A PROPHECY OF BARUCH
We have plenty of books attributed to Baruch besides that in our official Apocrypha: there is the Syriac Apocalypse and the Greek one (both of which are to be found in Dr. Charles's Pseudepigrapha and also the Rest of the Words of Baruch or Paralipomena of Jeremiah which has been edited by Dr. Rendel Harris: a translation of the Armenian version is in Issaverdens' collection. Justin the Gnostic -- a heretic only known from the treatise of Hippolytus -- had a book setting forth his peculiar system, in which an angelic being named Baruch figured, and the book bore his name; but that is hardly relevant here. There is an Ethiopic Apocalypse (Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 16,223) which, Dillmann says, deals in part with the history of the Abyssinian Church. However the following prophecy is not found in any existing books attributed to Baruch and therefore is evidence of a lost book. The prophecy is found in some MSS of Cyprian, Testimonia iii. 29.
For the time shall come when you and those that come after you shall seek me, desiring to hear a word of wisdom and understanding, and shall not find it. But nations shall desire to see a wise man, and it shall not happen to them. Not that the wisdom of this world shall be lacking or shall fail the earth, neither shall the word of the law be wanting to the world. For wisdom shall be among a few that keep watch and are silent and talk with one another in quiet, because some shall be afraid of them and fear them as evil men. But these shall not even believe the word of the law of the Most High, and others gaping with their mouths shall not believe and shall believe, and shall be contradicting and contrary, and obstructing the spirit of truth. And others shall be wise with the spirit of error and uttering their own words as the sayings of the Most High and the Mighty, and others shall be personal of faith: others capable and strong in the faith of the Most High and hateful to him that is strange thereto.
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