Reflections on Esaias Stiefel's Booklet: On the Threefold State of Man and His New Birth

4. Shall we speak of our age? No: We are a new branch / born from our first mother: We were a withered limb on the tree / but the mother has introduced her sap and power into us / and born a young branch out of herself / on which she will have joy / and through which she will bear her fruit. Yes, she has born a young son out of the old one / who shall not be blind / nor go out from her / but remain in her house / for he is her only heir / in whom she has joy.

5. Dear brothers / let us rejoice / and be glad in the LORD / that our city Jerusalem is being rebuilt in Zion / in which our mother dwells / and which shall also be our eternal dwelling.

6. Because you then / dear hearts and brothers / as I hear / also stand within the greening essence / and have received a seeing eye; I feel a desire in my limbs in the essence of my mother / to rejoice heartily with you in our new life / and I ask / may you not understand this otherwise than in true fidelity and love / as one limb owes another.

7. That I shall speak with you in this way / does not happen as if I wanted to rise above your gifts / and exalt myself over you / in that a sharp understanding has been given to me by the Divine Mysterio mystery: but understand this in such a way / that I have not become your breaker / but rather a beam in our building / in the house of our common mother / not through human reason or art / but thus it was arranged by Him who had the power / who does what He wills.

8. So a house must not only have rafters and beams / but also stones for the foundation / and must have various fittings. If now the LORD lays one as a foundation or corner-stone / and uses another for the building / we should learn to recognize one another / each according to his gift / and not despise or reject one another because of unequal gifts / as has happened for a long time until now in Babel / but rather consider the utility of the building / and that one fitting does not have to be like the other / even though it is all closed within one another / and is together only one house.

9. It has been given to me to understand and speak from the foundation / to another from the whole building of GOD / as in a sum. But the foundation and the whole house of GOD is only One: It comes from one Spirit / and all of this serves for the wondrous revelation of GOD.