38. I said: "Supreme Lord, who can know these things except one who doesn’t live among human beings?
39. But I’m ignorant. How can I speak of these things that you asked me about?"
40. He said to me: "As you can’t do one of these things that were mentioned, so you can’t comprehend my judgment or the goal of the love I have promised to my people."
41. I said: "Look, Lord, you’ve made promises concerning these who are alive at the end, but what will those who are before us do, or we, or those who come after us?"
42. He said to me, "I will compare my judgment to a crown. Just as there is no delay for those who come last, so there is no rushing for those who come before."
43. I replied, "Couldn’t you have created all at once those who have been and those who are and those who will be so that you might show your judgment more quickly?"
44. He replied to me, "The creation can’t run ahead of its creator, nor can the world sustain all at one time those who are created in it."
45. I said: "How then could you say to your servant that you will certainly give life to the creation created by you at one time? If, therefore, they will live at one time and the creation will sustain them then, couldn’t it sustain them at one time now?"
46. He said to me: "Ask a woman’s womb: If you bear ten children, why do you only do it over time? Ask it then to produce ten at once."
47. I said, "Surely it can’t, but only over time."
48. He said to me: "I also have given the earth’s womb for those who have been sown on it over time.
49. As an infant doesn’t give birth and a woman who has become old doesn’t give birth any longer, so I have set in order the world I created."
50. I asked: "Since you have given me opportunity, let me speak before you. Is our mother, of whom you spoke to me, still young? Or is she already approaching old age?"
51. He responded to me: "Ask one who gives birth, and she will tell you. Say to her,
52. ‘Why are those you have borne now not like those whom you bore before, but are smaller in stature?’