Jesus the Unknown

Martha-Mary, to all creation:

if you believe, you will see the glory of God (38-40).

All that follows is the "vision of glory." But is it only "vision", "deception of the senses", "hallucination" that does not exist? One would have to be a hundred times more of a lackey than Smerdyakov's lackey to make up his mind and be satisfied with that; not to feel that this vision is an epiphany, a breakthrough into another reality, greater than the one in which we live, so that in comparison with it everything that we consider "real" can only be a "deception of the senses", a "hallucination" – something that does not exist.

XXXIV

What Mary saw, we will never know; we can only vaguely guess at this from the word of the Lord spoken on that Sabbath, when, by healing the paralytic of Bethesda, Jesus seemed to have broken, but in fact fulfilled – "fulfilled" – the law of the Father in the freedom of the Son:

If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free. "Whoever keeps My word will never see death." (John 8:36, 51.)

We can also judge this from another word spoken on the day when the Pharisees-lawyers, not daring to execute an adulterous wife, seem to be violating, but in fact fulfilling the Father's law:

My Father does (creates) until now, and I do (create). For as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so the Son gives life to whom He will...

Verily, verily, I say to you, the time is coming, and it is now, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and when they have heard, they will live...

For just as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave the Son to have life in Himself...

Do not be amazed at this, for the time is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God. And they will come out... (John 5:7, 21, 25-28.)

After this quiet word in time, the thunderous word in eternity:

Lazarus, depart!

And the dead man came out, wrapped hand and foot in grave clothes, and his face was bound with a cloth. (John 11:43-44.)