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NON-CANONICAL APOCALYPSES AND REVELATORY TREATISES
done. For the rest of their lives they will serve as the Lord’s slave with pure hearts, and they will prosper in their every deed, receiving everything they ask from the Lord. Then they glorify the Lord, be cause they have been delivered over to me, and they no longer suffer any evil.” (VI, 4) I said to him, “Lord, explain something else to me.” “What do you want to know?” he asked. “Are those who live in luxury and deceit,” I asked, “tormented for the same amount of time they lived in luxury and deceit?” He replied to me, “They are tormented the same amount of time.” 2 “Then they are tormented very little, Lord,” I said. “For those who have lived in luxury like this and forgotten God should be tormented seven times as long.” 3 He said to me, “You are a fool and do not understand the force of the tor ment.” “If I had understood it, Lord,” I replied, “I would not have asked you to explain it to me.” “Listen,” he said, “and I will tell you the force of both things. 4 The time of luxury and deceit is a single hour. But an hour’s worth of tor ment has the force of thirty days. And so, if someone lives in luxury and deceit for a single day, and is then tormented for a single day, that day of torment has the force of an entire year. Thus, a person is tormented for the same number of years as the days he has lived in luxury.n You see,” he said, “that the time of luxury and deceit is very brief, but that of pun ishment and torment is long.”
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(VI, 5) I said, “Lord, since I have not completely understood about the times of deceit and luxury and tor ment, explain them to me more clearly.” 2 He answered me, “You are persis tently foolish and do not wish to cleanse
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your heart and serve God. Take care,” he said, “lest the time be fulfilled and you be found foolish. Listen, now,” he said, “to what you want to know, so that you may understand these things. 3 The one who lives in luxury and de ceit for a single day, doing whatever he wants, is clothed with great foolishness and does not understand what he is doing. The next day he forgets what he did the day before. For luxury and deceit have no memories, because the person is clothed in foolishness. But when punish ment and torment cling to a person for a single day, he is punished and tormented for a year, because punishment and tor ment have great memories, 4 And so, when he is tormented and punished over the course of the entire year, then he remembers his luxury and deceit and he knows that he is suffering because of these evil deeds. All those who live in luxury and deceit are tor mented in this way, because even though they are alive they have handed them selves over to death.” 5 “What sorts of luxuries, Lord,” I asked, “are harmful?” He replied, “Ev erything that brings a person pleasure is a luxury,” he said. “For even the foultempered person who acts as he desires enjoys a luxury. So too does the adulterer, the drunkard, the slanderer, the liar, the greedy, the defrauder, and anyone who does anything similar, as he desires, in his own diseased way. Such a person, then, enjoys a luxury in what he does. 6 All these luxuries are harmful to the slaves of God. Those who are punished and tormented, therefore, suffer because of these deceitful practices. 7 But there are also luxuries that save people. For many people who do what is good enjoy luxury by being borne along
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Note: the calculations are based on a twelve-hour day