TO THE FOREIGN VISITORS

A PSYCHOTHERAPY OF JOHN

(The Preface to the book JOHN BAPTIST, from Clovis Tavares)

John Baptiste is not a Revealer, like Moses and Jesus, but the carrier of an Inter-Revelation. He can be considered a kind of inter-revelator.Inter-Revelation is the preparation a of a New Revelation.

It is necessary to understand that Jesus taught is a so great rupture with the old ethics, that it was necessary a previous stage. This Inter-revelation had already been foreseen for Malaquias Prophet: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."(Ml 4:5)

If the mission of John, the Baptist is a kind of Inter-revelation, we need to Know between what revelations it is situated.

It is exactly between the Revelation by Moses and the Christian Revelation.
We are talking about 1500 years.

Along this time, there were great cultural changes. Changes in Politics, society, Psychology and Spituality.

Jesus came close Himself gradually to the earth atmosphere. This psychosphere gradually breathed new possibilities.

In elapsing of these fifteen centuries, it appeared Elijah, who have preached the repentance.
Elijah reincarnated himself as John, contemporary of Jesus and His relative, accomplishing the mission to prepare the ways of the Lord.

On what consists this intermediate sub-revelation?

In first place, it is not a revelation, as we already explained. It has a function to fix psychological basis of the minds for the big true radical change, that was comming. This change is the Christian Ethics. As long time ago Moses had done, Jonh just lead people through the promised land.

The psychological distance from the Ten Commandments to the Sermon of the Mount can only be understood if the people submit theirselves to a kind of psycotherapy.

This therapy is the Psycotherapy of John. His magnetic presence have lead people to confess and have produced a psychic reorganization for everyone who accepted his message.

It is very necessary today. Nowadays more than at any time.

A Psycotherapic process for a humanity surrounded by serveral kinds of psychical disorder.

Possibly, a Psychotherapy by the John Baptist's method would be succeed in the so called compulsive disorders.

One time, I was invited to talk in an open meeting of the familiars of Alcoholic Anonymous. During my brief communication, I remembered that John Baptist suggested his “patients” to make a moral inventory before the water baptism. This is similar to what the anonymous groups of mutual aid do. I said then that if they did not have a spiritual protector, they could choose John, the Baptist. The moral inventory of these groups are the psychologic method of John.

I have read a lot regarding of Jonh Baptist. But I confess that I have never had contact with any texts so well written like these.

One of them is a 1940 text, published in the "Escola Jesus Cristo", directed only to domestic public. So, we are reprinting this text: "The Life of John Baptist", of Clóvis Tavares. It was printed first time 60 years ago and has never been reprinted.

The other text is a preach of my Father, Clóvis Tavares, whitch occuried on Sunday, June 24, 1979, the day of John Baptist, in the "Escola Jesus Cristo". It was recordered by our friend Rubens Fernandes, who gave the tapes to my Mother after my Father´s death.

The time between the two texts was about 40 years.

In these forty years, the life of my Father changed in many aspects too. He advanced in years, he changed byologically, socially, psychologically, changed his civil state, became himself a father, got many human afflictions…

But one thing remained and was fortified: his Faith.

The life of my Father, in many aspects, remembers the humble and the power of John Baptist.

Even though the conversion of my Father had a preparatory period. In a first time, he belonged to the Jonh Baptist Spiritist Group. This social entity, older than "Escola Jesus Cristo", baptized it, I say, introduced it in the spiritist scene in Campos dos Goytacazes at the 30´s.

When "Escola Jesus Cristo" started to grow, the John Baptist Group, following the humble exemple of its protector, decided to diminish so that "Escola Jesus Cristo" could grow. And then, sent to "Escola Jesus Cristo" its people, its preachers, its experience, its history.

A historical event carried out by two spiritual giants is recapitulated two thousand years later for two institutions that, without no premeditation, have these two spiritual giants as their protectors: John Baptist and Jesus Christ.

John Baptist became happy with the presence of Jesus since the time where he was in Isabel's womb. Certainly, he has produced himself in Isabel, the second-sight phenomenon, told by Lucas. Isabel, feeling his movements, had the intuition of the presence of the Lord and proclaimed her intuition for the posterity.

I hope these pages can produce the waited fruits, of the repentance, of the preparation for a new psychological stage, of a purification of character, of change mental and spiritual level, in order to, finally, we become apt to understand Jesus message.

Flávio Mussa Tavares