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

obedience. And even if the Lord were to command fire to fall from heaven, as with Elijah, it cannot refrain; it should and must perform the Lord's work in fervor.

92. Therefore, I say in good faith out of my gifts that a person should take good care if he should or wants to speak with the mouth of the Lord. For if one wants to say: I, the living word of God, say and do this; then the will of the Lord must be there, and the spirit of God must arm the tongue, heart, and mind and travel with it Himself; otherwise, it is not the Lord's, but the outer man's word.

93. What the author further speaks of the entirely fleshly Christendom, which carries no more than just the name in its mouth, where the heart and mind are recognized before God only as a mocker of the name of Christ, is indeed so, and he has written rightly about it in his knowledge.

94. It has now borrowed and lent the cloak of Christ with His suffering, death, and dying, with the satisfaction, and has hidden the Antichristian whore-child underneath it. It covers that same man of pride and falsity with the purple cloak of Christ and rides with it in Babel on the horrible and shameful beast, in the Revelation of John.

95. It tickles itself with the suffering and satisfaction of Christ, but will not enter into the suffering, dying, death, and resurrection of Christ and be born out of the spirit of Christ. The whore-child shall only be comforted.

96. Oh, how the cloak of Christ, with which it covers the man of falsity, will turn into hellish fire for many a one! It is truly not called only comforting; rather, You must be born anew, out of water and the Holy Spirit, otherwise you shall not see the kingdom of God, says the mouth of Christ.

97. The will must be turned out of deceit and falsity into justice and truth, if it wants to be called a Christian with the foundation of truth and not be a Christian only in the mouth, but in the deed.

98. But he who carries Christ only in his mouth and is not born out of the will and spirit of Christ, he is the Antichrist and boasts unfairly of being a Christian. If he does not struggle against the will of the flesh and always kill it, then the life of Christ is not in him, but the will of the outer world and of the devil in the wrath of God is in him. For Christ said: