The Urantia Book - Part IV - original from:
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PART IV


 The Life and Teachings of Jesus


 PAPER 120


 THE BESTOWAL OF MICHAEL ON URANTIA

  120:0.1 ASSIGNED by Gabriel to supervise the restatement of the life of
  Michael when on Urantia and in the likeness of mortal flesh, I, the
  Melchizedek director of the revelatory commission intrusted with this task, am
  authorized to present this narrative of certain events which immediately
  preceded the Creator Son's arrival on Urantia to embark upon the terminal
  phase of his universe bestowal experience. To live such identical lives as he
  imposes upon the intelligent beings of his own creation, thus to bestow
  himself in the likeness of his various orders of created beings, is a part of
  the price which every Creator Son must pay for the full and supreme
  sovereignty of his self-made universe of things and beings.

  120:0.2 Before the events I am about to delineate, Michael of Nebadon had
  bestowed himself six times after the similitude of six differing orders of his
  diverse creation of intelligent beings. Then he prepared to descend upon
  Urantia in the likeness of mortal flesh, the lowest order of his intelligent
  will creatures, and, as such a human of the material realm, to execute the
  final act in the drama of the acquirement of universe sovereignty in
  accordance with the mandates of the divine Paradise Rulers of the universe of
  universes.

  120:0.3 In the course of each of these preceding bestowals Michael not only
  acquired the finite experience of one group of his created beings, but he also
  acquired an essential experience in Paradise co-operation which would, in and
  of itself, further contribute to constituting him the sovereign of his self-
  made universe. At any moment throughout all past local universe time, Michael
  could have asserted personal sovereignty as a Creator Son and as a Creator Son
  could have ruled his universe after the manner of his own choosing. In such an
  event, Immanuel and the associated Paradise Sons would have taken leave of the
  universe. But Michael did not wish to rule Nebadon merely in his own isolated
  right, as a Creator Son. He desired to ascend through actual experience in co-
  operative subordination to the Paradise Trinity to that high place in universe
  status where he would become qualified to rule his universe and administer its
  affairs with that perfection of insight and wisdom of execution which will
  sometime be characteristic of the exalted rule of the Supreme Being. He
  aspired not to perfection of rule as a Creator Son but to supremacy of
  administration as the embodiment of the universe wisdom and the divine
  experience of the Supreme Being.

  120:0.4 Michael, therefore, had a double purpose in the making of these seven
  bestowals upon the various orders of his universe creatures: First, he was
  completing the required experience in creature understanding which is demanded
  of all Creator Sons before they assume complete sovereignty. At any time a
  Creator Son may rule his universe in his own right, but he can rule as the
  supreme representative of the Paradise Trinity only after passing through the
  seven universe-creature bestowals. Second, he was aspiring to the privilege of
  representing the maximum authority of the Paradise Trinity which can be
  exercised in the direct and personal administration of a local universe.
  Accordingly, did Michael, during the experience of each of his universe
  bestowals, successfully and acceptably voluntarily subordinate himself to the
  variously constituted wills of the diverse associations of the persons of the
  Paradise Trinity. That is, on the first bestowal he was subject to the
  combined will of the Father, Son, and Spirit; on the second bestowal to the
  will of the Father and the Son; on the third bestowal to the will of the
  Father and the Spirit; on the fourth bestowal to the will of the Son and the
  Spirit; on the fifth bestowal to the will of the Infinite Spirit; on the sixth
  bestowal to the will of the Eternal Son; and during the seventh and final
  bestowal, on Urantia, to the will of the Universal Father.

  120:0.5 Michael, therefore, combines in his personal sovereignty the divine
  will of the sevenfold phases of the universal Creators with the understanding
  experience of his local universe creatures. Thus has his administration become
  representative of the greatest possible power and authority although divested
  of all arbitrary assumptions. His power is unlimited since it is derived from
  experienced association with the Paradise Deities; his authority is
  unquestioned inasmuch as it was acquired through actual experience in the
  likeness of universe creatures; his sovereignty is supreme since it embodies
  at one and the same time the sevenfold viewpoint of Paradise Deity with the
  creature viewpoint of time and space.

  120:0.6 Having determined the time of his final bestowal and having selected
  the planet whereon this extraordinary event would take place, Michael held the
  usual prebestowal conference with Gabriel and then presented himself before
  his elder brother and Paradise counselor, Immanuel. All powers of universe
  administration which had not previously been conferred upon Gabriel, Michael
  now assigned to the custody of Immanuel. And just before Michael's departure
  for the Urantia incarnation, Immanuel, in accepting the custody of the
  universe during the time of the Urantia bestowal, proceeded to impart the
  bestowal counsel which would serve as the incarnation guide for Michael when
  he would presently grow up on Urantia as a mortal of the realm.

  120:0.7 In this connection it should be borne in mind that Michael had elected
  to execute this bestowal in the likeness of mortal flesh, subject to the will
  of the Paradise Father. The Creator Son required instructions from no one in
  order to effect this incarnation for the sole purpose of achieving universe
  sovereignty, but he had embarked upon a program of the revelation of the
  Supreme which involved co-operative functioning with the diverse wills of the
  Paradise Deities. Thus his sovereignty, when finally and personally acquired,
  would actually be all-inclusive of the sevenfold will of Deity as it
  culminates in the Supreme. He had, therefore, six times previously been
  instructed by the personal representatives of the various Paradise Deities and
  associations thereof; and now he was instructed by the Union of Days,
  ambassador of the Paradise Trinity to the local universe of Nebadon, acting on
  behalf of the Universal Father.

  120:0.8 There were immediate advantages and tremendous compensations resultant
  from the willingness of this mighty Creator Son once more voluntarily to
  subordinate himself to the will of the Paradise Deities, this time to that of
  the Universal Father. By this decision to effect such associative
  subordination, Michael would experience in this incarnation, not only the
  nature of mortal man, but also the will of the Paradise Father of all. And
  further, he could enter upon this unique bestowal with the complete assurance,
  not only that Immanuel would exercise the full authority of the Paradise
  Father in the administration of his universe during his absence on the Urantia
  bestowal, but also with the comforting knowledge that the Ancients of Days of
  the superuniverse had decreed the safety of his realm throughout the entire
  bestowal period.

  120:0.9 And this was the setting of the momentous occasion when Immanuel
  presented the seventh bestowal commission. And from this prebestowal charge of
  Immanuel to the universe ruler who subsequently became Jesus of Nazareth
  (Christ Michael) on Urantia, I am permitted to present the following excerpts:



1. THE SEVENTH BESTOWAL COMMISSION

  120:1.1 "My Creator brother, I am about to witness your seventh and final
  universe bestowal. Most faithfully and perfectly have you executed the six
  previous commissions, and I entertain no thought but that you will be equally
  triumphant on this, your terminal sovereignty bestowal. Heretofore you have
  appeared on your bestowal spheres as a fully developed being of the order of
  your choosing. Now you are about to appear upon Urantia, the disordered and
  disturbed planet of your choice, not as a fully developed mortal, but as a
  helpless babe. This, my comrade, will be a new and untried experience for you.
  You are about to pay the full price of bestowal and to experience the complete
  enlightenment of the incarnation of a Creator in the likeness of a creature.

  120:1.2 "Throughout each of your former bestowals you have voluntarily chosen
  to subject yourself to the will of the three Paradise Deities and their divine
  interassociations. Of the seven phases of the will of the Supreme you have in
  your previous bestowals been subject to all but the personal will of your
  Paradise Father. Now that you have elected to be wholly subject to your
  Father's will throughout your seventh bestowal, I, as the personal
  representative of our Father, assume the unqualified jurisdiction of your
  universe for the time of your incarnation.

  120:1.3 "In entering upon the Urantia bestowal, you have voluntarily divested
  yourself of all extraplanetary support and special assistance such as might be
  rendered by any creature of your own creation. As your created sons of Nebadon
  are wholly dependent upon you for safe conduct throughout their universe
  careers, so now must you become wholly and unreservedly dependent upon your
  Paradise Father for safe conduct throughout the unrevealed vicissitudes of
  your ensuing mortal career. And when you shall have finished this bestowal
  experience, you will know in very truth the full meaning and the rich
  significance of that faith-trust which you so unvaryingly require all your
  creatures to master as a part of their intimate relationship with you as their
  local universe Creator and Father.

  120:1.4 "Throughout your Urantia bestowal you need be concerned with but one
  thing, the unbroken communion between you and your Paradise Father; and it
  will be by the perfection of such a relationship that the world of your
  bestowal, even all the universe of your creation, will behold a new and more
  understandable revelation of your Father and my Father, the Universal Father
  of all. Your concern, therefore, has only to do with your personal life on
  Urantia. I will be fully and efficiently responsible for the security and
  unbroken administration of your universe from the moment of your voluntary
  relinquishment of authority until you return to us as Universe Sovereign,
  confirmed by Paradise, and receive back from my hands, not the vicegerent
  authority which you now surrender to me, but, instead, the supreme power over,
  and jurisdiction of, your universe.

  120:1.5 "And that you may know with assurance that I am empowered to do all
  that I am now promising (knowing full well that I am the assurance of all
  Paradise for the faithful performance of my word), I announce to you that
  there has just been communicated to me a mandate of the Ancients of Days on
  Uversa which will prevent all spiritual jeopardy in Nebadon throughout the
  period of your voluntary bestowal. From the moment you surrender
  consciousness, upon the beginning of the mortal incarnation, until you return
  to us as supreme and unconditional sovereign of this universe of your own
  creation and organization, nothing of serious import can happen in all
  Nebadon. In this interim of your incarnation, I hold the orders of the
  Ancients of Days which unqualifiedly mandate the instantaneous and automatic
  extinction of any being guilty of rebellion or presuming to instigate
  insurrection in the universe of Nebadon while you are absent on this bestowal.
  My brother, in view of the authority of Paradise inherent in my presence and
  augmented by the judicial mandate of Uversa, your universe and all its loyal
  creatures will be secure during your bestowal. You may proceed upon your
  mission with but a single thought -- the enhanced revelation of our Father to
  the intelligent beings of your universe.

  120:1.6 "As in each of your previous bestowals, I would remind you that I am
  recipient of your universe jurisdiction as brother-trustee. I exercise all
  authority and wield all power in your name. I function as would our Paradise
  Father and in accordance with your explicit request that I thus act in your
  stead. And such being the fact, all this delegated authority is yours again to
  exercise at any moment you may see fit to requisition its return. Your
  bestowal is, throughout, wholly voluntary. As a mortal incarnate in the realm
  you are without celestial endowments, but all your relinquished power may be
  had at any time you may choose to reinvest yourself with universe authority.
  If you should choose to reinstate yourself in power and authority, remember,
  it will be wholly for personal reasons since I am the living and supreme
  pledge whose presence and promise guarantee the safe administration of your
  universe in accordance with your Father's will. Rebellion, such as has three
  times occurred in Nebadon, cannot occur during your absence from Salvington on
  this bestowal. For the period of the Urantia bestowal the Ancients of Days
  have decreed that rebellion in Nebadon shall be invested with the automatic
  seed of its own annihilation.

  120:1.7 "As long as you are absent on this final and extraordinary bestowal, I
  pledge (with Gabriel's co-operation) the faithful administration of your
  universe; and as I commission you to undertake this ministry of divine
  revelation and to undergo this experience of perfected human understanding, I
  act in behalf of my Father and your Father and offer you the following
  counsel, which should guide you in the living of your earth life as you become
  progressively self-conscious regarding the divine mission of your continued
  sojourn in the flesh:





2. THE BESTOWAL LIMITATIONS

  120:2.1 "1. In accordance with the usages and in conformity with the technique
  of Sonarington -- in compliance with the mandates of the Eternal Son of
  Paradise -- I have provided in every way for your immediate entrance upon this
  mortal bestowal in harmony with the plans formulated by you and placed in my
  keeping by Gabriel. You will grow up on Urantia as a child of the realm,
  complete your human education -- all the while subject to the will of your
  Paradise Father -- live your life on Urantia as you have determined, terminate
  your planetary sojourn, and prepare for ascension to your Father to receive
  from him the supreme sovereignty of your universe.

  120:2.2 "2. Apart from your earth mission and your universe revelation, but
  incidental to both, I counsel that you assume, after you are sufficiently
  self-conscious of your divine identity, the additional task of technically
  terminating the Lucifer rebellion in the system of Satania, and that you do
  all this as the Son of Man; thus, as a mortal creature of the realm, in
  weakness made powerful by faith-submission to the will of your Father, I
  suggest that you graciously achieve all you have repeatedly declined
  arbitrarily to accomplish by power and might when you were so endowed at the
  time of the inception of this sinful and unjustified rebellion. I would regard
  it as a fitting climax of your mortal bestowal if you should return to us as
  the Son of Man, Planetary Prince of Urantia, as well as the Son of God,
  supreme sovereign of your universe. As a mortal man, the lowest type of
  intelligent creature in Nebadon, meet and adjudicate the blasphemous
  pretensions of Caligastia and Lucifer and, in your assumed humble estate,
  forever end the shameful misrepresentations of these fallen children of light.
  Having steadfastly declined to discredit these rebels through the exercise of
  your creator prerogatives, now it would be fitting that you should, in the
  likeness of the lowest creatures of your creation, wrest dominion from the
  hands of these fallen Sons; and so would your whole local universe in all
  fairness clearly and forever recognize the justice of your doing in the role
  of mortal flesh those things which mercy admonished you not to do by the power
  of arbitrary authority. And having thus by your bestowal established the
  possibility of the sovereignty of the Supreme in Nebadon, you will in effect
  have brought to a close the unadjudicated affairs of all preceding
  insurrections, notwithstanding the greater or lesser time lag involved in the
  realization of this achievement. By this act the pending dissensions of your
  universe will be in substance liquidated. And with the subsequent endowment of
  supreme sovereignty over your universe, similar challenges to your authority
  can never recur in any part of your great personal creation.

  120:2.3 "3. When you have succeeded in terminating the Urantia secession, as
  you undoubtedly will, I counsel you to accept from Gabriel the conference of
  the title of `Planetary Prince of Urantia' as the eternal recognition by your
  universe of your final bestowal experience; and that you further do any and
  all things, consistent with the purport of your bestowal, to atone for the
  sorrow and confusion brought upon Urantia by the Caligastia betrayal and the
  subsequent Adamic default.

  120:2.4 "4. In accordance with your request, Gabriel and all concerned will
  co-operate with you in the expressed desire to end your Urantia bestowal with
  the pronouncement of a dispensational judgment of the realm, accompanied by
  the termination of an age, the resurrection of the sleeping mortal survivors,
  and the establishment of the dispensation of the bestowed Spirit of Truth.

  120:2.5 "5. As concerns the planet of your bestowal and the immediate
  generation of men living thereon at the time of your mortal sojourn, I counsel
  you to function largely in the role of a teacher. Give attention, first, to
  the liberation and inspiration of man's spiritual nature. Next, illuminate the
  darkened human intellect, heal the souls of men, and emancipate their minds
  from age-old fears. And then, in accordance with your mortal wisdom, minister
  to the physical well-being and material comfort of your brothers in the flesh.
  Live the ideal religious life for the inspiration and edification of all your
  universe.

  120:2.6 "6. On the planet of your bestowal, set rebellion-segregated man
  spiritually free. On Urantia, make a further contribution to the sovereignty
  of the Supreme, thus extending the establishment of this sovereignty
  throughout the broad domains of your personal creation. In this, your material
  bestowal in the likeness of the flesh, you are about to experience the final
  enlightenment of a time-space Creator, the dual experience of working within
  the nature of man with the will of your Paradise Father. In your temporal life
  the will of the finite creature and the will of the infinite Creator are to
  become as one, even as they are also uniting in the evolving Deity of the
  Supreme Being. Pour out upon the planet of your bestowal the Spirit of Truth
  and thus make all normal mortals on that isolated sphere immediately and fully
  accessible to the ministry of the segregated presence of our Paradise Father,
  the Thought Adjusters of the realms.

  120:2.7 "7. In all that you may perform on the world of your bestowal, bear
  constantly in mind that you are living a life for the instruction and
  edification of all your universe. You are bestowing this life of mortal
  incarnation upon Urantia, but you are to live such a life for the spiritual
  inspiration of every human and superhuman intelligence that has lived, now
  exists, or may yet live on every inhabited world which has formed, now forms,
  or may yet form a part of the vast galaxy of your administrative domain. Your
  earth life in the likeness of mortal flesh shall not be so lived as to
  constitute an example for the mortals of Urantia in the days of your earthly
  sojourn nor for any subsequent generation of human beings on Urantia or on any
  other world. Rather shall your life in the flesh on Urantia be the inspiration
  for all lives upon all Nebadon worlds throughout all generations in the ages
  to come.

  120:2.8 "8. Your great mission to be realized and experienced in the mortal
  incarnation is embraced in your decision to live a life wholeheartedly
  motivated to do the will of your Paradise Father, thus to reveal God, your
  Father, in the flesh and especially to the creatures of the flesh. At the same
  time you will also interpret, with a new enhancement, our Father, to the
  supermortal beings of all Nebadon. Equally with this ministry of new
  revelation and augmented interpretation of the Paradise Father to the human
  and the superhuman type of mind, you will also so function as to make a new
  revelation of man to God. Exhibit in your one short life in the flesh, as it
  has never before been seen in all Nebadon, the transcendent possibilities
  attainable by a God-knowing human during the short career of mortal existence,
  and make a new and illuminating interpretation of man and the vicissitudes of
  his planetary life to all the superhuman intelligences of all Nebadon, and for
  all time. You are to go down to Urantia in the likeness of mortal flesh, and
  living as a man in your day and generation, you will so function as to show
  your entire universe the ideal of perfected technique in the supreme
  engagement of the affairs of your vast creation: The achievement of God
  seeking man and finding him and the phenomenon of man seeking God and finding
  him; and doing all of this to mutual satisfaction and doing it during one
  short lifetime in the flesh.

  120:2.9 "9. I caution you ever to bear in mind that, while in fact you are to
  become an ordinary human of the realm, in potential you will remain a Creator
  Son of the Paradise Father. Throughout this incarnation, although you will
  live and act as a Son of Man, the creative attributes of your personal
  divinity will follow you from Salvington to Urantia. It will ever be within
  your power-of-will to terminate the incarnation at any moment subsequent to
  the arrival of your Thought Adjuster. Prior to the arrival and reception of
  the Adjuster I will vouch for your personality integrity. But subsequent to
  the arrival of your Adjuster and concomitant with your progressive recognition
  of the nature and import of your bestowal mission, you should refrain from the
  formulation of any superhuman will-to-attainment, achievement, or power in
  view of the fact that your creator prerogatives will remain associated with
  your mortal personality because of the inseparability of these attributes from
  your personal presence. But no superhuman repercussions will attend your
  earthly career apart from the will of the Paradise Father unless you should,
  by an act of conscious and deliberate will, make an undivided decision which
  would terminate in whole-personality choice.





3. FURTHER COUNSEL AND ADVICE

  120:3.1 "And now, my brother, in taking leave of you as you prepare to depart
  for Urantia and after counseling you regarding the general conduct of your
  bestowal, allow me to present certain advices that have been arrived at in
  consultation with Gabriel, and which concern minor phases of your mortal life.
  We further suggest:

  120:3.2 "1. That, in the pursuit of the ideal of your mortal earth life, you
  also give some attention to the realization and exemplification of some things
  practical and immediately helpful to your fellow men.

  120:3.3 "2. As concerns family relationships, give precedence to the accepted
  customs of family life as you find them established in the day and generation
  of your bestowal. Live your family and community life in accordance with the
  practices of the people among whom you have elected to appear.

  120:3.4 "3. In your relations to the social order we advise that you confine
  your efforts largely to spiritual regeneration and intellectual emancipation.
  Avoid all entanglements with the economic structure and the political
  commitments of your day. More especially devote yourself to living the ideal
  religious life on Urantia.

  120:3.5 "4. Under no circumstances and not even in the least detail, should
  you interfere with the normal and orderly progressive evolution of the Urantia
  races. But this prohibition must not be interpreted as limiting your efforts
  to leave behind you on Urantia an enduring and improved system of positive
  religious ethics. As a dispensational Son you are granted certain privileges
  pertaining to the advancement of the spiritual and religious status of the
  world peoples.

  120:3.6 "5. As you may see fit, you are to identify yourself with existing
  religious and spiritual movements as they may be found on Urantia but in every
  possible manner seek to avoid the formal establishment of an organized cult, a
  crystallized religion, or a segregated ethical grouping of mortal beings. Your
  life and teachings are to become the common heritage of all religions and all
  peoples.

  120:3.7 "6. To the end that you may not unnecessarily contribute to the
  creation of subsequent stereotyped systems of Urantia religious beliefs or
  other types of nonprogressive religious loyalties, we advise you still
  further: Leave no writings behind you on the planet. Refrain from all writing
  upon permanent materials; enjoin your associates to make no images or other
  likenesses of yourself in the flesh. See that nothing potentially idolatrous
  is left on the planet at the time of your departure.

  120:3.8 "7. While you will live the normal and average social life of the
  planet, being a normal individual of the male sex, you will probably not enter
  the marriage relation, which relation would be wholly honorable and consistent
  with your bestowal; but I must remind you that one of the incarnation mandates
  of Sonarington forbids the leaving of human offspring behind on any planet by
  a bestowal Son of Paradise origin.

  120:3.9 "8. In all other details of your oncoming bestowal we would commit you
  to the leading of the indwelling Adjuster, the teaching of the ever-present
  divine spirit of human guidance, and the reason-judgment of your expanding
  human mind of hereditary endowment. Such an association of creature and
  Creator attributes will enable you to live for us the perfect life of man on
  the planetary spheres, not necessarily perfect as regarded by any one man in
  any one generation on any one world (much less on Urantia) but wholly and
  supremely replete as evaluated on the more highly perfected and perfecting
  worlds of your far-flung universe.

  120:3.10 "And now, may your Father and my Father, who has ever sustained us in
  all past performances, guide and sustain you and be with you from the moment
  you leave us and achieve the surrender of your consciousness of personality,
  throughout your gradual return to recognition of your divine identity
  incarnate in human form, and then on through the whole of your bestowal
  experience on Urantia until your deliverance from the flesh and your ascension
  to our Father's right hand of sovereignty. When I shall again see you on
  Salvington, we shall welcome your return to us as the supreme and
  unconditional sovereign of this universe of your own making, serving, and
  completed understanding.

  120:3.11 "In your stead I now reign. I assume jurisdiction of all Nebadon as
  acting sovereign during the interim of your seventh and mortal bestowal on
  Urantia. And to you, Gabriel, I commit the safekeeping of the Son of Man
  about-to-be until he shall presently and in power and glory be returned to me
  as the Son of Man and the Son of God. And, Gabriel, I am your sovereign until
  Michael thus returns."



 ***

  120:3.12 Then, immediately, in the presence of all Salvington assembled,
  Michael removed himself from our midst, and we saw him no more in his
  accustomed place until his return as the supreme and personal ruler of the
  universe, subsequent to the completion of his bestowal career on Urantia.





4. THE INCARNATION -- MAKING TWO ONE

  120:4.1 And so certain unworthy children of Michael, who had accused their
  Creator-father of selfishly seeking rulership and indulged the insinuation
  that the Creator Son was arbitrarily and autocratically upheld in power by
  virtue of the unreasoning loyalty of a deluded universe of subservient
  creatures, were to be silenced forever and left confounded and disillusioned
  by the life of self-forgetful service which the Son of God now entered upon as
  the Son of Man -- all the while subject to "the will of the Paradise Father."

  120:4.2 But make no mistake; Christ Michael, while truly a dual-origin being,
  was not a double personality. He was not God in association with man but,
  rather, God incarnate in man. And he was always just that combined being. The
  only progressive factor in such a nonunderstandable relationship was the
  progressive self-conscious realization and recognition (by the human mind) of
  this fact of being God and man.

  120:4.3 Christ Michael did not progressively become God. God did not, at some
  vital moment in the earth life of Jesus, become man. Jesus was God and man --
  always and even forevermore. And this God and this man were, and now are, one,
  even as the Paradise Trinity of three beings is in reality one Deity.

  120:4.4 Never lose sight of the fact that the supreme spiritual purpose of the
  Michael bestowal was to enhance the revelation of God.

  120:4.5 Urantia mortals have varying concepts of the miraculous, but to us who
  live as citizens of the local universe there are few miracles, and of these by
  far the most intriguing are the incarnational bestowals of the Paradise Sons.
  The appearance in and on your world, by apparently natural processes, of a
  divine Son, we regard as a miracle -- the operation of universal laws beyond
  our understanding. Jesus of Nazareth was a miraculous person.

  120:4.6 In and through all this extraordinary experience, God the Father chose
  to manifest himself as he always does -- in the usual way -- in the normal,
  natural, and dependable way of divine acting.




PAPER 121


 THE TIMES OF MICHAEL'S BESTOWAL



  121:0.1 ACTING under the supervision of a commission of twelve members of the
  United Brotherhood of Urantia Midwayers, conjointly sponsored by the presiding
  head of our order and the Melchizedek of record, I am the secondary midwayer
  of onetime attachment to the Apostle Andrew, and I am authorized to place on
  record the narrative of the life transactions of Jesus of Nazareth as they
  were observed by my order of earth creatures, and as they were subsequently
  partially recorded by the human subject of my temporal guardianship. Knowing
  how his Master so scrupulously avoided leaving written records behind him,
  Andrew steadfastly refused to multiply copies of his written narrative. A
  similar attitude on the part of the other apostles of Jesus greatly delayed
  the writing of the Gospels.





1. THE OCCIDENT OF THE FIRST CENTURY AFTER CHRIST

  121:1.1 Jesus did not come to this world during an age of spiritual decadence;
  at the time of his birth Urantia was experiencing such a revival of spiritual
  thinking and religious living as it had not known in all its previous post-
  Adamic history nor has experienced in any era since. When Michael incarnated
  on Urantia, the world presented the most favorable condition for the Creator
  Son's bestowal that had ever previously prevailed or has since obtained. In
  the centuries just prior to these times Greek culture and the Greek language
  had spread over Occident and near Orient, and the Jews, being a Levantine
  race, in nature part Occidental and part Oriental, were eminently fitted to
  utilize such cultural and linguistic settings for the effective spread of a
  new religion to both East and West. These most favorable circumstances were
  further enhanced by the tolerant political rule of the Mediterranean world by
  the Romans.

  121:1.2 This entire combination of world influences is well illustrated by the
  activities of Paul, who, being in religious culture a Hebrew of the Hebrews,
  proclaimed the gospel of a Jewish Messiah in the Greek tongue, while he
  himself was a Roman citizen.

  121:1.3 Nothing like the civilization of the times of Jesus has been seen in
  the Occident before or since those days. European civilization was unified and
  co-ordinated under an extraordinary threefold influence:

1. The Roman political and social systems.

2. The Grecian language and culture -- and philosophy to a certain extent.

3. The rapidly spreading influence of Jewish religious and moral teachings.

  121:1.4 When Jesus was born, the entire Mediterranean world was a unified
  empire. Good roads, for the first time in the world's history, interconnected
  many major centers. The seas were cleared of pirates, and a great era of trade
  and travel was rapidly advancing. Europe did not again enjoy another such
  period of travel and trade until the nineteenth century after Christ.

  121:1.5 Notwithstanding the internal peace and superficial prosperity of the
  Greco-Roman world, a majority of the inhabitants of the empire languished in
  squalor and poverty. The small upper class was rich; a miserable and
  impoverished lower class embraced the rank and file of humanity. There was no
  happy and prosperous middle class in those days; it had just begun to make its
  appearance in Roman society.

  121:1.6 The first struggles between the expanding Roman and Parthian states
  had been concluded in the then recent past, leaving Syria in the hands of the
  Romans. In the times of Jesus, Palestine and Syria were enjoying a period of
  prosperity, relative peace, and extensive commercial intercourse with the
  lands to both the East and the West.





2. THE JEWISH PEOPLE

  121:2.1 The Jews were a part of the older Semitic race, which also included
  the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, and the more recent enemies of Rome, the
  Carthaginians. During the fore part of the first century after Christ, the
  Jews were the most influential group of the Semitic peoples, and they happened
  to occupy a peculiarly strategic geographic position in the world as it was at
  that time ruled and organized for trade.

  121:2.2 Many of the great highways joining the nations of antiquity passed
  through Palestine, which thus became the meeting place, or crossroads, of
  three continents. The travel, trade, and armies of Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt,
  Syria, Greece, Parthia, and Rome successively swept over Palestine. From time
  immemorial, many caravan routes from the Orient passed through some part of
  this region to the few good seaports of the eastern end of the Mediterranean,
  whence ships carried their cargoes to all the maritime Occident. And more than
  half of this caravan traffic passed through or near the little town of
  Nazareth in Galilee.

  121:2.3 Although Palestine was the home of Jewish religious culture and the
  birthplace of Christianity, the Jews were abroad in the world, dwelling in
  many nations and trading in every province of the Roman and Parthian states.

  121:2.4 Greece provided a language and a culture, Rome built the roads and
  unified an empire, but the dispersion of the Jews, with their more than two
  hundred synagogues and well-organized religious communities scattered hither
  and yon throughout the Roman world, provided the cultural centers in which the
  new gospel of the kingdom of heaven found initial reception, and from which it
  subsequently spread to the uttermost parts of the world.

  121:2.5 Each Jewish synagogue tolerated a fringe of gentile believers,
  "devout" or "God-fearing" men, and it was among this fringe of proselytes that
  Paul made the bulk of his early converts to Christianity. Even the temple at
  Jerusalem possessed its ornate court of the gentiles. There was very close
  connection between the culture, commerce, and worship of Jerusalem and
  Antioch. In Antioch Paul's disciples were first called "Christians."

  121:2.6 The centralization of the Jewish temple worship at Jerusalem
  constituted alike the secret of the survival of their monotheism and the
  promise of the nurture and sending forth to the world of a new and enlarged
  concept of that one God of all nations and Father of all mortals. The temple
  service at Jerusalem represented the survival of a religious cultural concept
  in the face of the downfall of a succession of gentile national overlords and
  racial persecutors.



  121:2.7 The Jewish people of this time, although under Roman suzerainty,
  enjoyed a considerable degree of self-government and, remembering the then
  only recent heroic exploits of deliverance executed by Judas Maccabee and his
  immediate successors, were vibrant with the expectation of the immediate
  appearance of a still greater deliverer, the long-expected Messiah.

  121:2.8 The secret of the survival of Palestine, the kingdom of the Jews, as a
  semi-independent state was wrapped up in the foreign policy of the Roman
  government, which desired to maintain control of the Palestinian highway of
  travel between Syria and Egypt as well as the western terminals of the caravan
  routes between the Orient and the Occident. Rome did not wish any power to
  arise in the Levant which might curb her future expansion in these regions.
  The policy of intrigue which had for its object the pitting of Seleucid Syria
  and Ptolemaic Egypt against each other necessitated fostering Palestine as a
  separate and independent state. Roman policy, the degeneration of Egypt, and
  the progressive weakening of the Seleucids before the rising power of Parthia,
  explain why it was that for several generations a small and unpowerful group
  of Jews was able to maintain its independence against both Seleucidae to the
  north and Ptolemies to the south. This fortuitous liberty and independence of
  the political rule of surrounding and more powerful peoples the Jews
  attributed to the fact that they were the "chosen people," to the direct
  interposition of Yahweh. Such an attitude of racial superiority made it all
  the harder for them to endure Roman suzerainty when it finally fell upon their
  land. But even in that sad hour the Jews refused to learn that their world
  mission was spiritual, not political.



  121:2.9 The Jews were unusually apprehensive and suspicious during the times
  of Jesus because they were then ruled by an outsider, Herod the Idumean, who
  had seized the overlordship of Judea by cleverly ingratiating himself with the
  Roman rulers. And though Herod professed loyalty to the Hebrew ceremonial
  observances, he proceeded to build temples for many strange gods.

  121:2.10 The friendly relations of Herod with the Roman rulers made the world
  safe for Jewish travel and thus opened the way for increased Jewish
  penetration even of distant portions of the Roman Empire and of foreign treaty
  nations with the new gospel of the kingdom of heaven. Herod's reign also
  contributed much toward the further blending of Hebrew and Hellenistic
  philosophies.

  121:2.11 Herod built the harbor of Caesarea, which further aided in making
  Palestine the crossroads of the civilized world. He died in 4 B.C., and his
  son Herod Antipas governed Galilee and Perea during Jesus' youth and ministry
  to A.D. 39. Antipas, like his father, was a great builder. He rebuilt many of
  the cities of Galilee, including the important trade center of Sepphoris.

  121:2.12 The Galileans were not regarded with full favor by the Jerusalem
  religious leaders and rabbinical teachers. Galilee was more gentile than
  Jewish when Jesus was born.





3. AMONG THE GENTILES

  121:3.1 Although the social and economic condition of the Roman state was not
  of the highest order, the widespread domestic peace and prosperity was
  propitious for the bestowal of Michael. In the first century after Christ the
  society of the Mediterranean world consisted of five well-defined strata:



  121:3.2 1. The aristocracy. The upper classes with money and official power,
  the privileged and ruling groups.



  121:3.3 2. The business groups. The merchant princes and the bankers, the
  traders -- the big importers and exporters -- the international merchants.



  121:3.4 3. The small middle class. Although this group was indeed small, it
  was very influential and provided the moral backbone of the early Christian
  church, which encouraged these groups to continue in their various crafts and
  trades. Among the Jews many of the Pharisees belonged to this class of
  tradesmen.



  121:3.5 4. The free proletariat. This group had little or no social standing.
  Though proud of their freedom, they were placed at great disadvantage because
  they were forced to compete with slave labor. The upper classes regarded them
  disdainfully, allowing that they were useless except for "breeding purposes."



  121:3.6 5. The slaves. Half the population of the Roman state were slaves;
  many were superior individuals and quickly made their way up among the free
  proletariat and even among the tradesmen. The majority were either mediocre or
  very inferior.



  121:3.7 Slavery, even of superior peoples, was a feature of Roman military
  conquest. The power of the master over his slave was unqualified. The early
  Christian church was largely composed of the lower classes and these slaves.

  121:3.8 Superior slaves often received wages and by saving their earnings were
  able to purchase their freedom. Many such emancipated slaves rose to high
  positions in state, church, and the business world. And it was just such
  possibilities that made the early Christian church so tolerant of this
  modified form of slavery.

  121:3.9 There was no widespread social problem in the Roman Empire in the
  first century after Christ. The major portion of the populace regarded
  themselves as belonging in that group into which they chanced to be born.
  There was always the open door through which talented and able individuals
  could ascend from the lower to the higher strata of Roman society, but the
  people were generally content with their social rank. They were not class
  conscious, neither did they look upon these class distinctions as being unjust
  or wrong. Christianity was in no sense an economic movement having for its
  purpose the amelioration of the miseries of the depressed classes.

  121:3.10 Although woman enjoyed more freedom throughout the Roman Empire than
  in her restricted position in Palestine, the family devotion and natural
  affection of the Jews far transcended that of the gentile world.





4. GENTILE PHILOSOPHY

  121:4.1 The gentiles were, from a moral standpoint, somewhat inferior to the
  Jews, but there was present in the hearts of the nobler gentiles abundant soil
  of natural goodness and potential human affection in which it was possible for
  the seed of Christianity to sprout and bring forth an abundant harvest of
  moral character and spiritual achievement. The gentile world was then
  dominated by four great philosophies, all more or less derived from the
  earlier Platonism of the Greeks. These schools of philosophy were:



  121:4.2 1. The Epicurean. This school of thought was dedicated to the pursuit
  of happiness. The better Epicureans were not given to sensual excesses. At
  least this doctrine helped to deliver the Romans from a more deadly form of
  fatalism; it taught that men could do something to improve their terrestrial
  status. It did effectually combat ignorant superstition.



  121:4.3 2. The Stoic. Stoicism was the superior philosophy of the better
  classes. The Stoics believed that a controlling Reason-Fate dominated all
  nature. They taught that the soul of man was divine; that it was imprisoned in
  the evil body of physical nature. Man's soul achieved liberty by living in
  harmony with nature, with God; thus virtue came to be its own reward. Stoicism
  ascended to a sublime morality, ideals never since transcended by any purely
  human system of philosophy. While the Stoics professed to be the "offspring of
  God," they failed to know him and therefore failed to find him. Stoicism
  remained a philosophy; it never became a religion. Its followers sought to
  attune their minds to the harmony of the Universal Mind, but they failed to
  envisage themselves as the children of a loving Father. Paul leaned heavily
  toward Stoicism when he wrote, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am,
  therewith to be content."



  121:4.4 3. The Cynic. Although the Cynics traced their philosophy to Diogenes
  of Athens, they derived much of their doctrine from the remnants of the
  teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek. Cynicism had formerly been more of a
  religion than a philosophy. At least the Cynics made their religio-philosophy
  democratic. In the fields and in the market places they continually preached
  their doctrine that "man could save himself if he would." They preached
  simplicity and virtue and urged men to meet death fearlessly. These wandering
  Cynic preachers did much to prepare the spiritually hungry populace for the
  later Christian missionaries. Their plan of popular preaching was much after
  the pattern, and in accordance with the style, of Paul's Epistles.



  121:4.5 4. The Skeptic. Skepticism asserted that knowledge was fallacious, and
  that conviction and assurance were impossible. It was a purely negative
  attitude and never became widespread.



  121:4.6 These philosophies were semireligious; they were often invigorating,
  ethical, and ennobling but were usually above the common people. With the
  possible exception of Cynicism, they were philosophies for the strong and the
  wise, not religions of salvation for even the poor and the weak.





5. THE GENTILE RELIGIONS

  121:5.1 Throughout preceding ages religion had chiefly been an affair of the
  tribe or nation; it had not often been a matter of concern to the individual.
  Gods were tribal or national, not personal. Such religious systems afforded
  little satisfaction for the individual spiritual longings of the average
  person.



  121:5.2 In the times of Jesus the religions of the Occident included:



  121:5.3 1. The pagan cults. These were a combination of Hellenic and Latin
  mythology, patriotism, and tradition.



  121:5.4 2. Emperor worship. This deification of man as the symbol of the state
  was very seriously resented by the Jews and the early Christians and led
  directly to the bitter persecutions of both churches by the Roman government.



  121:5.5 3. Astrology. This pseudo science of Babylon developed into a religion
  throughout the Greco-Roman Empire. Even in the twentieth century man has not
  been fully delivered from this superstitious belief.



  121:5.6 4. The mystery religions. Upon such a spiritually hungry world a flood
  of mystery cults had broken, new and strange religions from the Levant, which
  had enamored the common people and had promised them individual salvation.
  These religions rapidly became the accepted belief of the lower classes of the
  Greco-Roman world. And they did much to prepare the way for the rapid spread
  of the vastly superior Christian teachings, which presented a majestic concept
  of Deity, associated with an intriguing theology for the intelligent and a
  profound proffer of salvation for all, including the ignorant but spiritually
  hungry average man of those days.



  121:5.7 The mystery religions spelled the end of national beliefs and resulted
  in the birth of the numerous personal cults. The mysteries were many but were
  all characterized by:



  121:5.8 1. Some mythical legend, a mystery -- whence their name. As a rule
  this mystery pertained to the story of some god's life and death and return to
  life, as illustrated by the teachings of Mithraism, which, for a time, were
  contemporary with, and a competitor of, Paul's rising cult of Christianity.



  121:5.9 2. The mysteries were nonnational and interracial. They were personal
  and fraternal, giving rise to religious brotherhoods and numerous sectarian
  societies.



  121:5.10 3. They were, in their services, characterized by elaborate
  ceremonies of initiation and impressive sacraments of worship. Their secret
  rites and rituals were sometimes gruesome and revolting.



  121:5.11 4. But no matter what the nature of their ceremonies or the degree of
  their excesses, these mysteries invariably promised their devotees salvation,
  "deliverance from evil, survival after death, and enduring life in blissful
  realms beyond this world of sorrow and slavery."



  121:5.12 But do not make the mistake of confusing the teachings of Jesus with
  the mysteries. The popularity of the mysteries reveals man's quest for
  survival, thus portraying a real hunger and thirst for personal religion and
  individual righteousness. Although the mysteries failed adequately to satisfy
  this longing, they did prepare the way for the subsequent appearance of Jesus,
  who truly brought to this world the bread of life and the water thereof.

  121:5.13 Paul, in an effort to utilize the widespread adherence to the better
  types of the mystery religions, made certain adaptations of the teachings of
  Jesus so as to render them more acceptable to a larger number of prospective
  converts. But even Paul's compromise of Jesus' teachings (Christianity) was
  superior to the best in the mysteries in that:



  121:5.14 1. Paul taught a moral redemption, an ethical salvation. Christianity
  pointed to a new life and proclaimed a new ideal. Paul forsook magic rites and
  ceremonial enchantments.



  121:5.15 2. Christianity presented a religion which grappled with final
  solutions of the human problem, for it not only offered salvation from sorrow
  and even from death, but it also promised deliverance from sin followed by the
  endowment of a righteous character of eternal survival qualities.



  121:5.16 3. The mysteries were built upon myths. Christianity, as Paul
  preached it, was founded upon a historic fact: the bestowal of Michael, the
  Son of God, upon mankind.



  121:5.17 Morality among the gentiles was not necessarily related to either
  philosophy or religion. Outside of Palestine it not always occurred to people
  that a priest of religion was supposed to lead a moral life. Jewish religion
  and subsequently the teachings of Jesus and later the evolving Christianity of
  Paul were the first European religions to lay one hand upon morals and the
  other upon ethics, insisting that religionists pay some attention to both.

  121:5.18 Into such a generation of men, dominated by such incomplete systems
  of philosophy and perplexed by such complex cults of religion, Jesus was born
  in Palestine. And to this same generation he subsequently gave his gospel of
  personal religion -- sonship with God.





6. THE HEBREW RELIGION

  121:6.1 By the close of the first century before Christ the religious thought
  of Jerusalem had been tremendously influenced and somewhat modified by Greek
  cultural teachings and even by Greek philosophy. In the long contest between
  the views of the Eastern and Western schools of Hebrew thought, Jerusalem and
  the rest of the Occident and the Levant in general adopted the Western Jewish
  or modified Hellenistic viewpoint.

  121:6.2 In the days of Jesus three languages prevailed in Palestine: The
  common people spoke some dialect of Aramaic; the priests and rabbis spoke
  Hebrew; the educated classes and the better strata of Jews in general spoke
  Greek. The early translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek at Alexandria
  was responsible in no small measure for the subsequent predominance of the
  Greek wing of Jewish culture and theology. And the writings of the Christian
  teachers were soon to appear in the same language. The renaissance of Judaism
  dates from the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. This was a vital
  influence which later determined the drift of Paul's Christian cult toward the
  West instead of toward the East.

  121:6.3 Though the Hellenized Jewish beliefs were very little influenced by
  the teachings of the Epicureans, they were very materially affected by the
  philosophy of Plato and the self-abnegation doctrines of the Stoics. The great
  inroad of Stoicism is exemplified by the Fourth Book of the Maccabees; the
  penetration of both Platonic philosophy and Stoic doctrines is exhibited in
  the Wisdom of Solomon. The Hellenized Jews brought to the Hebrew scriptures
  such an allegorical interpretation that they found no difficulty in conforming
  Hebrew theology with their revered Aristotelian philosophy. But this all led
  to disastrous confusion until these problems were taken in hand by Philo of
  Alexandria, who proceeded to harmonize and systemize Greek philosophy and
  Hebrew theology into a compact and fairly consistent system of religious
  belief and practice. And it was this later teaching of combined Greek
  philosophy and Hebrew theology that prevailed in Palestine when Jesus lived
  and taught, and which Paul utilized as the foundation on which to build his
  more advanced and enlightening cult of Christianity.

  121:6.4 Philo was a great teacher; not since Moses had there lived a man who
  exerted such a profound influence on the ethical and religious thought of the
  Occidental world. In the matter of the combination of the better elements in
  contemporaneous systems of ethical and religious teachings, there have been
  seven outstanding human teachers: Sethard, Moses, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, Buddha,
  Philo, and Paul.

  121:6.5 Many, but not all, of Philo's inconsistencies resulting from an effort
  to combine Greek mystical philosophy and Roman Stoic doctrines with the
  legalistic theology of the Hebrews, Paul recognized and wisely eliminated from
  his pre-Christian basic theology. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to
  restore the concept of the Paradise Trinity, which had long been dormant in
  Jewish theology. In only one matter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or
  to transcend the teachings of this wealthy and educated Jew of Alexandria, and
  that was the doctrine of the atonement; Philo taught deliverance from the
  doctrine of forgiveness only by the shedding of blood. He also possibly
  glimpsed the reality and presence of the Thought Adjusters more clearly than
  did Paul. But Paul's theory of original sin, the doctrines of hereditary guilt
  and innate evil and redemption therefrom, was partially Mithraic in origin,
  having little in common with Hebrew theology, Philo's philosophy, or Jesus'
  teachings. Some phases of Paul's teachings regarding original sin and the
  atonement were original with himself.

  121:6.6 The Gospel of John, the last of the narratives of Jesus' earth life,
  was addressed to the Western peoples and presents its story much in the light
  of the viewpoint of the later Alexandrian Christians, who were also disciples
  of the teachings of Philo.

  121:6.7 At about the time of Christ a strange reversion of feeling toward the
  Jews occurred in Alexandria, and from this former Jewish stronghold there went
  forth a virulent wave of persecution, extending even to Rome, from which many
  thousands were banished. But such a campaign of misrepresentation was short-
  lived; very soon the imperial government fully restored the curtailed
  liberties of the Jews throughout the empire.

  121:6.8 Throughout the whole wide world, no matter where the Jews found
  themselves dispersed by commerce or oppression, all with one accord kept their
  hearts centered on the holy temple at Jerusalem. Jewish theology did survive
  as it was interpreted and practiced at Jerusalem, notwithstanding that it was
  several times saved from oblivion by the timely intervention of certain
  Babylonian teachers.

  121:6.9 As many as two and one-half million of these dispersed Jews used to
  come to Jerusalem for the celebration of their national religious festivals.
  And no matter what the theologic or philosophic differences of the Eastern
  (Babylonian) and the Western (Hellenic) Jews, they were all agreed on
  Jerusalem as the center of their worship and in ever looking forward to the
  coming of the Messiah.





7. JEWS AND GENTILES

  121:7.1 By the times of Jesus the Jews had arrived at a settled concept of
  their origin, history, and destiny. They had built up a rigid wall of
  separation between themselves and the gentile world; they looked upon all
  gentile ways with utter contempt. They worshiped the letter of the law and
  indulged a form of self-righteousness based upon the false pride of descent.
  They had formed preconceived notions regarding the promised Messiah, and most
  of these expectations envisaged a Messiah who would come as a part of their
  national and racial history. To the Hebrews of those days Jewish theology was
  irrevocably settled, forever fixed.

  121:7.2 The teachings and practices of Jesus regarding tolerance and kindness
  ran counter to the long-standing attitude of the Jews toward other peoples
  whom they considered heathen. For generations the Jews had nourished an
  attitude toward the outside world which made it impossible for them to accept
  the Master's teachings about the spiritual brotherhood of man. They were
  unwilling to share Yahweh on equal terms with the gentiles and were likewise
  unwilling to accept as the Son of God one who taught such new and strange
  doctrines.

  121:7.3 The scribes, the Pharisees, and the priesthood held the Jews in a
  terrible bondage of ritualism and legalism, a bondage far more real than that
  of the Roman political rule. The Jews of Jesus' time were not only held in
  subjugation to the law but were equally bound by the slavish demands of the
  traditions, which involved and invaded every domain of personal and social
  life. These minute regulations of conduct pursued and dominated every loyal
  Jew, and it is not strange that they promptly rejected one of their number who
  presumed to ignore their sacred traditions, and who dared to flout their long-
  honored regulations of social conduct. They could hardly regard with favor the
  teachings of one who did not hestitate to clash with dogmas which they
  regarded as having been ordained by Father Abraham himself. Moses had given
  them their law and they would not compromise.

  121:7.4 By the time of the first century after Christ the spoken
  interpretation of the law by the recognized teachers, the scribes, had become
  a higher authority than the written law itself. And all this made it easier
  for certain religious leaders of the Jews to array the people against the
  acceptance of a new gospel.

  121:7.5 These circumstances rendered it impossible for the Jews to fulfill
  their divine destiny as messengers of the new gospel of religious freedom and
  spiritual liberty. They could not break the fetters of tradition. Jeremiah had
  told of the "law to be written in men's hearts," Ezekiel had spoken of a "new
  spirit to live in man's soul," and the Psalmist had prayed that God would
  "create a clean heart within and renew a right spirit." But when the Jewish
  religion of good works and slavery to law fell victim to the stagnation of
  traditionalistic inertia, the motion of religious evolution passed westward to
  the European peoples.

  121:7.6 And so a different people were called upon to carry an advancing
  theology to the world, a system of teaching embodying the philosophy of the
  Greeks, the law of the Romans, the morality of the Hebrews, and the gospel of
  personality sanctity and spiritual liberty formulated by Paul and based on the
  teachings of Jesus.



  121:7.7 Paul's cult of Christianity exhibited its morality as a Jewish
  birthmark. The Jews viewed history as the providence of God -- Yahweh at work.
  The Greeks brought to the new teaching clearer concepts of the eternal life.
  Paul's doctrines were influenced in theology and philosophy not only by Jesus'
  teachings but also by Plato and Philo. In ethics he was inspired not only by
  Christ but also by the Stoics.



  121:7.8 The gospel of Jesus, as it was embodied in Paul's cult of Antioch
  Christianity, became blended with the following teachings:

1. The philosophic reasoning of the Greek proselytes to Judaism, including some
of their concepts of the eternal life.

2. The appealing teachings of the prevailing mystery cults, especially the
Mithraic doctrines of redemption, atonement, and salvation by the sacrifice made
by some god.

3. The sturdy morality of the established Jewish religion.



  121:7.9 The Mediterranean Roman Empire, the Parthian kingdom, and the adjacent
  peoples of Jesus' time all held crude and primitive ideas regarding the
  geography of the world, astronomy, health, and disease; and naturally they
  were amazed by the new and startling pronouncements of the carpenter of
  Nazareth. The ideas of spirit possession, good and bad, applied not merely to
  human beings, but every rock and tree was viewed by many as being spirit
  possessed. This was an enchanted age, and everybody believed in miracles as
  commonplace occurrences.





8. PREVIOUS WRITTEN RECORDS

  121:8.1 As far as possible, consistent with our mandate, we have endeavored to
  utilize and to some extent co-ordinate the existing records having to do with
  the life of Jesus on Urantia. Although we have enjoyed access to the lost
  record of the Apostle Andrew and have benefited from the collaboration of a
  vast host of celestial beings who were on earth during the times of Michael's
  bestowal (notably his now Personalized Adjuster), it has been our purpose also
  to make use of the so-called Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  121:8.2 These New Testament records had their origin in the following
  circumstances:



  121:8.3 1. The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the earliest (excepting the
  notes of Andrew), briefest, and most simple record of Jesus' life. He
  presented the Master as a minister, as man among men. Although Mark was a lad
  lingering about many of the scenes which he depicts, his record is in reality
  the Gospel according to Simon Peter. He was early associated with Peter; later
  with Paul. Mark wrote this record at the instigation of Peter and on the
  earnest petition of the church at Rome. Knowing how consistently the Master
  refused to write out his teachings when on earth and in the flesh, Mark, like
  the apostles and other leading disciples, was hesitant to put them in writing.
  But Peter felt the church at Rome required the assistance of such a written
  narrative, and Mark consented to undertake its preparation. He made many notes
  before Peter died in A.D. 67, and in accordance with the outline approved by
  Peter and for the church at Rome, he began his writing soon after Peter's
  death. The Gospel was completed near the end of A.D. 68. Mark wrote entirely
  from his own memory and Peter's memory. The record has since been considerably
  changed, numerous passages having been taken out and some later matter added
  at the end to replace the latter one fifth of the original Gospel, which was
  lost from the first manuscript before it was ever copied. This record by Mark,
  in conjunction with Andrew's and Matthew's notes, was the written basis of all
  subsequent Gospel narratives which sought to portray the life and teachings of
  Jesus.



  121:8.4 2. The Gospel of Matthew. The so-called Gospel according to Matthew is
  the record of the Master's life which was written for the edification of
  Jewish Christians. The author of this record constantly seeks to show in
  Jesus' life that much which he did was that "it might be fulfilled which was
  spoken by the prophet." Matthew's Gospel portrays Jesus as a son of David,
  picturing him as showing great respect for the law and the prophets.

  121:8.5 The Apostle Matthew did not write this Gospel. It was written by
  Isador, one of his disciples, who had as a help in his work not only Matthew's
  personal remembrance of these events but also a certain record which the
  latter had made of the sayings of Jesus directly after the crucifixion. This
  record by Matthew was written in Aramaic; Isador wrote in Greek. There was no
  intent to deceive in accrediting the production to Matthew. It was the custom
  in those days for pupils thus to honor their teachers.

  121:8.6 Matthew's original record was edited and added to in A.D. 40 just
  before he left Jerusalem to engage in evangelistic preaching. It was a private
  record, the last copy having been destroyed in the burning of a Syrian
  monastery in A.D. 416.

  121:8.7 Isador escaped from Jerusalem in A.D. 70 after the investment of the
  city by the armies of Titus, taking with him to Pella a copy of Matthew's
  notes. In the year 71, while living at Pella, Isador wrote the Gospel
  according to Matthew. He also had with him the first four fifths of Mark's
  narrative.



  121:8.8 3. The Gospel by Luke. Luke, the physician of Antioch in Pisidia, was
  a gentile convert of Paul, and he wrote quite a different story of the
  Master's life. He began to follow Paul and learn of the life and teachings of
  Jesus in A.D. 47. Luke preserves much of the "grace of the Lord Jesus Christ"
  in his record as he gathered up these facts from Paul and others. Luke
  presents the Master as "the friend of publicans and sinners." He did not
  formulate his many notes into the Gospel until after Paul's death. Luke wrote
  in the year 82 in Achaia. He planned three books dealing with the history of
  Christ and Christianity but died in A.D. 90 just before he finished the second
  of these works, the "Acts of the Apostles."

  121:8.9 As material for the compilation of his Gospel, Luke first depended
  upon the story of Jesus' life as Paul had related it to him. Luke's Gospel is,
  therefore, in some ways the Gospel according to Paul. But Luke had other
  sources of information. He not only interviewed scores of eyewitnesses to the
  numerous episodes of Jesus' life which he records, but he also had with him a
  copy of Mark's Gospel, that is, the first four fifths, Isador's narrative, and
  a brief record made in the year A.D. 78 at Antioch by a believer named Cedes.
  Luke also had a mutilated and much-edited copy of some notes purported to have
  been made by the Apostle Andrew.



  121:8.10 4. The Gospel of John. The Gospel according to John relates much of
  Jesus' work in Judea and around Jerusalem which is not contained in the other
  records. This is the so-called Gospel according to John the son of Zebedee,
  and though John did not write it, he did inspire it. Since its first writing
  it has several times been edited to make it appear to have been written by
  John himself. When this record was made, John had the other Gospels, and he
  saw that much had been omitted; accordingly, in the year A.D. 101 he
  encouraged his associate, Nathan, a Greek Jew from Caesarea, to begin the
  writing. John supplied his material from memory and by reference to the three
  records already in existence. He had no written records of his own. The
  Epistle known as "First John" was written by John himself as a covering letter
  for the work which Nathan executed under his direction.



  121:8.11 All these writers presented honest pictures of Jesus as they saw,
  remembered, or had learned of him, and as their concepts of these distant
  events were affected by their subsequent espousal of Paul's theology of
  Christianity. And these records, imperfect as they are, have been sufficient
  to change the course of the history of Urantia for almost two thousand years.



  121:8.12 Acknowledgment: In carrying out my commission to restate the
  teachings and retell the doings of Jesus of Nazareth, I have drawn freely upon
  all sources of record and planetary information. My ruling motive has been to
  prepare a record which will not only be enlightening to the generation of men
  now living, but which may also be helpful to all future generations. From the
  vast store of information made available to me, I have chosen that which is
  best suited to the accomplishment of this purpose. As far as possible I have
  derived my information from purely human sources. Only when such sources
  failed, have I resorted to those records which are superhuman. When ideas and
  concepts of Jesus' life and teachings have been acceptably expressed by a
  human mind, I invariably gave preference to such apparently human thought
  patterns. Although I have sought to adjust the verbal expression the better to
  conform to our concept of the real meaning and the true import of the Master's
  life and teachings, as far as possible, I have adhered to the actual human
  concept and thought pattern in all my narratives. I well know that those
  concepts which have had origin in the human mind will prove more acceptable
  and helpful to all other human minds. When unable to find the necessary
  concepts in the human records or in human expressions, I have next resorted to
  the memory resources of my own order of earth creatures, the midwayers. And
  when that secondary source of information proved inadequate, I have
  unhesitatingly resorted to the superplanetary sources of information.

  121:8.13 The memoranda which I have collected, and from which I have prepared
  this narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus -- aside from the memory of
  the record of the Apostle Andrew -- embrace thought gems and superior concepts
  of Jesus' teachings assembled from more than two thousand human beings who
  have lived on earth from the days of Jesus down to the time of the inditing of
  these revelations, more correctly restatements. The revelatory permission has
  been utilized only when the human record and human concepts failed to supply
  an adequate thought pattern. My revelatory commission forbade me to resort to
  extrahuman sources of either information or expression until such a time as I
  could testify that I had failed in my efforts to find the required conceptual
  expression in purely human sources.

  121:8.14 While I, with the collaboration of my eleven associate fellow
  midwayers and under the supervision of the Melchizedek of record, have
  portrayed this narrative in accordance with my concept of its effective
  arrangement and in response to my choice of immediate expression,
  nevertheless, the majority of the ideas and even some of the effective
  expressions which I have thus utilized had their origin in the minds of the
  men of many races who have lived on earth during the intervening generations,
  right on down to those who are still alive at the time of this undertaking. In
  many ways I have served more as a collector and editor than as an original
  narrator. I have unhesitatingly appropriated those ideas and concepts,
  preferably human, which would enable me to create the most effective
  portraiture of Jesus' life, and which would qualify me to restate his
  matchless teachings in the most strikingly helpful and universally uplifting
  phraseology. In behalf of the Brotherhood of the United Midwayers of Urantia,
  I most gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to all sources of record and
  concept which have been hereinafter utilized in the further elaboration of our
  restatement of Jesus' life on earth.




PAPER 122


 BIRTH AND INFANCY OF JESUS



  122:0.1 IT WILL hardly be possible fully to explain the many reasons which led
  to the selection of Palestine as the land for Michael's bestowal, and
  especially as to just why the family of Joseph and Mary should have been
  chosen as the immediate setting for the appearance of this Son of God on
  Urantia.

  122:0.2 After a study of the special report on the status of segregated worlds
  prepared by the Melchizedeks, in counsel with Gabriel, Michael finally chose
  Urantia as the planet whereon to enact his final bestowal. Subsequent to this
  decision Gabriel made a personal visit to Urantia, and, as a result of his
  study of human groups and his survey of the spiritual, intellectual, racial,
  and geographic features of the world and its peoples, he decided that the
  Hebrews possessed those relative advantages which warranted their selection as
  the bestowal race. Upon Michael's approval of this decision, Gabriel appointed
  and dispatched to Urantia the Family Commission of Twelve -- selected from
  among the higher orders of universe personalities -- which was intrusted with
  the task of making an investigation of Jewish family life. When this
  commission ended its labors, Gabriel was present on Urantia and received the
  report nominating three prospective unions as being, in the opinion of the
  commission, equally favorable as bestowal families for Michael's projected
  incarnation.

  122:0.3 From the three couples nominated, Gabriel made the personal choice of
  Joseph and Mary, subsequently making his personal appearance to Mary, at which
  time he imparted to her the glad tidings that she had been selected to become
  the earth mother of the bestowal child.





1. JOSEPH AND MARY

  122:1.1 Joseph, the human father of Jesus (Joshua ben Joseph), was a Hebrew of
  the Hebrews, albeit he carried many non-Jewish racial strains which had been
  added to his ancestral tree from time to time by the female lines of his
  progenitors. The ancestry of the father of Jesus went back to the days of
  Abraham and through this venerable patriarch to the earlier lines of
  inheritance leading to the Sumerians and Nodites and, through the southern
  tribes of the ancient blue man, to Andon and Fonta. David and Solomon were not
  in the direct line of Joseph's ancestry, neither did Joseph's lineage go
  directly back to Adam. Joseph's immediate ancestors were mechanics --
  builders, carpenters, masons, and smiths. Joseph himself was a carpenter and
  later a contractor. His family belonged to a long and illustrious line of the
  nobility of the common people, accentuated ever and anon by the appearance of
  unusual individuals who had distinguished themselves in connection with the
  evolution of religion on Urantia.

  122:1.2 Mary, the earth mother of Jesus, was a descendant of a long line of
  unique ancestors embracing many of the most remarkable women in the racial
  history of Urantia. Although Mary was an average woman of her day and
  generation, possessing a fairly normal temperament, she reckoned among her
  ancestors such well-known women as Annon, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, Ansie, Cloa,
  Eve, Enta, and Ratta. No Jewish woman of that day had a more illustrious
  lineage of common progenitors or one extending back to more auspicious
  beginnings. Mary's ancestry, like Joseph's, was characterized by the
  predominance of strong but average individuals, relieved now and then by
  numerous outstanding personalities in the march of civilization and the
  progressive evolution of religion. Racially considered, it is hardly proper to
  regard Mary as a Jewess. In culture and belief she was a Jew, but in
  hereditary endowment she was more a composite of Syrian, Hittite, Phoenician,
  Greek, and Egyptian stocks, her racial inheritance being more general than
  that of Joseph.

  122:1.3 Of all couples living in Palestine at about the time of Michael's
  projected bestowal, Joseph and Mary possessed the most ideal combination of
  widespread racial connections and superior average of personality endowments.
  It was the plan of Michael to appear on earth as an average man, that the
  common people might understand him and receive him; wherefore Gabriel selected
  just such persons as Joseph and Mary to become the bestowal parents.





2. GABRIEL APPEARS TO ELIZABETH

  122:2.1 Jesus' lifework on Urantia was really begun by John the Baptist.
  Zacharias, John's father, belonged to the Jewish priesthood, while his mother,
  Elizabeth, was a member of the more prosperous branch of the same large family
  group to which Mary the mother of Jesus also belonged. Zacharias and
  Elizabeth, though they had been married many years, were childless.



  122:2.2 It was late in the month of June, 8 B.C., about three months after the
  marriage of Joseph and Mary, that Gabriel appeared to Elizabeth at noontide
  one day, just as he later made his presence known to Mary. Said Gabriel:

  122:2.3 "While your husband, Zacharias, stands before the altar in Jerusalem,
  and while the assembled people pray for the coming of a deliverer, I, Gabriel,
  have come to announce that you will shortly bear a son who shall be the
  forerunner of this divine teacher, and you shall call your son John. He will
  grow up dedicated to the Lord your God, and when he has come to full years, he
  will gladden your heart because he will turn many souls to God, and he will
  also proclaim the coming of the soul-healer of your people and the spirit-
  liberator of all mankind. Your kinswoman Mary shall be the mother of this
  child of promise, and I will also appear to her."

  122:2.4 This vision greatly frightened Elizabeth. After Gabriel's departure
  she turned this experience over in her mind, long pondering the sayings of the
  majestic visitor, but did not speak of the revelation to anyone save her
  husband until her subsequent visit with Mary in early February of the
  following year.



  122:2.5 For five months, however, Elizabeth withheld her secret even from her
  husband. Upon her disclosure of the story of Gabriel's visit, Zacharias was
  very skeptical and for weeks doubted the entire experience, only consenting
  halfheartedly to believe in Gabriel's visit to his wife when he could no
  longer question that she was expectant with child. Zacharias was very much
  perplexed regarding the prospective motherhood of Elizabeth, but he did not
  doubt the integrity of his wife, notwithstanding his own advanced age. It was
  not until about six weeks before John's birth that Zacharias, as the result of
  an impressive dream, became fully convinced that Elizabeth was to become the
  mother of a son of destiny, one who was to prepare the way for the coming of
  the Messiah.

  122:2.6 Gabriel appeared to Mary about the middle of November, 8 B.C., while
  she was at work in her Nazareth home. Later on, after Mary knew without doubt
  that she was to become a mother, she persuaded Joseph to let her journey to
  the City of Judah, four miles west of Jerusalem, in the hills, to visit
  Elizabeth. Gabriel had informed each of these mothers-to-be of his appearance
  to the other. Naturally they were anxious to get together, compare
  experiences, and talk over the probable futures of their sons. Mary remained
  with her distant cousin for three weeks. Elizabeth did much to strengthen
  Mary's faith in the vision of Gabriel, so that she returned home more fully
  dedicated to the call to mother the child of destiny whom she was so soon to
  present to the world as a helpless babe, an average and normal infant of the
  realm.



  122:2.7 John was born in the City of Judah, March 25, 7 B.C. Zacharias and
  Elizabeth rejoiced greatly in the realization that a son had come to them as
  Gabriel had promised, and when on the eighth day they presented the child for
  circumcision, they formally christened him John, as they had been directed
  aforetime. Already had a nephew of Zacharias departed for Nazareth, carrying
  the message of Elizabeth to Mary proclaiming that a son had been born to her
  and that his name was to be John.

  122:2.8 From his earliest infancy John was judiciously impressed by his
  parents with the idea that he was to grow up to become a spiritual leader and
  religious teacher. And the soil of John's heart was ever responsive to the
  sowing of such suggestive seeds. Even as a child he was found frequently at
  the temple during the seasons of his father's service, and he was tremendously
  impressed with the significance of all that he saw.





3. GABRIEL'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO MARY

  122:3.1 One evening about sundown, before Joseph had returned home, Gabriel
  appeared to Mary by the side of a low stone table and, after she had recovered
  her composure, said: "I come at the bidding of one who is my Master and whom
  you shall love and nurture. To you, Mary, I bring glad tidings when I announce
  that the conception within you is ordained by heaven, and that in due time you
  will become the mother of a son; you shall call him Joshua, and he shall
  inaugurate the kingdom of heaven on earth and among men. Speak not of this
  matter save to Joseph and to Elizabeth, your kinswoman, to whom I have also
  appeared, and who shall presently also bear a son, whose name shall be John,
  and who will prepare the way for the message of deliverance which your son
  shall proclaim to men with great power and deep conviction. And doubt not my
  word, Mary, for this home has been chosen as the mortal habitat of the child
  of destiny. My benediction rests upon you, the power of the Most Highs will
  strengthen you, and the Lord of all the earth shall overshadow you."



  122:3.2 Mary pondered this visitation secretly in her heart for many weeks
  until of a certainty she knew she was with child, before she dared to disclose
  these unusual events to her husband. When Joseph heard all about this,
  although he had great confidence in Mary, he was much troubled and could not
  sleep for many nights. At first Joseph had doubts about the Gabriel
  visitation. Then when he became well-nigh persuaded that Mary had really heard
  the voice and beheld the form of the divine messenger, he was torn in mind as
  he pondered how such things could be. How could the offspring of human beings
  be a child of divine destiny? Never could Joseph reconcile these conflicting
  ideas until, after several weeks of thought, both he and Mary reached the
  conclusion that they had been chosen to become the parents of the Messiah,
  though it had hardly been the Jewish concept that the expected deliverer was
  to be of divine nature. Upon arriving at this momentous conclusion, Mary
  hastened to depart for a visit with Elizabeth.

  122:3.3 Upon her return, Mary went to visit her parents, Joachim and Hannah.
  Her two brothers and two sisters, as well as her parents, were always very
  skeptical about the divine mission of Jesus, though, of course, at this time
  they knew nothing of the Gabriel visitation. But Mary did confide to her
  sister Salome that she thought her son was destined to become a great teacher.



  122:3.4 Gabriel's announcement to Mary was made the day following the
  conception of Jesus and was the only event of supernatural occurrence
  connected with her entire experience of carrying and bearing the child of
  promise.





4. JOSEPH'S DREAM

  122:4.1 Joseph did not become reconciled to the idea that Mary was to become
  the mother of an extraordinary child until after he had experienced a very
  impressive dream. In this dream a brilliant celestial messenger appeared to
  him and, among other things, said: "Joseph, I appear by command of Him who now
  reigns on high, and I am directed to instruct you concerning the son whom Mary
  shall bear, and who shall become a great light in the world. In him will be
  life, and his life shall become the light of mankind. He shall first come to
  his own people, but they will hardly receive him; but to as many as shall
  receive him to them will he reveal that they are the children of God." After
  this experience Joseph never again wholly doubted Mary's story of Gabriel's
  visit and of the promise that the unborn child was to become a divine
  messenger to the world.



  122:4.2 In all these visitations nothing was said about the house of David.
  Nothing was ever intimated about Jesus' becoming a "deliverer of the Jews,"
  not even that he was to be the long-expected Messiah. Jesus was not such a
  Messiah as the Jews had anticipated, but he was the world's deliverer. His
  mission was to all races and peoples, not to any one group.

  122:4.3 Joseph was not of the line of King David. Mary had more of the Davidic
  ancestry than Joseph. True, Joseph did go to the City of David, Bethlehem, to
  be registered for the Roman census, but that was because, six generations
  previously, Joseph's paternal ancestor of that generation, being an orphan,
  was adopted by one Zadoc, who was a direct descendant of David; hence was
  Joseph also accounted as of the "house of David."

  122:4.4 Most of the so-called Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament were
  made to apply to Jesus long after his life had been lived on earth. For
  centuries the Hebrew prophets had proclaimed the coming of a deliverer, and
  these promises had been construed by successive generations as referring to a
  new Jewish ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and, by the reputed
  miraculous methods of Moses, proceed to establish the Jews in Palestine as a
  powerful nation, free from all foreign domination. Again, many figurative
  passages found throughout the Hebrew scriptures were subsequently misapplied
  to the life mission of Jesus. Many Old Testament sayings were so distorted as
  to appear to fit some episode of the Master's earth life. Jesus himself
  onetime publicly denied any connection with the royal house of David. Even the
  passage, "a maiden shall bear a son," was made to read, "a virgin shall bear a
  son." This was also true of the many genealogies of both Joseph and Mary which
  were constructed subsequent to Michael's career on earth. Many of these
  lineages contain much of the Master's ancestry, but on the whole they are not
  genuine and may not be depended upon as factual. The early followers of Jesus
  all too often succumbed to the temptation to make all the olden prophetic
  utterances appear to find fulfillment in the life of their Lord and Master.





5. JESUS' EARTH PARENTS

  122:5.1 Joseph was a mild-mannered man, extremely conscientious, and in every
  way faithful to the religious conventions and practices of his people. He
  talked little but thought much. The sorry plight of the Jewish people caused
  Joseph much sadness. As a youth, among his eight brothers and sisters, he had
  been more cheerful, but in the earlier years of married life (during Jesus'
  childhood) he was subject to periods of mild spiritual discouragement. These
  temperamental manifestations were greatly improved just before his untimely
  death and after the economic condition of his family had been enhanced by his
  advancement from the rank of carpenter to the role of a prosperous contractor.

  122:5.2 Mary's temperament was quite opposite to that of her husband. She was
  usually cheerful, was very rarely downcast, and possessed an ever-sunny
  disposition. Mary indulged in free and frequent expression of her emotional
  feelings and was never observed to be sorrowful until after the sudden death
  of Joseph. And she had hardly recovered from this shock when she had thrust
  upon her the anxieties and questionings aroused by the extraordinary career of
  her eldest son, which was so rapidly unfolding before her astonished gaze. But
  throughout all this unusual experience Mary was composed, courageous, and
  fairly wise in her relationship with her strange and little-understood first-
  born son and his surviving brothers and sisters.

  122:5.3 Jesus derived much of his unusual gentleness and marvelous sympathetic
  understanding of human nature from his father; he inherited his gift as a
  great teacher and his tremendous capacity for righteous indignation from his
  mother. In emotional reactions to his adult-life environment, Jesus was at one
  time like his father, meditative and worshipful, sometimes characterized by
  apparent sadness; but more often he drove forward in the manner of his
  mother's optimistic and determined disposition. All in all, Mary's temperament
  tended to dominate the career of the divine Son as he grew up and swung into
  the momentous strides of his adult life. In some particulars Jesus was a
  blending of his parents' traits; in other respects he exhibited the traits of
  one in contrast with those of the other.

  122:5.4 From Joseph Jesus secured his strict training in the usages of the
  Jewish ceremonials and his unusual acquaintance with the Hebrew scriptures;
  from Mary he derived a broader viewpoint of religious life and a more liberal
  concept of personal spiritual freedom.

  122:5.5 The families of both Joseph and Mary were well educated for their
  time. Joseph and Mary were educated far above the average for their day and
  station in life. He was a thinker; she was a planner, expert in adaptation and
  practical in immediate execution. Joseph was a black-eyed brunet; Mary, a
  brown-eyed well-nigh blond type.

  122:5.6 Had Joseph lived, he undoubtedly would have become a firm believer in
  the divine mission of his eldest son. Mary alternated between believing and
  doubting, being greatly influenced by the position taken by her other children
  and by her friends and relatives, but always was she steadied in her final
  attitude by the memory of Gabriel's appearance to her immediately after the
  child was conceived.

  122:5.7 Mary was an expert weaver and more than averagely skilled in most of
  the household arts of that day; she was a good housekeeper and a superior
  homemaker. Both Joseph and Mary were good teachers, and they saw to it that
  their children were well versed in the learning of that day.



  122:5.8 When Joseph was a young man, he was employed by Mary's father in the
  work of building an addition to his house, and it was when Mary brought Joseph
  a cup of water, during a noontime meal, that the courtship of the pair who
  were destined to become the parents of Jesus really began.

  122:5.9 Joseph and Mary were married, in accordance with Jewish custom, at
  Mary's home in the environs of Nazareth when Joseph was twenty-one years old.
  This marriage concluded a normal courtship of almost two years' duration.
  Shortly thereafter they moved into their new home in Nazareth, which had been
  built by Joseph with the assistance of two of his brothers. The house was
  located near the foot of the near-by elevated land which so charmingly
  overlooked the surrounding countryside. In this home, especially prepared,
  these young and expectant parents had thought to welcome the child of promise,
  little realizing that this momentous event of a universe was to transpire
  while they would be absent from home in Bethlehem of Judea.



  122:5.10 The larger part of Joseph's family became believers in the teachings
  of Jesus, but very few of Mary's people ever believed in him until after he
  departed from this world. Joseph leaned more toward the spiritual concept of
  the expected Messiah, but Mary and her family, especially her father, held to
  the idea of the Messiah as a temporal deliverer and political ruler. Mary's
  ancestors had been prominently identified with the Maccabean activities of the
  then but recent times.

  122:5.11 Joseph held vigorously to the Eastern, or Babylonian, views of the
  Jewish religion; Mary leaned strongly toward the more liberal and broader
  Western, or Hellenistic, interpretation of the law and the prophets.





6. THE HOME AT NAZARETH

  122:6.1 The home of Jesus was not far from the high hill in the northerly part
  of Nazareth, some distance from the village spring, which was in the eastern
  section of the town. Jesus' family dwelt in the outskirts of the city, and
  this made it all the easier for him subsequently to enjoy frequent strolls in
  the country and to make trips up to the top of this near-by highland, the
  highest of all the hills of southern Galilee save the Mount Tabor range to the
  east and the hill of Nain, which was about the same height. Their home was
  located a little to the south and east of the southern promontory of this hill
  and about midway between the base of this elevation and the road leading out
  of Nazareth toward Cana. Aside from climbing the hill, Jesus' favorite stroll
  was to follow a narrow trail winding about the base of the hill in a
  northeasterly direction to a point where it joined the road to Sepphoris.

  122:6.2 The home of Joseph and Mary was a one-room stone structure with a flat
  roof and an adjoining building for housing the animals. The furniture
  consisted of a low stone table, earthenware and stone dishes and pots, a loom,
  a lampstand, several small stools, and mats for sleeping on the stone floor.
  In the back yard, near the animal annex, was the shelter which covered the
  oven and the mill for grinding grain. It required two persons to operate this
  type of mill, one to grind and another to feed the grain. As a small boy Jesus
  often fed grain to this mill while his mother turned the grinder.

  122:6.3 In later years, as the family grew in size, they would all squat about
  the enlarged stone table to enjoy their meals, helping themselves from a
  common dish, or pot, of food. During the winter, at the evening meal the table
  would be lighted by a small, flat clay lamp, which was filled with olive oil.
  After the birth of Martha, Joseph built an addition to this house, a large
  room, which was used as a carpenter shop during the day and as a sleeping room
  at night.





7. THE TRIP TO BETHLEHEM

  122:7.1 In the month of March, 8 B.C. (the month Joseph and Mary were
  married), Caesar Augustus decreed that all inhabitants of the Roman Empire
  should be numbered, that a census should be made which could be used for
  effecting better taxation. The Jews had always been greatly prejudiced against
  any attempt to "number the people," and this, in connection with the serious
  domestic difficulties of Herod, King of Judea, had conspired to cause the
  postponement of the taking of this census in the Jewish kingdom for one year.
  Throughout all the Roman Empire this census was registered in the year 8 B.C.,
  except in the Palestinian kingdom of Herod, where it was taken in 7 B.C., one
  year later.

  122:7.2 It was not necessary that Mary should go to Bethlehem for enrollment
  -- Joseph was authorized to register for his family -- but Mary, being an
  adventurous and aggressive person, insisted on accompanying him. She feared
  being left alone lest the child be born while Joseph was away, and again,
  Bethlehem being not far from the City of Judah, Mary foresaw a possible
  pleasurable visit with her kinswoman Elizabeth.

  122:7.3 Joseph virtually forbade Mary to accompany him, but it was of no
  avail; when the food was packed for the trip of three or four days, she
  prepared double rations and made ready for the journey. But before they
  actually set forth, Joseph was reconciled to Mary's going along, and they
  cheerfully departed from Nazareth at the break of day.

  122:7.4 Joseph and Mary were poor, and since they had only one beast of
  burden, Mary, being large with child, rode on the animal with the provisions
  while Joseph walked, leading the beast. The building and furnishing of a home
  had been a great drain on Joseph since he had also to contribute to the
  support of his parents, as his father had been recently disabled. And so this
  Jewish couple went forth from their humble home early on the morning of August
  18, 7 B.C., on their journey to Bethlehem.

  122:7.5 Their first day of travel carried them around the foothills of Mount
  Gilboa, where they camped for the night by the river Jordan and engaged in
  many speculations as to what sort of a son would be born to them, Joseph
  adhering to the concept of a spiritual teacher and Mary holding to the idea of
  a Jewish Messiah, a deliverer of the Hebrew nation.

  122:7.6 Bright and early the morning of August 19, Joseph and Mary were again
  on their way. They partook of their noontide meal at the foot of Mount
  Sartaba, overlooking the Jordan valley, and journeyed on, making Jericho for
  the night, where they stopped at an inn on the highway in the outskirts of the
  city. Following the evening meal and after much discussion concerning the
  oppressiveness of Roman rule, Herod, the census enrollment, and the
  comparative influence of Jerusalem and Alexandria as centers of Jewish
  learning and culture, the Nazareth travelers retired for the night's rest.
  Early in the morning of August 20 they resumed their journey, reaching
  Jerusalem before noon, visiting the temple, and going on to their destination,
  arriving at Bethlehem in midafternoon.

  122:7.7 The inn was overcrowded, and Joseph accordingly sought lodgings with
  distant relatives, but every room in Bethlehem was filled to overflowing. On
  returning to the courtyard of the inn, he was informed that the caravan
  stables, hewn out of the side of the rock and situated just below the inn, had
  been cleared of animals and cleaned up for the reception of lodgers. Leaving
  the donkey in the courtyard, Joseph shouldered their bags of clothing and
  provisions and with Mary descended the stone steps to their lodgings below.
  They found themselves located in what had been a grain storage room to the
  front of the stalls and mangers. Tent curtains had been hung, and they counted
  themselves fortunate to have such comfortable quarters.

  122:7.8 Joseph had thought to go out at once and enroll, but Mary was weary;
  she was considerably distressed and besought him to remain by her side, which
  he did.





8. THE BIRTH OF JESUS

  122:8.1 All that night Mary was restless so that neither of them slept much.
  By the break of day the pangs of childbirth were well in evidence, and at
  noon, August 21, 7 B.C., with the help and kind ministrations of women fellow
  travelers, Mary was delivered of a male child. Jesus of Nazareth was born into
  the world, was wrapped in the clothes which Mary had brought along for such a
  possible contingency, and laid in a near-by manger.

  122:8.2 In just the same manner as all babies before that day and since have
  come into the world, the promised child was born; and on the eighth day,
  according to the Jewish practice, he was circumcised and formally named Joshua
  (Jesus).

  122:8.3 The next day after the birth of Jesus, Joseph made his enrollment.
  Meeting a man they had talked with two nights previously at Jericho, Joseph
  was taken by him to a well-to-do friend who had a room at the inn, and who
  said he would gladly exchange quarters with the Nazareth couple. That
  afternoon they moved up to the inn, where they lived for almost three weeks
  until they found lodgings in the home of a distant relative of Joseph.

  122:8.4 The second day after the birth of Jesus, Mary sent word to Elizabeth
  that her child had come and received word in return inviting Joseph up to
  Jerusalem to talk over all their affairs with Zacharias. The following week
  Joseph went to Jerusalem to confer with Zacharias. Both Zacharias and
  Elizabeth had become possessed with the sincere conviction that Jesus was
  indeed to become the Jewish deliverer, the Messiah, and that their son John
  was to be his chief of aides, his right-hand man of destiny. And since Mary
  held these same ideas, it was not difficult to prevail upon Joseph to remain
  in Bethlehem, the City of David, so that Jesus might grow up to become the
  successor of David on the throne of all Israel. Accordingly, they remained in
  Bethlehem more than a year, Joseph meantime working some at his carpenter's
  trade.



  122:8.5 At the noontide birth of Jesus the seraphim of Urantia, assembled
  under their directors, did sing anthems of glory over the Bethlehem manger,
  but these utterances of praise were not heard by human ears. No shepherds nor
  any other mortal creatures came to pay homage to the babe of Bethlehem until
  the day of the arrival of certain priests from Ur, who were sent down from
  Jerusalem by Zacharias.

  122:8.6 These priests from Mesopotamia had been told sometime before by a
  strange religious teacher of their country that he had had a dream in which he
  was informed that "the light of life" was about to appear on earth as a babe
  and among the Jews. And thither went these three teachers looking for this
  "light of life." After many weeks of futile search in Jerusalem, they were
  about to return to Ur when Zacharias met them and disclosed his belief that
  Jesus was the object of their quest and sent them on to Bethlehem, where they
  found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was
  almost three weeks old at the time of their visit.

  122:8.7 These wise men saw no star to guide them to Bethlehem. The beautiful
  legend of the star of Bethlehem originated in this way: Jesus was born August
  21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there occurred an extraordinary
  conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces. And it is a
  remarkable astronomic fact that similar conjunctions occurred on September 29
  and December 5 of the same year. Upon the basis of these extraordinary but
  wholly natural events the well-meaning zealots of the succeeding generation
  constructed the appealing legend of the star of Bethlehem and the adoring Magi
  led thereby to the manger, where they beheld and worshiped the newborn babe.
  Oriental and near-Oriental minds delight in fairy stories, and they are
  continually spinning such beautiful myths about the lives of their religious
  leaders and political heroes. In the absence of printing, when most human
  knowledge was passed by word of mouth from one generation to another, it was
  very easy for myths to become traditions and for traditions eventually to
  become accepted as facts.





9. THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE

  122:9.1 Moses had taught the Jews that every first-born son belonged to the
  Lord, and that, in lieu of his sacrifice as was the custom among the heathen
  nations, such a son might live provided his parents would redeem him by the
  payment of five shekels to any authorized priest. There was also a Mosaic
  ordinance which directed that a mother, after the passing of a certain period
  of time, should present herself (or have someone make the proper sacrifice for
  her) at the temple for purification. It was customary to perform both of these
  ceremonies at the same time. Accordingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the
  temple at Jerusalem in person to present Jesus to the priests and effect his
  redemption and also to make the proper sacrifice to insure Mary's ceremonial
  purification from the alleged uncleanness of childbirth.



  122:9.2 There lingered constantly about the courts of the temple two
  remarkable characters, Simeon a singer and Anna a poetess. Simeon was a
  Judean, but Anna was a Galilean. This couple were frequently in each other's
  company, and both were intimates of the priest Zacharias, who had confided the
  secret of John and Jesus to them. Both Simeon and Anna longed for the coming
  of the Messiah, and their confidence in Zacharias led them to believe that
  Jesus was the expected deliverer of the Jewish people.

  122:9.3 Zacharias knew the day Joseph and Mary were expected to appear at the
  temple with Jesus, and he had prearranged with Simeon and Anna to indicate, by
  the salute of his upraised hand, which one in the procession of first-born
  children was Jesus.



  122:9.4 For this occasion Anna had written a poem which Simeon proceeded to
  sing, much to the astonishment of Joseph, Mary, and all who were assembled in
  the temple courts. And this was their hymn of the redemption of the first-born
  son:



  122:9.5 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,

For he has visited us and wrought redemption for his people;

He has raised up a horn of salvation for all of us

In the house of his servant David.

Even as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets --

Salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;

To show mercy to our fathers, and remember his holy covenant --

The oath which he swore to Abraham our father,

To grant us that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies,

Should serve him without fear,

In holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

Yes, and you, child of promise, shall be called the prophet of the Most High;

For you shall go before the face of the Lord to establish his kingdom;

To give knowledge of salvation to his people

In the remission of their sins.

Rejoice in the tender mercy of our God because the dayspring from on high has
now visited us

To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death;

To guide our feet into ways of peace.

And now let your servant depart in peace, O Lord, according to your word,

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

Which you have prepared before the face of all peoples;

A light for even the unveiling of the gentiles

And the glory of your people Israel.



  122:9.6 On the way back to Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary were silent -- confused
  and overawed. Mary was much disturbed by the farewell salutation of Anna, the
  aged poetess, and Joseph was not in harmony with this premature effort to make
  Jesus out to be the expected Messiah of the Jewish people.





10. HEROD ACTS

  122:10.1 But the watchers for Herod were not inactive. When they reported to
  him the visit of the priests of Ur to Bethlehem, Herod summoned these
  Chaldeans to appear before him. He inquired diligently of these wise men about
  the new "king of the Jews," but they gave him little satisfaction, explaining
  that the babe had been born of a woman who had come down to Bethlehem with her
  husband for the census enrollment. Herod, not being satisfied with this
  answer, sent them forth with a purse and directed that they should find the
  child so that he too might come and worship him, since they had declared that
  his kingdom was to be spiritual, not temporal. But when the wise men did not
  return, Herod grew suspicious. As he turned these things over in his mind, his
  informers returned and made full report of the recent occurrences in the
  temple, bringing him a copy of parts of the Simeon song which had been sung at
  the redemption ceremonies of Jesus. But they had failed to follow Joseph and
  Mary, and Herod was very angry with them when they could not tell him whither
  the pair had taken the babe. He then dispatched searchers to locate Joseph and
  Mary. Knowing Herod pursued the Nazareth family, Zacharias and Elizabeth
  remained away from Bethlehem. The boy baby was secreted with Joseph's
  relatives.

  122:10.2 Joseph was afraid to seek work, and their small savings were rapidly
  disappearing. Even at the time of the purification ceremonies at the temple,
  Joseph deemed himself sufficiently poor to warrant his offering for Mary two
  young pigeons as Moses had directed for the purification of mothers among the
  poor.

  122:10.3 When, after more than a year of searching, Herod's spies had not
  located Jesus, and because of the suspicion that the babe was still concealed
  in Bethlehem, he prepared an order directing that a systematic search be made
  of every house in Bethlehem, and that all boy babies under two years of age
  should be killed. In this manner Herod hoped to make sure that this child who
  was to become "king of the Jews" would be destroyed. And thus perished in one
  day sixteen boy babies in Bethlehem of Judea. But intrigue and murder, even in
  his own immediate family, were common occurrences at the court of Herod.

  122:10.4 The massacre of these infants took place about the middle of October,
  6 B.C., when Jesus was a little over one year of age. But there were believers
  in the coming Messiah even among Herod's court attachés, and one of these,
  learning of the order to slaughter the Bethlehem boy babies, communicated with
  Zacharias, who in turn dispatched a messenger to Joseph; and the night before
  the massacre Joseph and Mary departed from Bethlehem with the babe for
  Alexandria in Egypt. In order to avoid attracting attention, they journeyed
  alone to Egypt with Jesus. They went to Alexandria on funds provided by
  Zacharias, and there Joseph worked at his trade while Mary and Jesus lodged
  with well-to-do relatives of Joseph's family. They sojourned in Alexandria two
  full years, not returning to Bethlehem until after the death of Herod.



PAPER 123


 THE EARLY CHILDHOOD OF JESUS



  123:0.1 OWING to the uncertainties and anxieties of their sojourn in
  Bethlehem, Mary did not wean the babe until they had arrived safely in
  Alexandria, where the family was able to settle down to a normal life. They
  lived with kinsfolk, and Joseph was well able to support his family as he
  secured work shortly after their arrival. He was employed as a carpenter for
  several months and then elevated to the position of foreman of a large group
  of workmen employed on one of the public buildings then in process of
  construction. This new experience gave him the idea of becoming a contractor
  and builder after their return to Nazareth.



  123:0.2 All through these early years of Jesus' helpless infancy, Mary
  maintained one long and constant vigil lest anything befall her child which
  might jeopardize his welfare or in any way interfere with his future mission
  on earth; no mother was ever more devoted to her child. In the home where
  Jesus chanced to be there were two other children about his age, and among the
  near neighbors there were six others whose ages were sufficiently near his own
  to make them acceptable play-fellows. At first Mary was disposed to keep Jesus
  close by her side. She feared something might happen to him if he were allowed
  to play in the garden with the other children, but Joseph, with the assistance
  of his kinsfolk, was able to convince her that such a course would deprive
  Jesus of the helpful experience of learning how to adjust himself to children
  of his own age. And Mary, realizing that such a program of undue sheltering
  and unusual protection might tend to make him self-conscious and somewhat
  self-centered, finally gave assent to the plan of permitting the child of
  promise to grow up just like any other child; and though she was obedient to
  this decision, she made it her business always to be on watch while the little
  folks were at play about the house or in the garden. Only an affectionate
  mother can know the burden that Mary carried in her heart for the safety of
  her son during these years of his infancy and early childhood.

  123:0.3 Throughout the two years of their sojourn at Alexandria, Jesus enjoyed
  good health and continued to grow normally. Aside from a few friends and
  relatives no one was told about Jesus' being a "child of promise." One of
  Joseph's relatives revealed this to a few friends in Memphis, descendants of
  the distant Ikhnaton, and they, with a small group of Alexandrian believers,
  assembled at the palatial home of Joseph's relative-benefactor a short time
  before the return to Palestine to wish the Nazareth family well and to pay
  their respects to the child. On this occasion the assembled friends presented
  Jesus with a complete copy of the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.
  But this copy of the Jewish sacred writings was not placed in Joseph's hands
  until both he and Mary had finally declined the invitation of their Memphis
  and Alexandrian friends to remain in Egypt. These believers insisted that the
  child of destiny would be able to exert a far greater world influence as a
  resident of Alexandria than of any designated place in Palestine. These
  persuasions delayed their departure for Palestine for some time after they
  received the news of Herod's death.

  123:0.4 Joseph and Mary finally took leave of Alexandria on a boat belonging
  to their friend Ezraeon, bound for Joppa, arriving at that port late in August
  of the year 4 B.C. They went directly to Bethlehem, where they spent the
  entire month of September in counsel with their friends and relatives
  concerning whether they should remain there or return to Nazareth.

  123:0.5 Mary had never fully given up the idea that Jesus ought to grow up in
  Bethlehem, the City of David. Joseph did not really believe that their son was
  to become a kingly deliverer of Israel. Besides, he knew that he himself was
  not really a descendant of David; that his being reckoned among the offspring
  of David was due to the adoption of one of his ancestors into the Davidic line
  of descent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most appropriate
  place in which the new candidate for David's throne could be reared, but
  Joseph preferred to take chances with Herod Antipas rather than with his
  brother Archelaus. He entertained great fears for the child's safety in
  Bethlehem or in any other city in Judea, and surmised that Archelaus would be
  more likely to pursue the menacing policies of his father, Herod, than would
  Antipas in Galilee. And besides all these reasons, Joseph was outspoken in his
  preference for Galilee as a better place in which to rear and educate the
  child, but it required three weeks to overcome Mary's objections.

  123:0.6 By the first of October Joseph had convinced Mary and all their
  friends that it was best for them to return to Nazareth. Accordingly, early in
  October, 4 B.C., they departed from Bethlehem for Nazareth, going by way of
  Lydda and Scythopolis. They started out early one Sunday morning, Mary and the
  child riding on their newly acquired beast of burden, while Joseph and five
  accompanying kinsmen proceeded on foot; Joseph's relatives refused to permit
  them to make the trip to Nazareth alone. They feared to go to Galilee by
  Jerusalem and the Jordan valley, and the western routes were not altogether
  safe for two lone travelers with a child of tender years.





1. BACK IN NAZARETH



  123:1.1 On the fourth day of the journey the party reached its destination in
  safety. They arrived unannounced at the Nazareth home, which had been occupied
  for more than three years by one of Joseph's married brothers, who was indeed
  surprised to see them; so quietly had they gone about their business that
  neither the family of Joseph nor that of Mary knew they had even left
  Alexandria. The next day Joseph's brother moved his family, and Mary, for the
  first time since Jesus' birth, settled down with her little family to enjoy
  life in their own home. In less than a week Joseph secured work as a
  carpenter, and they were supremely happy.

  123:1.2 Jesus was about three years and two months old at the time of their
  return to Nazareth. He had stood all these travels very well and was in
  excellent health and full of childish glee and excitement at having premises
  of his own to run about in and to enjoy. But he greatly missed the association
  of his Alexandrian playmates.

  123:1.3 On the way to Nazareth Joseph had persuaded Mary that it would be
  unwise to spread the word among their Galilean friends and relatives that
  Jesus was a child of promise. They agreed to refrain from all mention of these
  matters to anyone. And they were both very faithful in keeping this promise.

  123:1.4 Jesus' entire fourth year was a period of normal physical development
  and of unusual mental activity. Meantime he had formed a very close attachment
  for a neighbor boy about his own age named Jacob. Jesus and Jacob were always
  happy in their play, and they grew up to be great friends and loyal
  companions.

  123:1.5 The next important event in the life of this Nazareth family was the
  birth of the second child, James, in the early morning hours of April 2, 3
  B.C. Jesus was thrilled by the thought of having a baby brother, and he would
  stand around by the hour just to observe the baby's early activities.

  123:1.6 It was midsummer of this same year that Joseph built a small workshop
  close to the village spring and near the caravan tarrying lot. After this he
  did very little carpenter work by the day. He had as associates two of his
  brothers and several other mechanics, whom he sent out to work while he
  remained at the shop making yokes and plows and doing other woodwork. He also
  did some work in leather and with rope and canvas. And Jesus, as he grew up,
  when not at school, spent his time about equally between helping his mother
  with home duties and watching his father work at the shop, meanwhile listening
  to the conversation and gossip of the caravan conductors and passengers from
  the four corners of the earth.

  123:1.7 In July of this year, one month before Jesus was four years old, an
  outbreak of malignant intestinal trouble spread over all Nazareth from contact
  with the caravan travelers. Mary became so alarmed by the danger of Jesus
  being exposed to this epidemic of disease that she bundled up both her
  children and fled to the country home of her brother, several miles south of
  Nazareth on the Megiddo road near Sarid. They did not return to Nazareth for
  more than two months; Jesus greatly enjoyed this, his first experience on a
  farm.





2. THE FIFTH YEAR (2 B.C.)



  123:2.1 In something more than a year after the return to Nazareth the boy
  Jesus arrived at the age of his first personal and wholehearted moral
  decision; and there came to abide with him a Thought Adjuster, a divine gift
  of the Paradise Father, which had aforetime served with Machiventa
  Melchizedek, thus gaining the experience of functioning in connection with the
  incarnation of a supermortal being living in the likeness of mortal flesh.
  This event occurred on February 11, 2 B.C. Jesus was no more aware of the
  coming of the divine Monitor than are the millions upon millions of other
  children who, before and since that day, have likewise received these Thought
  Adjusters to indwell their minds and work for the ultimate spiritualization of
  these minds and the eternal survival of their evolving immortal souls.

  123:2.2 On this day in February the direct and personal supervision of the
  Universe Rulers, as it was related to the integrity of the childlike
  incarnation of Michael, terminated. From that time on throughout the human
  unfolding of the incarnation, the guardianship of Jesus was destined to rest
  in the keeping of this indwelling Adjuster and the associated seraphic
  guardians, supplemented from time to time by the ministry of midway creatures
  assigned for the performance of certain definite duties in accordance with the
  instruction of their planetary superiors.



  123:2.3 Jesus was five years old in August of this year, and we will,
  therefore, refer to this as his fifth (calendar) year of life. In this year, 2
  B.C., a little more than one month before his fifth birthday anniversay, Jesus
  was made very happy by the coming of his sister Miriam, who was born on the
  night of July 11. During the evening of the following day Jesus had a long
  talk with his father concerning the manner in which various groups of living
  things are born into the world as separate individuals. The most valuable part
  of Jesus' early education was secured from his parents in answer to his
  thoughtful and searching inquiries. Joseph never failed to do his full duty in
  taking pains and spending time answering the boy's numerous questions. From
  the time Jesus was five years old until he was ten, he was one continuous
  question mark. While Joseph and Mary could not always answer his questions,
  they never failed fully to discuss his inquiries and in every other possible
  way to assist him in his efforts to reach a satisfactory solution of the
  problem which his alert mind had suggested.

  123:2.4 Since returning to Nazareth, theirs had been a busy household, and
  Joseph had been unusually occupied building his new shop and getting his
  business started again. So fully was he occupied that he had found no time to
  build a cradle for James, but this was corrected long before Miriam came, so
  that she had a very comfortable crib in which to nestle while the family
  admired her. And the child Jesus heartily entered into all these natural and
  normal home experiences. He greatly enjoyed his little brother and his baby
  sister and was of great help to Mary in their care.

  123:2.5 There were few homes in the gentile world of those days that could
  give a child a better intellectual, moral, and religious training than the
  Jewish homes of Galilee. These Jews had a systematic program for rearing and
  educating their children. They divided a child's life into seven stages:

1. The newborn child, the first to the eighth day.

2. The suckling child.

3. The weaned child.

4. The period of dependence on the mother, lasting up to the end of the fifth
year.

5. The beginning independence of the child and, with sons, the father assuming
responsibility for their education.

6. The adolescent youths and maidens.

7. The young men and the young women.

  123:2.6 It was the custom of the Galilean Jews for the mother to bear the
  responsibility for a child's training until the fifth birthday, and then, if
  the child were a boy, to hold the father responsible for the lad's education
  from that time on. This year, therefore, Jesus entered upon the fifth stage of
  a Galilean Jewish child's career, and accordingly on August 21, 2 B.C., Mary
  formally turned him over to Joseph for further instruction.

  123:2.7 Though Joseph was now assuming the direct responsibility for Jesus'
  intellectual and religious education, his mother still interested herself in
  his home training. She taught him to know and care for the vines and flowers
  growing about the garden walls which completely surrounded the home plot. She
  also provided on the roof of the house (the summer bedroom) shallow boxes of
  sand in which Jesus worked out maps and did much of his early practice at
  writing Aramaic, Greek, and later on, Hebrew, for in time he learned to read,
  write, and speak, fluently, all three languages.

  123:2.8 Jesus appeared to be a well-nigh perfect child physically and
  continued to make normal progress mentally and emotionally. He experienced a
  mild digestive upset, his first minor illness, in the latter part of this, his
  fifth (calendar) year.

  123:2.9 Though Joseph and Mary often talked about the future of their eldest
  child, had you been there, you would only have observed the growing up of a
  normal, healthy, carefree, but exceedingly inquisitive child of that time and
  place.





3. EVENTS OF THE SIXTH YEAR (1 B.C.)



  123:3.1 Already, with his mother's help, Jesus had mastered the Galilean
  dialect of the Aramaic tongue; and now his father began teaching him Greek.
  Mary spoke little Greek, but Joseph was a fluent speaker of both Aramaic and
  Greek. The textbook for the study of the Greek language was the copy of the
  Hebrew scriptures -- a complete version of the law and the prophets, including
  the Psalms -- which had been presented to them on leaving Egypt. There were
  only two complete copies of the Scriptures in Greek in all Nazareth, and the
  possession of one of them by the carpenter's family made Joseph's home a much-
  sought place and enabled Jesus, as he grew up, to meet an almost endless
  procession of earnest students and sincere truth seekers. Before this year
  ended, Jesus had assumed custody of this priceless manuscript, having been
  told on his sixth birthday that the sacred book had been presented to him by
  Alexandrian friends and relatives. And in a very short time he could read it
  readily.



  123:3.2 The first great shock of Jesus' young life occurred when he was not
  quite six years old. It had seemed to the lad that his father -- at least his
  father and mother together -- knew everything. Imagine, therefore, the
  surprise of this inquiring child, when he asked his father the cause of a mild
  earthquake which had just occurred, to hear Joseph say, "My son, I really do
  not know." Thus began that long and disconcerting disillusionment in the
  course of which Jesus found out that his earthly parents were not all-wise and
  all-knowing.

  123:3.3 Joseph's first thought was to tell Jesus that the earthquake had been
  caused by God, but a moment's reflection admonished him that such an answer
  would immediately be provocative of further and still more embarrassing
  inquiries. Even at an early age it was very difficult to answer Jesus'
  questions about physical or social phenomena by thoughtlessly telling him that
  either God or the devil was responsible. In harmony with the prevailing belief
  of the Jewish people, Jesus was long willing to accept the doctrine of good
  spirits and evil spirits as the possible explanation of mental and spiritual
  phenomena, but he very early became doubtful that such unseen influences were
  responsible for the physical happenings of the natural world.



  123:3.4 Before Jesus was six years of age, in the early summer of 1 B.C.,
  Zacharias and Elizabeth and their son John came to visit the Nazareth family.
  Jesus and John had a happy time during this, their first visit within their
  memories. Although the visitors could remain only a few days, the parents
  talked over many things, including the future plans for their sons. While they
  were thus engaged, the lads played with blocks in the sand on top of the house
  and in many other ways enjoyed themselves in true boyish fashion.



  123:3.5 Having met John, who came from near Jerusalem, Jesus began to evince
  an unusual interest in the history of Israel and to inquire in great detail as
  to the meaning of the Sabbath rites, the synagogue sermons, and the recurring
  feasts of commemoration. His father explained to him the meaning of all these
  seasons. The first was the midwinter festive illumination, lasting eight days,
  starting out with one candle the first night and adding one each successive
  night; this commemorated the dedication of the temple after the restoration of
  the Mosaic services by Judas Maccabee. Next came the early springtime
  celebration of Purim, the feast of Esther and Israel's deliverance through
  her. Then followed the solemn Passover, which the adults celebrated in
  Jerusalem whenever possible, while at home the children would remember that no
  leavened bread was to be eaten for the whole week. Later came the feast of the
  first-fruits, the harvest ingathering; and last, the most solemn of all, the
  feast of the new year, the day of atonement. While some of these celebrations
  and observances were difficult for Jesus' young mind to understand, he
  pondered them seriously and then entered fully into the joy of the feast of
  tabernacles, the annual vacation season of the whole Jewish people, the time
  when they camped out in leafy booths and gave themselves up to mirth and
  pleasure.



  123:3.6 During this year Joseph and Mary had trouble with Jesus about his
  prayers. He insisted on talking to his heavenly Father much as he would talk
  to Joseph, his earthly father. This departure from the more solemn and
  reverent modes of communication with Deity was a bit disconcerting to his
  parents, especially to his mother, but there was no persuading him to change;
  he would say his prayers just as he had been taught, after which he insisted
  on having "just a little talk with my Father in heaven."

  123:3.7 In June of this year Joseph turned the shop in Nazareth over to his
  brothers and formally entered upon his work as a builder. Before the year was
  over, the family income had more than trebled. Never again, until after
  Joseph's death, did the Nazareth family feel the pinch of poverty. The family
  grew larger and larger, and they spent much money on extra education and
  travel, but always Joseph's increasing income kept pace with the growing
  expenses.

  123:3.8 The next few years Joseph did considerable work at Cana, Bethlehem (of
  Galilee), Magdala, Nain, Sepphoris, Capernaum, and Endor, as well as much
  building in and near Nazareth. As James grew up to be old enough to help his
  mother with the housework and care of the younger children, Jesus made
  frequent trips away from home with his father to these surrounding towns and
  villages. Jesus was a keen observer and gained much practical knowledge from
  these trips away from home; he was assiduously storing up knowledge regarding
  man and the way he lived on earth.



  123:3.9 This year Jesus made great progress in adjusting his strong feelings
  and vigorous impulses to the demands of family co-operation and home
  discipline. Mary was a loving mother but a fairly strict disciplinarian. In
  many ways, however, Joseph exerted the greater control over Jesus as it was
  his practice to sit down with the boy and fully explain the real and
  underlying reasons for the necessity of disciplinary curtailment of personal
  desires in deference to the welfare and tranquillity of the entire family.
  When the situation had been explained to Jesus, he was always intelligently
  and willingly co-operative with parental wishes and family regulations.



  123:3.10 Much of his spare time -- when his mother did not require his help
  about the house -- was spent studying the flowers and plants by day and the
  stars by night. He evinced a troublesome penchant for lying on his back and
  gazing wonderingly up into the starry heavens long after his usual bedtime in
  this well-ordered Nazareth household.





4. THE SEVENTH YEAR (A.D. 1)



  123:4.1 This was, indeed, an eventful year in Jesus' life. Early in January a
  great snowstorm occurred in Galilee. Snow fell two feet deep, the heaviest
  snowfall Jesus saw during his lifetime and one of the deepest at Nazareth in a
  hundred years.

  123:4.2 The play life of Jewish children in the times of Jesus was rather
  circumscribed; all too often the children played at the more serious things
  they observed their elders doing. They played much at weddings and funerals,
  ceremonies which they so frequently saw and which were so spectacular. They
  danced and sang but had few organized games, such as children of later days so
  much enjoy.

  123:4.3 Jesus, in company with a neighbor boy and later his brother James,
  delighted to play in the far corner of the family carpenter shop, where they
  had great fun with the shavings and the blocks of wood. It was always
  difficult for Jesus to comprehend the harm of certain sorts of play which were
  forbidden on the Sabbath, but he never failed to conform to his parents'
  wishes. He had a capacity for humor and play which was afforded little
  opportunity for expression in the environment of his day and generation, but
  up to the age of fourteen he was cheerful and lighthearted most of the time.

  123:4.4 Mary maintained a dovecote on top of the animal house adjoining the
  home, and they used the profits from the sale of doves as a special charity
  fund, which Jesus administered after he deducted the tithe and turned it over
  to the officer of the synagogue.

  123:4.5 The only real accident Jesus had up to this time was a fall down the
  back-yard stone stairs which led up to the canvas-roofed bedroom. It happened
  during an unexpected July sandstorm from the east. The hot winds, carrying
  blasts of fine sand, usually blew during the rainy season, especially in March
  and April. It was extraordinary to have such a storm in July. When the storm
  came up, Jesus was on the housetop playing, as was his habit, for during much
  of the dry season this was his accustomed playroom. He was blinded by the sand
  when descending the stairs and fell. After this accident Joseph built a
  balustrade up both sides of the stairway.

  123:4.6 There was no way in which this accident could have been prevented. It
  was not chargeable to neglect by the midway temporal guardians, one primary
  and one secondary midwayer having been assigned to the watchcare of the lad;
  neither was it chargeable to the guardian seraphim. It simply could not have
  been avoided. But this slight accident, occurring while Joseph was absent in
  Endor, caused such great anxiety to develop in Mary's mind that she unwisely
  tried to keep Jesus very close to her side for some months.

  123:4.7 Material accidents, commonplace occurrences of a physical nature, are
  not arbitrarily interfered with by celestial personalities. Under ordinary
  circumstances only midway creatures can intervene in material conditions to
  safeguard the persons of men and women of destiny, and even in special
  situations these beings can so act only in obedience to the specific mandates
  of their superiors.

  123:4.8 And this was but one of a number of such minor accidents which
  subsequently befell this inquisitive and adventurous youth. If you envisage
  the average childhood and youth of an aggressive boy, you will have a fairly
  good idea of the youthful career of Jesus, and you will be able to imagine
  just about how much anxiety he caused his parents, particularly his mother.



  123:4.9 The fourth member of the Nazareth family, Joseph, was born Wednesday
  morning, March 16, A.D. 1.





5. SCHOOL DAYS IN NAZARETH



  123:5.1 Jesus was now seven years old, the age when Jewish children were
  supposed to begin their formal education in the synagogue schools.
  Accordingly, in August of this year he entered upon his eventful school life
  at Nazareth. Already this lad was a fluent reader, writer, and speaker of two
  languages, Aramaic and Greek. He was now to acquaint himself with the task of
  learning to read, write, and speak the Hebrew language. And he was truly eager
  for the new school life which was ahead of him.

  123:5.2 For three years -- until he was ten -- he attended the elementary
  school of the Nazareth synagogue. For these three years he studied the
  rudiments of the Book of the Law as it was recorded in the Hebrew tongue. For
  the following three years he studied in the advanced school and committed to
  memory, by the method of repeating aloud, the deeper teachings of the sacred
  law. He graduated from this school of the synagogue during his thirteenth year
  and was turned over to his parents by the synagogue rulers as an educated "son
  of the commandment" -- henceforth a responsible citizen of the commonwealth of
  Israel, all of which entailed his attendance at the Passovers in Jerusalem;
  accordingly, he attended his first Passover that year in company with his
  father and mother.



  123:5.3 At Nazareth the pupils sat on the floor in a semicircle, while their
  teacher, the chazan, an officer of the synagogue, sat facing them. Beginning
  with the Book of Leviticus, they passed on to the study of the other books of
  the law, followed by the study of the Prophets and the Psalms. The Nazareth
  synagogue possessed a complete copy of the Scriptures in Hebrew. Nothing but
  the Scriptures was studied prior to the twelfth year. In the summer months the
  hours for school were greatly shortened.

  123:5.4 Jesus early became a master of Hebrew, and as a young man, when no
  visitor of prominence happened to be sojourning in Nazareth, he would often be
  asked to read the Hebrew scriptures to the faithful assembled in the synagogue
  at the regular Sabbath services.

  123:5.5 These synagogue schools, of course, had no textbooks. In teaching, the
  chazan would utter a statement while the pupils would in unison repeat it
  after him. When having access to the written books of the law, the student
  learned his lesson by reading aloud and by constant repetition.



  123:5.6 Next, in addition to his more formal schooling, Jesus began to make
  contact with human nature from the four quarters of the earth as men from many
  lands passed in and out of his father's repair shop. When he grew older, he
  mingled freely with the caravans as they tarried near the spring for rest and
  nourishment. Being a fluent speaker of Greek, he had little trouble in
  conversing with the majority of the caravan travelers and conductors.

  123:5.7 Nazareth was a caravan way station and crossroads of travel and
  largely gentile in population; at the same time it was widely known as a
  center of liberal interpretation of Jewish traditional law. In Galilee the
  Jews mingled more freely with the gentiles than was their practice in Judea.
  And of all the cities of Galilee, the Jews of Nazareth were most liberal in
  their interpretation of the social restrictions based on the fears of
  contamination as a result of contact with the gentiles. And these conditions
  gave rise to the common saying in Jerusalem, "Can any good thing come out of
  Nazareth?"

  123:5.8 Jesus received his moral training and spiritual culture chiefly in his
  own home. He secured much of his intellectual and theological education from
  the chazan. But his real education -- that equipment of mind and heart for the
  actual test of grappling with the difficult problems of life -- he obtained by
  mingling with his fellow men. It was this close association with his fellow
  men, young and old, Jew and gentile, that afforded him the opportunity to know
  the human race. Jesus was highly educated in that he thoroughly understood men
  and devotedly loved them.



  123:5.9 Throughout his years at the synagogue he was a brilliant student,
  possessing a great advantage since he was conversant with three languages. The
  Nazareth chazan, on the occasion of Jesus' finishing the course in his school,
  remarked to Joseph that he feared he "had learned more from Jesus' searching
  questions" than he had "been able to teach the lad."

  123:5.10 Throughout his course of study Jesus learned much and derived great
  inspiration from the regular Sabbath sermons in the synagogue. It was
  customary to ask distinguished visitors, stopping over the Sabbath in
  Nazareth, to address the synagogue. As Jesus grew up, he heard many great
  thinkers of the entire Jewish world expound their views, and many also who
  were hardly orthodox Jews since the synagogue of Nazareth was an advanced and
  liberal center of Hebrew thought and culture.

  123:5.11 When entering school at seven years (at this time the Jews had just
  inaugurated a compulsory education law), it was customary for the pupils to
  choose their "birthday text," a sort of golden rule to guide them throughout
  their studies, one upon which they often expatiated at their graduation when
  thirteen years old. The text which Jesus chose was from the Prophet Isaiah:
  "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has
  sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the brokenhearted, to
  proclaim liberty to the captives, and to set the spiritual prisoners free."



  123:5.12 Nazareth was one of the twenty-four priest centers of the Hebrew
  nation. But the Galilean priesthood was more liberal in the interpretation of
  the traditional laws than were the Judean scribes and rabbis. And at Nazareth
  they were also more liberal regarding the observance of the Sabbath. It was
  therefore the custom for Joseph to take Jesus out for walks on Sabbath
  afternoons, one of their favorite jaunts being to climb the high hill near
  their home, from which they could obtain a panoramic view of all Galilee. To
  the northwest, on clear days, they could see the long ridge of Mount Carmel
  running down to the sea; and many times Jesus heard his father relate the
  story of Elijah, one of the first of that long line of Hebrew prophets, who
  reproved Ahab and exposed the priests of Baal. To the north Mount Hermon
  raised its snowy peak in majestic splendor and monopolized the skyline, almost
  3,000 feet of the upper slopes glistening white with perpetual snow. Far to
  the east they could discern the Jordan valley and, far beyond, the rocky hills
  of Moab. Also to the south and the east, when the sun shone upon their marble
  walls, they could see the Greco-Roman cities of the Decapolis, with their
  amphitheaters and pretentious temples. And when they lingered toward the going
  down of the sun, to the west they could make out the sailing vessels on the
  distant Mediterranean.

  123:5.13 From four directions Jesus could observe the caravan trains as they
  wended their way in and out of Nazareth, and to the south he could overlook
  the broad and fertile plain country of Esdraelon, stretching off toward Mount
  Gilboa and Samaria.

  123:5.14 When they did not climb the heights to view the distant landscape,
  they strolled through the countryside and studied nature in her various moods
  in accordance with the seasons. Jesus' earliest training, aside from that of
  the home hearth, had to do with a reverent and sympathetic contact with
  nature.



  123:5.15 Before he was eight years of age, he was known to all the mothers and
  young women of Nazareth, who had met him and talked with him at the spring,
  which was not far from his home, and which was one of the social centers of
  contact and gossip for the entire town. This year Jesus learned to milk the
  family cow and care for the other animals. During this and the following year
  he also learned to make cheese and to weave. When he was ten years of age, he
  was an expert loom operator. It was about this time that Jesus and the
  neighbor boy Jacob became great friends of the potter who worked near the
  flowing spring; and as they watched Nathan's deft fingers mold the clay on the
  potter's wheel, many times both of them determined to be potters when they
  grew up. Nathan was very fond of the lads and often gave them clay to play
  with, seeking to stimulate their creative imaginations by suggesting
  competitive efforts in modeling various objects and animals.





6. HIS EIGHTH YEAR (A.D. 2)



  123:6.1 This was an interesting year at school. Although Jesus was not an
  unusual student, he was a diligent pupil and belonged to the more progressive
  third of the class, doing his work so well that he was excused from attendance
  one week out of each month. This week he usually spent either with his
  fisherman uncle on the shores of the Sea of Galilee near Magdala or on the
  farm of another uncle (his mother's brother) five miles south of Nazareth.

  123:6.2 Although his mother had become unduly anxious about his health and
  safety, she gradually became reconciled to these trips away from home. Jesus'
  uncles and aunts were all very fond of him, and there ensued a lively
  competition among them to secure his company for these monthly visits
  throughout this and immediately subsequent years. His first week's sojourn on
  his uncle's farm (since infancy) was in January of this year; the first week's
  fishing experience on the Sea of Galilee occurred in the month of May.

  123:6.3 About this time Jesus met a teacher of mathematics from Damascus, and
  learning some new techniques of numbers, he spent much time on mathematics for
  several years. He developed a keen sense of numbers, distances, and
  proportions.

  123:6.4 Jesus began to enjoy his brother James very much and by the end of
  this year had begun to teach him the alphabet.

  123:6.5 This year Jesus made arrangements to exchange dairy products for
  lessons on the harp. He had an unusual liking for everything musical. Later on
  he did much to promote an interest in vocal music among his youthful
  associates. By the time he was eleven years of age, he was a skillful harpist
  and greatly enjoyed entertaining both family and friends with his
  extraordinary interpretations and able improvisations.

  123:6.6 While Jesus continued to make enviable progress at school, all did not
  run smoothly for either parents or teachers. He persisted in asking many
  embarrassing questions concerning both science and religion, particularly
  regarding geography and astronomy. He was especially insistent on finding out
  why there was a dry season and a rainy season in Palestine. Repeatedly he
  sought the explanation for the great difference between the temperatures of
  Nazareth and the Jordan valley. He simply never ceased to ask such intelligent
  but perplexing questions.



  123:6.7 His third brother, Simon, was born on Friday evening, April 14, of
  this year, A.D. 2.



  123:6.8 In February, Nahor, one of the teachers in a Jerusalem academy of the
  rabbis, came to Nazareth to observe Jesus, having been on a similar mission to
  Zacharias's home near Jerusalem. He came to Nazareth at the instigation of
  John's father. While at first he was somewhat shocked by Jesus' frankness and
  unconventional manner of relating himself to things religious, he attributed
  it to the remoteness of Galilee from the centers of Hebrew learning and
  culture and advised Joseph and Mary to allow him to take Jesus back with him
  to Jerusalem, where he could have the advantages of education and training at
  the center of Jewish culture. Mary was half persuaded to consent; she was
  convinced her eldest son was to become the Messiah, the Jewish deliverer;
  Joseph hesitated; he was equally persuaded that Jesus was to grow up to become
  a man of destiny, but what that destiny would prove to be he was profoundly
  uncertain. But he never really doubted that his son was to fulfill some great
  mission on earth. The more he thought about Nahor's advice, the more he
  questioned the wisdom of the proposed sojourn in Jerusalem.

  123:6.9 Because of this difference of opinion between Joseph and Mary, Nahor
  requested permission to lay the whole matter before Jesus. Jesus listened
  attentively, talked with Joseph, Mary, and a neighbor, Jacob the stone mason,
  whose son was his favorite playmate, and then, two days later, reported that
  since there was such a difference of opinion among his parents and advisers,
  and since he did not feel competent to assume the responsibility for such a
  decision, not feeling strongly one way or the other, in view of the whole
  situation, he had finally decided to "talk with my Father who is in heaven";
  and while he was not perfectly sure about the answer, he rather felt he should
  remain at home "with my father and mother," adding, "they who love me so much
  should be able to do more for me and guide me more safely than strangers who
  can only view my body and observe my mind but can hardly truly know me." They
  all marveled, and Nahor went his way, back to Jerusalem. And it was many years
  before the subject of Jesus' going away from home again came up for
  consideration.


PAPER 124


 THE LATER CHILDHOOD OF JESUS



  124:0.1 ALTHOUGH Jesus might have enjoyed a better opportunity for schooling
  at Alexandria than in Galilee, he could not have had such a splendid
  environment for working out his own life problems with a minimum of
  educational guidance, at the same time enjoying the great advantage of
  constantly contacting with such a large number of all classes of men and women
  hailing from every part of the civilized world. Had he remained at Alexandria,
  his education would have been directed by Jews and along exclusively Jewish
  lines. At Nazareth he secured an education and received a training which more
  acceptably prepared him to understand the gentiles, and which gave him a
  better and more balanced idea of the relative merits of the Eastern, or
  Babylonian, and the Western, or Hellenic, views of Hebrew theology.





1. JESUS' NINTH YEAR (A.D. 3)

  124:1.1 Though it could hardly be said that Jesus was ever seriously ill, he
  did have some of the minor ailments of childhood this year, along with his
  brothers and baby sister.

  124:1.2 School went on and he was still a favored pupil, having one week each
  month at liberty, and he continued to divide his time about equally between
  trips to neighboring cities with his father, sojourns on his uncle's farm
  south of Nazareth, and fishing excursions out from Magdala.



  124:1.3 The most serious trouble as yet to come up at school occurred in late
  winter when Jesus dared to challenge the chazan regarding the teaching that
  all images, pictures, and drawings were idolatrous in nature. Jesus delighted
  in drawing landscapes as well as in modeling a great variety of objects in
  potter's clay. Everything of that sort was strictly forbidden by Jewish law,
  but up to this time he had managed to disarm his parents' objection to such an
  extent that they had permitted him to continue in these activities.

  124:1.4 But trouble was again stirred up at school when one of the more
  backward pupils discovered Jesus drawing a charcoal picture of the teacher on
  the floor of the schoolroom. There it was, plain as day, and many of the
  elders had viewed it before the committee went to call on Joseph to demand
  that something be done to suppress the lawlessness of his eldest son. And
  though this was not the first time complaints had come to Joseph and Mary
  about the doings of their versatile and aggressive child, this was the most
  serious of all the accusations which had thus far been lodged against him.
  Jesus listened to the indictment of his artistic efforts for some time, being
  seated on a large stone just outside the back door. He resented their blaming
  his father for his alleged misdeeds; so in he marched, fearlessly confronting
  his accusers. The elders were thrown into confusion. Some were inclined to
  view the episode humorously, while one or two seemed to think the boy was
  sacrilegious if not blasphemous. Joseph was nonplused, Mary indignant, but
  Jesus insisted on being heard. He had his say, courageously defended his
  viewpoint, and with consummate self-control announced that he would abide by
  the decision of his father in this as in all other matters controversial. And
  the committee of elders departed in silence.

  124:1.5 Mary endeavored to influence Joseph to permit Jesus to model in clay
  at home, provided he promised not to carry on any of these questionable
  activities at school, but Joseph felt impelled to rule that the rabbinical
  interpretation of the second commandment should prevail. And so Jesus no more
  drew or modeled the likeness of anything from that day as long as he lived in
  his father's house. But he was unconvinced of the wrong of what he had done,
  and to give up such a favorite pastime constituted one of the great trials of
  his young life.



  124:1.6 In the latter part of June, Jesus, in company with his father, first
  climbed to the summit of Mount Tabor. It was a clear day and the view was
  superb. It seemed to this nine-year-old lad that he had really gazed upon the
  entire world excepting India, Africa, and Rome.



  124:1.7 Jesus' second sister, Martha, was born Thursday night, September 13.
  Three weeks after the coming of Martha, Joseph, who was home for awhile,
  started the building of an addition to their house, a combined workshop and
  bedroom. A small workbench was built for Jesus, and for the first time he
  possessed tools of his own. At odd times for many years he worked at this
  bench and became highly expert in the making of yokes.



  124:1.8 This winter and the next were the coldest in Nazareth for many
  decades. Jesus had seen snow on the mountains, and several times it had fallen
  in Nazareth, remaining on the ground only a short time; but not until this
  winter had he seen ice. The fact that water could be had as a solid, a liquid,
  and a vapor -- he had long pondered over the escaping steam from the boiling
  pots -- caused the lad to think a great deal about the physical world and its
  constitution; and yet the personality embodied in this growing youth was all
  this while the actual creator and organizer of all these things throughout a
  far-flung universe.

  124:1.9 The climate of Nazareth was not severe. January was the coldest month,
  the temperature averaging around 50° F. During July and August, the hottest
  months, the temperature would vary from 75° to 90° F. From the mountains to
  the Jordan and the Dead Sea valley the climate of Palestine ranged from the
  frigid to the torrid. And so, in a way, the Jews were prepared to live in
  about any and all of the world's varying climates.

  124:1.10 Even during the warmest summer months a cool sea breeze usually blew
  from the west from 10:00 A.M. until about 10:00 P.M. But every now and then
  terrific hot winds from the eastern desert would blow across all Palestine.
  These hot blasts usually came in February and March, near the end of the rainy
  season. In those days the rain fell in refreshing showers from November to
  April, but it did not rain steadily. There were only two seasons in Palestine,
  summer and winter, the dry and rainy seasons. In January the flowers began to
  bloom, and by the end of April the whole land was one vast flower garden.



  124:1.11 In May of this year, on his uncle's farm, Jesus for the first time
  helped with the harvest of the grain. Before he was thirteen, he had managed
  to find out something about practically everything that men and women worked
  at around Nazareth except metal working, and he spent several months in a
  smith's shop when older, after the death of his father.

  124:1.12 When work and caravan travel were slack, Jesus made many trips with
  his father on pleasure or business to nearby Cana, Endor, and Nain. Even as a
  lad he frequently visited Sepphoris, only a little over three miles from
  Nazareth to the northwest, and from 4 B.C. to about A.D. 25 the capital of
  Galilee and one of the residences of Herod Antipas.

  124:1.13 Jesus continued to grow physically, intellectually, socially, and
  spiritually. His trips away from home did much to give him a better and more
  generous understanding of his own family, and by this time even his parents
  were beginning to learn from him as well as to teach him. Jesus was an
  original thinker and a skillful teacher, even in his youth. He was in constant
  collision with the so-called "oral law," but he always sought to adapt himself
  to the practices of his family. He got along fairly well with the children of
  his age, but he often grew discouraged with their slow-acting minds. Before he
  was ten years old, he had become the leader of a group of seven lads who
  formed themselves into a society for promoting the acquirements of manhood --
  physical, intellectual, and religious. Among these boys Jesus succeeded in
  introducing many new games and various improved methods of physical
  recreation.





2. THE TENTH YEAR (A.D. 4)

  124:2.1 It was the fifth of July, the first Sabbath of the month, when Jesus,
  while strolling through the countryside with his father, first gave expression
  to feelings and ideas which indicated that he was becoming self-conscious of
  the unusual nature of his life mission. Joseph listened attentively to the
  momentous words of his son but made few comments; he volunteered no
  information. The next day Jesus had a similar but longer talk with his mother.
  Mary likewise listened to the pronouncements of the lad, but neither did she
  volunteer any information. It was almost two years before Jesus again spoke to
  his parents concerning this increasing revelation within his own consciousness
  regarding the nature of his personality and the character of his mission on
  earth.



  124:2.2 He entered the advanced school of the synagogue in August. At school
  he was constantly creating trouble by the questions he persisted in asking.
  Increasingly he kept all Nazareth in more or less of a hubbub. His parents
  were loath to forbid his asking these disquieting questions, and his chief
  teacher was greatly intrigued by the lad's curiosity, insight, and hunger for
  knowledge.

  124:2.3 Jesus' playmates saw nothing supernatural in his conduct; in most ways
  he was altogether like themselves. His interest in study was somewhat above
  the average but not wholly unusual. He did ask more questions at school than
  others in his class.



  124:2.4 Perhaps his most unusual and outstanding trait was his unwillingness
  to fight for his rights. Since he was such a well-developed lad for his age,
  it seemed strange to his playfellows that he was disinclined to defend himself
  even from injustice or when subjected to personal abuse. As it happened, he
  did not suffer much on account of this trait because of the friendship of
  Jacob, a neighbor boy, who was one year older. He was the son of the stone
  mason, a business associate of Joseph. Jacob was a great admirer of Jesus and
  made it his business to see that no one was permitted to impose upon Jesus
  because of his aversion to physical combat. Several times older and uncouth
  youths attacked Jesus, relying upon his reputed docility, but they always
  suffered swift and certain retribution at the hands of his self-appointed
  champion and ever-ready defender, Jacob the stone mason's son.

  124:2.5 Jesus was the generally accepted leader of the Nazareth lads who stood
  for the higher ideals of their day and generation. He was really loved by his
  youthful associates, not only because he was fair, but also because he
  possessed a rare and understanding sympathy that betokened love and bordered
  on discreet compassion.

  124:2.6 This year he began to show a marked preference for the company of
  older persons. He delighted in talking over things cultural, educational,
  social, economic, political, and religious with older minds, and his depth of
  reasoning and keenness of observation so charmed his adult associates that
  they were always more than willing to visit with him. Until he became
  responsible for the support of the home, his parents were constantly seeking
  to influence him to associate with those of his own age, or more nearly his
  age, rather than with older and better-informed individuals for whom he
  evinced such a preference.

  124:2.7 Late this year he had a fishing experience of two months with his
  uncle on the Sea of Galilee, and he was very successful. Before attaining
  manhood, he had become an expert fisherman.

  124:2.8 His physical development continued; he was an advanced and privileged
  pupil at school; he got along fairly well at home with his younger brothers
  and sisters, having the advantage of being three and one-half years older than
  the oldest of the other children. He was well thought of in Nazareth except by
  the parents of some of the duller children, who often spoke of Jesus as being
  too pert, as lacking in proper humility and youthful reserve. He manifested a
  growing tendency to direct the play activities of his youthful associates into
  more serious and thoughtful channels. He was a born teacher and simply could
  not refrain from so functioning, even when supposedly engaged in play.

  124:2.9 Joseph early began to instruct Jesus in the diverse means of gaining a
  livelihood, explaining the advantages of agriculture over industry and trade.
  Galilee was a more beautiful and prosperous district than Judea, and it cost
  only about one fourth as much to live there as in Jerusalem and Judea. It was
  a province of agricultural villages and thriving industrial cities, containing
  more than two hundred towns of over five thousand population and thirty of
  over fifteen thousand.

  124:2.10 When on his first trip with his father to observe the fishing
  industry on the lake of Galilee, Jesus had just about made up his mind to
  become a fisherman; but close association with his father's vocation later on
  influenced him to become a carpenter, while still later a combination of
  influences led him to the final choice of becoming a religious teacher of a
  new order.





3. THE ELEVENTH YEAR (A.D. 5)

  124:3.1 Throughout this year the lad continued to make trips away from home
  with his father, but he also frequently visited his uncle's farm and
  occasionally went over to Magdala to engage in fishing with the uncle who made
  his headquarters near that city.

  124:3.2 Joseph and Mary were often tempted to show some special favoritism for
  Jesus or otherwise to betray their knowledge that he was a child of promise, a
  son of destiny. But both of his parents were extraordinarily wise and
  sagacious in all these matters. The few times they did in any manner exhibit
  any preference for him, even in the slightest degree, the lad was quick to
  refuse all such special consideration.

  124:3.3 Jesus spent considerable time at the caravan supply shop, and by
  conversing with the travelers from all parts of the world, he acquired a store
  of information about international affairs that was amazing, considering his
  age. This was the last year in which he enjoyed much free play and youthful
  joyousness. From this time on difficulties and responsibilities rapidly
  multiplied in the life of this youth.



  124:3.4 On Wednesday evening, June 24, A.D. 5, Jude was born. Complications
  attended the birth of this, the seventh child. Mary was so very ill for
  several weeks that Joseph remained at home. Jesus was very much occupied with
  errands for his father and with many duties occasioned by his mother's serious
  illness. Never again did this youth find it possible to return to the
  childlike attitude of his earlier years. From the time of his mother's illness
  -- just before he was eleven years old -- he was compelled to assume the
  responsibilities of the first-born son and to do all this one or two full
  years before these burdens should normally have fallen on his shoulders.

  124:3.5 The chazan spent one evening each week with Jesus, helping him to
  master the Hebrew scriptures. He was greatly interested in the progress of his
  promising pupil; therefore was he willing to assist him in many ways. This
  Jewish pedagogue exerted a great influence upon this growing mind, but he was
  never able to comprehend why Jesus was so indifferent to all his suggestions
  regarding the prospects of going to Jerusalem to continue his education under
  the learned rabbis.



  124:3.6 About the middle of May the lad accompanied his father on a business
  trip to Scythopolis, the chief Greek city of the Decapolis, the ancient Hebrew
  city of Beth-shean. On the way Joseph recounted much of the olden history of
  King Saul, the Philistines, and the subsequent events of Israel's turbulent
  history. Jesus was tremendously impressed with the clean appearance and well-
  ordered arrangement of this so-called heathen city. He marveled at the open-
  air theater and admired the beautiful marble temple dedicated to the worship
  of the "heathen" gods. Joseph was much perturbed by the lad's enthusiasm and
  sought to counteract these favorable impressions by extolling the beauty and
  grandeur of the Jewish temple at Jerusalem. Jesus had often gazed curiously
  upon this magnificent Greek city from the hill of Nazareth and had many times
  inquired about its extensive public works and ornate buildings, but his father
  had always sought to avoid answering these questions. Now they were face to
  face with the beauties of this gentile city, and Joseph could not gracefully
  ignore Jesus' inquiries.

  124:3.7 It so happened that just at this time the annual competitive games and
  public demonstrations of physical prowess between the Greek cities of the
  Decapolis were in progress at the Scythopolis amphitheater, and Jesus was
  insistent that his father take him to see the games, and he was so insistent
  that Joseph hesitated to deny him. The boy was thrilled with the games and
  entered most heartily into the spirit of the demonstrations of physical
  development and athletic skill. Joseph was inexpressibly shocked to observe
  his son's enthusiasm as he beheld these exhibitions of "heathen"
  vaingloriousness. After the games were finished, Joseph received the surprise
  of his life when he heard Jesus express his approval of them and suggest that
  it would be good for the young men of Nazareth if they could be thus benefited
  by wholesome outdoor physical activities. Joseph talked earnestly and long
  with Jesus concerning the evil nature of such practices, but he well knew that
  the lad was unconvinced.

  124:3.8 The only time Jesus ever saw his father angry with him was that night
  in their room at the inn when, in the course of their discussions, the boy so
  far forgot the trends of Jewish thought as to suggest that they go back home
  and work for the building of an amphitheater at Nazareth. When Joseph heard
  his first-born son express such un-Jewish sentiments, he forgot his usual calm
  demeanor and, seizing Jesus by the shoulder, angrily exclaimed, "My son, never
  again let me hear you give utterance to such an evil thought as long as you
  live." Jesus was startled by his father's display of emotion; he had never
  before been made to feel the personal sting of his father's indignation and
  was astonished and shocked beyond expression. He only replied, "Very well, my
  father, it shall be so." And never again did the boy even in the slightest
  manner allude to the games and other athletic activities of the Greeks as long
  as his father lived.

  124:3.9 Later on, Jesus saw the Greek amphitheater at Jerusalem and learned
  how hateful such things were from the Jewish point of view. Nevertheless,
  throughout his life he endeavored to introduce the idea of wholesome
  recreation into his personal plans and, as far as Jewish practice would
  permit, into the later program of regular activities for his twelve apostles.

  124:3.10 At the end of this eleventh year Jesus was a vigorous, well-
  developed, moderately humorous, and fairly lighthearted youth, but from this
  year on he was more and more given to peculiar seasons of profound meditation
  and serious contemplation. He was much given to thinking about how he was to
  carry out his obligations to his family and at the same time be obedient to
  the call of his mission to the world; already he had conceived that his
  ministry was not to be limited to the betterment of the Jewish people.





4. THE TWELFTH YEAR (A.D. 6)

  124:4.1 This was an eventful year in Jesus' life. He continued to make
  progress at school and was indefatigable in his study of nature, while
  increasingly he prosecuted his study of the methods whereby men make a living.
  He began doing regular work in the home carpenter shop and was permitted to
  manage his own earnings, a very unusual arrangement to obtain in a Jewish
  family. This year he also learned the wisdom of keeping such matters a secret
  in the family. He was becoming conscious of the way in which he had caused
  trouble in the village, and henceforth he became increasingly discreet in
  concealing everything which might cause him to be regarded as different from
  his fellows.

  124:4.2 Throughout this year he experienced many seasons of uncertainty, if
  not actual doubt, regarding the nature of his mission. His naturally
  developing human mind did not yet fully grasp the reality of his dual nature.
  The fact that he had a single personality rendered it difficult for his
  consciousness to recognize the double origin of those factors which composed
  the nature associated with that selfsame personality.

  124:4.3 From this time on he became more successful in getting along with his
  brothers and sisters. He was increasingly tactful, always compassionate and
  considerate of their welfare and happiness, and enjoyed good relations with
  them up to the beginning of his public ministry. To be more explicit: He got
  along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet unborn) children, Amos
  and Ruth, most excellently. He always got along with Martha fairly well. What
  trouble he had at home largely arose out of friction with Joseph and Jude,
  particularly the latter.



  124:4.4 It was a trying experience for Joseph and Mary to undertake the
  rearing of this unprecedented combination of divinity and humanity, and they
  deserve great credit for so faithfully and successfully discharging their
  parental responsibilities. Increasingly Jesus' parents realized that there was
  something superhuman resident within this eldest son, but they never even
  faintly dreamed that this son of promise was indeed and in truth the actual
  creator of this local universe of things and beings. Joseph and Mary lived and
  died without ever learning that their son Jesus really was the Universe
  Creator incarnate in mortal flesh.

  124:4.5 This year Jesus paid more attention than ever to music, and he
  continued to teach the home school for his brothers and sisters. It was at
  about this time that the lad became keenly conscious of the difference between
  the viewpoints of Joseph and Mary regarding the nature of his mission. He
  pondered much over his parents' differing opinions, often hearing their
  discussions when they thought he was sound asleep. More and more he inclined
  to the view of his father, so that his mother was destined to be hurt by the
  realization that her son was gradually rejecting her guidance in matters
  having to do with his life career. And, as the years passed, this breach of
  understanding widened. Less and less did Mary comprehend the significance of
  Jesus' mission, and increasingly was this good mother hurt by the failure of
  her favorite son to fulfill her fond expectations.

  124:4.6 Joseph entertained a growing belief in the spiritual nature of Jesus'
  mission. And but for other and more important reasons it does seem unfortunate
  that he could not have lived to see the fulfillment of his concept of Jesus'
  bestowal on earth.



  124:4.7 During his last year at school, when he was twelve years old, Jesus
  remonstrated with his father about the Jewish custom of touching the bit of
  parchment nailed upon the doorpost each time on going into, or coming out of,
  the house and then kissing the finger that touched the parchment. As a part of
  this ritual it was customary to say, "The Lord shall preserve our going out
  and our coming in, from this time forth and even forevermore." Joseph and Mary
  had repeatedly instructed Jesus as to the reasons for not making images or
  drawing pictures, explaining that such creations might be used for idolatrous
  purposes. Though Jesus failed fully to grasp their proscriptions against
  images and pictures, he possessed a high concept of consistency and therefore
  pointed out to his father the essentially idolatrous nature of this habitual
  obeisance to the doorpost parchment. And Joseph removed the parchment after
  Jesus had thus remonstrated with him.

  124:4.8 As time passed, Jesus did much to modify their practice of religious
  forms, such as the family prayers and other customs. And it was possible to do
  many such things at Nazareth, for its synagogue was under the influence of a
  liberal school of rabbis, exemplified by the renowned Nazareth teacher, Jose.

  124:4.9 Throughout this and the two following years Jesus suffered great
  mental distress as the result of his constant effort to adjust his personal
  views of religious practices and social amenities to the established beliefs
  of his parents. He was distraught by the conflict between the urge to be loyal
  to his own convictions and the conscientious admonition of dutiful submission
  to his parents; his supreme conflict was between two great commands which were
  uppermost in his youthful mind. The one was: "Be loyal to the dictates of your
  highest convictions of truth and righteousness." The other was: "Honor your
  father and mother, for they have given you life and the nurture thereof."
  However, he never shirked the responsibility of making the necessary daily
  adjustments between these realms of loyalty to one's personal convictions and
  duty toward one's family, and he achieved the satisfaction of effecting an
  increasingly harmonious blending of personal convictions and family
  obligations into a masterful concept of group solidarity based upon loyalty,
  fairness, tolerance, and love.





5. HIS THIRTEENTH YEAR (A.D. 7)

  124:5.1 In this year the lad of Nazareth passed from boyhood to the beginning
  of young manhood; his voice began to change, and other features of mind and
  body gave evidence of the oncoming status of manhood.

  124:5.2 On Sunday night, January 9, A.D. 7, his baby brother, Amos, was born.
  Jude was not yet two years of age, and the baby sister, Ruth, was yet to come;
  so it may be seen that Jesus had a sizable family of small children left to
  his watchcare when his father met his accidental death the following year.



  124:5.3 It was about the middle of February that Jesus became humanly assured
  that he was destined to perform a mission on earth for the enlightenment of
  man and the revelation of God. Momentous decisions, coupled with far-reaching
  plans, were formulating in the mind of this youth, who was, to outward
  appearances, an average Jewish lad of Nazareth. The intelligent life of all
  Nebadon looked on with fascination and amazement as all this began to unfold
  in the thinking and acting of the now adolescent carpenter's son.



  124:5.4 On the first day of the week, March 20, A.D. 7, Jesus graduated from
  the course of training in the local school connected with the Nazareth
  synagogue. This was a great day in the life of any ambitious Jewish family,
  the day when the first-born son was pronounced a "son of the commandment" and
  the ransomed first-born of the Lord God of Israel, a "child of the Most High"
  and servant of the Lord of all the earth.

  124:5.5 Friday of the week before, Joseph had come over from Sepphoris, where
  he was in charge of the work on a new public building, to be present on this
  glad occasion. Jesus' teacher confidently believed that his alert and diligent
  pupil was destined to some outstanding career, some distinguished mission. The
  elders, notwithstanding all their trouble with Jesus' nonconformist
  tendencies, were very proud of the lad and had already begun laying plans
  which would enable him to go to Jerusalem to continue his education in the
  renowned Hebrew academies.

  124:5.6 As Jesus heard these plans discussed from time to time, he became
  increasingly sure that he would never go to Jerusalem to study with the
  rabbis. But he little dreamed of the tragedy, so soon to occur, which would
  insure the abandonment of all such plans by causing him to assume the
  responsibility for the support and direction of a large family, presently to
  consist of five brothers and three sisters as well as his mother and himself.
  Jesus had a larger and longer experience rearing this family than was accorded
  to Joseph, his father; and he did measure up to the standard which he
  subsequently set for himself: to become a wise, patient, understanding, and
  effective teacher and eldest brother to this family -- his family -- so
  suddenly sorrow-stricken and so unexpectedly bereaved.





6. THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM

  124:6.1 Jesus, having now reached the threshold of young manhood and having
  been formally graduated from the synagogue schools, was qualified to proceed
  to Jerusalem with his parents to participate with them in the celebration of
  his first Passover. The Passover feast of this year fell on Saturday, April 9,
  A.D. 7. A considerable company (103) made ready to depart from Nazareth early
  Monday morning, April 4, for Jerusalem. They journeyed south toward Samaria,
  but on reaching Jezreel, they turned east, going around Mount Gilboa into the
  Jordan valley in order to avoid passing through Samaria. Joseph and his family
  would have enjoyed going down through Samaria by way of Jacob's well and
  Bethel, but since the Jews disliked to deal with the Samaritans, they decided
  to go with their neighbors by way of the Jordan valley.

  124:6.2 The much-dreaded Archelaus had been deposed, and they had little to
  fear in taking Jesus to Jerusalem. Twelve years had passed since the first
  Herod had sought to destroy the babe of Bethlehem, and no one would now think
  of associating that affair with this obscure lad of Nazareth.

  124:6.3 Before reaching the Jezreel junction, and as they journeyed on, very
  soon, on the left, they passed the ancient village of Shunem, and Jesus heard
  again about the most beautiful maiden of all Israel who once lived there and
  also about the wonderful works Elisha performed there. In passing by Jezreel,
  Jesus' parents recounted the doings of Ahab and Jezebel and the exploits of
  Jehu. In passing around Mount Gilboa, they talked much about Saul, who took
  his life on the slopes of this mountain, King David, and the associations of
  this historic spot.

  124:6.4 As they rounded the base of Gilboa, the pilgrims could see the Greek
  city of Scythopolis on the right. They gazed upon the marble structures from a
  distance but went not near the gentile city lest they so defile themselves
  that they could not participate in the forthcoming solemn and sacred
  ceremonies of the Passover at Jerusalem. Mary could not understand why neither
  Joseph nor Jesus would speak of Scythopolis. She did not know about their
  controversy of the previous year as they had never revealed this episode to
  her.

  124:6.5 The road now led immediately down into the tropical Jordan valley, and
  soon Jesus was to have exposed to his wondering gaze the crooked and ever-
  winding Jordan with its glistening and rippling waters as it flowed down
  toward the Dead Sea. They laid aside their outer garments as they journeyed
  south in this tropical valley, enjoying the luxurious fields of grain and the
  beautiful oleanders laden with their pink blossoms, while massive snow-capped
  Mount Hermon stood far to the north, in majesty looking down on the historic
  valley. A little over three hours' travel from opposite Scythopolis they came
  upon a bubbling spring, and here they camped for the night, out under the
  starlit heavens.



  124:6.6 On their second day's journey they passed by where the Jabbok, from
  the east, flows into the Jordan, and looking east up this river valley, they
  recounted the days of Gideon, when the Midianites poured into this region to
  overrun the land. Toward the end of the second day's journey they camped near
  the base of the highest mountain overlooking the Jordan valley, Mount Sartaba,
  whose summit was occupied by the Alexandrian fortress where Herod had
  imprisoned one of his wives and buried his two strangled sons.

  124:6.7 The third day they passed by two villages which had been recently
  built by Herod and noted their superior architecture and their beautiful palm
  gardens. By nightfall they reached Jericho, where they remained until the
  morrow. That evening Joseph, Mary, and Jesus walked a mile and a half to the
  site of the ancient Jericho, where Joshua, for whom Jesus was named, had
  performed his renowned exploits, according to Jewish tradition.

  124:6.8 By the fourth and last day's journey the road was a continuous
  procession of pilgrims. They now began to climb the hills leading up to
  Jerusalem. As they neared the top, they could look across the Jordan to the
  mountains beyond and south over the sluggish waters of the Dead Sea. About
  halfway up to Jerusalem, Jesus gained his first view of the Mount of Olives
  (the region to be so much a part of his subsequent life), and Joseph pointed
  out to him that the Holy City lay just beyond this ridge, and the lad's heart
  beat fast with joyous anticipation of soon beholding the city and house of his
  heavenly Father.

  124:6.9 On the eastern slopes of Olivet they paused for rest in the borders of
  a little village called Bethany. The hospitable villagers poured forth to
  minister to the pilgrims, and it happened that Joseph and his family had
  stopped near the house of one Simon, who had three children about the same age
  as Jesus -- Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They invited the Nazareth family in for
  refreshment, and a lifelong friendship sprang up between the two families.
  Many times afterward, in his eventful life, Jesus stopped in this home.

  124:6.10 They pressed on, soon standing on the brink of Olivet, and Jesus saw
  for the first time (in his memory) the Holy City, the pretentious palaces, and
  the inspiring temple of his Father. At no time in his life did Jesus ever
  experience such a purely human thrill as that which at this time so completely
  enthralled him as he stood there on this April afternoon on the Mount of
  Olives, drinking in his first view of Jerusalem. And in after years, on this
  same spot he stood and wept over the city which was about to reject another
  prophet, the last and the greatest of her heavenly teachers.

  124:6.11 But they hurried on to Jerusalem. It was now Thursday afternoon. On
  reaching the city, they journeyed past the temple, and never had Jesus beheld
  such throngs of human beings. He meditated deeply on how these Jews had
  assembled here from the uttermost parts of the known world.

  124:6.12 Soon they reached the place prearranged for their accommodation
  during the Passover week, the large home of a well-to-do relative of Mary's,
  one who knew something of the early history of both John and Jesus, through
  Zacharias. The following day, the day of preparation, they made ready for the
  appropriate celebration of the Passover Sabbath.

  124:6.13 While all Jerusalem was astir in preparation for the Passover, Joseph
  found time to take his son around to visit the academy where it had been
  arranged for him to resume his education two years later, as soon as he
  reached the required age of fifteen. Joseph was truly puzzled when he observed
  how little interest Jesus evinced in all these carefully laid plans.

  124:6.14 Jesus was profoundly impressed by the temple and all the associated
  services and other activities. For the first time since he was four years old,
  he was too much preoccupied with his own meditations to ask many questions. He
  did, however, ask his father several embarrassing questions (as he had on
  previous occasions) as to why the heavenly Father required the slaughter of so
  many innocent and helpless animals. And his father well knew from the
  expression on the lad's face that his answers and attempts at explanation were
  unsatisfactory to his deep-thinking and keen-reasoning son.



  124:6.15 On the day before the Passover Sabbath, flood tides of spiritual
  illumination swept through the mortal mind of Jesus and filled his human heart
  to overflowing with affectionate pity for the spiritually blind and morally
  ignorant multitudes assembled for the celebration of the ancient Passover
  commemoration. This was one of the most extraordinary days that the Son of God
  spent in the flesh; and during the night, for the first time in his earth
  career, there appeared to him an assigned messenger from Salvington,
  commissioned by Immanuel, who said: "The hour has come. It is time that you
  began to be about your Father's business."

  124:6.16 And so, even ere the heavy responsibilities of the Nazareth family
  descended upon his youthful shoulders, there now arrived the celestial
  messenger to remind this lad, not quite thirteen years of age, that the hour
  had come to begin the resumption of the responsibilities of a universe. This
  was the first act of a long succession of events which finally culminated in
  the completion of the Son's bestowal on Urantia and the replacing of "the
  government of a universe on his human-divine shoulders."

  124:6.17 As time passed, the mystery of the incarnation became, to all of us,
  more and more unfathomable. We could hardly comprehend that this lad of
  Nazareth was the creator of all Nebadon. Neither do we nowadays understand how
  the spirit of this same Creator Son and the spirit of his Paradise Father are
  associated with the souls of mankind. With the passing of time, we could see
  that his human mind was increasingly discerning that, while he lived his life
  in the flesh, in spirit on his shoulders rested the responsibility of a
  universe.



  124:6.18 Thus ends the career of the Nazareth lad, and begins the narrative of
  that adolescent youth -- the increasingly self-conscious divine human -- who
  now begins the contemplation of his world career as he strives to integrate
  his expanding life purpose with the desires of his parents and his obligations
  to his family and the society of his day and age.


 PAPER 125


 JESUS AT JERUSALEM



  125:0.1 NO INCIDENT in all Jesus' eventful earth career was more engaging,
  more humanly thrilling, than this, his first remembered visit to Jerusalem. He
  was especially stimulated by the experience of attending the temple
  discussions by himself, and it long stood out in his memory as the great event
  of his later childhood and early youth. This was his first opportunity to
  enjoy a few days of independent living, the exhilaration of going and coming
  without restraint and restrictions. This brief period of undirected living,
  during the week following the Passover, was the first complete freedom from
  responsibility he had ever enjoyed. And it was many years subsequent to this
  before he again had a like period of freedom from all sense of responsibility,
  even for a short time.



  125:0.2 Women seldom went to the Passover feast at Jerusalem; they were not
  required to be present. Jesus, however, virtually refused to go unless his
  mother would accompany them. And when his mother decided to go, many other
  Nazareth women were led to make the journey, so that the Passover company
  contained the largest number of women, in proportion to men, ever to go up to
  the Passover from Nazareth. Ever and anon, on the way to Jerusalem, they
  chanted the one hundred and thirtieth Psalm.

  125:0.3 From the time they left Nazareth until they reached the summit of the
  Mount of Olives, Jesus experienced one long stress of expectant anticipation.
  All through a joyful childhood he had reverently heard of Jerusalem and its
  temple; now he was soon to behold them in reality. From the Mount of Olives
  and from the outside, on closer inspection, the temple had been all and more
  than Jesus had expected; but when he once entered its sacred portals, the
  great disillusionment began.

  125:0.4 In company with his parents Jesus passed through the temple precincts
  on his way to join that group of new sons of the law who were about to be
  consecrated as citizens of Israel. He was a little disappointed by the general
  demeanor of the temple throngs, but the first great shock of the day came when
  his mother took leave of them on her way to the women's gallery. It had never
  occurred to Jesus that his mother was not to accompany him to the consecration
  ceremonies, and he was thoroughly indignant that she was made to suffer from
  such unjust discrimination. While he strongly resented this, aside from a few
  remarks of protest to his father, he said nothing. But he thought, and thought
  deeply, as his questions to the scribes and teachers a week later disclosed.

  125:0.5 He passed through the consecration rituals but was disappointed by
  their perfunctory and routine natures. He missed that personal interest which
  characterized the ceremonies of the synagogue at Nazareth. He then returned to
  greet his mother and prepared to accompany his father on his first trip about
  the temple and its various courts, galleries, and corridors. The temple
  precincts could accommodate over two hundred thousand worshipers at one time,
  and while the vastness of these buildings -- in comparison with any he had
  ever seen -- greatly impressed his mind, he was more intrigued by the
  contemplation of the spiritual significance of the temple ceremonies and their
  associated worship.

  125:0.6 Though many of the temple rituals very touchingly impressed his sense
  of the beautiful and the symbolic, he was always disappointed by the
  explanation of the real meanings of these ceremonies which his parents would
  offer in answer to his many searching inquiries. Jesus simply would not accept
  explanations of worship and religious devotion which involved belief in the
  wrath of God or the anger of the Almighty. In further discussion of these
  questions, after the conclusion of the temple visit, when his father became
  mildly insistent that he acknowledge acceptance of the orthodox Jewish
  beliefs, Jesus turned suddenly upon his parents and, looking appealingly into
  the eyes of his father, said: "My father, it cannot be true -- the Father in
  heaven cannot so regard his erring children on earth. The heavenly Father
  cannot love his children less than you love me. And I well know, no matter
  what unwise thing I might do, you would never pour out wrath upon me nor vent
  anger against me. If you, my earthly father, possess such human reflections of
  the Divine, how much more must the heavenly Father be filled with goodness and
  overflowing with mercy. I refuse to believe that my Father in heaven loves me
  less than my father on earth."

  125:0.7 When Joseph and Mary heard these words of their first-born son, they
  held their peace. And never again did they seek to change his mind about the
  love of God and the mercifulness of the Father in heaven.





1. JESUS VIEWS THE TEMPLE

  125:1.1 Everywhere Jesus went throughout the temple courts, he was shocked and
  sickened by the spirit of irreverence which he observed. He deemed the conduct
  of the temple throngs to be inconsistent with their presence in "his Father's
  house." But he received the shock of his young life when his father escorted
  him into the court of the gentiles with its noisy jargon, loud talking and
  cursing, mingled indiscriminately with the bleating of sheep and the babble of
  noises which betrayed the presence of the money-changers and the vendors of
  sacrificial animals and sundry other commercial commodities.

  125:1.2 But most of all was his sense of propriety outraged by the sight of
  the frivolous courtesans parading about within this precinct of the temple,
  just such painted women as he had so recently seen when on a visit to
  Sepphoris. This profanation of the temple fully aroused all his youthful
  indignation, and he did not hesitate to express himself freely to Joseph.

  125:1.3 Jesus admired the sentiment and service of the temple, but he was
  shocked by the spiritual ugliness which he beheld on the faces of so many of
  the unthinking worshipers.

  125:1.4 They now passed down to the priests' court beneath the rock ledge in
  front of the temple, where the altar stood, to observe the killing of the
  droves of animals and the washing away of the blood from the hands of the
  officiating slaughter priests at the bronze fountain. The bloodstained
  pavement, the gory hands of the priests, and the sounds of the dying animals
  were more than this nature-loving lad could stand. The terrible sight sickened
  this boy of Nazareth; he clutched his father's arm and begged to be taken
  away. They walked back through the court of the gentiles, and even the coarse
  laughter and profane jesting which he there heard were a relief from the
  sights he had just beheld.

  125:1.5 Joseph saw how his son had sickened at the sight of the temple rites
  and wisely led him around to view the "gate beautiful," the artistic gate made
  of Corinthian bronze. But Jesus had had enough for his first visit at the
  temple. They returned to the upper court for Mary and walked about in the open
  air and away from the crowds for an hour, viewing the Asmonean palace, the
  stately home of Herod, and the tower of the Roman guards. During this stroll
  Joseph explained to Jesus that only the inhabitants of Jerusalem were
  permitted to witness the daily sacrifices in the temple, and that the dwellers
  in Galilee came up only three times a year to participate in the temple
  worship: at the Passover, at the feast of Pentecost (seven weeks after
  Passover), and at the feast of tabernacles in October. These feasts were
  established by Moses. They then discussed the two later established feasts of
  the dedication and of Purim. Afterward they went to their lodgings and made
  ready for the celebration of the Passover.





2. JESUS AND THE PASSOVER

  125:2.1 Five Nazareth families were guests of, or associates with, the family
  of Simon of Bethany in the celebration of the Passover, Simon having purchased
  the paschal lamb for the company. It was the slaughter of these lambs in such
  enormous numbers that had so affected Jesus on his temple visit. It had been
  the plan to eat the Passover with Mary's relatives, but Jesus persuaded his
  parents to accept the invitation to go to Bethany.

  125:2.2 That night they assembled for the Passover rites, eating the roasted
  flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Jesus, being a new son of the
  covenant, was asked to recount the origin of the Passover, and this he well
  did, but he somewhat disconcerted his parents by the inclusion of numerous
  remarks mildly reflecting the impressions made on his youthful but thoughtful
  mind by the things which he had so recently seen and heard. This was the
  beginning of the seven-day ceremonies of the feast of the Passover.

  125:2.3 Even at this early date, though he said nothing about such matters to
  his parents, Jesus had begun to turn over in his mind the propriety of
  celebrating the Passover without the slaughtered lamb. He felt assured in his
  own mind that the Father in heaven was not pleased with this spectacle of
  sacrificial offerings, and as the years passed, he became increasingly
  determined someday to establish the celebration of a bloodless Passover.

  125:2.4 Jesus slept very little that night. His rest was greatly disturbed by
  revolting dreams of slaughter and suffering. His mind was distraught and his
  heart torn by the inconsistencies and absurdities of the theology of the whole
  Jewish ceremonial system. His parents likewise slept little. They were greatly
  disconcerted by the events of the day just ended. They were completely upset
  in their own hearts by the lad's, to them, strange and determined attitude.
  Mary became nervously agitated during the fore part of the night, but Joseph
  remained calm, though he was equally puzzled. Both of them feared to talk
  frankly with the lad about these problems, though Jesus would gladly have
  talked with his parents if they had dared to encourage him.

  125:2.5 The next day's services at the temple were more acceptable to Jesus
  and did much to relieve the unpleasant memories of the previous day. The
  following morning young Lazarus took Jesus in hand, and they began a
  systematic exploration of Jerusalem and its environs. Before the day was over,
  Jesus discovered the various places about the temple where teaching and
  question conferences were in progress; and aside from a few visits to the holy
  of holies to gaze in wonder as to what really was behind the veil of
  separation, he spent most of his time about the temple at these teaching
  conferences.

  125:2.6 Throughout the Passover week, Jesus kept his place among the new sons
  of the commandment, and this meant that he must seat himself outside the rail
  which segregated all persons who were not full citizens of Israel. Being thus
  made conscious of his youth, he refrained from asking the many questions which
  surged back and forth in his mind; at least he refrained until the Passover
  celebration had ended and these restrictions on the newly consecrated youths
  were lifted.

  125:2.7 On Wednesday of the Passover week, Jesus was permitted to go home with
  Lazarus to spend the night at Bethany. This evening, Lazarus, Martha, and Mary
  heard Jesus discuss things temporal and eternal, human and divine, and from
  that night on they all three loved him as if he had been their own brother.

  125:2.8 By the end of the week, Jesus saw less of Lazarus since he was not
  eligible for admission to even the outer circle of the temple discussions,
  though he attended some of the public talks delivered in the outer courts.
  Lazarus was the same age as Jesus, but in Jerusalem youths were seldom
  admitted to the consecration of sons of the law until they were a full
  thirteen years of age.

  125:2.9 Again and again, during the Passover week, his parents would find
  Jesus sitting off by himself with his youthful head in his hands, profoundly
  thinking. They had never seen him behave like this, and not knowing how much
  he was confused in mind and troubled in spirit by the experience through which
  he was passing, they were sorely perplexed; they did not know what to do. They
  welcomed the passing of the days of the Passover week and longed to have their
  strangely acting son safely back in Nazareth.

  125:2.10 Day by day Jesus was thinking through his problems. By the end of the
  week he had made many adjustments; but when the time came to return to
  Nazareth, his youthful mind was still swarming with perplexities and beset by
  a host of unanswered questions and unsolved problems.

  125:2.11 Before Joseph and Mary left Jerusalem, in company with Jesus'
  Nazareth teacher they made definite arrangements for Jesus to return when he
  reached the age of fifteen to begin his long course of study in one of the
  best-known academies of the rabbis. Jesus accompanied his parents and teacher
  on their visits to the school, but they were all distressed to observe how
  indifferent he seemed to all they said and did. Mary was deeply pained at his
  reactions to the Jerusalem visit, and Joseph was profoundly perplexed at the
  lad's strange remarks and unusual conduct.

  125:2.12 After all, Passover week had been a great event in Jesus' life. He
  had enjoyed the opportunity of meeting scores of boys about his own age,
  fellow candidates for the consecration, and he utilized such contacts as a
  means of learning how people lived in Mesopotamia, Turkestan, and Parthia, as
  well as in the Far-Western provinces of Rome. He was already fairly conversant
  with the way in which the youth of Egypt and other regions near Palestine grew
  up. There were thousands of young people in Jerusalem at this time, and the
  Nazareth lad personally met, and more or less extensively interviewed, more
  than one hundred and fifty. He was particularly interested in those who hailed
  from the Far-Eastern and the remote Western countries. As a result of these
  contacts the lad began to entertain a desire to travel about the world for the
  purpose of learning how the various groups of his fellow men toiled for their
  livelihood.





3. DEPARTURE OF JOSEPH AND MARY

  125:3.1 It had been arranged that the Nazareth party should gather in the
  region of the temple at midforenoon on the first day of the week after the
  Passover festival had ended. This they did and started out on the return
  journey to Nazareth. Jesus had gone into the temple to listen to the
  discussions while his parents awaited the assembly of their fellow travelers.
  Presently the company prepared to depart, the men going in one group and the
  women in another as was their custom in journeying to and from the Jerusalem
  festivals. Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem in company with his mother and the
  women. Being now a young man of the consecration, he was supposed to journey
  back to Nazareth in company with his father and the men. But as the Nazareth
  party moved on toward Bethany, Jesus was completely absorbed in the discussion
  of angels, in the temple, being wholly unmindful of the passing of the time
  for the departure of his parents. And he did not realize that he had been left
  behind until the noontime adjournment of the temple conferences.

  125:3.2 The Nazareth travelers did not miss Jesus because Mary surmised he
  journeyed with the men, while Joseph thought he traveled with the women since
  he had gone up to Jerusalem with the women, leading Mary's donkey. They did
  not discover his absence until they reached Jericho and prepared to tarry for
  the night. After making inquiry of the last of the party to reach Jericho and
  learning that none of them had seen their son, they spent a sleepless night,
  turning over in their minds what might have happened to him, recounting many
  of his unusual reactions to the events of Passover week, and mildly chiding
  each other for not seeing to it that he was in the group before they left
  Jerusalem.





4. FIRST AND SECOND DAYS IN THE TEMPLE

  125:4.1 In the meantime, Jesus had remained in the temple throughout the
  afternoon, listening to the discussions and enjoying the more quiet and
  decorous atmosphere, the great crowds of Passover week having about
  disappeared. At the conclusion of the afternoon discussions, in none of which
  Jesus participated, he betook himself to Bethany, arriving just as Simon's
  family made ready to partake of their evening meal. The three youngsters were
  overjoyed to greet Jesus, and he remained in Simon's house for the night. He
  visited very little during the evening, spending much of the time alone in the
  garden meditating.

  125:4.2 Early next day Jesus was up and on his way to the temple. On the brow
  of Olivet he paused and wept over the sight his eyes beheld -- a spiritually
  impoverished people, tradition bound and living under the surveillance of the
  Roman legions. Early forenoon found him in the temple with his mind made up to
  take part in the discussions. Meanwhile, Joseph and Mary also had arisen with
  the early dawn with the intention of retracing their steps to Jerusalem.
  First, they hastened to the house of their relatives, where they had lodged as
  a family during the Passover week, but inquiry elicited the fact that no one
  had seen Jesus. After searching all day and finding no trace of him, they
  returned to their relatives for the night.

  125:4.3 At the second conference Jesus had made bold to ask questions, and in
  a very amazing way he participated in the temple discussions but always in a
  manner consistent with his youth. Sometimes his pointed questions were
  somewhat embarrassing to the learned teachers of the Jewish law, but he
  evinced such a spirit of candid fairness, coupled with an evident hunger for
  knowledge, that the majority of the temple teachers were disposed to treat him
  with every consideration. But when he presumed to question the justice of
  putting to death a drunken gentile who had wandered outside the court of the
  gentiles and unwittingly entered the forbidden and reputedly sacred precincts
  of the temple, one of the more intolerant teachers grew impatient with the
  lad's implied criticisms and, glowering down upon him, asked how old he was.
  Jesus replied, "thirteen years lacking a trifle more than four months."
  "Then," rejoined the now irate teacher, "why are you here, since you are not
  of age as a son of the law?" And when Jesus explained that he had received
  consecration during the Passover, and that he was a finished student of the
  Nazareth schools, the teachers with one accord derisively replied, "We might
  have known; he is from Nazareth." But the leader insisted that Jesus was not
  to be blamed if the rulers of the synagogue at Nazareth had graduated him,
  technically, when he was twelve instead of thirteen; and notwithstanding that
  several of his detractors got up and left, it was ruled that the lad might
  continue undisturbed as a pupil of the temple discussions.

  125:4.4 When this, his second day in the temple, was finished, again he went
  to Bethany for the night. And again he went out in the garden to meditate and
  pray. It was apparent that his mind was concerned with the contemplation of
  weighty problems.





5. THE THIRD DAY IN THE TEMPLE

  125:5.1 Jesus' third day with the scribes and teachers in the temple witnessed
  the gathering of many spectators who, having heard of this youth from Galilee,
  came to enjoy the experience of seeing a lad confuse the wise men of the law.
  Simon also came down from Bethany to see what the boy was up to. Throughout
  this day Joseph and Mary continued their anxious search for Jesus, even going
  several times into the temple but never thinking to scrutinize the several
  discussion groups, although they once came almost within hearing distance of
  his fascinating voice.

  125:5.2 Before the day had ended, the entire attention of the chief discussion
  group of the temple had become focused upon the questions being asked by
  Jesus. Among his many questions were:



  125:5.3 1. What really exists in the holy of holies, behind the veil?

  125:5.4 2. Why should mothers in Israel be segregated from the male temple
  worshipers?

  125:5.5 3. If God is a father who loves his children, why all this slaughter
  of animals to gain divine favor -- has the teaching of Moses been
  misunderstood?

  125:5.6 4. Since the temple is dedicated to the worship of the Father in
  heaven, is it consistent to permit the presence of those who engage in secular
  barter and trade?

  125:5.7 5. Is the expected Messiah to become a temporal prince to sit on the
  throne of David, or is he to function as the light of life in the
  establishment of a spiritual kingdom?



  125:5.8 And all the day through, those who listened marveled at these
  questions, and none was more astonished than Simon. For more than four hours
  this Nazareth youth plied these Jewish teachers with thought-provoking and
  heart-searching questions. He made few comments on the remarks of his elders.
  He conveyed his teaching by the questions he would ask. By the deft and subtle
  phrasing of a question he would at one and the same time challenge their
  teaching and suggest his own. In the manner of his asking a question there was
  an appealing combination of sagacity and humor which endeared him even to
  those who more or less resented his youthfulness. He was always eminently fair
  and considerate in the asking of these penetrating questions. On this eventful
  afternoon in the temple he exhibited that same reluctance to take unfair
  advantage of an opponent which characterized his entire subsequent public
  ministry. As a youth, and later on as a man, he seemed to be utterly free from
  all egoistic desire to win an argument merely to experience logical triumph
  over his fellows, being interested supremely in just one thing: to proclaim
  everlasting truth and thus effect a fuller revelation of the eternal God.



  125:5.9 When the day was over, Simon and Jesus wended their way back to
  Bethany. For most of the distance both the man and the boy were silent. Again
  Jesus paused on the brow of Olivet, but as he viewed the city and its temple,
  he did not weep; he only bowed his head in silent devotion.

  125:5.10 After the evening meal at Bethany he again declined to join the merry
  circle but instead went to the garden, where he lingered long into the night,
  vainly endeavoring to think out some definite plan of approach to the problem
  of his lifework and to decide how best he might labor to reveal to his
  spiritually blinded countrymen a more beautiful concept of the heavenly Father
  and so set them free from their terrible bondage to law, ritual, ceremonial,
  and musty tradition. But the clear light did not come to the truth-seeking
  lad.





6. THE FOURTH DAY IN THE TEMPLE

  125:6.1 Jesus was strangely unmindful of his earthly parents; even at
  breakfast, when Lazarus's mother remarked that his parents must be about home
  by that time, Jesus did not seem to comprehend that they would be somewhat
  worried about his having lingered behind.

  125:6.2 Again he journeyed to the temple, but he did not pause to meditate at
  the brow of Olivet. In the course of the morning's discussions much time was
  devoted to the law and the prophets, and the teachers were astonished that
  Jesus was so familiar with the Scriptures, in Hebrew as well as Greek. But
  they were amazed not so much by his knowledge of truth as by his youth.

  125:6.3 At the afternoon conference they had hardly begun to answer his
  question relating to the purpose of prayer when the leader invited the lad to
  come forward and, sitting beside him, bade him state his own views regarding
  prayer and worship.



  125:6.4 The evening before, Jesus' parents had heard about this strange youth
  who so deftly sparred with the expounders of the law, but it had not occurred
  to them that this lad was their son. They had about decided to journey out to
  the home of Zacharias as they thought Jesus might have gone thither to see
  Elizabeth and John. Thinking Zacharias might perhaps be at the temple, they
  stopped there on their way to the City of Judah. As they strolled through the
  courts of the temple, imagine their surprise and amazement when they
  recognized the voice of the missing lad and beheld him seated among the temple
  teachers.

  125:6.5 Joseph was speechless, but Mary gave vent to her long-pent-up fear and
  anxiety when, rushing up to the lad, now standing to greet his astonished
  parents, she said: "My child, why have you treated us like this? It is now
  more than three days that your father and I have searched for you sorrowing.
  Whatever possessed you to desert us?" It was a tense moment. All eyes were
  turned on Jesus to hear what he would say. His father looked reprovingly at
  him but said nothing.



  125:6.6 It should be remembered that Jesus was supposed to be a young man. He
  had finished the regular schooling of a child, had been recognized as a son of
  the law, and had received consecration as a citizen of Israel. And yet his
  mother more than mildly upbraided him before all the people assembled, right
  in the midst of the most serious and sublime effort of his young life, thus
  bringing to an inglorious termination one of the greatest opportunities ever
  to be granted him to function as a teacher of truth, a preacher of
  righteousness, a revealer of the loving character of his Father in heaven.

  125:6.7 But the lad was equal to the occasion. When you take into fair
  consideration all the factors which combined to make up this situation, you
  will be better prepared to fathom the wisdom of the boy's reply to his
  mother's unintended rebuke. After a moment's thought, Jesus answered his
  mother, saying: "Why is it that you have so long sought me? Would you not
  expect to find me in my Father's house since the time has come when I should
  be about my Father's business?"

  125:6.8 Everyone was astonished at the lad's manner of speaking. Silently they
  all withdrew and left him standing alone with his parents. Presently the young
  man relieved the embarrassment of all three when he quietly said: "Come, my
  parents, none has done aught but that which he thought best. Our Father in
  heaven has ordained these things; let us depart for home."

  125:6.9 In silence they started out, arriving at Jericho for the night. Only
  once did they pause, and that on the brow of Olivet, when the lad raised his
  staff aloft and, quivering from head to foot under the surging of intense
  emotion, said: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, and the people thereof, what slaves
  you are -- subservient to the Roman yoke and victims of your own traditions --
  but I will return to cleanse yonder temple and deliver my people from this
  bondage!"

  125:6.10 On the three days' journey to Nazareth Jesus said little; neither did
  his parents say much in his presence. They were truly at a loss to understand
  the conduct of their first-born son, but they did treasure in their hearts his
  sayings, even though they could not fully comprehend their meanings.

  125:6.11 Upon reaching home, Jesus made a brief statement to his parents,
  assuring them of his affection and implying that they need not fear he would
  again give any occasion for their suffering anxiety because of his conduct. He
  concluded this momentous statement  by saying: "While I must do the will of my
  Father in heaven, I will also be obedient to my father on earth. I will await
  my hour."



  125:6.12 Though Jesus, in his mind, would many times refuse to consent to the
  well-intentioned but misguided efforts of his parents to dictate the course of
  his thinking or to establish the plan of his work on earth, still, in every
  manner consistent with his dedication to the doing of his Paradise Father's
  will, he did most gracefully conform to the desires of his earthly father and
  to the usages of his family in the flesh. Even when he could not consent, he
  would do everything possible to conform.  He was an artist in the matter of
  adjusting his dedication to duty to his obligations of family loyalty and
  social service.



  125:6.13 Joseph was puzzled, but Mary, as she reflected on these experiences,
  gained comfort, eventually viewing his utterance on Olivet as prophetic of the
  Messianic mission of her son as Israel's deliverer. She set to work with
  renewed energy to mold his thoughts into patriotic and nationalistic channels
  and enlisted the efforts of her brother, Jesus' favorite uncle; and in every
  other way did the mother of Jesus address herself to the task of preparing her
  first-born son to assume the leadership of those who would restore the throne
  of David and forever cast off the gentile yoke of political bondage.


PAPER 126


 THE TWO CRUCIAL YEARS



  126:0.1 OF ALL Jesus' earth-life experiences, the fourteenth and fifteenth
  years were the most crucial. These two years, after he began to be self-
  conscious of divinity and destiny, and before he achieved a large measure of
  communication with his indwelling Adjuster, were the most trying of his
  eventful life on Urantia. It is this period of two years which should be
  called the great test, the real temptation. No human youth, in passing through
  the early confusions and adjustment problems of adolescence, ever experienced
  a more crucial testing than that which Jesus passed through during his
  transition from childhood to young manhood.

  126:0.2 This important period in Jesus' youthful development began with the
  conclusion of the Jerusalem visit and with his return to Nazareth. At first
  Mary was happy in the thought that she had her boy back once more, that Jesus
  had returned home to be a dutiful son -- not that he was ever anything else --
  and that he would henceforth be more responsive to her plans for his future
  life. But she was not for long to bask in this sunshine of maternal delusion
  and unrecognized family pride; very soon she was to be more completely
  disillusioned. More and more the boy was in the company of his father; less
  and less did he come to her with his problems, while increasingly both his
  parents failed to comprehend his frequent alternation between the affairs of
  this world and the contemplation of his relation to his Father's business.
  Frankly, they did not understand him, but they did truly love him.



  126:0.3 As he grew older, Jesus' pity and love for the Jewish people deepened,
  but with the passing years, there developed in his mind a growing righteous
  resentment of the presence in the Father's temple of the politically appointed
  priests. Jesus had great respect for the sincere Pharisees and the honest
  scribes, but he held the hypocritical Pharisees and the dishonest theologians
  in great contempt; he looked with disdain upon all those religious leaders who
  were not sincere. When he scrutinized the leadership of Israel, he was
  sometimes tempted to look with favor on the possibility of his becoming the
  Messiah of Jewish expectation, but he never yielded to such a temptation.



  126:0.4 The story of his exploits among the wise men of the temple in
  Jerusalem was gratifying to all Nazareth, especially to his former teachers in
  the synagogue school. For a time his praise was on everybody's lips. All the
  village recounted his childhood wisdom and praiseworthy conduct and predicted
  that he was destined to become a great leader in Israel; at last a really
  great teacher was to come out of Nazareth in Galilee. And they all looked
  forward to the time when he would be fifteen years of age so that he might be
  permitted regularly to read the Scriptures in the synagogue on the Sabbath
  day.





1. HIS FOURTEENTH YEAR (A.D. 8)

  126:1.1 This is the calendar year of his fourteenth birthday. He had become a
  good yoke maker and worked well with both canvas and leather. He was also
  rapidly developing into an expert carpenter and cabinetmaker. This summer he
  made frequent trips to the top of the hill to the northwest of Nazareth for
  prayer and meditation. He was gradually becoming more self-conscious of the
  nature of his bestowal on earth.

  126:1.2 This hill, a little more than one hundred years previously, had been
  the "high place of Baal," and now it was the site of the tomb of Simeon, a
  reputed holy man of Israel. From the summit of this hill of Simeon, Jesus
  looked out over Nazareth and the surrounding country. He would gaze upon
  Megiddo and recall the story of the Egyptian army winning its first great
  victory in Asia; and how, later on, another such army defeated the Judean king
  Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deborah and Barak
  defeated Sisera. In the distance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he
  had been taught Joseph's brethren sold him into Egyptian slavery. He then
  would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Gerizim and recount to himself the
  traditions of Abraham, Jacob, and Abimelech. And thus he recalled and turned
  over in his mind the historic and traditional events of his father Joseph's
  people.

  126:1.3 He continued to carry on his advanced courses of reading under the
  synagogue teachers, and he also continued with the home education of his
  brothers and sisters as they grew up to suitable ages.

  126:1.4 Early this year Joseph arranged to set aside the income from his
  Nazareth and Capernaum property to pay for Jesus' long course of study at
  Jerusalem, it having been planned that he should go to Jerusalem in August of
  the following year when he would be fifteen years of age.

  126:1.5 By the beginning of this year both Joseph and Mary entertained
  frequent doubts about the destiny of their first-born son. He was indeed a
  brilliant and lovable child, but he was so difficult to understand, so hard to
  fathom, and again, nothing extraordinary or miraculous ever happened. Scores
  of times had his proud mother stood in breathless anticipation, expecting to
  see her son engage in some superhuman or miraculous peformance, but always
  were her hopes dashed down in cruel disappointment. And all this was
  discouraging, even disheartening. The devout people of those days truly
  believed that prophets and men of promise always demonstrated their calling
  and established their divine authority by performing miracles and working
  wonders. But Jesus did none of these things; wherefore was the confusion of
  his parents steadily increased as they contemplated his future.

  126:1.6 The improved economic condition of the Nazareth family was reflected
  in many ways about the home and especially in the increased number of smooth
  white boards which were used as writing slates, the writing being done with
  charcoal. Jesus was also permitted to resume his music lessons; he was very
  fond of playing the harp.



  126:1.7 Throughout this year it can truly be said that Jesus "grew in favor
  with man and with God." The prospects of the family seemed good; the future
  was bright.





2. THE DEATH OF JOSEPH

  126:2.1 All did go well until that fateful day of Tuesday, September 25, when
  a runner from Sepphoris brought to this Nazareth home the tragic news that
  Joseph had been severely injured by the falling of a derrick while at work on
  the governor's residence. The messenger from Sepphoris had stopped at the shop
  on the way to Joseph's home, informing Jesus of his father's accident, and
  they went together to the house to break the sad news to Mary. Jesus desired
  to go immediately to his father, but Mary would hear to nothing but that she
  must hasten to her husband's side. She directed that James, then ten years of
  age, should accompany her to Sepphoris while Jesus remained home with the
  younger children until she should return, as she did not know how seriously
  Joseph had been injured. But Joseph died of his injuries before Mary arrived.
  They brought him to Nazareth, and on the following day he was laid to rest
  with his fathers.



  126:2.2 Just at the time when prospects were good and the future looked
  bright, an apparently cruel hand struck down the head of this Nazareth
  household, the affairs of this home were disrupted, and every plan for Jesus
  and his future education was demolished. This carpenter lad, now just past
  fourteen years of age, awakened to the realization that he had not only to
  fulfill the commission of his heavenly Father to reveal the divine nature on
  earth and in the flesh, but that his young human nature must also shoulder the
  responsibility of caring for his widowed mother and seven brothers and sisters
  -- and another yet to be born. This lad of Nazareth now became the sole
  support and comfort of this so suddenly bereaved family. Thus were permitted
  those occurrences of the natural order of events on Urantia which would force
  this young man of destiny so early to assume these heavy but highly
  educational and disciplinary responsibilities attendant upon becoming the head
  of a human family, of becoming father to his own brothers and sisters, of
  supporting and protecting his mother, of functioning as guardian of his
  father's home, the only home he was to know while on this world.

  126:2.3 Jesus cheerfully accepted the responsibilities so suddenly thrust upon
  him, and he carried them faithfully to the end. At least one great problem and
  anticipated difficulty in his life had been tragically solved -- he would not
  now be expected to go to Jerusalem to study under the rabbis. It remained
  always true that Jesus "sat at no man's feet." He was ever willing to learn
  from even the humblest of little children, but he never derived authority to
  teach truth from human sources.

  126:2.4 Still he knew nothing of the Gabriel visit to his mother before his
  birth; he only learned of this from John on the day of his baptism, at the
  beginning of his public ministry.



  126:2.5 As the years passed, this young carpenter of Nazareth increasingly
  measured every institution of society and every usage of religion by the
  unvarying test: What does it do for the human soul? does it bring God to man?
  does it bring man to God? While this youth did not wholly neglect the
  recreational and social aspects of life, more and more he devoted his time and
  energies to just two purposes: the care of his family and the preparation to
  do his Father's heavenly will on earth.



  126:2.6 This year it became the custom for the neighbors to drop in during the
  winter evenings to hear Jesus play upon the harp, to listen to his stories
  (for the lad was a master storyteller), and to hear him read from the Greek
  scriptures.

  126:2.7 The economic affairs of the family continued to run fairly smoothly as
  there was quite a sum of money on hand at the time of Joseph's death. Jesus
  early demonstrated the possession of keen business judgment and financial
  sagacity. He was liberal but frugal; he was saving but generous. He proved to
  be a wise and efficient administrator of his father's estate.

  126:2.8 But in spite of all that Jesus and the Nazareth neighbors could do to
  bring cheer into the home, Mary, and even the children, were overcast with
  sadness. Joseph was gone. Joseph was an unusual husband and father, and they
  all missed him. And it seemed all the more tragic to think that he died ere
  they could speak to him or hear his farewell blessing.





3. THE FIFTEENTH YEAR (A.D. 9)

  126:3.1 By the middle of this fifteenth year -- and we are reckoning time in
  accordance with the twentieth-century calendar, not by the Jewish year --
  Jesus had taken a firm grasp upon the management of his family. Before this
  year had passed, their savings had about disappeared, and they were face to
  face with the necessity of disposing of one of the Nazareth houses which
  Joseph and his neighbor Jacob owned in partnership.

  126:3.2 On Wednesday evening, April 17, A.D. 9, Ruth, the baby of the family,
  was born, and to the best of his ability Jesus endeavored to take the place of
  his father in comforting and ministering to his mother during this trying and
  peculiarly sad ordeal. For almost a score of years (until he began his public
  ministry) no father could have loved and nurtured his daughter any more
  affectionately and faithfully than Jesus cared for little Ruth. And he was an
  equally good father to all the other members of his family.



  126:3.3 During this year Jesus first formulated the prayer which he
  subsequently taught to his apostles, and which to many has become known as
  "The Lord's Prayer." In a way it was an evolution of the family altar; they
  had many forms of praise and several formal prayers. After his father's death
  Jesus tried to teach the older children to express themselves individually in
  prayer -- much as he so enjoyed doing -- but they could not grasp his thought
  and would invariably fall back upon their memorized prayer forms. It was in
  this effort to stimulate his older brothers and sisters to say individual
  prayers that Jesus would endeavor to lead them along by suggestive phrases,
  and presently, without intention on his part, it developed that they were all
  using a form of prayer which was largely built up from these suggestive lines
  which Jesus had taught them.

  126:3.4 At last Jesus gave up the idea of having each member of the family
  formulate spontaneous prayers, and one evening in October he sat down by the
  little squat lamp on the low stone table, and, on a piece of smooth cedar
  board about eighteen inches square, with a piece of charcoal he wrote out the
  prayer which became from that time on the standard family petition.



  126:3.5 This year Jesus was much troubled with confused thinking. Family
  responsibility had quite effectively removed all thought of immediately
  carrying out any plan for responding to the Jerusalem visitation directing him
  to "be about his Father's business." Jesus rightly reasoned that the watchcare
  of his earthly father's family must take precedence of all duties; that the
  support of his family must become his first obligation.



  126:3.6 In the course of this year Jesus found a passage in the so-called Book
  of Enoch which influenced him in the later adoption of the term "Son of Man"
  as a designation for his bestowal mission on Urantia. He had thoroughly
  considered the idea of the Jewish Messiah and was firmly convinced that he was
  not to be that Messiah. He longed to help his father's people, but he never
  expected to lead Jewish armies in overthrowing the foreign domination of
  Palestine. He knew he would never sit on the throne of David at Jerusalem.
  Neither did he believe that his mission was that of a spiritual deliverer or
  moral teacher solely to the Jewish people. In no sense, therefore, could his
  life mission be the fulfillment of the intense longings and supposed Messianic
  prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures; at least, not as the Jews understood
  these predictions of the prophets. Likewise he was certain he was never to
  appear as the Son of Man depicted by the Prophet Daniel.

  126:3.7 But when the time came for him to go forth as a world teacher, what
  would he call himself? What claim should he make concerning his mission? By
  what name would he be called by the people who would become believers in his
  teachings?

  126:3.8 While turning all these problems over in his mind, he found in the
  synagogue library at Nazareth, among the apocalyptic books which he had been
  studying, this manuscript called "The Book of Enoch"; and though he was
  certain that it had not been written by Enoch of old, it proved very
  intriguing to him, and he read and reread it many times. There was one passage
  which particularly impressed him, a passage in which this term "Son of Man"
  appeared. The writer of this so-called Book of Enoch went on to tell about
  this Son of Man, describing the work he would do on earth and explaining that
  this Son of Man, before coming down on this earth to bring salvation to
  mankind, had walked through the courts of heavenly glory with his Father, the
  Father of all; and that he had turned his back upon all this grandeur and
  glory to come down on earth to proclaim salvation to needy mortals. As Jesus
  would read these passages (well understanding that much of the Eastern
  mysticism which had become admixed with these teachings was erroneous), he
  responded in his heart and recognized in his mind that of all the Messianic
  predictions of the Hebrew scriptures and of all the theories about the Jewish
  deliverer, none was so near the truth as this story tucked away in this only
  partially accredited Book of Enoch; and he then and there decided to adopt as
  his inaugural title "the Son of Man." And this he did when he subsequently
  began his public work. Jesus had an unerring ability for the recognition of
  truth, and truth he never hesitated to embrace, no matter from what source it
  appeared to emanate.

  126:3.9 By this time he had quite thoroughly settled many things about his
  forthcoming work for the world, but he said nothing of these matters to his
  mother, who still held stoutly to the idea of his being the Jewish Messiah.

  126:3.10 The great confusion of Jesus' younger days now arose. Having settled
  something about the nature of his mission on earth, "to be about his Father's
  business" -- to show forth his Father's loving nature to all mankind -- he
  began to ponder anew the many statements in the Scriptures referring to the
  coming of a national deliverer, a Jewish teacher or king. To what event did
  these prophecies refer? Was not he a Jew? or was he? Was he or was he not of
  the house of David? His mother averred he was; his father had ruled that he
  was not. He decided he was not. But had the prophets confused the nature and
  mission of the Messiah?

  126:3.11 After all, could it be possible that his mother was right? In most
  matters, when differences of opinion had arisen in the past, she had been
  right. If he were a new teacher and not the Messiah, then how should he
  recognize the Jewish Messiah if such a one should appear in Jerusalem during
  the time of his earth mission; and, further, what should be his relation to
  this Jewish Messiah? And what should be his relation, after embarking on his
  life mission, to his family? to the Jewish commonwealth and religion? to the
  Roman Empire? to the gentiles and their religions? Each of these momentous
  problems this young Galilean turned over in his mind and seriously pondered
  while he continued to work at the carpenter's bench, laboriously making a
  living for himself, his mother, and eight other hungry mouths.



  126:3.12 Before the end of this year Mary saw the family funds diminishing.
  She turned the sale of doves over to James. Presently they bought a second
  cow, and with the aid of Miriam they began the sale of milk to their Nazareth
  neighbors.



  126:3.13 His profound periods of meditation, his frequent journeys to the
  hilltop for prayer, and the many strange ideas which Jesus advanced from time
  to time, thoroughly alarmed his mother. Sometimes she thought the lad was
  beside himself, and then she would steady her fears, remembering that he was,
  after all, a child of promise and in some manner different from other youths.

  126:3.14 But Jesus was learning not to speak of all his thoughts, not to
  present all his ideas to the world, not even to his own mother. From this year
  on, Jesus' disclosures about what was going on in his mind steadily
  diminished; that is, he talked less about those things which an average person
  could not grasp, and which would lead to his being regarded as peculiar or
  different from ordinary folks. To all appearances he became commonplace and
  conventional, though he did long for someone who could understand his
  problems. He craved a trustworthy and confidential friend, but his problems
  were too complex for his human associates to comprehend. The uniqueness of the
  unusual situation compelled him to bear his burdens alone.





4. FIRST SERMON IN THE SYNAGOGUE

  126:4.1 With the coming of his fifteenth birthday, Jesus could officially
  occupy the synagogue pulpit on the Sabbath day. Many times before, in the
  absence of speakers, Jesus had been asked to read the Scriptures, but now the
  day had come when, according to law, he could conduct the service. Therefore
  on the first Sabbath after his fifteenth birthday the chazan arranged for
  Jesus to conduct the morning service of the synagogue. And when all the
  faithful in Nazareth had assembled, the young man, having made his selection
  of Scriptures, stood up and began to read:



  126:4.2 "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me;
  he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the brokenhearted,
  to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to set the spiritual prisoners free;
  to proclaim the year of God's favor and the day of our God's reckoning; to
  comfort all mourners, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy in the
  place of mourning, a song of praise instead of the spirit of sorrow, that they
  may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, wherewith he
  may be glorified.

  126:4.3 "Seek good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of
  hosts, shall be with you. Hate the evil and love the good; establish judgment
  in the gate. Perhaps the Lord God will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

  126:4.4 "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your
  doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil and learn to do good; seek
  justice, relieve the oppressed. Defend the fatherless and plead for the widow.

  126:4.5 "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, to bow myself before the Lord
  of all the earth? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a
  year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousands of
  sheep, or with rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
  the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? for the Lord has showed us, O
  men, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to deal justly,
  love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

  126:4.6 "To whom, then, will you liken God who sits upon the circle of the
  earth? Lift up your eyes and behold who has created all these worlds, who
  brings forth their host by number and calls them all by their names. He does
  all these things by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in
  power, not one fails. He gives power to the weak, and to those who are weary
  he increases strength. Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am
  your God. I will strengthen you and I will help you; yes, I will uphold you
  with the right hand of my righteousness, for I am the Lord your God. And I
  will hold your right hand, saying to you, fear not, for I will help you.

  126:4.7 "And you are my witness, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have
  chosen that all may know and believe me and understand that I am the Eternal.
  I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no savior."



  126:4.8 And when he had thus read, he sat down, and the people went to their
  homes, pondering over the words which he had so graciously read to them. Never
  had his townspeople seen him so magnificently solemn; never had they heard his
  voice so earnest and so sincere; never had they observed him so manly and
  decisive, so authoritative.

  126:4.9 This Sabbath afternoon Jesus climbed the Nazareth hill with James and,
  when they returned home, wrote out the Ten Commandments in Greek on two smooth
  boards in charcoal. Subsequently Martha colored and decorated these boards,
  and for long they hung on the wall over James's small workbench.





5. THE FINANCIAL STRUGGLE

  126:5.1 Gradually Jesus and his family returned to the simple life of their
  earlier years. Their clothes and even their food became simpler. They had
  plenty of milk, butter, and cheese. In season they enjoyed the produce of
  their garden, but each passing month necessitated the practice of greater
  frugality. Their breakfasts were very plain; they saved their best food for
  the evening meal. However, among these Jews lack of wealth did not imply
  social inferiority.

  126:5.2 Already had this youth well-nigh encompassed the comprehension of how
  men lived in his day. And how well he understood life in the home, field, and
  workshop is shown by his subsequent teachings, which so repletely reveal his
  intimate contact with all phases of human experience.

  126:5.3 The Nazareth chazan continued to cling to the belief that Jesus was to
  become a great teacher, probably the successor of the renowned Gamaliel at
  Jerusalem.



  126:5.4 Apparently all Jesus' plans for a career were thwarted. The future did
  not look bright as matters now developed. But he did not falter; he was not
  discouraged. He lived on, day by day, doing well the present duty and
  faithfully discharging the immediate responsibilities of his station in life.
  Jesus' life is the everlasting comfort of all disappointed idealists.

  126:5.5 The pay of a common day-laboring carpenter was slowly diminishing. By
  the end of this year Jesus could earn, by working early and late, only the
  equivalent of about twenty-five cents a day. By the next year they found it
  difficult to pay the civil taxes, not to mention the synagogue assessments and
  the temple tax of one-half shekel. During this year the tax collector tried to
  squeeze extra revenue out of Jesus, even threatening to take his harp.

  126:5.6 Fearing that the copy of the Greek scriptures might be discovered and
  confiscated by the tax collectors, Jesus, on his fifteenth birthday, presented
  it to the Nazareth synagogue library as his maturity offering to the Lord.



  126:5.7 The great shock of his fifteenth year came when Jesus went over to
  Sepphoris to receive the decision of Herod regarding the appeal taken to him
  in the dispute about the amount of money due Joseph at the time of his
  accidental death. Jesus and Mary had hoped for the receipt of a considerable
  sum of money when the treasurer at Sepphoris had offered them a paltry amount.
  Joseph's brothers had taken an appeal to Herod himself, and now Jesus stood in
  the palace and heard Herod decree that his father had nothing due him at the
  time of his death. And for such an unjust decision Jesus never again trusted
  Herod Antipas. It is not surprising that he once alluded to Herod as "that
  fox."

  126:5.8 The close work at the carpenter's bench during this and subsequent
  years deprived Jesus of the opportunity of mingling with the caravan
  passengers. The family supply shop had already been taken over by his uncle,
  and Jesus worked altogether in the home shop, where he was near to help Mary
  with the family. About this time he began sending James up to the camel lot to
  gather information about world events, and thus he sought to keep in touch
  with the news of the day.

  126:5.9 As he grew up to manhood, he passed through all those conflicts and
  confusions which the average young persons of previous and subsequent ages
  have undergone. And the rigorous experience of supporting his family was a
  sure safeguard against his having overmuch time for idle meditation or the
  indulgence of mystic tendencies.



  126:5.10 This was the year that Jesus rented a considerable piece of land just
  to the north of their home, which was divided up as a family garden plot. Each
  of the older children had an individual garden, and they entered into keen
  competition in their agricultural efforts. Their eldest brother spent some
  time with them in the garden each day during the season of vegetable
  cultivation. As Jesus worked with his younger brothers and sisters in the
  garden, he many times entertained the wish that they were all located on a
  farm out in the country where they could enjoy the liberty and freedom of an
  unhampered life. But they did not find themselves growing up in the country;
  and Jesus, being a thoroughly practical youth as well as an idealist,
  intelligently and vigorously attacked his problem just as he found it, and did
  everything within his power to adjust himself and his family to the realities
  of their situation and to adapt their condition to the highest possible
  satisfaction of their individual and collective longings.

  126:5.11 At one time Jesus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up
  sufficient means, provided they could collect the considerable sum of money
  due his father for work on Herod's palace, to warrant undertaking the purchase
  of a small farm. He had really given serious thought to this plan of moving
  his family out into the country. But when Herod refused to pay them any of the
  funds due Joseph, they gave up the ambition of owning a home in the country.
  As it was, they contrived to enjoy much of the experience of farm life as they
  now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chickens, a donkey, and a dog, in
  addition to the doves. Even the little tots had their regular duties to
  perform in the well-regulated scheme of management which characterized the
  home life of this Nazareth family.



  126:5.12 With the close of this fifteenth year Jesus completed the traversal
  of that dangerous and difficult period in human existence, that time of
  transition between the more complacent years of childhood and the
  consciousness of approaching manhood with its increased responsibilities and
  opportunities for the acquirement of advanced experience in the development of
  a noble character. The growth period for mind and body had ended, and now
  began the real career of this young man of Nazareth.


PAPER 127


 THE ADOLESCENT YEARS



  127:0.1 AS JESUS entered upon his adolescent years, he found himself the head
  and sole support of a large family. Within a few years after his father's
  death all their property was gone. As time passed, he became increasingly
  conscious of his pre-existence; at the same time he began more fully to
  realize that he was present on earth and in the flesh for the express purpose
  of revealing his Paradise Father to the children of men.

  127:0.2 No adolescent youth who has lived or ever will live on this world or
  any other world has had or ever will have more weighty problems to resolve or
  more intricate difficulties to untangle. No youth of Urantia will ever be
  called upon to pass through more testing conflicts or more trying situations
  than Jesus himself endured during those strenuous years from fifteen to
  twenty.

  127:0.3 Having thus tasted the actual experience of living these adolescent
  years on a world beset by evil and distraught by sin, the Son of Man became
  possessed of full knowledge about the life experience of the youth of all the
  realms of Nebadon, and thus forever he became the understanding refuge for the
  distressed and perplexed adolescents of all ages and on all worlds throughout
  the local universe.

  127:0.4 Slowly, but certainly and by actual experience, this divine Son is
  earning the right to become sovereign of his universe, the unquestioned and
  supreme ruler of all created intelligences on all local universe worlds, the
  understanding refuge of the beings of all ages and of all degrees of personal
  endowment and experience.





1. THE SIXTEENTH YEAR (A.D. 10)



  127:1.1 The incarnated Son passed through infancy and experienced an
  uneventful childhood. Then he emerged from that testing and trying transition
  stage between childhood and young manhood -- he became the adolescent Jesus.

  127:1.2 This year he attained his full physical growth. He was a virile and
  comely youth. He became increasingly sober and serious, but he was kind and
  sympathetic. His eye was kind but searching; his smile was always engaging and
  reassuring. His voice was musical but authoritative; his greeting cordial but
  unaffected. Always, even in the most commonplace of contacts, there seemed to
  be in evidence the touch of a twofold nature, the human and the divine. Ever
  he displayed this combination of the sympathizing friend and the authoritative
  teacher. And these personality traits began early to become manifest, even in
  these adolescent years.

  127:1.3 This physically strong and robust youth also acquired the full growth
  of his human intellect, not the full experience of human thinking but the
  fullness of capacity for such intellectual development. He possessed a healthy
  and well-proportioned body, a keen and analytical mind, a kind and sympathetic
  disposition, a somewhat fluctuating but aggressive temperament, all of which
  were becoming organized into a strong, striking, and attractive personality.



  127:1.4 As time went on, it became more difficult for his mother and his
  brothers and sisters to understand him; they stumbled over his sayings and
  misinterpreted his doings. They were all unfitted to comprehend their eldest
  brother's life because their mother had given them to understand that he was
  destined to become the deliverer of the Jewish people. After they had received
  from Mary such intimations as family secrets, imagine their confusion when
  Jesus would make frank denials of all such ideas and intentions.



  127:1.5 This year Simon started to school, and they were compelled to sell
  another house. James now took charge of the teaching of his three sisters, two
  of whom were old enough to begin serious study. As soon as Ruth grew up, she
  was taken in hand by Miriam and Martha. Ordinarily the girls of Jewish
  families received little education, but Jesus maintained (and his mother
  agreed) that girls should go to school the same as boys, and since the
  synagogue school would not receive them, there was nothing to do but conduct a
  home school especially for them.

  127:1.6 Throughout this year Jesus was closely confined to the workbench.
  Fortunately he had plenty of work; his was of such a superior grade that he
  was never idle no matter how slack work might be in that region. At times he
  had so much to do that James would help him.

  127:1.7 By the end of this year he had just about made up his mind that he
  would, after rearing his family and seeing them married, enter publicly upon
  his work as a teacher of truth and as a revealer of the heavenly Father to the
  world. He knew he was not to become the expected Jewish Messiah, and he
  concluded that it was next to useless to discuss these matters with his
  mother; he decided to allow her to entertain whatever ideas she might choose
  since all he had said in the past had made little or no impression upon her
  and he recalled that his father had never been able to say anything that would
  change her mind. From this year on he talked less and less with his mother, or
  anyone else, about these problems. His was such a peculiar mission that no one
  living on earth could give him advice concerning its prosecution.

  127:1.8 He was a real though youthful father to the family; he spent every
  possible hour with the youngsters, and they truly loved him. His mother
  grieved to see him work so hard; she sorrowed that he was day by day toiling
  at the carpenter's bench earning a living for the family instead of being, as
  they had so fondly planned, at Jerusalem studying with the rabbis. While there
  was much about her son that Mary could not understand, she did love him, and
  she most thoroughly appreciated the willing manner in which he shouldered the
  responsibility of the home.





2. THE SEVENTEENTH YEAR (A.D. 11)



  127:2.1 At about this time there was considerable agitation, especially at
  Jerusalem and in Judea, in favor of rebellion against the payment of taxes to
  Rome. There was coming into existence a strong nationalist party, presently to
  be called the Zealots. The Zealots, unlike the Pharisees, were not willing to
  await the coming of the Messiah. They proposed to bring things to a head
  through political revolt.

  127:2.2 A group of organizers from Jerusalem arrived in Galilee and were
  making good headway until they reached Nazareth. When they came to see Jesus,
  he listened carefully to them and asked many questions but refused to join the
  party. He declined fully to disclose his reasons for not enlisting, and his
  refusal had the effect of keeping out many of his youthful fellows in
  Nazareth.

  127:2.3 Mary did her best to induce him to enlist, but she could not budge
  him. She went so far as to intimate that his refusal to espouse the
  nationalist cause at her behest was insubordination, a violation of his pledge
  made upon their return from Jerusalem that he would be subject to his parents;
  but in answer to this insinuation he only laid a kindly hand on her shoulder
  and, looking into her face, said: "My mother, how could you?" And Mary
  withdrew her statement.

  127:2.4 One of Jesus' uncles (Mary's brother Simon) had already joined this
  group, subsequently becoming an officer in the Galilean division. And for
  several years there was something of an estrangement between Jesus and his
  uncle.

  127:2.5 But trouble began to brew in Nazareth. Jesus' attitude in these
  matters had resulted in creating a division among the Jewish youths of the
  city. About half had joined the nationalist organization, and the other half
  began the formation of an opposing group of more moderate patriots, expecting
  Jesus to assume the leadership. They were amazed when he refused the honor
  offered him, pleading as an excuse his heavy family responsibilities, which
  they all allowed. But the situation was still further complicated when,
  presently, a wealthy Jew, Isaac, a moneylender to the gentiles, came forward
  agreeing to support Jesus' family if he would lay down his tools and assume
  leadership of these Nazareth patriots.

  127:2.6 Jesus, then scarcely seventeen years of age, was confronted with one
  of the most delicate and difficult situations of his early life. Patriotic
  issues, especially when complicated by tax-gathering foreign oppressors, are
  always difficult for spiritual leaders to relate themselves to, and it was
  doubly so in this case since the Jewish religion was involved in all this
  agitation against Rome.

  127:2.7 Jesus' position was made more difficult because his mother and uncle,
  and even his younger brother James, all urged him to join the nationalist
  cause. All the better Jews of Nazareth had enlisted, and those young men who
  had not joined the movement would all enlist the moment Jesus changed his
  mind. He had but one wise counselor in all Nazareth, his old teacher, the
  chazan, who counseled him about his reply to the citizens' committee of
  Nazareth when they came to ask for his answer to the public appeal which had
  been made. In all Jesus' young life this was the very first time he had
  consciously resorted to public strategy. Theretofore, always had he depended
  upon a frank statement of truth to clarify the situation, but now he could not
  declare the full truth. He could not intimate that he was more than a man; he
  could not disclose his idea of the mission which awaited his attainment of a
  riper manhood. Despite these limitations his religious fealty and national
  loyalty were directly challenged. His family was in a turmoil, his youthful
  friends in division, and the entire Jewish contingent of the town in a hubbub.
  And to think that he was to blame for it all! And how innocent he had been of
  all intention to make trouble of any kind, much less a disturbance of this
  sort.

  127:2.8 Something had to be done. He must state his position, and this he did
  bravely and diplomatically to the satisfaction of many, but not all. He
  adhered to the terms of his original plea, maintaining that his first duty was
  to his family, that a widowed mother and eight brothers and sisters needed
  something more than mere money could buy -- the physical necessities of life
  -- that they were entitled to a father's watchcare and guidance, and that he
  could not in clear conscience release himself from the obligation which a
  cruel accident had thrust upon him. He paid compliment to his mother and
  eldest brother for being willing to release him but reiterated that loyalty to
  a dead father forbade his leaving the family no matter how much money was
  forthcoming for their material support, making his never-to-be-forgotten
  statement that "money cannot love." In the course of this address Jesus made
  several veiled references to his "life mission" but explained that, regardless
  of whether or not it might be inconsistent with the military idea, it, along
  with everything else in his life, had been given up in order that he might be
  able to discharge faithfully his obligation to his family. Everyone in
  Nazareth well knew he was a good father to his family, and this was a matter
  so near the heart of every noble Jew that Jesus' plea found an appreciative
  response in the hearts of many of his hearers; and some of those who were not
  thus minded were disarmed by a speech made by James, which, while not on the
  program, was delivered at this time. That very day the chazan had rehearsed
  James in his speech, but that was their secret.

  127:2.9 James stated that he was sure Jesus would help to liberate his people
  if he (James) were only old enough to assume responsibility for the family,
  and that, if they would only consent to allow Jesus to remain "with us, to be
  our father and teacher, then you will have not just one leader from Joseph's
  family, but presently you will have five loyal nationalists, for are there not
  five of us boys to grow up and come forth from our brother-father's guidance
  to serve our nation?" And thus did the lad bring to a fairly happy ending a
  very tense and threatening situation.

  127:2.10 The crisis for the time being was over, but never was this incident
  forgotten in Nazareth. The agitation persisted; not again was Jesus in
  universal favor; the division of sentiment was never fully overcome. And this,
  augmented by other and subsequent occurrences, was one of the chief reasons
  why he moved to Capernaum in later years. Henceforth Nazareth maintained a
  division of sentiment regarding the Son of Man.



  127:2.11 James graduated at school this year and began full-time work at home
  in the carpenter shop. He had become a clever worker with tools and now took
  over the making of yokes and plows while Jesus began to do more house
  finishing and expert cabinet work.



  127:2.12 This year Jesus made great progress in the organization of his mind.
  Gradually he had brought his divine and human natures together, and he
  accomplished all this organization of intellect by the force of his own
  decisions and with only the aid of his indwelling Monitor, just such a Monitor
  as all normal mortals on all postbestowal-Son worlds have within their minds.
  So far, nothing supernatural had happened in this young man's career except
  the visit of a messenger, dispatched by his elder brother Immanuel, who once
  appeared to him during the night at Jerusalem.





3. THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR (A.D. 12)



  127:3.1 In the course of this year all the family property, except the home
  and garden, was disposed of. The last piece of Capernaum property (except an
  equity in one other), already mortgaged, was sold. The proceeds were used for
  taxes, to buy some new tools for James, and to make a payment on the old
  family supply and repair shop near the caravan lot, which Jesus now proposed
  to buy back since James was old enough to work at the house shop and help Mary
  about the home. With the financial pressure thus eased for the time being,
  Jesus decided to take James to the Passover. They went up to Jerusalem a day
  early, to be alone, going by way of Samaria. They walked, and Jesus told James
  about the historic places en route as his father had taught him on a similar
  journey five years before.

  127:3.2 In passing through Samaria, they saw many strange sights. On this
  journey they talked over many of their problems, personal, family, and
  national. James was a very religious type of lad, and while he did not fully
  agree with his mother regarding the little he knew of the plans concerning
  Jesus' lifework, he did look forward to the time when he would be able to
  assume responsibility for the family so that Jesus could begin his mission. He
  was very appreciative of Jesus' taking him up to the Passover, and they talked
  over the future more fully than ever before.

  127:3.3 Jesus did much thinking as they journeyed through Samaria,
  particularly at Bethel and when drinking from Jacob's well. He and his brother
  discussed the traditions of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He did much to prepare
  James for what he was about to witness at Jerusalem, thus seeking to lessen
  the shock such as he himself had experienced on his first visit to the temple.
  But James was not so sensitive to some of these sights. He commented on the
  perfunctory and heartless manner in which some of the priests performed their
  duties but on the whole greatly enjoyed his sojourn at Jerusalem.

  127:3.4 Jesus took James to Bethany for the Passover supper. Simon had been
  laid to rest with his fathers, and Jesus presided over this household as the
  head of the Passover family, having brought the paschal lamb from the temple.

  127:3.5 After the Passover supper Mary sat down to talk with James while
  Martha, Lazarus, and Jesus talked together far into the night. The next day
  they attended the temple services, and James was received into the
  commonwealth of Israel. That morning, as they paused on the brow of Olivet to
  view the temple, while James exclaimed in wonder, Jesus gazed on Jerusalem in
  silence. James could not comprehend his brother's demeanor. That night they
  again returned to Bethany and would have departed for home the next day, but
  James was insistent on their going back to visit the temple, explaining that
  he wanted to hear the teachers. And while this was true, secretly in his heart
  he wanted to hear Jesus participate in the discussions, as he had heard his
  mother tell about. Accordingly, they went to the temple and heard the
  discussions, but Jesus asked no questions. It all seemed so puerile and
  insignificant to this awakening mind of man and God -- he could only pity
  them. James was disappointed that Jesus said nothing. To his inquiries Jesus
  only made reply, "My hour has not yet come."

  127:3.6 The next day they journeyed home by Jericho and the Jordan valley, and
  Jesus recounted many things by the way, including his former trip over this
  road when he was thirteen years old.



  127:3.7 Upon returning to Nazareth, Jesus began work in the old family repair
  shop and was greatly cheered by being able to meet so many people each day
  from all parts of the country and surrounding districts. Jesus truly loved
  people -- just common folks. Each month he made his payments on the shop and,
  with James's help, continued to provide for the family.

  127:3.8 Several times a year, when visitors were not present thus to function,
  Jesus continued to read the Sabbath scriptures at the synagogue and many times
  offered comments on the lesson, but usually he so selected the passages that
  comment was unnecessary. He was skillful, so arranging the order of the
  reading of the various passages that the one would illuminate the other. He
  never failed, weather permitting, to take his brothers and sisters out on
  Sabbath afternoons for their nature strolls.

  127:3.9 About this time the chazan inaugurated a young men's club for
  philosophic discussion which met at the homes of different members and often
  at his own home, and Jesus became a prominent member of this group. By this
  means he was enabled to regain some of the local prestige which he had lost at
  the time of the recent nationalistic controversies.

  127:3.10 His social life, while restricted, was not wholly neglected. He had
  many warm friends and stanch admirers among both the young men and the young
  women of Nazareth.



  127:3.11 In September, Elizabeth and John came to visit the Nazareth family.
  John, having lost his father, intended to return to the Judean hills to engage
  in agriculture and sheep raising unless Jesus advised him to remain in
  Nazareth to take up carpentry or some other line of work. They did not know
  that the Nazareth family was practically penniless. The more Mary and
  Elizabeth talked about their sons, the more they became convinced that it
  would be good for the two young men to work together and see more of each
  other.

  127:3.12 Jesus and John had many talks together; and they talked over some
  very intimate and personal matters. When they had finished this visit, they
  decided not again to see each other until they should meet in their public
  service after "the heavenly Father should call" them to their work. John was
  tremendously impressed by what he saw at Nazareth that he should return home
  and labor for the support of his mother. He became convinced that he was to be
  a part of Jesus' life mission, but he saw that Jesus was to occupy many years
  with the rearing of his family; so he was much more content to return to his
  home and settle down to the care of their little farm and to minister to the
  needs of his mother. And never again did John and Jesus see each other until
  that day by the Jordan when the Son of Man presented himself for baptism.



  127:3.13 On Saturday afternoon, December 3, of this year, death for the second
  time struck at this Nazareth family. Little Amos, their baby brother, died
  after a week's illness with a high fever. After passing through this time of
  sorrow with her first-born son as her only support, Mary at last and in the
  fullest sense recognized Jesus as the real head of the family; and he was
  truly a worthy head.

  127:3.14 For four years their standard of living had steadily declined; year
  by year they felt the pinch of increasing poverty. By the close of this year
  they faced one of the most difficult experiences of all their uphill
  struggles. James had not yet begun to earn much, and the expenses of a funeral
  on top of everything else staggered them. But Jesus would only say to his
  anxious and grieving mother: "Mother-Mary, sorrow will not help us; we are all
  doing our best, and mother's smile, perchance, might even inspire us to do
  better. Day by day we are strengthened for these tasks by our hope of better
  days ahead." His sturdy and practical optimism was truly contagious; all the
  children lived in an atmosphere of anticipation of better times and better
  things. And this hopeful courage contributed mightily to the development of
  strong and noble characters, in spite of the depressiveness of their poverty.

  127:3.15 Jesus possessed the ability effectively to mobilize all his powers of
  mind, soul, and body on the task immediately in hand. He could concentrate his
  deep-thinking mind on the one problem which he wished to solve, and this, in
  connection with his untiring patience, enabled him serenely to endure the
  trials of a difficult mortal existence -- to live as if he were "seeing Him
  who is invisible."





4. THE NINETEENTH YEAR (A.D. 13)



  127:4.1 By this time Jesus and Mary were getting along much better. She
  regarded him less as a son; he had become to her more a father to her
  children. Each day's life swarmed with practical and immediate difficulties.
  Less frequently they spoke of his lifework, for, as time passed, all their
  thought was mutually devoted to the support and upbringing of their family of
  four boys and three girls.

  127:4.2 By the beginning of this year Jesus had fully won his mother to the
  acceptance of his methods of child training -- the positive injunction to do
  good in the place of the older Jewish method of forbidding to do evil. In his
  home and throughout his public-teaching career Jesus invariably employed the
  positive form of exhortation. Always and everywhere did he say, "You shall do
  this -- you ought to do that." Never did he employ the negative mode of
  teaching derived from the ancient taboos. He refrained from placing emphasis
  on evil by forbidding it, while he exalted the good by commanding its
  performance. Prayer time in this household was the occasion for discussing
  anything and everything relating to the welfare of the family.

  127:4.3 Jesus began wise discipline upon his brothers and sisters at such an
  early age that little or no punishment was ever required to secure their
  prompt and wholehearted obedience. The only exception was Jude, upon whom on
  sundry occasions Jesus found it necessary to impose penalties for his
  infractions of the rules of the home. On three occasions when it was deemed
  wise to punish Jude for self-confessed and deliberate violations of the family
  rules of conduct, his punishment was fixed by the unanimous decree of the
  older children and was assented to by Jude himself before it was inflicted.

  127:4.4 While Jesus was most methodical and systematic in everything he did,
  there was also in all his administrative rulings a refreshing elasticity of
  interpretation and an individuality of adaptation that greatly impressed all
  the children with the spirit of justice which actuated their father-brother.
  He never arbitrarily disciplined his brothers and sisters, and such uniform
  fairness and personal consideration greatly endeared Jesus to all his family.

  127:4.5 James and Simon grew up trying to follow Jesus' plan of placating
  their bellicose and sometimes irate playmates by persuasion and nonresistance,
  and they were fairly successful; but Joseph and Jude, while assenting to such
  teachings at home, made haste to defend themselves when assailed by their
  comrades; in particular was Jude guilty of violating the spirit of these
  teachings. But nonresistance was not a rule of the family. No penalty was
  attached to the violation of personal teachings.

  127:4.6 In general, all of the children, particularly the girls, would consult
  Jesus about their childhood troubles and confide in him just as they would
  have in an affectionate father.

  127:4.7 James was growing up to be a well-balanced and even-tempered youth,
  but he was not so spiritually inclined as Jesus. He was a much better student
  than Joseph, who, while a faithful worker, was even less spiritually minded.
  Joseph was a plodder and not up to the intellectual level of the other
  children. Simon was a well-meaning boy but too much of a dreamer. He was slow
  in getting settled down in life and was the cause of considerable anxiety to
  Jesus and Mary. But he was always a good and well-intentioned lad. Jude was a
  firebrand. He had the highest of ideals, but he was unstable in temperament.
  He had all and more of his mother's determination and aggressiveness, but he
  lacked much of her sense of proportion and discretion.

  127:4.8 Miriam was a well-balanced and level-headed daughter with a keen
  appreciation of things noble and spiritual. Martha was slow in thought and
  action but a very dependable and efficient child. Baby Ruth was the sunshine
  of the home; though thoughtless of speech, she was most sincere of heart. She
  just about worshiped her big brother and father. But they did not spoil her.
  She was a beautiful child but not quite so comely as Miriam, who was the belle
  of the family, if not of the city.



  127:4.9 As time passed, Jesus did much to liberalize and modify the family
  teachings and practices related to Sabbath observance and many other phases of
  religion, and to all these changes Mary gave hearty assent. By this time Jesus
  had become the unquestioned head of the house.

  127:4.10 This year Jude started to school, and it was necessary for Jesus to
  sell his harp in order to defray these expenses. Thus disappeared the last of
  his recreational pleasures. He much loved to play the harp when tired in mind
  and weary in body, but he comforted himself with the thought that at least the
  harp was safe from seizure by the tax collector.





5. REBECCA, THE DAUGHTER OF EZRA



  127:5.1 Although Jesus was poor, his social standing in Nazareth was in no way
  impaired. He was one of the foremost young men of the city and very highly
  regarded by most of the young women. Since Jesus was such a splendid specimen
  of robust and intellectual manhood, and considering his reputation as a
  spiritual leader, it was not strange that Rebecca, the eldest daughter of
  Ezra, a wealthy merchant and trader of Nazareth, should discover that she was
  slowly falling in love with this son of Joseph. She first confided her
  affection to Miriam, Jesus' sister, and Miriam in turn talked all this over
  with her mother. Mary was intensely aroused. Was she about to lose her son,
  now become the indispensable head of the family? Would troubles never cease?
  What next could happen? And then she paused to contemplate what effect
  marriage would have upon Jesus' future career; not often, but at least
  sometimes, did she recall the fact that Jesus was a "child of promise." After
  she and Miriam had talked this matter over, they decided to make an effort to
  stop it before Jesus learned about it, by going direct to Rebecca, laying the
  whole story before her, and honestly telling her about their belief that Jesus
  was a son of destiny; that he was to become a great religious leader, perhaps
  the Messiah.

  127:5.2 Rebecca listened intently; she was thrilled with the recital and more
  than ever determined to cast her lot with this man of her choice and to share
  his career of leadership. She argued (to herself) that such a man would all
  the more need a faithful and efficient wife. She interpreted Mary's efforts to
  dissuade her as a natural reaction to the dread of losing the head and sole
  support of her family; but knowing that her father approved of her attraction
  for the carpenter's son, she rightly reckoned that he would gladly supply the
  family with sufficient income fully to compensate for the loss of Jesus'
  earnings. When her father agreed to such a plan, Rebecca had further
  conferences with Mary and Miriam, and when she failed to win their support,
  she made bold to go directly to Jesus. This she did with the co-operation of
  her father, who invited Jesus to their home for the celebration of Rebecca's
  seventeenth birthday.

  127:5.3 Jesus listened attentively and sympathetically to the recital of these
  things, first by the father, then by Rebecca herself. He made kindly reply to
  the effect that no amount of money could take the place of his obligation
  personally to rear his father's family, to "fulfill the most sacred of all
  human trusts -- loyalty to one's own flesh and blood." Rebecca's father was
  deeply touched by Jesus' words of family devotion and retired from the
  conference. His only remark to Mary, his wife, was: "We can't have him for a
  son; he is too noble for us."

  127:5.4 Then began that eventful talk with Rebecca. Thus far in his life,
  Jesus had made little distinction in his association with boys and girls, with
  young men and young women. His mind had been altogether too much occupied with
  the pressing problems of practical earthly affairs and the intriguing
  contemplation of his eventual career "about his Father's business" ever to
  have given serious consideration to the consummation of personal love in human
  marriage. But now he was face to face with another of those problems which
  every average human being must confront and decide. Indeed was he "tested in
  all points like as you are."

  127:5.5 After listening attentively, he sincerely thanked Rebecca for her
  expressed admiration, adding, "it shall cheer and comfort me all the days of
  my life." He explained that he was not free to enter into relations with any
  woman other than those of simple brotherly regard and pure friendship. He made
  it clear that his first and paramount duty was the rearing of his father's
  family, that he could not consider marriage until that was accomplished; and
  then he added: "If I am a son of destiny, I must not assume obligations of
  lifelong duration until such a time as my destiny shall be made manifest."

  127:5.6 Rebecca was heartbroken. She refused to be comforted and importuned
  her father to leave Nazareth until he finally consented to move to Sepphoris.
  In after years, to the many men who sought her hand in marriage, Rebecca had
  but one answer. She lived for only one purpose -- to await the hour when this,
  to her, the greatest man who ever lived would begin his career as a teacher of
  living truth. And she followed him devotedly through his eventful years of
  public labor, being present (unobserved by Jesus) that day when he rode
  triumphantly into Jerusalem; and she stood "among the other women" by the side
  of Mary on that fateful and tragic afternoon when the Son of Man hung upon the
  cross, to her, as well as to countless worlds on high, "the one altogether
  lovely and the greatest among ten thousand."





6. HIS TWENTIETH YEAR (A.D. 14)



  127:6.1 The story of Rebecca's love for Jesus was whispered about Nazareth and
  later on at Capernaum, so that, while in the years to follow many women loved
  Jesus even as men loved him, not again did he have to reject the personal
  proffer of another good woman's devotion. From this time on human affection
  for Jesus partook more of the nature of worshipful and adoring regard. Both
  men and women loved him devotedly and for what he was, not with any tinge of
  self-satisfaction or desire for affectionate possession. But for many years,
  whenever the story of Jesus' human personality was recited, the devotion of
  Rebecca was recounted.

  127:6.2 Miriam, knowing fully about the affair of Rebecca and knowing how her
  brother had forsaken even the love of a beautiful maiden (not realizing the
  factor of his future career of destiny), came to idealize Jesus and to love
  him with a touching and profound affection as for a father as well as for a
  brother.



  127:6.3 Although they could hardly afford it, Jesus had a strange longing to
  go up to Jerusalem for the Passover. His mother, knowing of his recent
  experience with Rebecca, wisely urged him to make the journey. He was not
  markedly conscious of it, but what he most wanted was an opportunity to talk
  with Lazarus and to visit with Martha and Mary. Next to his own family he
  loved these three most of all.

  127:6.4 In making this trip to Jerusalem, he went by way of Megiddo,
  Antipatris, and Lydda, in part covering the same route traversed when he was
  brought back to Nazareth on the return from Egypt. He spent four days going up
  to the Passover and thought much about the past events which had transpired in
  and around Megiddo, the international battlefield of Palestine.

  127:6.5 Jesus passed on through Jerusalem, only pausing to look upon the
  temple and the gathering throngs of visitors. He had a strange and increasing
  aversion to this Herod-built temple with its politically appointed priesthood.
  He wanted most of all to see Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Lazarus was the same
  age as Jesus and now head of the house; by the time of this visit Lazarus's
  mother had also been laid to rest. Martha was a little over one year older
  than Jesus, while Mary was two years younger. And Jesus was the idolized ideal
  of all three of them.

  127:6.6 On this visit occurred one of those periodic outbreaks of rebellion
  against tradition -- the expression of resentment for those ceremonial
  practices which Jesus deemed misrepresentative of his Father in heaven. Not
  knowing Jesus was coming, Lazarus had arranged to celebrate the Passover with
  friends in an adjoining village down the Jericho road. Jesus now proposed that
  they celebrate the feast where they were, at Lazarus's house. "But," said
  Lazarus, "we have no paschal lamb." And then Jesus entered upon a prolonged
  and convincing dissertation to the effect that the Father in heaven was not
  truly concerned with such childlike and meaningless rituals. After solemn and
  fervent prayer they rose, and Jesus said: "Let the childlike and darkened
  minds of my people serve their God as Moses directed; it is better that they
  do, but let us who have seen the light of life no longer approach our Father
  by the darkness of death. Let us be free in the knowledge of the truth of our
  Father's eternal love."

  127:6.7 That evening about twilight these four sat down and partook of the
  first Passover feast ever to be celebrated by devout Jews without the paschal
  lamb. The unleavened bread and the wine had been made ready for this Passover,
  and these emblems, which Jesus termed "the bread of life" and "the water of
  life," he served to his companions, and they ate in solemn conformity with the
  teachings just imparted. It was his custom to engage in this sacramental
  ritual whenever he paid subsequent visits to Bethany. When he returned home,
  he told all this to his mother. She was shocked at first but came gradually to
  see his viewpoint; nevertheless, she was greatly relieved when Jesus assured
  her that he did not intend to introduce this new idea of the Passover in their
  family. At home with the children he continued, year by year, to eat the
  Passover "according to the law of Moses."



  127:6.8 It was during this year that Mary had a long talk with Jesus about
  marriage. She frankly asked him if he would get married if he were free from
  his family responsibilities. Jesus explained to her that, since immediate duty
  forbade his marriage, he had given the subject little thought. He expressed
  himself as doubting that he would ever enter the marriage state; he said that
  all such things must await "my hour," the time when "my Father's work must
  begin." Having settled already in his mind that he was not to become the
  father of children in the flesh, he gave very little thought to the subject of
  human marriage.

  127:6.9 This year he began anew the task of further weaving his mortal and
  divine natures into a simple and effective human individuality. And he
  continued to grow in moral status and spiritual understanding.

  127:6.10 Although all their Nazareth property (except their home) was gone,
  this year they received a little financial help from the sale of an equity in
  a piece of property in Capernaum. This was the last of Joseph's entire estate.
  This real estate deal in Capernaum was with a boatbuilder named Zebedee.

  127:6.11 Joseph graduated at the synagogue school this year and prepared to
  begin work at the small bench in the home carpenter shop. Although the estate
  of their father was exhausted, there were prospects that they would
  successfully fight off poverty since three of them were now regularly at work.



  127:6.12 Jesus is rapidly becoming a man, not just a young man but an adult.
  He has learned well to bear responsibility. He knows how to carry on in the
  face of disappointment. He bears up bravely when his plans are thwarted and
  his purposes temporarily defeated. He has learned how to be fair and just even
  in the face of injustice. He is learning how to adjust his ideals of spiritual
  living to the practical demands of earthly existence. He is learning how to
  plan for the achievement of a higher and distant goal of idealism while he
  toils earnestly for the attainment of a nearer and immediate goal of
  necessity. He is steadily acquiring the art of adjusting his aspirations to
  the commonplace demands of the human occasion. He has very nearly mastered the
  technique of utilizing the energy of the spiritual drive to turn the mechanism
  of material achievement. He is slowly learning how to live the heavenly life
  while he continues on with the earthly existence. More and more he depends
  upon the ultimate guidance of his heavenly Father while he assumes the
  fatherly role of guiding and directing the children of his earth family. He is
  becoming experienced in the skillful wresting of victory from the very jaws of
  defeat; he is learning how to transform the difficulties of time into the
  triumphs of eternity.



  127:6.13 And so, as the years pass, this young man of Nazareth continues to
  experience life as it is lived in mortal flesh on the worlds of time and
  space. He lives a full, representative, and replete life on Urantia. He left
  this world ripe in the experience which his creatures pass through during the
  short and strenuous years of their first life, the life in the flesh. And all
  this human experience is an eternal possession of the Universe Sovereign. He
  is our understanding brother, sympathetic friend, experienced sovereign, and
  merciful father.

  127:6.14 As a child he accumulated a vast body of knowledge; as a youth he
  sorted, classified, and correlated this information; and now as a man of the
  realm he begins to organize these mental possessions preparatory to
  utilization in his subsequent teaching, ministry, and service in behalf of his
  fellow mortals on this world and on all other spheres of habitation throughout
  the entire universe of Nebadon.

  127:6.15 Born into the world a babe of the realm, he has lived his childhood
  life and passed through the successive stages of youth and young manhood; he
  now stands on the threshold of full manhood, rich in the experience of human
  living, replete in the understanding of human nature, and full of sympathy for
  the frailties of human nature. He is becoming expert in the divine art of
  revealing his Paradise Father to all ages and stages of mortal creatures.

  127:6.16 And now as a full-grown man -- an adult of the realm -- he prepares
  to continue his supreme mission of revealing God to men and leading men to
  God.


PAPER 128


 JESUS' EARLY MANHOOD



  128:0.1 AS JESUS of Nazareth entered upon the early years of his adult life,
  he had lived, and continued to live, a normal and average human life on earth.
  Jesus came into this world just as other children come; he had nothing to do
  with selecting his parents. He did choose this particular world as the planet
  whereon to carry out his seventh and final bestowal, his incarnation in the
  likeness of mortal flesh, but otherwise he entered the world in a natural
  manner, growing up as a child of the realm and wrestling with the vicissitudes
  of his environment just as do other mortals on this and on similar worlds.

  128:0.2 Always be mindful of the twofold purpose of Michael's bestowal on
  Urantia:

1. The mastering of the experience of living the full life of a human creature
in mortal flesh, the completion of his sovereignty in Nebadon.

2. The revelation of the Universal Father to the mortal dwellers on the worlds
of time and space and the more effective leading of these same mortals to a
better understanding of the Universal Father.

  128:0.3 All other creature benefits and universe advantages were incidental
  and secondary to these major purposes of the mortal bestowal.





1. THE TWENTY-FIRST YEAR (A.D. 15)



  128:1.1 With the attainment of adult years Jesus began in earnest and with
  full self-consciousness the task of completing the experience of mastering the
  knowledge of the life of his lowest form of intelligent creatures, thereby
  finally and fully earning the right of unqualified rulership of his self-
  created universe. He entered upon this stupendous task fully realizing his
  dual nature. But he had already effectively combined these two natures into
  one -- Jesus of Nazareth.

  128:1.2 Joshua ben Joseph knew full well that he was a man, a mortal man, born
  of woman. This is shown in the selection of his first title, the Son of Man.
  He was truly a partaker of flesh and blood, and even now, as he presides in
  sovereign authority over the destinies of a universe, he still bears among his
  numerous well-earned titles that of Son of Man. It is literally true that the
  creative Word -- the Creator Son -- of the Universal Father was "made flesh
  and dwelt as a man of the realm on Urantia." He labored, grew weary, rested,
  and slept. He hungered and satisfied such cravings with food; he thirsted and
  quenched his thirst with water. He experienced the full gamut of human
  feelings and emotions; he was "in all things tested, even as you are," and he
  suffered and died.

  128:1.3 He obtained knowledge, gained experience, and combined these into
  wisdom, just as do other mortals of the realm. Until after his baptism he
  availed himself of no supernatural power. He employed no agency not a part of
  his human endowment as a son of Joseph and Mary.

  128:1.4 As to the attributes of his prehuman existence, he emptied himself.
  Prior to the beginning of his public work his knowledge of men and events was
  wholly self-limited. He was a true man among men.



  128:1.5 It is forever and gloriously true: "We have a high ruler who can be
  touched with the feeling of our infirmities. We have a Sovereign who was in
  all points tested and tempted like as we are, yet without sin." And since he
  himself has suffered, being tested and tried, he is abundantly able to
  understand and minister to those who are confused and distressed.



  128:1.6 The Nazareth carpenter now fully understood the work before him, but
  he chose to live his human life in the channel of its natural flowing. And in
  some of these matters he is indeed an example to his mortal creatures, even as
  it is recorded: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who,
  being of the nature of God, thought it not strange to be equal with God. But
  he made himself to be of little import and, taking upon himself the form of a
  creature, was born in the likeness of mankind. And being thus fashioned as a
  man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the
  cross."

  128:1.7 He lived his mortal life just as all others of the human family may
  live theirs, "who in the days of the flesh so frequently offered up prayers
  and supplications, even with strong feelings and tears, to Him who is able to
  save from all evil, and his prayers were effective because he believed."
  Wherefore it behooved him in every respect to be made like his brethren that
  he might become a merciful and understanding sovereign ruler over them.

  128:1.8 Of his human nature he was never in doubt; it was self-evident and
  always present in his consciousness. But of his divine nature there was always
  room for doubt and conjecture, at least this was true right up to the event of
  his baptism. The self-realization of divinity was a slow and, from the human
  standpoint, a natural evolutionary revelation. This revelation and self-
  realization of divinity began in Jerusalem when he was not quite thirteen
  years old with the first supernatural occurrence of his human existence; and
  this experience of effecting the self-realization of his divine nature was
  completed at the time of his second supernatural experience while in the
  flesh, the episode attendant upon his baptism by John in the Jordan, which
  event marked the beginning of his public career of ministry and teaching.

  128:1.9 Between these two celestial visitations, one in his thirteenth year
  and the other at his baptism, there occurred nothing supernatural or
  superhuman in the life of this incarnated Creator Son. Notwithstanding this,
  the babe of Bethlehem, the lad, youth, and man of Nazareth, was in reality the
  incarnated Creator of a universe; but he never once used aught of this power,
  nor did he utilize the guidance of celestial personalities, aside from that of
  his guardian seraphim, in the living of his human life up to the day of his
  baptism by John. And we who thus testify know whereof we speak.

  128:1.10 And yet, throughout all these years of his life in the flesh he was
  truly divine. He was actually a Creator Son of the Paradise Father. When once
  he had espoused his public career, subsequent to the technical completion of
  his purely mortal experience of sovereignty acquirement, he did not hesitate
  publicly to admit that he was the Son of God. He did not hesitate to declare,
  "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." He
  made no protest in later years when he was called Lord of Glory, Ruler of a
  Universe, the Lord God of all creation, the Holy One of Israel, the Lord of
  all, our Lord and our God, God with us, having a name above every name and on
  all worlds, the Omnipotence of a universe, the Universe Mind of this creation,
  the One in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the fullness of
  Him who fills all things, the eternal Word of the eternal God, the One who was
  before all things and in whom all things consist, the Creator of the heavens
  and the earth, the Upholder of a universe, the Judge of all the earth, the
  Giver of life eternal, the True Shepherd, the Deliverer of the worlds, and the
  Captain of our salvation.



  128:1.11 He never objected to any of these titles as they were applied to him
  subsequent to the emergence from his purely human life into the later years of
  his self-consciousness of the ministry of divinity in humanity, and for
  humanity, and to humanity on this world and for all other worlds. Jesus
  objected to but one title as applied to him: When he was once called Immanuel,
  he merely replied, "Not I, that is my elder brother."

  128:1.12 Always, even after his emergence into the larger life on earth, Jesus
  was submissively subject to the will of the Father in heaven.

  128:1.13 After his baptism he thought nothing of permitting his sincere
  believers and grateful followers to worship him. Even while he wrestled with
  poverty and toiled with his hands to provide the necessities of life for his
  family, his awareness that he was a Son of God was growing; he knew that he
  was the maker of the heavens and this very earth whereon he was now living out
  his human existence. And the hosts of celestial beings throughout the great
  and onlooking universe likewise knew that this man of Nazareth was their
  beloved Sovereign and Creator-father. A profound suspense pervaded the
  universe of Nebadon throughout these years; all celestial eyes were
  continuously focused on Urantia -- on Palestine.



  128:1.14 This year Jesus went up to Jerusalem with Joseph to celebrate the
  Passover. Having taken James to the temple for consecration, he deemed it his
  duty to take Joseph. Jesus never exhibited any degree of partiality in dealing
  with his family. He went with Joseph to Jerusalem by the usual Jordan valley
  route, but he returned to Nazareth by the east Jordan way, which led through
  Amathus. Going down the Jordan, Jesus narrated Jewish history to Joseph and on
  the return trip told him about the experiences of the reputed tribes of Ruben,
  Gad, and Gilead that traditionally had dwelt in these regions east of the
  river.

  128:1.15 Joseph asked Jesus many leading questions concerning his life
  mission, but to most of these inquiries Jesus would only reply, "My hour has
  not yet come." However, in these intimate discussions many words were dropped
  which Joseph remembered during the stirring events of subsequent years. Jesus,
  with Joseph, spent this Passover with his three friends at Bethany, as was his
  custom when in Jerusalem attending these festival commemorations.





2. THE TWENTY-SECOND YEAR (A.D. 16)



  128:2.1 This was one of several years during which Jesus' brothers and sisters
  were facing the trials and tribulations peculiar to the problems and
  readjustments of adolescence. Jesus now had brothers and sisters ranging in
  ages from seven to eighteen, and he was kept busy helping them to adjust
  themselves to the new awakenings of their intellectual and emotional lives. He
  had thus to grapple with the problems of adolescence as they became manifest
  in the lives of his younger brothers and sisters.

  128:2.2 This year Simon graduated from school and began work with Jesus' old
  boyhood playmate and ever-ready defender, Jacob the stone mason. As a result
  of several family conferences it was decided that it was unwise for all the
  boys to take up carpentry. It was thought that by diversifying their trades
  they would be prepared to take contracts for putting up entire buildings.
  Again, they had not all kept busy since three of them had been working as
  full-time carpenters.

  128:2.3 Jesus continued this year at house finishing and cabinetwork but spent
  most of his time at the caravan repair shop. James was beginning to alternate
  with him in attendance at the shop. The latter part of this year, when
  carpenter work was slack about Nazareth, Jesus left James in charge of the
  repair shop and Joseph at the home bench while he went over to Sepphoris to
  work with a smith. He worked six months with metals and acquired considerable
  skill at the anvil.



  128:2.4 Before taking up his new employment at Sepphoris, Jesus held one of
  his periodic family conferences and solemnly installed James, then just past
  eighteen years old, as acting head of the family. He promised his brother
  hearty support and full co-operation and exacted formal promises of obedience
  to James from each member of the family. From this day James assumed full
  financial responsibility for the family, Jesus making his weekly payments to
  his brother. Never again did Jesus take the reins out of James's hands. While
  working at Sepphoris he could have walked home every night if necessary, but
  he purposely remained away, assigning weather and other reasons, but his true
  motive was to train James and Joseph in the bearing of the family
  responsibility. He had begun the slow process of weaning his family. Each
  Sabbath Jesus returned to Nazareth, and sometimes during the week when
  occasion required, to observe the working of the new plan, to give advice and
  offer helpful suggestions.



  128:2.5 Living much of the time in Sepphoris for six months afforded Jesus a
  new opportunity to become better acquainted with the gentile viewpoint of
  life. He worked with gentiles, lived with gentiles, and in every possible
  manner did he make a close and painstaking study of their habits of living and
  of the gentile mind.

  128:2.6 The moral standards of this home city of Herod Antipas were so far
  below those of even the caravan city of Nazareth that after six months'
  sojourn at Sepphoris Jesus was not averse to finding an excuse for returning
  to Nazareth. The group he worked for were to become engaged on public work in
  both Sepphoris and the new city of Tiberias, and Jesus was disinclined to have
  anything to do with any sort of employment under the supervision of Herod
  Antipas. And there were still other reasons which made it wise, in the opinion
  of Jesus, for him to go back to Nazareth. When he returned to the repair shop,
  he did not again assume the personal direction of family affairs. He worked in
  association with James at the shop and as far as possible permitted him to
  continue oversight of the home. James's management of family expenditures and
  his administration of the home budget were undisturbed.

  128:2.7 It was by just such wise and thoughtful planning that Jesus prepared
  the way for his eventual withdrawal from active participation in the affairs
  of his family. When James had had two years' experience as acting head of the
  family -- and two full years before he (James) was to be married -- Joseph was
  placed in charge of the household funds and intrusted with the general
  management of the home.





3. THE TWENTY-THIRD YEAR (A.D. 17)



  128:3.1 This year the financial pressure was slightly relaxed as four were at
  work. Miriam earned considerable by the sale of milk and butter; Martha had
  become an expert weaver. The purchase price of the repair shop was over one
  third paid. The situation was such that Jesus stopped work for three weeks to
  take Simon to Jerusalem for the Passover, and this was the longest period away
  from daily toil he had enjoyed since the death of his father.

  128:3.2 They journeyed to Jerusalem by way of the Decapolis and through Pella,
  Gerasa, Philadelphia, Heshbon, and Jericho. They returned to Nazareth by the
  coast route, touching Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea, thence around Mount Carmel to
  Ptolemais and Nazareth. This trip fairly well acquainted Jesus with the whole
  of Palestine north of the Jerusalem district.

  128:3.3 At Philadelphia Jesus and Simon became acquainted with a merchant from
  Damascus who developed such a great liking for the Nazareth couple that he
  insisted they stop with him at his Jerusalem headquarters. While Simon gave
  attendance at the temple, Jesus spent much of his time talking with this well-
  educated and much-traveled man of world affairs. This merchant owned over four
  thousand caravan camels; he had interests all over the Roman world and was now
  on his way to Rome. He proposed that Jesus come to Damascus to enter his
  Oriental import business, but Jesus explained that he did not feel justified
  in going so far away from his family just then. But on the way back home he
  thought much about these distant cities and the even more remote countries of
  the Far West and the Far East, countries he had so frequently heard spoken of
  by the caravan passengers and conductors.

  128:3.4 Simon greatly enjoyed his visit to Jerusalem. He was duly received
  into the commonwealth of Israel at the Passover consecration of the new sons
  of the commandment. While Simon attended the Passover ceremonies, Jesus
  mingled with the throngs of visitors and engaged in many interesting personal
  conferences with numerous gentile proselytes.

  128:3.5 Perhaps the most notable of all these contacts was the one with a
  young Hellenist named Stephen. This young man was on his first visit to
  Jerusalem and chanced to meet Jesus on Thursday afternoon of Passover week.
  While they both strolled about viewing the Asmonean palace, Jesus began the
  casual conversation that resulted in their becoming interested in each other,
  and which led to a four-hour discussion of the way of life and the true God
  and his worship. Stephen was tremendously impressed with what Jesus said; he
  never forgot his words.

  128:3.6 And this was the same Stephen who subsequently became a believer in
  the teachings of Jesus, and whose boldness in preaching this early gospel
  resulted in his being stoned to death by irate Jews. Some of Stephen's
  extraordinary boldness in proclaiming his view of the new gospel was the
  direct result of this earlier interview with Jesus. But Stephen never even
  faintly surmised that the Galilean he had talked with some fifteen years
  previously was the very same person whom he later proclaimed the world's
  Savior, and for whom he was so soon to die, thus becoming the first martyr of
  the newly evolving Christian faith. When Stephen yielded up his life as the
  price of his attack upon the Jewish temple and its traditional practices,
  there stood by one named Saul, a citizen of Tarsus. And when Saul saw how this
  Greek could die for his faith, there were aroused in his heart those emotions
  which eventually led him to espouse the cause for which Stephen died; later on
  he became the aggressive and indomitable Paul, the philosopher, if not the
  sole founder, of the Christian religion.



  128:3.7 On the Sunday after Passover week Simon and Jesus started on their way
  back to Nazareth. Simon never forgot what Jesus taught him on this trip. He
  had always loved Jesus, but now he felt that he had begun to know his father-
  brother. They had many heart-to-heart talks as they journeyed through the
  country and prepared their meals by the wayside. They arrived home Thursday
  noon, and Simon kept the family up late that night relating his experiences.

  128:3.8 Mary was much upset by Simon's report that Jesus spent most of the
  time when in Jerusalem "visiting with the strangers, especially those from the
  far countries." Jesus' family never could comprehend his great interest in
  people, his urge to visit with them, to learn about their way of living, and
  to find out what they were thinking about.



  128:3.9 More and more the Nazareth family became engrossed with their
  immediate and human problems; not often was mention made of the future mission
  of Jesus, and very seldom did he himself speak of his future career. His
  mother rarely thought about his being a child of promise. She was slowly
  giving up the idea that Jesus was to fulfill any divine mission on earth, yet
  at times her faith was revived when she paused to recall the Gabriel
  visitation before the child was born.





4. THE DAMASCUS EPISODE



  128:4.1 The last four months of this year Jesus spent in Damascus as the guest
  of the merchant whom he first met at Philadelphia when on his way to
  Jerusalem. A representative of this merchant had sought out Jesus when passing
  through Nazareth and escorted him to Damascus. This part-Jewish merchant
  proposed to devote an extraordinary sum of money to the establishment of a
  school of religious philosophy at Damascus. He planned to create a center of
  learning which would out-rival Alexandria. And he proposed that Jesus should
  immediately begin a long tour of the world's educational centers preparatory
  to becoming the head of this new project. This was one of the greatest
  temptations that Jesus ever faced in the course of his purely human career.

  128:4.2 Presently this merchant brought before Jesus a group of twelve
  merchants and bankers who agreed to support this newly projected school. Jesus
  manifested deep interest in the proposed school, helped them plan for its
  organization, but always expressed the fear that his other and unstated but
  prior obligations would prevent his accepting the direction of such a
  pretentious enterprise. His would-be benefactor was persistent, and he
  profitably employed Jesus at his home doing some translating while he, his
  wife, and their sons and daughters sought to prevail upon Jesus to accept the
  proffered honor. But he would not consent. He well knew that his mission on
  earth was not to be supported by institutions of learning; he knew that he
  must not obligate himself in the least to be directed by the "councils of
  men," no matter how well-intentioned.

  128:4.3 He who was rejected by the Jerusalem religious leaders, even after he
  had demonstrated his leadership, was recognized and hailed as a master teacher
  by the businessmen and bankers of Damascus, and all this when he was an
  obscure and unknown carpenter of Nazareth.

  128:4.4 He never spoke about this offer to his family, and the end of this
  year found him back in Nazareth going about his daily duties just as if he had
  never been tempted by the flattering propositions of his Damascus friends.
  Neither did these men of Damascus ever associate the later citizen of
  Capernaum who turned all Jewry upside down with the former carpenter of
  Nazareth who had dared to refuse the honor which their combined wealth might
  have procured.



  128:4.5 Jesus most cleverly and intentionally contrived to detach various
  episodes of his life so that they never became, in the eyes of the world,
  associated together as the doings of a single individual. Many times in
  subsequent years he listened to the recital of this very story of the strange
  Galilean who declined the opportunity of founding a school in Damascus to
  compete with Alexandria.

  128:4.6 One purpose which Jesus had in mind, when he sought to segregate
  certain features of his earthly experience, was to prevent the building up of
  such a versatile and spectacular career as would cause subsequent generations
  to venerate the teacher in place of obeying the truth which he had lived and
  taught. Jesus did not want to build up such a human record of achievement as
  would attract attention from his teaching. Very early he recognized that his
  followers would be tempted to formulate a religion about him which might
  become a competitor of the gospel of the kingdom that he intended to proclaim
  to the world. Accordingly, he consistently sought to suppress everything
  during his eventful career which he thought might be made to serve this
  natural human tendency to exalt the teacher in place of proclaiming his
  teachings.

  128:4.7 This same motive also explains why he permitted himself to be known by
  different titles during various epochs of his diversified life on earth.
  Again, he did not want to bring any undue influence to bear upon his family or
  others which would lead them to believe in him against their honest
  convictions. He always refused to take undue or unfair advantage of the human
  mind. He did not want men to believe in him unless their hearts were
  responsive to the spiritual realities revealed in his teachings.



  128:4.8 By the end of this year the Nazareth home was running fairly smoothly.
  The children were growing up, and Mary was becoming accustomed to Jesus' being
  away from home. He continued to turn over his earnings to James for the
  support of the family, retaining only a small portion for his immediate
  personal expenses.

  128:4.9 As the years passed, it became more difficult to realize that this man
  was a Son of God on earth. He seemed to become quite like an individual of the
  realm, just another man among men. And it was ordained by the Father in heaven
  that the bestowal should unfold in this very way.





5. THE TWENTY-FOURTH YEAR (A.D. 18)



  128:5.1 This was Jesus' first year of comparative freedom from family
  responsibility. James was very successful in managing the home with Jesus'
  help in counsel and finances.



  128:5.2 The week following the Passover of this year a young man from
  Alexandria came down to Nazareth to arrange for a meeting, later in the year,
  between Jesus and a group of Alexandrian Jews at some point on the Palestinian
  coast. This conference was set for the middle of June, and Jesus went over to
  Caesarea to meet with five prominent Jews of Alexandria, who besought him to
  establish himself in their city as a religious teacher, offering as an
  inducement to begin with, the position of assistant to the chazan in their
  chief synagogue.

  128:5.3 The spokesmen for this committee explained to Jesus that Alexandria
  was destined to become the headquarters of Jewish culture for the entire
  world; that the Hellenistic trend of Jewish affairs had virtually outdistanced
  the Babylonian school of thought. They reminded Jesus of the ominous rumblings
  of rebellion in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine and assured him that any
  uprising of the Palestinian Jews would be equivalent to national suicide, that
  the iron hand of Rome would crush the rebellion in three months, and that
  Jerusalem would be destroyed and the temple demolished, that not one stone
  would be left upon another.

  128:5.4 Jesus listened to all they had to say, thanked them for their
  confidence, and, in declining to go to Alexandria, in substance said, "My hour
  has not yet come." They were nonplused by his apparent indifference to the
  honor they had sought to confer upon him. Before taking leave of Jesus, they
  presented him with a purse in token of the esteem of his Alexandrian friends
  and in compensation for the time and expense of coming over to Caesarea to
  confer with them. But he likewise refused the money, saying: "The house of
  Joseph has never received alms, and we cannot eat another's bread as long as I
  have strong arms and my brothers can labor."

  128:5.5 His friends from Egypt set sail for home, and in subsequent years,
  when they heard rumors of the Capernaum boatbuilder who was creating such a
  commotion in Palestine, few of them surmised that he was the babe of Bethlehem
  grown up and the same strange-acting Galilean who had so unceremoniously
  declined the invitation to become a great teacher in Alexandria.



  128:5.6 Jesus returned to Nazareth. The remainder of this year was the most
  uneventful six months of his whole career. He enjoyed this temporary respite
  from the usual program of problems to solve and difficulties to surmount. He
  communed much with his Father in heaven and made tremendous progress in the
  mastery of his human mind.

  128:5.7 But human affairs on the worlds of time and space do not run smoothly
  for long. In December James had a private talk with Jesus, explaining that he
  was much in love with Esta, a young woman of Nazareth, and that they would
  sometime like to be married if it could be arranged. He called attention to
  the fact that Joseph would soon be eighteen years old, and that it would be a
  good experience for him to have a chance to serve as the acting head of the
  family. Jesus gave consent for James's marriage two years later, provided he
  had, during the intervening time, properly trained Joseph to assume direction
  of the home.

  128:5.8 And now things began to happen -- marriage was in the air. James's
  success in gaining Jesus' assent to his marriage emboldened Miriam to approach
  her brother-father with her plans. Jacob, the younger stone mason, onetime
  self-appointed champion of Jesus, now business associate of James and Joseph,
  had long sought to gain Miriam's hand in marriage. After Miriam had laid her
  plans before Jesus, he directed that Jacob should come to him making formal
  request for her and promised his blessing for the marriage just as soon as she
  felt that Martha was competent to assume her duties as eldest daughter.



  128:5.9 When at home, he continued to teach the evening school three times a
  week, read the Scriptures often in the synagogue on the Sabbath, visited with
  his mother, taught the children, and in general conducted himself as a worthy
  and respected citizen of Nazareth in the commonwealth of Israel.





6. THE TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR (A.D. 19)



  128:6.1 This year began with the Nazareth family all in good health and
  witnessed the finishing of the regular schooling of all the children with the
  exception of certain work which Martha must do for Ruth.



  128:6.2 Jesus was one of the most robust and refined specimens of manhood to
  appear on earth since the days of Adam. His physical development was superb.
  His mind was active, keen, and penetrating -- compared with the average
  mentality of his contemporaries, it had developed gigantic proportions -- and
  his spirit was indeed humanly divine.



  128:6.3 The family finances were in the best condition since the disappearance
  of Joseph's estate. The final payments had been made on the caravan repair
  shop; they owed no man and for the first time in years had some funds ahead.
  This being true, and since he had taken his other brothers to Jerusalem for
  their first Passover ceremonies, Jesus decided to accompany Jude (who had just
  graduated from the synagogue school) on his first visit to the temple.

  128:6.4 They went up to Jerusalem and returned by the same route, the Jordan
  valley, as Jesus feared trouble if he took his young brother through Samaria.
  Already at Nazareth Jude had got into slight trouble several times because of
  his hasty disposition, coupled with his strong patriotic sentiments.

  128:6.5 They arrived at Jerusalem in due time and were on their way for a
  first visit to the temple, the very sight of which had stirred and thrilled
  Jude to the very depths of his soul, when they chanced to meet Lazarus of
  Bethany. While Jesus talked with Lazarus and sought to arrange for their joint
  celebration of the Passover, Jude started up real trouble for them all. Close
  at hand stood a Roman guard who made some improper remarks regarding a Jewish
  girl who was passing. Jude flushed with fiery indignation and was not slow in
  expressing his resentment of such an impropriety directly to and within
  hearing of the soldier. Now the Roman legionnaires were very sensitive to
  anything bordering on Jewish disrespect; so the guard promptly placed Jude
  under arrest. This was too much for the young patriot, and before Jesus could
  caution him by a warning glance, he had delivered himself of a voluble
  denunciation of pent-up anti-Roman feelings, all of which only made a bad
  matter worse. Jude, with Jesus by his side, was taken at once to the military
  prison.

  128:6.6 Jesus endeavored to obtain either an immediate hearing for Jude or
  else his release in time for the Passover celebration that evening, but he
  failed in these attempts. Since the next day was a "holy convocation" in
  Jerusalem, even the Romans would not presume to hear charges against a Jew.
  Accordingly, Jude remained in confinement until the morning of the second day
  after his arrest, and Jesus stayed at the prison with him. They were not
  present in the temple at the ceremony of receiving the sons of the law into
  the full citizenship of Israel. Jude did not pass through this formal ceremony
  for several years, until he was next in Jerusalem at a Passover and in
  connection with his propaganda work in behalf of the Zealots, the patriotic
  organization to which he belonged and in which he was very active.

  128:6.7 The morning following their second day in prison Jesus appeared before
  the military magistrate in behalf of Jude. By making apologies for his
  brother's youth and by a further explanatory but judicious statement with
  reference to the provocative nature of the episode which had led up to the
  arrest of his brother, Jesus so handled the case that the magistrate expressed
  the opinion that the young Jew might have had some possible excuse for his
  violent outburst. After warning Jude not to allow himself again to be guilty
  of such rashness, he said to Jesus in dismissing them: "You had better keep
  your eye on the lad; he's liable to make a lot of trouble for all of you." And
  the Roman judge spoke the truth. Jude did make considerable trouble for Jesus,
  and always was the trouble of this same nature -- clashes with the civil
  authorities because of his thoughtless and unwise patriotic outbursts.

  128:6.8 Jesus and Jude walked over to Bethany for the night, explaining why
  they had failed to keep their appointment for the Passover supper, and set out
  for Nazareth the following day. Jesus did not tell the family about his young
  brother's arrest at Jerusalem, but he had a long talk with Jude about this
  episode some three weeks after their return. After this talk with Jesus Jude
  himself told the family. He never forgot the patience and forbearance his
  brother-father manifested throughout the whole of this trying experience.

  128:6.9 This was the last Passover Jesus attended with any member of his own
  family. Increasingly the Son of Man was to become separated from close
  association with his own flesh and blood.



  128:6.10 This year his seasons of deep meditation were often broken into by
  Ruth and her playmates. And always was Jesus ready to postpone the
  contemplation of his future work for the world and the universe that he might
  share in the childish joy and youthful gladness of these youngsters, who never
  tired of listening to Jesus relate the experiences of his various trips to
  Jerusalem. They also greatly enjoyed his stories about animals and nature.

  128:6.11 The children were always welcome at the repair shop. Jesus provided
  sand, blocks, and stones by the side of the shop, and bevies of youngsters
  flocked there to amuse themselves. When they tired of their play, the more
  intrepid ones would peek into the shop, and if its keeper were not busy, they
  would make bold to go in and say, "Uncle Joshua, come out and tell us a big
  story." Then they would lead him out by tugging at his hands until he was
  seated on the favorite rock by the corner of the shop, with the children on
  the ground in a semicircle before him. And how the little folks did enjoy
  their Uncle Joshua. They were learning to laugh, and to laugh heartily. It was
  customary for one or two of the smallest of the children to climb upon his
  knees and sit there, looking up in wonderment at his expressive features as he
  told his stories. The children loved Jesus, and Jesus loved the children.

  128:6.12 It was difficult for his friends to comprehend the range of his
  intellectual activities, how he could so suddenly and so completely swing from
  the profound discussion of politics, philosophy, or religion to the
  lighthearted and joyous playfulness of these tots of from five to ten years of
  age. As his own brothers and sisters grew up, as he gained more leisure, and
  before the grandchildren arrived, he paid a great deal of attention to these
  little ones. But he did not live on earth long enough to enjoy the
  grandchildren very much.





7. THE TWENTY-SIXTH YEAR (A.D. 20)



  128:7.1 As this year began, Jesus of Nazareth became strongly conscious that
  he possessed a wide range of potential power. But he was likewise fully
  persuaded that this power was not to be employed by his personality as the Son
  of Man, at least not until his hour should come.

  128:7.2 At this time he thought much but said little about the relation of
  himself to his Father in heaven. And the conclusion of all this thinking was
  expressed once in his prayer on the hilltop, when he said: "Regardless of who
  I am and what power I may or may not wield, I always have been, and always
  will be, subject to the will of my Paradise Father." And yet, as this man
  walked about Nazareth to and from his work, it was literally true -- as
  concerned a vast universe -- that "in him were hidden all the treasures of
  wisdom and knowledge."



  128:7.3 All this year the family affairs ran smoothly except for Jude. For
  years James had trouble with his youngest brother, who was not inclined to
  settle down to work nor was he to be depended upon for his share of the home
  expenses. While he would live at home, he was not conscientious about earning
  his share of the family upkeep.

  128:7.4 Jesus was a man of peace, and ever and anon was he embarrassed by
  Jude's belligerent exploits and numerous patriotic outbursts. James and Joseph
  were in favor of casting him out, but Jesus would not consent. When their
  patience would be severely tried, Jesus would only counsel: "Be patient. Be
  wise in your counsel and eloquent in your lives, that your young brother may
  first know the better way and then be constrained to follow you in it." The
  wise and loving counsel of Jesus prevented a break in the family; they
  remained together. But Jude never was brought to his sober senses until after
  his marriage.

  128:7.5 Mary seldom spoke of Jesus' future mission. Whenever this subject was
  referred to, Jesus only replied, "My hour has not yet come." Jesus had about
  completed the difficult task of weaning his family from dependence on the
  immediate presence of his personality. He was rapidly preparing for the day
  when he could consistently leave this Nazareth home to begin the more active
  prelude to his real ministry for men.

  128:7.6 Never lose sight of the fact that the prime mission of Jesus in his
  seventh bestowal was the acquirement of creature experience, the achievement
  of the sovereignty of Nebadon. And in the gathering of this very experience he
  made the supreme revelation of the Paradise Father to Urantia and to his
  entire local universe. Incidental to these purposes he also undertook to
  untangle the complicated affairs of this planet as they were related to the
  Lucifer rebellion.



  128:7.7 This year Jesus enjoyed more than usual leisure, and he devoted much
  time to training James in the management of the repair shop and Joseph in the
  direction of home affairs. Mary sensed that he was making ready to leave them.
  Leave them to go where? To do what? She had about given up the thought that
  Jesus was the Messiah. She could not understand him; she simply could not
  fathom her first-born son.

  128:7.8 Jesus spent a great deal of time this year with the individual members
  of his family. He would take them for long and frequent strolls up the hill
  and through the countryside. Before harvest he took Jude to the farmer uncle
  south of Nazareth, but Jude did not remain long after the harvest. He ran
  away, and Simon later found him with the fishermen at the lake. When Simon
  brought him back home, Jesus talked things over with the runaway lad and,
  since he wanted to be a fisherman, went over to Magdala with him and put him
  in the care of a relative, a fisherman; and Jude worked fairly well and
  regularly from that time on until his marriage, and he continued as a
  fisherman after his marriage.



  128:7.9 At last the day had come when all Jesus' brothers had chosen, and were
  established in, their lifework. The stage was being set for Jesus' departure
  from home.



  128:7.10 In November a double wedding occurred. James and Esta, and Miriam and
  Jacob were married. It was truly a joyous occasion. Even Mary was once more
  happy except every now and then when she realized that Jesus was preparing to
  go away. She suffered under the burden of a great uncertainty: If Jesus would
  only sit down and talk it all over freely with her as he had done when he was
  a boy, but he was consistently uncommunicative; he was profoundly silent about
  the future.

  128:7.11 James and his bride, Esta, moved into a neat little home on the west
  side of town, the gift of her father. While James continued his support of his
  mother's home, his quota was cut in half because of his marriage, and Joseph
  was formally installed by Jesus as head of the family. Jude was now very
  faithfully sending his share of funds home each month. The weddings of James
  and Miriam had a very beneficial influence on Jude, and when he left for the
  fishing grounds, the day after the double wedding, he assured Joseph that he
  could depend on him "to do my full duty, and more if it is needed." And he
  kept his promise.



  128:7.12 Miriam lived next door to Mary in the home of Jacob, Jacob the elder
  having been laid to rest with his fathers. Martha took Miriam's place in the
  home, and the new organization was working smoothly before the year ended.

  128:7.13 The day after this double wedding Jesus held an important conference
  with James. He told James, confidentially, that he was preparing to leave
  home. He presented full title to the repair shop to James, formally and
  solemnly abdicated as head of Joseph's house, and most touchingly established
  his brother James as "head and protector of my father's house." He drew up,
  and they both signed, a secret compact in which it was stipulated that, in
  return for the gift of the repair shop, James would henceforth assume full
  financial responsibility for the family, thus releasing Jesus from all further
  obligations in these matters. After the contract was signed, after the budget
  was so arranged that the actual expenses of the family would be met without
  any contribution from Jesus, Jesus said to James: "But, my son, I will
  continue to send you something each month until my hour shall have come, but
  what I send shall be used by you as the occasion demands. Apply my funds to
  the family necessities or pleasures as you see fit. Use them in case of
  sickness or apply them to meet the unexpected emergencies which may befall any
  individual member of the family."

  128:7.14 And thus did Jesus make ready to enter upon the second and home-
  detached phase of his adult life before the public entrance upon his Father's
  business.


 PAPER 129


 THE LATER ADULT LIFE OF JESUS



  129:0.1 JESUS had fully and finally separated himself from the management of
  the domestic affairs of the Nazareth family and from the immediate direction
  of its individuals. He continued, right up to the event of his baptism, to
  contribute to the family finances and to take a keen personal interest in the
  spiritual welfare of every one of his brothers and sisters. And always was he
  ready to do everything humanly possible for the comfort and happiness of his
  widowed mother.

  129:0.2 The Son of Man had now made every preparation for detaching himself
  permanently from the Nazareth home; and this was not easy for him to do. Jesus
  naturally loved his people; he loved his family, and this natural affection
  had been tremendously augmented by his extraordinary devotion to them. The
  more fully we bestow ourselves upon our fellows, the more we come to love
  them; and since Jesus had given himself so fully to his family, he loved them
  with a great and fervent affection.

  129:0.3 All the family had slowly awakened to the realization that Jesus was
  making ready to leave them. The sadness of the anticipated separation was only
  tempered by this graduated method of preparing them for the announcement of
  his intended departure. For more than four years they discerned that he was
  planning for this eventual separation.





1. THE TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR (A.D. 21)

  129:1.1 In January of this year, A.D. 21, on a rainy Sunday morning, Jesus
  took unceremonious leave of his family, only explaining that he was going over
  to Tiberias and then on a visit to other cities about the Sea of Galilee. And
  thus he left them, never again to be a regular member of that household.

  129:1.2 He spent one week at Tiberias, the new city which was soon to succeed
  Sepphoris as the capital of Galilee; and finding little to interest him, he
  passed on successively through Magdala and Bethsaida to Capernaum, where he
  stopped to pay a visit to his father's friend Zebedee. Zebedee's sons were
  fishermen; he himself was a boatbuilder. Jesus of Nazareth was an expert in
  both designing and building; he was a master at working with wood; and Zebedee
  had long known of the skill of the Nazareth craftsman. For a long time Zebedee
  had contemplated making improved boats; he now laid his plans before Jesus and
  invited the visiting carpenter to join him in the enterprise, and Jesus
  readily consented.

  129:1.3 Jesus worked with Zebedee only a little more than one year, but during
  that time he created a new style of boat and established entirely new methods
  of boatmaking. By superior technique and greatly improved methods of steaming
  the boards, Jesus and Zebedee began to build boats of a very superior type,
  craft which were far more safe for sailing the lake than were the older types.
  For several years Zebedee had more work, turning out these new-style boats,
  than his small establishment could handle; in less than five years practically
  all the craft on the lake had been built in the shop of Zebedee at Capernaum.
  Jesus became well known to the Galilean fisherfolk as the designer of the new
  boats.

  129:1.4 Zebedee was a moderately well-to-do man; his boatbuilding shops were
  on the lake to the south of Capernaum, and his home was situated down the lake
  shore near the fishing headquarters of Bethsaida. Jesus lived in the home of
  Zebedee during the year and more he remained at Capernaum. He had long worked
  alone in the world, that is, without a father, and greatly enjoyed this period
  of working with a father-partner.

  129:1.5 Zebedee's wife, Salome, was a relative of Annas, onetime high priest
  at Jerusalem and still the most influential of the Sadducean group, having
  been deposed only eight years previously. Salome became a great admirer of
  Jesus. She loved him as she loved her own sons, James, John, and David, while
  her four daughters looked upon Jesus as their elder brother. Jesus often went
  out fishing with James, John, and David, and they learned that he was an
  experienced fisherman as well as an expert boatbuilder.



  129:1.6 All this year Jesus sent money each month to James. He returned to
  Nazareth in October to attend Martha's wedding, and he was not again in
  Nazareth for over two years, when he returned shortly before the double
  wedding of Simon and Jude.



  129:1.7 Throughout this year Jesus built boats and continued to observe how
  men lived on earth. Frequently he would go down to visit at the caravan
  station, Capernaum being on the direct travel route from Damascus to the
  south. Capernaum was a strong Roman military post, and the garrison's
  commanding officer was a gentile believer in Yahweh, "a devout man," as the
  Jews were wont to designate such proselytes. This officer belonged to a
  wealthy Roman family, and he took it upon himself to build a beautiful
  synagogue in Capernaum, which had been presented to the Jews a short time
  before Jesus came to live with Zebedee. Jesus conducted the services in this
  new synagogue more than half the time this year, and some of the caravan
  people who chanced to attend remembered him as the carpenter from Nazareth.

  129:1.8 When it came to the payment of taxes, Jesus registered himself as a
  "skilled craftsman of Capernaum." From this day on to the end of his earth
  life he was known as a resident of Capernaum. He never claimed any other legal
  residence, although he did, for various reasons, permit others to assign his
  residence to Damascus, Bethany, Nazareth, and even Alexandria.

  129:1.9 At the Capernaum synagogue he found many new books in the library
  chests, and he spent at least five evenings a week at intense study. One
  evening he devoted to social life with the older folks, and one evening he
  spent with the young people. There was something gracious and inspiring about
  the personality of Jesus which invariably attracted young people. He always
  made them feel at ease in his presence. Perhaps his great secret in getting
  along with them consisted in the twofold fact that he was always interested in
  what they were doing, while he seldom offered them advice unless they asked
  for it.

  129:1.10 The Zebedee family almost worshiped Jesus, and they never failed to
  attend the conferences of questions and answers which he conducted each
  evening after supper before he departed for the synagogue to study. The
  youthful neighbors also came in frequently to attend these after-supper
  meetings. To these little gatherings Jesus gave varied and advanced
  instruction, just as advanced as they could comprehend. He talked quite freely
  with them, expressing his ideas and ideals about politics, sociology, science,
  and philosophy, but never presumed to speak with authoritative finality except
  when discussing religion -- the relation of man to God.

  129:1.11 Once a week Jesus held a meeting with the entire household, shop, and
  shore helpers, for Zebedee had many employees. And it was among these workers
  that Jesus was first called "the Master." They all loved him. He enjoyed his
  labors with Zebedee in Capernaum, but he missed the children playing out by
  the side of the Nazareth carpenter shop.

  129:1.12 Of the sons of Zebedee, James was the most interested in Jesus as a
  teacher, as a philosopher. John cared most for his religious teaching and
  opinions. David respected him as a mechanic but took little stock in his
  religious views and philosophic teachings.

  129:1.13 Frequently Jude came over on the Sabbath to hear Jesus talk in the
  synagogue and would tarry to visit with him. And the more Jude saw of his
  eldest brother, the more he became convinced that Jesus was a truly great man.



  129:1.14 This year Jesus made great advances in the ascendant mastery of his
  human mind and attained new and high levels of conscious contact with his
  indwelling Thought Adjuster.

  129:1.15 This was the last year of his settled life. Never again did Jesus
  spend a whole year in one place or at one undertaking. The days of his earth
  pilgrimages were rapidly approaching. Periods of intense activity were not far
  in the future, but there were now about to intervene between his simple but
  intensely active life of the past and his still more intense and strenuous
  public ministry, a few years of extensive travel and highly diversified
  personal activity. His training as a man of the realm had to be completed
  before he could enter upon his career of teaching and preaching as the
  perfected God-man of the divine and posthuman phases of his Urantia bestowal.





2. THE TWENTY-EIGHTH YEAR (A.D. 22)



  129:2.1 In March, A.D. 22, Jesus took leave of Zebedee and of Capernaum. He
  asked for a small sum of money to defray his expenses to Jerusalem. While
  working with Zebedee he had drawn only small sums of money, which each month
  he would send to the family at Nazareth. One month Joseph would come down to
  Capernaum for the money; the next month Jude would come over to Capernaum, get
  the money from Jesus, and take it up to Nazareth. Jude's fishing headquarters
  was only a few miles south of Capernaum.

  129:2.2 When Jesus took leave of Zebedee's family, he agreed to remain in
  Jerusalem until Passover time, and they all promised to be present for that
  event. They even arranged to celebrate the Passover supper together. They all
  sorrowed when Jesus left them, especially the daughters of Zebedee.



  129:2.3 Before leaving Capernaum, Jesus had a long talk with his new-found
  friend and close companion, John Zebedee. He told John that he contemplated
  traveling extensively until "my hour shall come" and asked John to act in his
  stead in the matter of sending some money to the family at Nazareth each month
  until the funds due him should be exhausted. And John made him this promise:
  "My Teacher, go about your business, do your work in the world; I will act for
  you in this or any other matter, and I will watch over your family even as I
  would foster my own mother and care for my own brothers and sisters. I will
  disburse your funds which my father holds as you have directed and as they may
  be needed, and when your money has been expended, if I do not receive more
  from you, and if your mother is in need, then will I share my own earnings
  with her. Go your way in peace. I will act in your stead in all these
  matters."

  129:2.4 Therefore, after Jesus had departed for Jerusalem, John consulted with
  his father, Zebedee, regarding the money due Jesus, and he was surprised that
  it was such a large sum. As Jesus had left the matter so entirely in their
  hands, they agreed that it would be the better plan to invest these funds in
  property and use the income for assisting the family at Nazareth; and since
  Zebedee knew of a little house in Capernaum which carried a mortgage and was
  for sale, he directed John to buy this house with Jesus' money and hold the
  title in trust for his friend. And John did as his father advised him. For two
  years the rent of this house was applied on the mortgage, and this, augmented
  by a certain large fund which Jesus presently sent up to John to be used as
  needed by the family, almost equaled the amount of this obligation; and
  Zebedee supplied the difference, so that John paid up the remainder of the
  mortgage when it fell due, thereby securing clear title to this two-room
  house. In this way Jesus became the owner of a house in Capernaum, but he had
  not been told about it.



  129:2.5 When the family at Nazareth heard that Jesus had departed from
  Capernaum, they, not knowing of this financial arrangement with John, believed
  the time had come for them to get along without any further help from Jesus.
  James remembered his contract with Jesus and, with the help of his brothers,
  forthwith assumed full responsibility for the care of the family.



  129:2.6 But let us go back to observe Jesus in Jerusalem. For almost two
  months he spent the greater part of his time listening to the temple
  discussions with occasional visits to the various schools of the rabbis. Most
  of the Sabbath days he spent at Bethany.

  129:2.7 Jesus had carried with him to Jerusalem a letter from Salome,
  Zebedee's wife, introducing him to the former high priest, Annas, as "one, the
  same as my own son." Annas spent much time with him, personally taking him to
  visit the many academies of the Jerusalem religious teachers. While Jesus
  thoroughly inspected these schools and carefully observed their methods of
  teaching, he never so much as asked a single question in public. Although
  Annas looked upon Jesus as a great man, he was puzzled as to how to advise
  him. He recognized the foolishness of suggesting that he enter any of the
  schools of Jerusalem as a student, and yet he well knew Jesus would never be
  accorded the status of a regular teacher inasmuch as he had never been trained
  in these schools.

  129:2.8 Presently the time of the Passover drew near, and along with the
  throngs from every quarter there arrived at Jerusalem from Capernaum, Zebedee
  and his entire family. They all stopped at the spacious home of Annas, where
  they celebrated the Passover as one happy family.



  129:2.9 Before the end of this Passover week, by apparent chance, Jesus met a
  wealthy traveler and his son, a young man about seventeen years of age. These
  travelers hailed from India, and being on their way to visit Rome and various
  other points on the Mediterranean, they had arranged to arrive in Jerusalem
  during the Passover, hoping to find someone whom they could engage as
  interpreter for both and tutor for the son. The father was insistent that
  Jesus consent to travel with them. Jesus told him about his family and that it
  was hardly fair to go away for almost two years, during which time they might
  find themselves in need. Whereupon, this traveler from the Orient proposed to
  advance to Jesus the wages of one year so that he could intrust such funds to
  his friends for the safeguarding of his family against want. And Jesus agreed
  to make the trip.

  129:2.10 Jesus turned this large sum over to John the son of Zebedee. And you
  have been told how John applied this money toward the liquidation of the
  mortgage on the Capernaum property. Jesus took Zebedee fully into his
  confidence regarding this Mediterranean journey, but he enjoined him to tell
  no man, not even his own flesh and blood, and Zebedee never did disclose his
  knowledge of Jesus' whereabouts during this long period of almost two years.
  Before Jesus' return from this trip the family at Nazareth had just about
  given him up as dead. Only the assurances of Zebedee, who went up to Nazareth
  with his son John on several occasions, kept hope alive in Mary's heart.



  129:2.11 During this time the Nazareth family got along very well; Jude had
  considerably increased his quota and kept up this extra contribution until he
  was married. Notwithstanding that they required little assistance, it was the
  practice of John Zebedee to take presents each month to Mary and Ruth, as
  Jesus had instructed him.





3. THE TWENTY-NINTH YEAR (A.D. 23)



  129:3.1 The whole of Jesus' twenty-ninth year was spent finishing up the tour
  of the Mediterranean world. The main events, as far as we have permission to
  reveal these experiences, constitute the subjects of the narratives which
  immediately follow this paper.



  129:3.2 Throughout this tour of the Roman world, for many reasons, Jesus was
  known as the Damascus scribe. At Corinth and other stops on the return trip he
  was, however, known as the Jewish tutor.

  129:3.3 This was an eventful period in Jesus' life. While on this journey he
  made many contacts with his fellow men, but this experience is a phase of his
  life which he never revealed to any member of his family nor to any of the
  apostles. Jesus lived out his life in the flesh and departed from this world
  without anyone (save Zebedee of Bethsaida) knowing that he had made this
  extensive trip. Some of his friends thought he had returned to Damascus;
  others thought he had gone to India. His own family inclined to the belief
  that he was in Alexandria, as they knew that he had once been invited to go
  there for the purpose of becoming an assistant chazan.

  129:3.4 When Jesus returned to Palestine, he did nothing to change the opinion
  of his family that he had gone from Jerusalem to Alexandria; he permitted them
  to continue in the belief that all the time he had been absent from Palestine
  had been spent in that city of learning and culture. Only Zebedee the
  boatbuilder of Bethsaida knew the facts about these matters, and Zebedee told
  no one.



  129:3.5 In all your efforts to decipher the meaning of Jesus' life on Urantia,
  you must be mindful of the motivation of the Michael bestowal. If you would
  comprehend the meaning of many of his apparently strange doings, you must
  discern the purpose of his sojourn on your world. He was consistently careful
  not to build up an overattractive and attention-consuming personal career. He
  wanted to make no unusual or overpowering appeals to his fellow men. He was
  dedicated to the work of revealing the heavenly Father to his fellow mortals
  and at the same time was consecrated to the sublime task of living his mortal
  earth life all the while subject to the will of the same Paradise Father.



  129:3.6 It will also always be helpful in understanding Jesus' life on earth
  if all mortal students of this divine bestowal will remember that, while he
  lived this life of incarnation on Urantia, he lived it for his entire
  universe. There was something special and inspiring associated with the life
  he lived in the flesh of mortal nature for every single inhabited sphere
  throughout all the universe of Nebadon. The same is also true of all those
  worlds which have become habitable since the eventful times of his sojourn on
  Urantia. And it will likewise be equally true of all worlds which may become
  inhabited by will creatures in all the future history of this local universe.



  129:3.7 The Son of Man, during the time and through the experiences of this
  tour of the Roman world, practically completed his educational contact-
  training with the diversified peoples of the world of his day and generation.
  By the time of his return to Nazareth, through the medium of this travel-
  training he had just about learned how man lived and wrought out his existence
  on Urantia.

  129:3.8 The real purpose of his trip around the Mediterranean basin was to
  know men. He came very close to hundreds of humankind on this journey. He met
  and loved all manner of men, rich and poor, high and low, black and white,
  educated and uneducated, cultured and uncultured, animalistic and spiritual,
  religious and irreligious, moral and immoral.

  129:3.9 On this Mediterranean journey Jesus made great advances in his human
  task of mastering the material and mortal mind, and his indwelling Adjuster
  made great progress in the ascension and spiritual conquest of this same human
  intellect. By the end of this tour Jesus virtually knew -- with all human
  certainty -- that he was a Son of God, a Creator Son of the Universal Father.
  The Adjuster more and more was able to bring up in the mind of the Son of Man
  shadowy memories of his Paradise experience in association with his divine
  Father ere he ever came to organize and administer this local universe of
  Nebadon. Thus did the Adjuster, little by little, bring to Jesus' human
  consciousness those necessary memories of his former and divine existence in
  the various epochs of the well-nigh eternal past. The last episode of his
  prehuman experience to be brought forth by the Adjuster was his farewell
  conference with Immanuel of Salvington just before his surrender of conscious
  personality to embark upon the Urantia incarnation. And this final memory
  picture of prehuman existence was made clear in Jesus' consciousness on the
  very day of his baptism by John in the Jordan.





4. THE HUMAN JESUS



  129:4.1 To the onlooking celestial intelligences of the local universe, this
  Mediterranean trip was the most enthralling of all Jesus' earth experiences,
  at least of all his career right up to the event of his crucifixion and mortal
  death. This was the fascinating period of his personal ministry in contrast
  with the soon-following epoch of public ministry. This unique episode was all
  the more engrossing because he was at this time still the carpenter of
  Nazareth, the boatbuilder of Capernaum, the scribe of Damascus; he was still
  the Son of Man. He had not yet achieved the complete mastery of his human
  mind; the Adjuster had not fully mastered and counterparted the mortal
  identity. He was still a man among men.

  129:4.2 The purely human religious experience -- the personal spiritual growth
  -- of the Son of Man well-nigh reached the apex of attainment during this, the
  twenty-ninth year. This experience of spiritual development was a consistently
  gradual growth from the moment of the arrival of his Thought Adjuster until
  the day of the completion and confirmation of that natural and normal human
  relationship between the material mind of man and the mind-endowment of the
  spirit -- the phenomenon of the making of these two minds one, the experience
  which the Son of Man attained in completion and finality, as an incarnated
  mortal of the realm, on the day of his baptism in the Jordan.

  129:4.3 Throughout these years, while he did not appear to engage in so many
  seasons of formal communion with his Father in heaven, he perfected
  increasingly effective methods of personal communication with the indwelling
  spirit presence of the Paradise Father. He lived a real life, a full life, and
  a truly normal, natural, and average life in the flesh. He knows from personal
  experience the equivalent of the actuality of the entire sum and substance of
  the living of the life of human beings on the material worlds of time and
  space.

  129:4.4 The Son of Man experienced those wide ranges of human emotion which
  reach from superb joy to profound sorrow. He was a child of joy and a being of
  rare good humor; likewise was he a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."
  In a spiritual sense, he did live through the mortal life from the bottom to
  the top, from the beginning to the end. From a material point of view, he
  might appear to have escaped living through both social extremes of human
  existence, but intellectually he became wholly familiar with the entire and
  complete experience of humankind.

  129:4.5 Jesus knows about the thoughts and feelings, the urges and impulses,
  of the evolutionary and ascendant mortals of the realms, from birth to death.
  He has lived the human life from the beginnings of physical, intellectual, and
  spiritual selfhood up through infancy, childhood, youth, and adulthood -- even
  to the human experience of death. He not only passed through these usual and
  familiar human periods of intellectual and spiritual advancement, but he also
  fully experienced those higher and more advanced phases of human and Adjuster
  reconciliation which so few Urantia mortals ever attain. And thus he
  experienced the full life of mortal man, not only as it is lived on your
  world, but also as it is lived on all other evolutionary worlds of time and
  space, even on the highest and most advanced of all the worlds settled in
  light and life.

  129:4.6 Although this perfect life which he lived in the likeness of mortal
  flesh may not have received the unqualified and universal approval of his
  fellow mortals, those who chanced to be his contemporaries on earth, still,
  the life which Jesus of Nazareth lived in the flesh and on Urantia did receive
  full and unqualified acceptance by the Universal Father as constituting at one
  and the same time, and in one and the same personality-life, the fullness of
  the revelation of the eternal God to mortal man and the presentation of
  perfected human personality to the satisfaction of the Infinite Creator.

  129:4.7 And this was his true and supreme purpose. He did not come down to
  live on Urantia as the perfect and detailed example for any child or adult,
  any man or woman, in that age or any other. True it is, indeed, that in his
  full, rich, beautiful, and noble life we may all find much that is exquisitely
  exemplary, divinely inspiring, but this is because he lived a true and
  genuinely human life. Jesus did not live his life on earth in order to set an
  example for all other human beings to copy. He lived this life in the flesh by
  the same mercy ministry that you all may live your lives on earth; and as he
  lived his mortal life in his day and as he was, so did he thereby set the
  example for all of us thus to live our lives in our day and as we are. You may
  not aspire to live his life, but you can resolve to live your lives even as,
  and by the same means that, he lived his. Jesus may not be the technical and
  detailed example for all the mortals of all ages on all the realms of this
  local universe, but he is everlastingly the inspiration and guide of all
  Paradise pilgrims from the worlds of initial ascension up through a universe
  of universes and on through Havona to Paradise. Jesus is the new and living
  way from man to God, from the partial to the perfect, from the earthly to the
  heavenly, from time to eternity.



  129:4.8 By the end of the twenty-ninth year Jesus of Nazareth had virtually
  finished the living of the life required of mortals as sojourners in the
  flesh. He came on earth the fullness of God to be manifest to man; he had now
  become well-nigh the perfection of man awaiting the occasion to become
  manifest to God. And he did all of this before he was thirty years of age.


PAPER 130


 ON THE WAY TO ROME

  130:0.1 THE tour of the Roman world consumed most of the twenty-eighth and the
  entire twenty-ninth year of Jesus' life on earth. Jesus and the two natives
  from India -- Gonod and his son Ganid -- left Jerusalem on a Sunday morning,
  April 26, A.D. 22. They made their journey according to schedule, and Jesus
  said good-bye to the father and son in the city of Charax on the Persian Gulf
  on the tenth day of December the following year, A.D. 23.

  130:0.2 From Jerusalem they went to Caesarea by way of Joppa. At Caesarea they
  took a boat for Alexandria. From Alexandria they sailed for Lasea in Crete.
  From Crete they sailed for Carthage, touching at Cyrene. At Carthage they took
  a boat for Naples, stopping at Malta, Syracuse, and Messina. From Naples they
  went to Capua, whence they traveled by the Appian Way to Rome.

  130:0.3 After their stay in Rome they went overland to Tarentum, where they
  set sail for Athens in Greece, stopping at Nicopolis and Corinth. From Athens
  they went to Ephesus by way of Troas. From Ephesus they sailed for Cyprus,
  putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent considerable time visiting and
  resting on Cyprus and then sailed for Antioch in Syria. From Antioch they
  journeyed south to Sidon and then went over to Damascus. From there they
  traveled by caravan to Mesopotamia, passing through Thapsacus and Larissa.
  They spent some time in Babylon, visited Ur and other places, and then went to
  Susa. From Susa they journeyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ganid
  embarked for India.

  130:0.4 It was while working four months at Damascus that Jesus had picked up
  the rudiments of the language spoken by Gonod and Ganid. While there he had
  labored much of the time on translations from Greek into one of the languages
  of India, being assisted by a native of Gonod's home district.

  130:0.5 On this Mediterranean tour Jesus spent about half of each day teaching
  Ganid and acting as interpreter during Gonod's business conferences and social
  contacts. The remainder of each day, which was at his disposal, he devoted to
  making those close personal contacts with his fellow men, those intimate
  associations with the mortals of the realm, which so characterized his
  activities during these years that just preceded his public ministry.

  130:0.6 From firsthand observation and actual contact Jesus acquainted himself
  with the higher material and intellectual civilization of the Occident and the
  Levant; from Gonod and his brilliant son he learned a great deal about the
  civilization and culture of India and China, for Gonod, himself a citizen of
  India, had made three extensive trips to the empire of the yellow race.

  130:0.7 Ganid, the young man, learned much from Jesus during this long and
  intimate association. They developed a great affection for each other, and the
  lad's father many times tried to persuade Jesus to return with them to India,
  but Jesus always declined, pleading the necessity for returning to his family
  in Palestine.



1. AT JOPPA -- DISCOURSE ON JONAH

  130:1.1 During their stay in Joppa, Jesus met Gadiah, a Philistine interpreter
  who worked for one Simon a tanner. Gonod's agents in Mesopotamia had
  transacted much business with this Simon; so Gonod and his son desired to pay
  him a visit on their way to Caesarea. While they tarried at Joppa, Jesus and
  Gadiah became warm friends. This young Philistine was a truth seeker. Jesus
  was a truth giver; he was the truth for that generation on Urantia. When a
  great truth seeker and a great truth giver meet, the result is a great and
  liberating enlightenment born of the experience of new truth.

  130:1.2 One day after the evening meal Jesus and the young Philistine strolled
  down by the sea, and Gadiah, not knowing that this "scribe of Damascus" was so
  well versed in the Hebrew traditions, pointed out to Jesus the ship landing
  from which it was reputed that Jonah had embarked on his ill-fated voyage to
  Tarshish. And when he had concluded his remarks, he asked Jesus this question:
  "But do you suppose the big fish really did swallow Jonah?" Jesus perceived
  that this young man's life had been tremendously influenced by this tradition,
  and that its contemplation had impressed upon him the folly of trying to run
  away from duty; Jesus therefore said nothing that would suddenly destroy the
  foundations of Gadiah's present motivation for practical living. In answering
  this question, Jesus said: "My friend, we are all Jonahs with lives to live in
  accordance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to escape the
  present duty of living by running away to far-off enticements, we thereby put
  ourselves in the immediate control of those influences which are not directed
  by the powers of truth and the forces of righteousness. The flight from duty
  is the sacrifice of truth. The escape from the service of light and life can
  only result in those distressing conflicts with the difficult whales of
  selfishness which lead eventually to darkness and death unless such God-
  forsaking Jonahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of
  despair, to seek after God and his goodness. And when such disheartened souls
  sincerely seek for God -- hunger for truth and thirst for righteousness --
  there is nothing that can hold them in further captivity. No matter into what
  great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole
  heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will deliver them from their
  captivity; the evil circumstances of life will spew them out upon the dry land
  of fresh opportunities for renewed service and wiser living."

  130:1.3 Gadiah was mightily moved by Jesus' teaching, and they talked long
  into the night by the seaside, and before they went to their lodgings, they
  prayed together and for each other. This was the same Gadiah who listened to
  the later preaching of Peter, became a profound believer in Jesus of Nazareth,
  and held a memorable argument with Peter one evening at the home of Dorcas.
  And Gadiah had very much to do with the final decision of Simon, the wealthy
  leather merchant, to embrace Christianity.

  130:1.4 (In this narrative of the personal work of Jesus with his fellow
  mortals on this tour of the Mediterranean, we shall, in accordance with our
  permission, freely translate his words into modern phraseology current on
  Urantia at the time of this presentation.)

  130:1.5 Jesus' last visit with Gadiah had to do with a discussion of good and
  evil. This young Philistine was much troubled by a feeling of injustice
  because of the presence of evil in the world alongside the good. He said: "How
  can God, if he is infinitely good, permit us to suffer the sorrows of evil;
  after all, who creates evil?" It was still believed by many in those days that
  God creates both good and evil, but Jesus never taught such error. In
  answering this question, Jesus said: "My brother, God is love; therefore he
  must be good, and his goodness is so great and real that it cannot contain the
  small and unreal things of evil. God is so positively good that there is
  absolutely no place in him for negative evil. Evil is the immature choosing
  and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful
  of beauty, and disloyal to truth. Evil is only the misadaptation of immaturity
  or the disruptive and distorting influence of ignorance. Evil is the
  inevitable darkness which follows upon the heels of the unwise rejection of
  light. Evil is that which is dark and untrue, and which, when consciously
  embraced and willfully endorsed, becomes sin.

  130:1.6 "Your Father in heaven, by endowing you with the power to choose
  between truth and error, created the potential negative of the positive way of
  light and life; but such errors of evil are really nonexistent until such a
  time as an intelligent creature wills their existence by mischoosing the way
  of life. And then are such evils later exalted into sin by the knowing and
  deliberate choice of such a willful and rebellious creature. This is why our
  Father in heaven permits the good and the evil to go along together until the
  end of life, just as nature allows the wheat and the tares to grow side by
  side until the harvest." Gadiah was fully satisfied with Jesus' answer to his
  question after their subsequent discussion had made clear to his mind the real
  meaning of these momentous statements.





2. AT CAESAREA



  130:2.1 Jesus and his friends tarried in Caesarea beyond the time expected
  because one of the huge steering paddles of the vessel on which they intended
  to embark was discovered to be in danger of cleaving. The captain decided to
  remain in port while a new one was being made. There was a shortage of skilled
  woodworkers for this task, so Jesus volunteered to assist. During the evenings
  Jesus and his friends strolled about on the beautiful wall which served as a
  promenade around the port. Ganid greatly enjoyed Jesus' explanation of the
  water system of the city and the technique whereby the tides were utilized to
  flush the city's streets and sewers. This youth of India was much impressed
  with the temple of Augustus, situated upon an elevation and surmounted by a
  colossal statue of the Roman emperor. The second afternoon of their stay the
  three of them attended a performance in the enormous amphitheater which could
  seat twenty thousand persons, and that night they went to a Greek play at the
  theater. These were the first exhibitions of this sort Ganid had ever
  witnessed, and he asked Jesus many questions about them. On the morning of the
  third day they paid a formal visit to the governor's palace, for Caesarea was
  the capital of Palestine and the residence of the Roman procurator.

  130:2.2 At their inn there also lodged a merchant from Mongolia, and since
  this Far-Easterner talked Greek fairly well, Jesus had several long visits
  with him. This man was much impressed with Jesus' philosophy of life and never
  forgot his words of wisdom regarding "the living of the heavenly life while on
  earth by means of daily submission to the will of the heavenly Father." This
  merchant was a Taoist, and he had thereby become a strong believer in the
  doctrine of a universal Deity. When he returned to Mongolia, he began to teach
  these advanced truths to his neighbors and to his business associates, and as
  a direct result of such activities, his eldest son decided to become a Taoist
  priest. This young man exerted a great influence in behalf of advanced truth
  throughout his lifetime and was followed by a son and a grandson who likewise
  were devotedly loyal to the doctrine of the One God -- the Supreme Ruler of
  Heaven.

  130:2.3 While the eastern branch of the early Christian church, having its
  headquarters at Philadelphia, held more faithfully to the teachings of Jesus
  than did the Jerusalem brethren, it was regrettable that there was no one like
  Peter to go into China, or like Paul to enter India, where the spiritual soil
  was then so favorable for planting the seed of the new gospel of the kingdom.
  These very teachings of Jesus, as they were held by the Philadelphians, would
  have made just such an immediate and effective appeal to the minds of the
  spiritually hungry Asiatic peoples as did the preaching of Peter and Paul in
  the West.

  130:2.4 One of the young men who worked with Jesus one day on the steering
  paddle became much interested in the words which he dropped from hour to hour
  as they toiled in the shipyard. When Jesus intimated that the Father in heaven
  was interested in the welfare of his children on earth, this young Greek,
  Anaxand, said: "If the Gods are interested in me, then why do they not remove
  the cruel and unjust foreman of this workshop?" He was startled when Jesus
  replied, "Since you know the ways of kindness and value justice, perhaps the
  Gods have brought this erring man near that you may lead him into this better
  way. Maybe you are the salt which is to make this brother more agreeable to
  all other men; that is, if you have not lost your savor. As it is, this man is
  your master in that his evil ways unfavorably influence you. Why not assert
  your mastery of evil by virtue of the power of goodness and thus become the
  master of all relations between the two of you? I predict that the good in you
  could overcome the evil in him if you gave it a fair and living chance. There
  is no adventure in the course of mortal existence more enthralling than to
  enjoy the exhilaration of becoming the material life partner with spiritual
  energy and divine truth in one of their triumphant struggles with error and
  evil. It is a marvelous and transforming experience to become the living
  channel of spiritual light to the mortal who sits in spiritual darkness. If
  you are more blessed with truth than is this man, his need should challenge
  you. Surely you are not the coward who could stand by on the seashore and
  watch a fellow man who could not swim perish! How much more of value is this
  man's soul floundering in darkness compared to his body drowning in water!"

  130:2.5 Anaxand was mightily moved by Jesus' words. Presently he told his
  superior what Jesus had said, and that night they both sought Jesus' advice as
  to the welfare of their souls. And later on, after the Christian message had
  been proclaimed in Caesarea, both of these men, one a Greek and the other a
  Roman, believed Philip's preaching and became prominent members of the church
  which he founded. Later this young Greek was appointed the steward of a Roman
  centurion, Cornelius, who became a believer through Peter's ministry. Anaxand
  continued to minister light to those who sat in darkness until the days of
  Paul's imprisonment at Caesarea, when he perished, by accident, in the great
  slaughter of twenty thousand Jews while he ministered to the suffering and
  dying.

  130:2.6 Ganid was, by this time, beginning to learn how his tutor spent his
  leisure in this unusual personal ministry to his fellow men, and the young
  Indian set about to find out the motive for these incessant activities. He
  asked, "Why do you occupy yourself so continuously with these visits with
  strangers?" And Jesus answered: "Ganid, no man is a stranger to one who knows
  God. In the experience of finding the Father in heaven you discover that all
  men are your brothers, and does it seem strange that one should enjoy the
  exhilaration of meeting a newly discovered brother? To become acquainted with
  one's brothers and sisters, to know their problems and to learn to love them,
  is the supreme experience of living."

  130:2.7 This was a conference which lasted well into the night, in the course
  of which the young man requested Jesus to tell him the difference between the
  will of God and that human mind act of choosing which is also called will. In
  substance Jesus said: The will of God is the way of God, partnership with the
  choice of God in the face of any potential alternative. To do the will of God,
  therefore, is the progressive experience of becoming more and more like God,
  and God is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true.
  The will of man is the way of man, the sum and substance of that which the
  mortal chooses to be and do. Will is the deliberate choice of a self-conscious
  being which leads to decision-conduct based on intelligent reflection.

  130:2.8 That afternoon Jesus and Ganid had both enjoyed playing with a very
  intelligent shepherd dog, and Ganid wanted to know whether the dog had a soul,
  whether it had a will, and in response to his questions Jesus said: "The dog
  has a mind which can know material man, his master, but cannot know God, who
  is spirit; therefore the dog does not possess a spiritual nature and cannot
  enjoy a spiritual experience. The dog may have a will derived from nature and
  augmented by training, but such a power of mind is not a spiritual force,
  neither is it comparable to the human will, inasmuch as it is not reflective
  -- it is not the result of discriminating higher and moral meanings or
  choosing spiritual and eternal values. It is the possession of such powers of
  spiritual discrimination and truth choosing that makes mortal man a moral
  being, a creature endowed with the attributes of spiritual responsibility and
  the potential of eternal survival." Jesus went on to explain that it is the
  absence of such mental powers in the animal which makes it forever impossible
  for the animal world to develop language in time or to experience anything
  equivalent to personality survival in eternity. As a result of this day's
  instruction Ganid never again entertained belief in the transmigration of the
  souls of men into the bodies of animals.

  130:2.9 The next day Ganid talked all this over with his father, and it was in
  answer to Gonod's question that Jesus explained that "human wills which are
  fully occupied with passing only upon temporal decisions having to do with the
  material problems of animal existence are doomed to perish in time. Those who
  make wholehearted moral decisions and unqualified spiritual choices are thus
  progressively identified with the indwelling and divine spirit, and thereby
  are they increasingly transformed into the values of eternal survival --
  unending progression of divine service."

  130:2.10 It was on this same day that we first heard that momentous truth
  which, stated in modern terms, would signify: "Will is that manifestation of
  the human mind which enables the subjective consciousness to express itself
  objectively and to experience the phenomenon of aspiring to be Godlike." And
  it is in this same sense that every reflective and spiritually minded human
  being can become creative.





3. AT ALEXANDRIA

  130:3.1 It had been an eventful visit at Caesarea, and when the boat was
  ready, Jesus and his two friends departed at noon one day for Alexandria in
  Egypt.

  130:3.2 The three enjoyed a most pleasant passage to Alexandria. Ganid was
  delighted with the voyage and kept Jesus busy answering questions. As they
  approached the city's harbor, the young man was thrilled by the great
  lighthouse of Pharos, located on the island which Alexander had joined by a
  mole to the mainland, thus creating two magnificent harbors and thereby making
  Alexandria the maritime commercial crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
  This great lighthouse was one of the seven wonders of the world and was the
  forerunner of all subsequent lighthouses. They arose early in the morning to
  view this splendid lifesaving device of man, and amidst the exclamations of
  Ganid Jesus said: "And you, my son, will be like this lighthouse when you
  return to India, even after your father is laid to rest; you will become like
  the light of life to those who sit about you in darkness, showing all who so
  desire the way to reach the harbor of salvation in safety." And as Ganid
  squeezed Jesus' hand, he said, "I will."

  130:3.3 And again we remark that the early teachers of the Christian religion
  made a great mistake when they so exclusively turned their attention to the
  western civilization of the Roman world. The teachings of Jesus, as they were
  held by the Mesopotamian believers of the first century, would have been
  readily received by the various groups of Asiatic religionists.

  130:3.4 By the fourth hour after landing they were settled near the eastern
  end of the long and broad avenue, one hundred feet wide and five miles long,
  which stretched on out to the western limits of this city of one million
  people. After the first survey of the city's chief attractions -- university
  (museum), library, the royal mausoleum of Alexander, the palace, temple of
  Neptune, theater, and gymnasium -- Gonod addressed himself to business while
  Jesus and Ganid went to the library, the greatest in the world. Here were
  assembled nearly a million manuscripts from all the civilized world: Greece,
  Rome, Palestine, Parthia, India, China, and even Japan. In this library Ganid
  saw the largest collection of Indian literature in all the world; and they
  spent some time here each day throughout their stay in Alexandria. Jesus told
  Ganid about the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek at this place.
  And they discussed again and again all the religions of the world, Jesus
  endeavoring to point out to this young mind the truth in each, always adding:
  "But Yahweh is the God developed from the revelations of Melchizedek and the
  covenant of Abraham. The Jews were the offspring of Abraham and subsequently
  occupied the very land wherein Melchizedek had lived and taught, and from
  which he sent teachers to all the world; and their religion eventually
  portrayed a clearer recognition of the Lord God of Israel as the Universal
  Father in heaven than any other world religion."

  130:3.5 Under Jesus' direction Ganid made a collection of the teachings of all
  those religions of the world which recognized a Universal Deity, even though
  they might also give more or less recognition to subordinate deities. After
  much discussion Jesus and Ganid decided that the Romans had no real God in
  their religion, that their religion was hardly more than emperor worship. The
  Greeks, they concluded, had a philosophy but hardly a religion with a personal
  God. The mystery cults they discarded because of the confusion of their
  multiplicity, and because their varied concepts of Deity seemed to be derived
  from other and older religions.

  130:3.6 Although these translations were made at Alexandria, Ganid did not
  finally arrange these selections and add his own personal conclusions until
  near the end of their sojourn in Rome. He was much surprised to discover that
  the best of the authors of the world's sacred literature all more or less
  clearly recognized the existence of an eternal God and were much in agreement
  with regard to his character and his relationship with mortal man.

  130:3.7 Jesus and Ganid spent much time in the museum during their stay in
  Alexandria. This museum was not a collection of rare objects but rather a
  university of fine art, science, and literature. Learned professors here gave
  daily lectures, and in those times this was the intellectual center of the
  Occidental world. Day by day Jesus interpreted the lectures to Ganid; one day
  during the second week the young man exclaimed: "Teacher Joshua, you know more
  than these professors; you should stand up and tell them the great things you
  have told me; they are befogged by much thinking. I shall speak to my father
  and have him arrange it." Jesus smiled, saying: "You are an admiring pupil,
  but these teachers are not minded that you and I should instruct them. The
  pride of unspiritualized learning is a treacherous thing in human experience.
  The true teacher maintains his intellectual integrity by ever remaining a
  learner."

  130:3.8 Alexandria was the city of the blended culture of the Occident and
  next to Rome the largest and most magnificent in the world. Here was located
  the largest Jewish synagogue in the world, the seat of government of the
  Alexandria Sanhedrin, the seventy ruling elders.

  130:3.9 Among the many men with whom Gonod transacted business was a certain
  Jewish banker, Alexander, whose brother, Philo, was a famous religious
  philosopher of that time. Philo was engaged in the laudable but exceedingly
  difficult task of harmonizing Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology. Ganid and
  Jesus talked much about Philo's teachings and expected to attend some of his
  lectures, but throughout their stay at Alexandria this famous Hellenistic Jew
  lay sick abed.

  130:3.10 Jesus commended to Ganid much in the Greek philosophy and the Stoic
  doctrines, but he impressed upon the lad the truth that these systems of
  belief, like the indefinite teachings of some of his own people, were
  religions only in the sense that they led men to find God and enjoy a living
  experience in knowing the Eternal.



4. DISCOURSE ON REALITY

  130:4.1 The night before they left Alexandria Ganid and Jesus had a long visit
  with one of the government professors at the university who lectured on the
  teachings of Plato. Jesus interpreted for the learned Greek teacher but
  injected no teaching of his own in refutation of the Greek philosophy. Gonod
  was away on business that evening; so, after the professor had departed, the
  teacher and his pupil had a long and heart-to-heart talk about Plato's
  doctrines. While Jesus gave qualified approval of some of the Greek teachings
  which had to do with the theory that the material things of the world are
  shadowy reflections of invisible but more substantial spiritual realities, he
  sought to lay a more trustworthy foundation for the lad's thinking; so he
  began a long dissertation concerning the nature of reality in the universe. In
  substance and in modern phraseology Jesus said to Ganid:

  130:4.2 The source of universe reality is the Infinite. The material things of
  finite creation are the time-space repercussions of the Paradise Pattern and
  the Universal Mind of the eternal God. Causation in the physical world, self-
  consciousness in the intellectual world, and progressing selfhood in the
  spirit world -- these realities, projected on a universal scale, combined in
  eternal relatedness, and experienced with perfection of quality and divinity
  of value -- constitute the reality of the Supreme. But in an ever-changing
  universe the Original Personality of causation, intelligence, and spirit
  experience is changeless, absolute. All things, even in an eternal universe of
  limitless values and divine qualities, may, and oftentimes do, change except
  the Absolutes and that which has attained the physical status, intellectual
  embrace, or spiritual identity which is absolute.

  130:4.3 The highest level to which a finite creature can progress is the
  recognition of the Universal Father and the knowing of the Supreme. And even
  then such beings of finality destiny go on experiencing change in the motions
  of the physical world and in its material phenomena. Likewise do they remain
  aware of selfhood progression in their continuing ascension of the spiritual
  universe and of growing consciousness in their deepening appreciation of, and
  response to, the intellectual cosmos. Only in the perfection, harmony, and
  unanimity of will can the creature become as one with the Creator; and such a
  state of divinity is attained and maintained only by the creature's continuing
  to live in time and eternity by consistently conforming his finite personal
  will to the divine will of the Creator. Always must the desire to do the
  Father's will be supreme in the soul and dominant over the mind of an
  ascending son of God.

  130:4.4 A one-eyed person can never hope to visualize depth of perspective.
  Neither can single-eyed material scientists nor single-eyed spiritual mystics
  and allegorists correctly visualize and adequately comprehend the true depths
  of universe reality. All true values of creature experience are concealed in
  depth of recognition.

  130:4.5 Mindless causation cannot evolve the refined and complex from the
  crude and the simple, neither can spiritless experience evolve the divine
  characters of eternal survival from the material minds of the mortals of time.
  The one attribute of the universe which so exclusively characterizes the
  infinite Deity is this unending creative bestowal of personality which can
  survive in progressive Deity attainment.

  130:4.6 Personality is that cosmic endowment, that phase of universal reality,
  which can coexist with unlimited change and at the same time retain its
  identity in the very presence of all such changes, and forever afterward.

  130:4.7 Life is an adaptation of the original cosmic causation to the demands
  and possibilities of universe situations, and it comes into being by the
  action of the Universal Mind and the activation of the spirit spark of the God
  who is spirit. The meaning of life is its adaptability; the value of life is
  its progressability -- even to the heights of God-consciousness.

  130:4.8 Misadaptation of self-conscious life to the universe results in cosmic
  disharmony. Final divergence of personality will from the trend of the
  universes terminates in intellectual isolation, personality segregation. Loss
  of the indwelling spirit pilot supervenes in spiritual cessation of existence.
  Intelligent and progressing life becomes then, in and of itself, an
  incontrovertible proof of the existence of a purposeful universe expressing
  the will of a divine Creator. And this life, in the aggregate, struggles
  toward higher values, having for its final goal the Universal Father.

  130:4.9 Only in degree does man possess mind above the animal level aside from
  the higher and quasi-spiritual ministrations of intellect. Therefore animals
  (not having worship and wisdom) cannot experience superconsciousness,
  consciousness of consciousness. The animal mind is only conscious of the
  objective universe.

  130:4.10 Knowledge is the sphere of the material or fact-discerning mind.
  Truth is the domain of the spiritually endowed intellect that is conscious of
  knowing God. Knowledge is demonstrable; truth is experienced. Knowledge is a
  possession of the mind; truth an experience of the soul, the progressing self.
  Knowledge is a function of the nonspiritual level; truth is a phase of the
  mind-spirit level of the universes. The eye of the material mind perceives a
  world of factual knowledge; the eye of the spiritualized intellect discerns a
  world of true values. These two views, synchronized and harmonized, reveal the
  world of reality, wherein wisdom interprets the phenomena of the universe in
  terms of progressive personal experience.

  130:4.11 Error (evil) is the penalty of imperfection. The qualities of
  imperfection or facts of misadaptation are disclosed on the material level by
  critical observation and by scientific analysis; on the moral level, by human
  experience. The presence of evil constitutes proof of the inaccuracies of mind
  and the immaturity of the evolving self. Evil is, therefore, also a measure of
  imperfection in universe interpretation. The possibility of making mistakes is
  inherent in the acquisition of wisdom, the scheme of progressing from the
  partial and temporal to the complete and eternal, from the relative and
  imperfect to the final and perfected. Error is the shadow of relative
  incompleteness which must of necessity fall across man's ascending universe
  path to Paradise perfection. Error (evil) is not an actual universe quality;
  it is simply the observation of a relativity in the relatedness of the
  imperfection of the incomplete finite to the ascending levels of the Supreme
  and Ultimate.

  130:4.12 Although Jesus told all this to the lad in language best suited to
  his comprehension, at the end of the discussion Ganid was heavy of eye and was
  soon lost in slumber. They rose early the next morning to go aboard the boat
  bound for Lasea on the island of Crete. But before they embarked, the lad had
  still further questions to ask about evil, to which Jesus replied:

  130:4.13 Evil is a relativity concept. It arises out of the observation of the
  imperfections which appear in the shadow cast by a finite universe of things
  and beings as such a cosmos obscures the living light of the universal
  expression of the eternal realities of the Infinite One.

  130:4.14 Potential evil is inherent in the necessary incompleteness of the
  revelation of God as a time-space-limited expression of infinity and eternity.
  The fact of the partial in the presence of the complete constitutes relativity
  of reality, creates necessity for intellectual choosing, and establishes value
  levels of spirit recognition and response. The incomplete and finite concept
  of the Infinite which is held by the temporal and limited creature mind is, in
  and of itself, potential evil. But the augmenting error of unjustified
  deficiency in reasonable spiritual rectification of these originally inherent
  intellectual disharmonies and spiritual insufficiencies, is equivalent to the
  realization of actual evil.

  130:4.15 All static, dead, concepts are potentially evil. The finite shadow of
  relative and living truth is continually moving. Static concepts invariably
  retard science, politics, society, and religion. Static concepts may represent
  a certain knowledge, but they are deficient in wisdom and devoid of truth. But
  do not permit the concept of relativity so to mislead you that you fail to
  recognize the co-ordination of the universe under the guidance of the cosmic
  mind, and its stabilized control by the energy and spirit of the Supreme.





5. ON THE ISLAND OF CRETE

  130:5.1 The travelers had but one purpose in going to Crete, and that was to
  play, to walk about over the island, and to climb the mountains. The Cretans
  of that time did not enjoy an enviable reputation among the surrounding
  peoples. Nevertheless, Jesus and Ganid won many souls to higher levels of
  thinking and living and thus laid the foundation for the quick reception of
  the later gospel teachings when the first preachers from Jerusalem arrived.
  Jesus loved these Cretans, notwithstanding the harsh words which Paul later
  spoke concerning them when he subsequently sent Titus to the island to
  reorganize their churches.

  130:5.2 On the mountainside in Crete Jesus had his first long talk with Gonod
  regarding religion. And the father was much impressed, saying: "No wonder the
  boy believes everything you tell him, but I never knew they had such a
  religion even in Jerusalem, much less in Damascus." It was during the island
  sojourn that Gonod first proposed to Jesus that he go back to India with them,
  and Ganid was delighted with the thought that Jesus might consent to such an
  arrangement.

  130:5.3 One day when Ganid asked Jesus why he had not devoted himself to the
  work of a public teacher, he said: "My son, everything must await the coming
  of its time. You are born into the world, but no amount of anxiety and no
  manifestation of impatience will help you to grow up. You must, in all such
  matters, wait upon time. Time alone will ripen the green fruit upon the tree.
  Season follows season and sundown follows sunrise only with the passing of
  time. I am now on the way to Rome with you and your father, and that is
  sufficient for today. My tomorrow is wholly in the hands of my Father in
  heaven." And then he told Ganid the story of Moses and the forty years of
  watchful waiting and continued preparation.

  130:5.4 One thing happened on a visit to Fair Havens which Ganid never forgot;
  the memory of this episode always caused him to wish he might do something to
  change the caste system of his native India. A drunken degenerate was
  attacking a slave girl on the public highway. When Jesus saw the plight of the
  girl, he rushed forward and drew the maiden away from the assault of the
  madman. While the frightened child clung to him, he held the infuriated man at
  a safe distance by his powerful extended right arm until the poor fellow had
  exhausted himself beating the air with his angry blows. Ganid felt a strong
  impulse to help Jesus handle the affair, but his father forbade him. Though
  they could not speak the girl's language, she could understand their act of
  mercy and gave token of her heartfelt appreciation as they all three escorted
  her home. This was probably as near a personal encounter with his fellows as
  Jesus ever had throughout his entire life in the flesh. But he had a difficult
  task that evening trying to explain to Ganid why he did not smite the drunken
  man. Ganid thought this man should have been struck at least as many times as
  he had struck the girl.





6. THE YOUNG MAN WHO WAS AFRAID



  130:6.1 While they were up in the mountains, Jesus had a long talk with a
  young man who was fearful and downcast. Failing to derive comfort and courage
  from association with his fellows, this youth had sought the solitude of the
  hills; he had grown up with a feeling of helplessness and inferiority. These
  natural tendencies had been augmented by numerous difficult circumstances
  which the lad had encountered as he grew up, notably, the loss of his father
  when he was twelve years of age. As they met, Jesus said: "Greetings, my
  friend! why so downcast on such a beautiful day? If something has happened to
  distress you, perhaps I can in some manner assist you. At any rate it affords
  me real pleasure to proffer my services."

  130:6.2 The young man was disinclined to talk, and so Jesus made a second
  approach to his soul, saying: "I understand you come up in these hills to get
  away from folks; so, of course, you do not want to talk with me, but I would
  like to know whether you are familiar with these hills; do you know the
  direction of the trails? and, perchance, could you inform me as to the best
  route to Phenix?" Now this youth was very familiar with these mountains, and
  he really became much interested in telling Jesus the way to Phenix, so much
  so that he marked out all the trails on the ground and fully explained every
  detail. But he was startled and made curious when Jesus, after saying good-bye
  and making as if he were taking leave, suddenly turned to him, saying: "I well
  know you wish to be left alone with your disconsolation; but it would be
  neither kind nor fair for me to receive such generous help from you as to how
  best to find my way to Phenix and then unthinkingly to go away from you
  without making the least effort to answer your appealing request for help and
  guidance regarding the best route to the goal of destiny which you seek in
  your heart while you tarry here on the mountainside. As you so well know the
  trails to Phenix, having traversed them many times, so do I well know the way
  to the city of your disappointed hopes and thwarted ambitions. And since you
  have asked me for help, I will not disappoint you." The youth was almost
  overcome, but he managed to stammer out, "But -- I did not ask you for
  anything -- " And Jesus, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, said: "No, son,
  not with words but with longing looks did you appeal to my heart. My boy, to
  one who loves his fellows there is an eloquent appeal for help in your
  countenance of discouragement and despair.

Sit down with me while I tell you of the service trails and happiness highways
which lead from the sorrows of self to the joys of loving activities in the
brotherhood of men and in the service of the God of heaven."

  130:6.3 By this time the young man very much desired to talk with Jesus, and
  he knelt at his feet imploring Jesus to help him, to show him the way of
  escape from his world of personal sorrow and defeat. Said Jesus: "My friend,
  arise! Stand up like a man! You may be surrounded with small enemies and be
  retarded by many obstacles, but the big things and the real things of this
  world and the universe are on your side. The sun rises every morning to salute
  you just as it does the most powerful and prosperous man on earth. Look -- you
  have a strong body and powerful muscles -- your physical equipment is better
  than the average. Of course, it is just about useless while you sit out here
  on the mountainside and grieve over your misfortunes, real and fancied. But
  you could do great things with your body if you would hasten off to where
  great things are waiting to be done. You are trying to run away from your
  unhappy self, but it cannot be done. You and your problems of living are real;
  you cannot escape them as long as you live. But look again, your mind is clear
  and capable. Your strong body has an intelligent mind to direct it. Set your
  mind at work to solve its problems; teach your intellect to work for you;
  refuse longer to be dominated by fear like an unthinking animal. Your mind
  should be your courageous ally in the solution of your life problems rather
  than your being, as you have been, its abject fear-slave and the bond-servant
  of depression and defeat. But most valuable of all, your potential of real
  achievement is the spirit which lives within you, and which will stimulate and
  inspire your mind to control itself and activate the body if you will release
  it from the fetters of fear and thus enable your spiritual nature to begin
  your deliverance from the evils of inaction by the power-presence of living
  faith. And then, forthwith, will this faith vanquish fear of men by the
  compelling presence of that new and all-dominating love of your fellows which
  will so soon fill your soul to overflowing because of the consciousness which
  has been born in your heart that you are a child of God.

  130:6.4 "This day, my son, you are to be reborn, re-established as a man of
  faith, courage, and devoted service to man, for God's sake. And when you
  become so readjusted to life within yourself, you become likewise readjusted
  to the universe; you have been born again -- born of the spirit -- and
  henceforth will your whole life become one of victorious accomplishment.
  Trouble will invigorate you; disappointment will spur you on; difficulties
  will challenge you; and obstacles will stimulate you. Arise, young man! Say
  farewell to the life of cringing fear and fleeing cowardice. Hasten back to
  duty and live your life in the flesh as a son of God, a mortal dedicated to
  the ennobling service of man on earth and destined to the superb and eternal
  service of God in eternity."

  130:6.5 And this youth, Fortune, subsequently became the leader of the
  Christians in Crete and the close associate of Titus in his labors for the
  uplift of the Cretan believers.

  130:6.6 The travelers were truly rested and refreshed when they made ready
  about noon one day to sail for Carthage in northern Africa, stopping for two
  days at Cyrene. It was here that Jesus and Ganid gave first aid to a lad named
  Rufus, who had been injured by the breakdown of a loaded oxcart. They carried
  him home to his mother, and his father, Simon, little dreamed that the man
  whose cross he subsequently bore by orders of a Roman soldier was the stranger
  who once befriended his son.



7. AT CARTHAGE -- DISCOURSE ON TIME AND SPACE



  130:7.1 Most of the time en route to Carthage Jesus talked with his fellow
  travelers about things social, political, and commercial; hardly a word was
  said about religion. For the first time Gonod and Ganid discovered that Jesus
  was a good storyteller, and they kept him busy telling tales about his early
  life in Galilee. They also learned that he was reared in Galilee and not in
  either Jerusalem or Damascus.

  130:7.2 When Ganid inquired what one could do to make friends, having noticed
  that the majority of persons whom they chanced to meet were attracted to
  Jesus, his teacher said: "Become interested in your fellows; learn how to love
  them and watch for the opportunity to do something for them which you are sure
  they want done," and then he quoted the olden Jewish proverb -- "A man who
  would have friends must show himself friendly."

  130:7.3 At Carthage Jesus had a long and memorable talk with a Mithraic priest
  about immortality, about time and eternity. This Persian had been educated at
  Alexandria, and he really desired to learn from Jesus. Put into the words of
  today, in substance Jesus said in answer to his many questions:

  130:7.4 Time is the stream of flowing temporal events perceived by creature
  consciousness. Time is a name given to the succession-arrangement whereby
  events are recognized and segregated. The universe of space is a time-related
  phenomenon as it is viewed from any interior position outside of the fixed
  abode of Paradise. The motion of time is only revealed in relation to
  something which does not move in space as a time phenomenon. In the universe
  of universes Paradise and its Deities transcend both time and space. On the
  inhabited worlds, human personality (indwelt and oriented by the Paradise
  Father's spirit) is the only physically related reality which can transcend
  the material sequence of temporal events.

  130:7.5 Animals do not sense time as does man, and even to man, because of his
  sectional and circumscribed view, time appears as a succession of events; but
  as man ascends, as he progresses inward, the enlarging view of this event
  procession is such that it is discerned more and more in its wholeness. That
  which formerly appeared as a succession of events then will be viewed as a
  whole and perfectly related cycle; in this way will circular simultaneity
  increasingly displace the onetime consciousness of the linear sequence of
  events.

  130:7.6 There are seven different conceptions of space as it is conditioned by
  time. Space is measured by time, not time by space. The confusion of the
  scientist grows out of failure to recognize the reality of space. Space is not
  merely an intellectual concept of the variation in relatedness of universe
  objects. Space is not empty, and the only thing man knows which can even
  partially transcend space is mind. Mind can function independently of the
  concept of the space-relatedness of material objects. Space is relatively and
  comparatively finite to all beings of creature status. The nearer
  consciousness approaches the awareness of seven cosmic dimensions, the more
  does the concept of potential space approach ultimacy. But the space potential
  is truly ultimate only on the absolute level.

  130:7.7 It must be apparent that universal reality has an expanding and always
  relative meaning on the ascending and perfecting levels of the cosmos.
  Ultimately, surviving mortals achieve identity in a seven-dimensional
  universe.

  130:7.8 The time-space concept of a mind of material origin is destined to
  undergo successive enlargements as the conscious and conceiving personality
  ascends the levels of the universes. When man attains the mind intervening
  between the material and the spiritual planes of existence, his ideas of time-
  space will be enormously expanded both as to quality of perception and
  quantity of experience. The enlarging cosmic conceptions of an advancing
  spirit personality are due to augmentations of both depth of insight and scope
  of consciousness. And as personality passes on, upward and inward, to the
  transcendental levels of Deity-likeness, the time-space concept will
  increasingly approximate the timeless and spaceless concepts of the Absolutes.
  Relatively, and in accordance with transcendental attainment, these concepts
  of the absolute level are to be envisioned by the children of ultimate
  destiny.





8. ON THE WAY TO NAPLES AND ROME

  130:8.1 The first stop on the way to Italy was at the island of Malta. Here
  Jesus had a long talk with a downhearted and discouraged young man named
  Claudus. This fellow had contemplated taking his life, but when he had
  finished talking with the scribe of Damascus, he said: "I will face life like
  a man; I am through playing the coward. I will go back to my people and begin
  all over again." Shortly he became an enthusiastic preacher of the Cynics, and
  still later on he joined hands with Peter in proclaiming Christianity in Rome
  and Naples, and after the death of Peter he went on to Spain preaching the
  gospel. But he never knew that the man who inspired him in Malta was the Jesus
  whom he subsequently proclaimed the world's Deliverer.

  130:8.2 At Syracuse they spent a full week. The notable event of their stop
  here was the rehabilitation of Ezra, the backslidden Jew, who kept the tavern
  where Jesus and his companions stopped. Ezra was charmed by Jesus' approach
  and asked him to help him come back to the faith of Israel. He expressed his
  hopelessness by saying, "I want to be a true son of Abraham, but I cannot find
  God." Said Jesus: "If you truly want to find God, that desire is in itself
  evidence that you have already found him. Your trouble is not that you cannot
  find God, for the Father has already found you; your trouble is simply that
  you do not know God. Have you not read in the Prophet Jeremiah, `You shall
  seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart'? And
  again, does not this same prophet say: `And I will give you a heart to know
  me, that I am the Lord, and you shall belong to my people, and I will be your
  God'? And have you not also read in the Scriptures where it says: `He looks
  down upon men, and if any will say: I have sinned and perverted that which was
  right, and it profited me not, then will God deliver that man's soul from
  darkness, and he shall see the light'?" And Ezra found God and to the
  satisfaction of his soul. Later, this Jew, in association with a well-to-do
  Greek proselyte, built the first Christian church in Syracuse.

  130:8.3 At Messina they stopped for only one day, but that was long enough to
  change the life of a small boy, a fruit vendor, of whom Jesus bought fruit and
  in turn fed with the bread of life. The lad never forgot the words of Jesus
  and the kindly look which went with them when, placing his hand on the boy's
  shoulder, he said: "Farewell, my lad, be of good courage as you grow up to
  manhood and after you have fed the body learn how also to feed the soul. And
  my Father in heaven will be with you and go before you." The lad became a
  devotee of the Mithraic religion and later on turned to the Christian faith.

  130:8.4 At last they reached Naples and felt they were not far from their
  destination, Rome. Gonod had much business to transact in Naples, and aside
  from the time Jesus was required as interpreter, he and Ganid spent their
  leisure visiting and exploring the city. Ganid was becoming adept at sighting
  those who appeared to be in need. They found much poverty in this city and
  distributed many alms. But Ganid never understood the meaning of Jesus' words
  when, after he had given a coin to a street beggar, he refused to pause and
  speak comfortingly to the man. Said Jesus: "Why waste words upon one who
  cannot perceive the meaning of what you say? The spirit of the Father cannot
  teach and save one who has no capacity for sonship." What Jesus meant was that
  the man was not of normal mind; that he lacked the ability to respond to
  spirit leading.

  130:8.5 There was no outstanding experience in Naples; Jesus and the young man
  thoroughly canvassed the city and spread good cheer with many smiles upon
  hundreds of men, women, and children.

  130:8.6 From here they went by way of Capua to Rome, making a stop of three
  days at Capua. By the Appian Way they journeyed on beside their pack animals
  toward Rome, all three being anxious to see this mistress of empire and the
  greatest city in all the world.




PAPER 131


 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS



  131:0.1 DURING the Alexandrian sojourn of Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid, the young
  man spent much of his time and no small sum of his father's money making a
  collection of the teachings of the world's religions about God and his
  relations with mortal man. Ganid employed more than threescore learned
  translators in the making of this abstract of the religious doctrines of the
  world concerning the Deities. And it should be made plain in this record that
  all these teachings portraying monotheism were largely derived, directly or
  indirectly, from the preachments of the missionaries of Machiventa
  Melchizedek, who went forth from their Salem headquarters to spread the
  doctrine of one God -- the Most High -- to the ends of the earth.

  131:0.2 There is presented herewith an abstract of Ganid's manuscript, which
  he prepared at Alexandria and Rome, and which was preserved in India for
  hundreds of years after his death. He collected this material under ten heads,
  as follows:





1. CYNICISM

  131:1.1 The residual teachings of the disciples of Melchizedek, excepting
  those which persisted in the Jewish religion, were best preserved in the
  doctrines of the Cynics. Ganid's selection embraced the following:



  131:1.2 "God is supreme; he is the Most High of heaven and earth. God is the
  perfected circle of eternity, and he rules the universe of universes. He is
  the sole maker of the heavens and the earth. When he decrees a thing, that
  thing is. Our God is one God, and he is compassionate and merciful. Everything
  that is high, holy, true, and beautiful is like our God. The Most High is the
  light of heaven and earth; he is the God of the east, the west, the north, and
  the south.

  131:1.3 "Even if the earth should pass away, the resplendent face of the
  Supreme would abide in majesty and glory. The Most High is the first and the
  last, the beginning and the end of everything. There is but this one God, and
  his name is Truth. God is self-existent, and he is devoid of all anger and
  enmity; he is immortal and infinite. Our God is omnipotent and bounteous.
  While he has many manifestations, we worship only God himself. God knows all
  -- our secrets and our proclamations; he also knows what each of us deserves.
  His might is equal to all things.

  131:1.4 "God is a peace giver and a faithful protector of all who fear and
  trust him. He gives salvation to all who serve him. All creation exists in the
  power of the Most High. His divine love springs forth from the holiness of his
  power, and affection is born of the might of his greatness. The Most High has
  decreed the union of body and soul and has endowed man with his own spirit.
  What man does must come to an end, but what the Creator does goes on forever.
  We gain knowledge from the experience of man, but we derive wisdom from the
  contemplation of the Most High.

  131:1.5 "God pours rain upon the earth, he causes the sun to shine upon the
  sprouting grain, and he gives us the abundant harvest of the good things of
  this life and eternal salvation in the world to come. Our God enjoys great
  authority; his name is Excellent and his nature is unfathomable. When you are
  sick, it is the Most High who heals you. God is full of goodness toward all
  men; we have no friend like the Most High. His mercy fills all places and his
  goodness encompasses all souls. The Most High is changeless ; and he is our
  helper in every time of need. Wherever you turn to pray, there is the face of
  the Most High and the open ear of our God. You may hide yourself from men, but
  not from God. God is not a great distance from us; he is omnipresent. God
  fills all places and lives in the heart of the man who fears his holy name.
  Creation is in the Creator and the Creator in his creation. We search for the
  Most High and then find him in our hearts. You go in quest of a dear friend,
  and then you discover him within your soul.

  131:1.6 "The man who knows God looks upon all men as equal; they are his
  brethren. Those who are selfish, those who ignore their brothers in the flesh,
  have only weariness as their reward. Those who love their fellows and who have
  pure hearts shall see God. God never forgets sincerity. He will guide the
  honest of heart into the truth, for God is truth.

  131:1.7 "In your lives overthrow error and overcome evil by the love of the
  living truth. In all your relations with men do good for evil. The Lord God is
  merciful and loving; he is forgiving. Let us love God, for he first loved us.
  By God's love and through his mercy we shall be saved. Poor men and rich men
  are brothers. God is their Father. The evil you would not have done you, do
  not to others.

  131:1.8 "At all times call upon his name, and as you believe in his name, so
  shall your prayer be heard. What a great honor it is to worship the Most High!
  All the worlds and the universes worship the Most High. And with all your
  prayers give thanks -- ascend to worship. Prayerful worship shuns evil and
  forbids sin. At all times let us praise the name of the Most High. The man who
  takes shelter in the Most High conceals his defects from the universe. When
  you stand before God with a clean heart, you become fearless of all creation.
  The Most High is like a loving father and mother; he really loves us, his
  children on earth. Our God will forgive us and guide our footsteps into the
  ways of salvation. He will take us by the hand and lead us to himself. God
  saves those who trust him; he does not compel man to serve his name.

  131:1.9 "If the faith of the Most High has entered your heart, then shall you
  abide free from fear throughout all the days of your life. Fret not yourself
  because of the prosperity of the ungodly; fear not those who plot evil; let
  the soul turn away from sin and put your whole trust in the God of salvation.
  The weary soul of the wandering mortal finds eternal rest in the arms of the
  Most High; the wise man hungers for the divine embrace; the earth child longs
  for the security of the arms of the Universal Father. The noble man seeks for
  that high estate wherein the soul of the mortal blends with the spirit of the
  Supreme. God is just: What fruit we receive not from our plantings in this
  world we shall receive in the next."





2. JUDAISM

  131:2.1 The Kenites of Palestine salvaged much of the teaching of Melchizedek,
  and from these records, as preserved and modified by the Jews, Jesus and Ganid
  made the following selection:



  131:2.2 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and all things
  therein. And, behold, all he created was very good. The Lord, he is God; there
  is none beside him in heaven above or upon the earth beneath. Therefore shall
  you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
  all your might. The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the
  waters cover the sea. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament
  shows his handiwork. Day after day utters speech; night after night shows
  knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. The
  Lord's work is great, and in wisdom has he made all things; the greatness of
  the Lord is unsearchable. He knows the number of the stars; he calls them all
  by their names.

  131:2.3 "The power of the Lord is great and his understanding infinite. Says
  the Lord: `As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
  than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.' God reveals the
  deep and secret things because the light dwells with him. The Lord is merciful
  and gracious; he is long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth. The
  Lord is good and upright; the meek will he guide in judgment. Taste and see
  that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts God. God is our refuge
  and strength, a very present help in trouble.

  131:2.4 "The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon those
  who fear him and his righteousness even to our children's children. The Lord
  is gracious and full of compassion. The Lord is good to all, and his tender
  mercies are over all his creation; he heals the brokenhearted and binds up
  their wounds. Whither shall I go from God's spirit? whither shall I flee from
  the divine presence? Thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity,
  whose name is Holy: `I dwell in the high and holy place; also with him who is
  of a contrite heart and a humble spirit!' None can hide himself from our God,
  for he fills heaven and earth. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth
  rejoice. Let all nations say: The Lord reigns! Give thanks to God, for his
  mercy endures forever.

  131:2.5 "The heavens declare God's righteousness, and all the people have seen
  his glory. It is God who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people,
  the sheep of his pasture. His mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures to
  all generations. Our God is governor among the nations. Let the earth be
  filled with his glory! O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and
  for his wonderful gifts to the children of men!

  131:2.6 "God has made man a little less than divine and has crowned him with
  love and mercy. The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the
  ungodly shall perish. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; the
  knowledge of the Supreme is understanding. Says the Almighty God: `Walk before
  me and be perfect.' Forget not that pride goes before destruction and a
  haughty spirit before a fall. He who rules his own spirit is mightier than he
  who takes a city. Says the Lord God, the Holy One: `In returning to your
  spiritual rest shall you be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your
  strength.' They who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall
  mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall
  walk and not be faint. The Lord shall give you rest from your fear. Says the
  Lord: `Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will
  strengthen you; I will help you; yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of
  my righteousness.'

  131:2.7 "God is our Father; the Lord is our redeemer. God has created the
  universal hosts, and he preserves them all. His righteousness is like the
  mountains and his judgment like the great deep. He causes us to drink of the
  river of his pleasures, and in his light we shall see light. It is good to
  give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to the Most High; to show forth
  loving-kindness in the morning and the divine faithfulness every night. God's
  kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures throughout all
  generations. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie
  down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.
  He leads me in the paths of righteousness. Yes, even though I walk through the
  valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me. Surely
  goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell
  in the house of the Lord forever.

  131:2.8 "Yahweh is the God of my salvation; therefore in the divine name will
  I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not
  upon my own understanding. In all my ways I will acknowledge him, and he shall
  direct my paths. The Lord is faithful; he keeps his word with those who serve
  him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is because sin
  lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not
  yourself because of evildoers. If you regard iniquity in your heart, the Lord
  will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God
  will bring every man's work to judgment with every secret thing, whether it be
  good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

  131:2.9 "The Lord is near all who call upon him in sincerity and in truth.
  Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. A merry heart
  does good like a medicine. No good thing will God withhold from those who walk
  uprightly. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of
  man. Thus says the Lord who created the heavens and who formed the earth:
  `There is no God beside me, a just God and a savior. Look to me and be saved,
  all the ends of the earth. If you seek me, you shall find me if you search for
  me with all your heart.' The meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight
  themselves in the abundance of peace. Whoever sows iniquity shall reap
  calamity; they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

  131:2.10 "`Come now, let us reason together,' says the Lord, `Though your sins
  be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like
  crimson, they shall be as wool.' But there is no peace for the wicked; it is
  your own sins which have withheld the good things from you. God is the health
  of my countenance and the joy of my soul. The eternal God is my strength; he
  is our dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. The Lord is
  near to those who are brokenhearted; he saves all who have a childlike spirit.
  Many are the afflictions of the righteous man, but the Lord delivers him out
  of them all. Commit your way to the Lord -- trust him -- and he will bring it
  to pass. He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under
  the shadow of the Almighty.

  131:2.11 "Love your neighbor as yourself; bear a grudge against no man.
  Whatsoever you hate do to no man. Love your brother, for the Lord has said: `I
  will love my children freely.' The path of the just is as a shining light
  which shines more and more until the perfect day. They who are wise shall
  shine as the brightness of the firmament and they who turn many to
  righteousness as the stars forever and ever. Let the wicked forsake his evil
  way and the unrighteous man his rebellious thoughts. Says the Lord: `Let them
  return to me, and I will have mercy on them; I will abundantly pardon.'

  131:2.12 "Says God, the creator of heaven and earth: `Great peace have they
  who love my law. My commandments are: You shall love me with all your heart;
  you shall have no gods before me; you shall not take my name in vain; remember
  the Sabbath day to keep it holy; honor your father and mother; you shall not
  kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear
  false witness; you shall not covet.'

  131:2.13 "And to all who love the Lord supremely and their neighbors like
  themselves, the God of heaven says: `I will ransom you from the grave; I will
  redeem you from death. I will be merciful to your children, as well as just.
  Have I not said of my creatures on earth, you are the sons of the living God?
  And have I not loved you with an everlasting love? Have I not called you to
  become like me and to dwell forever with me in Paradise?'"





3. BUDDHISM

  131:3.1 Ganid was shocked to discover how near Buddhism came to being a great
  and beautiful religion without God, without a personal and universal Deity.
  However, he did find some record of certain earlier beliefs which reflected
  something of the influence of the teachings of the Melchizedek missionaries
  who continued their work in India even to the times of Buddha. Jesus and Ganid
  collected the following statements from the Buddhist literature:



  131:3.2 "Out of a pure heart shall gladness spring forth to the Infinite; all
  my being shall be at peace with this supermortal rejoicing. My soul is filled
  with content, and my heart overflows with the bliss of peaceful trust. I have
  no fear; I am free from anxiety. I dwell in security, and my enemies cannot
  alarm me. I am satisfied with the fruits of my confidence. I have found the
  approach to the Immortal easy of access. I pray for faith to sustain me on the
  long journey; I know that faith from beyond will not fail me. I know my
  brethren will prosper if they become imbued with the faith of the Immortal,
  even the faith that creates modesty, uprightness, wisdom, courage, knowledge,
  and perseverance. Let us forsake sorrow and disown fear. By faith let us lay
  hold upon true righteousness and genuine manliness. Let us learn to meditate
  on justice and mercy. Faith is man's true wealth; it is the endowment of
  virtue and glory.

  131:3.3 "Unrighteousness is contemptible; sin is despicable. Evil is
  degrading, whether held in thought or wrought out in deeds. Pain and sorrow
  follow in the path of evil as the dust follows the wind. Happiness and peace
  of mind follow pure thinking and virtuous living as the shadow follows the
  substance of material things. Evil is the fruit of wrongly directed thinking.
  It is evil to see sin where there is no sin; to see no sin where there is sin.
  Evil is the path of false doctrines. Those who avoid evil by seeing things as
  they are gain joy by thus embracing the truth. Make an end of your misery by
  loathing sin. When you look up to the Noble One, turn away from sin with a
  whole heart. Make no apology for evil; make no excuse for sin. By your efforts
  to make amends for past sins you acquire strength to resist future tendencies
  thereto. Restraint is born of repentance. Leave no fault unconfessed to the
  Noble One.

  131:3.4 "Cheerfulness and gladness are the rewards of deeds well done and to
  the glory of the Immortal. No man can rob you of the liberty of your own mind.
  When the faith of your religion has emancipated your heart, when the mind,
  like a mountain, is settled and immovable, then shall the peace of the soul
  flow tranquilly like a river of waters. Those who are sure of salvation are
  forever free from lust, envy, hatred, and the delusions of wealth. While faith
  is the energy of the better life, nevertheless, must you work out your own
  salvation with perseverance. If you would be certain of your final salvation,
  then make sure that you sincerely seek to fulfill all righteousness. Cultivate
  the assurance of the heart which springs from within and thus come to enjoy
  the ecstasy of eternal salvation.

  131:3.5 "No religionist may hope to attain the enlightenment of immortal
  wisdom who persists in being slothful, indolent, feeble, idle, shameless, and
  selfish. But whoso is thoughtful, prudent, reflective, fervent, and earnest --
  even while he yet lives on earth -- may attain the supreme enlightenment of
  the peace and liberty of divine wisdom. Remember, every act shall receive its
  reward. Evil results in sorrow and sin ends in pain. Joy and happiness are the
  outcome of a good life. Even the evildoer enjoys a season of grace before the
  time of the full ripening of his evil deeds, but inevitably there must come
  the full harvest of evil-doing. Let no man think lightly of sin, saying in his
  heart: `The penalty of wrongdoing shall not come near me.' What you do shall
  be done to you, in the judgment of wisdom. Injustice done to your fellows
  shall come back upon you. The creature cannot escape the destiny of his deeds.

  131:3.6 "The fool has said in his heart, `Evil shall not overtake me'; but
  safety is found only when the soul craves reproof and the mind seeks wisdom.
  The wise man is a noble soul who is friendly in the midst of his enemies,
  tranquil among the turbulent, and generous among the grasping. Love of self is
  like weeds in a goodly field. Selfishness leads to grief; perpetual care
  kills. The tamed mind yields happiness. He is the greatest of warriors who
  overcomes and subdues himself. Restraint in all things is good. He alone is a
  superior person who esteems virtue and is observant of his duty. Let not anger
  and hate master you. Speak harshly of no one. Contentment is the greatest
  wealth. What is given wisely is well saved. Do not to others those things you
  would not wish done to you. Pay good for evil; overcome evil with the good.

  131:3.7 "A righteous soul is more to be desired than the sovereignty of all
  the earth. Immortality is the goal of sincerity; death, the end of thoughtless
  living. Those who are earnest die not; the thoughtless are dead already.
  Blessed are they who have insight into the deathless state. Those who torture
  the living will hardly find happiness after death. The unselfish go to heaven,
  where they rejoice in the bliss of infinite liberality and continue to
  increase in noble generosity. Every mortal who thinks righteously, speaks
  nobly, and acts unselfishly shall not only enjoy virtue here during this brief
  life but shall also, after the dissolution of the body, continue to enjoy the
  delights of heaven."





4. HINDUISM

  131:4.1 The missionaries of Melchizedek carried the teachings of the one God
  with them wherever they journeyed. Much of this monotheistic doctrine,
  together with other and previous concepts, became embodied in the subsequent
  teachings of Hinduism. Jesus and Ganid made the following excerpts:



  131:4.2 "He is the great God, in every way supreme. He is the Lord who
  encompasses all things. He is the creator and controller of the universe of
  universes. God is one God; he is alone and by himself; he is the only one. And
  this one God is our Maker and the last destiny of the soul. The Supreme One is
  brilliant beyond description; he is the Light of Lights. Every heart and every
  world is illuminated by this divine light. God is our protector -- he stands
  by the side of his creatures -- and those who learn to know him become
  immortal. God is the great source of energy; he is the Great Soul. He
  exercises universal lordship over all. This one God is loving, glorious, and
  adorable. Our God is supreme in power and abides in the supreme abode. This
  true Person is eternal and divine; he is the primal Lord of heaven. All the
  prophets have hailed him, and he has revealed himself to us. We worship him. O
  Supreme Person, source of beings, Lord of creation, and ruler of the universe,
  reveal to us, your creatures, the power whereby you abide immanent! God has
  made the sun and the stars; he is bright, pure, and self-existent. His eternal
  knowledge is divinely wise. The Eternal is unpenetrated by evil. Inasmuch as
  the universe sprang from God, he does rule it appropriately. He is the cause
  of creation, and hence are all things established in him.

  131:4.3 "God is the sure refuge of every good man when in need; the Immortal
  One cares for all mankind. God's salvation is strong and his kindness is
  gracious. He is a loving protector, a blessed defender. Says the Lord: `I
  dwell within their own souls as a lamp of wisdom. I am the splendor of the
  splendid and the goodness of the good. Where two or three gather together,
  there am I also.' The creature cannot escape the presence of the Creator. The
  Lord even counts the ceaseless winking of every mortal's eyes; and we worship
  this divine Being as our inseparable companion. He is all-prevailing,
  bountiful, omnipresent, and infinitely kind. The Lord is our ruler, shelter,
  and supreme controller, and his primeval spirit dwells within the mortal soul.
  The Eternal Witness to vice and virtue dwells within man's heart. Let us long
  meditate on the adorable and divine Vivifier; let his spirit fully direct our
  thoughts. From this unreal world lead us to the real! From darkness lead us to
  the light! From death guide us to immortality!

  131:4.4 "With our hearts purged of all hate, let us worship the Eternal. Our
  God is the Lord of prayer; he hears the cry of his children. Let all men
  submit their wills to him, the Resolute. Let us delight in the liberality of
  the Lord of prayer. Make prayer your inmost friend and worship your soul's
  support. `If you will but worship me in love,' says the Eternal, `I will give
  you the wisdom to attain me, for my worship is the virtue common to all
  creatures.' God is the illuminator of the gloomy and the power of those who
  are faint. Since God is our strong friend, we have no more fear. We praise the
  name of the never-conquered Conqueror. We worship him because he is man's
  faithful and eternal helper. God is our sure leader and unfailing guide. He is
  the great parent of heaven and earth, possessed of unlimited energy and
  infinite wisdom. His splendor is sublime and his beauty divine. He is the
  supreme refuge of the universe and the changeless guardian of everlasting law.
  Our God is the Lord of life and the Comforter of all men; he is the lover of
  mankind and the helper of those who are distressed. He is our life giver and
  the Good Shepherd of the human flocks. God is our father, brother, and friend.
  And we long to know this God in our inner being.

  131:4.5 "We have learned to win faith by the yearning of our hearts. We have
  attained wisdom by the restraint of our senses, and by wisdom we have
  experienced peace in the Supreme. He who is full of faith worships truly when
  his inner self is intent upon God. Our God wears the heavens as a mantle; he
  also inhabits the other six wide-spreading universes. He is supreme over all
  and in all. We crave forgiveness from the Lord for all of our trespasses
  against our fellows; and we would release our friend from the wrong he has
  done us. Our spirit loathes all evil; therefore, O Lord, free us from all
  taint of sin. We pray to God as a comforter, protector, and savior -- one who
  loves us.

  131:4.6 "The spirit of the Universe Keeper enters the soul of the simple
  creature. That man is wise who worships the One God. Those who strive for
  perfection must indeed know the Lord Supreme. He never fears who knows the
  blissful security of the Supreme, for the Supreme says to those who serve him,
  `Fear not, for I am with you.' The God of providence is our Father. God is
  truth. And it is the desire of God that his creatures should understand him --
  come fully to know the truth. Truth is eternal; it sustains the universe. Our
  supreme desire shall be union with the Supreme. The Great Controller is the
  generator of all things -- all evolves from him. And this is the sum of duty:
  Let no man do to another what would be repugnant to himself; cherish no
  malice, smite not him who smites you, conquer anger with mercy, and vanquish
  hate by benevolence. And all this we should do because God is a kind friend
  and a gracious father who remits all our earthly offenses.

  131:4.7 "God is our Father, the earth our mother, and the universe our
  birthplace. Without God the soul is a prisoner; to know God releases the soul.
  By meditation on God, by union with him, there comes deliverance from the
  illusions of evil and ultimate salvation from all material fetters. When man
  shall roll up space as a piece of leather, then will come the end of evil
  because man has found God. O God, save us from the threefold ruin of hell --
  lust, wrath, and avarice! O soul, gird yourself for the spirit struggle of
  immortality! When the end of mortal life comes, hesitate not to forsake this
  body for a more fit and beautiful form and to awake in the realms of the
  Supreme and Immortal, where there is no fear, sorrow, hunger, thirst, or
  death. To know God is to cut the cords of death. The God-knowing soul rises in
  the universe like the cream appears on top of the milk. We worship God, the
  all-worker, the Great Soul, who is ever seated in the heart of his creatures.
  And they who know that God is enthroned in the human heart are destined to
  become like him -- immortal. Evil must be left behind in this world, but
  virtue follows the soul to heaven.

  131:4.8 "It is only the wicked who say: The universe has neither truth nor a
  ruler; it was only designed for our lusts. Such souls are deluded by the
  smallness of their intellects. They thus abandon themselves to the enjoyment
  of their lusts and deprive their souls of the joys of virtue and the pleasures
  of righteousness. What can be greater than to experience salvation from sin?
  The man who has seen the Supreme is immortal. Man's friends of the flesh
  cannot survive death; virtue alone walks by man's side as he journeys ever
  onward toward the gladsome and sunlit fields of Paradise."





5. ZOROASTRIANISM

  131:5.1 Zoroaster was himself directly in contact with the descendants of the
  earlier Melchizedek missionaries, and their doctrine of the one God became a
  central teaching in the religion which he founded in Persia. Aside from
  Judaism, no religion of that day contained more of these Salem teachings. From
  the records of this religion Ganid made the following excerpts:

  131:5.2 "All things come from, and belong to, the One God -- all-wise, good,
  righteous, holy, resplendent, and glorious. This, our God, is the source of
  all luminosity. He is the Creator, the God of all good purposes, and the
  protector of the justice of the universe. The wise course in life is to act in
  consonance with the spirit of truth. God is all-seeing, and he beholds both
  the evil deeds of the wicked and the good works of the righteous; our God
  observes all things with a flashing eye. His touch is the touch of healing.
  The Lord is an all-powerful benefactor. God stretches out his beneficent hand
  to both the righteous and the wicked. God established the world and ordained
  the rewards for good and for evil. The all-wise God has promised immortality
  to the pious souls who think purely and act righteously. As you supremely
  desire, so shall you be. The light of the sun is as wisdom to those who
  discern God in the universe.

  131:5.3 "Praise God by seeking the pleasure of the Wise One. Worship the God
  of light by joyfully walking in the paths ordained by his revealed religion.
  There is but one Supreme God, the Lord of Lights. We worship him who made the
  waters, plants, animals, the earth, and the heavens. Our God is Lord, most
  beneficent. We worship the most beauteous, the bountiful Immortal, endowed
  with eternal light. God is farthest from us and at the same time nearest to us
  in that he dwells within our souls. Our God is the divine and holiest Spirit
  of Paradise, and yet he is more friendly to man than the most friendly of all
  creatures. God is most helpful to us in this greatest of all businesses, the
  knowing of himself. God is our most adorable and righteous friend; he is our
  wisdom, life, and vigor of soul and body. Through our good thinking the wise
  Creator will enable us to do his will, thereby attaining the realization of
  all that is divinely perfect.

  131:5.4 "Lord, teach us how to live this life in the flesh while preparing for
  the next life of the spirit. Speak to us, Lord, and we will do your bidding.
  Teach us the good paths, and we will go right. Grant us that we may attain
  union with you. We know that the religion is right which leads to union with
  righteousness. God is our wise nature, best thought, and righteous act. May
  God grant us unity with the divine spirit and immortality in himself!

  131:5.5 "This religion of the Wise One cleanses the believer from every evil
  thought and sinful deed. I bow before the God of heaven in repentance if I
  have offended in thought, word, or act -- intentionally or unintentionally --
  and I offer prayers for mercy and praise for forgiveness. I know when I make
  confession, if I purpose not to do again the evil thing, that sin will be
  removed from my soul. I know that forgiveness takes away the bonds of sin.
  Those who do evil shall receive punishment, but those who follow truth shall
  enjoy the bliss of an eternal salvation. Through grace lay hold upon us and
  minister saving power to our souls. We claim mercy because we aspire to attain
  perfection; we would be like God."





6. SUDUANISM (JAINISM)

  131:6.1 The third group of religious believers who preserved the doctrine of
  one God in India -- the survival of the Melchizedek teaching -- were known in
  those days as the Suduanists. Latterly these believers have become known as
  followers of Jainism. They taught:



  131:6.2 "The Lord of Heaven is supreme. Those who commit sin will not ascend
  on high, but those who walk in the paths of righteousness shall find a place
  in heaven. We are assured of the life hereafter if we know truth. The soul of
  man may ascend to the highest heaven, there to develop its true spiritual
  nature, to attain perfection. The estate of heaven delivers man from the
  bondage of sin and introduces him to the final beatitudes; the righteous man
  has already experienced an end of sin and all its associated miseries. Self is
  man's invincible foe, and self is manifested as man's four greatest passions:
  anger, pride, deceit, and greed. Man's greatest victory is the conquest of
  himself. When man looks to God for forgiveness, and when he makes bold to
  enjoy such liberty, he is thereby delivered from fear. Man should journey
  through life treating his fellow creatures as he would like to be treated."





7. SHINTO

  131:7.1 Only recently had the manuscripts of this Far-Eastern religion been
  lodged in the Alexandrian library. It was the one world religion of which
  Ganid had never heard. This belief also contained remnants of the earlier
  Melchizedek teachings as is shown by the following abstracts:



  131:7.2 "Says the Lord: `You are all recipients of my divine power; all men
  enjoy my ministry of mercy. I derive great pleasure in the multiplication of
  righteous men throughout the land. In both the beauties of nature and the
  virtues of men does the Prince of Heaven seek to reveal himself and to show
  forth his righteous nature. Since the olden people did not know my name, I
  manifested myself by being born into the world as a visible existence and
  endured such abasement even that man should not forget my name. I am the maker
  of heaven and earth; the sun and the moon and all the stars obey my will. I am
  the ruler of all creatures on land and in the four seas. Although I am great
  and supreme, still I have regard for the prayer of the poorest man. If any
  creature will worship me, I will hear his prayer and grant the desire of his
  heart.'

  131:7.3 "`Every time man yields to anxiety, he takes one step away from the
  leading of the spirit of his heart.' Pride obscures God. If you would obtain
  heavenly help, put away your pride; every hair of pride shuts off saving
  light, as it were, by a great cloud. If you are not right on the inside, it is
  useless to pray for that which is on the outside. `If I hear your prayers, it
  is because you come before me with a clean heart, free from falsehood and
  hypocrisy, with a soul which reflects truth like a mirror. If you would gain
  immortality, forsake the world and come to me.'"





8. TAOISM

  131:8.1 The messengers of Melchizedek penetrated far into China, and the
  doctrine of one God became a part of the earlier teachings of several Chinese
  religions; the one persisting the longest and containing most of the
  monotheistic truth was Taoism, and Ganid collected the following from the
  teachings of its founder:



  131:8.2 "How pure and tranquil is the Supreme One and yet how powerful and
  mighty, how deep and unfathomable! This God of heaven is the honored ancestor
  of all things. If you know the Eternal, you are enlightened and wise. If you
  know not the Eternal, then does ignorance manifest itself as evil, and thus do
  the passions of sin arise. This wondrous Being existed before the heavens and
  the earth were. He is truly spiritual; he stands alone and changes not. He is
  indeed the world's mother, and all creation moves around him. This Great One
  imparts himself to men and thereby enables them to excel and to survive. Even
  if one has but a little knowledge, he can still walk in the ways of the
  Supreme; he can conform to the will of heaven.

  131:8.3 "All good works of true service come from the Supreme. All things
  depend on the Great Source for life. The Great Supreme seeks no credit for his
  bestowals. He is supreme in power, yet he remains hidden from our gaze. He
  unceasingly transmutes his attributes while perfecting his creatures. The
  heavenly Reason is slow and patient in his designs but sure of his
  accomplishments. The Supreme overspreads the universe and sustains it all. How
  great and mighty are his overflowing influence and drawing power! True
  goodness is like water in that it blesses everything and harms nothing. And
  like water, true goodness seeks the lowest places, even those levels which
  others avoid, and that is because it is akin to the Supreme. The Supreme
  creates all things, in nature nourishing them and in spirit perfecting them.
  And it is a mystery how the Supreme fosters, protects, and perfects the
  creature without compelling him. He guides and directs, but without self-
  assertion. He ministers progression, but without domination.

  131:8.4 "The wise man universalizes his heart. A little knowledge is a
  dangerous thing. Those who aspire to greatness must learn to humble
  themselves. In creation the Supreme became the world's mother. To know one's
  mother is to recognize one's sonship. He is a wise man who regards all parts
  from the point of view of the whole. Relate yourself to every man as if you
  were in his place. Recompense injury with kindness. If you love people, they
  will draw near you -- you will have no difficulty in winning them.

  131:8.5 "The Great Supreme is all-pervading; he is on the left hand and on the
  right; he supports all creation and indwells all true beings. You cannot find
  the Supreme, neither can you go to a place where he is not. If a man
  recognizes the evil of his ways and repents of sin from the heart, then may he
  seek forgiveness; he may escape the penalty; he may change calamity into
  blessing. The Supreme is the secure refuge for all creation; he is the
  guardian and savior of mankind. If you seek for him daily, you shall find him.
  Since he can forgive sins, he is indeed most precious to all men. Always
  remember that God does not reward man for what he does but for what he is;
  therefore should you extend help to your fellows without the thought of
  rewards. Do good without thought of benefit to the self.

  131:8.6 "They who know the laws of the Eternal are wise. Ignorance of the
  divine law is misery and disaster. They who know the laws of God are liberal
  minded. If you know the Eternal, even though your body perish, your soul shall
  survive in spirit service. You are truly wise when you recognize your
  insignificance. If you abide in the light of the Eternal, you shall enjoy the
  enlightenment of the Supreme. Those who dedicate their persons to the service
  of the Supreme are joyous in this pursuit of the Eternal. When man dies, the
  spirit begins to wing its long flight on the great home journey."





9. CONFUCIANISM

  131:9.1 Even the least God-recognizing of the world's great religions
  acknowledged the monotheism of the Melchizedek missionaries and their
  persistent successors. Ganid's summary of Confucianism was:



  131:9.2 "What Heaven appoints is without error. Truth is real and divine.
  Everything originates in Heaven, and the Great Heaven makes no mistakes.
  Heaven has appointed many subordinates to assist in the instruction and
  uplifting of the inferior creatures. Great, very great, is the One God who
  rules man from on high. God is majestic in power and awful in judgment. But
  this Great God has conferred a moral sense even on many inferior people.
  Heaven's bounty never stops. Benevolence is Heaven's choicest gift to men.
  Heaven has bestowed its nobility upon the soul of man; the virtues of man are
  the fruit of this endowment of Heaven's nobility. The Great Heaven is all-
  discerning and goes with man in all his doings. And we do well when we call
  the Great Heaven our Father and our Mother. If we are thus servants of our
  divine ancestors, then may we in confidence pray to Heaven. At all times and
  in everything let us stand in awe of the majesty of Heaven. We acknowledge, O
  God, the Most High and sovereign Potentate, that judgment rests with you, and
  that all mercy proceeds from the divine heart.

  131:9.3 "God is with us; therefore we have no fear in our hearts. If there be
  found any virtue in me, it is the manifestation of Heaven who abides with me.
  But this Heaven within me often makes hard demands on my faith. If God is with
  me, I have determined to have no doubt in my heart. Faith must be very near
  the truth of things, and I do not see how a man can live without this good
  faith. Good and evil do not befall men without cause. Heaven deals with man's
  soul in accordance with its purpose. When you find yourself in the wrong, do
  not hesitate to confess your error and be quick to make amends.

  131:9.4 "A wise man is occupied with the search for truth, not in seeking for
  a mere living. To attain the perfection of Heaven is the goal of man. The
  superior man is given to self-adjustment, and he is free from anxiety and
  fear. God is with you; have no doubt in your heart. Every good deed has its
  recompense. The superior man murmurs not against Heaven nor holds a grudge
  against men. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not to others. Let
  compassion be a part of all punishment; in every way endeavor to make
  punishment a blessing. Such is the way of Great Heaven. While all creatures
  must die and return to the earth, the spirit of the noble man goes forth to be
  displayed on high and to ascend to the glorious light of final brightness."





10. "OUR RELIGION"

  131:10.1 After the arduous labor of effecting this compilation of the
  teachings of the world religions concerning the Paradise Father, Ganid set
  himself to the task of formulating what he deemed to be a summary of the
  belief he had arrived at regarding God as a result of Jesus' teaching. This
  young man was in the habit of referring to such beliefs as "our religion."
  This was his record:



  131:10.2 "The Lord our God is one Lord, and you should love him with all your
  mind and heart while you do your very best to love all his children as you
  love yourself. This one God is our heavenly Father, in whom all things
  consist, and who dwells, by his spirit, in every sincere human soul. And we
  who are the children of God should learn how to commit the keeping of our
  souls to him as to a faithful Creator. With our heavenly Father all things are
  possible. Since he is the Creator, having made all things and all beings, it
  could not be otherwise. Though we cannot see God, we can know him. And by
  daily living the will of the Father in heaven, we can reveal him to our fellow
  men.

  131:10.3 "The divine riches of God's character must be infinitely deep and
  eternally wise. We cannot search out God by knowledge, but we can know him in
  our hearts by personal experience. While his justice may be past finding out,
  his mercy may be received by the humblest being on earth. While the Father
  fills the universe, he also lives in our hearts. The mind of man is human,
  mortal, but the spirit of man is divine, immortal. God is not only all-
  powerful but also all-wise. If our earth parents, being of evil tendency, know
  how to love their children and bestow good gifts on them, how much more must
  the good Father in heaven know how wisely to love his children on earth and to
  bestow suitable blessings upon them.

  131:10.4 "The Father in heaven will not suffer a single child on earth to
  perish if that child has a desire to find the Father and truly longs to be
  like him. Our Father even loves the wicked and is always kind to the
  ungrateful. If more human beings could only know about the goodness of God,
  they would certainly be led to repent of their evil ways and forsake all known
  sin. All good things come down from the Father of light, in whom there is no
  variableness neither shadow of changing. The spirit of the true God is in
  man's heart. He intends that all men should be brothers. When men begin to
  feel after God, that is evidence that God has found them, and that they are in
  quest of knowledge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

  131:10.5 "I will no longer be satisfied to believe that God is the Father of
  all my people; I will henceforth believe that he is also my Father. Always
  will I try to worship God with the help of the Spirit of Truth, which is my
  helper when I have become really God-knowing. But first of all I am going to
  practice worshiping God by learning how to do the will of God on earth; that
  is, I am going to do my best to treat each of my fellow mortals just as I
  think God would like to have him treated. And when we live this sort of a life
  in the flesh, we may ask many things of God, and he will give us the desire of
  our hearts that we may be the better prepared to serve our fellows. And all of
  this loving service of the children of God enlarges our capacity to receive
  and experience the joys of heaven, the high pleasures of the ministry of the
  spirit of heaven.

  131:10.6 "I will every day thank God for his unspeakable gifts; I will praise
  him for his wonderful works to the children of men. To me he is the Almighty,
  the Creator, the Power, and the Mercy, but best of all, he is my spirit
  Father, and as his earth child I am sometime going forth to see him. And my
  tutor has said that by searching for him I shall become like him. By faith in
  God I have attained peace with him. This new religion of ours is very full of
  joy, and it generates an enduring happiness. I am confident that I shall be
  faithful even to death, and that I will surely receive the crown of eternal
  life.

  131:10.7 "I am learning to prove all things and adhere to that which is good.
  Whatsoever I would that men should do to me, that I will do to my fellows. By
  this new faith I know that man may become the son of God, but it sometimes
  terrifies me when I stop to think that all men are my brothers, but it must be
  true. I do not see how I can rejoice in the fatherhood of God while I refuse
  to accept the brotherhood of man. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord
  shall be saved. If that is true, then all men must be my brothers.

  131:10.8 "Henceforth will I do my good deeds in secret; I will also pray most
  when by myself. I will judge not that I may not be unfair to my fellows. I am
  going to learn to love my enemies; I have not truly mastered this practice of
  being Godlike. Though I see God in these other religions, I find him in `our
  religion' as being more beautiful, loving, merciful, personal, and positive.
  But most of all, this great and glorious Being is my spiritual Father; I am
  his child. And by no other means than my honest desire to be like him, I am
  eventually to find him and eternally to serve him. At last I have a religion
  with a God, a marvelous God, and he is a God of eternal salvation."


PAPER 132


 THE SOJOURN AT ROME



  132:0.1 SINCE Gonod carried greetings from the princes of India to Tiberius,
  the Roman ruler, on the third day after their arrival in Rome the two Indians
  and Jesus appeared before him. The morose emperor was unusually cheerful on
  this day and chatted long with the trio. And when they had gone from his
  presence, the emperor, referring to Jesus, remarked to the aide standing on
  his right, "If I had that fellow's kingly bearing and gracious manner, I would
  be a real emperor, eh?"



  132:0.2 While at Rome, Ganid had regular hours for study and for visiting
  places of interest about the city. His father had much business to transact,
  and desiring that his son grow up to become a worthy successor in the
  management of his vast commercial interests, he thought the time had come to
  introduce the boy to the business world. There were many citizens of India in
  Rome, and often one of Gonod's own employees would accompany him as
  interpreter so that Jesus would have whole days to himself; this gave him time
  in which to become thoroughly acquainted with this city of two million
  inhabitants. He was frequently to be found in the forum, the center of
  political, legal, and business life. He often went up to the Capitolium and
  pondered the bondage of ignorance in which these Romans were held as he beheld
  this magnificent temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. He also spent
  much time on Palatine hill, where were located the emperor's residence, the
  temple of Apollo, and the Greek and Latin libraries.



  132:0.3 At this time the Roman Empire included all of southern Europe, Asia
  Minor, Syria, Egypt, and northwest Africa; and its inhabitants embraced the
  citizens of every country of the Eastern Hemisphere. His desire to study and
  mingle with this cosmopolitan aggregation of Urantia mortals was the chief
  reason why Jesus consented to make this journey.

  132:0.4 Jesus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valuable of
  all the manifold experiences of his six months' sojourn in that city was his
  contact with, and influence upon, the religious leaders of the empire's
  capital. Before the end of the first week in Rome Jesus had sought out, and
  had made the acquaintance of, the worth-while leaders of the Cynics, the
  Stoics, and the mystery cults, in particular the Mithraic group. Whether or
  not it was apparent to Jesus that the Jews were going to reject his mission,
  he most certainly foresaw that his messengers were presently coming to Rome to
  proclaim the kingdom of heaven; and he therefore set about, in the most
  amazing manner, to prepare the way for the better and more certain reception
  of their message. He selected five of the leading Stoics, eleven of the
  Cynics, and sixteen of the mystery-cult leaders and spent much of his spare
  time for almost six months in intimate association with these religious
  teachers. And this was his method of instruction: Never once did he attack
  their errors or even mention the flaws in their teachings. In each case he
  would select the truth in what they taught and then proceed so to embellish
  and illuminate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this
  enhancement of the truth effectively crowded out the associated error; and
  thus were these Jesus-taught men and women prepared for the subsequent
  recognition of additional and similar truths in the teachings of the early
  Christian missionaries. It was this early acceptance of the teachings of the
  gospel preachers which gave that powerful impetus to the rapid spread of
  Christianity in Rome and from there throughout the empire.

  132:0.5 The significance of this remarkable doing can the better be understood
  when we record the fact that, out of this group of thirty-two Jesus-taught
  religious leaders in Rome, only two were unfruitful; the thirty became pivotal
  individuals in the establishment of Christianity in Rome, and certain of them
  also aided in turning the chief Mithraic temple into the first Christian
  church of that city. We who view human activities from behind the scenes and
  in the light of nineteen centuries of time recognize just three factors of
  paramount value in the early setting of the stage for the rapid spread of
  Christianity throughout Europe, and they are:

1. The choosing and holding of Simon Peter as an apostle.

2. The talk in Jerusalem with Stephen, whose death led to the winning of Saul of
Tarsus.

3. The preliminary preparation of these thirty Romans for the subsequent
leadership of the new religion in Rome and throughout the empire.

  132:0.6 Through all their experiences, neither Stephen nor the thirty chosen
  ones ever realized that they had once talked with the man whose name became
  the subject of their religious teaching. Jesus' work in behalf of the original
  thirty-two was entirely personal. In his labors for these individuals the
  scribe of Damascus never met more than three of them at one time, seldom more
  than two, while most often he taught them singly. And he could do this great
  work of religious training because these men and women were not tradition
  bound; they were not victims of a settled preconception as to all future
  religious developments.

  132:0.7 Many were the times in the years so soon to follow that Peter, Paul,
  and the other Christian teachers in Rome heard about this scribe of Damascus
  who had preceded them, and who had so obviously (and as they supposed
  unwittingly) prepared the way for their coming with the new gospel. Though
  Paul never really surmised the identity of this scribe of Damascus, he did, a
  short time before his death, because of the similarity of personal
  descriptions, reach the conclusion that the "tentmaker of Antioch" was also
  the "scribe of Damascus." On one occasion, while preaching in Rome, Simon
  Peter, on listening to a description of the Damascus scribe, surmised that
  this individual might have been Jesus but quickly dismissed the idea, knowing
  full well (so he thought) that the Master had never been in Rome.



1. TRUE VALUES



  132:1.1 It was with Angamon, the leader of the Stoics, that Jesus had an all-
  night talk early during his sojourn in Rome. This man subsequently became a
  great friend of Paul and proved to be one of the strong supporters of the
  Christian church at Rome. In substance, and restated in modern phraseology,
  Jesus taught Angamon:



  132:1.2 The standard of true values must be looked for in the spiritual world
  and on divine levels of eternal reality. To an ascending mortal all lower and
  material standards must be recognized as transient, partial, and inferior. The
  scientist, as such, is limited to the discovery of the relatedness of material
  facts. Technically, he has no right to assert that he is either materialist or
  idealist, for in so doing he has assumed to forsake the attitude of a true
  scientist since any and all such assertions of attitude are the very essence
  of philosophy.

  132:1.3 Unless the moral insight and the spiritual attainment of mankind are
  proportionately augmented, the unlimited advancement of a purely materialistic
  culture may eventually become a menace to civilization. A purely materialistic
  science harbors within itself the potential seed of the destruction of all
  scientific striving, for this very attitude presages the ultimate collapse of
  a civilization which has abandoned its sense of moral values and has
  repudiated its spiritual goal of attainment.

  132:1.4 The materialistic scientist and the extreme idealist are destined
  always to be at loggerheads. This is not true of those scientists and
  idealists who are in possession of a common standard of high moral values and
  spiritual test levels. In every age scientists and religionists must recognize
  that they are on trial before the bar of human need. They must eschew all
  warfare between themselves while they strive valiantly to justify their
  continued survival by enhanced devotion to the service of human progress. If
  the so-called science or religion of any age is false, then must it either
  purify its activities or pass away before the emergence of a material science
  or spiritual religion of a truer and more worthy order.





2. GOOD AND EVIL



  132:2.1 Mardus was the acknowledged leader of the Cynics of Rome, and he
  became a great friend of the scribe of Damascus. Day after day he conversed
  with Jesus, and night upon night he listened to his supernal teaching. Among
  the more important discussions with Mardus was the one designed to answer this
  sincere Cynic's question about good and evil. In substance, and in twentieth-
  century phraseology, Jesus said:



  132:2.2 My brother, good and evil are merely words symbolizing relative levels
  of human comprehension of the observable universe. If you are ethically lazy
  and socially indifferent, you can take as your standard of good the current
  social usages. If you are spiritually indolent and morally unprogressive, you
  may take as your standards of good the religious practices and traditions of
  your contemporaries. But the soul that survives time and emerges into eternity
  must make a living and personal choice between good and evil as they are
  determined by the true values of the spiritual standards established by the
  divine spirit which the Father in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of
  man. This indwelling spirit is the standard of personality survival.

  132:2.3 Goodness, like truth, is always relative and unfailingly evil-
  contrasted. It is the perception of these qualities of goodness and truth that
  enables the evolving souls of men to make those personal decisions of choice
  which are essential to eternal survival.

  132:2.4 The spiritually blind individual who logically follows scientific
  dictation, social usage, and religious dogma stands in grave danger of
  sacrificing his moral freedom and losing his spiritual liberty. Such a soul is
  destined to become an intellectual parrot, a social automaton, and a slave to
  religious authority.

  132:2.5 Goodness is always growing toward new levels of the increasing liberty
  of moral self-realization and spiritual personality attainment -- the
  discovery of, and identification with, the indwelling Adjuster. An experience
  is good when it heightens the appreciation of beauty, augments the moral will,
  enhances the discernment of truth, enlarges the capacity to love and serve
  one's fellows, exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human
  motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling Adjuster, all of
  which lead directly to an increased desire to do the Father's will, thereby
  fostering the divine passion to find God and to be more like him.



  132:2.6 As you ascend the universe scale of creature development, you will
  find increasing goodness and diminishing evil in perfect accordance with your
  capacity for goodness-experience and truth-discernment. The ability to
  entertain error or experience evil will not be fully lost until the ascending
  human soul achieves final spirit levels.

  132:2.7 Goodness is living, relative, always progressing, invariably a
  personal experience, and everlastingly correlated with the discernment of
  truth and beauty. Goodness is found in the recognition of the positive truth-
  values of the spiritual level, which must, in human experience, be contrasted
  with the negative counterpart -- the shadows of potential evil.



  132:2.8 Until you attain Paradise levels, goodness will always be more of a
  quest than a possession, more of a goal than an experience of attainment. But
  even as you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you experience increasing
  satisfaction in the partial attainment of goodness. The presence of goodness
  and evil in the world is in itself positive proof of the existence and reality
  of man's moral will, the personality, which thus identifies these values and
  is also able to choose between them.

  132:2.9 By the time of the attainment of Paradise the ascending mortal's
  capacity for identifying the self with true spirit values has become so
  enlarged as to result in the attainment of the perfection of the possession of
  the light of life. Such a perfected spirit personality becomes so wholly,
  divinely, and spiritually unified with the positive and supreme qualities of
  goodness, beauty, and truth that there remains no possibility that such a
  righteous spirit would cast any negative shadow of potential evil when exposed
  to the searching luminosity of the divine light of the infinite Rulers of
  Paradise. In all such spirit personalities, goodness is no longer partial,
  contrastive, and comparative; it has become divinely complete and spiritually
  replete; it approaches the purity and perfection of the Supreme.

  132:2.10 The possibility of evil is necessary to moral choosing, but not the
  actuality thereof. A shadow is only relatively real. Actual evil is not
  necessary as a personal experience. Potential evil acts equally well as a
  decision stimulus in the realms of moral progress on the lower levels of
  spiritual development. Evil becomes a reality of personal experience only when
  a moral mind makes evil its choice.





3. TRUTH AND FAITH



  132:3.1 Nabon was a Greek Jew and foremost among the leaders of the chief
  mystery cult in Rome, the Mithraic. While this high priest of Mithraism held
  many conferences with the Damascus scribe, he was most permanently influenced
  by their discussion of truth and faith one evening. Nabon had thought to make
  a convert of Jesus and had even suggested that he return to Palestine as a
  Mithraic teacher. He little realized that Jesus was preparing him to become
  one of the early converts to the gospel of the kingdom. Restated in modern
  phraseology, the substance of Jesus' teaching was:



  132:3.2 Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always
  more than knowledge. Knowledge pertains to things observed, but truth
  transcends such purely material levels in that it consorts with wisdom and
  embraces such imponderables as human experience, even spiritual and living
  realities. Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth,
  in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts;
  wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values.

  132:3.3 Man tends to crystallize science, formulate philosophy, and dogmatize
  truth because he is mentally lazy in adjusting to the progressive struggles of
  living, while he is also terribly afraid of the unknown. Natural man is slow
  to initiate changes in his habits of thinking and in his techniques of living.

  132:3.4 Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of
  the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the
  indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-
  loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this
  mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father's will, to find God
  and to become like him. There is never conflict between true knowledge and
  truth. There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs
  colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of
  facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress.

  132:3.5 But truth can never become man's possession without the exercise of
  faith. This is true because man's thoughts, wisdom, ethics, and ideals will
  never rise higher than his faith, his sublime hope. And all such true faith is
  predicated on profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising
  moral consciousness. Faith is the inspiration of the spiritized creative
  imagination.

  132:3.6 Faith acts to release the superhuman activities of the divine spark,
  the immortal germ, that lives within the mind of man, and which is the
  potential of eternal survival. Plants and animals survive in time by the
  technique of passing on from one generation to another identical particles of
  themselves. The human soul (personality) of man survives mortal death by
  identity association with this indwelling spark of divinity, which is
  immortal, and which functions to perpetuate the human personality upon a
  continuing and higher level of progressive universe existence. The concealed
  seed of the human soul is an immortal spirit. The second generation of the
  soul is the first of a succession of personality manifestations of spiritual
  and progressing existences, terminating only when this divine entity attains
  the source of its existence, the personal source of all existence, God, the
  Universal Father.

  132:3.7 Human life continues -- survives -- because it has a universe
  function, the task of finding God. The faith-activated soul of man cannot stop
  short of the attainment of this goal of destiny; and when it does once achieve
  this divine goal, it can never end because it has become like God -- eternal.



  132:3.8 Spiritual evolution is an experience of the increasing and voluntary
  choice of goodness attended by an equal and progressive diminution of the
  possibility of evil. With the attainment of finality of choice for goodness
  and of completed capacity for truth appreciation, there comes into existence a
  perfection of beauty and holiness whose righteousness eternally inhibits the
  possibility of the emergence of even the concept of potential evil. Such a
  God-knowing soul casts no shadow of doubting evil when functioning on such a
  high spirit level of divine goodness.

  132:3.9 The presence of the Paradise spirit in the mind of man constitutes the
  revelation promise and the faith pledge of an eternal existence of divine
  progression for every soul seeking to achieve identity with this immortal and
  indwelling spirit fragment of the Universal Father.

  132:3.10 Universe progress is characterized by increasing personality freedom
  because it is associated with the progressive attainment of higher and higher
  levels of self-understanding and consequent voluntary self-restraint. The
  attainment of perfection of spiritual self-restraint equals completeness of
  universe freedom and personal liberty. Faith fosters and maintains man's soul
  in the midst of the confusion of his early orientation in such a vast
  universe, whereas prayer becomes the great unifier of the various inspirations
  of the creative imagination and the faith urges of a soul trying to identify
  itself with the spirit ideals of the indwelling and associated divine
  presence.



  132:3.11 Nabon was greatly impressed by these words, as he was by each of his
  talks with Jesus. These truths continued to burn within his heart, and he was
  of great assistance to the later arriving preachers of Jesus' gospel.





4. PERSONAL MINISTRY



  132:4.1 Jesus did not devote all his leisure while in Rome to this work of
  preparing men and women to become future disciples in the oncoming kingdom. He
  spent much time gaining an intimate knowledge of all races and classes of men
  who lived in this, the largest and most cosmopolitan city of the world. In
  each of these numerous human contacts Jesus had a double purpose: He desired
  to learn their reactions to the life they were living in the flesh, and he was
  also minded to say or do something to make that life richer and more worth
  while. His religious teachings during these weeks were no different than those
  which characterized his later life as teacher of the twelve and preacher to
  the multitudes.

  132:4.2 Always the burden of his message was: the fact of the heavenly
  Father's love and the truth of his mercy, coupled with the good news that man
  is a faith-son of this same God of love. Jesus' usual technique of social
  contact was to draw people out and into talking with him by asking them
  questions. The interview would usually begin by his asking them questions and
  end by their asking him questions. He was equally adept in teaching by either
  asking or answering questions. As a rule, to those he taught the most, he said
  the least. Those who derived most benefit from his personal ministry were
  overburdened, anxious, and dejected mortals who gained much relief because of
  the opportunity to unburden their souls to a sympathetic and understanding
  listener, and he was all that and more. And when these maladjusted human
  beings had told Jesus about their troubles, always was he able to offer
  practical and immediately helpful suggestions looking toward the correction of
  their real difficulties, albeit he did not neglect to speak words of present
  comfort and immediate consolation. And invariably would he tell these
  distressed mortals about the love of God and impart the information, by
  various and sundry methods, that they were the children of this loving Father
  in heaven.

  132:4.3 In this manner, during the sojourn in Rome, Jesus personally came into
  affectionate and uplifting contact with upward of five hundred mortals of the
  realm. He thus gained a knowledge of the different races of mankind which he
  could never have acquired in Jerusalem and hardly even in Alexandria. He
  always regarded this six months as one of the richest and most informative of
  any like period of his earth life.

  132:4.4 As might have been expected, such a versatile and aggressive man could
  not thus function for six months in the world's metropolis without being
  approached by numerous persons who desired to secure his services in
  connection with some business or, more often, for some project of teaching,
  social reform, or religious movement. More than a dozen such proffers were
  made, and he utilized each one as an opportunity for imparting some thought of
  spiritual ennoblement by well-chosen words or by some obliging service. Jesus
  was very fond of doing things -- even little things -- for all sorts of
  people.



  132:4.5 He talked with a Roman senator on politics and statesmanship, and this
  one contact with Jesus made such an impression on this legislator that he
  spent the rest of his life vainly trying to induce his colleagues to change
  the course of the ruling policy from the idea of the government supporting and
  feeding the people to that of the people supporting the government. Jesus
  spent one evening with a wealthy slaveholder, talked about man as a son of
  God, and the next day this man, Claudius, gave freedom to one hundred and
  seventeen slaves. He visited at dinner with a Greek physician, telling him
  that his patients had minds and souls as well as bodies, and thus led this
  able doctor to attempt a more far-reaching ministry to his fellow men. He
  talked with all sorts of people in every walk of life. The only place in Rome
  he did not visit was the public baths. He refused to accompany his friends to
  the baths because of the sex promiscuity which there prevailed.



  132:4.6 To a Roman soldier, as they walked along the Tiber, he said: "Be brave
  of heart as well as of hand. Dare to do justice and be big enough to show
  mercy. Compel your lower nature to obey your higher nature as you obey your
  superiors. Revere goodness and exalt truth. Choose the beautiful in place of
  the ugly. Love your fellows and reach out for God with a whole heart, for God
  is your Father in heaven."



  132:4.7 To the speaker at the forum he said: "Your eloquence is pleasing, your
  logic is admirable, your voice is pleasant, but your teaching is hardly true.
  If you could only enjoy the inspiring satisfaction of knowing God as your
  spiritual Father, then you might employ your powers of speech to liberate your
  fellows from the bondage of darkness and from the slavery of ignorance." This
  was the Marcus who heard Peter preach in Rome and became his successor. When
  they crucified Simon Peter, it was this man who defied the Roman persecutors
  and boldly continued to preach the new gospel.



  132:4.8 Meeting a poor man who had been falsely accused, Jesus went with him
  before the magistrate and, having been granted special permission to appear in
  his behalf, made that superb address in the course of which he said: "Justice
  makes a nation great, and the greater a nation the more solicitous will it be
  to see that injustice shall not befall even its most humble citizen. Woe upon
  any nation when only those who possess money and influence can secure ready
  justice before its courts! It is the sacred duty of a magistrate to acquit the
  innocent as well as to punish the guilty. Upon the impartiality, fairness, and
  integrity of its courts the endurance of a nation depends. Civil government is
  founded on justice, even as true religion is founded on mercy." The judge
  reopened the case, and when the evidence had been sifted, he discharged the
  prisoner. Of all Jesus' activities during these days of personal ministry,
  this came the nearest to being a public appearance.





5. COUNSELING THE RICH MAN



  132:5.1 A certain rich man, a Roman citizen and a Stoic, became greatly
  interested in Jesus' teaching, having been introduced by Angamon. After many
  intimate conferences this wealthy citizen asked Jesus what he would do with
  wealth if he had it, and Jesus answered him: "I would bestow material wealth
  for the enhancement of material life, even as I would minister knowledge,
  wisdom, and spiritual service for the enrichment of the intellectual life, the
  ennoblement of the social life, and the advancement of the spiritual life. I
  would administer material wealth as a wise and effective trustee of the
  resources of one generation for the benefit and ennoblement of the next and
  succeeding generations."

  132:5.2 But the rich man was not fully satisfied with Jesus' answer. He made
  bold to ask again: "But what do you think a man in my position should do with
  his wealth? Should I keep it, or should I give it away?" And when Jesus
  perceived that he really desired to know more of the truth about his loyalty
  to God and his duty to men, he further answered: "My good friend, I discern
  that you are a sincere seeker after wisdom and an honest lover of truth;
  therefore am I minded to lay before you my view of the solution of your
  problems having to do with the responsibilities of wealth. I do this because
  you have asked for my counsel, and in giving you this advice, I am not
  concerned with the wealth of any other rich man; I am offering advice only to
  you and for your personal guidance. If you honestly desire to regard your
  wealth as a trust, if you really wish to become a wise and efficient steward
  of your accumulated wealth, then would I counsel you to make the following
  analysis of the sources of your riches: Ask yourself, and do your best to find
  the honest answer, whence came this wealth? And as a help in the study of the
  sources of your great fortune, I would suggest that you bear in mind the
  following ten different methods of amassing material wealth:



"1. Inherited wealth -- riches derived from parents and other ancestors.

"2. Discovered wealth -- riches derived from the uncultivated resources of
mother earth.

"3. Trade wealth -- riches obtained as a fair profit in the exchange and barter
of material goods.

"4. Unfair wealth -- riches derived from the unfair exploitation or the
enslavement of one's fellows.

"5. Interest wealth -- income derived from the fair and just earning
possibilities of invested capital.

"6. Genius wealth -- riches accruing from the rewards of the creative and
inventive endowments of the human mind.

"7. Accidental wealth -- riches derived from the generosity of one's fellows or
taking origin in the circumstances of life.

"8. Stolen wealth -- riches secured by unfairness, dishonesty, theft, or fraud.

"9. Trust funds -- wealth lodged in your hands by your fellows for some specific
use, now or in the future.

"10. Earned wealth -- riches derived directly from your own personal labor, the
fair and just reward of your own daily efforts of mind and body.



  132:5.3 "And so, my friend, if you would be a faithful and just steward of
  your large fortune, before God and in service to men, you must approximately
  divide your wealth into these ten grand divisions, and then proceed to
  administer each portion in accordance with the wise and honest interpretation
  of the laws of justice, equity, fairness, and true efficiency; albeit, the God
  of heaven would not condemn you if sometimes you erred, in doubtful
  situations, on the side of merciful and unselfish regard for the distress of
  the suffering victims of the unfortunate circumstances of mortal life. When in
  honest doubt about the equity and justice of material situations, let your
  decisions favor those who are in need, favor those who suffer the misfortune
  of undeserved hardships."

  132:5.4 After discussing these matters for several hours and in response to
  the rich man's request for further and more detailed instruction, Jesus went
  on to amplify his advice, in substance saying: "While I offer further
  suggestions concerning your attitude toward wealth, I would admonish you to
  receive my counsel as given only to you and for your personal guidance. I
  speak only for myself and to you as an inquiring friend. I adjure you not to
  become a dictator as to how other rich men shall regard their wealth. I would
  advise you:



  132:5.5 "1. As steward of inherited wealth you should consider its sources.
  You are under moral obligation to represent the past generation in the honest
  transmittal of legitimate wealth to succeeding generations after subtracting a
  fair toll for the benefit of the present generation. But you are not obligated
  to perpetuate any dishonesty or injustice involved in the unfair accumulation
  of wealth by your ancestors. Any portion of your inherited wealth which turns
  out to have been derived through fraud or unfairness, you may disburse in
  accordance with your convictions of justice, generosity, and restitution. The
  remainder of your legitimate inherited wealth you may use in equity and
  transmit in security as the trustee of one generation for another. Wise
  discrimination and sound judgment should dictate your decisions regarding the
  bequest of riches to your successors.



  132:5.6 "2. Everyone who enjoys wealth as a result of discovery should
  remember that one individual can live on earth but a short season and should,
  therefore, make adequate provision for the sharing of these discoveries in
  helpful ways by the largest possible number of his fellow men. While the
  discoverer should not be denied all reward for efforts of discovery, neither
  should he selfishly presume to lay claim to all of the advantages and
  blessings to be derived from the uncovering of nature's hoarded resources.



  132:5.7 "3. As long as men choose to conduct the world's business by trade and
  barter, they are entitled to a fair and legitimate profit. Every tradesman
  deserves wages for his services; the merchant is entitled to his hire. The
  fairness of trade and the honest treatment accorded one's fellows in the
  organized business of the world create many different sorts of profit wealth,
  and all these sources of wealth must be judged by the highest principles of
  justice, honesty, and fairness. The honest trader should not hesitate to take
  the same profit which he would gladly accord his fellow trader in a similar
  transaction. While this sort of wealth is not identical with individually
  earned income when business dealings are conducted on a large scale, at the
  same time, such honestly accumulated wealth endows its possessor with a
  considerable equity as regards a voice in its subsequent distribution.



  132:5.8 "4. No mortal who knows God and seeks to do the divine will can stoop
  to engage in the oppressions of wealth. No noble man will strive to accumulate
  riches and amass wealth-power by the enslavement or unfair exploitation of his
  brothers in the flesh. Riches are a moral curse and a spiritual stigma when
  they are derived from the sweat of oppressed mortal man. All such wealth
  should be restored to those who have thus been robbed or to their children and
  their children's children. An enduring civilization cannot be built upon the
  practice of defrauding the laborer of his hire.



  132:5.9 "5. Honest wealth is entitled to interest. As long as men borrow and
  lend, that which is fair interest may be collected provided the capital lent
  was legitimate wealth. First cleanse your capital before you lay claim to the
  interest. Do not become so small and grasping that you would stoop to the
  practice of usury. Never permit yourself to be so selfish as to employ money-
  power to gain unfair advantage over your struggling fellows. Yield not to the
  temptation to take usury from your brother in financial distress.



  132:5.10 "6. If you chance to secure wealth by flights of genius, if your
  riches are derived from the rewards of inventive endowment, do not lay claim
  to an unfair portion of such rewards. The genius owes something to both his
  ancestors and his progeny; likewise is he under obligation to the race,
  nation, and circumstances of his inventive discoveries; he should also
  remember that it was as man among men that he labored and wrought out his
  inventions. It would be equally unjust to deprive the genius of all his
  increment of wealth. And it will ever be impossible for men to establish rules
  and regulations applicable equally to all these problems of the equitable
  distribution of wealth. You must first recognize man as your brother, and if
  you honestly desire to do by him as you would have him do by you, the
  commonplace dictates of justice, honesty, and fairness will guide you in the
  just and impartial settlement of every recurring problem of economic rewards
  and social justice.



  132:5.11 "7. Except for the just and legitimate fees earned in administration,
  no man should lay personal claim to that wealth which time and chance may
  cause to fall into his hands. Accidental riches should be regarded somewhat in
  the light of a trust to be expended for the benefit of one's social or
  economic group. The possessors of such wealth should be accorded the major
  voice in the determination of the wise and effective distribution of such
  unearned resources. Civilized man will not always look upon all that he
  controls as his personal and private possession.



  132:5.12 "8. If any portion of your fortune has been knowingly derived from
  fraud; if aught of your wealth has been accumulated by dishonest practices or
  unfair methods; if your riches are the product of unjust dealings with your
  fellows, make haste to restore all these ill-gotten gains to the rightful
  owners. Make full amends and thus cleanse your fortune of all dishonest
  riches.



  132:5.13 "9. The trusteeship of the wealth of one person for the benefit of
  others is a solemn and sacred responsibility. Do not hazard or jeopardize such
  a trust. Take for yourself of any trust only that which all honest men would
  allow.

  132:5.14 "10. That part of your fortune which represents the earnings of your
  own mental and physical efforts -- if your work has been done in fairness and
  equity -- is truly your own. No man can gainsay your right to hold and use
  such wealth as you may see fit provided your exercise of this right does not
  work harm upon your fellows."



  132:5.15 When Jesus had finished counseling him, this wealthy Roman arose from
  his couch and, in saying farewell for the night, delivered himself of this
  promise: "My good friend, I perceive you are a man of great wisdom and
  goodness, and tomorrow I will begin the administration of all my wealth in
  accordance with your counsel."





6. SOCIAL MINISTRY



  132:6.1 Here in Rome also occurred that touching incident in which the Creator
  of a universe spent several hours restoring a lost child to his anxious
  mother. This little boy had wandered away from his home, and Jesus found him
  crying in distress. He and Ganid were on their way to the libraries, but they
  devoted themselves to getting the child back home. Ganid never forgot Jesus'
  comment: "You know, Ganid, most human beings are like the lost child. They
  spend much of their time crying in fear and suffering in sorrow when, in very
  truth, they are but a short distance from safety and security, even as this
  child was only a little way from home. And all those who know the way of truth
  and enjoy the assurance of knowing God should esteem it a privilege, not a
  duty, to offer guidance to their fellows in their efforts to find the
  satisfactions of living. Did we not supremely enjoy this ministry of restoring
  the child to his mother? So do those who lead men to God experience the
  supreme satisfaction of human service." And from that day forward, for the
  remainder of his natural life, Ganid was continually on the lookout for lost
  children whom he might restore to their homes.

  132:6.2 There was the widow with five children whose husband had been
  accidentally killed. Jesus told Ganid about the loss of his own father by an
  accident, and they went repeatedly to comfort this mother and her children,
  while Ganid sought money from his father to provide food and clothing. They
  did not cease their efforts until they had found a position for the eldest boy
  so that he could help in the care of the family.



  132:6.3 That night, as Gonod listened to the recital of these experiences, he
  said to Jesus, good-naturedly: "I propose to make a scholar or a businessman
  of my son, and now you start out to make a philosopher or philanthropist of
  him." And Jesus smilingly replied: "Perhaps we will make him all four; then
  can he enjoy a fourfold satisfaction in life as his ear for the recognition of
  human melody will be able to recognize four tones instead of one." Then said
  Gonod: "I perceive that you really are a philosopher. You must write a book
  for future generations." And Jesus replied: "Not a book -- my mission is to
  live a life in this generation and for all generations. I -- " but he stopped,
  saying to Ganid, "My son, it is time to retire."





7. TRIPS ABOUT ROME



  132:7.1 Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid made five trips away from Rome to points of
  interest in the surrounding territory. On their visit to the northern Italian
  lakes Jesus had the long talk with Ganid concerning the impossibility of
  teaching a man about God if the man does not desire to know God. They had
  casually met a thoughtless pagan while on their journey up to the lakes, and
  Ganid was surprised that Jesus did not follow out his usual practice of
  enlisting the man in conversation which would naturally lead up to the
  discussion of spiritual questions. When Ganid asked his teacher why he evinced
  so little interest in this pagan, Jesus answered:

  132:7.2 "Ganid, the man was not hungry for truth. He was not dissatisfied with
  himself. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not
  open to receive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the harvest of
  salvation; he must be allowed more time for the trials and difficulties of
  life to prepare him for the reception of wisdom and higher learning. Or, if we
  could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Father in
  heaven, and thus would he become so attracted by our lives as sons of God that
  he would be constrained to inquire about our Father. You cannot reveal God to
  those who do not seek for him; you cannot lead unwilling souls into the joys
  of salvation. Man must become hungry for truth as a result of the experiences
  of living, or he must desire to know God as the result of contact with the
  lives of those who are acquainted with the divine Father before another human
  being can act as the means of leading such a fellow mortal to the Father in
  heaven. If we know God, our real business on earth is so to live as to permit
  the Father to reveal himself in our lives, and thus will all God-seeking
  persons see the Father and ask for our help in finding out more about the God
  who in this manner finds expression in our lives."



  132:7.3 It was on the visit to Switzerland, up in the mountains, that Jesus
  had an all-day talk with both father and son about Buddhism. Many times Ganid
  had asked Jesus direct questions about Buddha, but he had always received more
  or less evasive replies. Now, in the presence of the son, the father asked
  Jesus a direct question about Buddha, and he received a direct reply. Said
  Gonod: "I would really like to know what you think of Buddha." And Jesus
  answered:

  132:7.4 "Your Buddha was much better than your Buddhism. Buddha was a great
  man, even a prophet to his people, but he was an orphan prophet; by that I
  mean that he early lost sight of his spiritual Father, the Father in heaven.
  His experience was tragic. He tried to live and teach as a messenger of God,
  but without God. Buddha guided his ship of salvation right up to the safe
  harbor, right up to the entrance to the haven of mortal salvation, and there,
  because of faulty charts of navigation, the good ship ran aground. There it
  has rested these many generations, motionless and almost hopelessly stranded.
  And thereon have many of your people remained all these years. They live
  within hailing distance of the safe waters of rest, but they refuse to enter
  because the noble craft of the good Buddha met the misfortune of grounding
  just outside the harbor. And the Buddhist peoples never will enter this harbor
  unless they abandon the philosophic craft of their prophet and seize upon his
  noble spirit. Had your people remained true to the spirit of Buddha, you would
  have long since entered your haven of spirit tranquillity, soul rest, and
  assurance of salvation.

  132:7.5 "You see, Gonod, Buddha knew God in spirit but failed clearly to
  discover him in mind; the Jews discovered God in mind but largely failed to
  know him in spirit. Today, the Buddhists flounder about in a philosophy
  without God, while my people are piteously enslaved to the fear of a God
  without a saving philosophy of life and liberty. You have a philosophy without
  a God; the Jews have a God but are largely without a philosophy of living as
  related thereto. Buddha, failing to envision God as a spirit and as a Father,
  failed to provide in his teaching the moral energy and the spiritual driving
  power which a religion must possess if it is to change a race and exalt a
  nation."

  132:7.6 Then exclaimed Ganid: "Teacher, let's you and I make a new religion,
  one good enough for India and big enough for Rome, and maybe we can trade it
  to the Jews for Yahweh." And Jesus replied: "Ganid, religions are not made.
  The religions of men grow up over long periods of time, while the revelations
  of God flash upon earth in the lives of the men who reveal God to their
  fellows." But they did not comprehend the meaning of these prophetic words.



  132:7.7 That night after they had retired, Ganid could not sleep. He talked a
  long time with his father and finally said, "You know, father, I sometimes
  think Joshua is a prophet." And his father only sleepily replied, "My son,
  there are others -- "

  132:7.8 From this day, for the remainder of his natural life, Ganid continued
  to evolve a religion of his own. He was mightily moved in his own mind by
  Jesus' broadmindedness, fairness, and tolerance. In all their discussions of
  philosophy and religion this youth never experienced feelings of resentment or
  reactions of antagonism.



  132:7.9 What a scene for the celestial intelligences to behold, this spectacle
  of the Indian lad proposing to the Creator of a universe that they make a new
  religion! And though the young man did not know it, they were making a new and
  everlasting religion right then and there -- this new way of salvation, the
  revelation of God to man through, and in, Jesus. That which the lad wanted
  most to do he was unconsciously actually doing. And it was, and is, ever thus.
  That which the enlightened and reflective human imagination of spiritual
  teaching and leading wholeheartedly and unselfishly wants to do and be,
  becomes measurably creative in accordance with the degree of mortal dedication
  to the divine doing of the Father's will. When man goes in partnership with
  God, great things may, and do, happen.


PAPER 133


 THE RETURN FROM ROME



  133:0.1 WHEN preparing to leave Rome, Jesus said good-bye to none of his
  friends. The scribe of Damascus appeared in Rome without announcement and
  disappeared in like manner. It was a full year before those who knew and loved
  him gave up hope of seeing him again. Before the end of the second year small
  groups of those who had known him found themselves drawn together by their
  common interest in his teachings and through mutual memory of their good times
  with him. And these small groups of Stoics, Cynics, and mystery cultists
  continued to hold these irregular and informal meetings right up to the time
  of the appearance in Rome of the first preachers of the Christian religion.



  133:0.2 Gonod and Ganid had purchased so many things in Alexandria and Rome
  that they sent all their belongings on ahead by pack train to Tarentum, while
  the three travelers walked leisurely across Italy over the great Appian Way.
  On this journey they encountered all sorts of human beings. Many noble Roman
  citizens and Greek colonists lived along this road, but already the progeny of
  great numbers of inferior slaves were beginning to make their appearance.



  133:0.3 One day while resting at lunch, about halfway to Tarentum, Ganid asked
  Jesus a direct question as to what he thought of India's caste system. Said
  Jesus: "Though human beings differ in many ways, the one from another, before
  God and in the spiritual world all mortals stand on an equal footing. There
  are only two groups of mortals in the eyes of God: those who desire to do his
  will and those who do not. As the universe looks upon an inhabited world, it
  likewise discerns two great classes: those who know God and those who do not.
  Those who cannot know God are reckoned among the animals of any given realm.
  Mankind can appropriately be divided into many classes in accordance with
  differing qualifications, as they may be viewed physically, mentally,
  socially, vocationally, or morally, but as these different classes of mortals
  appear before the judgment bar of God, they stand on an equal footing; God is
  truly no respecter of persons. Although you cannot escape the recognition of
  differential human abilities and endowments in matters intellectual, social,
  and moral, you should make no such distinctions in the spiritual brotherhood
  of men when assembled for worship in the presence of God."





1. MERCY AND JUSTICE



  133:1.1 A very interesting incident occurred one afternoon by the roadside as
  they neared Tarentum. They observed a rough and bullying youth brutally
  attacking a smaller lad. Jesus hastened to the assistance of the assaulted
  youth, and when he had rescued him, he tightly held on to the offender until
  the smaller lad had made his escape. The moment Jesus released the little
  bully, Ganid pounced upon the boy and began soundly to thrash him, and to
  Ganid's astonishment Jesus promptly interfered. After he had restrained Ganid
  and permitted the frightened boy to escape, the young man, as soon as he got
  his breath, excitedly exclaimed: "I cannot understand you, Teacher. If mercy
  requires that you rescue the smaller lad, does not justice demand the
  punishment of the larger and offending youth?" In answering, Jesus said:

  133:1.2 "Ganid, it is true, you do not understand. Mercy ministry is always
  the work of the individual, but justice punishment is the function of the
  social, governmental, or universe administrative groups. As an individual I am
  beholden to show mercy; I must go to the rescue of the assaulted lad, and in
  all consistency I may employ sufficient force to restrain the aggressor. And
  that is just what I did. I achieved the deliverance of the assaulted lad; that
  was the end of mercy ministry. Then I forcibly detained the aggressor a
  sufficient length of time to enable the weaker party to the dispute to make
  his escape, after which I withdrew from the affair. I did not proceed to sit
  in judgment on the aggressor, thus to pass upon his motive -- to adjudicate
  all that entered into his attack upon his fellow -- and then undertake to
  execute the punishment which my mind might dictate as just recompense for his
  wrongdoing. Ganid, mercy may be lavish, but justice is precise. Cannot you
  discern that no two persons are likely to agree as to the punishment which
  would satisfy the demands of justice? One would impose forty lashes, another
  twenty, while still another would advise solitary confinement as a just
  punishment. Can you not see that on this world such responsibilities had
  better rest upon the group or be administered by chosen representatives of the
  group? In the universe, judgment is vested in those who fully know the
  antecedents of all wrongdoing as well as its motivation. In civilized society
  and in an organized universe the administration of justice presupposes the
  passing of just sentence consequent upon fair judgment, and such prerogatives
  are vested in the juridical groups of the worlds and in the all-knowing
  administrators of the higher universes of all creation."

  133:1.3 For days they talked about this problem of manifesting mercy and
  administering justice. And Ganid, at least to some extent, understood why
  Jesus would not engage in personal combat. But Ganid asked one last question,
  to which he never received a fully satisfactory answer; and that question was:
  "But, Teacher, if a stronger and ill-tempered creature should attack you and
  threaten to destroy you, what would you do? Would you make no effort to defend
  yourself?" Although Jesus could not fully and satisfactorily answer the lad's
  question, inasmuch as he was not willing to disclose to him that he (Jesus)
  was living on earth as the exemplification of the Paradise Father's love to an
  onlooking universe, he did say this much:

  133:1.4 "Ganid, I can well understand how some of these problems perplex you,
  and I will endeavor to answer your question. First, in all attacks which might
  be made upon my person, I would determine whether or not the aggressor was a
  son of God -- my brother in the flesh -- and if I thought such a creature did
  not possess moral judgment and spiritual reason, I would unhesitatingly defend
  myself to the full capacity of my powers of resistance, regardless of
  consequences to the attacker. But I would not thus assault a fellow man of
  sonship status, even in self-defense. That is, I would not punish him in
  advance and without judgment for his assault upon me. I would by every
  possible artifice seek to prevent and dissuade him from making such an attack
  and to mitigate it in case of my failure to abort it. Ganid, I have absolute
  confidence in my heavenly Father's overcare; I am consecrated to doing the
  will of my Father in heaven. I do not believe that real harm can befall me; I
  do not believe that my lifework can really be jeopardized by anything my
  enemies might wish to visit upon me, and surely we have no violence to fear
  from our friends. I am absolutely assured that the entire universe is friendly
  to me -- this all-powerful truth I insist on believing with a wholehearted
  trust in spite of all appearances to the contrary."

  133:1.5 But Ganid was not fully satisfied. Many times they talked over these
  matters, and Jesus told him some of his boyhood experiences and also about
  Jacob the stone mason's son. On learning how Jacob appointed himself to defend
  Jesus, Ganid said: "Oh, I begin to see! In the first place very seldom would
  any normal human being want to attack such a kindly person as you, and even if
  any one should be so unthinking as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to
  be near at hand some other mortal who will fly to your assistance, even as you
  always go to the rescue of any person you observe to be in distress. In my
  heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had
  been Jacob, I would have enjoyed punishing those rude fellows who presumed to
  attack you just because they thought you would not defend yourself. I presume
  you are fairly safe in your journey through life since you spend much of your
  time helping others and ministering to your fellows in distress -- well, most
  likely there'll always be someone on hand to defend you." And Jesus replied:
  "That test has not yet come, Ganid, and when it does, we will have to abide by
  the Father's will." And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to
  say on this difficult subject of self-defense and nonresistance. On another
  occasion he did draw from Jesus the opinion that organized society had every
  right to employ force in the execution of its just mandates.





2. EMBARKING AT TARENTUM



  133:2.1 While tarrying at the ship landing, waiting for the boat to unload
  cargo, the travelers observed a man mistreating his wife. As was his custom,
  Jesus intervened in behalf of the person subjected to attack. He stepped up
  behind the irate husband and, tapping him gently on the shoulder, said: "My
  friend, may I speak with you in private for a moment?" The angry man was
  nonplused by such an approach and, after a moment of embarrassing hesitation,
  stammered out -- "er -- why -- yes, what do you want with me?" When Jesus had
  led him to one side, he said: "My friend, I perceive that something terrible
  must have happened to you; I very much desire that you tell me what could
  happen to such a strong man to lead him to attack his wife, the mother of his
  children, and that right out here before all eyes. I am sure you must feel
  that you have some good reason for this assault. What did the woman do to
  deserve such treatment from her husband? As I look upon you, I think I discern
  in your face the love of justice if not the desire to show mercy. I venture to
  say that, if you found me out by the wayside, attacked by robbers, you would
  unhesitatingly rush to my rescue. I dare say you have done many such brave
  things in the course of your life. Now, my friend, tell me what is the matter?
  Did the woman do something wrong, or did you foolishly lose your head and
  thoughtlessly assault her?" It was not so much what he said that touched this
  man's heart as the kindly look and the sympathetic smile which Jesus bestowed
  upon him at the conclusion of his remarks. Said the man: "I perceive you are a
  priest of the Cynics, and I am thankful you restrained me. My wife has done no
  great wrong; she is a good woman, but she irritates me by the manner in which
  she picks on me in public, and I lose my temper. I am sorry for my lack of
  self-control, and I promise to try to live up to my former pledge to one of
  your brothers who taught me the better way many years ago. I promise you."

  133:2.2 And then, in bidding him farewell, Jesus said: "My brother, always
  remember that man has no rightful authority over woman unless the woman has
  willingly and voluntarily given him such authority. Your wife has engaged to
  go through life with you, to help you fight its battles, and to assume the far
  greater share of the burden of bearing and rearing your children; and in
  return for this special service it is only fair that she receive from you that
  special protection which man can give to woman as the partner who must carry,
  bear, and nurture the children. The loving care and consideration which a man
  is willing to bestow upon his wife and their children are the measure of that
  man's attainment of the higher levels of creative and spiritual self-
  consciousness. Do you not know that men and women are partners with God in
  that they co-operate to create beings who grow up to possess themselves of the
  potential of immortal souls? The Father in heaven treats the Spirit Mother of
  the children of the universe as one equal to himself. It is Godlike to share
  your life and all that relates thereto on equal terms with the mother partner
  who so fully shares with you that divine experience of reproducing yourselves
  in the lives of your children. If you can only love your children as God loves
  you, you will love and cherish your wife as the Father in heaven honors and
  exalts the Infinite Spirit, the mother of all the spirit children of a vast
  universe."

  133:2.3 As they went on board the boat, they looked back upon the scene of the
  teary-eyed couple standing in silent embrace. Having heard the latter half of
  Jesus' message to the man, Gonod was all day occupied with meditations
  thereon, and he resolved to reorganize his home when he returned to India.

  133:2.4 The journey to Nicopolis was pleasant but slow as the wind was not
  favorable. The three spent many hours recounting their experiences in Rome and
  reminiscing about all that had happened to them since they first met in
  Jerusalem. Ganid was becoming imbued with the spirit of personal ministry. He
  began work on the steward of the ship, but on the second day, when he got into
  deep religious water, he called on Joshua to help him out.

  133:2.5 They spent several days at Nicopolis, the city which Augustus had
  founded some fifty years before as the "city of victory" in commemoration of
  the battle of Actium, this site being the land whereon he camped with his army
  before the battle. They lodged in the home of one Jeramy, a Greek proselyte of
  the Jewish faith, whom they had met on shipboard. The Apostle Paul spent all
  winter with the son of Jeramy in the same house in the course of his third
  missionary journey. From Nicopolis they sailed on the same boat for Corinth,
  the capital of the Roman province of Achaia.





3. AT CORINTH



  133:3.1 By the time they reached Corinth, Ganid was becoming very much
  interested in the Jewish religion, and so it was not strange that, one day as
  they passed the synagogue and saw the people going in, he requested Jesus to
  take him to the service. That day they heard a learned rabbi discourse on the
  "Destiny of Israel," and after the service they met one Crispus, the chief
  ruler of this synagogue. Many times they went back to the synagogue services,
  but chiefly to meet Crispus. Ganid grew to be very fond of Crispus, his wife,
  and their family of five children. He much enjoyed observing how a Jew
  conducted his family life.

  133:3.2 While Ganid studied family life, Jesus was teaching Crispus the better
  ways of religious living. Jesus held more than twenty sessions with this
  forward-looking Jew; and it is not surprising, years afterward, when Paul was
  preaching in this very synagogue, and when the Jews had rejected his message
  and had voted to forbid his further preaching in the synagogue, and when he
  then went to the gentiles, that Crispus with his entire family embraced the
  new religion, and that he became one of the chief supports of the Christian
  church which Paul subsequently organized at Corinth.

  133:3.3 During the eighteen months Paul preached in Corinth, being later
  joined by Silas and Timothy, he met many others who had been taught by the
  "Jewish tutor of the son of an Indian merchant."

  133:3.4 At Corinth they met people of every race hailing from three
  continents. Next to Alexandria and Rome, it was the most cosmopolitan city of
  the Mediterranean empire. There was much to attract one's attention in this
  city, and Ganid never grew weary of visiting the citadel which stood almost
  two thousand feet above the sea. He also spent a great deal of his spare time
  about the synagogue and in the home of Crispus. He was at first shocked, and
  later on charmed, by the status of woman in the Jewish home; it was a
  revelation to this young Indian.

  133:3.5 Jesus and Ganid were often guests in another Jewish home, that of
  Justus, a devout merchant, who lived alongside the synagogue. And many times,
  subsequently, when the Apostle Paul sojourned in this home, did he listen to
  the recounting of these visits with the Indian lad and his Jewish tutor, while
  both Paul and Justus wondered whatever became of such a wise and brilliant
  Hebrew teacher.

  133:3.6 When in Rome, Ganid observed that Jesus refused to accompany them to
  the public baths. Several times afterward the young man sought to induce Jesus
  further to express himself in regard to the relations of the sexes. Though he
  would answer the lad's questions, he never seemed disposed to discuss these
  subjects at great length. One evening as they strolled about Corinth out near
  where the wall of the citadel ran down to the sea, they were accosted by two
  public women. Ganid had imbibed the idea, and rightly, that Jesus was a man of
  high ideals, and that he abhorred everything which partook of uncleanness or
  savored of evil; accordingly he spoke sharply to these women and rudely
  motioned them away. When Jesus saw this, he said to Ganid: "You mean well, but
  you should not presume thus to speak to the children of God, even though they
  chance to be his erring children. Who are we that we should sit in judgment on
  these women? Do you happen to know all of the circumstances which led them to
  resort to such methods of obtaining a livelihood? Stop here with me while we
  talk about these matters." The courtesans were astonished at what he said even
  more than was Ganid.

  133:3.7 As they stood there in the moonlight, Jesus went on to say: "There
  lives within every human mind a divine spirit, the gift of the Father in
  heaven. This good spirit ever strives to lead us to God, to help us to find
  God and to know God; but also within mortals there are many natural physical
  tendencies which the Creator put there to serve the well-being of the
  individual and the race. Now, oftentimes, men and women become confused in
  their efforts to understand themselves and to grapple with the manifold
  difficulties of making a living in a world so largely dominated by selfishness
  and sin. I perceive, Ganid, that neither of these women is willfully wicked. I
  can tell by their faces that they have experienced much sorrow; they have
  suffered much at the hands of an apparently cruel fate; they have not
  intentionally chosen this sort of life; they have, in discouragement bordering
  on despair, surrendered to the pressure of the hour and accepted this
  distasteful means of obtaining a livelihood as the best way out of a situation
  that to them appeared hopeless. Ganid, some people are really wicked at heart;
  they deliberately choose to do mean things, but, tell me, as you look into
  these now tear-stained faces, do you see anything bad or wicked?" And as Jesus
  paused for his reply, Ganid's voice choked up as he stammered out his answer:
  "No, Teacher, I do not. And I apologize for my rudeness to them -- I crave
  their forgiveness." Then said Jesus: "And I bespeak for them that they have
  forgiven you as I speak for my Father in heaven that he has forgiven them. Now
  all of you come with me to a friend's house where we will seek refreshment and
  plan for the new and better life ahead." Up to this time the amazed women had
  not uttered a word; they looked at each other and silently followed as the men
  led the way.

  133:3.8 Imagine the surprise of Justus' wife when, at this late hour, Jesus
  appeared with Ganid and these two strangers, saying: "You will forgive us for
  coming at this hour, but Ganid and I desire a bite to eat, and we would share
  it with these our new-found friends, who are also in need of nourishment; and
  besides all this, we come to you with the thought that you will be interested
  in counseling with us as to the best way to help these women get a new start
  in life. They can tell you their story, but I surmise they have had much
  trouble, and their very presence here in your house testifies how earnestly
  they crave to know good people, and how willingly they will embrace the
  opportunity to show all the world -- and even the angels of heaven -- what
  brave and noble women they can become."

  133:3.9 When Martha, Justus' wife, had spread the food on the table, Jesus,
  taking unexpected leave of them, said: "As it is getting late, and since the
  young man's father will be awaiting us, we pray to be excused while we leave
  you here together -- three women -- the beloved children of the Most High. And
  I will pray for your spiritual guidance while you make plans for a new and
  better life on earth and eternal life in the great beyond."

  133:3.10 Thus did Jesus and Ganid take leave of the women. So far the two
  courtesans had said nothing; likewise was Ganid speechless. And for a few
  moments so was Martha, but presently she rose to the occasion and did
  everything for these strangers that Jesus had hoped for. The elder of these
  two women died a short time thereafter, with bright hopes of eternal survival,
  and the younger woman worked at Justus' place of business and later became a
  lifelong member of the first Christian church in Corinth.

  133:3.11 Several times in the home of Crispus, Jesus and Ganid met one Gaius,
  who subsequently became a loyal supporter of Paul. During these two months in
  Corinth they held intimate conversations with scores of worth-while
  individuals, and as a result of all these apparently casual contacts more than
  half of the individuals so affected became members of the subsequent Christian
  community.

  133:3.12 When Paul first went to Corinth, he had not intended to make a
  prolonged visit. But he did not know how well the Jewish tutor had prepared
  the way for his labors. And further, he discovered that great interest had
  already been aroused by Aquila and Priscilla, Aquila being one of the Cynics
  with whom Jesus had come in contact when in Rome. This couple were Jewish
  refugees from Rome, and they quickly embraced Paul's teachings. He lived with
  them and worked with them, for they were also tentmakers. It was because of
  these circumstances that Paul prolonged his stay in Corinth.





4. PERSONAL WORK IN CORINTH



  133:4.1 Jesus and Ganid had many more interesting experiences in Corinth. They
  had close converse with a great number of persons who greatly profited by the
  instruction received from Jesus.



  133:4.2 The miller he taught about grinding up the grains of truth in the mill
  of living experience so as to render the difficult things of divine life
  readily receivable by even the weak and feeble among one's fellow mortals.
  Said Jesus: "Give the milk of truth to those who are babes in spiritual
  perception. In your living and loving ministry serve spiritual food in
  attractive form and suited to the capacity of receptivity of each of your
  inquirers."



  133:4.3 To the Roman centurion he said: "Render unto Caesar the things which
  are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's. The sincere service of
  God and the loyal service of Caesar do not conflict unless Caesar should
  presume to arrogate to himself that homage which alone can be claimed by
  Deity. Loyalty to God, if you should come to know him, would render you all
  the more loyal and faithful in your devotion to a worthy emperor."



  133:4.4 To the earnest leader of the Mithraic cult he said: "You do well to
  seek for a religion of eternal salvation, but you err to go in quest of such a
  glorious truth among man-made mysteries and human philosophies. Know you not
  that the mystery of eternal salvation dwells within your own soul? Do you not
  know that the God of heaven has sent his spirit to live within you, and that
  this spirit will lead all truth-loving and God-serving mortals out of this
  life and through the portals of death up to the eternal heights of light where
  God waits to receive his children? And never forget: You who know God are the
  sons of God if you truly yearn to be like him."



  133:4.5 To the Epicurean teacher he said: "You do well to choose the best and
  esteem the good, but are you wise when you fail to discern the greater things
  of mortal life which are embodied in the spirit realms derived from the
  realization of the presence of God in the human heart? The great thing in all
  human experience is the realization of knowing the God whose spirit lives
  within you and seeks to lead you forth on that long and almost endless journey
  of attaining the personal presence of our common Father, the God of all
  creation, the Lord of universes."



  133:4.6 To the Greek contractor and builder he said: "My friend, as you build
  the material structures of men, grow a spiritual character in the similitude
  of the divine spirit within your soul. Do not let your achievement as a
  temporal builder outrun your attainment as a spiritual son of the kingdom of
  heaven. While you build the mansions of time for another, neglect not to
  secure your title to the mansions of eternity for yourself. Ever remember,
  there is a city whose foundations are righteousness and truth, and whose
  builder and maker is God."



  133:4.7 To the Roman judge he said: "As you judge men, remember that you
  yourself will also some day come to judgment before the bar of the Rulers of a
  universe. Judge justly, even mercifully, even as you shall some day thus crave
  merciful consideration at the hands of the Supreme Arbiter. Judge as you would
  be judged under similar circumstances, thus being guided by the spirit of the
  law as well as by its letter. And even as you accord justice dominated by
  fairness in the light of the need of those who are brought before you, so
  shall you have the right to expect justice tempered by mercy when you sometime
  stand before the Judge of all the earth."



  133:4.8 To the mistress of the Greek inn he said: "Minister your hospitality
  as one who entertains the children of the Most High. Elevate the drudgery of
  your daily toil to the high levels of a fine art through the increasing
  realization that you minister to God in the persons whom he indwells by his
  spirit which has descended to live within the hearts of men, thereby seeking
  to transform their minds and lead their souls to the knowledge of the Paradise
  Father of all these bestowed gifts of the divine spirit."



  133:4.9 Jesus had many visits with a Chinese merchant. In saying good-bye, he
  admonished him: "Worship only God, who is your true spirit ancestor. Remember
  that the Father's spirit ever lives within you and always points your soul-
  direction heavenward. If you follow the unconscious leadings of this immortal
  spirit, you are certain to continue on in the uplifted way of finding God. And
  when you do attain the Father in heaven, it will be because by seeking him you
  have become more and more like him. And so farewell, Chang, but only for a
  season, for we shall meet again in the worlds of light where the Father of
  spirit souls has provided many delightful stopping-places for those who are
  Paradise-bound."



  133:4.10 To the traveler from Britain he said: "My brother, I perceive you are
  seeking for truth, and I suggest that the spirit of the Father of all truth
  may chance to dwell within you. Did you ever sincerely endeavor to talk with
  the spirit of your own soul? Such a thing is indeed difficult and seldom
  yields consciousness of success; but every honest attempt of the material mind
  to communicate with its indwelling spirit meets with certain success,
  notwithstanding that the majority of all such magnificent human experiences
  must long remain as superconscious registrations in the souls of such God-
  knowing mortals."



  133:4.11 To the runaway lad Jesus said: "Remember, there are two things you
  cannot run away from -- God and yourself. Wherever you may go, you take with
  you yourself and the spirit of the heavenly Father which lives within your
  heart. My son, stop trying to deceive yourself; settle down to the courageous
  practice of facing the facts of life; lay firm hold on the assurances of
  sonship with God and the certainty of eternal life, as I have instructed you.
  From this day on purpose to be a real man, a man determined to face life
  bravely and intelligently."



  133:4.12 To the condemned criminal he said at the last hour: "My brother, you
  have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you became entangled in the
  meshes of crime. From talking to you, I well know you did not plan to do the
  thing which is about to cost you your temporal life. But you did do this evil,
  and your fellows have adjudged you guilty; they have determined that you shall
  die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-defense in the manner
  of its own choosing. There seems to be no way of humanly escaping the penalty
  of your wrongdoing. Your fellows must judge you by what you did, but there is
  a Judge to whom you may appeal for forgiveness, and who will judge you by your
  real motives and better intentions. You need not fear to meet the judgment of
  God if your repentance is genuine and your faith sincere. The fact that your
  error carries with it the death penalty imposed by man does not prejudice the
  chance of your soul to obtain justice and enjoy mercy before the heavenly
  courts."



  133:4.13 Jesus enjoyed many intimate talks with a large number of hungry
  souls, too many to find a place in this record. The three travelers enjoyed
  their sojourn in Corinth. Excepting Athens, which was more renowned as an
  educational center, Corinth was the most important city in Greece during these
  Roman times, and their two months' stay in this thriving commercial center
  afforded opportunity for all three of them to gain much valuable experience.
  Their sojourn in this city was one of the most interesting of all their stops
  on the way back from Rome.

  133:4.14 Gonod had many interests in Corinth, but finally his business was
  finished, and they prepared to sail for Athens. They traveled on a small boat
  which could be carried overland on a land track from one of Corinth's harbors
  to the other, a distance of ten miles.





5. AT ATHENS -- DISCOURSE ON SCIENCE



  133:5.1 They shortly arrived at the olden center of Greek science and
  learning, and Ganid was thrilled with the thought of being in Athens, of being
  in Greece, the cultural center of the onetime Alexandrian empire, which had
  extended its borders even to his own land of India. There was little business
  to transact; so Gonod spent most of his time with Jesus and Ganid, visiting
  the many points of interest and listening to the interesting discussions of
  the lad and his versatile teacher.

  133:5.2 A great university still thrived in Athens, and the trio made frequent
  visits to its halls of learning. Jesus and Ganid had thoroughly discussed the
  teachings of Plato when they attended the lectures in the museum at
  Alexandria. They all enjoyed the art of Greece, examples of which were still
  to be found here and there about the city.

  133:5.3 Both the father and the son greatly enjoyed the discussion on science
  which Jesus had at their inn one evening with a Greek philosopher. After this
  pedant had talked for almost three hours, and when he had finished his
  discourse, Jesus, in terms of modern thought, said:

  133:5.4 Scientists may some day measure the energy, or force manifestations,
  of gravitation, light, and electricity, but these same scientists can never
  (scientifically) tell you what these universe phenomena are. Science deals
  with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal values. True
  philosophy grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate these
  quantitative and qualitative observations. There always exists the danger that
  the purely physical scientist may become afflicted with mathematical pride and
  statistical egotism, not to mention spiritual blindness.

  133:5.5 Logic is valid in the material world, and mathematics is reliable when
  limited in its application to physical things; but neither is to be regarded
  as wholly dependable or infallible when applied to life problems. Life
  embraces phenomena which are not wholly material. Arithmetic says that, if one
  man could shear a sheep in ten minutes, ten men could shear it in one minute.
  That is sound mathematics, but it is not true, for the ten men could not so do
  it; they would get in one another's way so badly that the work would be
  greatly delayed.

  133:5.6 Mathematics asserts that, if one person stands for a certain unit of
  intellectual and moral value, ten persons would stand for ten times this
  value. But in dealing with human personality it would be nearer the truth to
  say that such a personality association is a sum equal to the square of the
  number of personalities concerned in the equation rather than the simple
  arithmetical sum. A social group of human beings in co-ordinated working
  harmony stands for a force far greater than the simple sum of its parts.

  133:5.7 Quantity may be identified as a fact, thus becoming a scientific
  uniformity. Quality, being a matter of mind interpretation, represents an
  estimate of values, and must, therefore, remain an experience of the
  individual. When both science and religion become less dogmatic and more
  tolerant of criticism, philosophy will then begin to achieve unity in the
  intelligent comprehension of the universe.

  133:5.8 There is unity in the cosmic universe if you could only discern its
  workings in actuality. The real universe is friendly to every child of the
  eternal God. The real problem is: How can the finite mind of man achieve a
  logical, true, and corresponding unity of thought? This universe-knowing state
  of mind can be had only by conceiving that the quantitative fact and the
  qualitative value have a common causation in the Paradise Father. Such a
  conception of reality yields a broader insight into the purposeful unity of
  universe phenomena; it even reveals a spiritual goal of progressive
  personality achievement. And this is a concept of unity which can sense the
  unchanging background of a living universe of continually changing impersonal
  relations and evolving personal relationships.

  133:5.9 Matter and spirit and the state intervening between them are three
  interrelated and interassociated levels of the true unity of the real
  universe. Regardless of how divergent the universe phenomena of fact and value
  may appear to be, they are, after all, unified in the Supreme.

  133:5.10 Reality of material existence attaches to unrecognized energy as well
  as to visible matter. When the energies of the universe are so slowed down
  that they acquire the requisite degree of motion, then, under favorable
  conditions, these same energies become mass. And forget not, the mind which
  can alone perceive the presence of apparent realities is itself also real. And
  the fundamental cause of this universe of energy-mass, mind, and spirit, is
  eternal -- it exists and consists in the nature and reactions of the Universal
  Father and his absolute co-ordinates.



  133:5.11 They were all more than astounded at the words of Jesus, and when the
  Greek took leave of them, he said: "At last my eyes have beheld a Jew who
  thinks something besides racial superiority and talks something besides
  religion." And they retired for the night.

  133:5.12 The sojourn in Athens was pleasant and profitable, but it was not
  particularly fruitful in its human contacts. Too many of the Athenians of that
  day were either intellectually proud of their reputation of another day or
  mentally stupid and ignorant, being the offspring of the inferior slaves of
  those earlier periods when there was glory in Greece and wisdom in the minds
  of its people. Even then, there were still many keen minds to be found among
  the citizens of Athens.





6. AT EPHESUS -- DISCOURSE ON THE SOUL



  133:6.1 On leaving Athens, the travelers went by way of Troas to Ephesus, the
  capital of the Roman province of Asia. They made many trips out to the famous
  temple of Artemis of the Ephesians, about two miles from the city. Artemis was
  the most famous goddess of all Asia Minor and a perpetuation of the still
  earlier mother goddess of ancient Anatolian times. The crude idol exhibited in
  the enormous temple dedicated to her worship was reputed to have fallen from
  heaven. Not all of Ganid's early training to respect images as symbols of
  divinity had been eradicated, and he thought it best to purchase a little
  silver shrine in honor of this fertility goddess of Asia Minor. That night
  they talked at great length about the worship of things made with human hands.

  133:6.2 On the third day of their stay they walked down by the river to
  observe the dredging of the harbor's mouth. At noon they talked with a young
  Phoenician who was homesick and much discouraged; but most of all he was
  envious of a certain young man who had received promotion over his head. Jesus
  spoke comforting words to him and quoted the olden Hebrew proverb: "A man's
  gift makes room for him and brings him before great men."

  133:6.3 Of all the large cities they visited on this tour of the
  Mediterranean, they here accomplished the least of value to the subsequent
  work of the Christian missionaries. Christianity secured its start in Ephesus
  largely through the efforts of Paul, who resided here more than two years,
  making tents for a living and conducting lectures on religion and philosophy
  each night in the main audience chamber of the school of Tyrannus.

  133:6.4 There was a progressive thinker connected with this local school of
  philosophy, and Jesus had several profitable sessions with him. In the course
  of these talks Jesus had repeatedly used the word "soul." This learned Greek
  finally asked him what he meant by "soul," and he replied:



  133:6.5 "The soul is the self-reflective, truth-discerning, and spirit-
  perceiving part of man which forever elevates the human being above the level
  of the animal world. Self-consciousness, in and of itself, is not the soul.
  Moral self-consciousness is true human self-realization and constitutes the
  foundation of the human soul, and the soul is that part of man which
  represents the potential survival value of human experience. Moral choice and
  spiritual attainment, the ability to know God and the urge to be like him, are
  the characteristics of the soul. The soul of man cannot exist apart from moral
  thinking and spiritual activity. A stagnant soul is a dying soul. But the soul
  of man is distinct from the divine spirit which dwells within the mind. The
  divine spirit arrives simultaneously with the first moral activity of the
  human mind, and that is the occasion of the birth of the soul.

  133:6.6 "The saving or losing of a soul has to do with whether or not the
  moral consciousness attains survival status through eternal alliance with its
  associated immortal spirit endowment. Salvation is the spiritualization of the
  self-realization of the moral consciousness, which thereby becomes possessed
  of survival value. All forms of soul conflict consist in the lack of harmony
  between the moral, or spiritual, self-consciousness and the purely
  intellectual self-consciousness.

  133:6.7 "The human soul, when matured, ennobled, and spiritualized, approaches
  the heavenly status in that it comes near to being an entity intervening
  between the material and the spiritual, the material self and the divine
  spirit. The evolving soul of a human being is difficult of description and
  more difficult of demonstration because it is not discoverable by the methods
  of either material investigation or spiritual proving. Material science cannot
  demonstrate the existence of a soul, neither can pure spirit-testing.
  Notwithstanding the failure of both material science and spiritual standards
  to discover the existence of the human soul, every morally conscious mortal
  knows of the existence of his soul as a real and actual personal experience."





7. THE SOJOURN AT CYPRUS -- DISCOURSE ON MIND



  133:7.1 Shortly the travelers set sail for Cyprus, stopping at Rhodes. They
  enjoyed the long water voyage and arrived at their island destination much
  rested in body and refreshed in spirit.

  133:7.2 It was their plan to enjoy a period of real rest and play on this
  visit to Cyprus as their tour of the Mediterranean was drawing to a close.
  They landed at Paphos and at once began the assembly of supplies for their
  sojourn of several weeks in the near-by mountains. On the third day after
  their arrival they started for the hills with their well-loaded pack animals.

  133:7.3 For two weeks the trio greatly enjoyed themselves, and then, without
  warning, young Ganid was suddenly taken grievously ill. For two weeks he
  suffered from a raging fever, oftentimes becoming delirious; both Jesus and
  Gonod were kept busy attending the sick boy. Jesus skillfully and tenderly
  cared for the lad, and the father was amazed by both the gentleness and
  adeptness manifested in all his ministry to the afflicted youth. They were far
  from human habitations, and the boy was too ill to be moved; so they prepared
  as best they could to nurse him back to health right there in the mountains.

  133:7.4 During Ganid's convalescence of three weeks Jesus told him many
  interesting things about nature and her various moods. And what fun they had
  as they wandered over the mountains, the boy asking questions, Jesus answering
  them, and the father marveling at the whole performance.

  133:7.5 The last week of their sojourn in the mountains Jesus and Ganid had a
  long talk on the functions of the human mind. After several hours of
  discussion the lad asked this question: "But, Teacher, what do you mean when
  you say that man experiences a higher form of self-consciousness than do the
  higher animals?" And as restated in modern phraseology, Jesus answered:

  133:7.6 My son, I have already told you much about the mind of man and the
  divine spirit that lives therein, but now let me emphasize that self-
  consciousness is a reality. When any animal becomes self-conscious, it becomes
  a primitive man. Such an attainment results from a co-ordination of function
  between impersonal energy and spirit-conceiving mind, and it is this
  phenomenon which warrants the bestowal of an absolute focal point for the
  human personality, the spirit of the Father in heaven.

  133:7.7 Ideas are not simply a record of sensations; ideas are sensations plus
  the reflective interpretations of the personal self; and the self is more than
  the sum of one's sensations. There begins to be something of an approach to
  unity in an evolving selfhood, and that unity is derived from the indwelling
  presence of a part of absolute unity which spiritually activates such a self-
  conscious animal-origin mind.

  133:7.8 No mere animal could possess a time self-consciousness. Animals
  possess a physiological co-ordination of associated sensation-recognition and
  memory thereof, but none experience a meaningful recognition of sensation or
  exhibit a purposeful association of these combined physical experiences such
  as is manifested in the conclusions of intelligent and reflective human
  interpretations. And this fact of self-conscious existence, associated with
  the reality of his subsequent spiritual experience, constitutes man a
  potential son of the universe and foreshadows his eventual attainment of the
  Supreme Unity of the universe.

  133:7.9 Neither is the human self merely the sum of the successive states of
  consciousness. Without the effective functioning of a consciousness sorter and
  associater there would not exist sufficient unity to warrant the designation
  of a selfhood. Such an ununified mind could hardly attain conscious levels of
  human status. If the associations of consciousness were just an accident, the
  minds of all men would then exhibit the uncontrolled and random associations
  of certain phases of mental madness.

  133:7.10 A human mind, built up solely out of the consciousness of physical
  sensations, could never attain spiritual levels; this kind of material mind
  would be utterly lacking in a sense of moral values and would be without a
  guiding sense of spiritual dominance which is so essential to achieving
  harmonious personality unity in time, and which is inseparable from
  personality survival in eternity.

  133:7.11 The human mind early begins to manifest qualities which are
  supermaterial; the truly reflective human intellect is not altogether bound by
  the limits of time. That individuals so differ in their life performances
  indicates, not only the varying endowments of heredity and the different
  influences of the environment, but also the degree of unification with the
  indwelling spirit of the Father which has been achieved by the self, the
  measure of the identification of the one with the other.

  133:7.12 The human mind does not well stand the conflict of double allegiance.
  It is a severe strain on the soul to undergo the experience of an effort to
  serve both good and evil. The supremely happy and efficiently unified mind is
  the one wholly dedicated to the doing of the will of the Father in heaven.
  Unresolved conflicts destroy unity and may terminate in mind disruption. But
  the survival character of a soul is not fostered by attempting to secure peace
  of mind at any price, by the surrender of noble aspirations, and by the
  compromise of spiritual ideals; rather is such peace attained by the stalwart
  assertion of the triumph of that which is true, and this victory is achieved
  in the overcoming of evil with the potent force of good.



  133:7.13 The next day they departed for Salamis, where they embarked for
  Antioch on the Syrian coast.





8. AT ANTIOCH



  133:8.1 Antioch was the capital of the Roman province of Syria, and here the
  imperial governor had his residence. Antioch had half a million inhabitants;
  it was the third city of the empire in size and the first in wickedness and
  flagrant immorality. Gonod had considerable business to transact; so Jesus and
  Ganid were much by themselves. They visited everything about this polyglot
  city except the grove of Daphne. Gonod and Ganid visited this notorious shrine
  of shame, but Jesus declined to accompany them. Such scenes were not so
  shocking to Indians, but they were repellent to an idealistic Hebrew.

  133:8.2 Jesus became sober and reflective as he drew nearer Palestine and the
  end of their journey. He visited with few people in Antioch; he seldom went
  about in the city. After much questioning as to why his teacher manifested so
  little interest in Antioch, Ganid finally induced Jesus to say: "This city is
  not far from Palestine; maybe I shall come back here sometime."



  133:8.3 Ganid had a very interesting experience in Antioch. This young man had
  proved himself an apt pupil and already had begun to make practical use of
  some of Jesus' teachings. There was a certain Indian connected with his
  father's business in Antioch who had become so unpleasant and disgruntled that
  his dismissal had been considered. When Ganid heard this, he betook himself to
  his father's place of business and held a long conference with his fellow
  countryman. This man felt he had been put at the wrong job. Ganid told him
  about the Father in heaven and in many ways expanded his views of religion.
  But of all that Ganid said, the quotation of a Hebrew proverb did the most
  good, and that word of wisdom was: "Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do that
  with all your might."

  133:8.4 After preparing their luggage for the camel caravan, they passed on
  down to Sidon and thence over to Damascus, and after three days they made
  ready for the long trek across the desert sands.





9. IN MESOPOTAMIA



  133:9.1 The caravan trip across the desert was not a new experience for these
  much-traveled men. After Ganid had watched his teacher help with the loading
  of their twenty camels and observed him volunteer to drive their own animal,
  he exclaimed, "Teacher, is there anything that you cannot do?" Jesus only
  smiled, saying, "The teacher surely is not without honor in the eyes of a
  diligent pupil." And so they set forth for the ancient city of Ur.

  133:9.2 Jesus was much interested in the early history of Ur, the birthplace
  of Abraham, and he was equally fascinated with the ruins and traditions of
  Susa, so much so that Gonod and Ganid extended their stay in these parts three
  weeks in order to afford Jesus more time to conduct his investigations and
  also to provide the better opportunity to persuade him to go back to India
  with them.

  133:9.3 It was at Ur that Ganid had a long talk with Jesus regarding the
  difference between knowledge, wisdom, and truth. And he was greatly charmed
  with the saying of the Hebrew wise man: "Wisdom is the principal thing;
  therefore get wisdom. With all your quest for knowledge, get understanding.
  Exalt wisdom and she will promote you. She will bring you to honor if you will
  but embrace her."



  133:9.4 At last the day came for the separation. They were all brave,
  especially the lad, but it was a trying ordeal. They were tearful of eye but
  courageous of heart. In bidding his teacher farewell, Ganid said: "Farewell,
  Teacher, but not forever. When I come again to Damascus, I will look for you.
  I love you, for I think the Father in heaven must be something like you; at
  least I know you are much like what you have told me about him. I will
  remember your teaching, but most of all, I will never forget you." Said the
  father, "Farewell to a great teacher, one who has made us better and helped us
  to know God." And Jesus replied, "Peace be upon you, and may the blessing of
  the Father in heaven ever abide with you." And Jesus stood on the shore and
  watched as the small boat carried them out to their anchored ship. Thus the
  Master left his friends from India at Charax, never to see them again in this
  world; nor were they, in this world, ever to know that the man who later
  appeared as Jesus of Nazareth was this same friend they had just taken leave
  of -- Joshua their teacher.

  133:9.5 In India, Ganid grew up to become an influential man, a worthy
  successor of his eminent father, and he spread abroad many of the noble truths
  which he had learned from Jesus, his beloved teacher. Later on in life, when
  Ganid heard of the strange teacher in Palestine who terminated his career on a
  cross, though he recognized the similarity between the gospel of this Son of
  Man and the teachings of his Jewish tutor, it never occurred to him that these
  two were actually the same person.



  133:9.6 Thus ended that chapter in the life of the Son of Man which might be
  termed: The mission of Joshua the teacher.


PAPER 134


 THE TRANSITION YEARS



  134:0.1 DURING the Mediterranean journey Jesus had carefully studied the
  people he met and the countries through which he passed, and at about this
  time he reached his final decision as to the remainder of his life on earth.
  He had fully considered and now finally approved the plan which provided that
  he be born of Jewish parents in Palestine, and he therefore deliberately
  returned to Galilee to await the beginning of his lifework as a public teacher
  of truth; he began to lay plans for a public career in the land of his father
  Joseph's people, and he did this of his own free will.

  134:0.2 Jesus had found out through personal and human experience that
  Palestine was the best place in all the Roman world wherein to set forth the
  closing chapters, and to enact the final scenes, of his life on earth. For the
  first time he became fully satisfied with the program of openly manifesting
  his true nature and of revealing his divine identity among the Jews and
  gentiles of his native Palestine. He definitely decided to finish his life on
  earth and to complete his career of mortal existence in the same land in which
  he entered the human experience as a helpless babe. His Urantia career began
  among the Jews in Palestine, and he chose to terminate his life in Palestine
  and among the Jews.





1. THE THIRTIETH YEAR (A.D. 24)

  134:1.1 After taking leave of Gonod and Ganid at Charax (in December of A.D.
  23), Jesus returned by way of Ur to Babylon, where he joined a desert caravan
  that was on its way to Damascus. From Damascus he went to Nazareth, stopping
  only a few hours at Capernaum, where he paused to call on Zebedee's family.
  There he met his brother James, who had sometime previously come over to work
  in his place in Zebedee's boatshop. After talking with James and Jude (who
  also chanced to be in Capernaum) and after turning over to his brother James
  the little house which John Zebedee had managed to buy, Jesus went on to
  Nazareth.

  134:1.2 At the end of his Mediterranean journey Jesus had received sufficient
  money to meet his living expenses almost up to the time of the beginning of
  his public ministry. But aside from Zebedee of Capernaum and the people whom
  he met on this extraordinary trip, the world never knew that he made this
  journey. His family always believed that he spent this time in study at
  Alexandria. Jesus never confirmed these beliefs, neither did he make open
  denial of such misunderstandings.

  134:1.3 During his stay of a few weeks at Nazareth, Jesus visited with his
  family and friends, spent some time at the repair shop with his brother
  Joseph, but devoted most of his attention to Mary and Ruth. Ruth was then
  nearly fifteen years old, and this was Jesus' first opportunity to have long
  talks with her since she had become a young woman.

  134:1.4 Both Simon and Jude had for some time wanted to get married, but they
  had disliked to do this without Jesus' consent; accordingly they had postponed
  these events, hoping for their eldest brother's return. Though they all
  regarded James as the head of the family in most matters, when it came to
  getting married, they wanted the blessing of Jesus. So Simon and Jude were
  married at a double wedding in early March of this year, A.D. 24. All the
  older children were now married; only Ruth, the youngest, remained at home
  with Mary.

  134:1.5 Jesus visited with the individual members of his family quite normally
  and naturally, but when they were all together, he had so little to say that
  they remarked about it among themselves. Mary especially was disconcerted by
  this unusually peculiar behavior of her first-born son.

  134:1.6 About the time Jesus was preparing to leave Nazareth, the conductor of
  a large caravan which was passing through the city was taken violently ill,
  and Jesus, being a linguist, volunteered to take his place. Since this trip
  would necessitate his absence for a year, and inasmuch as all his brothers
  were married and his mother was living at home with Ruth, Jesus called a
  family conference at which he proposed that his mother and Ruth go to
  Capernaum to live in the home which he had so recently given to James.
  Accordingly, a few days after Jesus left with the caravan, Mary and Ruth moved
  to Capernaum, where they lived for the rest of Mary's life in the home that
  Jesus had provided. Joseph and his family moved into the old Nazareth home.

  134:1.7 This was one of the more unusual years in the inner experience of the
  Son of Man; great progress was made in effecting working harmony between his
  human mind and the indwelling Adjuster. The Adjuster had been actively engaged
  in reorganizing the thinking and in rehearsing the mind for the great events
  which were in the not then distant future. The personality of Jesus was
  preparing for his great change in attitude toward the world. These were the
  in-between times, the transition stage of that being who began life as God
  appearing as man, and who was now making ready to complete his earth career as
  man appearing as God.





2. THE CARAVAN TRIP TO THE CASPIAN

  134:2.1 It was the first of April, A.D. 24, when Jesus left Nazareth on the
  caravan trip to the Caspian Sea region. The caravan which Jesus joined as its
  conductor was going from Jerusalem by way of Damascus and Lake Urmia through
  Assyria, Media, and Parthia to the southeastern Caspian Sea region. It was a
  full year before he returned from this journey.

  134:2.2 For Jesus this caravan trip was another adventure of exploration and
  personal ministry. He had an interesting experience with his caravan family --
  passengers, guards, and camel drivers. Scores of men, women, and children
  residing along the route followed by the caravan lived richer lives as a
  result of their contact with Jesus, to them, the extraordinary conductor of a
  commonplace caravan. Not all who enjoyed these occasions of his personal
  ministry profited thereby, but the vast majority of those who met and talked
  with him were made better for the remainder of their natural lives.

  134:2.3 Of all his world travels this Caspian Sea trip carried Jesus nearest
  to the Orient and enabled him to gain a better understanding of the Far-
  Eastern peoples. He made intimate and personal contact with every one of the
  surviving races of Urantia excepting the red. He equally enjoyed his personal
  ministry to each of these varied races and blended peoples, and all of them
  were receptive to the living truth which he brought them. The Europeans from
  the Far West and the Asiatics from the Far East alike gave attention to his
  words of hope and eternal life and were equally influenced by the life of
  loving service and spiritual ministry which he so graciously lived among them.



  134:2.4 The caravan trip was successful in every way. This was a most
  interesting episode in the human life of Jesus, for he functioned during this
  year in an executive capacity, being responsible for the material intrusted to
  his charge and for the safe conduct of the travelers making up the caravan
  party. And he most faithfully, efficiently, and wisely discharged his multiple
  duties.

  134:2.5 On the return from the Caspian region, Jesus gave up the direction of
  the caravan at Lake Urmia, where he tarried for slightly over two weeks. He
  returned as a passenger with a later caravan to Damascus, where the owners of
  the camels besought him to remain in their service. Declining this offer, he
  journeyed on with the caravan train to Capernaum, arriving the first of April,
  A.D. 25. No longer did he regard Nazareth as his home. Capernaum had become
  the home of Jesus, James, Mary, and Ruth. But Jesus never again lived with his
  family; when in Capernaum he made his home with the Zebedees.





3. THE URMIA LECTURES

  134:3.1 On the way to the Caspian Sea, Jesus had stopped several days for rest
  and recuperation at the old Persian city of Urmia on the western shores of
  Lake Urmia. On the largest of a group of islands situated a short distance
  offshore near Urmia was located a large building -- a lecture amphitheater --
  dedicated to the "spirit of religion." This structure was really a temple of
  the philosophy of religions.

  134:3.2 This temple of religion had been built by a wealthy merchant citizen
  of Urmia and his three sons. This man was Cymboyton, and he numbered among his
  ancestors many diverse peoples.

  134:3.3 The lectures and discussions in this school of religion began at 10:00
  o'clock every morning in the week. The afternoon sessions started at 3:00
  o'clock, and the evening debates opened at 8:00 o'clock. Cymboyton or one of
  his three sons always presided at these sessions of teaching, discussion, and
  debate. The founder of this unique school of religions lived and died without
  ever revealing his personal religious beliefs.

  134:3.4 On several occasions Jesus participated in these discussions, and
  before he left Urmia, Cymboyton arranged with Jesus to sojourn with them for
  two weeks on his return trip and give twenty-four lectures on "The Brotherhood
  of Men," and to conduct twelve evening sessions of questions, discussions, and
  debates on his lectures in particular and on the brotherhood of men in
  general.

  134:3.5 In accordance with this arrangement, Jesus stopped off on the return
  trip and delivered these lectures. This was the most systematic and formal of
  all the Master's teaching on Urantia. Never before or after did he say so much
  on one subject as was contained in these lectures and discussions on the
  brotherhood of men. In reality these lectures were on the "Kingdom of God" and
  the "Kingdoms of Men."

  134:3.6 More than thirty religions and religious cults were represented on the
  faculty of this temple of religious philosophy. These teachers were chosen,
  supported, and fully accredited by their respective religious groups. At this
  time there were about seventy-five teachers on the faculty, and they lived in
  cottages each accommodating about a dozen persons. Every new moon these groups
  were changed by the casting of lots. Intolerance, a contentious spirit, or any
  other disposition to interfere with the smooth running of the community would
  bring about the prompt and summary dismissal of the offending teacher. He
  would be unceremoniously dismissed, and his alternate in waiting would be
  immediately installed in his place.

  134:3.7 These teachers of the various religions made a great effort to show
  how similar their religions were in regard to the fundamental things of this
  life and the next. There was but one doctrine which had to be accepted in
  order to gain a seat on this faculty -- every teacher must represent a
  religion which recognized God -- some sort of supreme Deity. There were five
  independent teachers on the faculty who did not represent any organized
  religion, and it was as such an independent teacher that Jesus appeared before
  them.



  134:3.8 When we, the midwayers, first prepared the summary of Jesus' teachings
  at Urmia, there arose a disagreement between the seraphim of the churches and
  the seraphim of progress as to the wisdom of including these teachings in the
  Urantia Revelation. Conditions of the twentieth century, prevailing in both
  religion and human governments, are so different from those prevailing in
  Jesus' day that it was indeed difficult to adapt the Master's teachings at
  Urmia to the problems of the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of men as these
  world functions are existent in the twentieth century. We were never able to
  formulate a statement of the Master's teachings which was acceptable to both
  groups of these seraphim of planetary government. Finally, the Melchizedek
  chairman of the revelatory commission appointed a commission of three of our
  number to prepare our view of the Master's Urmia teachings as adapted to
  twentieth-century religious and political conditions on Urantia. Accordingly,
  we three secondary midwayers completed such an adaptation of Jesus' teachings,
  restating his pronouncements as we would apply them to present-day world
  conditions, and we now present these statements as they stand after having
  been edited by the Melchizedek chairman of the revelatory commission.





4. SOVEREIGNTY -- DIVINE AND HUMAN

  134:4.1 The brotherhood of men is founded on the fatherhood of God. The family
  of God is derived from the love of God -- God is love. God the Father divinely
  loves his children, all of them.

  134:4.2 The kingdom of heaven, the divine government, is founded on the fact
  of divine sovereignty -- God is spirit. Since God is spirit, this kingdom is
  spiritual. The kingdom of heaven is neither material nor merely intellectual;
  it is a spiritual relationship between God and man.

  134:4.3 If different religions recognize the spirit sovereignty of God the
  Father, then will all such religions remain at peace. Only when one religion
  assumes that it is in some way superior to all others, and that it possesses
  exclusive authority over other religions, will such a religion presume to be
  intolerant of other religions or dare to persecute other religious believers.

  134:4.4 Religious peace -- brotherhood -- can never exist unless all religions
  are willing to completely divest themselves of all ecclesiastical authority
  and fully surrender all concept of spiritual sovereignty. God alone is spirit
  sovereign.

  134:4.5 You cannot have equality among religions (religious liberty) without
  having religious wars unless all religions consent to the transfer of all
  religious sovereignty to some superhuman level, to God himself.

  134:4.6 The kingdom of heaven in the hearts of men will create religious unity
  (not necessarily uniformity) because any and all religious groups composed of
  such religious believers will be free from all notions of ecclesiastical
  authority -- religious sovereignty.

  134:4.7 God is spirit, and God gives a fragment of his spirit self to dwell in
  the heart of man. Spiritually, all men are equal. The kingdom of heaven is
  free from castes, classes, social levels, and economic groups. You are all
  brethren.

  134:4.8 But the moment you lose sight of the spirit sovereignty of God the
  Father, some one religion will begin to assert its superiority over other
  religions; and then, instead of peace on earth and good will among men, there
  will start dissensions, recriminations, even religious wars, at least wars
  among religionists.

  134:4.9 Freewill beings who regard themselves as equals, unless they mutually
  acknowledge themselves as subject to some supersovereignty, some authority
  over and above themselves, sooner or later are tempted to try out their
  ability to gain power and authority over other persons and groups. The concept
  of equality never brings peace except in the mutual recognition of some
  overcontrolling influence of supersovereignty.

  134:4.10 The Urmia religionists lived together in comparative peace and
  tranquillity because they had fully surrendered all their notions of religious
  sovereignty. Spiritually, they all believed in a sovereign God; socially, full
  and unchallengeable authority rested in their presiding head -- Cymboyton.
  They well knew what would happen to any teacher who assumed to lord it over
  his fellow teachers. There can be no lasting religious peace on Urantia until
  all religious groups freely surrender all their notions of divine favor,
  chosen people, and religious sovereignty. Only when God the Father becomes
  supreme will men become religious brothers and live together in religious
  peace on earth.





5. POLITICAL SOVEREIGNTY

  134:5.1 While the Master's teaching concerning the sovereignty of God is a
  truth -- only complicated by the subsequent appearance of the religion about
  him among the world's religions -- his presentations concerning political
  sovereignty are vastly complicated by the political evolution of nation life
  during the last nineteen hundred years and more. In the times of Jesus there
  were only two great world powers -- the Roman Empire in the West and the Han
  Empire in the East -- and these were widely separated by the Parthian kingdom
  and other intervening lands of the Caspian and Turkestan regions. We have,
  therefore, in the following presentation departed more widely from the
  substance of the Master's teachings at Urmia concerning political sovereignty,
  at the same time attempting to depict the import of such teachings as they are
  applicable to the peculiarly critical stage of the evolution of political
  sovereignty in the twentieth century after Christ.



  134:5.2 War on Urantia will never end so long as nations cling to the illusive
  notions of unlimited national sovereignty. There are only two levels of
  relative sovereignty on an inhabited world: the spiritual free will of the
  individual mortal and the collective sovereignty of mankind as a whole.
  Between the level of the individual human being and the level of the total of
  mankind, all groupings and associations are relative, transitory, and of value
  only in so far as they enhance the welfare, well-being, and progress of the
  individual and the planetary grand total -- man and mankind.

  134:5.3 Religious teachers must always remember that the spiritual sovereignty
  of God overrides all intervening and intermediate spiritual loyalties. Someday
  civil rulers will learn that the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men.

  134:5.4 This rule of the Most Highs in the kingdoms of men is not for the
  especial benefit of any especially favored group of mortals. There is no such
  thing as a "chosen people." The rule of the Most Highs, the overcontrollers of
  political evolution, is a rule designed to foster the greatest good to the
  greatest number of all men and for the greatest length of time.

  134:5.5 Sovereignty is power and it grows by organization. This growth of the
  organization of political power is good and proper, for it tends to encompass
  ever-widening segments of the total of mankind. But this same growth of
  political organizations creates a problem at every intervening stage between
  the initial and natural organization of political power -- the family -- and
  the final consummation of political growth -- the government of all mankind,
  by all mankind, and for all mankind.

  134:5.6 Starting out with parental power in the family group, political
  sovereignty evolves by organization as families overlap into consanguineous
  clans which become united, for various reasons, into tribal units --
  superconsanguineous political groupings. And then, by trade, commerce, and
  conquest, tribes become unified as a nation, while nations themselves
  sometimes become unified by empire.

  134:5.7 As sovereignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are
  lessened. That is, minor wars between smaller nations are lessened, but the
  potential for greater wars is increased as the nations wielding sovereignty
  become larger and larger. Presently, when all the world has been explored and
  occupied, when nations are few, strong, and powerful, when these great and
  supposedly sovereign nations come to touch borders, when only oceans separate
  them, then will the stage be set for major wars, world-wide conflicts. So-
  called sovereign nations cannot rub elbows without generating conflicts and
  eventuating wars.

  134:5.8 The difficulty in the evolution of political sovereignty from the
  family to all mankind, lies in the inertia-resistance exhibited on all
  intervening levels. Families have, on occasion, defied their clan, while clans
  and tribes have often been subversive of the sovereignty of the territorial
  state. Each new and forward evolution of political sovereignty is (and has
  always been) embarrassed and hampered by the "scaffolding stages" of the
  previous developments in political organization. And this is true because
  human loyalties, once mobilized, are hard to change. The same loyalty which
  makes possible the evolution of the tribe, makes difficult the evolution of
  the supertribe -- the territorial state. And the same loyalty (patriotism)
  which makes possible the evolution of the territorial state, vastly
  complicates the evolutionary development of the government of all mankind.

  134:5.9 Political sovereignty is created out of the surrender of self-
  determinism, first by the individual within the family and then by the
  families and clans in relation to the tribe and larger groupings. This
  progressive transfer of self-determination from the smaller to ever larger
  political organizations has generally proceeded unabated in the East since the
  establishment of the Ming and the Mogul dynasties. In the West it obtained for
  more than a thousand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an
  unfortunate retrograde movement temporarily reversed this normal trend by re-
  establishing the submerged political sovereignty of numerous small groups in
  Europe.

  134:5.10 Urantia will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign
  nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the
  hands of the brotherhood of men -- mankind government. Internationalism --
  Leagues of Nations -- can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide
  confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably
  control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control
  the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real
  conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from the League and declare
  war. You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected
  with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step
  in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor
  wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between
  the great military governments of earth.

  134:5.11 As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so
  do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are
  only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the
  life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by
  voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create
  the essential nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning
  of the real sovereignty of all mankind.



  134:5.12 Peace will not come to Urantia until every so-called sovereign nation
  surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government
  of all mankind. Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world.
  When all the peoples of Urantia create a world government, they have the right
  and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a
  representative or democratic world power controls the world's land, air, and
  naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail -- but not
  until then.

  134:5.13 To use an important nineteenth- and twentieth-century illustration:
  The forty-eight states of the American Federal Union have long enjoyed peace.
  They have no more wars among themselves. They have surrendered their
  sovereignty to the federal government, and through the arbitrament of war,
  they have abandoned all claims to the delusions of self-determination. While
  each state regulates its internal affairs, it is not concerned with foreign
  relations, tariffs, immigration, military affairs, or interstate commerce.
  Neither do the individual states concern themselves with matters of
  citizenship. The forty-eight states suffer the ravages of war only when the
  federal government's sovereignty is in some way jeopardized.



  134:5.14 These forty-eight states, having abandoned the twin sophistries of
  sovereignty and self-determination, enjoy interstate peace and tranquillity.
  So will the nations of Urantia begin to enjoy peace when they freely surrender
  their respective sovereignties into the hands of a global government -- the
  sovereignty of the brotherhood of men. In this world state the small nations
  will be as powerful as the great, even as the small state of Rhode Island has
  its two senators in the American Congress just the same as the populous state
  of New York or the large state of Texas.

  134:5.15 The limited (state) sovereignty of these forty-eight states was
  created by men and for men. The superstate (national) sovereignty of the
  American Federal Union was created by the original thirteen of these states
  for their own benefit and for the benefit of men. Sometime the supernational
  sovereignty of the planetary government of mankind will be similarly created
  by nations for their own benefit and for the benefit of all men.

  134:5.16 Citizens are not born for the benefit of governments; governments are
  organizations created and devised for the benefit of men. There can be no end
  to the evolution of political sovereignty short of the appearance of the
  government of the sovereignty of all men. All other sovereignties are relative
  in value, intermediate in meaning, and subordinate in status.

  134:5.17 With scientific progress, wars are going to become more and more
  devastating until they become almost racially suicidal. How many world wars
  must be fought and how many leagues of nations must fail before men will be
  willing to establish the government of mankind and begin to enjoy the
  blessings of permanent peace and thrive on the tranquillity of good will --
  world-wide good will -- among men?





6. LAW, LIBERTY, AND SOVEREIGNTY

  134:6.1 If one man craves freedom -- liberty -- he must remember that all
  other men long for the same freedom. Groups of such liberty-loving mortals
  cannot live together in peace without becoming subservient to such laws,
  rules, and regulations as will grant each person the same degree of freedom
  while at the same time safeguarding an equal degree of freedom for all of his
  fellow mortals. If one man is to be absolutely free, then another must become
  an absolute slave. And the relative nature of freedom is true socially,
  economically, and politically. Freedom is the gift of civilization made
  possible by the enforcement of LAW.

  134:6.2 Religion makes it spiritually possible to realize the brotherhood of
  men, but it will require mankind government to regulate the social, economic,
  and political problems associated with such a goal of human happiness and
  efficiency.

  134:6.3 There shall be wars and rumors of wars -- nation will rise against
  nation -- just as long as the world's political sovereignty is divided up and
  unjustly held by a group of nation-states. England, Scotland, and Wales were
  always fighting each other until they gave up their respective sovereignties,
  reposing them in the United Kingdom.

  134:6.4 Another world war will teach the so-called sovereign nations to form
  some sort of federation, thus creating the machinery for preventing small
  wars, wars between the lesser nations. But global wars will go on until the
  government of mankind is created. Global sovereignty will prevent global wars
  -- nothing else can.

  134:6.5 The forty-eight American free states live together in peace. There are
  among the citizens of these forty-eight states all of the various
  nationalities and races that live in the ever-warring nations of Europe. These
  Americans represent almost all the religions and religious sects and cults of
  the whole wide world, and yet here in North America they live together in
  peace. And all this is made possible because these forty-eight states have
  surrendered their sovereignty and have abandoned all notions of the supposed
  rights of self-determination.

  134:6.6 It is not a question of armaments or disarmament. Neither does the
  question of conscription or voluntary military service enter into these
  problems of maintaining world-wide peace. If you take every form of modern
  mechanical armaments and all types of explosives away from strong nations,
  they will fight with fists, stones, and clubs as long as they cling to their
  delusions of the divine right of national sovereignty.

  134:6.7 War is not man's great and terrible disease; war is a symptom, a
  result. The real disease is the virus of national sovereignty.

  134:6.8 Urantia nations have not possessed real sovereignty; they never have
  had a sovereignty which could protect them from the ravages and devastations
  of world wars. In the creation of the global government of mankind, the
  nations are not giving up sovereignty so much as they are actually creating a
  real, bona fide, and lasting world sovereignty which will henceforth be fully
  able to protect them from all war. Local affairs will be handled by local
  governments; national affairs, by national governments; international affairs
  will be administered by global government.

  134:6.9 World peace cannot be maintained by treaties, diplomacy, foreign
  policies, alliances, balances of power, or any other type of makeshift
  juggling with the sovereignties of nationalism. World law must come into being
  and must be enforced by world government -- the sovereignty of all mankind.

  134:6.10 The individual will enjoy far more liberty under world government.
  Today, the citizens of the great powers are taxed, regulated, and controlled
  almost oppressively, and much of this present interference with individual
  liberties will vanish when the national governments are willing to trustee
  their sovereignty as regards international affairs into the hands of global
  government.

  134:6.11 Under global government the national groups will be afforded a real
  opportunity to realize and enjoy the personal liberties of genuine democracy.
  The fallacy of self-determination will be ended. With global regulation of
  money and trade will come the new era of world-wide peace. Soon may a global
  language evolve, and there will be at least some hope of sometime having a
  global religion -- or religions with a global viewpoint.

  134:6.12 Collective security will never afford peace until the collectivity
  includes all mankind.

  134:6.13 The political sovereignty of representative mankind government will
  bring lasting peace on earth, and the spiritual brotherhood of man will
  forever insure good will among all men. And there is no other way whereby
  peace on earth and good will among men can be realized.



* * *



  134:6.14 After the death of Cymboyton, his sons encountered great difficulties
  in maintaining a peaceful faculty. The repercussions of Jesus' teachings would
  have been much greater if the later Christian teachers who joined the Urmia
  faculty had exhibited more wisdom and exercised more tolerance.

  134:6.15 Cymboyton's eldest son had appealed to Abner at Philadelphia for
  help, but Abner's choice of teachers was most unfortunate in that they turned
  out to be unyielding and uncompromising. These teachers sought to make their
  religion dominant over the other beliefs. They never suspected that the oft-
  referred-to lectures of the caravan conductor had been delivered by Jesus
  himself.

  134:6.16 As confusion increased in the faculty, the three brothers withdrew
  their financial support, and after five years the school closed. Later it was
  reopened as a Mithraic temple and eventually burned down in connection with
  one of their orgiastic celebrations.





7. THE THIRTY-FIRST YEAR (A.D. 25)

  134:7.1 When Jesus returned from the journey to the Caspian Sea, he knew that
  his world travels were about finished. He made only one more trip outside of
  Palestine, and that was into Syria. After a brief visit to Capernaum, he went
  to Nazareth, stopping over a few days to visit. In the middle of April he left
  Nazareth for Tyre. From there he journeyed on north, tarrying for a few days
  at Sidon, but his destination was Antioch.

  134:7.2 This is the year of Jesus' solitary wanderings through Palestine and
  Syria. Throughout this year of travel he was known by various names in
  different parts of the country: the carpenter of Nazareth, the boatbuilder of
  Capernaum, the scribe of Damascus, and the teacher of Alexandria.

  134:7.3 At Antioch the Son of Man lived for over two months, working,
  observing, studying, visiting, ministering, and all the while learning how man
  lives, how he thinks, feels, and reacts to the environment of human existence.
  For three weeks of this period he worked as a tentmaker. He remained longer in
  Antioch than at any other place he visited on this trip. Ten years later, when
  the Apostle Paul was preaching in Antioch and heard his followers speak of the
  doctrines of the Damascus scribe, he little knew that his pupils had heard the
  voice, and listened to the teachings, of the Master himself.

  134:7.4 From Antioch Jesus journeyed south along the coast to Caesarea, where
  he tarried for a few weeks, continuing down the coast to Joppa. From Joppa he
  traveled inland to Jamnia, Ashdod, and Gaza. From Gaza he took the inland
  trail to Beersheba, where he remained for a week.

  134:7.5 Jesus then started on his final tour, as a private individual, through
  the heart of Palestine, going from Beersheba in the south to Dan in the north.
  On this journey northward he stopped at Hebron, Bethlehem (where he saw his
  birthplace), Jerusalem (he did not visit Bethany), Beeroth, Lebonah, Sychar,
  Schecham, Samaria, Geba, En-Gannim, Endor, Madon; passing through Magdala and
  Capernaum, he journeyed on north; and passing east of the Waters of Merom, he
  went by Karahta to Dan, or Caesarea Philippi.

  134:7.6 The indwelling Thought Adjuster now led Jesus to forsake the dwelling
  places of men and betake himself up to Mount Hermon that he might finish his
  work of mastering his human mind and complete the task of effecting his full
  consecration to the remainder of his lifework on earth.

  134:7.7 This was one of those unusual and extraordinary epochs in the Master's
  earth life on Urantia. Another and very similar one was the experience he
  passed through when alone in the hills near Pella just subsequent to his
  baptism. This period of isolation on Mount Hermon marked the termination of
  his purely human career, that is, the technical termination of the mortal
  bestowal, while the later isolation marked the beginning of the more divine
  phase of the bestowal. And Jesus lived alone with God for six weeks on the
  slopes of Mount Hermon.





8. THE SOJOURN ON MOUNT HERMON

  134:8.1 After spending some time in the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus
  made ready his supplies, and securing a beast of burden and a lad named
  Tiglath, he proceeded along the Damascus road to a village sometime known as
  Beit Jenn in the foothills of Mount Hermon. Here, near the middle of August,
  A.D. 25, he established his headquarters, and leaving his supplies in the
  custody of Tiglath, he ascended the lonely slopes of the mountain. Tiglath
  accompanied Jesus this first day up the mountain to a designated point about
  6,000 feet above sea level, where they built a stone container in which
  Tiglath was to deposit food twice a week.

  134:8.2 The first day, after he had left Tiglath, Jesus had ascended the
  mountain only a short way when he paused to pray. Among other things he asked
  his Father to send back the guardian seraphim to "be with Tiglath." He
  requested that he be permitted to go up to his last struggle with the
  realities of mortal existence alone. And his request was granted. He went into
  the great test with only his indwelling Adjuster to guide and sustain him.



  134:8.3 Jesus ate frugally while on the mountain; he abstained from all food
  only a day or two at a time. The superhuman beings who confronted him on this
  mountain, and with whom he wrestled in spirit, and whom he defeated in power,
  were real; they were his archenemies in the system of Satania; they were not
  phantasms of the imagination evolved out of the intellectual vagaries of a
  weakened and starving mortal who could not distinguish reality from the
  visions of a disordered mind.

  134:8.4 Jesus spent the last three weeks of August and the first three weeks
  of September on Mount Hermon. During these weeks he finished the mortal task
  of achieving the circles of mind-understanding and personality-control.
  Throughout this period of communion with his heavenly Father the indwelling
  Adjuster also completed the assigned services. The mortal goal of this earth
  creature was there attained. Only the final phase of mind and Adjuster
  attunement remained to be consummated.

  134:8.5 After more than five weeks of unbroken communion with his Paradise
  Father, Jesus became absolutely assured of his nature and of the certainty of
  his triumph over the material levels of time-space personality manifestation.
  He fully believed in, and did not hesitate to assert, the ascendancy of his
  divine nature over his human nature.



  134:8.6 Near the end of the mountain sojourn Jesus asked his Father if he
  might be permitted to hold conference with his Satania enemies as the Son of
  Man, as Joshua ben Joseph. This request was granted. During the last week on
  Mount Hermon the great temptation, the universe trial, occurred. Satan
  (representing Lucifer) and the rebellious Planetary Prince, Caligastia, were
  present with Jesus and were made fully visible to him. And this "temptation,"
  this final trial of human loyalty in the face of the misrepresentations of
  rebel personalities, had not to do with food, temple pinnacles, or
  presumptuous acts. It had not to do with the kingdoms of this world but with
  the sovereignty of a mighty and glorious universe. The symbolism of your
  records was intended for the backward ages of the world's childlike thought.
  And subsequent generations should understand what a great struggle the Son of
  Man passed through that eventful day on Mount Hermon.

  134:8.7 To the many proposals and counterproposals of the emissaries of
  Lucifer, Jesus only made reply: "May the will of my Paradise Father prevail,
  and you, my rebellious son, may the Ancients of Days judge you divinely. I am
  your Creator-father; I can hardly judge you justly, and my mercy you have
  already spurned. I commit you to the adjudication of the Judges of a greater
  universe."

  134:8.8 To all the Lucifer-suggested compromises and makeshifts, to all such
  specious proposals about the incarnation bestowal, Jesus only made reply, "The
  will of my Father in Paradise be done." And when the trying ordeal was
  finished, the detached guardian seraphim returned to Jesus' side and
  ministered to him.



  134:8.9 On an afternoon in late summer, amid the trees and in the silence of
  nature, Michael of Nebadon won the unquestioned sovereignty of his universe.
  On that day he completed the task set for Creator Sons to live to the full the
  incarnated life in the likeness of mortal flesh on the evolutionary worlds of
  time and space. The universe announcement of this momentous achievement was
  not made until the day of his baptism, months afterward, but it all really
  took place that day on the mountain. And when Jesus came down from his sojourn
  on Mount Hermon, the Lucifer rebellion in Satania and the Caligastia secession
  on Urantia were virtually settled. Jesus had paid the last price required of
  him to attain the sovereignty of his universe, which in itself regulates the
  status of all rebels and determines that all such future upheavals (if they
  ever occur) may be dealt with summarily and effectively. Accordingly, it may
  be seen that the so-called "great temptation" of Jesus took place some time
  before his baptism and not just after that event.

  134:8.10 At the end of this sojourn on the mountain, as Jesus was making his
  descent, he met Tiglath coming up to the rendezvous with food. Turning him
  back, he said only: "The period of rest is over; I must return to my Father's
  business." He was a silent and much changed man as they journeyed back to Dan,
  where he took leave of the lad, giving him the donkey. He then proceeded south
  by the same way he had come, to Capernaum.





9. THE TIME OF WAITING

  134:9.1 It was now near the end of the summer, about the time of the day of
  atonement and the feast of tabernacles. Jesus had a family meeting in
  Capernaum over the Sabbath and the next day started for Jerusalem with John
  the son of Zebedee, going to the east of the lake and by Gerasa and on down
  the Jordan valley. While he visited some with his companion on the way, John
  noted a great change in Jesus.

  134:9.2 Jesus and John stopped overnight at Bethany with Lazarus and his
  sisters, going early the next morning to Jerusalem. They spent almost three
  weeks in and around the city, at least John did. Many days John went into
  Jerusalem alone while Jesus walked about over the near-by hills and engaged in
  many seasons of spiritual communion with his Father in heaven.

  134:9.3 Both of them were present at the solemn services of the day of
  atonement. John was much impressed by the ceremonies of this day of all days
  in the Jewish religious ritual, but Jesus remained a thoughtful and silent
  spectator. To the Son of Man this performance was pitiful and pathetic. He
  viewed it all as misrepresentative of the character and attributes of his
  Father in heaven. He looked upon the doings of this day as a travesty upon the
  facts of divine justice and the truths of infinite mercy. He burned to give
  vent to the declaration of the real truth about his Father's loving character
  and merciful conduct in the universe, but his faithful Monitor admonished him
  that his hour had not yet come. But that night, at Bethany, Jesus did drop
  numerous remarks which greatly disturbed John; and John never fully understood
  the real significance of what Jesus said in their hearing that evening.

  134:9.4 Jesus planned to remain throughout the week of the feast of
  tabernacles with John. This feast was the annual holiday of all Palestine; it
  was the Jewish vacation time. Although Jesus did not participate in the
  merriment of the occasion, it was evident that he derived pleasure and
  experienced satisfaction as he beheld the lighthearted and joyous abandon of
  the young and the old.

  134:9.5 In the midst of the week of celebration and ere the festivities were
  finished, Jesus took leave of John, saying that he desired to retire to the
  hills where he might the better commune with his Paradise Father. John would
  have gone with him, but Jesus insisted that he stay through the festivities,
  saying: "It is not required of you to bear the burden of the Son of Man; only
  the watchman must keep vigil while the city sleeps in peace." Jesus did not
  return to Jerusalem. After almost a week alone in the hills near Bethany, he
  departed for Capernaum. On the way home he spent a day and a night alone on
  the slopes of Gilboa, near where King Saul had taken his life; and when he
  arrived at Capernaum, he seemed more cheerful than when he had left John in
  Jerusalem.

  134:9.6 The next morning Jesus went to the chest containing his personal
  effects, which had remained in Zebedee's workshop, put on his apron, and
  presented himself for work, saying, "It behooves me to keep busy while I wait
  for my hour to come." And he worked several months, until January of the
  following year, in the boatshop, by the side of his brother James. After this
  period of working with Jesus, no matter what doubts came up to becloud James's
  understanding of the lifework of the Son of Man, he never again really and
  wholly gave up his faith in the mission of Jesus.

  134:9.7 During this final period of Jesus' work at the boatshop, he spent most
  of his time on the interior finishing of some of the larger craft. He took
  great pains with all his handiwork and seemed to experience the satisfaction
  of human achievement when he had completed a commendable piece of work. Though
  he wasted little time upon trifles, he was a painstaking workman when it came
  to the essentials of any given undertaking.



  134:9.8 As time passed, rumors came to Capernaum of one John who was preaching
  while baptizing penitents in the Jordan, and John preached: "The kingdom of
  heaven is at hand; repent and be baptized." Jesus listened to these reports as
  John slowly worked his way up the Jordan valley from the ford of the river
  nearest to Jerusalem. But Jesus worked on, making boats, until John had
  journeyed up the river to a point near Pella in the month of January of the
  next year, A.D. 26, when he laid down his tools, declaring, "My hour has
  come," and presently presented himself to John for baptism.

  134:9.9 But a great change had been coming over Jesus. Few of the people who
  had enjoyed his visits and ministrations as he had gone up and down in the
  land ever subsequently recognized in the public teacher the same person they
  had known and loved as a private individual in former years. And there was a
  reason for this failure of his early beneficiaries to recognize him in his
  later role of public and authoritative teacher. For long years this
  transformation of mind and spirit had been in progress, and it was finished
  during the eventful sojourn on Mount Hermon.




 PAPER 135


 JOHN THE BAPTIST



  135:0.1 JOHN the Baptist was born March 25, 7 B.C., in accordance with the
  promise that Gabriel made to Elizabeth in June of the previous year. For five
  months Elizabeth kept secret Gabriel's visitation; and when she told her
  husband, Zacharias, he was greatly troubled and fully believed her narrative
  only after he had an unusual dream about six weeks before the birth of John.
  Excepting the visit of Gabriel to Elizabeth and the dream of Zacharias, there
  was nothing unusual or supernatural connected with the birth of John the
  Baptist.

  135:0.2 On the eighth day John was circumcised according to the Jewish custom.
  He grew up as an ordinary child, day by day and year by year, in the small
  village known in those days as the City of Judah, about four miles west of
  Jerusalem.

  135:0.3 The most eventful occurrence in John's early childhood was the visit,
  in company with his parents, to Jesus and the Nazareth family. This visit
  occurred in the month of June, 1 B.C., when he was a little over six years of
  age.

  135:0.4 After their return from Nazareth John's parents began the systematic
  education of the lad. There was no synagogue school in this little village;
  however, as he was a priest, Zacharias was fairly well educated, and Elizabeth
  was far better educated than the average Judean woman; she was also of the
  priesthood, being a descendant of the "daughters of Aaron." Since John was an
  only child, they spent a great deal of time on his mental and spiritual
  training. Zacharias had only short periods of service at the temple in
  Jerusalem so that he devoted much of his time to teaching his son.

  135:0.5 Zacharias and Elizabeth had a small farm on which they raised sheep.
  They hardly made a living on this land, but Zacharias received a regular
  allowance from the temple funds dedicated to the priesthood.





1. JOHN BECOMES A NAZARITE



  135:1.1 John had no school from which to graduate at the age of fourteen, but
  his parents had selected this as the appropriate year for him to take the
  formal Nazarite vow. Accordingly, Zacharias and Elizabeth took their son to
  Engedi, down by the Dead Sea. This was the southern headquarters of the
  Nazarite brotherhood, and there the lad was duly and solemnly inducted into
  this order for life. After these ceremonies and the making of the vows to
  abstain from all intoxicating drinks, to let the hair grow, and to refrain
  from touching the dead, the family proceeded to Jerusalem, where, before the
  temple, John completed the making of the offerings which were required of
  those taking Nazarite vows.

  135:1.2 John took the same life vows that had been administered to his
  illustrious predecessors, Samson and the prophet Samuel. A life Nazarite was
  looked upon as a sanctified and holy personality. The Jews regarded a Nazarite
  with almost the respect and veneration accorded the high priest, and this was
  not strange since Nazarites of lifelong consecration were the only persons,
  except high priests, who were ever permitted to enter the holy of holies in
  the temple.



  135:1.3 John returned home from Jerusalem to tend his father's sheep and grew
  up to be a strong man with a noble character.

  135:1.4 When sixteen years old, John, as a result of reading about Elijah,
  became greatly impressed with the prophet of Mount Carmel and decided to adopt
  his style of dress. From that day on John always wore a hairy garment with a
  leather girdle. At sixteen he was more than six feet tall and almost full
  grown. With his flowing hair and peculiar mode of dress he was indeed a
  picturesque youth. And his parents expected great things of this their only
  son, a child of promise and a Nazarite for life.





2. THE DEATH OF ZACHARIAS



  135:2.1 After an illness of several months Zacharias died in July, A.D. 12,
  when John was just past eighteen years of age. This was a time of great
  embarrassment to John since the Nazarite vow forbade contact with the dead,
  even in one's own family. Although John had endeavored to comply with the
  restrictions of his vow regarding contamination by the dead, he doubted that
  he had been wholly obedient to the requirements of the Nazarite order;
  therefore, after his father's burial he went to Jerusalem, where, in the
  Nazarite corner of the women's court, he offered the sacrifices required for
  his cleansing.



  135:2.2 In September of this year Elizabeth and John made a journey to
  Nazareth to visit Mary and Jesus. John had just about made up his mind to
  launch out in his lifework, but he was admonished, not only by Jesus' words
  but also by his example, to return home, take care of his mother, and await
  the "coming of the Father's hour." After bidding Jesus and Mary good-bye at
  the end of this enjoyable visit, John did not again see Jesus until the event
  of his baptism in the Jordan.

  135:2.3 John and Elizabeth returned to their home and began to lay plans for
  the future. Since John refused to accept the priest's allowance due him from
  the temple funds, by the end of two years they had all but lost their home; so
  they decided to go south with the sheep herd. Accordingly, the summer that
  John was twenty years of age witnessed their removal to Hebron. In the so-
  called "wilderness of Judea" John tended his sheep along a brook that was
  tributary to a larger stream which entered the Dead Sea at Engedi. The Engedi
  colony included not only Nazarites of lifelong and time-period consecration
  but numerous other ascetic herdsmen who congregated in this region with their
  herds and fraternized with the Nazarite brotherhood. They supported themselves
  by sheep raising and from gifts which wealthy Jews made to the order.

  135:2.4 As time passed, John returned less often to Hebron, while he made more
  frequent visits to Engedi. He was so entirely different from the majority of
  the Nazarites that he found it very difficult fully to fraternize with the
  brotherhood. But he was very fond of Abner, the acknowledged leader and head
  of the Engedi colony.





3. THE LIFE OF A SHEPHERD



  135:3.1 Along the valley of this little brook John built no less than a dozen
  stone shelters and night corrals, consisting of piled-up stones, wherein he
  could watch over and safeguard his herds of sheep and goats. John's life as a
  shepherd afforded him a great deal of time for thought. He talked much with
  Ezda, an orphan lad of Beth-zur, whom he had in a way adopted, and who cared
  for the herds when he made trips to Hebron to see his mother and to sell
  sheep, as well as when he went down to Engedi for Sabbath services. John and
  the lad lived very simply, subsisting on mutton, goat's milk, wild honey, and
  the edible locusts of that region. This, their regular diet, was supplemented
  by provisions brought from Hebron and Engedi from time to time.



  135:3.2 Elizabeth kept John posted about Palestinian and world affairs, and
  his conviction grew deeper and deeper that the time was fast approaching when
  the old order was to end; that he was to become the herald of the approach of
  a new age, "the kingdom of heaven." This rugged shepherd was very partial to
  the writings of the Prophet Daniel. He read a thousand times Daniel's
  description of the great image, which Zacharias had told him represented the
  history of the great kingdoms of the world, beginning with Babylon, then
  Persia, Greece, and finally Rome. John perceived that already was Rome
  composed of such polyglot peoples and races that it could never become a
  strongly cemented and firmly consolidated empire. He believed that Rome was
  even then divided, as Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and other provinces; and then
  he further read "in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a
  kingdom which shall never be destroyed. And this kingdom shall not be left to
  other people but shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it
  shall stand forever." "And there was given him dominion and glory and a
  kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His
  dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his
  kingdom never shall be destroyed." "And the kingdom and dominion and the
  greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people
  of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and
  all dominions shall serve and obey him."



  135:3.3 John was never able completely to rise above the confusion produced by
  what he had heard from his parents concerning Jesus and by these passages
  which he read in the Scriptures. In Daniel he read: "I saw in the night
  visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven,
  and there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom." But these words of
  the prophet did not harmonize with what his parents had taught him. Neither
  did his talk with Jesus, at the time of his visit when he was eighteen years
  old, correspond with these statements of the Scriptures. Notwithstanding this
  confusion, throughout all of his perplexity his mother assured him that his
  distant cousin, Jesus of Nazareth, was the true Messiah, that he had come to
  sit on the throne of David, and that he (John) was to become his advance
  herald and chief support.

  135:3.4 From all John heard of the vice and wickedness of Rome and the
  dissoluteness and moral barrenness of the empire, from what he knew of the
  evil doings of Herod Antipas and the governors of Judea, he was minded to
  believe that the end of the age was impending. It seemed to this rugged and
  noble child of nature that the world was ripe for the end of the age of man
  and the dawn of the new and divine age -- the kingdom of heaven. The feeling
  grew in John's heart that he was to be the last of the old prophets and the
  first of the new. And he fairly vibrated with the mounting impulse to go forth
  and proclaim to all men: "Repent! Get right with God! Get ready for the end;
  prepare yourselves for the appearance of the new and eternal order of earth
  affairs, the kingdom of heaven."





4. THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH



  135:4.1 On August 17, A.D. 22, when John was twenty-eight years of age, his
  mother suddenly passed away. Elizabeth's friends, knowing of the Nazarite
  restrictions regarding contact with the dead, even in one's own family, made
  all arrangements for the burial of Elizabeth before sending for John. When he
  received word of the death of his mother, he directed Ezda to drive his herds
  to Engedi and started for Hebron.

  135:4.2 On returning to Engedi from his mother's funeral, he presented his
  flocks to the brotherhood and for a season detached himself from the outside
  world while he fasted and prayed. John knew only of the old methods of
  approach to divinity; he knew only of the records of such as Elijah, Samuel,
  and Daniel. Elijah was his ideal of a prophet. Elijah was the first of the
  teachers of Israel to be regarded as a prophet, and John truly believed that
  he was to be the last of this long and illustrious line of the messengers of
  heaven.

  135:4.3 For two and a half years John lived at Engedi, and he persuaded most
  of the brotherhood that "the end of the age was at hand"; that "the kingdom of
  heaven was about to appear." And all his early teaching was based upon the
  current Jewish idea and concept of the Messiah as the promised deliverer of
  the Jewish nation from the domination of their gentile rulers.

  135:4.4 Throughout this period John read much in the sacred writings which he
  found at the Engedi home of the Nazarites. He was especially impressed by
  Isaiah and by Malachi, the last of the prophets up to that time. He read and
  reread the last five chapters of Isaiah, and he believed these prophecies.
  Then he would read in Malachi: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
  before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn
  the hearts of the fathers toward the children and the hearts of the children
  toward their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." And it
  was only this promise of Malachi that Elijah would return that deterred John
  from going forth to preach about the coming kingdom and to exhort his fellow
  Jews to flee from the wrath to come. John was ripe for the proclamation of the
  message of the coming kingdom, but this expectation of the coming of Elijah
  held him back for more than two years. He knew he was not Elijah. What did
  Malachi mean? Was the prophecy literal or figurative? How could he know the
  truth? He finally dared to think that, since the first of the prophets was
  called Elijah, so the last should be known, eventually, by the same name.
  Nevertheless, he had doubts, doubts sufficient to prevent his ever calling
  himself Elijah.

  135:4.5 It was the influence of Elijah that caused John to adopt his methods
  of direct and blunt assault upon the sins and vices of his contemporaries. He
  sought to dress like Elijah, and he endeavored to talk like Elijah; in every
  outward aspect he was like the olden prophet. He was just such a stalwart and
  picturesque child of nature, just such a fearless and daring preacher of
  righteousness. John was not illiterate, he did well know the Jewish sacred
  writings, but he was hardly cultured. He was a clear thinker, a powerful
  speaker, and a fiery denunciator. He was hardly an example to his age, but he
  was an eloquent rebuke.

  135:4.6 At last he thought out the method of proclaiming the new age, the
  kingdom of God; he settled that he was to become the herald of the Messiah; he
  swept aside all doubts and departed from Engedi one day in March of A.D. 25 to
  begin his short but brilliant career as a public preacher.





5. THE KINGDOM OF GOD



  135:5.1 In order to understand John's message, account should be taken of the
  status of the Jewish people at the time he appeared upon the stage of action.
  For almost one hundred years all Israel had been in a quandary; they were at a
  loss to explain their continuous subjugation to gentile overlords. Had not
  Moses taught that righteousness was always rewarded with prosperity and power?
  Were they not God's chosen people? Why was the throne of David desolate and
  vacant? In the light of the Mosaic doctrines and the precepts of the prophets
  the Jews found it difficult to explain their long-continued national
  desolation.

  135:5.2 About one hundred years before the days of Jesus and John a new school
  of religious teachers arose in Palestine, the apocalyptists. These new
  teachers evolved a system of belief that accounted for the sufferings and
  humiliation of the Jews on the ground that they were paying the penalty for
  the nation's sins. They fell back onto the well-known reasons assigned to
  explain the Babylonian and other captivities of former times. But, so taught
  the apocalyptists, Israel should take heart; the days of their affliction were
  almost over; the discipline of God's chosen people was about finished; God's
  patience with the gentile foreigners was about exhausted. The end of Roman
  rule was synonymous with the end of the age and, in a certain sense, with the
  end of the world. These new teachers leaned heavily on the predictions of
  Daniel, and they consistently taught that creation was about to pass into its
  final stage; the kingdoms of this world were about to become the kingdom of
  God. To the Jewish mind of that day this was the meaning of that phrase -- the
  kingdom of heaven -- which runs throughout the teachings of both John and
  Jesus. To the Jews of Palestine the phrase "kingdom of heaven" had but one
  meaning: an absolutely righteous state in which God (the Messiah) would rule
  the nations of earth in perfection of power just as he ruled in heaven --
  "Your will be done on earth as in heaven."

  135:5.3 In the days of John all Jews were expectantly asking, "How soon will
  the kingdom come?" There was a general feeling that the end of the rule of the
  gentile nations was drawing near. There was present throughout all Jewry a
  lively hope and a keen expectation that the consummation of the desire of the
  ages would occur during the lifetime of that generation.

  135:5.4 While the Jews differed greatly in their estimates of the nature of
  the coming kingdom, they were alike in their belief that the event was
  impending, near at hand, even at the door. Many who read the Old Testament
  literally looked expectantly for a new king in Palestine, for a regenerated
  Jewish nation delivered from its enemies and presided over by the successor of
  King David, the Messiah who would quickly be acknowledged as the rightful and
  righteous ruler of all the world. Another, though smaller, group of devout
  Jews held a vastly different view of this kingdom of God. They taught that the
  coming kingdom was not of this world, that the world was approaching its
  certain end, and that "a new heaven and a new earth" were to usher in the
  establishment of the kingdom of God; that this kingdom was to be an
  everlasting dominion, that sin was to be ended, and that the citizens of the
  new kingdom were to become immortal in their enjoyment of this endless bliss.

  135:5.5 All were agreed that some drastic purging or purifying discipline
  would of necessity precede the establishment of the new kingdom on earth. The
  literalists taught that a world-wide war would ensue which would destroy all
  unbelievers, while the faithful would sweep on to universal and eternal
  victory. The spiritists taught that the kingdom would be ushered in by the
  great judgment of God which would relegate the unrighteous to their well-
  deserved judgment of punishment and final destruction, at the same time
  elevating the believing saints of the chosen people to high seats of honor and
  authority with the Son of Man, who would rule over the redeemed nations in
  God's name. And this latter group even believed that many devout gentiles
  might be admitted to the fellowship of the new kingdom.

  135:5.6 Some of the Jews held to the opinion that God might possibly establish
  this new kingdom by direct and divine intervention, but the vast majority
  believed that he would interpose some representative intermediary, the
  Messiah. And that was the only possible meaning the term Messiah could have
  had in the minds of the Jews of the generation of John and Jesus. Messiah
  could not possibly refer to one who merely taught God's will or proclaimed the
  necessity for righteous living. To all such holy persons the Jews gave the
  title of prophet. The Messiah was to be more than a prophet; the Messiah was
  to bring in the establishment of the new kingdom, the kingdom of God. No one
  who failed to do this could be the Messiah in the traditional Jewish sense.

  135:5.7 Who would this Messiah be? Again the Jewish teachers differed. The
  older ones clung to the doctrine of the son of David. The newer taught that,
  since the new kingdom was a heavenly kingdom, the new ruler might also be a
  divine personality, one who had long sat at God's right hand in heaven. And
  strange as it may appear, those who thus conceived of the ruler of the new
  kingdom looked upon him not as a human Messiah, not as a mere man, but as "the
  Son of Man" -- a Son of God -- a heavenly Prince, long held in waiting thus to
  assume the rulership of the earth made new. Such was the religious background
  of the Jewish world when John went forth proclaiming: "Repent, for the kingdom
  of heaven is at hand!"

  135:5.8 It becomes apparent, therefore, that John's announcement of the coming
  kingdom had not less than half a dozen different meanings in the minds of
  those who listened to his impassioned preaching. But no matter what
  significance they attached to the phrases which John employed, each of these
  various groups of Jewish-kingdom expectants was intrigued by the proclamations
  of this sincere, enthusiastic, rough-and-ready preacher of righteousness and
  repentance, who so solemnly exhorted his hearers to "flee from the wrath to
  come."





6. JOHN BEGINS TO PREACH



  135:6.1 Early in the month of March, A.D. 25, John journeyed around the
  western coast of the Dead Sea and up the river Jordan to opposite Jericho, the
  ancient ford over which Joshua and the children of Israel passed when they
  first entered the promised land; and crossing over to the other side of the
  river, he established himself near the entrance to the ford and began to
  preach to the people who passed by on their way back and forth across the
  river. This was the most frequented of all the Jordan crossings.

  135:6.2 It was apparent to all who heard John that he was more than a
  preacher. The great majority of those who listened to this strange man who had
  come up from the Judean wilderness went away believing that they had heard the
  voice of a prophet. No wonder the souls of these weary and expectant Jews were
  deeply stirred by such a phenomenon. Never in all Jewish history had the
  devout children of Abraham so longed for the "consolation of Israel" or more
  ardently anticipated "the restoration of the kingdom." Never in all Jewish
  history could John's message, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand," have made
  such a deep and universal appeal as at the very time he so mysteriously
  appeared on the bank of this southern crossing of the Jordan.

  135:6.3 He came from the herdsmen, like Amos. He was dressed like Elijah of
  old, and he thundered his admonitions and poured forth his warnings in the
  "spirit and power of Elijah." It is not surprising that this strange preacher
  created a mighty stir throughout all Palestine as the travelers carried abroad
  the news of his preaching along the Jordan.

  135:6.4 There was still another and a new feature about the work of this
  Nazarite preacher: He baptized every one of his believers in the Jordan "for
  the remission of sins." Although baptism was not a new ceremony among the
  Jews, they had never seen it employed as John now made use of it. It had long
  been the practice thus to baptize the gentile proselytes into the fellowship
  of the outer court of the temple, but never had the Jews themselves been asked
  to submit to the baptism of repentance. Only fifteen months intervened between
  the time John began to preach and baptize and his arrest and imprisonment at
  the instigation of Herod Antipas, but in this short time he baptized
  considerably over one hundred thousand penitents.

  135:6.5 John preached four months at Bethany ford before starting north up the
  Jordan. Tens of thousands of listeners, some curious but many earnest and
  serious, came to hear him from all parts of Judea, Perea, and Samaria. Even a
  few came from Galilee.

  135:6.6 In May of this year, while he still lingered at Bethany ford, the
  priests and Levites sent a delegation out to inquire of John whether he
  claimed to be the Messiah, and by whose authority he preached. John answered
  these questioners by saying: "Go tell your masters that you have heard `the
  voice of one crying in the wilderness,' as spoken by the prophet, saying,
  `make ready the way of the Lord, make straight a highway for our God. Every
  valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; the
  uneven ground shall become a plain, while the rough places shall become a
  smooth valley; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

  135:6.7 John was a heroic but tactless preacher. One day when he was preaching
  and baptizing on the west bank of the Jordan, a group of Pharisees and a
  number of Sadducees came forward and presented themselves for baptism. Before
  leading them down into the water, John, addressing them as a group said: "Who
  warned you to flee, as vipers before the fire, from the wrath to come? I will
  baptize you, but I warn you to bring forth fruit worthy of sincere repentance
  if you would receive the remission of your sins. Tell me not that Abraham is
  your father. I declare that God is able of these twelve stones here before you
  to raise up worthy children for Abraham. And even now is the ax laid to the
  very roots of the trees. Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is
  destined to be cut down and cast into the fire." (The twelve stones to which
  he referred were the reputed memorial stones set up by Joshua to commemorate
  the crossing of the "twelve tribes" at this very point when they first entered
  the promised land.)

  135:6.8 John conducted classes for his disciples, in the course of which he
  instructed them in the details of their new life and endeavored to answer
  their many questions. He counseled the teachers to instruct in the spirit as
  well as the letter of the law. He instructed the rich to feed the poor; to the
  tax gatherers he said: "Extort no more than that which is assigned you." To
  the soldiers he said: "Do no violence and exact nothing wrongfully -- be
  content with your wages." While he counseled all: "Make ready for the end of
  the age -- the kingdom of heaven is at hand."





7. JOHN JOURNEYS NORTH



  135:7.1 John still had confused ideas about the coming kingdom and its king.
  The longer he preached the more confused he became, but never did this
  intellectual uncertainty concerning the nature of the coming kingdom in the
  least lessen his conviction of the certainty of the kingdom's immediate
  appearance. In mind John might be confused, but in spirit never. He was in no
  doubt about the coming kingdom, but he was far from certain as to whether or
  not Jesus was to be the ruler of that kingdom. As long as John held to the
  idea of the restoration of the throne of David, the teachings of his parents
  that Jesus, born in the City of David, was to be the long-expected deliverer,
  seemed consistent; but at those times when he leaned more toward the doctrine
  of a spiritual kingdom and the end of the temporal age on earth, he was sorely
  in doubt as to the part Jesus would play in such events. Sometimes he
  questioned everything, but not for long. He really wished he might talk it all
  over with his cousin, but that was contrary to their expressed agreement.



  135:7.2 As John journeyed north, he thought much about Jesus. He paused at
  more than a dozen places as he traveled up the Jordan. It was at Adam that he
  first made reference to "another one who is to come after me" in answer to the
  direct question which his disciples asked him, "Are you the Messiah?" And he
  went on to say: "There will come after me one who is greater than I, whose
  sandal straps I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I baptize you with
  water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And his shovel is in his
  hand thoroughly to cleanse his threshing floor; he will gather the wheat into
  his garner, but the chaff will he burn up with the judgment fire."

  135:7.3 In response to the questions of his disciples John continued to expand
  his teachings, from day to day adding more that was helpful and comforting
  compared with his early and cryptic message: "Repent and be baptized." By this
  time throngs were arriving from Galilee and the Decapolis. Scores of earnest
  believers lingered with their adored teacher day after day.





8. MEETING OF JESUS AND JOHN



  135:8.1 By December of A.D. 25, when John reached the neighborhood of Pella in
  his journey up the Jordan, his fame had extended throughout all Palestine, and
  his work had become the chief topic of conversation in all the towns about the
  lake of Galilee. Jesus had spoken favorably of John's message, and this had
  caused many from Capernaum to join John's cult of repentance and baptism.
  James and John the fishermen sons of Zebedee had gone down in December, soon
  after John took up his preaching position near Pella, and had offered
  themselves for baptism. They went to see John once a week and brought back to
  Jesus fresh, first-hand reports of the evangelist's work.

  135:8.2 Jesus' brothers James and Jude had talked about going down to John for
  baptism; and now that Jude had come over to Capernaum for the Sabbath
  services, both he and James, after listening to Jesus' discourse in the
  synagogue, decided to take counsel with him concerning their plans. This was
  on Saturday night, January 12, A.D. Jesus requested that they postpone the
  discussion until the following day, when he would give them his answer. He
  slept very little that night, being in close communion with the Father in
  heaven. He had arranged to have noontime lunch with his brothers and to advise
  them concerning baptism by John. That Sunday morning Jesus was working as
  usual in the boatshop. James and Jude had arrived with the lunch and were
  waiting in the lumber room for him, as it was not yet time for the midday
  recess, and they knew that Jesus was very regular about such matters.

  135:8.3 Just before the noon rest, Jesus laid down his tools, removed his work
  apron, and merely announced to the three workmen in the room with him, "My
  hour has come." He went out to his brothers James and Jude, repeating, "My
  hour has come -- let us go to John." And they started immediately for Pella,
  eating their lunch as they journeyed. This was on Sunday, January 13. They
  tarried for the night in the Jordan valley and arrived on the scene of John's
  baptizing about noon of the next day.



  135:8.4 John had just begun baptizing the candidates for the day. Scores of
  repentants were standing in line awaiting their turn when Jesus and his two
  brothers took up their positions in this line of earnest men and women who had
  become believers in John's preaching of the coming kingdom. John had been
  inquiring about Jesus of Zebedee's sons. He had heard of Jesus' remarks
  concerning his preaching, and he was day by day expecting to see him arrive on
  the scene, but he had not expected to greet him in the line of baptismal
  candidates.

  135:8.5 Being engrossed with the details of rapidly baptizing such a large
  number of converts, John did not look up to see Jesus until the Son of Man
  stood in his immediate presence. When John recognized Jesus, the ceremonies
  were halted for a moment while he greeted his cousin in the flesh and asked,
  "But why do you come down into the water to greet me?" And Jesus answered, "To
  be subject to your baptism." John replied: "But I have need to be baptized by
  you. Why do you come to me?" And Jesus whispered to John: "Bear with me now,
  for it becomes us to set this example for my brothers standing here with me,
  and that the people may know that my hour has come."



  135:8.6 There was a tone of finality and authority in Jesus' voice. John was
  atremble with emotion as he made ready to baptize Jesus of Nazareth in the
  Jordan at noon on Monday, January 14, A.D. Thus did John baptize Jesus and his
  two brothers James and Jude. And when John had baptized these three, he
  dismissed the others for the day, announcing that he would resume baptisms at
  noon the next day. As the people were departing, the four men still standing
  in the water heard a strange sound, and presently there appeared for a moment
  an apparition immediately over the head of Jesus, and they heard a voice
  saying, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." A great change
  came over the countenance of Jesus, and coming up out of the water in silence
  he took leave of them, going toward the hills to the east. And no man saw
  Jesus again for forty days.

  135:8.7 John followed Jesus a sufficient distance to tell him the story of
  Gabriel's visit to his mother ere either had been born, as he had heard it so
  many times from his mother's lips. He allowed Jesus to continue on his way
  after he had said, "Now I know of a certainty that you are the Deliverer." But
  Jesus made no reply.





9. FORTY DAYS OF PREACHING



  135:9.1 When John returned to his disciples (he now had some twenty-five or
  thirty who abode with him constantly), he found them in earnest conference,
  discussing what had just happened in connection with Jesus' baptism. They were
  all the more astonished when John now made known to them the story of the
  Gabriel visitation to Mary before Jesus was born, and also that Jesus spoke no
  word to him even after he had told him about this. There was no rain that
  evening, and this group of thirty or more talked long into the starlit night.
  They wondered where Jesus had gone, and when they would see him again.



  135:9.2 After the experience of this day the preaching of John took on new and
  certain notes of proclamation concerning the coming kingdom and the expected
  Messiah. It was a tense time, these forty days of tarrying, waiting for the
  return of Jesus. But John continued to preach with great power, and his
  disciples began at about this time to preach to the overflowing throngs which
  gathered around John at the Jordan.

  135:9.3 In the course of these forty days of waiting, many rumors spread about
  the countryside and even to Tiberias and Jerusalem. Thousands came over to see
  the new attraction in John's camp, the reputed Messiah, but Jesus was not to
  be seen. When the disciples of John asserted that the strange man of God had
  gone to the hills, many doubted the entire story.

  135:9.4 About three weeks after Jesus had left them, there arrived on the
  scene at Pella a new deputation from the priests and Pharisees at Jerusalem.
  They asked John directly if he was Elijah or the prophet that Moses promised;
  and when John said, "I am not," they made bold to ask, "Are you the Messiah?"
  and John answered, "I am not." Then said these men from Jerusalem: "If you are
  not Elijah, nor the prophet, nor the Messiah, then why do you baptize the
  people and create all this stir?" And John replied: "It should be for those
  who have heard me and received my baptism to say who I am, but I declare to
  you that, while I baptize with water, there has been among us one who will
  return to baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

  135:9.5 These forty days were a difficult period for John and his disciples.
  What was to be the relation of John to Jesus? A hundred questions came up for
  discussion. Politics and selfish preferment began to make their appearance.
  Intense discussions grew up around the various ideas and concepts of the
  Messiah. Would he become a military leader and a Davidic king? Would he smite
  the Roman armies as Joshua had the Canaanites? Or would he come to establish a
  spiritual kingdom? John rather decided, with the minority, that Jesus had come
  to establish the kingdom of heaven, although he was not altogether clear in
  his own mind as to just what was to be embraced within this mission of the
  establishment of the kingdom of heaven.

  135:9.6 These were strenuous days in John's experience, and he prayed for the
  return of Jesus. Some of John's disciples organized scouting parties to go in
  search of Jesus, but John forbade, saying: "Our times are in the hands of the
  God of heaven; he will direct his chosen Son."



  135:9.7 It was early on the morning of Sabbath, February 23, that the company
  of John, engaged in eating their morning meal, looked up toward the north and
  beheld Jesus coming to them. As he approached them, John stood upon a large
  rock and, lifting up his sonorous voice, said: "Behold the Son of God, the
  deliverer of the world! This is he of whom I have said, `After me there will
  come one who is preferred before me because he was before me.' For this cause
  came I out of the wilderness to preach repentance and to baptize with water,
  proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And now comes one who shall
  baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And I beheld the divine spirit descending
  upon this man, and I heard the voice of God declare, `This is my beloved Son
  in whom I am well pleased.'"

  135:9.8 Jesus bade them return to their food while he sat down to eat with
  John, his brothers James and Jude having returned to Capernaum.



  135:9.9 Early in the morning of the next day he took leave of John and his
  disciples, going back to Galilee. He gave them no word as to when they would
  again see him. To John's inquiries about his own preaching and mission Jesus
  only said, "My Father will guide you now and in the future as he has in the
  past." And these two great men separated that morning on the banks of the
  Jordan, never again to greet each other in the flesh.





10. JOHN JOURNEYS SOUTH



  135:10.1 Since Jesus had gone north into Galilee, John felt led to retrace his
  steps southward. Accordingly, on Sunday morning, March 3, John and the
  remainder of his disciples began their journey south. About one quarter of
  John's immediate followers had meantime departed for Galilee in quest of
  Jesus. There was a sadness of confusion about John. He never again preached as
  he had before baptizing Jesus. He somehow felt that the responsibility of the
  coming kingdom was no longer on his shoulders. He felt that his work was
  almost finished; he was disconsolate and lonely. But he preached, baptized,
  and journeyed on southward.

  135:10.2 Near the village of Adam, John tarried for several weeks, and it was
  here that he made the memorable attack upon Herod Antipas for unlawfully
  taking the wife of another man. By June of this year (A.D. 26) John was back
  at the Bethany ford of the Jordan, where he had begun his preaching of the
  coming kingdom more than a year previously. In the weeks following the baptism
  of Jesus the character of John's preaching gradually changed into a
  proclamation of mercy for the common people, while he denounced with renewed
  vehemence the corrupt political and religious rulers.

  135:10.3 Herod Antipas, in whose territory John had been preaching, became
  alarmed lest he and his disciples should start a rebellion. Herod also
  resented John's public criticisms of his domestic affairs. In view of all
  this, Herod decided to put John in prison. Accordingly, very early in the
  morning of June 12, before the multitude arrived to hear the preaching and
  witness the baptizing, the agents of Herod placed John under arrest. As weeks
  passed and he was not released, his disciples scattered over all Palestine,
  many of them going into Galilee to join the followers of Jesus.





11. JOHN IN PRISON



  135:11.1 John had a lonely and somewhat bitter experience in prison. Few of
  his followers were permitted to see him. He longed to see Jesus but had to be
  content with hearing of his work through those of his followers who had become
  believers in the Son of Man. He was often tempted to doubt Jesus and his
  divine mission. If Jesus were the Messiah, why did he do nothing to deliver
  him from this unbearable imprisonment? For more than a year and a half this
  rugged man of God's outdoors languished in that despicable prison. And this
  experience was a great test of his faith in, and loyalty to, Jesus. Indeed,
  this whole experience was a great test of John's faith even in God. Many times
  was he tempted to doubt even the genuineness of his own mission and
  experience.



  135:11.2 After he had been in prison several months, a group of his disciples
  came to him and, after reporting concerning the public activities of Jesus,
  said: "So you see, Teacher, that he who was with you at the upper Jordan
  prospers and receives all who come to him. He even feasts with publicans and
  sinners. You bore courageous witness to him, and yet he does nothing to effect
  your deliverance." But John answered his friends: "This man can do nothing
  unless it has been given him by his Father in heaven. You well remember that I
  said, `I am not the Messiah, but I am one sent on before to prepare the way
  for him.' And that I did. He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the
  friend of the bridegroom who stands near-by and hears him rejoices greatly
  because of the bridegroom's voice. This, my joy, therefore is fulfilled. He
  must increase but I must decrease. I am of this earth and have declared my
  message. Jesus of Nazareth comes down to the earth from heaven and is above us
  all. The Son of Man has descended from God, and the words of God he will
  declare to you. For the Father in heaven gives not the spirit by measure to
  his own Son. The Father loves his Son and will presently put all things in the
  hands of this Son. He who believes in the Son has eternal life. And these
  words which I speak are true and abiding."



  135:11.3 These disciples were amazed at John's pronouncement, so much so that
  they departed in silence. John was also much agitated, for he perceived that
  he had uttered a prophecy. Never again did he wholly doubt the mission and
  divinity of Jesus. But it was a sore disappointment to John that Jesus sent
  him no word, that he came not to see him, and that he exercised none of his
  great power to deliver him from prison. But Jesus knew all about this. He had
  great love for John, but being now cognizant of his divine nature and knowing
  fully the great things in preparation for John when he departed from this
  world and also knowing that John's work on earth was finished, he constrained
  himself not to interfere in the natural outworking of the great preacher-
  prophet's career.



  135:11.4 This long suspense in prison was humanly unbearable. Just a few days
  before his death John again sent trusted messengers to Jesus, inquiring: "Is
  my work done? Why do I languish in prison? Are you truly the Messiah, or shall
  we look for another?" And when these two disciples gave this message to Jesus,
  the Son of Man replied: "Go back to John and tell him that I have not
  forgotten but to suffer me also this, for it becomes us to fulfill all
  righteousness. Tell John what you have seen and heard -- that the poor have
  good tidings preached to them -- and, finally, tell the beloved herald of my
  earth mission that he shall be abundantly blessed in the age to come if he
  finds no occasion to doubt and stumble over me." And this was the last word
  John received from Jesus. This message greatly comforted him and did much to
  stabilize his faith and prepare him for the tragic end of his life in the
  flesh which followed so soon upon the heels of this memorable occasion.





12. DEATH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST



  135:12.1 As John was working in southern Perea when arrested, he was taken
  immediately to the prison of the fortress of Machaerus, where he was
  incarcerated until his execution. Herod ruled over Perea as well as Galilee,
  and he maintained residence at this time at both Julias and Machaerus in
  Perea. In Galilee the official residence had been moved from Sepphoris to the
  new capital at Tiberias.

  135:12.2 Herod feared to release John lest he instigate rebellion. He feared
  to put him to death lest the multitude riot in the capital, for thousands of
  Pereans believed that John was a holy man, a prophet. Therefore Herod kept the
  Nazarite preacher in prison, not knowing what else to do with him. Several
  times John had been before Herod, but never would he agree either to leave the
  domains of Herod or to refrain from all public activities if he were released.
  And this new agitation concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was steadily
  increasing, admonished Herod that it was no time to turn John loose. Besides,
  John was also a victim of the intense and bitter hatred of Herodias, Herod's
  unlawful wife.

  135:12.3 On numerous occasions Herod talked with John about the kingdom of
  heaven, and while sometimes seriously impressed with his message, he was
  afraid to release him from prison.

  135:12.4 Since much building was still going on at Tiberias, Herod spent
  considerable time at his Perean residences, and he was partial to the fortress
  of Machaerus. It was a matter of several years before all the public buildings
  and the official residence at Tiberias were fully completed.



  135:12.5 In celebration of his birthday Herod made a great feast in the
  Machaerian palace for his chief officers and other men high in the councils of
  the government of Galilee and Perea. Since Herodias had failed to bring about
  John's death by direct appeal to Herod, she now set herself to the task of
  having John put to death by cunning planning.

  135:12.6 In the course of the evening's festivities and entertainment,
  Herodias presented her daughter to dance before the banqueters. Herod was very
  much pleased with the damsel's performance and, calling her before him, said:
  "You are charming. I am much pleased with you. Ask me on this my birthday for
  whatever you desire, and I will give it to you, even to the half of my
  kingdom." And Herod did all this while well under the influence of his many
  wines. The young lady drew aside and inquired of her mother what she should
  ask of Herod. Herodias said, "Go to Herod and ask for the head of John the
  Baptist." And the young woman, returning to the banquet table, said to Herod,
  "I request that you forthwith give me the head of John the Baptist on a
  platter."

  135:12.7 Herod was filled with fear and sorrow, but because of his oath and
  because of all those who sat at meat with him, he would not deny the request.
  And Herod Antipas sent a soldier, commanding him to bring the head of John. So
  was John that night beheaded in the prison, the soldier bringing the head of
  the prophet on a platter and presenting it to the young woman at the rear of
  the banquet hall. And the damsel gave the platter to her mother. When John's
  disciples heard of this, they came to the prison for the body of John, and
  after laying it in a tomb, they went and told Jesus.


PAPER 136


 BAPTISM AND THE FORTY DAYS



  136:0.1 JESUS began his public work at the height of the popular interest in
  John's preaching and at a time when the Jewish people of Palestine were
  eagerly looking for the appearance of the Messiah. There was a great contrast
  between John and Jesus. John was an eager and earnest worker, but Jesus was a
  calm and happy laborer; only a few times in his entire life was he ever in a
  hurry. Jesus was a comforting consolation to the world and somewhat of an
  example; John was hardly a comfort or an example. He preached the kingdom of
  heaven but hardly entered into the happiness thereof. Though Jesus spoke of
  John as the greatest of the prophets of the old order, he also said that the
  least of those who saw the great light of the new way and entered thereby into
  the kingdom of heaven was indeed greater than John.

  136:0.2 When John preached the coming kingdom, the burden of his message was:
  Repent! flee from the wrath to come. When Jesus began to preach, there
  remained the exhortation to repentance, but such a message was always followed
  by the gospel, the good tidings of the joy and liberty of the new kingdom.





1. CONCEPTS OF THE EXPECTED MESSIAH

  136:1.1 The Jews entertained many ideas about the expected deliverer, and each
  of these different schools of Messianic teaching was able to point to
  statements in the Hebrew scriptures as proof of their contentions. In a
  general way, the Jews regarded their national history as beginning with
  Abraham and culminating in the Messiah and the new age of the kingdom of God.
  In earlier times they had envisaged this deliverer as "the servant of the
  Lord," then as "the Son of Man," while latterly some even went so far as to
  refer to the Messiah as the "Son of God." But no matter whether he was called
  the "seed of Abraham" or "the son of David," all were agreed that he was to be
  the Messiah, the "anointed one." Thus did the concept evolve from the "servant
  of the Lord" to the "son of David," "Son of Man," and "Son of God."

  136:1.2 In the days of John and Jesus the more learned Jews had developed an
  idea of the coming Messiah as the perfected and representative Israelite,
  combining in himself as the "servant of the Lord" the threefold office of
  prophet, priest, and king.

  136:1.3 The Jews devoutly believed that, as Moses had delivered their fathers
  from Egyptian bondage by miraculous wonders, so would the coming Messiah
  deliver the Jewish people from Roman domination by even greater miracles of
  power and marvels of racial triumph. The rabbis had gathered together almost
  five hundred passages from the Scriptures which, notwithstanding their
  apparent contradictions, they averred were prophetic of the coming Messiah.
  And amidst all these details of time, technique, and function, they almost
  completely lost sight of the personality of the promised Messiah. They were
  looking for a restoration of Jewish national glory -- Israel's temporal
  exaltation -- rather than for the salvation of the world. It therefore becomes
  evident that Jesus of Nazareth could never satisfy this materialistic
  Messianic concept of the Jewish mind. Many of their reputed Messianic
  predictions, had they but viewed these prophetic utterances in a different
  light, would have very naturally prepared their minds for a recognition of
  Jesus as the terminator of one age and the inaugurator of a new and better
  dispensation of mercy and salvation for all nations.



  136:1.4 The Jews had been brought up to believe in the doctrine of the
  Shekinah. But this reputed symbol of the Divine Presence was not to be seen in
  the temple. They believed that the coming of the Messiah would effect its
  restoration. They held confusing ideas about racial sin and the supposed evil
  nature of man. Some taught that Adam's sin had cursed the human race, and that
  the Messiah would remove this curse and restore man to divine favor. Others
  taught that God, in creating man, had put into his being both good and evil
  natures; that when he observed the outworking of this arrangement, he was
  greatly disappointed, and that "He repented that he had thus made man." And
  those who taught this believed that the Messiah was to come in order to redeem
  man from this inherent evil nature.

  136:1.5 The majority of the Jews believed that they continued to languish
  under Roman rule because of their national sins and because of the
  halfheartedness of the gentile proselytes. The Jewish nation had not
  wholeheartedly repented; therefore did the Messiah delay his coming. There was
  much talk about repentance; wherefore the mighty and immediate appeal of
  John's preaching, "Repent and be baptized, for the kingdom of heaven is at
  hand." And the kingdom of heaven could mean only one thing to any devout Jew:
  The coming of the Messiah.

  136:1.6 There was one feature of the bestowal of Michael which was utterly
  foreign to the Jewish conception of the Messiah, and that was the union of the
  two natures, the human and the divine. The Jews had variously conceived of the
  Messiah as perfected human, superhuman, and even as divine, but they never
  entertained the concept of the union of the human and the divine. And this was
  the great stumbling block of Jesus' early disciples. They grasped the human
  concept of the Messiah as the son of David, as presented by the earlier
  prophets; as the Son of Man, the superhuman idea of Daniel and some of the
  later prophets; and even as the Son of God, as depicted by the author of the
  Book of Enoch and by certain of his contemporaries; but never had they for a
  single moment entertained the true concept of the union in one earth
  personality of the two natures, the human and the divine. The incarnation of
  the Creator in the form of the creature had not been revealed beforehand. It
  was revealed only in Jesus; the world knew nothing of such things until the
  Creator Son was made flesh and dwelt among the mortals of the realm.





2. THE BAPTISM OF JESUS

  136:2.1 Jesus was baptized at the very height of John's preaching when
  Palestine was aflame with the expectancy of his message -- "the kingdom of God
  is at hand" -- when all Jewry was engaged in serious and solemn self-
  examination. The Jewish sense of racial solidarity was very profound. The Jews
  not only believed that the sins of the father might afflict his children, but
  they firmly believed that the sin of one individual might curse the nation.
  Accordingly, not all who submitted to John's baptism regarded themselves as
  being guilty of the specific sins which John denounced. Many devout souls were
  baptized by John for the good of Israel. They feared lest some sin of
  ignorance on their part might delay the coming of the Messiah. They felt
  themselves to belong to a guilty and sin-cursed nation, and they presented
  themselves for baptism that they might by so doing manifest fruits of race
  penitence. It is therefore evident that Jesus in no sense received John's
  baptism as a rite of repentance or for the remission of sins. In accepting
  baptism at the hands of John, Jesus was only following the example of many
  pious Israelites.



  136:2.2 When Jesus of Nazareth went down into the Jordan to be baptized, he
  was a mortal of the realm who had attained the pinnacle of human evolutionary
  ascension in all matters related to the conquest of mind and to self-
  identification with the spirit. He stood in the Jordan that day a perfected
  mortal of the evolutionary worlds of time and space. Perfect synchrony and
  full communication had become established between the mortal mind of Jesus and
  the indwelling spirit Adjuster, the divine gift of his Father in Paradise. And
  just such an Adjuster indwells all normal beings living on Urantia since the
  ascension of Michael to the headship of his universe, except that Jesus'
  Adjuster had been previously prepared for this special mission by similarly
  indwelling another superhuman incarnated in the likeness of mortal flesh,
  Machiventa Melchizedek.

  136:2.3 Ordinarily, when a mortal of the realm attains such high levels of
  personality perfection, there occur those preliminary phenomena of spiritual
  elevation which terminate in eventual fusion of the matured soul of the mortal
  with its associated divine Adjuster. And such a change was apparently due to
  take place in the personality experience of Jesus of Nazareth on that very day
  when he went down into the Jordan with his two brothers to be baptized by
  John. This ceremony was the final act of his purely human life on Urantia, and
  many superhuman observers expected to witness the fusion of the Adjuster with
  its indwelt mind, but they were all destined to suffer disappointment.
  Something new and even greater occurred. As John laid his hands upon Jesus to
  baptize him, the indwelling Adjuster took final leave of the perfected human
  soul of Joshua ben Joseph. And in a few moments this divine entity returned
  from Divinington as a Personalized Adjuster and chief of his kind throughout
  the entire local universe of Nebadon. Thus did Jesus observe his own former
  divine spirit descending on its return to him in personalized form. And he
  heard this same spirit of Paradise origin now speak, saying, "This is my
  beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And John, with Jesus' two brothers,
  also heard these words. John's disciples, standing by the water's edge, did
  not hear these words, neither did they see the apparition of the Personalized
  Adjuster. Only the eyes of Jesus beheld the Personalized Adjuster.



  136:2.4 When the returned and now exalted Personalized Adjuster had thus
  spoken, all was silence. And while the four of them tarried in the water,
  Jesus, looking up to the near-by Adjuster, prayed: "My Father who reigns in
  heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come! Your will be done on earth,
  even as it is in heaven." When he had prayed, the "heavens were opened," and
  the Son of Man saw the vision, presented by the now Personalized Adjuster, of
  himself as a Son of God as he was before he came to earth in the likeness of
  mortal flesh, and as he would be when the incarnated life should be finished.
  This heavenly vision was seen only by Jesus.

  136:2.5 It was the voice of the Personalized Adjuster that John and Jesus
  heard, speaking in behalf of the Universal Father, for the Adjuster is of, and
  as, the Paradise Father. Throughout the remainder of Jesus' earth life this
  Personalized Adjuster was associated with him in all his labors; Jesus was in
  constant communion with this exalted Adjuster.



  136:2.6 When Jesus was baptized, he repented of no misdeeds; he made no
  confession of sin. His was the baptism of consecration to the performance of
  the will of the heavenly Father. At his baptism he heard the unmistakable call
  of his Father, the final summons to be about his Father's business, and he
  went away into private seclusion for forty days to think over these manifold
  problems. In thus retiring for a season from active personality contact with
  his earthly associates, Jesus, as he was and on Urantia, was following the
  very procedure that obtains on the morontia worlds whenever an ascending
  mortal fuses with the inner presence of the Universal Father.

  136:2.7 This day of baptism ended the purely human life of Jesus. The divine
  Son has found his Father, the Universal Father has found his incarnated Son,
  and they speak the one to the other.



  136:2.8 (Jesus was almost thirty-one and one-half years old when he was
  baptized. While Luke says that Jesus was baptized in the fifteenth year of the
  reign of Tiberius Caesar, which would be A.D. 29 since Augustus died in A.D.
  14, it should be recalled that Tiberius was coemperor with Augustus for two
  and one-half years before the death of Augustus, having had coins struck in
  his honor in October, A.D. 11. The fifteenth year of his actual rule was,
  therefore, this very year of A.D. 26, that of Jesus' baptism. And this was
  also the year that Pontius Pilate began his rule as governor of Judea.)





3. THE FORTY DAYS

  136:3.1 Jesus had endured the great temptation of his mortal bestowal before
  his baptism when he had been wet with the dews of Mount Hermon for six weeks.
  There on Mount Hermon, as an unaided mortal of the realm, he had met and
  defeated the Urantia pretender, Caligastia, the prince of this world. That
  eventful day, on the universe records, Jesus of Nazareth had become the
  Planetary Prince of Urantia. And this Prince of Urantia, so soon to be
  proclaimed supreme Sovereign of Nebadon, now went into forty days of
  retirement to formulate the plans and determine upon the technique of
  proclaiming the new kingdom of God in the hearts of men.

  136:3.2 After his baptism he entered upon the forty days of adjusting himself
  to the changed relationships of the world and the universe occasioned by the
  personalization of his Adjuster. During this isolation in the Perean hills he
  determined upon the policy to be pursued and the methods to be employed in the
  new and changed phase of earth life which he was about to inaugurate.

  136:3.3 Jesus did not go into retirement for the purpose of fasting and for
  the affliction of his soul. He was not an ascetic, and he came forever to
  destroy all such notions regarding the approach to God. His reasons for
  seeking this retirement were entirely different from those which had actuated
  Moses and Elijah, and even John the Baptist. Jesus was then wholly self-
  conscious concerning his relation to the universe of his making and also to
  the universe of universes, supervised by the Paradise Father, his Father in
  heaven. He now fully recalled the bestowal charge and its instructions
  administered by his elder brother, Immanuel, ere he entered upon his Urantia
  incarnation. He now clearly and fully comprehended all these far-flung
  relationships, and he desired to be away for a season of quiet meditation so
  that he could think out the plans and decide upon the procedures for the
  prosecution of his public labors in behalf of this world and for all other
  worlds in his local universe.



  136:3.4 While wandering about in the hills, seeking a suitable shelter, Jesus
  encountered his universe chief executive, Gabriel, the Bright and Morning Star
  of Nebadon. Gabriel now re-established personal communication with the Creator
  Son of the universe; they met directly for the first time since Michael took
  leave of his associates on Salvington when he went to Edentia preparatory to
  entering upon the Urantia bestowal. Gabriel, by direction of Immanuel and on
  authority of the Uversa Ancients of Days, now laid before Jesus information
  indicating that his bestowal experience on Urantia was practically finished so
  far as concerned the earning of the perfected sovereignty of his universe and
  the termination of the Lucifer rebellion. The former was achieved on the day
  of his baptism when the personalization of his Adjuster demonstrated the
  perfection and completion of his bestowal in the likeness of mortal flesh, and
  the latter was a fact of history on that day when he came down from Mount
  Hermon to join the waiting lad, Tiglath. Jesus was now informed, upon the
  highest authority of the local universe and the superuniverse, that his
  bestowal work was finished in so far as it affected his personal status in
  relation to sovereignty and rebellion. He had already had this assurance
  direct from Paradise in the baptismal vision and in the phenomenon of the
  personalization of his indwelling Thought Adjuster.

  136:3.5 While he tarried on the mountain, talking with Gabriel, the
  Constellation Father of Edentia appeared to Jesus and Gabriel in person,
  saying: "The records are completed. The sovereignty of Michael No. 611,121
  over his universe of Nebadon rests in completion at the right hand of the
  Universal Father. I bring to you the bestowal release of Immanuel, your
  sponsor-brother for the Urantia incarnation. You are at liberty now or at any
  subsequent time, in the manner of your own choosing, to terminate your
  incarnation bestowal, ascend to the right hand of your Father, receive your
  sovereignty, and assume your well-earned unconditional rulership of all
  Nebadon. I also testify to the completion of the records of the superuniverse,
  by authorization of the Ancients of Days, having to do with the termination of
  all sin-rebellion in your universe and endowing you with full and unlimited
  authority to deal with any and all such possible upheavals in the future.
  Technically, your work on Urantia and in the flesh of the mortal creature is
  finished. Your course from now on is a matter of your own choosing."

  136:3.6 When the Most High Father of Edentia had taken leave, Jesus held long
  converse with Gabriel regarding the welfare of the universe and, sending
  greetings to Immanuel, proffered his assurance that, in the work which he was
  about to undertake on Urantia, he would be ever mindful of the counsel he had
  received in connection with the prebestowal charge administered on Salvington.



  136:3.7 Throughout all of these forty days of isolation James and John the
  sons of Zebedee were engaged in searching for Jesus. Many times they were not
  far from his abiding place, but never did they find him.





4. PLANS FOR PUBLIC WORK

  136:4.1 Day by day, up in the hills, Jesus formulated the plans for the
  remainder of his Urantia bestowal. He first decided not to teach
  contemporaneously with John. He planned to remain in comparative retirement
  until the work of John achieved its purpose, or until John was suddenly
  stopped by imprisonment. Jesus well knew that John's fearless and tactless
  preaching would presently arouse the fears and enmity of the civil rulers. In
  view of John's precarious situation, Jesus began definitely to plan his
  program of public labors in behalf of his people and the world, in behalf of
  every inhabited world throughout his vast universe. Michael's mortal bestowal
  was on Urantia but for all worlds of Nebadon.

  136:4.2 The first thing Jesus did, after thinking through the general plan of
  co-ordinating his program with John's movement, was to review in his mind the
  instructions of Immanuel. Carefully he thought over the advice given him
  concerning his methods of labor, and that he was to leave no permanent writing
  on the planet. Never again did Jesus write on anything except sand. On his
  next visit to Nazareth, much to the sorrow of his brother Joseph, Jesus
  destroyed all of his writing that was preserved on the boards about the
  carpenter shop, and which hung upon the walls of the old home. And Jesus
  pondered well over Immanuel's advice pertaining to his economic, social, and
  political attitude toward the world as he should find it.



  136:4.3 Jesus did not fast during this forty days' isolation. The longest
  period he went without food was his first two days in the hills when he was so
  engrossed with his thinking that he forgot all about eating. But on the third
  day he went in search of food. Neither was he tempted during this time by any
  evil spirits or rebel personalities of station on this world or from any other
  world.



  136:4.4 These forty days were the occasion of the final conference between the
  human and the divine minds, or rather the first real functioning of these two
  minds as now made one. The results of this momentous season of meditation
  demonstrated conclusively that the divine mind has triumphantly and
  spiritually dominated the human intellect. The mind of man has become the mind
  of God from this time on, and though the selfhood of the mind of man is ever
  present, always does this spiritualized human mind say, "Not my will but yours
  be done."

  136:4.5 The transactions of this eventful time were not the fantastic visions
  of a starved and weakened mind, neither were they the confused and puerile
  symbolisms which afterward gained record as the "temptations of Jesus in the
  wilderness." Rather was this a season for thinking over the whole eventful and
  varied career of the Urantia bestowal and for the careful laying of those
  plans for further ministry which would best serve this world while also
  contributing something to the betterment of all other rebellion-isolated
  spheres. Jesus thought over the whole span of human life on Urantia, from the
  days of Andon and Fonta, down through Adam's default, and on to the ministry
  of the Melchizedek of Salem.

  136:4.6 Gabriel had reminded Jesus that there were two ways in which he might
  manifest himself to the world in case he should choose to tarry on Urantia for
  a time. And it was made clear to Jesus that his choice in this matter would
  have nothing to do with either his universe sovereignty or the termination of
  the Lucifer rebellion. These two ways of world ministry were:

1. His own way -- the way that might seem most pleasant and profitable from the
standpoint of the immediate needs of this world and the present edification of
his own universe.

2. The Father's way -- the exemplification of a farseeing ideal of creature life
visualized by the high personalities of the Paradise administration of the
universe of universes.

  136:4.7 It was thus made clear to Jesus that there were two ways in which he
  could order the remainder of his earth life. Each of these ways had something
  to be said in its favor as it might be regarded in the light of the immediate
  situation. The Son of Man clearly saw that his choice between these two modes
  of conduct would have nothing to do with his reception of universe
  sovereignty; that was a matter already settled and sealed on the records of
  the universe of universes and only awaited his demand in person. But it was
  indicated to Jesus that it would afford his Paradise brother, Immanuel, great
  satisfaction if he, Jesus, should see fit to finish up his earth career of
  incarnation as he had so nobly begun it, always subject to the Father's will.
  On the third day of this isolation Jesus promised himself he would go back to
  the world to finish his earth career, and that in a situation involving any
  two ways he would always choose the Father's will. And he lived out the
  remainder of his earth life always true to that resolve. Even to the bitter
  end he invariably subordinated his sovereign will to that of his heavenly
  Father.

  136:4.8 The forty days in the mountain wilderness were not a period of great
  temptation but rather the period of the Master's great decisions. During these
  days of lone communion with himself and his Father's immediate presence -- the
  Personalized Adjuster (he no longer had a personal seraphic guardian) -- he
  arrived, one by one, at the great decisions which were to control his policies
  and conduct for the remainder of his earth career. Subsequently the tradition
  of a great temptation became attached to this period of isolation through
  confusion with the fragmentary narratives of the Mount Hermon struggles, and
  further because it was the custom to have all great prophets and human leaders
  begin their public careers by undergoing these supposed seasons of fasting and
  prayer. It had always been Jesus' practice, when facing any new or serious
  decisions, to withdraw for communion with his own spirit that he might seek to
  know the will of God.

  136:4.9 In all this planning for the remainder of his earth life, Jesus was
  always torn in his human heart by two opposing courses of conduct:



  136:4.10 1. He entertained a strong desire to win his people -- and the whole
  world -- to believe in him and to accept his new spiritual kingdom. And he
  well knew their ideas concerning the coming Messiah.



  136:4.11 2. To live and work as he knew his Father would approve, to conduct
  his work in behalf of other worlds in need, and to continue, in the
  establishment of the kingdom, to reveal the Father and show forth his divine
  character of love.



  136:4.12 Throughout these eventful days Jesus lived in an ancient rock cavern,
  a shelter in the side of the hills near a village sometime called Beit Adis.
  He drank from the small spring which came from the side of the hill near this
  rock shelter.





5. THE FIRST GREAT DECISION

  136:5.1 On the third day after beginning this conference with himself and his
  Personalized Adjuster, Jesus was presented with the vision of the assembled
  celestial hosts of Nebadon sent by their commanders to wait upon the will of
  their beloved Sovereign. This mighty host embraced twelve legions of seraphim
  and proportionate numbers of every order of universe intelligence. And the
  first great decision of Jesus' isolation had to do with whether or not he
  would make use of these mighty personalities in connection with the ensuing
  program of his public work on Urantia.

  136:5.2 Jesus decided that he would not utilize a single personality of this
  vast assemblage unless it should become evident that this was his Father's
  will. Notwithstanding this general decision, this vast host remained with him
  throughout the balance of his earth life, always in readiness to obey the
  least expression of their Sovereign's will. Although Jesus did not constantly
  behold these attendant personalities with his human eyes, his associated
  Personalized Adjuster did constantly behold, and could communicate with, all
  of them.



  136:5.3 Before coming down from the forty days' retreat in the hills, Jesus
  assigned the immediate command of this attendant host of universe
  personalities to his recently Personalized Adjuster, and for more than four
  years of Urantia time did these selected personalities from every division of
  universe intelligences obediently and respectfully function under the wise
  guidance of this exalted and experienced Personalized Mystery Monitor. In
  assuming command of this mighty assembly, the Adjuster, being a onetime part
  and essence of the Paradise Father, assured Jesus that in no case would these
  superhuman agencies be permitted to serve, or manifest themselves in
  connection with, or in behalf of, his earth career unless it should develop
  that the Father willed such intervention. Thus by one great decision Jesus
  voluntarily deprived himself of all superhuman co-operation in all matters
  having to do with the remainder of his mortal career unless the Father might
  independently choose to participate in some certain act or episode of the
  Son's earth labors.

  136:5.4 In accepting this command of the universe hosts in attendance upon
  Christ Michael, the Personalized Adjuster took great pains to point out to
  Jesus that, while such an assembly of universe creatures could be limited in
  their space activities by the delegated authority of their Creator, such
  limitations were not operative in connection with their function in time. And
  this limitation was dependent on the fact that Adjusters are nontime beings
  when once they are personalized. Accordingly was Jesus admonished that, while
  the Adjuster's control of the living intelligences placed under his command
  would be complete and perfect as to all matters involving space, there could
  be no such perfect limitations imposed regarding time. Said the Adjuster: "I
  will, as you have directed, enjoin the employment of this attendant host of
  universe intelligences in any manner in connection with your earth career
  except in those cases where the Paradise Father directs me to release such
  agencies in order that his divine will of your choosing may be accomplished,
  and in those instances where you may engage in any choice or act of your
  divine-human will which shall only involve departures from the natural earth
  order as to time. In all such events I am powerless, and your creatures here
  assembled in perfection and unity of power are likewise helpless. If your
  united natures once entertain such desires, these mandates of your choice will
  be forthwith executed. Your wish in all such matters will constitute the
  abridgment of time, and the thing projected is existent. Under my command this
  constitutes the fullest possible limitation which can be imposed upon your
  potential sovereignty. In my self-consciousness time is nonexistent, and
  therefore I cannot limit your creatures in anything related thereto."



  136:5.5 Thus did Jesus become apprised of the working out of his decision to
  go on living as a man among men. He had by a single decision excluded all of
  his attendant universe hosts of varied intelligences from participating in his
  ensuing public ministry except in such matters as concerned time only. It
  therefore becomes evident that any possible supernatural or supposedly
  superhuman accompaniments of Jesus' ministry pertained wholly to the
  elimination of time unless the Father in heaven specifically ruled otherwise.
  No miracle, ministry of mercy, or any other possible event occurring in
  connection with Jesus' remaining earth labors could possibly be of the nature
  or character of an act transcending the natural laws established and regularly
  working in the affairs of man as he lives on Urantia except in this expressly
  stated matter of time. No limits, of course, could be placed upon the
  manifestations of "the Father's will." The elimination of time in connection
  with the expressed desire of this potential Sovereign of a universe could only
  be avoided by the direct and explicit act of the will of this God-man to the
  effect that time, as related to the act or event in question, should not be
  shortened or eliminated. In order to prevent the appearance of apparent time
  miracles, it was necessary for Jesus to remain constantly time conscious. Any
  lapse of time consciousness on his part, in connection with the entertainment
  of definite desire, was equivalent to the enactment of the thing conceived in
  the mind of this Creator Son, and without the intervention of time.

  136:5.6 Through the supervising control of his associated and Personalized
  Adjuster it was possible for Michael perfectly to limit his personal earth
  activities with reference to space, but it was not possible for the Son of Man
  thus to limit his new earth status as potential Sovereign of Nebadon as
  regards time. And this was the actual status of Jesus of Nazareth as he went
  forth to begin his public ministry on Urantia.





6. THE SECOND DECISION

  136:6.1 Having settled his policy concerning all personalities of all classes
  of his created intelligences, so far as this could be determined in view of
  the inherent potential of his new status of divinity, Jesus now turned his
  thoughts toward himself. What would he, now the fully self-conscious creator
  of all things and beings existent in this universe, do with these creator
  prerogatives in the recurring life situations which would immediately confront
  him when he returned to Galilee to resume his work among men? In fact,
  already, and right where he was in these lonely hills, had this problem
  forcibly presented itself in the matter of obtaining food. By the third day of
  his solitary meditations the human body grew hungry. Should he go in quest of
  food as any ordinary man would, or should he merely exercise his normal
  creative powers and produce suitable bodily nourishment ready at hand? And
  this great decision of the Master has been portrayed to you as a temptation --
  as a challenge by supposed enemies that he "command that these stones become
  loaves of bread."

  136:6.2 Jesus thus settled upon another and consistent policy for the
  remainder of his earth labors. As far as his personal necessities were
  concerned, and in general even in his relations with other personalities, he
  now deliberately chose to pursue the path of normal earthly existence; he
  definitely decided against a policy which would transcend, violate, or outrage
  his own established natural laws. But he could not promise himself, as he had
  already been warned by his Personalized Adjuster, that these natural laws
  might not, in certain conceivable circumstances, be greatly accelerated. In
  principle, Jesus decided that his lifework should be organized and prosecuted
  in accordance with natural law and in harmony with the existing social
  organization. The Master thereby chose a program of living which was the
  equivalent of deciding against miracles and wonders. Again he decided in favor
  of "the Father's will"; again he surrendered everything into the hands of his
  Paradise Father.

  136:6.3 Jesus' human nature dictated that the first duty was self-
  preservation; that is the normal attitude of the natural man on the worlds of
  time and space, and it is, therefore, a legitimate reaction of a Urantia
  mortal. But Jesus was not concerned merely with this world and its creatures;
  he was living a life designed to instruct and inspire the manifold creatures
  of a far-flung universe.

  136:6.4 Before his baptismal illumination he had lived in perfect submission
  to the will and guidance of his heavenly Father. He emphatically decided to
  continue on in just such implicit mortal dependence on the Father's will. He
  purposed to follow the unnatural course -- he decided not to seek self-
  preservation. He chose to go on pursuing the policy of refusing to defend
  himself. He formulated his conclusions in the words of Scripture familiar to
  his human mind: "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that
  proceeds from the mouth of God." In reaching this conclusion in regard to the
  appetite of the physical nature as expressed in hunger for food, the Son of
  Man made his final declaration concerning all other urges of the flesh and the
  natural impulses of human nature.

  136:6.5 His superhuman power he might possibly use for others, but for
  himself, never. And he pursued this policy consistently to the very end, when
  it was jeeringly said of him: "He saved others; himself he cannot save" --
  because he would not.

  136:6.6 The Jews were expecting a Messiah who would do even greater wonders
  than Moses, who was reputed to have brought forth water from the rock in a
  desert place and to have fed their forefathers with manna in the wilderness.
  Jesus knew the sort of Messiah his compatriots expected, and he had all the
  powers and prerogatives to measure up to their most sanguine expectations, but
  he decided against such a magnificent program of power and glory. Jesus looked
  upon such a course of expected miracle working as a harking back to the olden
  days of ignorant magic and the degraded practices of the savage medicine men.
  Possibly, for the salvation of his creatures, he might accelerate natural law,
  but to transcend his own laws, either for the benefit of himself or the
  overawing of his fellow men, that he would not do. And the Master's decision
  was final.

  136:6.7 Jesus sorrowed for his people; he fully understood how they had been
  led up to the expectation of the coming Messiah, the time when "the earth will
  yield its fruits ten thousandfold, and on one vine there will be a thousand
  branches, and each branch will produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster
  will produce a thousand grapes, and each grape will produce a gallon of wine."
  The Jews believed the Messiah would usher in an era of miraculous plenty. The
  Hebrews had long been nurtured on traditions of miracles and legends of
  wonders.

  136:6.8 He was not a Messiah coming to multiply bread and wine. He came not to
  minister to temporal needs only; he came to reveal his Father in heaven to his
  children on earth, while he sought to lead his earth children to join him in a
  sincere effort so to live as to do the will of the Father in heaven.



  136:6.9 In this decision Jesus of Nazareth portrayed to an onlooking universe
  the folly and sin of prostituting divine talents and God-given abilities for
  personal aggrandizement or for purely selfish gain and glorification. That was
  the sin of Lucifer and Caligastia.

  136:6.10 This great decision of Jesus portrays dramatically the truth that
  selfish satisfaction and sensuous gratification, alone and of themselves, are
  not able to confer happiness upon evolving human beings. There are higher
  values in mortal existence -- intellectual mastery and spiritual achievement
  -- which far transcend the necessary gratification of man's purely physical
  appetites and urges. Man's natural endowment of talent and ability should be
  chiefly devoted to the development and ennoblement of his higher powers of
  mind and spirit.

  136:6.11 Jesus thus revealed to the creatures of his universe the technique of
  the new and better way, the higher moral values of living and the deeper
  spiritual satisfactions of evolutionary human existence on the worlds of
  space.





7. THE THIRD DECISION

  136:7.1 Having made his decisions regarding such matters as food and physical
  ministration to the needs of his material body, the care of the health of
  himself and his associates, there remained yet other problems to solve. What
  would be his attitude when confronted by personal danger? He decided to
  exercise normal watchcare over his human safety and to take reasonable
  precaution to prevent the untimely termination of his career in the flesh but
  to refrain from all superhuman intervention when the crisis of his life in the
  flesh should come. As he was formulating this decision, Jesus was seated under
  the shade of a tree on an overhanging ledge of rock with a precipice right
  there before him. He fully realized that he could cast himself off the ledge
  and out into space, and that nothing could happen to harm him provided he
  would rescind his first great decision not to invoke the interposition of his
  celestial intelligences in the prosecution of his lifework on Urantia, and
  provided he would abrogate his second decision concerning his attitude toward
  self-preservation.

  136:7.2 Jesus knew his fellow countrymen were expecting a Messiah who would be
  above natural law. Well had he been taught that Scripture: "There shall no
  evil befall you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling. For he
  shall give his angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They
  shall bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone."
  Would this sort of presumption, this defiance of his Father's laws of gravity,
  be justified in order to protect himself from possible harm or, perchance, to
  win the confidence of his mistaught and distracted people? But such a course,
  however gratifying to the sign-seeking Jews, would be, not a revelation of his
  Father, but a questionable trifling with the established laws of the universe
  of universes.



  136:7.3 Understanding all of this and knowing that the Master refused to work
  in defiance of his established laws of nature in so far as his personal
  conduct was concerned, you know of a certainty that he never walked on the
  water nor did anything else which was an outrage to his material order of
  administering the world; always, of course, bearing in mind that there had, as
  yet, been found no way whereby he could be wholly delivered from the lack of
  control over the element of time in connection with those matters put under
  the jurisdiction of the Personalized Adjuster.

  136:7.4 Throughout his entire earth life Jesus was consistently loyal to this
  decision. No matter whether the Pharisees taunted him for a sign, or the
  watchers at Calvary dared him to come down from the cross, he steadfastly
  adhered to the decision of this hour on the hillside.





8. THE FOURTH DECISION

  136:8.1 The next great problem with which this God-man wrestled and which he
  presently decided in accordance with the will of the Father in heaven,
  concerned the question as to whether or not any of his superhuman powers
  should be employed for the purpose of attracting the attention and winning the
  adherence of his fellow men. Should he in any manner lend his universe powers
  to the gratification of the Jewish hankering for the spectacular and the
  marvelous? He decided that he should not. He settled upon a policy of
  procedure which eliminated all such practices as the method of bringing his
  mission to the notice of men. And he consistently lived up to this great
  decision. Even when he permitted the manifestation of numerous time-shortening
  ministrations of mercy, he almost invariably admonished the recipients of his
  healing ministry to tell no man about the benefits they had received. And
  always did he refuse the taunting challenge of his enemies to "show us a sign"
  in proof and demonstration of his divinity.

  136:8.2 Jesus very wisely foresaw that the working of miracles and the
  execution of wonders would call forth only outward allegiance by overawing the
  material mind; such performances would not reveal God nor save men. He refused
  to become a mere wonder-worker. He resolved to become occupied with but a
  single task -- the establishment of the kingdom of heaven.



  136:8.3 Throughout all this momentous dialog of Jesus' communing with himself,
  there was present the human element of questioning and near-doubting, for
  Jesus was man as well as God. It was evident he would never be received by the
  Jews as the Messiah if he did not work wonders. Besides, if he would consent
  to do just one unnatural thing, the human mind would know of a certainty that
  it was in subservience to a truly divine mind. Would it be consistent with
  "the Father's will" for the divine mind to make this concession to the
  doubting nature of the human mind? Jesus decided that it would not and cited
  the presence of the Personalized Adjuster as sufficient proof of divinity in
  partnership with humanity.



  136:8.4 Jesus had traveled much; he recalled Rome, Alexandria, and Damascus.
  He knew the methods of the world -- how people gained their ends in politics
  and commerce by compromise and diplomacy. Would he utilize this knowledge in
  the furtherance of his mission on earth? He likewise decided against all
  compromise with the wisdom of the world and the influence of riches in the
  establishment of the kingdom. He again chose to depend exclusively on the
  Father's will.

  136:8.5 Jesus was fully aware of the short cuts open to one of his powers. He
  knew many ways in which the attention of the nation, and the whole world,
  could be immediately focused upon himself. Soon the Passover would be
  celebrated at Jerusalem; the city would be thronged with visitors. He could
  ascend the pinnacle of the temple and before the bewildered multitude walk out
  on the air; that would be the kind of a Messiah they were looking for. But he
  would subsequently disappoint them since he had not come to re-establish
  David's throne. And he knew the futility of the Caligastia method of trying to
  get ahead of the natural, slow, and sure way of accomplishing the divine
  purpose. Again the Son of Man bowed obediently to the Father's way, the
  Father's will.

  136:8.6 Jesus chose to establish the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of
  mankind by natural, ordinary, difficult, and trying methods, just such
  procedures as his earth children must subsequently follow in their work of
  enlarging and extending that heavenly kingdom. For well did the Son of Man
  know that it would be "through much tribulation that many of the children of
  all ages would enter into the kingdom." Jesus was now passing through the
  great test of civilized man, to have power and steadfastly refuse to use it
  for purely selfish or personal purposes.



  136:8.7 In your consideration of the life and experience of the Son of Man, it
  should be ever borne in mind that the Son of God was incarnate in the mind of
  a first-century human being, not in the mind of a twentieth-century or other-
  century mortal. By this we mean to convey the idea that the human endowments
  of Jesus were of natural acquirement. He was the product of the hereditary and
  environmental factors of his time, plus the influence of his training and
  education. His humanity was genuine, natural, wholly derived from the
  antecedents of, and fostered by, the actual intellectual status and social and
  economic conditions of that day and generation. While in the experience of
  this God-man there was always the possibility that the divine mind would
  transcend the human intellect, nonetheless, when, and as, his human mind
  functioned, it did perform as would a true mortal mind under the conditions of
  the human environment of that day.



  136:8.8 Jesus portrayed to all the worlds of his vast universe the folly of
  creating artificial situations for the purpose of exhibiting arbitrary
  authority or of indulging exceptional power for the purpose of enhancing moral
  values or accelerating spiritual progress. Jesus decided that he would not
  lend his mission on earth to a repetition of the disappointment of the reign
  of the Maccabees. He refused to prostitute his divine attributes for the
  purpose of acquiring unearned popularity or for gaining political prestige. He
  would not countenance the transmutation of divine and creative energy into
  national power or international prestige. Jesus of Nazareth refused to
  compromise with evil, much less to consort with sin. The Master triumphantly
  put loyalty to his Father's will above every other earthly and temporal
  consideration.





9. THE FIFTH DECISION

  136:9.1 Having settled such questions of policy as pertained to his individual
  relations to natural law and spiritual power, he turned his attention to the
  choice of methods to be employed in the proclamation and establishment of the
  kingdom of God. John had already begun this work; how might he continue the
  message? How should he take over John's mission? How should he organize his
  followers for effective effort and intelligent co-operation? Jesus was now
  reaching the final decision which would forbid that he further regard himself
  as the Jewish Messiah, at least as the Messiah was popularly conceived in that
  day.

  136:9.2 The Jews envisaged a deliverer who would come in miraculous power to
  cast down Israel's enemies and establish the Jews as world rulers, free from
  want and oppression. Jesus knew that this hope would never be realized. He
  knew that the kingdom of heaven had to do with the overthrow of evil in the
  hearts of men, and that it was purely a matter of spiritual concern. He
  thought out the advisability of inaugurating the spiritual kingdom with a
  brilliant and dazzling display of power -- and such a course would have been
  permissible and wholly within the jurisdiction of Michael -- but he fully
  decided against such a plan. He would not compromise with the revolutionary
  techniques of Caligastia. He had won the world in potential by submission to
  the Father's will, and he proposed to finish his work as he had begun it, and
  as the Son of Man.

  136:9.3 You can hardly imagine what would have happened on Urantia had this
  God-man, now in potential possession of all power in heaven and on earth, once
  decided to unfurl the banner of sovereignty, to marshal his wonder-working
  battalions in militant array! But he would not compromise. He would not serve
  evil that the worship of God might presumably be derived therefrom. He would
  abide by the Father's will. He would proclaim to an onlooking universe, "You
  shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve."

  136:9.4 As the days passed, with ever-increasing clearness Jesus perceived
  what kind of a truth-revealer he was to become. He discerned that God's way
  was not going to be the easy way. He began to realize that the cup of the
  remainder of his human experience might possibly be bitter, but he decided to
  drink it.

  136:9.5 Even his human mind is saying good-bye to the throne of David. Step by
  step this human mind follows in the path of the divine. The human mind still
  asks questions but unfailingly accepts the divine answers as final rulings in
  this combined life of living as a man in the world while all the time
  submitting unqualifiedly to the doing of the Father's eternal and divine will.

  136:9.6 Rome was mistress of the Western world. The Son of Man, now in
  isolation and achieving these momentous decisions, with the hosts of heaven at
  his command, represented the last chance of the Jews to attain world dominion;
  but this earthborn Jew, who possessed such tremendous wisdom and power,
  declined to use his universe endowments either for the aggrandizement of
  himself or for the enthronement of his people. He saw, as it were, "the
  kingdoms of this world," and he possessed the power to take them. The Most
  Highs of Edentia had resigned all these powers into his hands, but he did not
  want them. The kingdoms of earth were paltry things to interest the Creator
  and Ruler of a universe. He had only one objective, the further revelation of
  God to man, the establishment of the kingdom, the rule of the heavenly Father
  in the hearts of mankind.

  136:9.7 The idea of battle, contention, and slaughter was repugnant to Jesus;
  he would have none of it. He would appear on earth as the Prince of Peace to
  reveal a God of love. Before his baptism he had again refused the offer of the
  Zealots to lead them in rebellion against the Roman oppressors. And now he
  made his final decision regarding those Scriptures which his mother had taught
  him, such as: "The Lord has said to me, `You are my Son; this day have I
  begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance
  and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession. You shall break them
  with a rod of iron; you shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.'"

  136:9.8 Jesus of Nazareth reached the conclusion that such utterances did not
  refer to him. At last, and finally, the human mind of the Son of Man made a
  clean sweep of all these Messianic difficulties and contradictions -- Hebrew
  scriptures, parental training, chazan teaching, Jewish expectations, and human
  ambitious longings; once and for all he decided upon his course. He would
  return to Galilee and quietly begin the proclamation of the kingdom and trust
  his Father (the Personalized Adjuster) to work out the details of procedure
  day by day.



  136:9.9 By these decisions Jesus set a worthy example for every person on
  every world throughout a vast universe when he refused to apply material tests
  to prove spiritual problems, when he refused presumptuously to defy natural
  laws. And he set an inspiring example of universe loyalty and moral nobility
  when he refused to grasp temporal power as the prelude to spiritual glory.



  136:9.10 If the Son of Man had any doubts about his mission and its nature
  when he went up in the hills after his baptism, he had none when he came back
  to his fellows following the forty days of isolation and decisions.

  136:9.11 Jesus has formulated a program for the establishment of the Father's
  kingdom. He will not cater to the physical gratification of the people. He
  will not deal out bread to the multitudes as he has so recently seen it being
  done in Rome. He will not attract attention to himself by wonder-working, even
  though the Jews are expecting just that sort of a deliverer. Neither will he
  seek to win acceptance of a spiritual message by a show of political authority
  or temporal power.

  136:9.12 In rejecting these methods of enhancing the coming kingdom in the
  eyes of the expectant Jews, Jesus made sure that these same Jews would
  certainly and finally reject all of his claims to authority and divinity.
  Knowing all this, Jesus long sought to prevent his early followers alluding to
  him as the Messiah.

  136:9.13 Throughout his public ministry he was confronted with the necessity
  of dealing with three constantly recurring situations: the clamor to be fed,
  the insistence on miracles, and the final request that he allow his followers
  to make him king. But Jesus never departed from the decisions which he made
  during these days of his isolation in the Perean hills.





10. THE SIXTH DECISION

  136:10.1 On the last day of this memorable isolation, before starting down the
  mountain to join John and his disciples, the Son of Man made his final
  decision. And this decision he communicated to the Personalized Adjuster in
  these words, "And in all other matters, as in these now of decision-record, I
  pledge you I will be subject to the will of my Father." And when he had thus
  spoken, he journeyed down the mountain. And his face shone with the glory of
  spiritual victory and moral achievement.


PAPER 137


 TARRYING TIME IN GALILEE



  137:0.1 EARLY on Saturday morning, February 23, A.D. 26, Jesus came down from
  the hills to rejoin John's company encamped at Pella. All that day Jesus
  mingled with the multitude. He ministered to a lad who had injured himself in
  a fall and journeyed to the near-by village of Pella to deliver the boy safely
  into the hands of his parents.





1. CHOOSING THE FIRST FOUR APOSTLES



  137:1.1 During this Sabbath two of John's leading disciples spent much time
  with Jesus. Of all John's followers one named Andrew was the most profoundly
  impressed with Jesus; he accompanied him on the trip to Pella with the injured
  boy. On the way back to John's rendezvous he asked Jesus many questions, and
  just before reaching their destination, the two paused for a short talk,
  during which Andrew said: "I have observed you ever since you came to
  Capernaum, and I believe you are the new Teacher, and though I do not
  understand all your teaching, I have fully made up my mind to follow you; I
  would sit at your feet and learn the whole truth about the new kingdom." And
  Jesus, with hearty assurance, welcomed Andrew as the first of his apostles,
  that group of twelve who were to labor with him in the work of establishing
  the new kingdom of God in the hearts of men.



  137:1.2 Andrew was a silent observer of, and sincere believer in, John's work,
  and he had a very able and enthusiastic brother, named Simon, who was one of
  John's foremost disciples. It would not be amiss to say that Simon was one of
  John's chief supporters.

  137:1.3 Soon after Jesus and Andrew returned to the camp, Andrew sought out
  his brother, Simon, and taking him aside, informed him that he had settled in
  his own mind that Jesus was the great Teacher, and that he had pledged himself
  as a disciple. He went on to say that Jesus had accepted his proffer of
  service and suggested that he (Simon) likewise go to Jesus and offer himself
  for fellowship in the service of the new kingdom. Said Simon: "Ever since this
  man came to work in Zebedee's shop, I have believed he was sent by God, but
  what about John? Are we to forsake him? Is this the right thing to do?"
  Whereupon they agreed to go at once to consult John. John was saddened by the
  thought of losing two of his able advisers and most promising disciples, but
  he bravely answered their inquiries, saying: "This is but the beginning;
  presently will my work end, and we shall all become his disciples." Then
  Andrew beckoned to Jesus to draw aside while he announced that his brother
  desired to join himself to the service of the new kingdom. And in welcoming
  Simon as his second apostle, Jesus said: "Simon, your enthusiasm is
  commendable, but it is dangerous to the work of the kingdom. I admonish you to
  become more thoughtful in your speech. I would change your name to Peter."



  137:1.4 The parents of the injured lad who lived at Pella had besought Jesus
  to spend the night with them, to make their house his home, and he had
  promised. Before leaving Andrew and his brother, Jesus said, "Early on the
  morrow we go into Galilee."



  137:1.5 After Jesus had returned to Pella for the night, and while Andrew and
  Simon were yet discussing the nature of their service in the establishment of
  the forthcoming kingdom, James and John the sons of Zebedee arrived upon the
  scene, having just returned from their long and futile searching in the hills
  for Jesus. When they heard Simon Peter tell how he and his brother, Andrew,
  had become the first accepted counselors of the new kingdom, and that they
  were to leave with their new Master on the morrow for Galilee, both James and
  John were sad. They had known Jesus for some time, and they loved him. They
  had searched for him many days in the hills, and now they returned to learn
  that others had been preferred before them. They inquired where Jesus had gone
  and made haste to find him.

  137:1.6 Jesus was asleep when they reached his abode, but they awakened him,
  saying: "How is it that, while we who have so long lived with you are
  searching in the hills for you, you prefer others before us and choose Andrew
  and Simon as your first associates in the new kingdom?" Jesus answered them,
  "Be calm in your hearts and ask yourselves, `who directed that you should
  search for the Son of Man when he was about his Father's business?'" After
  they had recited the details of their long search in the hills, Jesus further
  instructed them: "You should learn to search for the secret of the new kingdom
  in your hearts and not in the hills. That which you sought was already present
  in your souls. You are indeed my brethren -- you needed not to be received by
  me -- already were you of the kingdom, and you should be of good cheer, making
  ready also to go with us tomorrow into Galilee." John then made bold to ask,
  "But, Master, will James and I be associates with you in the new kingdom, even
  as Andrew and Simon?" And Jesus, laying a hand on the shoulder of each of
  them, said: "My brethren, you were already with me in the spirit of the
  kingdom, even before these others made request to be received. You, my
  brethren, have no need to make request for entrance into the kingdom; you have
  been with me in the kingdom from the beginning. Before men, others may take
  precedence over you, but in my heart did I also number you in the councils of
  the kingdom, even before you thought to make this request of me. And even so
  might you have been first before men had you not been absent engaged in a
  well-intentioned but self-appointed task of seeking for one who was not lost.
  In the coming kingdom, be not mindful of those things which foster your
  anxiety but rather at all times concern yourselves only with doing the will of
  the Father who is in heaven."

  137:1.7 James and John received the rebuke in good grace; never more were they
  envious of Andrew and Simon. And they made ready, with their two associate
  apostles, to depart for Galilee the next morning. From this day on the term
  apostle was employed to distinguish the chosen family of Jesus' advisers from
  the vast multitude of believing disciples who subsequently followed him.



  137:1.8 Late that evening, James, John, Andrew, and Simon held converse with
  John the Baptist, and with tearful eye but steady voice the stalwart Judean
  prophet surrendered two of his leading disciples to become the apostles of the
  Galilean Prince of the coming kingdom.





2. CHOOSING PHILIP AND NATHANIEL



  137:2.1 Sunday morning, February 24, A.D. 26, Jesus took leave of John the
  Baptist by the river near Pella, never again to see him in the flesh.

  137:2.2 That day, as Jesus and his four disciple-apostles departed for
  Galilee, there was a great tumult in the camp of John's followers. The first
  great division was about to take place. The day before, John had made his
  positive pronouncement to Andrew and Ezra that Jesus was the Deliverer. Andrew
  decided to follow Jesus, but Ezra rejected the mild-mannered carpenter of
  Nazareth, proclaiming to his associates: "The Prophet Daniel declares that the
  Son of Man will come with the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory. This
  Galilean carpenter, this Capernaum boatbuilder, cannot be the Deliverer. Can
  such a gift of God come out of Nazareth? This Jesus is a relative of John, and
  through much kindness of heart has our teacher been deceived. Let us remain
  aloof from this false Messiah." When John rebuked Ezra for these utterances,
  he drew away with many disciples and hastened south. And this group continued
  to baptize in John's name and eventually founded a sect of those who believed
  in John but refused to accept Jesus. A remnant of this group persists in
  Mesopotamia even to this day.



  137:2.3 While this trouble was brewing among John's followers, Jesus and his
  four disciple-apostles were well on their way toward Galilee. Before they
  crossed the Jordan, to go by way of Nain to Nazareth, Jesus, looking ahead and
  up the road, saw one Philip of Bethsaida with a friend coming toward them.
  Jesus had known Philip aforetime, and he was also well known to all four of
  the new apostles. He was on his way with his friend Nathaniel to visit John at
  Pella to learn more about the reported coming of the kingdom of God, and he
  was delighted to greet Jesus. Philip had been an admirer of Jesus ever since
  he first came to Capernaum. But Nathaniel, who lived at Cana of Galilee, did
  not know Jesus. Philip went forward to greet his friends while Nathaniel
  rested under the shade of a tree by the roadside.

  137:2.4 Peter took Philip to one side and proceeded to explain that they,
  referring to himself, Andrew, James, and John, had all become associates of
  Jesus in the new kingdom and strongly urged Philip to volunteer for service.
  Philip was in a quandary. What should he do? Here, without a moment's warning
  -- on the roadside near the Jordan -- there had come up for immediate decision
  the most momentous question of a lifetime. By this time he was in earnest
  converse with Peter, Andrew, and John while Jesus was outlining to James the
  trip through Galilee and on to Capernaum. Finally, Andrew suggested to Philip,
  "Why not ask the Teacher?"

  137:2.5 It suddenly dawned on Philip that Jesus was a really great man,
  possibly the Messiah, and he decided to abide by Jesus' decision in this
  matter; and he went straight to him, asking, "Teacher, shall I go down to John
  or shall I join my friends who follow you?" And Jesus answered, "Follow me."
  Philip was thrilled with the assurance that he had found the Deliverer.



  137:2.6 Philip now motioned to the group to remain where they were while he
  hurried back to break the news of his decision to his friend Nathaniel, who
  still tarried behind under the mulberry tree, turning over in his mind the
  many things which he had heard concerning John the Baptist, the coming
  kingdom, and the expected Messiah. Philip broke in upon these meditations,
  exclaiming, "I have found the Deliverer, him of whom Moses and the prophets
  wrote and whom John has proclaimed." Nathaniel, looking up, inquired, "Whence
  comes this teacher?" And Philip replied, "He is Jesus of Nazareth, the son of
  Joseph, the carpenter, more recently residing at Capernaum." And then,
  somewhat shocked, Nathaniel asked, "Can any such good thing come out of
  Nazareth?" But Philip, taking him by the arm, said, "Come and see."

  137:2.7 Philip led Nathaniel to Jesus, who, looking benignly into the face of
  the sincere doubter, said: "Behold a genuine Israelite, in whom there is no
  deceit. Follow me." And Nathaniel, turning to Philip, said: "You are right. He
  is indeed a master of men. I will also follow, if I am worthy." And Jesus
  nodded to Nathaniel, again saying, "Follow me."



  137:2.8 Jesus had now assembled one half of his future corps of intimate
  associates, five who had for some time known him and one stranger, Nathaniel.
  Without further delay they crossed the Jordan and, going by the village of
  Nain, reached Nazareth late that evening.

  137:2.9 They all remained overnight with Joseph in Jesus' boyhood home. The
  associates of Jesus little understood why their new-found teacher was so
  concerned with completely destroying every vestige of his writing which
  remained about the home in the form of the ten commandments and other mottoes
  and sayings. But this proceeding, together with the fact that they never saw
  him subsequently write -- except upon the dust or in the sand -- made a deep
  impression upon their minds.





3. THE VISIT TO CAPERNAUM



  137:3.1 The next day Jesus sent his apostles on to Cana, since all of them
  were invited to the wedding of a prominent young woman of that town, while he
  prepared to pay a hurried visit to his mother at Capernaum, stopping at
  Magdala to see his brother Jude.

  137:3.2 Before leaving Nazareth, the new associates of Jesus told Joseph and
  other members of Jesus' family about the wonderful events of the then recent
  past and gave free expression to their belief that Jesus was the long-expected
  deliverer. And these members of Jesus' family talked all this over, and Joseph
  said: "Maybe, after all, Mother was right -- maybe our strange brother is the
  coming king."

  137:3.3 Jude was present at Jesus' baptism and, with his brother James, had
  become a firm believer in Jesus' mission on earth. Although both James and
  Jude were much perplexed as to the nature of their brother's mission, their
  mother had resurrected all her early hopes of Jesus as the Messiah, the son of
  David, and she encouraged her sons to have faith in their brother as the
  deliverer of Israel.



  137:3.4 Jesus arrived in Capernaum Monday night, but he did not go to his own
  home, where lived James and his mother; he went directly to the home of
  Zebedee. All his friends at Capernaum saw a great and pleasant change in him.
  Once more he seemed to be comparatively cheerful and more like himself as he
  was during the earlier years at Nazareth. For years previous to his baptism
  and the isolation periods just before and just after, he had grown
  increasingly serious and self-contained. Now he seemed quite like his old self
  to all of them. There was about him something of majestic import and exalted
  aspect, but he was once again lighthearted and joyful.

  137:3.5 Mary was thrilled with expectation. She anticipated that the promise
  of Gabriel was nearing fulfillment. She expected all Palestine soon to be
  startled and stunned by the miraculous revelation of her son as the
  supernatural king of the Jews. But to all of the many questions which his
  mother, James, Jude, and Zebedee asked, Jesus only smilingly replied: "It is
  better that I tarry here for a while; I must do the will of my Father who is
  in heaven."



  137:3.6 On the next day, Tuesday, they all journeyed over to Cana for the
  wedding of Naomi, which was to take place on the following day. And in spite
  of Jesus' repeated warnings that they tell no man about him "until the
  Father's hour shall come," they insisted on quietly spreading the news abroad
  that they had found the Deliverer. They each confidently expected that Jesus
  would inaugurate his assumption of Messianic authority at the forthcoming
  wedding at Cana, and that he would do so with great power and sublime
  grandeur. They remembered what had been told them about the phenomena
  attendant upon his baptism, and they believed that his future course on earth
  would be marked by increasing manifestations of supernatural wonders and
  miraculous demonstrations. Accordingly, the entire countryside was preparing
  to gather together at Cana for the wedding feast of Naomi and Johab the son of
  Nathan.

  137:3.7 Mary had not been so joyous in years. She journeyed to Cana in the
  spirit of the queen mother on the way to witness the coronation of her son.
  Not since he was thirteen years old had Jesus' family and friends seen him so
  carefree and happy, so thoughtful and understanding of the wishes and desires
  of his associates, so touchingly sympathetic. And so they all whispered among
  themselves, in small groups, wondering what was going to happen. What would
  this strange person do next? How would he usher in the glory of the coming
  kingdom? And they were all thrilled with the thought that they were to be
  present to see the revelation of the might and power of Israel's God.





4. THE WEDDING AT CANA



  137:4.1 By noon on Wednesday almost a thousand guests had arrived in Cana,
  more than four times the number bidden to the wedding feast. It was a Jewish
  custom to celebrate weddings on Wednesday, and the invitations had been sent
  abroad for the wedding one month previously. In the forenoon and early
  afternoon it appeared more like a public reception for Jesus than a wedding.
  Everybody wanted to greet this near-famous Galilean, and he was most cordial
  to all, young and old, Jew and gentile. And everybody rejoiced when Jesus
  consented to lead the preliminary wedding procession.

  137:4.2 Jesus was now thoroughly self-conscious regarding his human existence,
  his divine pre-existence, and the status of his combined, or fused, human and
  divine natures. With perfect poise he could at one moment enact the human role
  or immediately assume the personality prerogatives of the divine nature.

  137:4.3 As the day wore on, Jesus became increasingly conscious that the
  people were expecting him to perform some wonder; more especially he
  recognized that his family and his six disciple-apostles were looking for him
  appropriately to announce his forthcoming kingdom by some startling and
  supernatural manifestation.

  137:4.4 Early in the afternoon Mary summoned James, and together they made
  bold to approach Jesus to inquire if he would admit them to his confidence to
  the extent of informing them at what hour and at what point in connection with
  the wedding ceremonies he had planned to manifest himself as the "supernatural
  one." No sooner had they spoken of these matters to Jesus than they saw they
  had aroused his characteristic indignation. He said only: "If you love me,
  then be willing to tarry with me while I wait upon the will of my Father who
  is in heaven." But the eloquence of his rebuke lay in the expression of his
  face.

  137:4.5 This move of his mother was a great disappointment to the human Jesus,
  and he was much sobered by his reaction to her suggestive proposal that he
  permit himself to indulge in some outward demonstration of his divinity. That
  was one of the very things he had decided not to do when so recently isolated
  in the hills. For several hours Mary was much depressed. She said to James: "I
  cannot understand him; what can it all mean? Is there no end to his strange
  conduct?" James and Jude tried to comfort their mother, while Jesus withdrew
  for an hour's solitude. But he returned to the gathering and was once more
  lighthearted and joyous.



  137:4.6 The wedding proceeded with a hush of expectancy, but the entire
  ceremony was finished and not a move, not a word, from the honored guest. Then
  it was whispered about that the carpenter and boatbuilder, announced by John
  as "the Deliverer," would show his hand during the evening festivities,
  perhaps at the wedding supper. But all expectance of such a demonstration was
  effectually removed from the minds of his six disciple-apostles when he called
  them together just before the wedding supper and, in great earnestness, said:
  "Think not that I have come to this place to work some wonder for the
  gratification of the curious or for the conviction of those who doubt. Rather
  are we here to wait upon the will of our Father who is in heaven." But when
  Mary and the others saw him in consultation with his associates, they were
  fully persuaded in their own minds that something extraordinary was about to
  happen. And they all sat down to enjoy the wedding supper and the evening of
  festive good fellowship.



  137:4.7 The father of the bridegroom had provided plenty of wine for all the
  guests bidden to the marriage feast, but how was he to know that the marriage
  of his son was to become an event so closely associated with the expected
  manifestation of Jesus as the Messianic deliverer? He was delighted to have
  the honor of numbering the celebrated Galilean among his guests, but before
  the wedding supper was over, the servants brought him the disconcerting news
  that the wine was running short. By the time the formal supper had ended and
  the guests were strolling about in the garden, the mother of the bridegroom
  confided to Mary that the supply of wine was exhausted. And Mary confidently
  said: "Have no worry -- I will speak to my son. He will help us." And thus did
  she presume to speak, notwithstanding the rebuke of but a few hours before.

  137:4.8 Throughout a period of many years, Mary had always turned to Jesus for
  help in every crisis of their home life at Nazareth so that it was only
  natural for her to think of him at this time. But this ambitious mother had
  still other motives for appealing to her eldest son on this occasion. As Jesus
  was standing alone in a corner of the garden, his mother approached him,
  saying, "My son, they have no wine." And Jesus answered, "My good woman, what
  have I to do with that?" Said Mary, "But I believe your hour has come; cannot
  you help us?" Jesus replied: "Again I declare that I have not come to do
  things in this wise. Why do you trouble me again with these matters?" And
  then, breaking down in tears, Mary entreated him, "But, my son, I promised
  them that you would help us; won't you please do something for me?" And then
  spoke Jesus: "Woman, what have you to do with making such promises? See that
  you do it not again. We must in all things wait upon the will of the Father in
  heaven."

  137:4.9 Mary the mother of Jesus was crushed; she was stunned! As she stood
  there before him motionless, with the tears streaming down her face, the human
  heart of Jesus was overcome with compassion for the woman who had borne him in
  the flesh; and bending forward, he laid his hand tenderly upon her head,
  saying: "Now, now, Mother Mary, grieve not over my apparently hard sayings,
  for have I not many times told you that I have come only to do the will of my
  heavenly Father? Most gladly would I do what you ask of me if it were a part
  of the Father's will --" and Jesus stopped short, he hesitated. Mary seemed to
  sense that something was happening. Leaping up, she threw her arms around
  Jesus' neck, kissed him, and rushed off to the servants' quarters, saying,
  "Whatever my son says, that do." But Jesus said nothing. He now realized that
  he had already said -- or rather desirefully thought -- too much.

  137:4.10 Mary was dancing with glee. She did not know how the wine would be
  produced, but she confidently believed that she had finally persuaded her
  first-born son to assert his authority, to dare to step forth and claim his
  position and exhibit his Messianic power. And, because of the presence and
  association of certain universe powers and personalities, of which all those
  present were wholly ignorant, she was not to be disappointed. The wine Mary
  desired and which Jesus, the God-man, humanly and sympathetically wished for,
  was forthcoming.

  137:4.11 Near at hand stood six waterpots of stone, filled with water, holding
  about twenty gallons apiece. This water was intended for subsequent use in the
  final purification ceremonies of the wedding celebration. The commotion of the
  servants about these huge stone vessels, under the busy direction of his
  mother, attracted Jesus' attention, and going over, he observed that they were
  drawing wine out of them by the pitcherful.

  137:4.12 It was gradually dawning upon Jesus what had happened. Of all persons
  present at the marriage feast of Cana, Jesus was the most surprised. Others
  had expected him to work a wonder, but that was just what he had purposed not
  to do. And then the Son of Man recalled the admonition of his Personalized
  Thought Adjuster in the hills. He recounted how the Adjuster had warned him
  about the inability of any power or personality to deprive him of the creator
  prerogative of independence of time. On this occasion power transformers,
  midwayers, and all other required personalities were assembled near the water
  and other necessary elements, and in the face of the expressed wish of the
  Universe Creator Sovereign, there was no escaping the instantaneous appearance
  of wine. And this occurrence was made doubly certain since the Personalized
  Adjuster had signified that the execution of the Son's desire was in no way a
  contravention of the Father's will.

  137:4.13 But this was in no sense a miracle. No law of nature was modified,
  abrogated, or even transcended. Nothing happened but the abrogation of time in
  association with the celestial assembly of the chemical elements requisite for
  the elaboration of the wine. At Cana on this occasion the agents of the
  Creator made wine just as they do by the ordinary natural processes except
  that they did it independently of time and with the intervention of superhuman
  agencies in the matter of the space assembly of the necessary chemical
  ingredients.

  137:4.14 Furthermore it was evident that the enactment of this so-called
  miracle was not contrary to the will of the Paradise Father, else it would not
  have transpired, since Jesus had already subjected himself in all things to
  the Father's will.



  137:4.15 When the servants drew this new wine and carried it to the best man,
  the "ruler of the feast," and when he had tasted it, he called to the
  bridegroom, saying: "It is the custom to set out first the good wine and, when
  the guests have well drunk, to bring forth the inferior fruit of the vine; but
  you have kept the best of the wine until the last of the feast."

  137:4.16 Mary and the disciples of Jesus were greatly rejoiced at the supposed
  miracle which they thought Jesus had intentionally performed, but Jesus
  withdrew to a sheltered nook of the garden and engaged in serious thought for
  a few brief moments. He finally decided that the episode was beyond his
  personal control under the circumstances and, not being adverse to his
  Father's will, was inevitable. When he returned to the people, they regarded
  him with awe; they all believed in him as the Messiah. But Jesus was sorely
  perplexed, knowing that they believed in him only because of the unusual
  occurrence which they had just inadvertently beheld. Again Jesus retired for a
  season to the housetop that he might think it all over.

  137:4.17 Jesus now fully comprehended that he must constantly be on guard lest
  his indulgence of sympathy and pity become responsible for repeated episodes
  of this sort. Nevertheless, many similar events occurred before the Son of Man
  took final leave of his mortal life in the flesh.





5. BACK IN CAPERNAUM



  137:5.1 Though many of the guests remained for the full week of wedding
  festivities, Jesus, with his newly chosen disciple-apostles -- James, John,
  Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathaniel -- departed very early the next morning
  for Capernaum, going away without taking leave of anyone. Jesus' family and
  all his friends in Cana were much distressed because he so suddenly left them,
  and Jude, Jesus' youngest brother, set out in search of him. Jesus and his
  apostles went directly to the home of Zebedee at Bethsaida. On this journey
  Jesus talked over many things of importance to the coming kingdom with his
  newly chosen associates and especially warned them to make no mention of the
  turning of the water into wine. He also advised them to avoid the cities of
  Sepphoris and Tiberias in their future work.

  137:5.2 After supper that evening, in this home of Zebedee and Salome, there
  was held one of the most important conferences of all Jesus' earthly career.
  Only the six apostles were present at this meeting; Jude arrived as they were
  about to separate. These six chosen men had journeyed from Cana to Bethsaida
  with Jesus, walking, as it were, on air. They were alive with expectancy and
  thrilled with the thought of having been selected as close associates of the
  Son of Man. But when Jesus set out to make clear to them who he was and what
  was to be his mission on earth and how it might possibly end, they were
  stunned. They could not grasp what he was telling them. They were speechless;
  even Peter was crushed beyond expression. Only the deep-thinking Andrew dared
  to make reply to Jesus' words of counsel. When Jesus perceived that they did
  not comprehend his message, when he saw that their ideas of the Jewish Messiah
  were so completely crystallized, he sent them to their rest while he walked
  and talked with his brother Jude. And before Jude took leave of Jesus, he said
  with much feeling: "My father-brother, I never have understood you. I do not
  know of a certainty whether you are what my mother has taught us, and I do not
  fully comprehend the coming kingdom, but I do know you are a mighty man of
  God. I heard the voice at the Jordan, and I am a believer in you, no matter
  who you are." And when he had spoken, he departed, going to his own home at
  Magdala.

  137:5.3 That night Jesus did not sleep. Donning his evening wraps, he sat out
  on the lake shore thinking, thinking until the dawn of the next day. In the
  long hours of that night of meditation Jesus came clearly to comprehend that
  he never would be able to make his followers see him in any other light than
  as the long-expected Messiah. At last he recognized that there was no way to
  launch his message of the kingdom except as the fulfillment of John's
  prediction and as the one for whom the Jews were looking. After all, though he
  was not the Davidic type of Messiah, he was truly the fulfillment of the
  prophetic utterances of the more spiritually minded of the olden seers. Never
  again did he wholly deny that he was the Messiah. He decided to leave the
  final untangling of this complicated situation to the outworking of the
  Father's will.

  137:5.4 The next morning Jesus joined his friends at breakfast, but they were
  a cheerless group. He visited with them and at the end of the meal gathered
  them about him, saying: "It is my Father's will that we tarry hereabouts for a
  season. You have heard John say that he came to prepare the way for the
  kingdom; therefore it behooves us to await the completion of John's preaching.
  When the forerunner of the Son of Man shall have finished his work, we will
  begin the proclamation of the good tidings of the kingdom." He directed his
  apostles to return to their nets while he made ready to go with Zebedee to the
  boatshop, promising to see them the next day at the synagogue, where he was to
  speak, and appointing a conference with them that Sabbath afternoon.





6. THE EVENTS OF A SABBATH DAY



  137:6.1 Jesus' first public appearance following his baptism was in the
  Capernaum synagogue on Sabbath, March 2, A.D. The synagogue was crowded to
  overflowing. The story of the baptism in the Jordan was now augmented by the
  fresh news from Cana about the water and the wine. Jesus gave seats of honor
  to his six apostles, and seated with them were his brothers in the flesh James
  and Jude. His mother, having returned to Capernaum with James the evening
  before, was also present, being seated in the women's section of the
  synagogue. The entire audience was on edge; they expected to behold some
  extraordinary manifestation of supernatural power which would be a fitting
  testimony to the nature and authority of him who was that day to speak to
  them. But they were destined to disappointment.

  137:6.2 When Jesus stood up, the ruler of the synagogue handed him the
  Scripture roll, and he read from the Prophet Isaiah: "Thus says the Lord: `The
  heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house that
  you built for me? And where is the place of my dwelling? All these things have
  my hands made,' says the Lord. `But to this man will I look, even to him who
  is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word.' Hear the word
  of the Lord, you who tremble and fear: `Your brethren hated you and cast you
  out for my name's sake.' But let the Lord be glorified. He shall appear to you
  in joy, and all others shall be ashamed. A voice from the city, a voice from
  the temple, a voice from the Lord says: `Before she travailed, she brought
  forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.' Who has heard
  such a thing? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or can a
  nation be born at once? But thus says the Lord: `Behold I will extend peace
  like a river, and the glory of even the gentiles shall be like a flowing
  stream. As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you. And you shall
  be comforted even in Jerusalem. And when you see these things, your heart
  shall rejoice.'"

  137:6.3 When he had finished this reading, Jesus handed the roll back to its
  keeper. Before sitting down, he simply said: "Be patient and you shall see the
  glory of God; even so shall it be with all those who tarry with me and thus
  learn to do the will of my Father who is in heaven." And the people went to
  their homes, wondering what was the meaning of all this.



  137:6.4 That afternoon Jesus and his apostles, with James and Jude, entered a
  boat and pulled down the shore a little way, where they anchored while he
  talked to them about the coming kingdom. And they understood more than they
  had on Thursday night.

  137:6.5 Jesus instructed them to take up their regular duties until "the hour
  of the kingdom comes." And to encourage them, he set an example by going back
  regularly to work in the boatshop. In explaining that they should spend three
  hours every evening in study and preparation for their future work, Jesus
  further said: "We will all remain hereabout until the Father bids me call you.
  Each of you must now return to his accustomed work just as if nothing had
  happened. Tell no man about me and remember that my kingdom is not to come
  with noise and glamor, but rather must it come through the great change which
  my Father will have wrought in your hearts and in the hearts of those who
  shall be called to join you in the councils of the kingdom. You are now my
  friends; I trust you and I love you; you are soon to become my personal
  associates. Be patient, be gentle. Be ever obedient to the Father's will. Make
  yourselves ready for the call of the kingdom. While you will experience great
  joy in the service of my Father, you should also be prepared for trouble, for
  I warn you that it will be only through much tribulation that many will enter
  the kingdom. But those who have found the kingdom, their joy will be full, and
  they shall be called the blest of all the earth. But do not entertain false
  hope; the world will stumble at my words. Even you, my friends, do not fully
  perceive what I am unfolding to your confused minds. Make no mistake; we go
  forth to labor for a generation of sign seekers. They will demand wonder-
  working as the proof that I am sent by my Father, and they will be slow to
  recognize in the revelation of my Father's love the credentials of my
  mission."

  137:6.6 That evening, when they had returned to the land, before they went
  their way, Jesus, standing by the water's edge, prayed: "My Father, I thank
  you for these little ones who, in spite of their doubts, even now believe. And
  for their sakes have I set myself apart to do your will. And now may they
  learn to be one, even as we are one."





7. FOUR MONTHS OF TRAINING



  137:7.1 For four long months -- March, April, May, and June -- this tarrying
  time continued; Jesus held over one hundred long and earnest, though cheerful
  and joyous, sessions with these six associates and his own brother James.
  Owing to sickness in his family, Jude seldom was able to attend these classes.
  James, Jesus' brother, did not lose faith in him, but during these months of
  delay and inaction Mary nearly despaired of her son. Her faith, raised to such
  heights at Cana, now sank to new low levels. She could only fall back on her
  so oft-repeated exclamation: "I cannot understand him. I cannot figure out
  what it all means." But James's wife did much to bolster Mary's courage.

  137:7.2 Throughout these four months these seven believers, one his own
  brother in the flesh, were getting acquainted with Jesus; they were getting
  used to the idea of living with this God-man. Though they called him Rabbi,
  they were learning not to be afraid of him. Jesus possessed that matchless
  grace of personality which enabled him so to live among them that they were
  not dismayed by his divinity. They found it really easy to be "friends with
  God," God incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh. This time of waiting
  severely tested the entire group of believers. Nothing, absolutely nothing,
  miraculous happened. Day by day they went about their ordinary work, while
  night after night they sat at Jesus' feet. And they were held together by his
  matchless personality and by the gracious words which he spoke to them evening
  upon evening.

  137:7.3 This period of waiting and teaching was especially hard on Simon
  Peter. He repeatedly sought to persuade Jesus to launch forth with the
  preaching of the kingdom in Galilee while John continued to preach in Judea.
  But Jesus' reply to Peter ever was: "Be patient, Simon. Make progress. We
  shall be none too ready when the Father calls." And Andrew would calm Peter
  now and then with his more seasoned and philosophic counsel. Andrew was
  tremendously impressed with the human naturalness of Jesus. He never grew
  weary of contemplating how one who could live so near God could be so friendly
  and considerate of men.

  137:7.4 Throughout this entire period Jesus spoke in the synagogue but twice.
  By the end of these many weeks of waiting the reports about his baptism and
  the wine of Cana had begun to quiet down. And Jesus saw to it that no more
  apparent miracles happened during this time. But even though they lived so
  quietly at Bethsaida, reports of the strange doings of Jesus had been carried
  to Herod Antipas, who in turn sent spies to ascertain what he was about. But
  Herod was more concerned about the preaching of John. He decided not to molest
  Jesus, whose work continued along so quietly at Capernaum.

  137:7.5 In this time of waiting Jesus endeavored to teach his associates what
  their attitude should be toward the various religious groups and the political
  parties of Palestine. Jesus' words always were, "We are seeking to win all of
  them, but we are not of any of them."



  137:7.6 The scribes and rabbis, taken together, were called Pharisees. They
  referred to themselves as the "associates." In many ways they were the
  progressive group among the Jews, having adopted many teachings not clearly
  found in the Hebrew scriptures, such as belief in the resurrection of the
  dead, a doctrine only mentioned by a later prophet, Daniel.



  137:7.7 The Sadducees consisted of the priesthood and certain wealthy Jews.
  They were not such sticklers for the details of law enforcement. The Pharisees
  and Sadducees were really religious parties, rather than sects.



  137:7.8 The Essenes were a true religious sect, originating during the
  Maccabean revolt, whose requirements were in some respects more exacting than
  those of the Pharisees. They had adopted many Persian beliefs and practices,
  lived as a brotherhood in monasteries, refrained from marriage, and had all
  things in common. They specialized in teachings about angels.



  137:7.9 The Zealots were a group of intense Jewish patriots. They advocated
  that any and all methods were justified in the struggle to escape the bondage
  of the Roman yoke.



  137:7.10 The Herodians were a purely political party that advocated
  emancipation from the direct Roman rule by a restoration of the Herodian
  dynasty.



  137:7.11 In the very midst of Palestine there lived the Samaritans, with whom
  "the Jews had no dealings," notwithstanding that they held many views similar
  to the Jewish teachings.



  137:7.12 All of these parties and sects, including the smaller Nazarite
  brotherhood, believed in the sometime coming of the Messiah. They all looked
  for a national deliverer. But Jesus was very positive in making it clear that
  he and his disciples would not become allied to any of these schools of
  thought or practice. The Son of Man was to be neither a Nazarite nor an
  Essene.

  137:7.13 While Jesus later directed that the apostles should go forth, as John
  had, preaching the gospel and instructing believers, he laid emphasis on the
  proclamation of the "good tidings of the kingdom of heaven." He unfailingly
  impressed upon his associates that they must "show forth love, compassion, and
  sympathy." He early taught his followers that the kingdom of heaven was a
  spiritual experience having to do with the enthronement of God in the hearts
  of men.

  137:7.14 As they thus tarried before embarking on their active public
  preaching, Jesus and the seven spent two evenings each week at the synagogue
  in the study of the Hebrew scriptures. In later years after seasons of intense
  public work, the apostles looked back upon these four months as the most
  precious and profitable of all their association with the Master. Jesus taught
  these men all they could assimilate. He did not make the mistake of
  overteaching them. He did not precipitate confusion by the presentation of
  truth too far beyond their capacity to comprehend.





8. SERMON ON THE KINGDOM



  137:8.1 On Sabbath, June 22, shortly before they went out on their first
  preaching tour and about ten days after John's imprisonment, Jesus occupied
  the synagogue pulpit for the second time since bringing his apostles to
  Capernaum.

  137:8.2 A few days before the preaching of this sermon on "The Kingdom," as
  Jesus was at work in the boatshop, Peter brought him the news of John's
  arrest. Jesus laid down his tools once more, removed his apron, and said to
  Peter: "The Father's hour has come. Let us make ready to proclaim the gospel
  of the kingdom."

  137:8.3 Jesus did his last work at the carpenter bench on this Tuesday, June
  18, A.D. Peter rushed out of the shop and by midafternoon had rounded up all
  of his associates, and leaving them in a grove by the shore, he went in quest
  of Jesus. But he could not find him, for the Master had gone to a different
  grove to pray. And they did not see him until late that evening when he
  returned to Zebedee's house and asked for food. The next day he sent his
  brother James to ask for the privilege of speaking in the synagogue the coming
  Sabbath day. And the ruler of the synagogue was much pleased that Jesus was
  again willing to conduct the service.

  137:8.4 Before Jesus preached this memorable sermon on the kingdom of God, the
  first pretentious effort of his public career, he read from the Scriptures
  these passages: "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy people.
  Yahweh is our judge, Yahweh is our lawgiver, Yahweh is our king; he will save
  us. Yahweh is my king and my God. He is a great king over all the earth.
  Loving-kindness is upon Israel in this kingdom. Blessed be the glory of the
  Lord for he is our King."

  137:8.5 When he had finished reading, Jesus said:



  137:8.6 "I have come to proclaim the establishment of the Father's kingdom.
  And this kingdom shall include the worshiping souls of Jew and gentile, rich
  and poor, free and bond, for my Father is no respecter of persons; his love
  and his mercy are over all.

  137:8.7 "The Father in heaven sends his spirit to indwell the minds of men,
  and when I shall have finished my work on earth, likewise shall the Spirit of
  Truth be poured out upon all flesh. And the spirit of my Father and the Spirit
  of Truth shall establish you in the coming kingdom of spiritual understanding
  and divine righteousness. My kingdom is not of this world. The Son of Man will
  not lead forth armies in battle for the establishment of a throne of power or
  a kingdom of worldly glory. When my kingdom shall have come, you shall know
  the Son of Man as the Prince of Peace, the revelation of the everlasting
  Father. The children of this world fight for the establishment and enlargement
  of the kingdoms of this world, but my disciples shall enter the kingdom of
  heaven by their moral decisions and by their spirit victories; and when they
  once enter therein, they shall find joy, righteousness, and eternal life.

  137:8.8 "Those who first seek to enter the kingdom, thus beginning to strive
  for a nobility of character like that of my Father, shall presently possess
  all else that is needful. But I say to you in all sincerity: Unless you seek
  entrance into the kingdom with the faith and trusting dependence of a little
  child, you shall in no wise gain admission.

  137:8.9 "Be not deceived by those who come saying here is the kingdom or there
  is the kingdom, for my Father's kingdom concerns not things visible and
  material. And this kingdom is even now among you, for where the spirit of God
  teaches and leads the soul of man, there in reality is the kingdom of heaven.
  And this kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

  137:8.10 "John did indeed baptize you in token of repentance and for the
  remission of your sins, but when you enter the heavenly kingdom, you will be
  baptized with the Holy Spirit.

  137:8.11 "In my Father's kingdom there shall be neither Jew nor gentile, only
  those who seek perfection through service, for I declare that he who would be
  great in my Father's kingdom must first become server of all. If you are
  willing to serve your fellows, you shall sit down with me in my kingdom, even
  as, by serving in the similitude of the creature, I shall presently sit down
  with my Father in his kingdom.

  137:8.12 "This new kingdom is like a seed growing in the good soil of a field.
  It does not attain full fruit quickly. There is an interval of time between
  the establishment of the kingdom in the soul of man and that hour when the
  kingdom ripens into the full fruit of everlasting righteousness and eternal
  salvation.

  137:8.13 "And this kingdom which I declare to you is not a reign of power and
  plenty. The kingdom of heaven is not a matter of meat and drink but rather a
  life of progressive righteousness and increasing joy in the perfecting service
  of my Father who is in heaven. For has not the Father said of his children of
  the world, `It is my will that they should eventually be perfect, even as I am
  perfect.'

  137:8.14 "I have come to preach the glad tidings of the kingdom. I have not
  come to add to the heavy burdens of those who would enter this kingdom. I
  proclaim the new and better way, and those who are able to enter the coming
  kingdom shall enjoy the divine rest. And whatever it shall cost you in the
  things of the world, no matter what price you may pay to enter the kingdom of
  heaven, you shall receive manyfold more of joy and spiritual progress in this
  world, and in the age to come eternal life.

  137:8.15 "Entrance into the Father's kingdom waits not upon marching armies,
  upon overturned kingdoms of this world, nor upon the breaking of captive
  yokes. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, and all who enter therein shall find
  abundant liberty and joyous salvation.

  137:8.16 "This kingdom is an everlasting dominion. Those who enter the kingdom
  shall ascend to my Father; they will certainly attain the right hand of his
  glory in Paradise. And all who enter the kingdom of heaven shall become the
  sons of God, and in the age to come so shall they ascend to the Father. And I
  have not come to call the would-be righteous but sinners and all who hunger
  and thirst for the righteousness of divine perfection.

  137:8.17 "John came preaching repentance to prepare you for the kingdom; now
  have I come proclaiming faith, the gift of God, as the price of entrance into
  the kingdom of heaven. If you would but believe that my Father loves you with
  an infinite love, then you are in the kingdom of God."



  137:8.18 When he had thus spoken, he sat down. All who heard him were
  astonished at his words. His disciples marveled. But the people were not
  prepared to receive the good news from the lips of this God-man. About one
  third who heard him believed the message even though they could not fully
  comprehend it; about one third prepared in their hearts to reject such a
  purely spiritual concept of the expected kingdom, while the remaining one
  third could not grasp his teaching, many truly believing that he "was beside
  himself."


PAPER 138


 TRAINING THE KINGDOM'S MESSENGERS

  138:0.1 AFTER preaching the sermon on "The Kingdom," Jesus called the six
  apostles together that afternoon and began to disclose his plans for visiting
  the cities around and about the Sea of Galilee. His brothers James and Jude
  were very much hurt because they were not called to this conference. Up to
  this time they had regarded themselves as belonging to Jesus' inner circle of
  associates. But Jesus planned to have no close relatives as members of this
  corps of apostolic directors of the kingdom. This failure to include James and
  Jude among the chosen few, together with his apparent aloofness from his
  mother ever since the experience at Cana, was the starting point of an ever-
  widening gulf between Jesus and his family. This situation continued
  throughout his public ministry -- they very nearly rejected him -- and these
  differences were not fully removed until after his death and resurrection. His
  mother constantly wavered between attitudes of fluctuating faith and hope, and
  increasing emotions of disappointment, humiliation, and despair. Only Ruth,
  the youngest, remained unswervingly loyal to her father-brother.

  138:0.2 Until after the resurrection, Jesus' entire family had very little to
  do with his ministry. If a prophet is not without honor save in his own
  country, he is not without understanding appreciation save in his own family.





1. FINAL INSTRUCTIONS

  138:1.1 The next day, Sunday, June 23, A.D. 26, Jesus imparted his final
  instructions to the six. He directed them to go forth, two and two, to teach
  the glad tidings of the kingdom. He forbade them to baptize and advised
  against public preaching. He went on to explain that later he would permit
  them to preach in public, but that for a season, and for many reasons, he
  desired them to acquire practical experience in dealing personally with their
  fellow men. Jesus purposed to make their first tour entirely one of personal
  work. Although this announcement was something of a disappointment to the
  apostles, still they saw, at least in part, Jesus' reason for thus beginning
  the proclamation of the kingdom, and they started out in good heart and with
  confident enthusiasm. He sent them forth by twos, James and John going to
  Kheresa, Andrew and Peter to Capernaum, while Philip and Nathaniel went to
  Tarichea.

  138:1.2 Before they began this first two weeks of service, Jesus announced to
  them that he desired to ordain twelve apostles to continue the work of the
  kingdom after his departure and authorized each of them to choose one man from
  among his early converts for membership in the projected corps of apostles.
  John spoke up, asking: "But, Master, will these six men come into our midst
  and share all things equally with us who have been with you since the Jordan
  and have heard all your teaching in preparation for this, our first labor for
  the kingdom?" And Jesus replied: "Yes, John, the men you choose shall become
  one with us, and you will teach them all that pertains to the kingdom, even as
  I have taught you." After thus speaking, Jesus left them.

  138:1.3 The six did not separate to go to their work until they had exchanged
  many words in discussion of Jesus' instruction that each of them should choose
  a new apostle. Andrew's counsel finally prevailed, and they went forth to
  their labors. In substance Andrew said: "The Master is right; we are too few
  to encompass this work. There is need for more teachers, and the Master has
  manifested great confidence in us inasmuch as he has intrusted us with the
  choosing of these six new apostles." This morning, as they separated to go to
  their work, there was a bit of concealed depression in each heart. They knew
  they were going to miss Jesus, and besides their fear and timidity, this was
  not the way they had pictured the kingdom of heaven being inaugurated.

  138:1.4 It had been arranged that the six were to labor for two weeks, after
  which they were to return to the home of Zebedee for a conference. Meantime
  Jesus went over to Nazareth to visit with Joseph and Simon and other members
  of his family living in that vicinity. Jesus did everything humanly possible,
  consistent with his dedication to the doing of his Father's will, to retain
  the confidence and affection of his family. In this matter he did his full
  duty and more.

  138:1.5 While the apostles were out on this mission, Jesus thought much about
  John, now in prison. It was a great temptation to use his potential powers to
  release him, but once more he resigned himself to "wait upon the Father's
  will."





2. CHOOSING THE SIX

  138:2.1 This first missionary tour of the six was eminently successful. They
  all discovered the great value of direct and personal contact with men. They
  returned to Jesus more fully realizing that, after all, religion is purely and
  wholly a matter of personal experience. They began to sense how hungry were
  the common people to hear words of religious comfort and spiritual good cheer.
  When they assembled about Jesus, they all wanted to talk at once, but Andrew
  assumed charge, and as he called upon them one by one, they made their formal
  reports to the Master and presented their nominations for the six new
  apostles.

  138:2.2 Jesus, after each man had presented his selection for the new
  apostleships, asked all the others to vote upon the nomination; thus all six
  of the new apostles were formally accepted by all of the older six. Then Jesus
  announced that they would all visit these candidates and give them the call to
  service.

  138:2.3 The newly selected apostles were:

  138:2.4 1. Matthew Levi, the customs collector of Capernaum, who had his
  office just to the east of the city, near the borders of Batanea. He was
  selected by Andrew.

  138:2.5 2. Thomas Didymus, a fisherman of Tarichea and onetime carpenter and
  stone mason of Gadara. He was selected by Philip.

  138:2.6 3. James Alpheus, a fisherman and farmer of Kheresa, was selected by
  James Zebedee.

  138:2.7 4. Judas Alpheus, the twin brother of James Alpheus, also a fisherman,
  was selected by John Zebedee.

  138:2.8 5. Simon Zelotes was a high officer in the patriotic organization of
  the Zealots, a position which he gave up to join Jesus' apostles. Before
  joining the Zealots, Simon had been a merchant. He was selected by Peter.

  138:2.9 6. Judas Iscariot was an only son of wealthy Jewish parents living in
  Jericho. He had become attached to John the Baptist, and his Sadducee parents
  had disowned him. He was looking for employment in these regions when Jesus'
  apostles found him, and chiefly because of his experience with finances,
  Nathaniel invited him to join their ranks. Judas Iscariot was the only Judean
  among the twelve apostles.

  138:2.10 Jesus spent a full day with the six, answering their questions and
  listening to the details of their reports, for they had many interesting and
  profitable experiences to relate. They now saw the wisdom of the Master's plan
  of sending them out to labor in a quiet and personal manner before the
  launching of their more pretentious public efforts.





3. THE CALL OF MATTHEW AND SIMON



  138:3.1 The next day Jesus and the six went to call upon Matthew, the customs
  collector. Matthew was awaiting them, having balanced his books and made ready
  to turn the affairs of his office over to his brother. As they approached the
  toll house, Andrew stepped forward with Jesus, who, looking into Matthew's
  face, said, "Follow me." And he arose and went to his house with Jesus and the
  apostles.

  138:3.2 Matthew told Jesus of the banquet he had arranged for that evening, at
  least that he wished to give such a dinner to his family and friends if Jesus
  would approve and consent to be the guest of honor. And Jesus nodded his
  consent. Peter then took Matthew aside and explained that he had invited one
  Simon to join the apostles and secured his consent that Simon be also bidden
  to this feast.

  138:3.3 After a noontide luncheon at Matthew's house they all went with Peter
  to call upon Simon the Zealot, whom they found at his old place of business,
  which was now being conducted by his nephew. When Peter led Jesus up to Simon,
  the Master greeted the fiery patriot and only said, "Follow me."

  138:3.4 They all returned to Matthew's home, where they talked much about
  politics and religion until the hour of the evening meal. The Levi family had
  long been engaged in business and tax gathering; therefore many of the guests
  bidden to this banquet by Matthew would have been denominated "publicans and
  sinners" by the Pharisees.

  138:3.5 In those days, when a reception-banquet of this sort was tendered a
  prominent individual, it was the custom for all interested persons to linger
  about the banquet room to observe the guests at meat and to listen to the
  conversation and speeches of the men of honor. Accordingly, most of the
  Capernaum Pharisees were present on this occasion to observe Jesus' conduct at
  this unusual social gathering.

  138:3.6 As the dinner progressed, the joy of the diners mounted to heights of
  good cheer, and everybody was having such a splendid time that the onlooking
  Pharisees began, in their hearts, to criticize Jesus for his participation in
  such a lighthearted and carefree affair. Later in the evening, when they were
  making speeches, one of the more malignant of the Pharisees went so far as to
  criticize Jesus' conduct to Peter, saying: "How dare you to teach that this
  man is righteous when he eats with publicans and sinners and thus lends his
  presence to such scenes of careless pleasure making." Peter whispered this
  criticism to Jesus before he spoke the parting blessing upon those assembled.
  When Jesus began to speak, he said: "In coming here tonight to welcome Matthew
  and Simon to our fellowship, I am glad to witness your lightheartedness and
  social good cheer, but you should rejoice still more because many of you will
  find entrance into the coming kingdom of the spirit, wherein you shall more
  abundantly enjoy the good things of the kingdom of heaven. And to you who
  stand about criticizing me in your hearts because I have come here to make
  merry with these friends, let me say that I have come to proclaim joy to the
  socially downtrodden and spiritual liberty to the moral captives. Need I
  remind you that they who are whole need not a physician, but rather those who
  are sick? I have come, not to call the righteous, but sinners."

  138:3.7 And truly this was a strange sight in all Jewry: to see a man of
  righteous character and noble sentiments mingling freely and joyously with the
  common people, even with an irreligious and pleasure-seeking throng of
  publicans and reputed sinners. Simon Zelotes desired to make a speech at this
  gathering in Matthew's house, but Andrew, knowing that Jesus did not want the
  coming kingdom to become confused with the Zealots' movement, prevailed upon
  him to refrain from making any public remarks.

  138:3.8 Jesus and the apostles remained that night in Matthew's house, and as
  the people went to their homes, they spoke of but one thing: the goodness and
  friendliness of Jesus.





4. THE CALL OF THE TWINS



  138:4.1 On the morrow all nine of them went by boat over to Kheresa to execute
  the formal calling of the next two apostles, James and Judas the twin sons of
  Alpheus, the nominees of James and John Zebedee. The fisherman twins were
  expecting Jesus and his apostles and were therefore awaiting them on the
  shore. James Zebedee presented the Master to the Kheresa fishermen, and Jesus,
  gazing on them, nodded and said, "Follow me."

  138:4.2 That afternoon, which they spent together, Jesus fully instructed them
  concerning attendance upon festive gatherings, concluding his remarks by
  saying: "All men are my brothers. My Father in heaven does not despise any
  creature of our making. The kingdom of heaven is open to all men and women. No
  man may close the door of mercy in the face of any hungry soul who may seek to
  gain an entrance thereto. We will sit at meat with all who desire to hear of
  the kingdom. As our Father in heaven looks down upon men, they are all alike.
  Refuse not therefore to break bread with Pharisee or sinner, Sadducee or
  publican, Roman or Jew, rich or poor, free or bond. The door of the kingdom is
  wide open for all who desire to know the truth and to find God."

  138:4.3 That night at a simple supper at the Alpheus home, the twin brothers
  were received into the apostolic family. Later in the evening Jesus gave his
  apostles their first lesson dealing with the origin, nature, and destiny of
  unclean spirits, but they could not comprehend the import of what he told
  them. They found it very easy to love and admire Jesus but very difficult to
  understand many of his teachings.

  138:4.4 After a night of rest the entire party, now numbering eleven, went by
  boat over to Tarichea.





5. THE CALL OF THOMAS AND JUDAS

  138:5.1 Thomas the fisherman and Judas the wanderer met Jesus and the apostles
  at the fisher-boat landing at Tarichea, and Thomas led the party to his near-
  by home. Philip now presented Thomas as his nominee for apostleship and
  Nathaniel presented Judas Iscariot, the Judean, for similar honors. Jesus
  looked upon Thomas and said: "Thomas, you lack faith; nevertheless, I receive
  you. Follow me." To Judas Iscariot the Master said: "Judas, we are all of one
  flesh, and as I receive you into our midst, I pray that you will always be
  loyal to your Galilean brethren. Follow me."

  138:5.2 When they had refreshed themselves, Jesus took the twelve apart for a
  season to pray with them and to instruct them in the nature and work of the
  Holy Spirit, but again did they largely fail to comprehend the meaning of
  those wonderful truths which he endeavored to teach them. One would grasp one
  point and one would comprehend another, but none of them could encompass the
  whole of his teaching. Always would they make the mistake of trying to fit
  Jesus' new gospel into their old forms of religious belief. They could not
  grasp the idea that Jesus had come to proclaim a new gospel of salvation and
  to establish a new way of finding God; they did not perceive that he was a new
  revelation of the Father in heaven.

  138:5.3 The next day Jesus left his twelve apostles quite alone; he wanted
  them to become acquainted and desired that they be alone to talk over what he
  had taught them. The Master returned for the evening meal, and during the
  after-supper hours he talked to them about the ministry of seraphim, and some
  of the apostles comprehended his teaching. They rested for a night and the
  next day departed by boat for Capernaum.

  138:5.4 Zebedee and Salome had gone to live with their son David so that their
  large home could be turned over to Jesus and his twelve apostles. Here Jesus
  spent a quiet Sabbath with his chosen messengers; he carefully outlined the
  plans for proclaiming the kingdom and fully explained the importance of
  avoiding any clash with the civil authorities, saying: "If the civil rulers
  are to be rebuked, leave that task to me. See that you make no denunciations
  of Caesar or his servants." It was this same evening that Judas Iscariot took
  Jesus aside to inquire why nothing was done to get John out of prison. And
  Judas was not wholly satisfied with Jesus' attitude.





6. THE WEEK OF INTENSIVE TRAINING

  138:6.1 The next week was devoted to a program of intense training. Each day
  the six new apostles were put in the hands of their respective nominators for
  a thoroughgoing review of all they had learned and experienced in preparation
  for the work of the kingdom. The older apostles carefully reviewed, for the
  benefit of the younger six, Jesus' teachings up to that hour. Evenings they
  all assembled in Zebedee's garden to receive Jesus' instruction.

  138:6.2 It was at this time that Jesus established the mid-week holiday for
  rest and recreation. And they pursued this plan of relaxation for one day each
  week throughout the remainder of his material life. As a general rule, they
  never prosecuted their regular activities on Wednesday. On this weekly holiday
  Jesus would usually take himself away from them, saying: "My children, go for
  a day of play. Rest yourselves from the arduous labors of the kingdom and
  enjoy the refreshment that comes from reverting to your former vocations or
  from discovering new sorts of recreational activity." While Jesus, at this
  period of his earth life, did not actually require this day of rest, he
  conformed to this plan because he knew it was best for his human associates.
  Jesus was the teacher -- the Master; his associates were his pupils --
  disciples.

  138:6.3 Jesus endeavored to make clear to his apostles the difference between
  his teachings and his life among them and the teachings which might
  subsequently spring up about him. Said Jesus: "My kingdom and the gospel
  related thereto shall be the burden of your message. Be not sidetracked into
  preaching about me and about my teachings. Proclaim the gospel of the kingdom
  and portray my revelation of the Father in heaven but do not be misled into
  the bypaths of creating legends and building up a cult having to do with
  beliefs and teachings about my beliefs and teachings." But again they did not
  understand why he thus spoke, and no man dared to ask why he so taught them.

  138:6.4 In these early teachings Jesus sought to avoid controversies with his
  apostles as far as possible excepting those involving wrong concepts of his
  Father in heaven. In

all
such matters he never hesitated to correct erroneous beliefs. There was just one
motive in Jesus' postbaptismal life on Urantia, and that was a better and truer
revelation of his Paradise Father; he was the pioneer of the new and better way
to God, the way of faith and love. Ever his exhortation to the apostles was: "Go
seek for the sinners; find the downhearted and comfort the anxious."

  138:6.5 Jesus had a perfect grasp of the situation; he possessed unlimited
  power, which might have been utilized in the furtherance of his mission, but
  he was wholly content with means and personalities which most people would
  have regarded as inadequate and would have looked upon as insignificant. He
  was engaged in a mission of enormous dramatic possibilities, but he insisted
  on going about his Father's business in the most quiet and undramatic manner;
  he studiously avoided all display of power. And he now planned to work
  quietly, at least for several months, with his twelve apostles around about
  the Sea of Galilee.





7. ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT

  138:7.1 Jesus had planned for a quiet missionary campaign of five months'
  personal work. He did not tell the apostles how long this was to last; they
  worked from week to week. And early on this first day of the week, just as he
  was about to announce this to his twelve apostles, Simon Peter, James Zebedee,
  and Judas Iscariot came to have private converse with him. Taking Jesus aside,
  Peter made bold to say: "Master, we come at the behest of our associates to
  inquire whether the time is not now ripe to enter into the kingdom. And will
  you proclaim the kingdom at Capernaum, or are we to move on to Jerusalem? And
  when shall we learn, each of us, the positions we are to occupy with you in
  the establishment of the kingdom --" and Peter would have gone on asking
  further questions, but Jesus raised an admonitory hand and stopped him. And
  beckoning the other apostles standing near by to join them, Jesus said: "My
  little children, how long shall I bear with you! Have I not made it plain to
  you that my kingdom is not of this world? I have told you many times that I
  have not come to sit on David's throne, and now how is it that you are
  inquiring which place each of you will occupy in the Father's kingdom? Can you
  not perceive that I have called you as ambassadors of a spiritual kingdom? Do
  you not understand that soon, very soon, you are to represent me in the world
  and in the proclamation of the kingdom, even as I now represent my Father who
  is in heaven? Can it be that I have chosen you and instructed you as
  messengers of the kingdom, and yet you do not comprehend the nature and
  significance of this coming kingdom of divine pre-eminence in the hearts of
  men? My friends, hear me once more. Banish from your minds this idea that my
  kingdom is a rule of power or a reign of glory. Indeed, all power in heaven
  and on earth will presently be given into my hands, but it is not the Father's
  will that we use this divine endowment to glorify ourselves during this age.

In another age you shall indeed sit with me in power and glory, but it behooves
us now to submit to the will of the Father and to go forth in humble obedience
to execute his bidding on earth."

  138:7.2 Once more were his associates shocked, stunned. Jesus sent them away
  two and two to pray, asking them to return to him at noontime. On this crucial
  forenoon they each sought to find God, and each endeavored to cheer and
  strengthen the other, and they returned to Jesus as he had bidden them.

  138:7.3 Jesus now recounted for them the coming of John, the baptism in the
  Jordan, the marriage feast at Cana, the recent choosing of the six, and the
  withdrawal from them of his own brothers in the flesh, and warned them that
  the enemy of the kingdom would seek also to draw them away. After this short
  but earnest talk the apostles all arose, under Peter's leadership, to declare
  their undying devotion to their Master and to pledge their unswerving loyalty
  to the kingdom, as Thomas expressed it, "To this coming kingdom, no matter
  what it is and even if I do not fully understand it." They all truly believed
  in Jesus, even though they did not fully comprehend his teaching.

  138:7.4 Jesus now asked them how much money they had among them; he also
  inquired as to what provision had been made for their families. When it
  developed that they had hardly sufficient funds to maintain themselves for two
  weeks, he said: "It is not the will of my Father that we begin our work in
  this way. We will remain here by the sea two weeks and fish or do whatever our
  hands find to do; and in the meantime, under the guidance of Andrew, the first
  chosen apostle, you shall so organize yourselves as to provide for everything
  needful in your future work, both for the present personal ministry and also
  when I shall subsequently ordain you to preach the gospel and instruct
  believers." They were all greatly cheered by these words; this was their first
  clearcut and positive intimation that Jesus designed later on to enter upon
  more aggressive and pretentious public efforts.

  138:7.5 The apostles spent the remainder of the day perfecting their
  organization and completing arrangements for boats and nets for embarking on
  the morrow's fishing as they had all decided to devote themselves to fishing;
  most of them had been fishermen, even Jesus was an experienced boatman and
  fisherman. Many of the boats which they used the next few years had been built
  by Jesus' own hands. And they were good and trustworthy boats.

  138:7.6 Jesus enjoined them to devote themselves to fishing for two weeks,
  adding, "And then will you go forth to become fishers of men." They fished in
  three groups, Jesus going out with a different group each night. And they all
  so much enjoyed Jesus! He was a good fisherman, a cheerful companion, and an
  inspiring friend; the more they worked with him, the more they loved him. Said
  Matthew one day: "The more you understand some people, the less you admire
  them, but of this man, even the less I comprehend him, the more I love him."

  138:7.7 This plan of fishing two weeks and going out to do personal work in
  behalf of the kingdom for two weeks was followed for more than five months,
  even to the end of this year of A.D. 26, until after the cessation of those
  special persecutions which had been directed against John's disciples
  subsequent to his imprisonment.





8. FIRST WORK OF THE TWELVE

  138:8.1 After disposing of the fish catches of two weeks, Judas Iscariot, the
  one chosen to act as treasurer of the twelve, divided the apostolic funds into
  six equal portions, funds for the care of dependent families having been
  already provided. And then near the middle of August, in the year A.D. 26,
  they went forth two and two to the fields of work assigned by Andrew. The
  first two weeks Jesus went out with Andrew and Peter, the second two weeks
  with James and John, and so on with the other couples in the order of their
  choosing. In this way he was able to go out at least once with each couple
  before he called them together for the beginning of their public ministry.

  138:8.2 Jesus taught them to preach the forgiveness of sin through faith in
  God without penance or sacrifice, and that the Father in heaven loves all his
  children with the same eternal love. He enjoined his apostles to refrain from
  discussing:

  138:8.3 1. The work and imprisonment of John the Baptist.

  138:8.4 2. The voice at the baptism. Said Jesus: "Only those who heard the
  voice may refer to it. Speak only that which you have heard from me; speak not
  hearsay."

  138:8.5 3. The turning of the water into wine at Cana. Jesus seriously charged
  them, saying, "Tell no man about the water and the wine."

  138:8.6 They had wonderful times throughout these five or six months during
  which they worked as fishermen every alternate two weeks, thereby earning
  enough money to support themselves in the field for each succeeding two weeks
  of missionary work for the kingdom.

  138:8.7 The common people marveled at the teaching and ministry of Jesus and
  his apostles. The rabbis had long taught the Jews that the ignorant could not
  be pious or righteous. But Jesus' apostles were both pious and righteous; yet
  they were cheerfully ignorant of much of the learning of the rabbis and the
  wisdom of the world.

  138:8.8 Jesus made plain to his apostles the difference between the repentance
  of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith
  -- the new birth -- which he required as the price of admission to the
  kingdom. He taught his apostles that faith was the only requisite to entering
  the Father's kingdom. John had taught them "repentance -- to flee from the
  wrath to come." Jesus taught, "Faith is the open door for entering into the
  present, perfect, and eternal love of God." Jesus did not speak like a
  prophet, one who comes to declare the word of God. He seemed to speak of
  himself as one having authority. Jesus sought to divert their minds from
  miracle seeking to the finding of a real and personal experience in the
  satisfaction and assurance of the indwelling of God's spirit of love and
  saving grace.

  138:8.9 The disciples early learned that the Master had a profound respect and
  sympathetic regard for every human being he met, and they were tremendously
  impressed by this uniform and unvarying consideration which he so consistently
  gave to all sorts of men, women, and children. He would pause in the midst of
  a profound discourse that he might go out in the road to speak good cheer to a
  passing woman laden with her burden of body and soul. He would interrupt a
  serious conference with his apostles to fraternize with an intruding child.
  Nothing ever seemed so important to Jesus as the individual human who chanced
  to be in his immediate presence. He was master and teacher, but he was more --
  he was also a friend and neighbor, an understanding comrade.

  138:8.10 Though Jesus' public teaching mainly consisted in parables and short
  discourses, he invariably taught his apostles by questions and answers. He
  would always pause to answer sincere questions during his later public
  discourses.

  138:8.11 The apostles were at first shocked by, but early became accustomed
  to, Jesus' treatment of women; he made it very clear to them that women were
  to be accorded equal rights with men in the kingdom.





9. FIVE MONTHS OF TESTING

  138:9.1 This somewhat monotonous period of alternate fishing and personal work
  proved to be a grueling experience for the twelve apostles, but they endured
  the test. With all of their grumblings, doubts, and transient dissatisfactions
  they remained true to their vows of devotion and loyalty to the Master. It was
  their personal association with Jesus during these months of testing that so
  endeared him to them that they all (save Judas Iscariot) remained loyal and
  true to him even in the dark hours of the trial and crucifixion. Real men
  simply could not actually desert a revered teacher who had lived so close to
  them and had been so devoted to them as had Jesus. Through the dark hours of
  the Master's death, in the hearts of these apostles all reason, judgment, and
  logic were set aside in deference to just one extraordinary human emotion --
  the supreme sentiment of friendship-loyalty. These five months of work with
  Jesus led these apostles, each one of them, to regard him as the best friend
  he had in all the world. And it was this human sentiment, and not his superb
  teachings or marvelous doings, that held them together until after the
  resurrection and the renewal of the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom.

  138:9.2 Not only were these months of quiet work a great test to the apostles,
  a test which they survived, but this season of public inactivity was a great
  trial to Jesus' family. By the time Jesus was prepared to launch forth on his
  public work, his entire family (except Ruth) had practically deserted him. On
  only a few occasions did they attempt to make subsequent contact with him, and
  then it was to persuade him to return home with them, for they came near to
  believing that he was beside himself. They simply could not fathom his
  philosophy nor grasp his teaching; it was all too much for those of his own
  flesh and blood.

  138:9.3 The apostles carried on their personal work in Capernaum, Bethsaida-
  Julias, Chorazin, Gerasa, Hippos, Magdala, Cana, Bethlehem of Galilee,
  Jotapata, Ramah, Safed, Gischala, Gadara, and Abila. Besides these towns they
  labored in many villages as well as in the countryside. By the end of this
  period the twelve had worked out fairly satisfactory plans for the care of
  their respective families. Most of the apostles were married, some had several
  children, but they had made such arrangements for the support of their home
  folks that, with some little assistance from the apostolic funds, they could
  devote their entire energies to the Master's work without having to worry
  about the financial welfare of their families.





10. ORGANIZATION OF THE TWELVE

  138:10.1 The apostles early organized themselves in the following manner:

  138:10.2 1. Andrew, the first chosen apostle, was designated chairman and
  director general of the twelve.

  138:10.3 2. Peter, James, and John were appointed personal companions of
  Jesus. They were to attend him day and night, to minister to his physical and
  sundry needs, and to accompany him on those night vigils of prayer and
  mysterious communion with the Father in heaven.

  138:10.4 3. Philip was made steward of the group. It was his duty to provide
  food and to see that visitors, and even the multitude of listeners at times,
  had something to eat.

  138:10.5 4. Nathaniel watched over the needs of the families of the twelve. He
  received regular reports as to the requirements of each apostle's family and,
  making requisition on Judas, the treasurer, would send funds each week to
  those in need.

  138:10.6 5. Matthew was the fiscal agent of the apostolic corps. It was his
  duty to see that the budget was balanced, the treasury replenished. If the
  funds for mutual support were not forthcoming, if donations sufficient to
  maintain the party were not received, Matthew was empowered to order the
  twelve back to their nets for a season. But this was never necessary after
  they began their public work; he always had sufficient funds in the
  treasurer's hands to finance their activities.

  138:10.7 6. Thomas was manager of the itinerary. It devolved upon him to
  arrange lodgings and in a general way select places for teaching and
  preaching, thereby insuring a smooth and expeditious travel schedule.

  138:10.8 7. James and Judas the twin sons of Alpheus were assigned to the
  management of the multitudes. It was their task to deputize a sufficient
  number of assistant ushers to enable them to maintain order among the crowds
  during the preaching.

  138:10.9 8. Simon Zelotes was given charge of recreation and play. He managed
  the Wednesday programs and also sought to provide for a few hours of
  relaxation and diversion each day.

  138:10.10 9. Judas Iscariot was appointed treasurer. He carried the bag. He
  paid all expenses and kept the books. He made budget estimates for Matthew
  from week to week and also made weekly reports to Andrew. Judas paid out funds
  on Andrew's authorization.

  138:10.11 In this way the twelve functioned from their early organization up
  to the time of the reorganization made necessary by the desertion of Judas,
  the betrayer. The Master and his disciple-apostles went on in this simple
  manner until Sunday, January 12, A.D. 27, when he called them together and
  formally ordained them as ambassadors of the kingdom and preachers of its glad
  tidings. And soon thereafter they prepared to start for Jerusalem and Judea on
  their first public preaching tour.




PAPER 139


 THE TWELVE APOSTLES



  139:0.1 IT IS an eloquent testimony to the charm and righteousness of Jesus'
  earth life that, although he repeatedly dashed to pieces the hopes of his
  apostles and tore to shreds their every ambition for personal exaltation, only
  one deserted him.

  139:0.2 The apostles learned from Jesus about the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus
  learned much from them about the kingdom of men, human nature as it lives on
  Urantia and on the other evolutionary worlds of time and space. These twelve
  men represented many different types of human temperament, and they had not
  been made alike by schooling. Many of these Galilean fishermen carried heavy
  strains of gentile blood as a result of the forcible conversion of the gentile
  population of Galilee one hundred years previously.



  139:0.3 Do not make the mistake of regarding the apostles as being altogether
  ignorant and unlearned. All of them, except the Alpheus twins, were graduates
  of the synagogue schools, having been thoroughly trained in the Hebrew
  scriptures and in much of the current knowledge of that day. Seven were
  graduates of the Capernaum synagogue schools, and there were no better Jewish
  schools in all Galilee.

  139:0.4 When your records refer to these messengers of the kingdom as being
  "ignorant and unlearned," it was intended to convey the idea that they were
  laymen, unlearned in the lore of the rabbis and untrained in the methods of
  rabbinical interpretation of the Scriptures. They were lacking in so-called
  higher education. In modern times they would certainly be considered
  uneducated, and in some circles of society even uncultured. One thing is
  certain: They had not all been put through the same rigid and stereotyped
  educational curriculum. From adolescence on they had enjoyed separate
  experiences of learning how to live.



1. ANDREW, THE FIRST CHOSEN



  139:1.1 Andrew, chairman of the apostolic corps of the kingdom, was born in
  Capernaum. He was the oldest child in a family of five -- himself, his brother
  Simon, and three sisters. His father, now dead, had been a partner of Zebedee
  in the fish-drying business at Bethsaida, the fishing harbor of Capernaum.
  When he became an apostle, Andrew was unmarried but made his home with his
  married brother, Simon Peter. Both were fishermen and partners of James and
  John the sons of Zebedee.

  139:1.2 In A.D. 26, the year he was chosen as an apostle, Andrew was 33, a
  full year older than Jesus and the oldest of the apostles. He sprang from an
  excellent line of ancestors and was the ablest man of the twelve. Excepting
  oratory, he was the peer of his associates in almost every imaginable ability.
  Jesus never gave Andrew a nickname, a fraternal designation. But even as the
  apostles soon began to call Jesus Master, so they also designated Andrew by a
  term the equivalent of Chief.



  139:1.3 Andrew was a good organizer but a better administrator. He was one of
  the inner circle of four apostles, but his appointment by Jesus as the head of
  the apostolic group made it necessary for him to remain on duty with his
  brethren while the other three enjoyed very close communion with the Master.
  To the very end Andrew remained dean of the apostolic corps.

  139:1.4 Although Andrew was never an effective preacher, he was an efficient
  personal worker, being the pioneer missionary of the kingdom in that, as the
  first chosen apostle, he immediately brought to Jesus his brother, Simon, who
  subsequently became one of the greatest preachers of the kingdom. Andrew was
  the chief supporter of Jesus' policy of utilizing the program of personal work
  as a means of training the twelve as messengers of the kingdom.

  139:1.5 Whether Jesus privately taught the apostles or preached to the
  multitude, Andrew was usually conversant with what was going on; he was an
  understanding executive and an efficient administrator. He rendered a prompt
  decision on every matter brought to his notice unless he deemed the problem
  one beyond the domain of his authority, in which event he would take it
  straight to Jesus.



  139:1.6 Andrew and Peter were very unlike in character and temperament, but it
  must be recorded everlastingly to their credit that they got along together
  splendidly. Andrew was never jealous of Peter's oratorical ability. Not often
  will an older man of Andrew's type be observed exerting such a profound
  influence over a younger and talented brother. Andrew and Peter never seemed
  to be in the least jealous of each other's abilities or achievements. Late on
  the evening of the day of Pentecost, when, largely through the energetic and
  inspiring preaching of Peter, two thousand souls were added to the kingdom,
  Andrew said to his brother: "I could not do that, but I am glad I have a
  brother who could." To which Peter replied: "And but for your bringing me to
  the Master and by your steadfastness keeping me with him, I should not have
  been here to do this." Andrew and Peter were the exceptions to the rule,
  proving that even brothers can live together peaceably and work together
  effectively.

  139:1.7 After Pentecost Peter was famous, but it never irritated the older
  Andrew to spend the rest of his life being introduced as "Simon Peter's
  brother."



  139:1.8 Of all the apostles, Andrew was the best judge of men. He knew that
  trouble was brewing in the heart of Judas Iscariot even when none of the
  others suspected that anything was wrong with their treasurer; but he told
  none of them his fears. Andrew's great service to the kingdom was in advising
  Peter, James, and John concerning the choice of the first missionaries who
  were sent out to proclaim the gospel, and also in counseling these early
  leaders about the organization of the administrative affairs of the kingdom.
  Andrew had a great gift for discovering the hidden resources and latent
  talents of young people.

  139:1.9 Very soon after Jesus' ascension on high, Andrew began the writing of
  a personal record of many of the sayings and doings of his departed Master.
  After Andrew's death other copies of this private record were made and
  circulated freely among the early teachers of the Christian church. These
  informal notes of Andrew's were subsequently edited, amended, altered, and
  added to until they made up a fairly consecutive narrative of the Master's
  life on earth. The last of these few altered and amended copies was destroyed
  by fire at Alexandria about one hundred years after the original was written
  by the first chosen of the twelve apostles.

  139:1.10 Andrew was a man of clear insight, logical thought, and firm
  decision, whose great strength of character consisted in his superb stability.
  His temperamental handicap was his lack of enthusiasm; he many times failed to
  encourage his associates by judicious commendation. And this reticence to
  praise the worthy accomplishments of his friends grew out of his abhorrence of
  flattery and insincerity. Andrew was one of those all-round, even-tempered,
  self-made, and successful men of modest affairs.



  139:1.11 Every one of the apostles loved Jesus, but it remains true that each
  of the twelve was drawn toward him because of some certain trait of
  personality which made a special appeal to the individual apostle. Andrew
  admired Jesus because of his consistent sincerity, his unaffected dignity.
  When men once knew Jesus, they were possessed with the urge to share him with
  their friends; they really wanted all the world to know him.



  139:1.12 When the later persecutions finally scattered the apostles from
  Jerusalem, Andrew journeyed through Armenia, Asia Minor, and Macedonia and,
  after bringing many thousands into the kingdom, was finally apprehended and
  crucified in Patrae in Achaia. It was two full days before this robust man
  expired on the cross, and throughout these tragic hours he continued
  effectively to proclaim the glad tidings of the salvation of the kingdom of
  heaven.





2. SIMON PETER



  139:2.1 When Simon joined the apostles, he was thirty years of age. He was
  married, had three children, and lived at Bethsaida, near Capernaum. His
  brother, Andrew, and his wife's mother lived with him. Both Peter and Andrew
  were fisher partners of the sons of Zebedee.

  139:2.2 The Master had known Simon for some time before Andrew presented him
  as the second of the apostles. When Jesus gave Simon the name Peter, he did it
  with a smile; it was to be a sort of nickname. Simon was well known to all his
  friends as an erratic and impulsive fellow. True, later on, Jesus did attach a
  new and significant import to this lightly bestowed nickname.



  139:2.3 Simon Peter was a man of impulse, an optimist. He had grown up
  permitting himself freely to indulge strong feelings; he was constantly
  getting into difficulties because he persisted in speaking without thinking.
  This sort of thoughtlessness also made incessant trouble for all of his
  friends and associates and was the cause of his receiving many mild rebukes
  from his Master. The only reason Peter did not get into more trouble because
  of his thoughtless speaking was that he very early learned to talk over many
  of his plans and schemes with his brother, Andrew, before he ventured to make
  public proposals.

  139:2.4 Peter was a fluent speaker, eloquent and dramatic. He was also a
  natural and inspirational leader of men, a quick thinker but not a deep
  reasoner. He asked many questions, more than all the apostles put together,
  and while the majority of these questions were good and relevant, many of them
  were thoughtless and foolish. Peter did not have a deep mind, but he knew his
  mind fairly well. He was therefore a man of quick decision and sudden action.
  While others talked in their astonishment at seeing Jesus on the beach, Peter
  jumped in and swam ashore to meet the Master.



  139:2.5 The one trait which Peter most admired in Jesus was his supernal
  tenderness. Peter never grew weary of contemplating Jesus' forbearance. He
  never forgot the lesson about forgiving the wrongdoer, not only seven times
  but seventy times and seven. He thought much about these impressions of the
  Master's forgiving character during those dark and dismal days immediately
  following his thoughtless and unintended denial of Jesus in the high priest's
  courtyard.



  139:2.6 Simon Peter was distressingly vacillating; he would suddenly swing
  from one extreme to the other. First he refused to let Jesus wash his feet and
  then, on hearing the Master's reply, begged to be washed all over. But, after
  all, Jesus knew that Peter's faults were of the head and not of the heart. He
  was one of the most inexplicable combinations of courage and cowardice that
  ever lived on earth. His great strength of character was loyalty, friendship.
  Peter really and truly loved Jesus. And yet despite this towering strength of
  devotion he was so unstable and inconstant that he permitted a servant girl to
  tease him into denying his Lord and Master. Peter could withstand persecution
  and any other form of direct assault, but he withered and shrank before
  ridicule. He was a brave soldier when facing a frontal attack, but he was a
  fear-cringing coward when surprised with an assault from the rear.

  139:2.7 Peter was the first of Jesus' apostles to come forward to defend the
  work of Philip among the Samaritans and Paul among the gentiles; yet later on
  at Antioch he reversed himself when confronted by ridiculing Judaizers,
  temporarily withdrawing from the gentiles only to bring down upon his head the
  fearless denunciation of Paul.

  139:2.8 He was the first one of the apostles to make wholehearted confession
  of Jesus' combined humanity and divinity and the first -- save Judas -- to
  deny him. Peter was not so much of a dreamer, but he disliked to descend from
  the clouds of ecstasy and the enthusiasm of dramatic indulgence to the plain
  and matter-of-fact world of reality.

  139:2.9 In following Jesus, literally and figuratively, he was either leading
  the procession or else trailing behind -- "following afar off." But he was the
  outstanding preacher of the twelve; he did more than any other one man, aside
  from Paul, to establish the kingdom and send its messengers to the four
  corners of the earth in one generation.

  139:2.10 After his rash denials of the Master he found himself, and with
  Andrew's sympathetic and understanding guidance he again led the way back to
  the fish nets while the apostles tarried to find out what was to happen after
  the crucifixion. When he was fully assured that Jesus had forgiven him and
  knew he had been received back into the Master's fold, the fires of the
  kingdom burned so brightly within his soul that he became a great and saving
  light to thousands who sat in darkness.



  139:2.11 After leaving Jerusalem and before Paul became the leading spirit
  among the gentile Christian churches, Peter traveled extensively, visiting all
  the churches from Babylon to Corinth. He even visited and ministered to many
  of the churches which had been raised up by Paul. Although Peter and Paul
  differed much in temperament and education, even in theology, they worked
  together harmoniously for the upbuilding of the churches during their later
  years.



  139:2.12 Something of Peter's style and teaching is shown in the sermons
  partially recorded by Luke and in the Gospel of Mark. His vigorous style was
  better shown in his letter known as the First Epistle of Peter; at least this
  was true before it was subsequently altered by a disciple of Paul.

  139:2.13 But Peter persisted in making the mistake of trying to convince the
  Jews that Jesus was, after all, really and truly the Jewish Messiah. Right up
  to the day of his death, Simon Peter continued to suffer confusion in his mind
  between the concepts of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, Christ as the world's
  redeemer, and the Son of Man as the revelation of God, the loving Father of
  all mankind.



  139:2.14 Peter's wife was a very able woman. For years she labored acceptably
  as a member of the women's corps, and when Peter was driven out of Jerusalem,
  she accompanied him upon all his journeys to the churches as well as on all
  his missionary excursions. And the day her illustrious husband yielded up his
  life, she was thrown to the wild beasts in the arena at Rome.



  139:2.15 And so this man Peter, an intimate of Jesus, one of the inner circle,
  went forth from Jerusalem proclaiming the glad tidings of the kingdom with
  power and glory until the fullness of his ministry had been accomplished; and
  he regarded himself as the recipient of high honors when his captors informed
  him that he must die as his Master had died -- on the cross. And thus was
  Simon Peter crucified in Rome.





3. JAMES ZEBEDEE



  139:3.1 James, the older of the two apostle sons of Zebedee, whom Jesus
  nicknamed "sons of thunder," was thirty years old when he became an apostle.
  He was married, had four children, and lived near his parents in the outskirts
  of Capernaum, Bethsaida. He was a fisherman, plying his calling in company
  with his younger brother John and in association with Andrew and Simon. James
  and his brother John enjoyed the advantage of having known Jesus longer than
  any of the other apostles.



  139:3.2 This able apostle was a temperamental contradiction; he seemed really
  to possess two natures, both of which were actuated by strong feelings. He was
  particularly vehement when his indignation was once fully aroused. He had a
  fiery temper when once it was adequately provoked, and when the storm was
  over, he was always wont to justify and excuse his anger under the pretense
  that it was wholly a manifestation of righteous indignation. Except for these
  periodic upheavals of wrath, James's personality was much like that of Andrew.
  He did not have Andrew's discretion or insight into human nature, but he was a
  much better public speaker. Next to Peter, unless it was Matthew, James was
  the best public orator among the twelve.

  139:3.3 Though James was in no sense moody, he could be quiet and taciturn one
  day and a very good talker and storyteller the next. He usually talked freely
  with Jesus, but among the twelve, for days at a time he was the silent man.
  His one great weakness was these spells of unaccountable silence.

  139:3.4 The outstanding feature of James's personality was his ability to see
  all sides of a proposition. Of all the twelve, he came the nearest to grasping
  the real import and significance of Jesus' teaching. He, too, was slow at
  first to comprehend the Master's meaning, but ere they had finished their
  training, he had acquired a superior concept of Jesus' message. James was able
  to understand a wide range of human nature; he got along well with the
  versatile Andrew, the impetuous Peter, and his self-contained brother John.

  139:3.5 Though James and John had their troubles trying to work together, it
  was inspiring to observe how well they got along. They did not succeed quite
  so well as Andrew and Peter, but they did much better than would ordinarily be
  expected of two brothers, especially such headstrong and determined brothers.
  But, strange as it may seem, these two sons of Zebedee were much more tolerant
  of each other than they were of strangers. They had great affection for one
  another; they had always been happy playmates. It was these "sons of thunder"
  who wanted to call fire down from heaven to destroy the Samaritans who
  presumed to show disrespect for their Master. But the untimely death of James
  greatly modified the vehement temperament of his younger brother John.



  139:3.6 That characteristic of Jesus which James most admired was the Master's
  sympathetic affection. Jesus' understanding interest in the small and the
  great, the rich and the poor, made a great appeal to him.



  139:3.7 James Zebedee was a well-balanced thinker and planner. Along with
  Andrew, he was one of the more level-headed of the apostolic group. He was a
  vigorous individual but was never in a hurry. He was an excellent balance
  wheel for Peter.

  139:3.8 He was modest and undramatic, a daily server, an unpretentious worker,
  seeking no special reward when he once grasped something of the real meaning
  of the kingdom. And even in the story about the mother of James and John, who
  asked that her sons be granted places on the right hand and the left hand of
  Jesus, it should be remembered that it was the mother who made this request.
  And when they signified that they were ready to assume such responsibilities,
  it should be recognized that they were cognizant of the dangers accompanying
  the Master's supposed revolt against the Roman power, and that they were also
  willing to pay the price. When Jesus asked if they were ready to drink the
  cup, they replied that they were. And as concerns James, it was literally true
  -- he did drink the cup with the Master, seeing that he was the first of the
  apostles to experience martyrdom, being early put to death with the sword by
  Herod Agrippa. James was thus the first of the twelve to sacrifice his life
  upon the new battle line of the kingdom. Herod Agrippa feared James above all
  the other apostles. He was indeed often quiet and silent, but he was brave and
  determined when his convictions were aroused and challenged.



  139:3.9 James lived his life to the full, and when the end came, he bore
  himself with such grace and fortitude that even his accuser and informer, who
  attended his trial and execution, was so touched that he rushed away from the
  scene of James's death to join himself to the disciples of Jesus.





4. JOHN ZEBEDEE



  139:4.1 When he became an apostle, John was twenty-four years old and was the
  youngest of the twelve. He was unmarried and lived with his parents at
  Bethsaida; he was a fisherman and worked with his brother James in partnership
  with Andrew and Peter. Both before and after becoming an apostle, John
  functioned as the personal agent of Jesus in dealing with the Master's family,
  and he continued to bear this responsibility as long as Mary the mother of
  Jesus lived.

  139:4.2 Since John was the youngest of the twelve and so closely associated
  with Jesus in his family affairs, he was very dear to the Master, but it
  cannot be truthfully said that he was "the disciple whom Jesus loved." You
  would hardly suspect such a magnanimous personality as Jesus to be guilty of
  showing favoritism, of loving one of his apostles more than the others. The
  fact that John was one of the three personal aides of Jesus lent further color
  to this mistaken idea, not to mention that John, along with his brother James,
  had known Jesus longer than the others.



  139:4.3 Peter, James, and John were assigned as personal aides to Jesus soon
  after they became apostles. Shortly after the selection of the twelve and at
  the time Jesus appointed Andrew to act as director of the group, he said to
  him: "And now I desire that you assign two or three of your associates to be
  with me and to remain by my side, to comfort me and to minister to my daily
  needs." And Andrew thought best to select for this special duty the next three
  first-chosen apostles. He would have liked to volunteer for such a blessed
  service himself, but the Master had already given him his commission; so he
  immediately directed that Peter, James, and John attach themselves to Jesus.



  139:4.4 John Zebedee had many lovely traits of character, but one which was
  not so lovely was his inordinate but usually well-concealed conceit. His long
  association with Jesus made many and great changes in his character. This
  conceit was greatly lessened, but after growing old and becoming more or less
  childish, this self-esteem reappeared to a certain extent, so that, when
  engaged in directing Nathan in the writing of the Gospel which now bears his
  name, the aged apostle did not hesitate repeatedly to refer to himself as the
  "disciple whom Jesus loved." In view of the fact that John came nearer to
  being the chum of Jesus than any other earth mortal, that he was his chosen
  personal representative in so many matters, it is not strange that he should
  have come to regard himself as the "disciple whom Jesus loved" since he most
  certainly knew he was the disciple whom Jesus so frequently trusted.

  139:4.5 The strongest trait in John's character was his dependability; he was
  prompt and courageous, faithful and devoted. His greatest weakness was this
  characteristic conceit. He was the youngest member of his father's family and
  the youngest of the apostolic group. Perhaps he was just a bit spoiled; maybe
  he had been humored slightly too much. But the John of after years was a very
  different type of person than the self-admiring and arbitrary young man who
  joined the ranks of Jesus' apostles when he was twenty-four.



  139:4.6 Those characteristics of Jesus which John most appreciated were the
  Master's love and unselfishness; these traits made such an impression on him
  that his whole subsequent life became dominated by the sentiment of love and
  brotherly devotion. He talked about love and wrote about love. This "son of
  thunder" became the "apostle of love"; and at Ephesus, when the aged bishop
  was no longer able to stand in the pulpit and preach but had to be carried to
  church in a chair, and when at the close of the service he was asked to say a
  few words to the believers, for years his only utterance was, "My little
  children, love one another."



  139:4.7 John was a man of few words except when his temper was aroused. He
  thought much but said little. As he grew older, his temper became more
  subdued, better controlled, but he never overcame his disinclination to talk;
  he never fully mastered this reticence. But he was gifted with a remarkable
  and creative imagination.



  139:4.8 There was another side to John that one would not expect to find in
  this quiet and introspective type. He was somewhat bigoted and inordinately
  intolerant. In this respect he and James were much alike -- they both wanted
  to call down fire from heaven on the heads of the disrespectful Samaritans.
  When John encountered some strangers teaching in Jesus' name, he promptly
  forbade them. But he was not the only one of the twelve who was tainted with
  this kind of self-esteem and superiority consciousness.

  139:4.9 John's life was tremendously influenced by the sight of Jesus' going
  about without a home as he knew how faithfully he had made provision for the
  care of his mother and family. John also deeply sympathized with Jesus because
  of his family's failure to understand him, being aware that they were
  gradually withdrawing from him. This entire situation, together with Jesus'
  ever deferring his slightest wish to the will of the Father in heaven and his
  daily life of implicit trust, made such a profound impression on John that it
  produced marked and permanent changes in his character, changes which
  manifested themselves throughout his entire subsequent life.

  139:4.10 John had a cool and daring courage which few of the other apostles
  possessed. He was the one apostle who followed right along with Jesus the
  night of his arrest and dared to accompany his Master into the very jaws of
  death. He was present and near at hand right up to the last earthly hour and
  was found faithfully carrying out his trust with regard to Jesus' mother and
  ready to receive such additional instructions as might be given during the
  last moments of the Master's mortal existence. One thing is certain, John was
  thoroughly dependable. John usually sat on Jesus' right hand when the twelve
  were at meat. He was the first of the twelve really and fully to believe in
  the resurrection, and he was the first to recognize the Master when he came to
  them on the seashore after his resurrection.

  139:4.11 This son of Zebedee was very closely associated with Peter in the
  early activities of the Christian movement, becoming one of the chief
  supporters of the Jerusalem church. He was the right-hand support of Peter on
  the day of Pentecost.

  139:4.12 Several years after the martyrdom of James, John married his
  brother's widow. The last twenty years of his life he was cared for by a
  loving granddaughter.

  139:4.13 John was in prison several times and was banished to the Isle of
  Patmos for a period of four years until another emperor came to power in Rome.
  Had not John been tactful and sagacious, he would undoubtedly have been killed
  as was his more outspoken brother James. As the years passed, John, together
  with James the Lord's brother, learned to practice wise conciliation when they
  appeared before the civil magistrates. They found that a "soft answer turns
  away wrath." They also learned to represent the church as a "spiritual
  brotherhood devoted to the social service of mankind" rather than as "the
  kingdom of heaven." They taught loving service rather than ruling power --
  kingdom and king.

  139:4.14 When in temporary exile on Patmos, John wrote the Book of Revelation,
  which you now have in greatly abridged and distorted form. This Book of
  Revelation contains the surviving fragments of a great revelation, large
  portions of which were lost, other portions of which were removed, subsequent
  to John's writing. It is preserved in only fragmentary and adulterated form.

  139:4.15 John traveled much, labored incessantly, and after becoming bishop of
  the Asia churches, settled down at Ephesus. He directed his associate, Nathan,
  in the writing of the so-called "Gospel according to John," at Ephesus, when
  he was ninety-nine years old. Of all the twelve apostles, John Zebedee
  eventually became the outstanding theologian. He died a natural death at
  Ephesus in A.D. 103 when he was one hundred and one years of age.





5. PHILIP THE CURIOUS



  139:5.1 Philip was the fifth apostle to be chosen, being called when Jesus and
  his first four apostles were on their way from John's rendezvous on the Jordan
  to Cana of Galilee. Since he lived at Bethsaida, Philip had for some time
  known of Jesus, but it had not occurred to him that Jesus was a really great
  man until that day in the Jordan valley when he said, "Follow me." Philip was
  also somewhat influenced by the fact that Andrew, Peter, James, and John had
  accepted Jesus as the Deliverer.

  139:5.2 Philip was twenty-seven years of age when he joined the apostles; he
  had recently been married, but he had no children at this time. The nickname
  which the apostles gave him signified "curiosity." Philip was always wanting
  to be shown. He never seemed to see very far into any proposition. He was not
  necessarily dull, but he lacked imagination. This lack of imagination was the
  great weakness of his character. He was a commonplace and matter-of-fact
  individual.



  139:5.3 When the apostles were organized for service, Philip was made steward;
  it was his duty to see that they were at all times supplied with provisions.
  And he was a good steward. His strongest characteristic was his methodical
  thoroughness; he was both mathematical and systematic.

  139:5.4 Philip came from a family of seven, three boys and four girls. He was
  next to the oldest, and after the resurrection he baptized his entire family
  into the kingdom. Philip's people were fisherfolk. His father was a very able
  man, a deep thinker, but his mother was of a very mediocre family. Philip was
  not a man who could be expected to do big things, but he was a man who could
  do little things in a big way, do them well and acceptably. Only a few times
  in four years did he fail to have food on hand to satisfy the needs of all.
  Even the many emergency demands attendant upon the life they lived seldom
  found him unprepared. The commissary department of the apostolic family was
  intelligently and efficiently managed.

  139:5.5 The strong point about Philip was his methodical reliability; the weak
  point in his make-up was his utter lack of imagination, the absence of the
  ability to put two and two together to obtain four. He was mathematical in the
  abstract but not constructive in his imagination. He was almost entirely
  lacking in certain types of imagination. He was the typical everyday and
  commonplace average man. There were a great many such men and women among the
  multitudes who came to hear Jesus teach and preach, and they derived great
  comfort from observing one like themselves elevated to an honored position in
  the councils of the Master; they derived courage from the fact that one like
  themselves had already found a high place in the affairs of the kingdom. And
  Jesus learned much about the way some human minds function as he so patiently
  listened to Philip's foolish questions and so many times complied with his
  steward's request to "be shown."

  139:5.6 The one quality about Jesus which Philip so continuously admired was
  the Master's unfailing generosity. Never could Philip find anything in Jesus
  which was small, niggardly, or stingy, and he worshiped this ever-present and
  unfailing liberality.

  139:5.7 There was little about Philip's personality that was impressive. He
  was often spoken of as "Philip of Bethsaida, the town where Andrew and Peter
  live." He was almost without discerning vision; he was unable to grasp the
  dramatic possibilities of a given situation. He was not pessimistic; he was
  simply prosaic. He was also greatly lacking in spiritual insight. He would not
  hesitate to interrupt Jesus in the midst of one of the Master's most profound
  discourses to ask an apparently foolish question. But Jesus never reprimanded
  him for such thoughtlessness; he was patient with him and considerate of his
  inability to grasp the deeper meanings of the teaching. Jesus well knew that,
  if he once rebuked Philip for asking these annoying questions, he would not
  only wound this honest soul, but such a reprimand would so hurt Philip that he
  would never again feel free to ask questions. Jesus knew that on his worlds of
  space there were untold billions of similar slow-thinking mortals, and he
  wanted to encourage them all to look to him and always to feel free to come to
  him with their questions and problems. After all, Jesus was really more
  interested in Philip's foolish questions than in the sermon he might be
  preaching. Jesus was supremely interested in men, all kinds of men.

  139:5.8 The apostolic steward was not a good public speaker, but he was a very
  persuasive and successful personal worker. He was not easily discouraged; he
  was a plodder and very tenacious in anything he undertook. He had that great
  and rare gift of saying, "Come." When his first convert, Nathaniel, wanted to
  argue about the merits and demerits of Jesus and Nazareth, Philip's effective
  reply was, "Come and see." He was not a dogmatic preacher who exhorted his
  hearers to "Go" -- do this and do that. He met all situations as they arose in
  his work with "Come" -- "come with me; I will show you the way." And that is
  always the effective technique in all forms and phases of teaching. Even
  parents may learn from Philip the better way of saying to their children not
  "Go do this and go do that," but rather, "Come with us while we show and share
  with you the better way."

  139:5.9 The inability of Philip to adapt himself to a new situation was well
  shown when the Greeks came to him at Jerusalem, saying: "Sir, we desire to see
  Jesus." Now Philip would have said to any Jew asking such a question, "Come."
  But these men were foreigners, and Philip could remember no instructions from
  his superiors regarding such matters; so the only thing he could think to do
  was to consult the chief, Andrew, and then they both escorted the inquiring
  Greeks to Jesus. Likewise, when he went into Samaria preaching and baptizing
  believers, as he had been instructed by his Master, he refrained from laying
  hands on his converts in token of their having received the Spirit of Truth.
  This was done by Peter and John, who presently came down from Jerusalem to
  observe his work in behalf of the mother church.

  139:5.10 Philip went on through the trying times of the Master's death,
  participated in the reorganization of the twelve, and was the first to go
  forth to win souls for the kingdom outside of the immediate Jewish ranks,
  being most successful in his work for the Samaritans and in all his subsequent
  labors in behalf of the gospel.



  139:5.11 Philip's wife, who was an efficient member of the women's corps,
  became actively associated with her husband in his evangelistic work after
  their flight from the Jerusalem persecutions. His wife was a fearless woman.
  She stood at the foot of Philip's cross encouraging him to proclaim the glad
  tidings even to his murderers, and when his strength failed, she began the
  recital of the story of salvation by faith in Jesus and was silenced only when
  the irate Jews rushed upon her and stoned her to death. Their eldest daughter,
  Leah, continued their work, later on becoming the renowned prophetess of
  Hierapolis.



  139:5.12 Philip, the onetime steward of the twelve, was a mighty man in the
  kingdom, winning souls wherever he went; and he was finally crucified for his
  faith and buried at Hierapolis.





6. HONEST NATHANIEL



  139:6.1 Nathaniel, the sixth and last of the apostles to be chosen by the
  Master himself, was brought to Jesus by his friend Philip. He had been
  associated in several business enterprises with Philip and, with him, was on
  the way down to see John the Baptist when they encountered Jesus.

  139:6.2 When Nathaniel joined the apostles, he was twenty-five years old and
  was the next to the youngest of the group. He was the youngest of a family of
  seven, was unmarried, and the only support of aged and infirm parents, with
  whom he lived at Cana; his brothers and sister were either married or
  deceased, and none lived there. Nathaniel and Judas Iscariot were the two best
  educated men among the twelve. Nathaniel had thought to become a merchant.



  139:6.3 Jesus did not himself give Nathaniel a nickname, but the twelve soon
  began to speak of him in terms that signified honesty, sincerity. He was
  "without guile." And this was his great virtue; he was both honest and
  sincere. The weakness of his character was his pride; he was very proud of his
  family, his city, his reputation, and his nation, all of which is commendable
  if it is not carried too far. But Nathaniel was inclined to go to extremes
  with his personal prejudices. He was disposed to prejudge individuals in
  accordance with his personal opinions. He was not slow to ask the question,
  even before he had met Jesus, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" But
  Nathaniel was not obstinate, even if he was proud. He was quick to reverse
  himself when he once looked into Jesus' face.

  139:6.4 In many respects Nathaniel was the odd genius of the twelve. He was
  the apostolic philosopher and dreamer, but he was a very practical sort of
  dreamer. He alternated between seasons of profound philosophy and periods of
  rare and droll humor; when in the proper mood, he was probably the best
  storyteller among the twelve. Jesus greatly enjoyed hearing Nathaniel
  discourse on things both serious and frivolous. Nathaniel progressively took
  Jesus and the kingdom more seriously, but never did he take himself seriously.

  139:6.5 The apostles all loved and respected Nathaniel, and he got along with
  them splendidly, excepting Judas Iscariot. Judas did not think Nathaniel took
  his apostleship sufficiently seriously and once had the temerity to go
  secretly to Jesus and lodge complaint against him. Said Jesus: "Judas, watch
  carefully your steps; do not overmagnify your office. Who of us is competent
  to judge his brother? It is not the Father's will that his children should
  partake only of the serious things of life. Let me repeat: I have come that my
  brethren in the flesh may have joy, gladness, and life more abundantly. Go
  then, Judas, and do well that which has been intrusted to you but leave
  Nathaniel, your brother, to give account of himself to God." And the memory of
  this, with that of many similar experiences, long lived in the self-deceiving
  heart of Judas Iscariot.

  139:6.6 Many times, when Jesus was away on the mountain with Peter, James, and
  John, and things were becoming tense and tangled among the apostles, when even
  Andrew was in doubt about what to say to his disconsolate brethren, Nathaniel
  would relieve the tension by a bit of philosophy or a flash of humor; good
  humor, too.

  139:6.7 Nathaniel's duty was to look after the families of the twelve. He was
  often absent from the apostolic councils, for when he heard that sickness or
  anything out of the ordinary had happened to one of his charges, he lost no
  time in getting to that home. The twelve rested securely in the knowledge that
  their families' welfare was safe in the hands of Nathaniel.



  139:6.8 Nathaniel most revered Jesus for his tolerance. He never grew weary of
  contemplating the broadmindedness and generous sympathy of the Son of Man.



  139:6.9 Nathaniel's father (Bartholomew) died shortly after Pentecost, after
  which this apostle went into Mesopotamia and India proclaiming the glad
  tidings of the kingdom and baptizing believers. His brethren never knew what
  became of their onetime philosopher, poet, and humorist. But he also was a
  great man in the kingdom and did much to spread his Master's teachings, even
  though he did not participate in the organization of the subsequent Christian
  church. Nathaniel died in India.



   7. MATTHEW LEVI



  139:7.1 Matthew, the seventh apostle, was chosen by Andrew. Matthew belonged
  to a family of tax gatherers, or publicans, but was himself a customs
  collector in Capernaum, where he lived. He was thirty-one years old and
  married and had four children. He was a man of moderate wealth, the only one
  of any means belonging to the apostolic corps. He was a good business man, a
  good social mixer, and was gifted with the ability to make friends and to get
  along smoothly with a great variety of people.



  139:7.2 Andrew appointed Matthew the financial representative of the apostles.
  In a way he was the fiscal agent and publicity spokesman for the apostolic
  organization. He was a keen judge of human nature and a very efficient
  propagandist. His is a personality difficult to visualize, but he was a very
  earnest disciple and an increasing believer in the mission of Jesus and in the
  certainty of the kingdom. Jesus never gave Levi a nickname, but his fellow
  apostles commonly referred to him as the "money-getter."

  139:7.3 Levi's strong point was his wholehearted devotion to the cause. That
  he, a publican, had been taken in by Jesus and his apostles was the cause for
  overwhelming gratitude on the part of the former revenue collector. However,
  it required some little time for the rest of the apostles, especially Simon
  Zelotes and Judas Iscariot, to become reconciled to the publican's presence in
  their midst. Matthew's weakness was his shortsighted and materialistic
  viewpoint of life. But in all these matters he made great progress as the
  months went by. He, of course, had to be absent from many of the most precious
  seasons of instruction as it was his duty to keep the treasury replenished.

  139:7.4 It was the Master's forgiving disposition which Matthew most
  appreciated. He would never cease to recount that faith only was necessary in
  the business of finding God. He always liked to speak of the kingdom as "this
  business of finding God."



  139:7.5 Though Matthew was a man with a past, he gave an excellent account of
  himself, and as time went on, his associates became proud of the publican's
  performances. He was one of the apostles who made extensive notes on the
  sayings of Jesus, and these notes were used as the basis of Isador's
  subsequent narrative of the sayings and doings of Jesus, which has become
  known as the Gospel according to Matthew.

  139:7.6 The great and useful life of Matthew, the business man and customs
  collector of Capernaum, has been the means of leading thousands upon thousands
  of other business men, public officials, and politicians, down through the
  subsequent ages, also to hear that engaging voice of the Master saying,
  "Follow me." Matthew really was a shrewd politician, but he was intensely
  loyal to Jesus and supremely devoted to the task of seeing that the messengers
  of the coming kingdom were adequately financed.

  139:7.7 The presence of Matthew among the twelve was the means of keeping the
  doors of the kingdom wide open to hosts of downhearted and outcast souls who
  had regarded themselves as long since without the bounds of religious
  consolation. Outcast and despairing men and women flocked to hear Jesus, and
  he never turned one away.



  139:7.8 Matthew received freely tendered offerings from believing disciples
  and the immediate auditors of the Master's teachings, but he never openly
  solicited funds from the multitudes. He did all his financial work in a quiet
  and personal way and raised most of the money among the more substantial class
  of interested believers. He gave practically the whole of his modest fortune
  to the work of the Master and his apostles, but they never knew of this
  generosity, save Jesus, who knew all about it. Matthew hesitated openly to
  contribute to the apostolic funds for fear that Jesus and his associates might
  regard his money as being tainted; so he gave much in the names of other
  believers. During the earlier months, when Matthew knew his presence among
  them was more or less of a trial, he was strongly tempted to let them know
  that his funds often supplied them with their daily bread, but he did not
  yield. When evidence of the disdain of the publican would become manifest,
  Levi would burn to reveal to them his generosity, but always he managed to
  keep still.

  139:7.9 When the funds for the week were short of the estimated requirements,
  Levi would often draw heavily upon his own personal resources. Also, sometimes
  when he became greatly interested in Jesus' teaching, he preferred to remain
  and hear the instruction, even though he knew he must personally make up for
  his failure to solicit the necessary funds. But Levi did so wish that Jesus
  might know that much of the money came from his pocket! He little realized
  that the Master knew all about it. The apostles all died without knowing that
  Matthew was their benefactor to such an extent that, when he went forth to
  proclaim the gospel of the kingdom after the beginning of the persecutions, he
  was practically penniless.



  139:7.10 When these persecutions caused the believers to forsake Jerusalem,
  Matthew journeyed north, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and baptizing
  believers. He was lost to the knowledge of his former apostolic associates,
  but on he went, preaching and baptizing, through Syria, Cappadocia, Galatia,
  Bithynia, and Thrace. And it was in Thrace, at Lysimachia, that certain
  unbelieving Jews conspired with the Roman soldiers to encompass his death. And
  this regenerated publican died triumphant in the faith of a salvation he had
  so surely learned from the teachings of the Master during his recent sojourn
  on earth.





8. THOMAS DIDYMUS



  139:8.1 Thomas was the eighth apostle, and he was chosen by Philip. In later
  times he has become known as "doubting Thomas," but his fellow apostles hardly
  looked upon him as a chronic doubter. True, his was a logical, skeptical type
  of mind, but he had a form of courageous loyalty which forbade those who knew
  him intimately to regard him as a trifling skeptic.

  139:8.2 When Thomas joined the apostles, he was twenty-nine years old, was
  married, and had four children. Formerly he had been a carpenter and stone
  mason, but latterly he had become a fisherman and resided at Tarichea,
  situated on the west bank of the Jordan where it flows out of the Sea of
  Galilee, and he was regarded as the leading citizen of this little village. He
  had little education, but he possessed a keen, reasoning mind and was the son
  of excellent parents, who lived at Tiberias. Thomas had the one truly
  analytical mind of the twelve; he was the real scientist of the apostolic
  group.

  139:8.3 The early home life of Thomas had been unfortunate; his parents were
  not altogether happy in their married life, and this was reflected in Thomas's
  adult experience. He grew up having a very disagreeable and quarrelsome
  disposition. Even his wife was glad to see him join the apostles; she was
  relieved by the thought that her pessimistic husband would be away from home
  most of the time. Thomas also had a streak of suspicion which made it very
  difficult to get along peaceably with him. Peter was very much upset by Thomas
  at first, complaining to his brother, Andrew, that Thomas was "mean, ugly, and
  always suspicious." But the better his associates knew Thomas, the more they
  liked him. They found he was superbly honest and unflinchingly loyal. He was
  perfectly sincere and unquestionably truthful, but he was a natural-born
  faultfinder and had grown up to become a real pessimist. His analytical mind
  had become cursed with suspicion. He was rapidly losing faith in his fellow
  men when he became associated with the twelve and thus came in contact with
  the noble character of Jesus. This association with the Master began at once
  to transform Thomas's whole disposition and to effect great changes in his
  mental reactions to his fellow men.

  139:8.4 Thomas's great strength was his superb analytical mind coupled with
  his unflinching courage -- when he had once made up his mind. His great
  weakness was his suspicious doubting, which he never fully overcame throughout
  his whole lifetime in the flesh.

  139:8.5 In the organization of the twelve Thomas was assigned to arrange and
  manage the itinerary, and he was an able director of the work and movements of
  the apostolic corps. He was a good executive, an excellent businessman, but he
  was handicapped by his many moods; he was one man one day and another man the
  next. He was inclined toward melancholic brooding when he joined the apostles,
  but contact with Jesus and the apostles largely cured him of this morbid
  introspection.

  139:8.6 Jesus enjoyed Thomas very much and had many long, personal talks with
  him. His presence among the apostles was a great comfort to all honest
  doubters and encouraged many troubled minds to come into the kingdom, even if
  they could not wholly understand everything about the spiritual and
  philosophic phases of the teachings of Jesus. Thomas's membership in the
  twelve was a standing declaration that Jesus loved even honest doubters.

  139:8.7 The other apostles held Jesus in reverence because of some special and
  outstanding trait of his replete personality, but Thomas revered his Master
  because of his superbly balanced character. Increasingly Thomas admired and
  honored one who was so lovingly merciful yet so inflexibly just and fair; so
  firm but never obstinate; so calm but never indifferent; so helpful and so
  sympathetic but never meddlesome or dictatorial; so strong but at the same
  time so gentle; so positive but never rough or rude; so tender but never
  vacillating; so pure and innocent but at the same time so virile, aggressive,
  and forceful; so truly courageous but never rash or foolhardy; such a lover of
  nature but so free from all tendency to revere nature; so humorous and so
  playful, but so free from levity and frivolity. It was this matchless symmetry
  of personality that so charmed Thomas. He probably enjoyed the highest
  intellectual understanding and personality appreciation of Jesus of any of the
  twelve.



  139:8.8 In the councils of the twelve Thomas was always cautious, advocating a
  policy of safety first, but if his conservatism was voted down or overruled,
  he was always the first fearlessly to move out in execution of the program
  decided upon. Again and again would he stand out against some project as being
  foolhardy and presumptuous; he would debate to the bitter end, but when Andrew
  would put the proposition to a vote, and after the twelve would elect to do
  that which he had so strenuously opposed, Thomas was the first to say, "Let's
  go!" He was a good loser. He did not hold grudges nor nurse wounded feelings.
  Time and again did he oppose letting Jesus expose himself to danger, but when
  the Master would decide to take such risks, always was it Thomas who rallied
  the apostles with his courageous words, "Come on, comrades, let's go and die
  with him."

  139:8.9 Thomas was in some respects like Philip; he also wanted "to be shown,"
  but his outward expressions of doubt were based on entirely different
  intellectual operations. Thomas was analytical, not merely skeptical. As far
  as personal physical courage was concerned, he was one of the bravest among
  the twelve.



  139:8.10 Thomas had some very bad days; he was blue and downcast at times. The
  loss of his twin sister when he was nine years old had occasioned him much
  youthful sorrow and had added to his temperamental problems of later life.
  When Thomas would become despondent, sometimes it was Nathaniel who helped him
  to recover, sometimes Peter, and not infrequently one of the Alpheus twins.
  When he was most depressed, unfortunately he always tried to avoid coming in
  direct contact with Jesus. But the Master knew all about this and had an
  understanding sympathy for his apostle when he was thus afflicted with
  depression and harassed by doubts.

  139:8.11 Sometimes Thomas would get permission from Andrew to go off by
  himself for a day or two. But he soon learned that such a course was not wise;
  he early found that it was best, when he was downhearted, to stick close to
  his work and to remain near his associates. But no matter what happened in his
  emotional life, he kept right on being an apostle. When the time actually came
  to move forward, it was always Thomas who said, "Let's go!"

  139:8.12 Thomas is the great example of a human being who has doubts, faces
  them, and wins. He had a great mind; he was no carping critic. He was a
  logical thinker; he was the acid test of Jesus and his fellow apostles. If
  Jesus and his work had not been genuine, it could not have held a man like
  Thomas from the start to the finish. He had a keen and sure sense of fact. At
  the first appearance of fraud or deception Thomas would have forsaken them
  all. Scientists may not fully understand all about Jesus and his work on
  earth, but there lived and worked with the Master and his human associates a
  man whose mind was that of a true scientist -- Thomas Didymus -- and he
  believed in Jesus of Nazareth.



  139:8.13 Thomas had a trying time during the days of the trial and
  crucifixion. He was for a season in the depths of despair, but he rallied his
  courage, stuck to the apostles, and was present with them to welcome Jesus on
  the Sea of Galilee. For a while he succumbed to his doubting depression but
  eventually rallied his faith and courage. He gave wise counsel to the apostles
  after Pentecost and, when persecution scattered the believers, went to Cyprus,
  Crete, the North African coast, and Sicily, preaching the glad tidings of the
  kingdom and baptizing believers. And Thomas continued preaching and baptizing
  until he was apprehended by the agents of the Roman government and was put to
  death in Malta. Just a few weeks before his death he had begun the writing of
  the life and teachings of Jesus.





9 and 10. JAMES AND JUDAS ALPHEUS



  139:9.1 James and Judas the sons of Alpheus, the twin fishermen living near
  Kheresa, were the ninth and tenth apostles and were chosen by James and John
  Zebedee. They were twenty-six years old and married, James having three
  children, Judas two.



  139:9.2 There is not much to be said about these two commonplace fisherfolk.
  They loved their Master and Jesus loved them, but they never interrupted his
  discourses with questions. They understood very little about the philosophical
  discussions or the theological debates of their fellow apostles, but they
  rejoiced to find themselves numbered among such a group of mighty men. These
  two men were almost identical in personal appearance, mental characteristics,
  and extent of spiritual perception. What may be said of one should be recorded
  of the other.

  139:9.3 Andrew assigned them to the work of policing the multitudes. They were
  the chief ushers of the preaching hours and, in fact, the general servants and
  errand boys of the twelve. They helped Philip with the supplies, they carried
  money to the families for Nathaniel, and always were they ready to lend a
  helping hand to any one of the apostles.

  139:9.4 The multitudes of the common people were greatly encouraged to find
  two like themselves honored with places among the apostles. By their very
  acceptance as apostles these mediocre twins were the means of bringing a host
  of fainthearted believers into the kingdom. And, too, the common people took
  more kindly to the idea of being directed and managed by official ushers who
  were very much like themselves.

  139:9.5 James and Judas, who were also called Thaddeus and Lebbeus, had
  neither strong points nor weak points. The nicknames given them by the
  disciples were good-natured designations of mediocrity. They were "the least
  of all the apostles"; they knew it and felt cheerful about it.



  139:9.6 James Alpheus especially loved Jesus because of the Master's
  simplicity. These twins could not comprehend the mind of Jesus, but they did
  grasp the sympathetic bond between themselves and the heart of their Master.
  Their minds were not of a high order; they might even reverently be called
  stupid, but they had a real experience in their spiritual natures. They
  believed in Jesus; they were sons of God and fellows of the kingdom.

  139:9.7 Judas Alpheus was drawn toward Jesus because of the Master's
  unostentatious humility. Such humility linked with such personal dignity made
  a great appeal to Judas. The fact that Jesus would always enjoin silence
  regarding his unusual acts made a great impression on this simple child of
  nature.



  139:9.8 The twins were good-natured, simple-minded helpers, and everybody
  loved them. Jesus welcomed these young men of one talent to positions of honor
  on his personal staff in the kingdom because there are untold millions of
  other such simple and fear-ridden souls on the worlds of space whom he
  likewise wishes to welcome into active and believing fellowship with himself
  and his outpoured Spirit of Truth. Jesus does not look down upon littleness,
  only upon evil and sin. James and Judas were little, but they were also
  faithful. They were simple and ignorant, but they were also big-hearted, kind,
  and generous.

  139:9.9 And how gratefully proud were these humble men on that day when the
  Master refused to accept a certain rich man as an evangelist unless he would
  sell his goods and help the poor. When the people heard this and beheld the
  twins among his counselors, they knew of a certainty that Jesus was no
  respecter of persons. But only a divine institution -- the kingdom of heaven
  -- could ever have been built upon such a mediocre human foundation!

  139:9.10 Only once or twice in all their association with Jesus did the twins
  venture to ask questions in public. Judas was once intrigued into asking Jesus
  a question when the Master had talked about revealing himself openly to the
  world. He felt a little disappointed that there were to be no more secrets
  among the twelve, and he made bold to ask: "But, Master, when you do thus
  declare yourself to the world, how will you favor us with special
  manifestations of your goodness?"



  139:9.11 The twins served faithfully until the end, until the dark days of
  trial, crucifixion, and despair. They never lost their heart faith in Jesus,
  and (save John) they were the first to believe in his resurrection. But they
  could not comprehend the establishment of the kingdom. Soon after their Master
  was crucified, they returned to their families and nets; their work was done.
  They had not the ability to go on in the more complex battles of the kingdom.
  But they lived and died conscious of having been honored and blessed with four
  years of close and personal association with a Son of God, the sovereign maker
  of a universe.





11. SIMON THE ZEALOT



  139:11.1 Simon Zelotes, the eleventh apostle, was chosen by Simon Peter. He
  was an able man of good ancestry and lived with his family at Capernaum. He
  was twenty-eight years old when he became attached to the apostles. He was a
  fiery agitator and was also a man who spoke much without thinking. He had been
  a merchant in Capernaum before he turned his entire attention to the patriotic
  organization of the Zealots.



  139:11.2 Simon Zelotes was given charge of the diversions and relaxation of
  the apostolic group, and he was a very efficient organizer of the play life
  and recreational activities of the twelve.

  139:11.3 Simon's strength was his inspirational loyalty. When the apostles
  found a man or woman who floundered in indecision about entering the kingdom,
  they would send for Simon. It usually required only about fifteen minutes for
  this enthusiastic advocate of salvation through faith in God to settle all
  doubts and remove all indecision, to see a new soul born into the "liberty of
  faith and the joy of salvation."

  139:11.4 Simon's great weakness was his material-mindedness. He could not
  quickly change himself from a Jewish nationalist to a spiritually minded
  internationalist. Four years was too short a time in which to make such an
  intellectual and emotional transformation, but Jesus was always patient with
  him.



  139:11.5 The one thing about Jesus which Simon so much admired was the
  Master's calmness, his assurance, poise, and inexplicable composure.



  139:11.6 Although Simon was a rabid revolutionist, a fearless firebrand of
  agitation, he gradually subdued his fiery nature until he became a powerful
  and effective preacher of "Peace on earth and good will among men." Simon was
  a great debater; he did like to argue. And when it came to dealing with the
  legalistic minds of the educated Jews or the intellectual quibblings of the
  Greeks, the task was always assigned to Simon.

  139:11.7 He was a rebel by nature and an iconoclast by training, but Jesus won
  him for the higher concepts of the kingdom of heaven. He had always identified
  himself with the party of protest, but he now joined the party of progress,
  unlimited and eternal progression of spirit and truth. Simon was a man of
  intense loyalties and warm personal devotions, and he did profoundly love
  Jesus.



  139:11.8 Jesus was not afraid to identify himself with business men, laboring
  men, optimists, pessimists, philosophers, skeptics, publicans, politicians,
  and patriots.



  139:11.9 The Master had many talks with Simon, but he never fully succeeded in
  making an internationalist out of this ardent Jewish nationalist. Jesus often
  told Simon that it was proper to want to see the social, economic, and
  political orders improved, but he would always add: "That is not the business
  of the kingdom of heaven. We must be dedicated to the doing of the Father's
  will. Our business is to be ambassadors of a spiritual government on high, and
  we must not immediately concern ourselves with aught but the representation of
  the will and character of the divine Father who stands at the head of the
  government whose credentials we bear." It was all difficult for Simon to
  comprehend, but gradually he began to grasp something of the meaning of the
  Master's teaching.



  139:11.10 After the dispersion because of the Jerusalem persecutions, Simon
  went into temporary retirement. He was literally crushed. As a nationalist
  patriot he had surrendered in deference to Jesus' teachings; now all was lost.
  He was in despair, but in a few years he rallied his hopes and went forth to
  proclaim the gospel of the kingdom.

  139:11.11 He went to Alexandria and, after working up the Nile, penetrated
  into the heart of Africa, everywhere preaching the gospel of Jesus and
  baptizing believers. Thus he labored until he was an old man and feeble. And
  he died and was buried in the heart of Africa.





12. JUDAS ISCARIOT



  139:12.1 Judas Iscariot, the twelfth apostle, was chosen by Nathaniel. He was
  born in Kerioth, a small town in southern Judea. When he was a lad, his
  parents moved to Jericho, where he lived and had been employed in his father's
  various business enterprises until he became interested in the preaching and
  work of John the Baptist. Judas' parents were Sadducees, and when their son
  joined John's disciples, they disowned him.



  139:12.2 When Nathaniel met Judas at Tarichea, he was seeking employment with
  a fish-drying enterprise at the lower end of the Sea of Galilee. He was thirty
  years of age and unmarried when he joined the apostles. He was probably the
  best-educated man among the twelve and the only Judean in the Master's
  apostolic family. Judas had no outstanding trait of personal strength, though
  he had many outwardly appearing traits of culture and habits of training. He
  was a good thinker but not always a truly honest thinker. Judas did not really
  understand himself; he was not really sincere in dealing with himself.

  139:12.3 Andrew appointed Judas treasurer of the twelve, a position which he
  was eminently fitted to hold, and up to the time of the betrayal of his Master
  he discharged the responsibilities of his office honestly, faithfully, and
  most efficiently.



  139:12.4 There was no special trait about Jesus which Judas admired above the
  generally attractive and exquisitely charming personality of the Master. Judas
  was never able to rise above his Judean prejudices against his Galilean
  associates; he would even criticize in his mind many things about Jesus. Him
  whom eleven of the apostles looked upon as the perfect man, as the "one
  altogether lovely and the chiefest among ten thousand," this self-satisfied
  Judean often dared to criticize in his own heart. He really entertained the
  notion that Jesus was timid and somewhat afraid to assert his own power and
  authority.



  139:12.5 Judas was a good business man. It required tact, ability, and
  patience, as well as painstaking devotion, to manage the financial affairs of
  such an idealist as Jesus, to say nothing of wrestling with the helter-skelter
  business methods of some of his apostles. Judas really was a great executive,
  a farseeing and able financier. And he was a stickler for organization. None
  of the twelve ever criticized Judas. As far as they could see, Judas Iscariot
  was a matchless treasurer, a learned man, a loyal (though sometimes critical)
  apostle, and in every sense of the word a great success. The apostles loved
  Judas; he was really one of them. He must have believed in Jesus, but we doubt
  whether he really loved the Master with a whole heart. The case of Judas
  illustrates the truthfulness of that saying: "There is a way that seems right
  to a man, but the end thereof is death." It is altogether possible to fall
  victim to the peaceful deception of pleasant adjustment to the paths of sin
  and death. Be assured that Judas was always financially loyal to his Master
  and his fellow apostles. Money could never have been the motive for his
  betrayal of the Master.

  139:12.6 Judas was an only son of unwise parents. When very young, he was
  pampered and petted; he was a spoiled child. As he grew up, he had exaggerated
  ideas about his self-importance. He was a poor loser. He had loose and
  distorted ideas about fairness; he was given to the indulgence of hate and
  suspicion. He was an expert at misinterpretation of the words and acts of his
  friends. All through his life Judas had cultivated the habit of getting even
  with those whom he fancied had mistreated him. His sense of values and
  loyalties was defective.



  139:12.7 To Jesus, Judas was a faith adventure. From the beginning the Master
  fully understood the weakness of this apostle and well knew the dangers of
  admitting him to fellowship. But it is the nature of the Sons of God to give
  every created being a full and equal chance for salvation and survival. Jesus
  wanted not only the mortals of this world but the onlookers of innumerable
  other worlds to know that, when doubts exist as to the sincerity and
  wholeheartedness of a creature's devotion to the kingdom, it is the invariable
  practice of the Judges of men fully to receive the doubtful candidate. The
  door of eternal life is wide open to all; "whosoever will may come"; there are
  no restrictions or qualifications save the faith of the one who comes.

  139:12.8 This is just the reason why Jesus permitted Judas to go on to the
  very end, always doing everything possible to transform and save this weak and
  confused apostle. But when light is not honestly received and lived up to, it
  tends to become darkness within the soul. Judas grew intellectually regarding
  Jesus' teachings about the kingdom, but he did not make progress in the
  acquirement of spiritual character as did the other apostles. He failed to
  make satisfactory personal progress in spiritual experience.



  139:12.9 Judas became increasingly a brooder over personal disappointment, and
  finally he became a victim of resentment. His feelings had been many times
  hurt, and he grew abnormally suspicious of his best friends, even of the
  Master. Presently he became obsessed with the idea of getting even, anything
  to avenge himself, yes, even betrayal of his associates and his Master.

  139:12.10 But these wicked and dangerous ideas did not take definite shape
  until the day when a grateful woman broke an expensive box of incense at
  Jesus' feet. This seemed wasteful to Judas, and when his public protest was so
  sweepingly disallowed by Jesus right there in the hearing of all, it was too
  much. That event determined the mobilization of all the accumulated hate,
  hurt, malice, prejudice, jealousy, and revenge of a lifetime, and he made up
  his mind to get even with he knew not whom; but he crystallized all the evil
  of his nature upon the one innocent person in all the sordid drama of his
  unfortunate life just because Jesus happened to be the chief actor in the
  episode which marked his passing from the progressive kingdom of light into
  that self-chosen domain of darkness.

  139:12.11 The Master many times, both privately and publicly, had warned Judas
  that he was slipping, but divine warnings are usually useless in dealing with
  embittered human nature. Jesus did everything possible, consistent with man's
  moral freedom, to prevent Judas's choosing to go the wrong way. The great test
  finally came. The son of resentment failed; he yielded to the sour and sordid
  dictates of a proud and vengeful mind of exaggerated self-importance and
  swiftly plunged on down into confusion, despair, and depravity.

  139:12.12 Judas then entered into the base and shameful intrigue to betray his
  Lord and Master and quickly carried the nefarious scheme into effect. During
  the outworking of his anger-conceived plans of traitorous betrayal, he
  experienced moments of regret and shame, and in these lucid intervals he
  faint-heartedly conceived, as a defense in his own mind, the idea that Jesus
  might possibly exert his power and deliver himself at the last moment.

  139:12.13 When the sordid and sinful business was all over, this renegade
  mortal, who thought lightly of selling his friend for thirty pieces of silver
  to satisfy his long-nursed craving for revenge, rushed out and committed the
  final act in the drama of fleeing from the realities of mortal existence --
  suicide.

  139:12.14 The eleven apostles were horrified, stunned. Jesus regarded the
  betrayer only with pity. The worlds have found it difficult to forgive Judas,
  and his name has become eschewed throughout a far-flung universe.


PAPER 140


 THE ORDINATION OF THE TWELVE



  140:0.1 JUST before noon on Sunday, January 12, A.D. 27, Jesus called the
  apostles together for their ordination as public preachers of the gospel of
  the kingdom. The twelve were expecting to be called almost any day; so this
  morning they did not go out far from the shore to fish. Several of them were
  lingering near the shore repairing their nets and tinkering with their fishing
  paraphernalia.

  140:0.2 As Jesus started down the seashore calling the apostles, he first
  hailed Andrew and Peter, who were fishing near the shore; next he signaled to
  James and John, who were in a boat near by, visiting with their father,
  Zebedee, and mending their nets. Two by two he gathered up the other apostles,
  and when he had assembled all twelve, he journeyed with them to the highlands
  north of Capernaum, where he proceeded to instruct them in preparation for
  their formal ordination.

  140:0.3 For once all twelve of the apostles were silent; even Peter was in a
  reflective mood. At last the long-waited-for hour had come! They were going
  apart with the Master to participate in some sort of solemn ceremony of
  personal consecration and collective dedication to the sacred work of
  representing their Master in the proclamation of the coming of his Father's
  kingdom.





1. PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTION

  140:1.1 Before the formal ordination service Jesus spoke to the twelve as they
  were seated about him: "My brethren, this hour of the kingdom has come. I have
  brought you apart here with me to present you to the Father as ambassadors of
  the kingdom. Some of you heard me speak of this kingdom in the synagogue when
  you first were called. Each of you has learned more about the Father's kingdom
  since you have been with me working in the cities around about the Sea of
  Galilee. But just now I have something more to tell you concerning this
  kingdom.

  140:1.2 "The new kingdom which my Father is about to set up in the hearts of
  his earth children is to be an everlasting dominion. There shall be no end of
  this rule of my Father in the hearts of those who desire to do his divine
  will. I declare to you that my Father is not the God of Jew or gentile. Many
  shall come from the east and from the west to sit down with us in the Father's
  kingdom, while many of the children of Abraham will refuse to enter this new
  brotherhood of the rule of the Father's spirit in the hearts of the children
  of men.

  140:1.3 "The power of this kingdom shall consist, not in the strength of
  armies nor in the might of riches, but rather in the glory of the divine
  spirit that shall come to teach the minds and rule the hearts of the reborn
  citizens of this heavenly kingdom, the sons of God. This is the brotherhood of
  love wherein righteousness reigns, and whose battle cry shall be: Peace on
  earth and good will to all men. This kingdom, which you are so soon to go
  forth proclaiming, is the desire of the good men of all ages, the hope of all
  the earth, and the fulfillment of the wise promises of all the prophets.

  140:1.4 "But for you, my children, and for all others who would follow you
  into this kingdom, there is set a severe test. Faith alone will pass you
  through its portals, but you must bring forth the fruits of my Father's spirit
  if you would continue to ascend in the progressive life of the divine
  fellowship. Verily, verily, I say to you, not every one who says, `Lord,
  Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but rather he who does the will of
  my Father who is in heaven.

  140:1.5 "Your message to the world shall be: Seek first the kingdom of God and
  his righteousness, and in finding these, all other things essential to eternal
  survival shall be secured therewith. And now would I make it plain to you that
  this kingdom of my Father will not come with an outward show of power or with
  unseemly demonstration. You are not to go hence in the proclamation of the
  kingdom, saying, `it is here' or `it is there,' for this kingdom of which you
  preach is God within you.

  140:1.6 "Whosoever would become great in my Father's kingdom shall become a
  minister to all; and whosoever would be first among you, let him become the
  server of his brethren. But when you are once truly received as citizens in
  the heavenly kingdom, you are no longer servants but sons, sons of the living
  God. And so shall this kingdom progress in the world until it shall break down
  every barrier and bring all men to know my Father and believe in the saving
  truth which I have come to declare. Even now is the kingdom at hand, and some
  of you will not die until you have seen the reign of God come in great power.

  140:1.7 "And this which your eyes now behold, this small beginning of twelve
  commonplace men, shall multiply and grow until eventually the whole earth
  shall be filled with the praise of my Father. And it will not be so much by
  the words you speak as by the lives you live that men will know you have been
  with me and have learned of the realities of the kingdom. And while I would
  lay no grievous burdens upon your minds, I am about to put upon your souls the
  solemn responsibility of representing me in the world when I shall presently
  leave you as I now represent my Father in this life which I am living in the
  flesh." And when he had finished speaking, he stood up.





2. THE ORDINATION

  140:2.1 Jesus now instructed the twelve mortals who had just listened to his
  declaration concerning the kingdom to kneel in a circle about him. Then the
  Master placed his hands upon the head of each apostle, beginning with Judas
  Iscariot and ending with Andrew. When he had blessed them, he extended his
  hands and prayed:

  140:2.2 "My Father, I now bring to you these men, my messengers. From among
  our children on earth I have chosen these twelve to go forth to represent me
  as I came forth to represent you. Love them and be with them as you have loved
  and been with me. And now, my Father, give these men wisdom as I place all the
  affairs of the coming kingdom in their hands. And I would, if it is your will,
  tarry on earth a time to help them in their labors for the kingdom. And again,
  my Father, I thank you for these men, and I commit them to your keeping while
  I go on to finish the work you have given me to do."

  140:2.3 When Jesus had finished praying, the apostles remained each man bowed
  in his place. And it was many minutes before even Peter dared lift up his eyes
  to look upon the Master. One by one they embraced Jesus, but no man said
  aught. A great silence pervaded the place while a host of celestial beings
  looked down upon this solemn and sacred scene -- the Creator of a universe
  placing the affairs of the divine brotherhood of man under the direction of
  human minds.





3. THE ORDINATION SERMON

  140:3.1 Then Jesus spoke, saying: "Now that you are ambassadors of my Father's
  kingdom, you have thereby become a class of men separate and distinct from all
  other men on earth. You are not now as men among men but as the enlightened
  citizens of another and heavenly country among the ignorant creatures of this
  dark world. It is not enough that you live as you were before this hour, but
  henceforth must you live as those who have tasted the glories of a better life
  and have been sent back to earth as ambassadors of the Sovereign of that new
  and better world. Of the teacher more is expected than of the pupil; of the
  master more is exacted than of the servant. Of the citizens of the heavenly
  kingdom more is required than of the citizens of the earthly rule. Some of the
  things which I am about to say to you may seem hard, but you have elected to
  represent me in the world even as I now represent the Father; and as my agents
  on earth you will be obligated to abide by those teachings and practices which
  are reflective of my ideals of mortal living on the worlds of space, and which
  I exemplify in my earth life of revealing the Father who is in heaven.

  140:3.2 "I send you forth to proclaim liberty to the spiritual captives, joy
  to those in the bondage of fear, and to heal the sick in accordance with the
  will of my Father in heaven. When you find my children in distress, speak
  encouragingly to them, saying:

  140:3.3 "Happy are the poor in spirit, the humble, for theirs are the
  treasures of the kingdom of heaven.

  140:3.4 "Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they
  shall be filled.

  140:3.5 "Happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  140:3.6 "Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

  140:3.7 "And even so speak to my children these further words of spiritual
  comfort and promise:

  140:3.8 "Happy are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Happy are they
  who weep, for they shall receive the spirit of rejoicing.

  140:3.9 "Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

  140:3.10 "Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

  140:3.11 "Happy are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for
  theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Happy are you when men shall revile you and
  persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely. Rejoice
  and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

  140:3.12 "My brethren, as I send you forth, you are the salt of the earth,
  salt with a saving savor. But if this salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall
  it be salted? It is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden
  under foot of men.

  140:3.13 "You are the light of the world. A city set upon a hill cannot be
  hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a
  candlestick; and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so
  shine before men that they may see your good works and be led to glorify your
  Father who is in heaven.

  140:3.14 "I am sending you out into the world to represent me and to act as
  ambassadors of my Father's kingdom, and as you go forth to proclaim the glad
  tidings, put your trust in the Father whose messengers you are. Do not
  forcibly resist injustice; put not your trust in the arm of the flesh. If your
  neighbor smites you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Be willing
  to suffer injustice rather than to go to law among yourselves. In kindness and
  with mercy minister to all who are in distress and in need.

  140:3.15 "I say to you: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
  bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you. And
  whatsoever you believe that I would do to men, do you also to them.

  140:3.16 "Your Father in heaven makes the sun to shine on the evil as well as
  upon the good; likewise he sends rain on the just and the unjust. You are the
  sons of God; even more, you are now the ambassadors of my Father's kingdom. Be
  merciful, even as God is merciful, and in the eternal future of the kingdom
  you shall be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.

  140:3.17 "You are commissioned to save men, not to judge them. At the end of
  your earth life you will all expect mercy; therefore do I require of you
  during your mortal life that you show mercy to all of your brethren in the
  flesh. Make not the mistake of trying to pluck a mote out of your brother's
  eye when there is a beam in your own eye. Having first cast the beam out of
  your own eye, you can the better see to cast the mote out of your brother's
  eye.

  140:3.18 "Discern the truth clearly; live the righteous life fearlessly; and
  so shall you be my apostles and my Father's ambassadors. You have heard it
  said: `If the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the pit.' If you
  would guide others into the kingdom, you must yourselves walk in the clear
  light of living truth. In all the business of the kingdom I exhort you to show
  just judgment and keen wisdom. Present not that which is holy to dogs, neither
  cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample your gems under foot and turn
  to rend you.

  140:3.19 "I warn you against false prophets who will come to you in sheep's
  clothing, while on the inside they are as ravening wolves. By their fruits you
  shall know them. Do men gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Even
  so, every good tree brings forth good fruit, but the corrupt tree bears evil
  fruit. A good tree cannot yield evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce
  good fruit. Every tree that does not bring forth good fruit is presently hewn
  down and cast into the fire. In gaining an entrance into the kingdom of
  heaven, it is the motive that counts. My Father looks into the hearts of men
  and judges by their inner longings and their sincere intentions.

  140:3.20 "In the great day of the kingdom judgment, many will say to me, `Did
  we not prophesy in your name and by your name do many wonderful works?' But I
  will be compelled to say to them, `I never knew you; depart from me you who
  are false teachers.' But every one who hears this charge and sincerely
  executes his commission to represent me before men even as I have represented
  my Father to you, shall find an abundant entrance into my service and into the
  kingdom of the heavenly Father."



  140:3.21 Never before had the apostles heard Jesus speak in this way, for he
  had talked to them as one having supreme authority. They came down from the
  mountain about sundown, but no man asked Jesus a question.





4. YOU ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH

  140:4.1 The so-called "Sermon on the Mount" is not the gospel of Jesus. It
  does contain much helpful instruction, but it was Jesus' ordination charge to
  the twelve apostles. It was the Master's personal commission to those who were
  to go on preaching the gospel and aspiring to represent him in the world of
  men even as he was so eloquently and perfectly representative of his Father.



  140:4.2 "You are the salt of the earth, salt with a saving savor. But if this
  salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is henceforth good
  for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men."

  140:4.3 In Jesus' time salt was precious. It was even used for money. The
  modern word "salary" is derived from salt. Salt not only flavors food, but it
  is also a preservative. It makes other things more tasty, and thus it serves
  by being spent.



  140:4.4 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.
  Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick;
  and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before
  men that they may see your good works and be led to glorify your Father who is
  in heaven."

  140:4.5 While light dispels darkness, it can also be so "blinding" as to
  confuse and frustrate. We are admonished to let our light so shine that our
  fellows will be guided into new and godly paths of enhanced living. Our light
  should so shine as not to attract attention to self. Even one's vocation can
  be utilized as an effective "reflector" for the dissemination of this light of
  life.

  140:4.6 Strong characters are not derived from not doing wrong but rather from
  actually doing right. Unselfishness is the badge of human greatness. The
  highest levels of self-realization are attained by worship and service. The
  happy and effective person is motivated, not by fear of wrongdoing, but by
  love of right doing.



  140:4.7 "By their fruits you shall know them." Personality is basically
  changeless; that which changes -- grows -- is the moral character. The major
  error of modern religions is negativism. The tree which bears no fruit is
  "hewn down and cast into the fire." Moral worth cannot be derived from mere
  repression -- obeying the injunction "Thou shalt not." Fear and shame are
  unworthy motivations for religious living. Religion is valid only when it
  reveals the fatherhood of God and enhances the brotherhood of men.



  140:4.8 An effective philosophy of living is formed by a combination of cosmic
  insight and the total of one's emotional reactions to the social and economic
  environment. Remember: While inherited urges cannot be fundamentally modified,
  emotional responses to such urges can be changed; therefore the moral nature
  can be modified, character can be improved. In the strong character emotional
  responses are integrated and co-ordinated, and thus is produced a unified
  personality. Deficient unification weakens the moral nature and engenders
  unhappiness.

  140:4.9 Without a worthy goal, life becomes aimless and unprofitable, and much
  unhappiness results. Jesus' discourse at the ordination of the twelve
  constitutes a master philosophy of life. Jesus exhorted his followers to
  exercise experiential faith. He admonished them not to depend on mere
  intellectual assent, credulity, and established authority.

  140:4.10 Education should be a technique of learning (discovering) the better
  methods of gratifying our natural and inherited urges, and happiness is the
  resulting total of these enhanced techniques of emotional satisfactions.
  Happiness is little dependent on environment, though pleasing surroundings may
  greatly contribute thereto.



  140:4.11 Every mortal really craves to be a complete person, to be perfect
  even as the Father in heaven is perfect, and such attainment is possible
  because in the last analysis the "universe is truly fatherly."





5. FATHERLY AND BROTHERLY LOVE

  140:5.1 From the Sermon on the Mount to the discourse of the Last Supper,
  Jesus taught his followers to manifest fatherly love rather than brotherly
  love. Brotherly love would love your neighbor as you love yourself, and that
  would be adequate fulfillment of the "golden rule." But fatherly affection
  would require that you should love your fellow mortals as Jesus loves you.

  140:5.2 Jesus loves mankind with a dual affection. He lived on earth as a
  twofold personality -- human and divine. As the Son of God he loves man with a
  fatherly love -- he is man's Creator, his universe Father. As the Son of Man,
  Jesus loves mortals as a brother -- he was truly a man among men.

  140:5.3 Jesus did not expect his followers to achieve an impossible
  manifestation of brotherly love, but he did expect them to so strive to be
  like God -- to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect -- that they
  could begin to look upon man as God looks upon his creatures and therefore
  could begin to love men as God loves them -- to show forth the beginnings of a
  fatherly affection. In the course of these exhortations to the twelve
  apostles, Jesus sought to reveal this new concept of fatherly love as it is
  related to certain emotional attitudes concerned in making numerous
  environmental social adjustments.



  140:5.4 The Master introduced this momentous discourse by calling attention to
  four faith attitudes as the prelude to the subsequent portrayal of his four
  transcendent and supreme reactions of fatherly love in contrast to the
  limitations of mere brotherly love.

  140:5.5 He first talked about those who were poor in spirit, hungered after
  righteousness, endured meekness, and who were pure in heart. Such spirit-
  discerning mortals could be expected to attain such levels of divine
  selflessness as to be able to attempt the amazing exercise of fatherly
  affection; that even as mourners they would be empowered to show mercy,
  promote peace, and endure persecutions, and throughout all of these trying
  situations to love even unlovely mankind with a fatherly love. A father's
  affection can attain levels of devotion that immeasurably transcend a
  brother's affection.

  140:5.6 The faith and the love of these beatitudes strengthen moral character
  and create happiness. Fear and anger weaken character and destroy happiness.
  This momentous sermon started out upon the note of happiness.



  140:5.7 1. "Happy are the poor in spirit -- the humble." To a child, happiness
  is the satisfaction of immediate pleasure craving. The adult is willing to sow
  seeds of self-denial in order to reap subsequent harvests of augmented
  happiness. In Jesus' times and since, happiness has all too often been
  associated with the idea of the possession of wealth. In the story of the
  Pharisee and the publican praying in the temple, the one felt rich in spirit
  -- egotistical; the other felt "poor in spirit" -- humble. One was self-
  sufficient; the other was teachable and truth-seeking. The poor in spirit seek
  for goals of spiritual wealth -- for God. And such seekers after truth do not
  have to wait for rewards in a distant future; they are rewarded now. They find
  the kingdom of heaven within their own hearts, and they experience such
  happiness now.



  140:5.8 2. "Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they
  shall be filled." Only those who feel poor in spirit will ever hunger for
  righteousness. Only the humble seek for divine strength and crave spiritual
  power. But it is most dangerous to knowingly engage in spiritual fasting in
  order to improve one's appetite for spiritual endowments. Physical fasting
  becomes dangerous after four or five days; one is apt to lose all desire for
  food. Prolonged fasting, either physical or spiritual, tends to destroy
  hunger.

  140:5.9 Experiential righteousness is a pleasure, not a duty. Jesus'
  righteousness is a dynamic love -- fatherly-brotherly affection. It is not the
  negative or thou-shalt-not type of righteousness. How could one ever hunger
  for something negative -- something "not to do"?



  140:5.10 It is not so easy to teach a child mind these first two of the
  beatitudes, but the mature mind should grasp their significance.



  140:5.11 3. "Happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Genuine
  meekness has no relation to fear. It is rather an attitude of man co-operating
  with God -- "Your will be done." It embraces patience and forbearance and is
  motivated by an unshakable faith in a lawful and friendly universe. It masters
  all temptations to rebel against the divine leading. Jesus was the ideal meek
  man of Urantia, and he inherited a vast universe.



  140:5.12 4. "Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Spiritual
  purity is not a negative quality, except that it does lack suspicion and
  revenge. In discussing purity, Jesus did not intend to deal exclusively with
  human sex attitudes. He referred more to that faith which man should have in
  his fellow man; that faith which a parent has in his child, and which enables
  him to love his fellows even as a father would love them. A father's love need
  not pamper, and it does not condone evil, but it is always anticynical.
  Fatherly love has singleness of purpose, and it always looks for the best in
  man; that is the attitude of a true parent.

  140:5.13 To see God -- by faith -- means to acquire true spiritual insight.
  And spiritual insight enhances Adjuster guidance, and these in the end augment
  God-consciousness. And when you know the Father, you are confirmed in the
  assurance of divine sonship, and you can increasingly love each of your
  brothers in the flesh, not only as a brother -- with brotherly love -- but
  also as a father -- with fatherly affection.

  140:5.14 It is easy to teach this admonition even to a child. Children are
  naturally trustful, and parents should see to it that they do not lose that
  simple faith. In dealing with children, avoid all deception and refrain from
  suggesting suspicion. Wisely help them to choose their heroes and select their
  lifework.



  140:5.15 And then Jesus went on to instruct his followers in the realization
  of the chief purpose of all human struggling -- perfection -- even divine
  attainment. Always he admonished them: "Be you perfect, even as your Father in
  heaven is perfect." He did not exhort the twelve to love their neighbors as
  they loved themselves. That would have been a worthy achievement; it would
  have indicated the achievement of brotherly love. He rather admonished his
  apostles to love men as he had loved them -- to love with a fatherly as well
  as a brotherly affection. And he illustrated this by pointing out four supreme
  reactions of fatherly love:



  140:5.16 1. "Happy are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted." So-called
  common sense or the best of logic would never suggest that happiness could be
  derived from mourning. But Jesus did not refer to outward or ostentatious
  mourning. He alluded to an emotional attitude of tenderheartedness. It is a
  great error to teach boys and young men that it is unmanly to show tenderness
  or otherwise to give evidence of emotional feeling or physical suffering.
  Sympathy is a worthy attribute of the male as well as the female. It is not
  necessary to be calloused in order to be manly. This is the wrong way to
  create courageous men. The world's great men have not been afraid to mourn.
  Moses, the mourner, was a greater man than either Samson or Goliath. Moses was
  a superb leader, but he was also a man of meekness. Being sensitive and
  responsive to human need creates genuine and lasting happiness, while such
  kindly attitudes safeguard the soul from the destructive influences of anger,
  hate, and suspicion.



  140:5.17 2. "Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Mercy here
  denotes the height and depth and breadth of the truest friendship -- loving-
  kindness. Mercy sometimes may be passive, but here it is active and dynamic --
  supreme fatherliness. A loving parent experiences little difficulty in
  forgiving his child, even many times. And in an unspoiled child the urge to
  relieve suffering is natural. Children are normally kind and sympathetic when
  old enough to appreciate actual conditions.



  140:5.18 3. "Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of
  God." Jesus' hearers were longing for military deliverance, not for
  peacemakers. But Jesus' peace is not of the pacific and negative kind. In the
  face of trials and persecutions he said, "My peace I leave with you." "Let not
  your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." This is the peace that
  prevents ruinous conflicts. Personal peace integrates personality. Social
  peace prevents fear, greed, and anger. Political peace prevents race
  antagonisms, national suspicions, and war. Peacemaking is the cure of distrust
  and suspicion.

  140:5.19 Children can easily be taught to function as peacemakers. They enjoy
  team activities; they like to play together. Said the Master at another time:
  "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life
  shall find it."



  140:5.20 4. "Happy are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for
  theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Happy are you when men shall revile you and
  persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely. Rejoice
  and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven."

  140:5.21 So often persecution does follow peace. But young people and brave
  adults never shun difficulty or danger. "Greater love has no man than to lay
  down his life for his friends." And a fatherly love can freely do all these
  things -- things which brotherly love can hardly encompass. And progress has
  always been the final harvest of persecution.

  140:5.22 Children always respond to the challenge of courage. Youth is ever
  willing to "take a dare." And every child should early learn to sacrifice.



  140:5.23 And so it is revealed that the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount
  are based on faith and love and not on law -- ethics and duty.



  140:5.24 Fatherly love delights in returning good for evil -- doing good in
  retaliation for injustice.





6. THE EVENING OF THE ORDINATION

  140:6.1 Sunday evening, on reaching the home of Zebedee from the highlands
  north of Capernaum, Jesus and the twelve partook of a simple meal. Afterward,
  while Jesus went for a walk along the beach, the twelve talked among
  themselves. After a brief conference, while the twins built a small fire to
  give them warmth and more light, Andrew went out to find Jesus, and when he
  had overtaken him, he said: "Master, my brethren are unable to comprehend what
  you have said about the kingdom. We do not feel able to begin this work until
  you have given us further instruction. I have come to ask you to join us in
  the garden and help us to understand the meaning of your words." And Jesus
  went with Andrew to meet with the apostles.

  140:6.2 When he had entered the garden, he gathered the apostles around him
  and taught them further, saying: "You find it difficult to receive my message
  because you would build the new teaching directly upon the old, but I declare
  that you must be reborn. You must start out afresh as little children and be
  willing to trust my teaching and believe in God. The new gospel of the kingdom
  cannot be made to conform to that which is. You have wrong ideas of the Son of
  Man and his mission on earth. But do not make the mistake of thinking that I
  have come to set aside the law and the prophets; I have not come to destroy
  but to fulfill, to enlarge and illuminate. I come not to transgress the law
  but rather to write these new commandments on the tablets of your hearts.

  140:6.3 "I demand of you a righteousness that shall exceed the righteousness
  of those who seek to obtain the Father's favor by almsgiving, prayer, and
  fasting. If you would enter the kingdom, you must have a righteousness that
  consists in love, mercy, and truth -- the sincere desire to do the will of my
  Father in heaven."

  140:6.4 Then said Simon Peter: "Master, if you have a new commandment, we
  would hear it. Reveal the new way to us." Jesus answered Peter: "You have
  heard it said by those who teach the law: `You shall not kill; that whosoever
  kills shall be subject to judgment.' But I look beyond the act to uncover the
  motive. I declare to you that every one who is angry with his brother is in
  danger of condemnation. He who nurses hatred in his heart and plans vengeance
  in his mind stands in danger of judgment. You must judge your fellows by their
  deeds; the Father in heaven judges by the intent.

  140:6.5 "You have heard the teachers of the law say, `You shall not commit
  adultery.' But I say to you that every man who looks upon a woman with intent
  to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. You
  can only judge men by their acts, but my Father looks into the hearts of his
  children and in mercy adjudges them in accordance with their intents and real
  desires."

  140:6.6 Jesus was minded to go on discussing the other commandments when James
  Zebedee interrupted him, asking: "Master, what shall we teach the people
  regarding divorcement? Shall we allow a man to divorce his wife as Moses has
  directed?" And when Jesus heard this question, he said: "I have not come to
  legislate but to enlighten. I have come not to reform the kingdoms of this
  world but rather to establish the kingdom of heaven. It is not the will of the
  Father that I should yield to the temptation to teach you rules of government,
  trade, or social behavior, which, while they might be good for today, would be
  far from suitable for the society of another age. I am on earth solely to
  comfort the minds, liberate the spirits, and save the souls of men. But I will
  say , concerning this question of divorcement, that, while Moses looked with
  favor upon such things, it was not so in the days of Adam and in the Garden."

  140:6.7 After the apostles had talked among themselves for a short time, Jesus
  went on to say: "Always must you recognize the two viewpoints of all mortal
  conduct -- the human and the divine; the ways of the flesh and the way of the
  spirit; the estimate of time and the viewpoint of eternity." And though the
  twelve could not comprehend all that he taught them, they were truly helped by
  this instruction.

  140:6.8 And then said Jesus: "But you will stumble over my teaching because
  you are wont to interpret my message literally; you are slow to discern the
  spirit of my teaching. Again must you remember that you are my messengers; you
  are beholden to live your lives as I have in spirit lived mine. You are my
  personal representatives; but do not err in expecting all men to live as you
  do in every particular. Also must you remember that I have sheep not of this
  flock, and that I am beholden to them also, to the end that I must provide for
  them the pattern of doing the will of God while living the life of the mortal
  nature."

  140:6.9 Then asked Nathaniel: "Master, shall we give no place to justice? The
  law of Moses says, `An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' What shall we
  say?" And Jesus answered: "You shall return good for evil. My messengers must
  not strive with men, but be gentle toward all. Measure for measure shall not
  be your rule. The rulers of men may have such laws, but not so in the kingdom;
  mercy always shall determine your judgments and love your conduct. And if
  these are hard sayings, you can even now turn back. If you find the
  requirements of apostleship too hard, you may return to the less rigorous
  pathway of discipleship."

  140:6.10 On hearing these startling words, the apostles drew apart by
  themselves for a while, but they soon returned, and Peter said: "Master, we
  would go on with you; not one of us would turn back. We are fully prepared to
  pay the extra price; we will drink the cup. We would be apostles, not merely
  disciples."

  140:6.11 When Jesus heard this, he said: "Be willing, then, to take up your
  responsibilities and follow me. Do your good deeds in secret; when you give
  alms, let not the left hand know what the right hand does. And when you pray,
  go apart by yourselves and use not vain repetitions and meaningless phrases.
  Always remember that the Father knows what you need even before you ask him.
  And be not given to fasting with a sad countenance to be seen by men. As my
  chosen apostles, now set apart for the service of the kingdom, lay not up for
  yourselves treasures on earth, but by your unselfish service lay up for
  yourselves treasures in heaven, for where your treasures are, there will your
  hearts be also.

  140:6.12 "The lamp of the body is the eye; if, therefore, your eye is
  generous, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is selfish,
  the whole body will be filled with darkness. If the very light which is in you
  is turned to darkness, how great is that darkness!"

  140:6.13 And then Thomas asked Jesus if they should "continue having
  everything in common." Said the Master: "Yes, my brethren, I would that we
  should live together as one understanding family. You are intrusted with a
  great work, and I crave your undivided service. You know that it has been well
  said: `No man can serve two masters.' You cannot sincerely worship God and at
  the same time wholeheartedly serve mammon. Having now enlisted unreservedly in
  the work of the kingdom, be not anxious for your lives; much less be concerned
  with what you shall eat or what you shall drink; nor yet for your bodies, what
  clothing you shall wear. Already have you learned that willing hands and
  earnest hearts shall not go hungry. And now, when you prepare to devote all of
  your energies to the work of the kingdom, be assured that the Father will not
  be unmindful of your needs. Seek first the kingdom of God, and when you have
  found entrance thereto, all things needful shall be added to you. Be not,
  therefore, unduly anxious for the morrow. Sufficient for the day is the
  trouble thereof."

  140:6.14 When Jesus saw they were disposed to stay up all night to ask
  questions, he said to them: "My brethren, you are earthen vessels; it is best
  for you to go to your rest so as to be ready for the morrow's work." But sleep
  had departed from their eyes. Peter ventured to request of his Master that "I
  have just a little private talk with you. Not that I would have secrets from
  my brethren, but I have a troubled spirit, and if, perchance, I should deserve
  a rebuke from my Master, I could the better endure it alone with you." And
  Jesus said, "Come with me, Peter" -- leading the way into the house. When
  Peter returned from the presence of his Master much cheered and greatly
  encouraged, James decided to go in to talk with Jesus. And so on through the
  early hours of the morning, the other apostles went in one by one to talk with
  the Master. When they had all held personal conferences with him save the
  twins, who had fallen asleep, Andrew went in to Jesus and said: "Master, the
  twins have fallen asleep in the garden by the fire; shall I arouse them to
  inquire if they would also talk with you?" And Jesus smilingly said to Andrew,
  "They do well -- trouble them not." And now the night was passing; the light
  of another day was dawning.





7. THE WEEK FOLLOWING THE ORDINATION

  140:7.1 After a few hours' sleep, when the twelve were assembled for a late
  breakfast with Jesus, he said: "Now must you begin your work of preaching the
  glad tidings and instructing believers. Make ready to go to Jerusalem." After
  Jesus had spoken, Thomas mustered up courage to say: "I know, Master, that we
  should now be ready to enter upon the work, but I fear we are not yet able to
  accomplish this great undertaking. Would you consent for us to stay hereabouts
  for just a few days more before we begin the work of the kingdom?" And when
  Jesus saw that all of his apostles were possessed by this same fear, he said:
  "It shall be as you have requested; we will remain here over the Sabbath day."



  140:7.2 For weeks and weeks small groups of earnest truth seekers, together
  with curious spectators, had been coming to Bethsaida to see Jesus. Already
  word about him had spread over the countryside; inquiring groups had come from
  cities as far away as Tyre, Sidon, Damascus, Caesarea, and Jerusalem.
  Heretofore, Jesus had greeted these people and taught them concerning the
  kingdom, but the Master now turned this work over to the twelve. Andrew would
  select one of the apostles and assign him to a group of visitors, and
  sometimes all twelve of them were so engaged.

  140:7.3 For two days they worked, teaching by day and holding private
  conferences late into the night. On the third day Jesus visited with Zebedee
  and Salome while he sent his apostles off to "go fishing, seek carefree
  change, or perchance visit your families." On Thursday they returned for three
  more days of teaching.

  140:7.4 During this week of rehearsing, Jesus many times repeated to his
  apostles the two great motives of his postbaptismal mission on earth:

1. To reveal the Father to man.

2. To lead men to become son-conscious -- to faith-realize that they are the
children of the Most High.

  140:7.5 One week of this varied experience did much for the twelve; some even
  became over self-confident. At the last conference, the night after the
  Sabbath, Peter and James came to Jesus, saying, "We are ready -- let us now go
  forth to take the kingdom." To which Jesus replied, "May your wisdom equal
  your zeal and your courage atone for your ignorance."

  140:7.6 Though the apostles failed to comprehend much of his teaching, they
  did not fail to grasp the significance of the charmingly beautiful life he
  lived with them.





8. THURSDAY AFTERNOON ON THE LAKE

  140:8.1 Jesus well knew that his apostles were not fully assimilating his
  teachings. He decided to give some special instruction to Peter, James, and
  John, hoping they would be able to clarify the ideas of their associates. He
  saw that, while some features of the idea of a spiritual kingdom were being
  grasped by the twelve, they steadfastly persisted in attaching these new
  spiritual teachings directly onto their old and entrenched literal concepts of
  the kingdom of heaven as a restoration of David's throne and the re-
  establishment of Israel as a temporal power on earth. Accordingly, on Thursday
  afternoon Jesus went out from the shore in a boat with Peter, James, and John
  to talk over the affairs of the kingdom. This was a four hours' teaching
  conference, embracing scores of questions and answers, and may most profitably
  be put in this record by reorganizing the summary of this momentous afternoon
  as it was given by Simon Peter to his brother, Andrew, the following morning:



  140:8.2 1. Doing the Father's will. Jesus' teaching to trust in the overcare
  of the heavenly Father was not a blind and passive fatalism. He quoted with
  approval, on this afternoon, an old Hebrew saying: "He who will not work shall
  not eat." He pointed to his own experience as sufficient commentary on his
  teachings. His precepts about trusting the Father must not be adjudged by the
  social or economic conditions of modern times or any other age. His
  instruction embraces the ideal principles of living near God in all ages and
  on all worlds.

  140:8.3 Jesus made clear to the three the difference between the requirements
  of apostleship and discipleship. And even then he did not forbid the exercise
  of prudence and foresight by the twelve. What he preached against was not
  forethought but anxiety, worry. He taught the active and alert submission to
  God's will. In answer to many of their questions regarding frugality and
  thriftiness, he simply called attention to his life as carpenter, boatmaker,
  and fisherman, and to his careful organization of the twelve. He sought to
  make it clear that the world is not to be regarded as an enemy; that the
  circumstances of life constitute a divine dispensation working along with the
  children of God.

  140:8.4 Jesus had great difficulty in getting them to understand his personal
  practice of nonresistance. He absolutely refused to defend himself, and it
  appeared to the apostles that he would be pleased if they would pursue the
  same policy. He taught them not to resist evil, not to combat injustice or
  injury, but he did not teach passive tolerance of wrongdoing. And he made it
  plain on this afternoon that he approved of the social punishment of evildoers
  and criminals, and that the civil government must sometimes employ force for
  the maintenance of social order and in the execution of justice.

  140:8.5 He never ceased to warn his disciples against the evil practice of
  retaliation; he made no allowance for revenge, the idea of getting even. He
  deplored the holding of grudges. He disallowed the idea of an eye for an eye
  and a tooth for a tooth. He discountenanced the whole concept of private and
  personal revenge, assigning these matters to civil government, on the one
  hand, and to the judgment of God, on the other. He made it clear to the three
  that his teachings applied to the individual, not the state. He summarized his
  instructions up to that time regarding these matters, as:

  140:8.6 Love your enemies -- remember the moral claims of human brotherhood.

  140:8.7 The futility of evil: A wrong is not righted by vengeance. Do not make
  the mistake of fighting evil with its own weapons.

  140:8.8 Have faith -- confidence in the eventual triumph of divine justice and
  eternal goodness.



  140:8.9 2. Political attitude. He cautioned his apostles to be discreet in
  their remarks concerning the strained relations then existing between the
  Jewish people and the Roman government; he forbade them to become in any way
  embroiled in these difficulties. He was always careful to avoid the political
  snares of his enemies, ever making reply, "Render to Caesar the things which
  are Caesar's and to God the things which are God's." He refused to have his
  attention diverted from his mission of establishing a new way of salvation; he
  would not permit himself to be concerned about anything else. In his personal
  life he was always duly observant of all civil laws and regulations; in all
  his public teachings he ignored the civic, social, and economic realms. He
  told the three apostles that he was concerned only with the principles of
  man's inner and personal spiritual life.

  140:8.10 Jesus was not, therefore, a political reformer. He did not come to
  reorganize the world; even if he had done this, it would have been applicable
  only to that day and generation. Nevertheless, he did show man the best way of
  living, and no generation is exempt from the labor of discovering how best to
  adapt Jesus' life to its own problems. But never make the mistake of
  identifying Jesus' teachings with any political or economic theory, with any
  social or industrial system.



  140:8.11 3. Social attitude. The Jewish rabbis had long debated the question:
  Who is my neighbor? Jesus came presenting the idea of active and spontaneous
  kindness, a love of one's fellow men so genuine that it expanded the
  neighborhood to include the whole world, thereby making all men one's
  neighbors. But with all this, Jesus was interested only in the individual, not
  the mass. Jesus was not a sociologist, but he did labor to break down all
  forms of selfish isolation. He taught pure sympathy, compassion. Michael of
  Nebadon is a mercy-dominated Son; compassion is his very nature.

  140:8.12 The Master did not say that men should never entertain their friends
  at meat, but he did say that his followers should make feasts for the poor and
  the unfortunate. Jesus had a firm sense of justice, but it was always tempered
  with mercy. He did not teach his apostles that they were to be imposed upon by
  social parasites or professional alms-seekers. The nearest he came to making
  sociological pronouncements was to say, "Judge not, that you be not judged."

  140:8.13 He made it clear that indiscriminate kindness may be blamed for many
  social evils. The following day Jesus definitely instructed Judas that no
  apostolic funds were to be given out as alms except upon his request or upon
  the joint petition of two of the apostles. In all these matters it was the
  practice of Jesus always to say, "Be as wise as serpents but as harmless as
  doves." It seemed to be his purpose in all social situations to teach
  patience, tolerance, and forgiveness.

  140:8.14 The family occupied the very center of Jesus' philosophy of life --
  here and hereafter. He based his teachings about God on the family, while he
  sought to correct the Jewish tendency to overhonor ancestors. He exalted
  family life as the highest human duty but made it plain that family
  relationships must not interfere with religious obligations. He called
  attention to the fact that the family is a temporal institution; that it does
  not survive death. Jesus did not hesitate to give up his family when the
  family ran counter to the Father's will. He taught the new and larger
  brotherhood of man -- the sons of God. In Jesus' time divorce practices were
  lax in Palestine and throughout the Roman Empire. He repeatedly refused to lay
  down laws regarding marriage and divorce, but many of Jesus' early followers
  had strong opinions on divorce and did not hesitate to attribute them to him.
  All of the New Testament writers held to these more stringent and advanced
  ideas about divorce except John Mark.



  140:8.15 4. Economic attitude. Jesus worked, lived, and traded in the world as
  he found it. He was not an economic reformer, although he did frequently call
  attention to the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth. But he did
  not offer any suggestions by way of remedy. He made it plain to the three
  that, while his apostles were not to hold property, he was not preaching
  against wealth and property, merely its unequal and unfair distribution. He
  recognized the need for social justice and industrial fairness, but he offered
  no rules for their attainment.

  140:8.16 He never taught his followers to avoid earthly possessions, only his
  twelve apostles. Luke, the physician, was a strong believer in social
  equality, and he did much to interpret Jesus' sayings in harmony with his
  personal beliefs. Jesus never personally directed his followers to adopt a
  communal mode of life; he made no pronouncement of any sort regarding such
  matters.

  140:8.17 Jesus frequently warned his listeners against covetousness, declaring
  that "a man's happiness consists not in the abundance of his material
  possessions." He constantly reiterated, "What shall it profit a man if he gain
  the whole world and lose his own soul?" He made no direct attack on the
  possession of property, but he did insist that it is eternally essential that
  spiritual values come first. In his later teachings he sought to correct many
  erroneous Urantia views of life by narrating numerous parables which he
  presented in the course of his public ministry. Jesus never intended to
  formulate economic theories; he well knew that each age must evolve its own
  remedies for existing troubles. And if Jesus were on earth today, living his
  life in the flesh, he would be a great disappointment to the majority of good
  men and women for the simple reason that he would not take sides in present-
  day political, social, or economic disputes. He would remain grandly aloof
  while teaching you how to perfect your inner spiritual life so as to render
  you manyfold more competent to attack the solution of your purely human
  problems.



  140:8.18 Jesus would make all men Godlike and then stand by sympathetically
  while these sons of God solve their own political, social, and economic
  problems. It was not wealth that he denounced, but what wealth does to the
  majority of its devotees. On this Thursday afternoon Jesus first told his
  associates that "it is more blessed to give than to receive."



  140:8.19 5. Personal religion. You, as did his apostles, should the better
  understand Jesus' teachings by his life. He lived a perfected life on Urantia,
  and his unique teachings can only be understood when that life is visualized
  in its immediate background. It is his life, and not his lessons to the twelve
  or his sermons to the multitudes, that will assist most in revealing the
  Father's divine character and loving personality.

  140:8.20 Jesus did not attack the teachings of the Hebrew prophets or the
  Greek moralists. The Master recognized the many good things which these great
  teachers stood for, but he had come down to earth to teach something
  additional, "the voluntary conformity of man's will to God's will." Jesus did
  not want simply to produce a religious man, a mortal wholly occupied with
  religious feelings and actuated only by spiritual impulses. Could you have had
  but one look at him, you would have known that Jesus was a real man of great
  experience in the things of this world. The teachings of Jesus in this respect
  have been grossly perverted and much misrepresented all down through the
  centuries of the Christian era; you have also held perverted ideas about the
  Master's meekness and humility. What he aimed at in his life appears to have
  been a superb self-respect. He only advised man to humble himself that he
  might become truly exalted; what he really aimed at was true humility toward
  God. He placed great value upon sincerity -- a pure heart. Fidelity was a
  cardinal virtue in his estimate of character, while courage was the very heart
  of his teachings. "Fear not" was his watchword, and patient endurance his
  ideal of strength of character. The teachings of Jesus constitute a religion
  of valor, courage, and heroism. And this is just why he chose as his personal
  representatives twelve commonplace men, the majority of whom were rugged,
  virile, and manly fishermen.

  140:8.21 Jesus had little to say about the social vices of his day; seldom did
  he make reference to moral delinquency. He was a positive teacher of true
  virtue. He studiously avoided the negative method of imparting instruction; he
  refused to advertise evil. He was not even a moral reformer. He well knew, and
  so taught his apostles, that the sensual urges of mankind are not suppressed
  by either religious rebuke or legal prohibitions. His few denunciations were
  largely directed against pride, cruelty, oppression, and hypocrisy.

  140:8.22 Jesus did not vehemently denounce even the Pharisees, as did John. He
  knew many of the scribes and Pharisees were honest of heart; he understood
  their enslaving bondage to religious traditions. Jesus laid great emphasis on
  "first making the tree good." He impressed the three that he valued the whole
  life, not just a certain few special virtues.



  140:8.23 The one thing which John gained from this day's teaching was that the
  heart of Jesus' religion consisted in the acquirement of a compassionate
  character coupled with a personality motivated to do the will of the Father in
  heaven.

  140:8.24 Peter grasped the idea that the gospel they were about to proclaim
  was really a fresh beginning for the whole human race. He conveyed this
  impression subsequently to Paul, who formulated therefrom his doctrine of
  Christ as "the second Adam."

  140:8.25 James grasped the thrilling truth that Jesus wanted his children on
  earth to live as though they were already citizens of the completed heavenly
  kingdom.



  140:8.26 Jesus knew men were different, and he so taught his apostles. He
  constantly exhorted them to refrain from trying to mold the disciples and
  believers according to some set pattern. He sought to allow each soul to
  develop in its own way, a perfecting and separate individual before God. In
  answer to one of Peter's many questions, the Master said: "I want to set men
  free so that they can start out afresh as little children upon the new and
  better life." Jesus always insisted that true goodness must be unconscious, in
  bestowing charity not allowing the left hand to know what the right hand does.

  140:8.27 The three apostles were shocked this afternoon when they realized
  that their Master's religion made no provision for spiritual self-examination.
  All religions before and after the times of Jesus, even Christianity,
  carefully provide for conscientious self-examination. But not so with the
  religion of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus' philosophy of life is without religious
  introspection. The carpenter's son never taught character building; he taught
  character growth, declaring that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.
  But Jesus said nothing which would proscribe self-analysis as a prevention of
  conceited egotism.

  140:8.28 The right to enter the kingdom is conditioned by faith, personal
  belief. The cost of remaining in the progressive ascent of the kingdom is the
  pearl of great price, in order to possess which a man sells all that he has.

  140:8.29 The teaching of Jesus is a religion for everybody, not alone for
  weaklings and slaves. His religion never became crystallized (during his day)
  into creeds and theological laws; he left not a line of writing behind him.
  His life and teachings were bequeathed the universe as an inspirational and
  idealistic inheritance suitable for the spiritual guidance and moral
  instruction of all ages on all worlds. And even today, Jesus' teaching stands
  apart from all religions, as such, albeit it is the living hope of every one
  of them.

  140:8.30 Jesus did not teach his apostles that religion is man's only earthly
  pursuit; that was the Jewish idea of serving God. But he did insist that
  religion was the exclusive business of the twelve. Jesus taught nothing to
  deter his believers from the pursuit of genuine culture; he only detracted
  from the tradition-bound religious schools of Jerusalem. He was liberal,
  bighearted, learned, and tolerant. Self-conscious piety had no place in his
  philosophy of righteous living.

  140:8.31 The Master offered no solutions for the nonreligious problems of his
  own age nor for any subsequent age. Jesus wished to develop spiritual insight
  into eternal realities and to stimulate initiative in the originality of
  living; he concerned himself exclusively with the underlying and permanent
  spiritual needs of the human race. He revealed a goodness equal to God. He
  exalted love -- truth, beauty, and goodness -- as the divine ideal and the
  eternal reality.

  140:8.32 The Master came to create in man a new spirit, a new will -- to
  impart a new capacity for knowing the truth, experiencing compassion, and
  choosing goodness -- the will to be in harmony with God's will, coupled with
  the eternal urge to become perfect, even as the Father in heaven is perfect.





9. THE DAY OF CONSECRATION

  140:9.1 The next Sabbath day Jesus devoted to his apostles, journeying back to
  the highland where he had ordained them; and there, after a long and
  beautifully touching personal message of encouragement, he engaged in the
  solemn act of the consecration of the twelve. This Sabbath afternoon Jesus
  assembled the apostles around him on the hillside and gave them into the hands
  of his heavenly Father in preparation for the day when he would be compelled
  to leave them alone in the world. There was no new teaching on this occasion,
  just visiting and communion.

  140:9.2 Jesus reviewed many features of the ordination sermon, delivered on
  this same spot, and then, calling them before him one by one, he commissioned
  them to go forth in the world as his representatives. The Master's
  consecration charge was: "Go into all the world and preach the glad tidings of
  the kingdom. Liberate spiritual captives, comfort the oppressed, and minister
  to the afflicted. Freely you have received, freely give."

  140:9.3 Jesus advised them to take neither money nor extra clothing, saying,
  "The laborer is worthy of his hire." And finally he said: "Behold I send you
  forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be you therefore as wise as serpents
  and as harmless as doves. But take heed, for your enemies will bring you up
  before their councils, while in their synagogues they will castigate you.
  Before governors and rulers you will be brought because you believe this
  gospel, and your very testimony shall be a witness for me to them. And when
  they lead you to judgment, be not anxious about what you shall say, for the
  spirit of my Father indwells you and will at such a time speak through you.
  Some of you will be put to death, and before you establish the kingdom on
  earth, you will be hated by many peoples because of this gospel; but fear not;
  I will be with you, and my spirit shall go before you into all the world. And
  my Father's presence will abide with you while you go first to the Jews, then
  to the gentiles."



  140:9.4 And when they came down from the mountain, they journeyed back to
  their home in Zebedee's house.





10. THE EVENING AFTER THE CONSECRATION

  140:10.1 That evening while teaching in the house, for it had begun to rain,
  Jesus talked at great length, trying to show the twelve what they must be, not
  what they must do. They knew only a religion that imposed the doing of certain
  things as the means of attaining righteousness -- salvation. But Jesus would
  reiterate, "In the kingdom you must be righteous in order to do the work."
  Many times did he repeat, "Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father in
  heaven is perfect." All the while was the Master explaining to his bewildered
  apostles that the salvation which he had come to bring to the world was to be
  had only by believing, by simple and sincere faith. Said Jesus: "John preached
  a baptism of repentance, sorrow for the old way of living. You are to proclaim
  the baptism of fellowship with God. Preach repentance to those who stand in
  need of such teaching, but to those already seeking sincere entrance to the
  kingdom, open the doors wide and bid them enter into the joyous fellowship of
  the sons of God." But it was a difficult task to persuade these Galilean
  fishermen that, in the kingdom, being righteous, by faith, must precede doing
  righteousness in the daily life of the mortals of earth.



  140:10.2 Another great handicap in this work of teaching the twelve was their
  tendency to take highly idealistic and spiritual principles of religious truth
  and remake them into concrete rules of personal conduct. Jesus would present
  to them the beautiful spirit of the soul's attitude, but they insisted on
  translating such teachings into rules of personal behavior. Many times, when
  they did make sure to remember what the Master said, they were almost certain
  to forget what he did not say. But they slowly assimilated his teaching
  because Jesus was all that he taught. What they could not gain from his verbal
  instruction, they gradually acquired by living with him.

  140:10.3 It was not apparent to the apostles that their Master was engaged in
  living a life of spiritual inspiration for every person of every age on every
  world of a far-flung universe. Notwithstanding what Jesus told them from time
  to time, the apostles did not grasp the idea that he was doing a work on this
  world but for all other worlds in his vast creation. Jesus lived his earth
  life on Urantia, not to set a personal example of mortal living for the men
  and women of this world, but rather to create a high spiritual and
  inspirational ideal for all mortal beings on all worlds.



  140:10.4 This same evening Thomas asked Jesus: "Master, you say that we must
  become as little children before we can gain entrance to the Father's kingdom,
  and yet you have warned us not to be deceived by false prophets nor to become
  guilty of casting our pearls before swine. Now, I am honestly puzzled. I
  cannot understand your teaching." Jesus replied to Thomas: "How long shall I
  bear with you! Ever you insist on making literal all that I teach. When I
  asked you to become as little children as the price of entering the kingdom, I
  referred not to ease of deception, mere willingness to believe, nor to
  quickness to trust pleasing strangers. What I did desire that you should
  gather from the illustration was the child-father relationship. You are the
  child, and it is your Father's kingdom you seek to enter. There is present
  that natural affection between every normal child and its father which insures
  an understanding and loving relationship, and which forever precludes all
  disposition to bargain for the Father's love and mercy. And the gospel you are
  going forth to preach has to do with a salvation growing out of the faith-
  realization of this very and eternal child-father relationship."



  140:10.5 The one characteristic of Jesus' teaching was that the morality of
  his philosophy originated in the personal relation of the individual to God --
  this very child-father relationship. Jesus placed emphasis on the individual,
  not on the race or nation. While eating supper, Jesus had the talk with
  Matthew in which he explained that the morality of any act is determined by
  the individual's motive. Jesus' morality was always positive. The golden rule
  as restated by Jesus demands active social contact; the older negative rule
  could be obeyed in isolation. Jesus stripped morality of all rules and
  ceremonies and elevated it to majestic levels of spiritual thinking and truly
  righteous living.

  140:10.6 This new religion of Jesus was not without its practical
  implications, but whatever of practical political, social, or economic value
  there is to be found in his teaching is the natural outworking of this inner
  experience of the soul as it manifests the fruits of the spirit in the
  spontaneous daily ministry of genuine personal religious experience.

  140:10.7 After Jesus and Matthew had finished talking, Simon Zelotes asked,
  "But, Master, are all men the sons of God?" And Jesus answered: "Yes, Simon,
  all men are the sons of God, and that is the good news you are going to
  proclaim." But the apostles could not grasp such a doctrine; it was a new,
  strange, and startling announcement. And it was because of his desire to
  impress this truth upon them that Jesus taught his followers to treat all men
  as their brothers.

  140:10.8 In response to a question asked by Andrew, the Master made it clear
  that the morality of his teaching was inseparable from the religion of his
  living. He taught morality, not from the nature of man, but from the relation
  of man to God.



  140:10.9 John asked Jesus, "Master, what is the kingdom of heaven?" And Jesus
  answered: "The kingdom of heaven consists in these three essentials: first,
  recognition of the fact of the sovereignty of God; second, belief in the truth
  of sonship with God; and third, faith in the effectiveness of the supreme
  human desire to do the will of God -- to be like God. And this is the good
  news of the gospel: that by faith every mortal may have all these essentials
  of salvation."



  140:10.10 And now the week of waiting was over, and they prepared to depart on
  the morrow for Jerusalem.


PAPER 141


 BEGINNING THE PUBLIC WORK



  141:0.1 ON THE first day of the week, January 19, A.D. 27, Jesus and the
  twelve apostles made ready to depart from their headquarters in Bethsaida. The
  twelve knew nothing of their Master's plans except that they were going up to
  Jerusalem to attend the Passover feast in April, and that it was the intention
  to journey by way of the Jordan valley. They did not get away from Zebedee's
  house until near noon because the families of the apostles and others of the
  disciples had come to say good-bye and wish them well in the new work they
  were about to begin.

  141:0.2 Just before leaving, the apostles missed the Master, and Andrew went
  out to find him. After a brief search he found Jesus sitting in a boat down
  the beach, and he was weeping. The twelve had often seen their Master when he
  seemed to grieve, and they had beheld his brief seasons of serious
  preoccupation of mind, but none of them had ever seen him weep. Andrew was
  somewhat startled to see the Master thus affected on the eve of their
  departure for Jerusalem, and he ventured to approach Jesus and ask: "On this
  great day, Master, when we are to depart for Jerusalem to proclaim the
  Father's kingdom, why is it that you weep? Which of us has offended you?" And
  Jesus, going back with Andrew to join the twelve, answered him: "No one of you
  has grieved me. I am saddened only because none of my father Joseph's family
  have remembered to come over to bid us Godspeed." At this time Ruth was on a
  visit to her brother Joseph at Nazareth. Other members of his family were kept
  away by pride, disappointment, misunderstanding, and petty resentment indulged
  as a result of hurt feelings.





1. LEAVING GALILEE

  141:1.1 Capernaum was not far from Tiberias, and the fame of Jesus had begun
  to spread well over all of Galilee and even to parts beyond. Jesus knew that
  Herod would soon begin to take notice of his work; so he thought best to
  journey south and into Judea with his apostles. A company of over one hundred
  believers desired to go with them, but Jesus spoke to them and besought them
  not to accompany the apostolic group on their way down the Jordan. Though they
  consented to remain behind, many of them followed after the Master within a
  few days.

  141:1.2 The first day Jesus and the apostles only journeyed as far as
  Tarichea, where they rested for the night. The next day they traveled to a
  point on the Jordan near Pella where John had preached about one year before,
  and where Jesus had received baptism. Here they tarried for more than two
  weeks, teaching and preaching. By the end of the first week several hundred
  people had assembled in a camp near where Jesus and the twelve dwelt, and they
  had come from Galilee, Phoenicia, Syria, the Decapolis, Perea, and Judea.

  141:1.3 Jesus did no public preaching. Andrew divided the multitude and
  assigned the preachers for the forenoon and afternoon assemblies; after the
  evening meal Jesus talked with the twelve. He taught them nothing new but
  reviewed his former teaching and answered their many questions. On one of
  these evenings he told the twelve something about the forty days which he
  spent in the hills near this place.

  141:1.4 Many of those who came from Perea and Judea had been baptized by John
  and were interested in finding out more about Jesus' teachings. The apostles
  made much progress in teaching the disciples of John inasmuch as they did not
  in any way detract from John's preaching, and since they did not at this time
  even baptize their new disciples. But it was always a stumbling stone to
  John's followers that Jesus, if he were all that John had announced, did
  nothing to get him out of prison. John's disciples never could understand why
  Jesus did not prevent the cruel death of their beloved leader.

  141:1.5 From night to night Andrew carefully instructed his fellow apostles in
  the delicate and difficult task of getting along smoothly with the followers
  of John the Baptist. During this first year of Jesus' public ministry more
  than three fourths of his followers had previously followed John and had
  received his baptism. This entire year of A.D. 27 was spent in quietly taking
  over John's work in Perea and Judea.





2. GOD'S LAW AND THE FATHER'S WILL

  141:2.1 The night before they left Pella, Jesus gave the apostles some further
  instruction with regard to the new kingdom. Said the Master: "You have been
  taught to look for the coming of the kingdom of God, and now I come announcing
  that this long-looked-for kingdom is near at hand, even that it is already
  here and in our midst. In every kingdom there must be a king seated upon his
  throne and decreeing the laws of the realm. And so have you developed a
  concept of the kingdom of heaven as a glorified rule of the Jewish people over
  all the peoples of the earth with Messiah sitting on David's throne and from
  this place of miraculous power promulgating the laws of all the world. But, my
  children, you see not with the eye of faith, and you hear not with the
  understanding of the spirit. I declare that the kingdom of heaven is the
  realization and acknowledgment of God's rule within the hearts of men. True,
  there is a King in this kingdom, and that King is my Father and your Father.
  We are indeed his loyal subjects, but far transcending that fact is the
  transforming truth that we are his sons. In my life this truth is to become
  manifest to all. Our Father also sits upon a throne, but not one made with
  hands. The throne of the Infinite is the eternal dwelling place of the Father
  in the heaven of heavens; he fills all things and proclaims his laws to
  universes upon universes. And the Father also rules within the hearts of his
  children on earth by the spirit which he has sent to live within the souls of
  mortal men.

  141:2.2 "When you are the subjects of this kingdom, you indeed are made to
  hear the law of the Universe Ruler; but when, because of the gospel of the
  kingdom which I have come to declare, you faith-discover yourselves as sons,
  you henceforth look not upon yourselves as law-subject creatures of an all-
  powerful king but as privileged sons of a loving and divine Father. Verily,
  verily, I say to you, when the Father's will is your law, you are hardly in
  the kingdom. But when the Father's will becomes truly your will, then are you
  in very truth in the kingdom because the kingdom has thereby become an
  established experience in you. When God's will is your law, you are noble
  slave subjects; but when you believe in this new gospel of divine sonship, my
  Father's will becomes your will, and you are elevated to the high position of
  the free children of God, liberated sons of the kingdom."

  141:2.3 Some of the apostles grasped something of this teaching, but none of
  them comprehended the full significance of this tremendous announcement,
  unless it was James Zebedee. But these words sank into their hearts and came
  forth to gladden their ministry during later years of service.





3. THE SOJOURN AT AMATHUS

  141:3.1 The Master and his apostles remained near Amathus for almost three
  weeks. The apostles continued to preach twice daily to the multitude, and
  Jesus preached each Sabbath afternoon. It became impossible to continue the
  Wednesday playtime; so Andrew arranged that two apostles should rest each day
  of the six days in the week, while all were on duty during the Sabbath
  services.

  141:3.2 Peter, James, and John did most of the public preaching. Philip,
  Nathaniel, Thomas, and Simon did much of the personal work and conducted
  classes for special groups of inquirers; the twins continued their general
  police supervision, while Andrew, Matthew, and Judas developed into a general
  managerial committee of three, although each of these three also did
  considerable religious work.

  141:3.3 Andrew was much occupied with the task of adjusting the constantly
  recurring misunderstandings and disagreements between the disciples of John
  and the newer disciples of Jesus. Serious situations would arise every few
  days, but Andrew, with the assistance of his apostolic associates, managed to
  induce the contending parties to come to some sort of agreement, at least
  temporarily. Jesus refused to participate in any of these conferences; neither
  would he give any advice about the proper adjustment of these difficulties. He
  never once offered a suggestion as to how the apostles should solve these
  perplexing problems. When Andrew came to Jesus with these questions, he would
  always say: "It is not wise for the host to participate in the family troubles
  of his guests; a wise parent never takes sides in the petty quarrels of his
  own children."



  141:3.4 The Master displayed great wisdom and manifested perfect fairness in
  all of his dealings with his apostles and with all of his disciples. Jesus was
  truly a master of men; he exercised great influence over his fellow men
  because of the combined charm and force of his personality. There was a subtle
  commanding influence in his rugged, nomadic, and homeless life. There was
  intellectual attractiveness and spiritual drawing power in his authoritative
  manner of teaching, in his lucid logic, his strength of reasoning, his
  sagacious insight, his alertness of mind, his matchless poise, and his sublime
  tolerance. He was simple, manly, honest, and fearless. With all of this
  physical and intellectual influence manifest in the Master's presence, there
  were also all those spiritual charms of being which have become associated
  with his personality -- patience, tenderness, meekness, gentleness, and
  humility.

  141:3.5 Jesus of Nazareth was indeed a strong and forceful personality; he was
  an intellectual power and a spiritual stronghold. His personality not only
  appealed to the spiritually minded women among his followers, but also to the
  educated and intellectual Nicodemus and to the hardy Roman soldier, the
  captain stationed on guard at the cross, who, when he had finished watching
  the Master die, said, "Truly, this was a Son of God." And red-blooded, rugged
  Galilean fishermen called him Master.

  141:3.6 The pictures of Jesus have been most unfortunate. These paintings of
  the Christ have exerted a deleterious influence on youth; the temple merchants
  would hardly have fled before Jesus if he had been such a man as your artists
  usually have depicted. His was a dignified manhood; he was good, but natural.
  Jesus did not pose as a mild, sweet, gentle, and kindly mystic. His teaching
  was thrillingly dynamic. He not only meant well, but he went about actually
  doing good.

  141:3.7 The Master never said, "Come to me all you who are indolent and all
  who are dreamers." But he did many times say, "Come to me all you who labor,
  and I will give you rest -- spiritual strength." The Master's yoke is, indeed,
  easy, but even so, he never imposes it; every individual must take this yoke
  of his own free will.

  141:3.8 Jesus portrayed conquest by sacrifice, the sacrifice of pride and
  selfishness. By showing mercy, he meant to portray spiritual deliverance from
  all grudges, grievances, anger, and the lust for selfish power and revenge.
  And when he said, "Resist not evil," he later explained that he did not mean
  to condone sin or to counsel fraternity with iniquity. He intended the more to
  teach forgiveness, to "resist not evil treatment of one's personality, evil
  injury to one's feelings of personal dignity."





4. TEACHING ABOUT THE FATHER

  141:4.1 While sojourning at Amathus, Jesus spent much time with the apostles
  instructing them in the new concept of God; again and again did he impress
  upon them that God is a Father, not a great and supreme bookkeeper who is
  chiefly engaged in making damaging entries against his erring children on
  earth, recordings of sin and evil to be used against them when he subsequently
  sits in judgment upon them as the just Judge of all creation. The Jews had
  long conceived of God as a king over all, even as a Father of the nation, but
  never before had large numbers of mortal men held the idea of God as a loving
  Father of the individual.

  141:4.2 In answer to Thomas's question, "Who is this God of the kingdom?"
  Jesus replied: "God is your Father, and religion -- my gospel -- is nothing
  more nor less than the believing recognition of the truth that you are his
  son. And I am here among you in the flesh to make clear both of these ideas in
  my life and teachings."

  141:4.3 Jesus also sought to free the minds of his apostles from the idea of
  offering animal sacrifices as a religious duty. But these men, trained in the
  religion of the daily sacrifice, were slow to comprehend what he meant.
  Nevertheless, the Master did not grow weary in his teaching. When he failed to
  reach the minds of all of the apostles by means of one illustration, he would
  restate his message and employ another type of parable for purposes of
  illumination.



  141:4.4 At this same time Jesus began to teach the twelve more fully
  concerning their mission "to comfort the afflicted and minister to the sick."
  The Master taught them much about the whole man -- the union of body, mind,
  and spirit to form the individual man or woman. Jesus told his associates
  about the three forms of affliction they would meet and went on to explain how
  they should minister to all who suffer the sorrows of human sickness. He
  taught them to recognize:

1. Diseases of the flesh -- those afflictions commonly regarded as physical
sickness.

2. Troubled minds -- those nonphysical afflictions which were subsequently
looked upon as emotional and mental difficulties and disturbances.

3. The possession of evil spirits.



  141:4.5 Jesus explained to his apostles on several occasions the nature, and
  something concerning the origin, of these evil spirits, in that day often also
  called unclean spirits. The Master well knew the difference between the
  possession of evil spirits and insanity, but the apostles did not. Neither was
  it possible, in view of their limited knowledge of the early history of
  Urantia, for Jesus to undertake to make this matter fully understandable. But
  he many times said to them, alluding to these evil spirits: " They shall no
  more molest men when I shall have ascended to my Father in heaven, and after I
  shall have poured out my spirit upon all flesh in those times when the kingdom
  will come in great power and spiritual glory."

  141:4.6 From week to week and from month to month, throughout this entire
  year, the apostles paid more and more attention to the healing ministry of the
  sick.





5. SPIRITUAL UNITY

  141:5.1 One of the most eventful of all the evening conferences at Amathus was
  the session having to do with the discussion of spiritual unity. James Zebedee
  had asked, "Master, how shall we learn to see alike and thereby enjoy more
  harmony among ourselves?" When Jesus heard this question, he was stirred
  within his spirit, so much so that he replied: "James, James, when did I teach
  you that you should all see alike? I have come into the world to proclaim
  spiritual liberty to the end that mortals may be empowered to live individual
  lives of originality and freedom before God. I do not desire that social
  harmony and fraternal peace shall be purchased by the sacrifice of free
  personality and spiritual originality. What I require of you, my apostles, is
  spirit unity -- and that you can experience in the joy of your united
  dedication to the wholehearted doing of the will of my Father in heaven. You
  do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in order
  spiritually to be alike. Spiritual unity is derived from the consciousness
  that each of you is indwelt, and increasingly dominated, by the spirit gift of
  the heavenly Father. Your apostolic harmony must grow out of the fact that the
  spirit hope of each of you is identical in origin, nature, and destiny.

  141:5.2 "In this way you may experience a perfected unity of spirit purpose
  and spirit understanding growing out of the mutual consciousness of the
  identity of each of your indwelling Paradise spirits; and you may enjoy all of
  this profound spiritual unity in the very face of the utmost diversity of your
  individual attitudes of intellectual thinking, temperamental feeling, and
  social conduct. Your personalities may be refreshingly diverse and markedly
  different, while your spiritual natures and spirit fruits of divine worship
  and brotherly love may be so unified that all who behold your lives will of a
  surety take cognizance of this spirit identity and soul unity; they will
  recognize that you have been with me and have thereby learned, and acceptably,
  how to do the will of the Father in heaven. You can achieve the unity of the
  service of God even while you render such service in accordance with the
  technique of your own original endowments of mind, body, and soul.

  141:5.3 "Your spirit unity implies two things, which always will be found to
  harmonize in the lives of individual believers: First, you are possessed with
  a common motive for life service; you all desire above everything to do the
  will of the Father in heaven. Second, you all have a common goal of existence;
  you all purpose to find the Father in heaven, thereby proving to the universe
  that you have become like him."

  141:5.4 Many times during the training of the twelve Jesus reverted to this
  theme. Repeatedly he told them it was not his desire that those who believed
  in him should become dogmatized and standardized in accordance with the
  religious interpretations of even good men. Again and again he warned his
  apostles against the formulation of creeds and the establishment of traditions
  as a means of guiding and controlling believers in the gospel of the kingdom.





6. LAST WEEK AT AMATHUS

  141:6.1 Near the end of the last week at Amathus, Simon Zelotes brought to
  Jesus one Teherma, a Persian doing business at Damascus. Teherma had heard of
  Jesus and had come to Capernaum to see him, and there learning that Jesus had
  gone with his apostles down the Jordan on the way to Jerusalem, he set out to
  find him. Andrew had presented Teherma to Simon for instruction. Simon looked
  upon the Persian as a "fire worshiper," although Teherma took great pains to
  explain that fire was only the visible symbol of the Pure and Holy One. After
  talking with Jesus, the Persian signified his intention of remaining for
  several days to hear the teaching and listen to the preaching.

  141:6.2 When Simon Zelotes and Jesus were alone, Simon asked the Master: "Why
  is it that I could not persuade him? Why did he so resist me and so readily
  lend an ear to you?" Jesus answered: "Simon, Simon, how many times have I
  instructed you to refrain from all efforts to take something out of the hearts
  of those who seek salvation? How often have I told you to labor only to put
  something into these hungry souls? Lead men into the kingdom, and the great
  and living truths of the kingdom will presently drive out all serious error.
  When you have presented to mortal man the good news that God is his Father,
  you can the easier persuade him that he is in reality a son of God. And having
  done that, you have brought the light of salvation to the one who sits in
  darkness. Simon, when the Son of Man came first to you, did he come denouncing
  Moses and the prophets and proclaiming a new and better way of life? I came
  not to take away that which you had from your forefathers but to show you the
  perfected vision of that which your fathers saw only in part. Go then, Simon,
  teaching and preaching the kingdom, and when you have a man safely and
  securely within the kingdom, then is the time, when such a one shall come to
  you with inquiries, to impart instruction having to do with the progressive
  advancement of the soul within the divine kingdom."

  141:6.3 Simon was astonished at these words, but he did as Jesus had
  instructed him, and Teherma, the Persian, was numbered among those who entered
  the kingdom.



  141:6.4 That night Jesus discoursed to the apostles on the new life in the
  kingdom. He said in part: "When you enter the kingdom, you are reborn. You
  cannot teach the deep things of the spirit to those who have been born only of
  the flesh; first see that men are born of the spirit before you seek to
  instruct them in the advanced ways of the spirit. Do not undertake to show men
  the beauties of the temple until you have first taken them into the temple.
  Introduce men to God and as the sons of God before you discourse on the
  doctrines of the fatherhood of God and the sonship of men. Do not strive with
  men -- always be patient. It is not your kingdom; you are only ambassadors.
  Simply go forth proclaiming: This is the kingdom of heaven -- God is your
  Father and you are his sons, and this good news, if you wholeheartedly believe
  it, is your eternal salvation."

  141:6.5 The apostles made great progress during the sojourn at Amathus. But
  they were very much disappointed that Jesus would give them no suggestions
  about dealing with John's disciples. Even in the important matter of baptism,
  all that Jesus said was: "John did indeed baptize with water, but when you
  enter the kingdom of heaven, you shall be baptized with the Spirit."



7. AT BETHANY BEYOND JORDAN

  141:7.1 On February 26, Jesus, his apostles, and a large group of followers
  journeyed down the Jordan to the ford near Bethany in Perea, the place where
  John first made proclamation of the coming kingdom. Jesus with his apostles
  remained here, teaching and preaching, for four weeks before they went on up
  to Jerusalem.

  141:7.2 The second week of the sojourn at Bethany beyond Jordan, Jesus took
  Peter, James, and John into the hills across the river and south of Jericho
  for a three days' rest. The Master taught these three many new and advanced
  truths about the kingdom of heaven. For the purpose of this record we will
  reorganize and classify these teachings as follows:



  141:7.3 Jesus endeavored to make clear that he desired his disciples, having
  tasted of the good spirit realities of the kingdom, so to live in the world
  that men, by seeing their lives, would become kingdom conscious and hence be
  led to inquire of believers concerning the ways of the kingdom. All such
  sincere seekers for the truth are always glad to hear the glad tidings of the
  faith gift which insures admission to the kingdom with its eternal and divine
  spirit realities.

  141:7.4 The Master sought to impress upon all teachers of the gospel of the
  kingdom that their only business was to reveal God to the individual man as
  his Father -- to lead this individual man to become son-conscious; then to
  present this same man to God as his faith son. Both of these essential
  revelations are accomplished in Jesus. He became, indeed, "the way, the truth,
  and the life." The religion of Jesus was wholly based on the living of his
  bestowal life on earth. When Jesus departed from this world, he left behind no
  books, laws, or other forms of human organization affecting the religious life
  of the individual.

  141:7.5 Jesus made it plain that he had come to establish personal and eternal
  relations with men which should forever take precedence over all other human
  relationships. And he emphasized that this intimate spiritual fellowship was
  to be extended to all men of all ages and of all social conditions among all
  peoples. The only reward which he held out for his children was: in this world
  -- spiritual joy and divine communion; in the next world -- eternal life in
  the progress of the divine spirit realities of the Paradise Father.

  141:7.6 Jesus laid great emphasis upon what he called the two truths of first
  import in the teachings of the kingdom, and they are: the attainment of
  salvation by faith, and faith alone, associated with the revolutionary
  teaching of the attainment of human liberty through the sincere recognition of
  truth, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Jesus
  was the truth made manifest in the flesh, and he promised to send his Spirit
  of Truth into the hearts of all his children after his return to the Father in
  heaven.

  141:7.7 The Master was teaching these apostles the essentials of truth for an
  entire age on earth. They often listened to his teachings when in reality what
  he said was intended for the inspiration and edification of other worlds. He
  exemplified a new and original plan of life. From the human standpoint he was
  indeed a Jew, but he lived his life for all the world as a mortal of the
  realm.

  141:7.8 To insure the recognition of his Father in the unfolding of the plan
  of the kingdom, Jesus explained that he had purposely ignored the "great men
  of earth." He began his work with the poor, the very class which had been so
  neglected by most of the evolutionary religions of preceding times. He
  despised no man; his plan was world-wide, even universal. He was so bold and
  emphatic in these announcements that even Peter, James, and John were tempted
  to think he might possibly be beside himself.

  141:7.9 He sought mildly to impart to these apostles the truth that he had
  come on this bestowal mission, not to set an example for a few earth
  creatures, but to establish and demonstrate a standard of human life for all
  peoples upon all worlds throughout his entire universe. And this standard
  approached the highest perfection, even the final goodness of the Universal
  Father. But the apostles could not grasp the meaning of his words.

  141:7.10 He announced that he had come to function as a teacher, a teacher
  sent from heaven to present spiritual truth to the material mind. And this is
  exactly what he did; he was a teacher, not a preacher. From the human
  viewpoint Peter was a much more effective preacher than Jesus. Jesus'
  preaching was so effective because of his unique personality, not so much
  because of compelling oratory or emotional appeal. Jesus spoke directly to
  men's souls. He was a teacher of man's spirit, but through the mind. He lived
  with men.

  141:7.11 It was on this occasion that Jesus intimated to Peter, James, and
  John that his work on earth was in some respects to be limited by the
  commission of his "associate on high," referring to the prebestowal
  instructions of his Paradise brother, Immanuel. He told them that he had come
  to do his Father's will and only his Father's will. Being thus motivated by a
  wholehearted singleness of purpose, he was not anxiously bothered by the evil
  in the world.

  141:7.12 The apostles were beginning to recognize the unaffected friendliness
  of Jesus. Though the Master was easy of approach, he always lived independent
  of, and above, all human beings. Not for one moment was he ever dominated by
  any purely mortal influence or subject to frail human judgment. He paid no
  attention to public opinion, and he was uninfluenced by praise. He seldom
  paused to correct misunderstandings or to resent misrepresentation. He never
  asked any man for advice; he never made requests for prayers

  141:7.13 James was astonished at how Jesus seemed to see the end from the
  beginning. The Master rarely appeared to be surprised. He was never excited,
  vexed, or disconcerted. He never apologized to any man. He was at times
  saddened, but never discouraged.

  141:7.14 More clearly John recognized that, notwithstanding all of his divine
  endowments, after all, he was human. Jesus lived as a man among men and
  understood, loved, and knew how to manage men. In his personal life he was so
  human, and yet so faultless. And he was always unselfish.

  141:7.15 Although Peter, James, and John could not understand very much of
  what Jesus said on this occasion, his gracious words lingered in their hearts,
  and after the crucifixion and resurrection they came forth greatly to enrich
  and gladden their subsequent ministry. No wonder these apostles did not fully
  comprehend the Master's words, for he was projecting to them the plan of a new
  age.





8. WORKING IN JERICHO

  141:8.1 Throughout the four weeks' sojourn at Bethany beyond Jordan, several
  times each week Andrew would assign apostolic couples to go up to Jericho for
  a day or two. John had many believers in Jericho, and the majority of them
  welcomed the more advanced teachings of Jesus and his apostles. On these
  Jericho visits the apostles began more specifically to carry out Jesus'
  instructions to minister to the sick; they visited every house in the city and
  sought to comfort every afflicted person.

  141:8.2 The apostles did some public work in Jericho, but their efforts were
  chiefly of a more quiet and personal nature. They now made the discovery that
  the good news of the kingdom was very comforting to the sick; that their
  message carried healing for the afflicted. And it was in Jericho that Jesus'
  commission to the twelve to preach the glad tidings of the kingdom and
  minister to the afflicted was first fully carried into effect.

  141:8.3 They stopped in Jericho on the way up to Jerusalem and were overtaken
  by a delegation from Mesopotamia that had come to confer with Jesus. The
  apostles had planned to spend but a day here, but when these truth seekers
  from the East arrived, Jesus spent three days with them, and they returned to
  their various homes along the Euphrates happy in the knowledge of the new
  truths of the kingdom of heaven.





9. DEPARTING FOR JERUSALEM

  141:9.1 On Monday, the last day of March, Jesus and the apostles began their
  journey up the hills toward Jerusalem. Lazarus of Bethany had been down to the
  Jordan twice to see Jesus, and every arrangement had been made for the Master
  and his apostles to make their headquarters with Lazarus and his sisters at
  Bethany as long as they might desire to stay in Jerusalem.

  141:9.2 The disciples of John remained at Bethany beyond the Jordan, teaching
  and baptizing the multitudes, so that Jesus was accompanied only by the twelve
  when he arrived at Lazarus's home. Here Jesus and the apostles tarried for
  five days, resting and refreshing themselves before going on to Jerusalem for
  the Passover. It was a great event in the lives of Martha and Mary to have the
  Master and his apostles in the home of their brother, where they could
  minister to their needs.

  141:9.3 On Sunday morning, April 6, Jesus and the apostles went down to
  Jerusalem; and this was the first time the Master and all of the twelve had
  been there together.


PAPER 142


 THE PASSOVER AT JERUSALEM



  142:0.1 THE month of April Jesus and the apostles worked in Jerusalem, going
  out of the city each evening to spend the night at Bethany. Jesus himself
  spent one or two nights each week in Jerusalem at the home of Flavius, a Greek
  Jew, where many prominent Jews came in secret to interview him.



  142:0.2 The first day in Jerusalem Jesus called upon his friend of former
  years, Annas, the onetime high priest and relative of Salome, Zebedee's wife.
  Annas had been hearing about Jesus and his teachings, and when Jesus called at
  the high priest's home, he was received with much reserve. When Jesus
  perceived Annas's coldness, he took immediate leave, saying as he departed:
  "Fear is man's chief enslaver and pride his great weakness; will you betray
  yourself into bondage to both of these destroyers of joy and liberty?" But
  Annas made no reply. The Master did not again see Annas until the time when he
  sat with his son-in-law in judgment on the Son of Man.





1. TEACHING IN THE TEMPLE



  142:1.1 Throughout this month Jesus or one of the apostles taught daily in the
  temple. When the Passover crowds were too great to find entrance to the temple
  teaching, the apostles conducted many teaching groups outside the sacred
  precincts. The burden of their message was:

1. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

2. By faith in the fatherhood of God you may enter the kingdom of heaven, thus
becoming the sons of God.

3. Love is the rule of living within the kingdom -- supreme devotion to God
while loving your neighbor as yourself.

4. Obedience to the will of the Father, yielding the fruits of the spirit in
one's personal life, is the law of the kingdom.

  142:1.2 The multitudes who came to celebrate the Passover heard this teaching
  of Jesus, and hundreds of them rejoiced in the good news. The chief priests
  and rulers of the Jews became much concerned about Jesus and his apostles and
  debated among themselves as to what should be done with them.

  142:1.3 Besides teaching in and about the temple, the apostles and other
  believers were engaged in doing much personal work among the Passover throngs.
  These interested men and women carried the news of Jesus' message from this
  Passover celebration to the uttermost parts of the Roman Empire and also to
  the East. This was the beginning of the spread of the gospel of the kingdom to
  the outside world. No longer was the work of Jesus to be confined to
  Palestine.





2. GOD'S WRATH



  142:2.1 There was in Jerusalem in attendance upon the Passover festivities one
  Jacob, a wealthy Jewish trader from Crete, and he came to Andrew making
  request to see Jesus privately. Andrew arranged this secret meeting with Jesus
  at Flavius's home the evening of the next day. This man could not comprehend
  the Master's teachings, and he came because he desired to inquire more fully
  about the kingdom of God. Said Jacob to Jesus: "But, Rabbi, Moses and the
  olden prophets tell us that Yahweh is a jealous God, a God of great wrath and
  fierce anger. The prophets say he hates evildoers and takes vengeance on those
  who obey not his law. You and your disciples teach us that God is a kind and
  compassionate Father who so loves all men that he would welcome them into this
  new kingdom of heaven, which you proclaim is so near at hand."



  142:2.2 When Jacob finished speaking, Jesus replied: "Jacob, you have well
  stated the teachings of the olden prophets who taught the children of their
  generation in accordance with the light of their day. Our Father in Paradise
  is changeless. But the concept of his nature has enlarged and grown from the
  days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the generation of the
  prophet Isaiah. And now have I come in the flesh to reveal the Father in new
  glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds. As the
  gospel of this kingdom shall spread over the world with its message of good
  cheer and good will to all men, there will grow up improved and better
  relations among the families of all nations. As time passes, fathers and their
  children will love each other more, and thus will be brought about a better
  understanding of the love of the Father in heaven for his children on earth.
  Remember, Jacob, that a good and true father not only loves his family as a
  whole -- as a family -- but he also truly loves and affectionately cares for
  each individual member."

  142:2.3 After considerable discussion of the heavenly Father's character,
  Jesus paused to say: "You, Jacob, being a father of many, know well the truth
  of my words." And Jacob said: "But, Master, who told you I was the father of
  six children? How did you know this about me?" And the Master replied:
  "Suffice it to say that the Father and the Son know all things, for indeed
  they see all. Loving your children as a father on earth, you must now accept
  as a reality the love of the heavenly Father for you -- not just for all the
  children of Abraham, but for you, your individual soul."



  142:2.4 Then Jesus went on to say: "When your children are very young and
  immature, and when you must chastise them, they may reflect that their father
  is angry and filled with resentful wrath. Their immaturity cannot penetrate
  beyond the punishment to discern the father's farseeing and corrective
  affection. But when these same children become grown-up men and women, would
  it not be folly for them to cling to these earlier and misconceived notions
  regarding their father? As men and women they should now discern their
  father's love in all these early disciplines. And should not mankind, as the
  centuries pass, come the better to understand the true nature and loving
  character of the Father in heaven? What profit have you from successive
  generations of spiritual illumination if you persist in viewing God as Moses
  and the prophets saw him? I say to you, Jacob, under the bright light of this
  hour you should see the Father as none of those who have gone before ever
  beheld him. And thus seeing him, you should rejoice to enter the kingdom
  wherein such a merciful Father rules, and you should seek to have his will of
  love dominate your life henceforth."

  142:2.5 And Jacob answered: "Rabbi, I believe; I desire that you lead me into
  the Father's kingdom."





3. THE CONCEPT OF GOD



  142:3.1 The twelve apostles, most of whom had listened to this discussion of
  the character of God, that night asked Jesus many questions about the Father
  in heaven. The Master's answers to these questions can best be presented by
  the following summary in modern phraseology:

  142:3.2 Jesus mildly upbraided the twelve, in substance saying: Do you not
  know the traditions of Israel relating to the growth of the idea of Yahweh,
  and are you ignorant of the teaching of the Scriptures concerning the doctrine
  of God? And then did the Master proceed to instruct the apostles about the
  evolution of the concept of Deity throughout the course of the development of
  the Jewish people. He called attention to the following phases of the growth
  of the God idea:



  142:3.3 1. Yahweh -- the god of the Sinai clans. This was the primitive
  concept of Deity which Moses exalted to the higher level of the Lord God of
  Israel. The Father in heaven never fails to accept the sincere worship of his
  children on earth, no matter how crude their concept of Deity or by what name
  they symbolize his divine nature.



  142:3.4 2. The Most High. This concept of the Father in heaven was proclaimed
  by Melchizedek to Abraham and was carried far from Salem by those who
  subsequently believed in this enlarged and expanded idea of Deity. Abraham and
  his brother left Ur because of the establishment of sun worship, and they
  became believers in Melchizedek's teaching of El Elyon -- the Most High God.
  Theirs was a composite concept of God, consisting in a blending of their older
  Mesopotamian ideas and the Most High doctrine.



  142:3.5 3. El Shaddai. During these early days many of the Hebrews worshiped
  El Shaddai, the Egyptian concept of the God of heaven, which they learned
  about during their captivity in the land of the Nile. Long after the times of
  Melchizedek all three of these concepts of God became joined together to form
  the doctrine of the creator Deity, the Lord God of Israel.



  142:3.6 4. Elohim. From the times of Adam the teaching of the Paradise Trinity
  has persisted. Do you not recall how the Scriptures begin by asserting that
  "In the beginning the Gods created the heavens and the earth"? This indicates
  that when that record was made the Trinity concept of three Gods in one had
  found lodgment in the religion of our forebears.



  142:3.7 5. The Supreme Yahweh. By the times of Isaiah these beliefs about God
  had expanded into the concept of a Universal Creator who was simultaneously
  all-powerful and all-merciful. And this evolving and enlarging concept of God
  virtually supplanted all previous ideas of Deity in our fathers' religion.



  142:3.8 6. The Father in heaven. And now do we know God as our Father in
  heaven. Our teaching provides a religion wherein the believer is a son of God.
  That is the good news of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. Coexistent with
  the Father are the Son and the Spirit, and the revelation of the nature and
  ministry of these Paradise Deities will continue to enlarge and brighten
  throughout the endless ages of the eternal spiritual progression of the
  ascending sons of God. At all times and during all ages the true worship of
  any human being -- as concerns individual spiritual progress -- is recognized
  by the indwelling spirit as homage rendered to the Father in heaven.



  142:3.9 Never before had the apostles been so shocked as they were upon
  hearing this recounting of the growth of the concept of God in the Jewish
  minds of previous generations; they were too bewildered to ask questions. As
  they sat before Jesus in silence, the Master continued: "And you would have
  known these truths had you read the Scriptures. Have you not read in Samuel
  where it says: `And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, so much
  so that he moved David against them, saying, go number Israel and Judah'? And
  this was not strange because in the days of Samuel the children of Abraham
  really believed that Yahweh created both good and evil. But when a later
  writer narrated these events, subsequent to the enlargement of the Jewish
  concept of the nature of God, he did not dare attribute evil to Yahweh;
  therefore he said: `And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to
  number Israel.' Cannot you discern that such records in the Scriptures clearly
  show how the concept of the nature of God continued to grow from one
  generation to another?

  142:3.10 "Again should you have discerned the growth of the understanding of
  divine law in perfect keeping with these enlarging concepts of divinity. When
  the children of Israel came out of Egypt in the days before the enlarged
  revelation of Yahweh, they had ten commandments which served as their law
  right up to the times when they were encamped before Sinai. And these ten
  commandments were:



  142:3.11 "1. You shall worship no other god, for the Lord is a jealous God.

  142:3.12 "2. You shall not make molten gods.

  142:3.13 "3. You shall not neglect to keep the feast of unleavened bread.

  142:3.14 "4. Of all the males of men or cattle, the first-born are mine, says
  the Lord.

  142:3.15 "5. Six days you may work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.

  142:3.16 "6. You shall not fail to observe the feast of the first fruits and
  the feast of the ingathering at the end of the year.

  142:3.17 "7. You shall not offer the blood of any sacrifice with leavened
  bread.

  142:3.18 "8. The sacrifice of the feast of the Passover shall not be left
  until morning.

  142:3.19 "9. The first of the first fruits of the ground you shall bring to
  the house of the Lord your God.

  142:3.20 "10. You shall not seethe a kid in its mother's milk.

  142:3.21 "And then, amidst the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, Moses gave
  them the new ten commandments, which you will all allow are more worthy
  utterances to accompany the enlarging Yahweh concepts of Deity. And did you
  never take notice of these commandments as twice recorded in the Scriptures,
  that in the first case deliverance from Egypt is assigned as the reason for
  Sabbath keeping, while in a later record the advancing religious beliefs of
  our forefathers demanded that this be changed to the recognition of the fact
  of creation as the reason for Sabbath observance?

  142:3.22 "And then will you remember that once again -- in the greater
  spiritual enlightenment of Isaiah's day -- these ten negative commandments
  were changed into the great and positive law of love, the injunction to love
  God supremely and your neighbor as yourself. And it is this supreme law of
  love for God and for man that I also declare to you as constituting the whole
  duty of man."



  142:3.23 And when he had finished speaking, no man asked him a question. They
  went, each one to his sleep.





4. FLAVIUS AND GREEK CULTURE



  142:4.1 Flavius, the Greek Jew, was a proselyte of the gate, having been
  neither circumcised nor baptized; and since he was a great lover of the
  beautiful in art and sculpture, the house which he occupied when sojourning in
  Jerusalem was a beautiful edifice. This home was exquisitely adorned with
  priceless treasures which he had gathered up here and there on his world
  travels. When he first thought of inviting Jesus to his home, he feared that
  the Master might take offense at the sight of these so-called images. But
  Flavius was agreeably surprised when Jesus entered the home that, instead of
  rebuking him for having these supposedly idolatrous objects scattered about
  the house, he manifested great interest in the entire collection and asked
  many appreciative questions about each object as Flavius escorted him from
  room to room, showing him all of his favorite statues.

  142:4.2 The Master saw that his host was bewildered at his friendly attitude
  toward art; therefore, when they had finished the survey of the entire
  collection, Jesus said: "Because you appreciate the beauty of things created
  by my Father and fashioned by the artistic hands of man, why should you expect
  to be rebuked? Because Moses onetime sought to combat idolatry and the worship
  of false gods, why should all men frown upon the reproduction of grace and
  beauty? I say to you, Flavius, Moses' children have misunderstood him, and now
  do they make false gods of even his prohibitions of images and the likeness of
  things in heaven and on earth. But even if Moses taught such restrictions to
  the darkened minds of those days, what has that to do with this day when the
  Father in heaven is revealed as the universal Spirit Ruler over all? And,
  Flavius, I declare that in the coming kingdom they shall no longer teach, `Do
  not worship this and do not worship that'; no longer shall they concern
  themselves with commands to refrain from this and take care not to do that,
  but rather shall all be concerned with one supreme duty. And this duty of man
  is expressed in two great privileges: sincere worship of the infinite Creator,
  the Paradise Father, and loving service bestowed upon one's fellow men. If you
  love your neighbor as you love yourself, you really know that you are a son of
  God.

  142:4.3 "In an age when my Father was not well understood, Moses was justified
  in his attempts to withstand idolatry, but in the coming age the Father will
  have been revealed in the life of the Son; and this new revelation of God will
  make it forever unnecessary to confuse the Creator Father with idols of stone
  or images of gold and silver. Henceforth, intelligent men may enjoy the
  treasures of art without confusing such material appreciation of beauty with
  the worship and service of the Father in Paradise, the God of all things and
  all beings."



  142:4.4 Flavius believed all that Jesus taught him. The next day he went to
  Bethany beyond the Jordan and was baptized by the disciples of John. And this
  he did because the apostles of Jesus did not yet baptize believers. When
  Flavius returned to Jerusalem, he made a great feast for Jesus and invited
  sixty of his friends. And many of these guests also became believers in the
  message of the coming kingdom.





5. THE DISCOURSE ON ASSURANCE



  142:5.1 One of the great sermons which Jesus preached in the temple this
  Passover week was in answer to a question asked by one of his hearers, a man
  from Damascus. This man asked Jesus: "But, Rabbi, how shall we know of a
  certainty that you are sent by God, and that we may truly enter into this
  kingdom which you and your disciples declare is near at hand?" And Jesus
  answered:

  142:5.2 "As to my message and the teaching of my disciples, you should judge
  them by their fruits. If we proclaim to you the truths of the spirit, the
  spirit will witness in your hearts that our message is genuine. Concerning the
  kingdom and your assurance of acceptance by the heavenly Father, let me ask
  what father among you who is a worthy and kindhearted father would keep his
  son in anxiety or suspense regarding his status in the family or his place of
  security in the affections of his father's heart? Do you earth fathers take
  pleasure in torturing your children with uncertainty about their place of
  abiding love in your human hearts? Neither does your Father in heaven leave
  his faith children of the spirit in doubtful uncertainty as to their position
  in the kingdom. If you receive God as your Father, then indeed and in truth
  are you the sons of God. And if you are sons, then are you secure in the
  position and standing of all that concerns eternal and divine sonship. If you
  believe my words, you thereby believe in Him who sent me, and by thus
  believing in the Father, you have made your status in heavenly citizenship
  sure. If you do the will of the Father in heaven, you shall never fail in the
  attainment of the eternal life of progress in the divine kingdom.

  142:5.3 "The Supreme Spirit shall bear witness with your spirits that you are
  truly the children of God. And if you are the sons of God, then have you been
  born of the spirit of God; and whosoever has been born of the spirit has in
  himself the power to overcome all doubt, and this is the victory that
  overcomes all uncertainty, even your faith.

  142:5.4 "Said the Prophet Isaiah, speaking of these times: `When the spirit is
  poured upon us from on high, then shall the work of righteousness become
  peace, quietness, and assurance forever.' And for all who truly believe this
  gospel, I will become surety for their reception into the eternal mercies and
  the everlasting life of my Father's kingdom. You, then, who hear this message
  and believe this gospel of the kingdom are the sons of God, and you have life
  everlasting; and the evidence to all the world that you have been born of the
  spirit is that you sincerely love one another."

  142:5.5 The throng of listeners remained many hours with Jesus, asking him
  questions and listening attentively to his comforting answers. Even the
  apostles were emboldened by Jesus' teaching to preach the gospel of the
  kingdom with more power and assurance. This experience at Jerusalem was a
  great inspiration to the twelve. It was their first contact with such enormous
  crowds, and they learned many valuable lessons which proved of great
  assistance in their later work.





6. THE VISIT WITH NICODEMUS



  142:6.1 One evening at the home of Flavius there came to see Jesus one
  Nicodemus, a wealthy and elderly member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. He had heard
  much about the teachings of this Galilean, and so he went one afternoon to
  hear him as he taught in the temple courts. He would have gone often to hear
  Jesus teach, but he feared to be seen by the people in attendance upon his
  teaching, for already were the rulers of the Jews so at variance with Jesus
  that no member of the Sanhedrin would want to be identified in any open manner
  with him. Accordingly, Nicodemus had arranged with Andrew to see Jesus
  privately and after nightfall on this particular evening. Peter, James, and
  John were in Flavius's garden when the interview began, but later they all
  went into the house where the discourse continued.

  142:6.2 In receiving Nicodemus, Jesus showed no particular deference; in
  talking with him, there was no compromise or undue persuasiveness. The Master
  made no attempt to repulse his secretive caller, nor did he employ sarcasm. In
  all his dealings with the distinguished visitor, Jesus was calm, earnest, and
  dignified. Nicodemus was not an official delegate of the Sanhedrin; he came to
  see Jesus wholly because of his personal and sincere interest in the Master's
  teachings.

  142:6.3 Upon being presented by Flavius, Nicodemus said: "Rabbi, we know that
  you are a teacher sent by God, for no mere man could so teach unless God were
  with him. And I am desirous of knowing more about your teachings regarding the
  coming kingdom."

  142:6.4 Jesus answered Nicodemus: "Verily, verily, I say to you, Nicodemus,
  except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Then
  replied Nicodemus: "But how can a man be born again when he is old? He cannot
  enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born."

  142:6.5 Jesus said: "Nevertheless, I declare to you, except a man be born of
  the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the
  flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. But you should
  not marvel that I said you must be born from above. When the wind blows, you
  hear the rustle of the leaves, but you do not see the wind -- whence it comes
  or whither it goes -- and so it is with everyone born of the spirit. With the
  eyes of the flesh you can behold the manifestations of the spirit, but you
  cannot actually discern the spirit."

  142:6.6 Nicodemus replied: "But I do not understand -- how can that be?" Said
  Jesus: "Can it be that you are a teacher in Israel and yet ignorant of all
  this? It becomes, then, the duty of those who know about the realities of the
  spirit to reveal these things to those who discern only the manifestations of
  the material world. But will you believe us if we tell you of the heavenly
  truths? Do you have the courage, Nicodemus, to believe in one who has
  descended from heaven, even the Son of Man?"

  142:6.7 And Nicodemus said: "But how can I begin to lay hold upon this spirit
  which is to remake me in preparation for entering into the kingdom?" Jesus
  answered: "Already does the spirit of the Father in heaven indwell you. If you
  would be led by this spirit from above, very soon would you begin to see with
  the eyes of the spirit, and then by the wholehearted choice of spirit guidance
  would you be born of the spirit since your only purpose in living would be to
  do the will of your Father who is in heaven. And so finding yourself born of
  the spirit and happily in the kingdom of God, you would begin to bear in your
  daily life the abundant fruits of the spirit."

  142:6.8 Nicodemus was thoroughly sincere. He was deeply impressed but went
  away bewildered. Nicodemus was accomplished in self-development, in self-
  restraint, and even in high moral qualities. He was refined, egoistic, and
  altruistic; but he did not know how to submit his will to the will of the
  divine Father as a little child is willing to submit to the guidance and
  leading of a wise and loving earthly father, thereby becoming in reality a son
  of God, a progressive heir of the eternal kingdom.

  142:6.9 But Nicodemus did summon faith enough to lay hold of the kingdom. He
  faintly protested when his colleagues of the Sanhedrin sought to condemn Jesus
  without a hearing; and with Joseph of Arimathea, he later boldly acknowledged
  his faith and claimed the body of Jesus, even when most of the disciples had
  fled in fear from the scenes of their Master's final suffering and death.





7. THE LESSON ON THE FAMILY



  142:7.1 After the busy period of teaching and personal work of Passover week
  in Jerusalem, Jesus spent the next Wednesday at Bethany with his apostles,
  resting. That afternoon, Thomas asked a question which elicited a long and
  instructive answer. Said Thomas: "Master, on the day we were set apart as
  ambassadors of the kingdom, you told us many things, instructed us regarding
  our personal mode of life, but what shall we teach the multitude? How are
  these people to live after the kingdom more fully comes? Shall your disciples
  own slaves? Shall your believers court poverty and shun property? Shall mercy
  alone prevail so that we shall have no more law and justice?" Jesus and the
  twelve spent all afternoon and all that evening, after supper, discussing
  Thomas's questions. For the purposes of this record we present the following
  summary of the Master's instruction:

  142:7.2 Jesus sought first to make plain to his apostles that he himself was
  on earth living a unique life in the flesh, and that they, the twelve, had
  been called to participate in this bestowal experience of the Son of Man; and
  as such coworkers, they, too, must share in many of the special restrictions
  and obligations of the entire bestowal experience. There was a veiled
  intimation that the Son of Man was the only person who had ever lived on earth
  who could simultaneously see into the very heart of God and into the very
  depths of man's soul.

  142:7.3 Very plainly Jesus explained that the kingdom of heaven was an
  evolutionary experience, beginning here on earth and progressing up through
  successive life stations to Paradise. In the course of the evening he
  definitely stated that at some future stage of kingdom development he would
  revisit this world in spiritual power and divine glory.

  142:7.4 He next explained that the "kingdom idea" was not the best way to
  illustrate man's relation to God; that he employed such figures of speech
  because the Jewish people were expecting the kingdom, and because John had
  preached in terms of the coming kingdom. Jesus said: "The people of another
  age will better understand the gospel of the kingdom when it is presented in
  terms expressive of the family relationship -- when man understands religion
  as the teaching of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, sonship
  with God." Then the Master discoursed at some length on the earthly family as
  an illustration of the heavenly family, restating the two fundamental laws of
  living: the first commandment of love for the father, the head of the family,
  and the second commandment of mutual love among the children, to love your
  brother as yourself. And then he explained that such a quality of brotherly
  affection would invariably manifest itself in unselfish and loving social
  service.

  142:7.5 Following that, came the memorable discussion of the fundamental
  characteristics of family life and their application to the relationship
  existing between God and man. Jesus stated that a true family is founded on
  the following seven facts:



  142:7.6 1. The fact of existence. The relationships of nature and the
  phenomena of mortal likenesses are bound up in the family: Children inherit
  certain parental traits. The children take origin in the parents; personality
  existence depends on the act of the parent. The relationship of father and
  child is inherent in all nature and pervades all living existences.



  142:7.7 2. Security and pleasure. True fathers take great pleasure in
  providing for the needs of their children. Many fathers are not content with
  supplying the mere wants of their children but enjoy making provision for
  their pleasures also.



  142:7.8 3. Education and training. Wise fathers carefully plan for the
  education and adequate training of their sons and daughters. When young they
  are prepared for the greater responsibilities of later life.



  142:7.9 4. Discipline and restraint. Farseeing fathers also make provision for
  the necessary discipline, guidance, correction, and sometimes restraint of
  their young and immature offspring.



  142:7.10 5. Companionship and loyalty. The affectionate father holds intimate
  and loving intercourse with his children. Always is his ear open to their
  petitions; he is ever ready to share their hardships and assist them over
  their difficulties. The father is supremely interested in the progressive
  welfare of his progeny.



  142:7.11 6. Love and mercy. A compassionate father is freely forgiving;
  fathers do not hold vengeful memories against their children. Fathers are not
  like judges, enemies, or creditors. Real families are built upon tolerance,
  patience, and forgiveness.



  142:7.12 7. Provision for the future. Temporal fathers like to leave an
  inheritance for their sons. The family continues from one generation to
  another. Death only ends one generation to mark the beginning of another.
  Death terminates an individual life but not necessarily the family.



  142:7.13 For hours the Master discussed the application of these features of
  family life to the relations of man, the earth child, to God, the Paradise
  Father. And this was his conclusion: "This entire relationship of a son to the
  Father, I know in perfection, for all that you must attain of sonship in the
  eternal future I have now already attained. The Son of Man is prepared to
  ascend to the right hand of the Father, so that in me is the way now open
  still wider for all of you to see God and, ere you have finished the glorious
  progression, to become perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."

  142:7.14 When the apostles heard these startling words, they recalled the
  pronouncements which John made at the time of Jesus' baptism, and they also
  vividly recalled this experience in connection with their preaching and
  teaching subsequent to the Master's death and resurrection.

  142:7.15 Jesus is a divine Son, one in the Universal Father's full confidence.
  He had been with the Father and comprehended him fully. He had now lived his
  earth life to the full satisfaction of the Father, and this incarnation in the
  flesh had enabled him fully to comprehend man. Jesus was the perfection of
  man; he had attained just such perfection as all true believers are destined
  to attain in him and through him. Jesus revealed a God of perfection to man
  and presented in himself the perfected son of the realms to God.

  142:7.16 Although Jesus discoursed for several hours, Thomas was not yet
  satisfied, for he said: "But, Master, we do not find that the Father in heaven
  always deals kindly and mercifully with us. Many times we grievously suffer on
  earth, and not always are our prayers answered. Where do we fail to grasp the
  meaning of your teaching?"

  142:7.17 Jesus replied: "Thomas, Thomas, how long before you will acquire the
  ability to listen with the ear of the spirit? How long will it be before you
  discern that this kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and that my Father is also a
  spiritual being? Do you not understand that I am teaching you as spiritual
  children in the spirit family of heaven, of which the fatherhead is an
  infinite and eternal spirit? Will you not allow me to use the earth family as
  an illustration of divine relationships without so literally applying my
  teaching to material affairs? In your minds cannot you separate the spiritual
  realities of the kingdom from the material, social, economic, and political
  problems of the age? When I speak the language of the spirit, why do you
  insist on translating my meaning into the language of the flesh just because I
  presume to employ commonplace and literal relationships for purposes of
  illustration? My children, I implore that you cease to apply the teaching of
  the kingdom of the spirit to the sordid affairs of slavery, poverty, houses,
  and lands, and to the material problems of human equity and justice. These
  temporal matters are the concern of the men of this world, and while in a way
  they affect all men, you have been called to represent me in the world, even
  as I represent my Father. You are spiritual ambassadors of a spiritual
  kingdom, special representatives of the spirit Father. By this time it should
  be possible for me to instruct you as full-grown men of the spirit kingdom.
  Must I ever address you only as children? Will you never grow up in spirit
  perception? Nevertheless, I love you and will bear with you, even to the very
  end of our association in the flesh. And even then shall my spirit go before
  you into all the world."





8. IN SOUTHERN JUDEA



  142:8.1 By the end of April the opposition to Jesus among the Pharisees and
  Sadducees had become so pronounced that the Master and his apostles decided to
  leave Jerusalem for a while, going south to work in Bethlehem and Hebron. The
  entire month of May was spent in doing personal work in these cities and among
  the people of the surrounding villages. No public preaching was done on this
  trip, only house-to-house visitation. A part of this time, while the apostles
  taught the gospel and ministered to the sick, Jesus and Abner spent at Engedi,
  visiting the Nazarite colony. John the Baptist had gone forth from this place,
  and Abner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite brotherhood became
  believers in Jesus, but the majority of these ascetic and eccentric men
  refused to accept him as a teacher sent from heaven because he did not teach
  fasting and other forms of self-denial.

  142:8.2 The people living in this region did not know that Jesus had been born
  in Bethlehem. They always supposed the Master had been born at Nazareth, as
  did the vast majority of his disciples, but the twelve knew the facts.

  142:8.3 This sojourn in the south of Judea was a restful and fruitful season
  of labor; many souls were added to the kingdom. By the first days of June the
  agitation against Jesus had so quieted down in Jerusalem that the Master and
  the apostles returned to instruct and comfort believers.

  142:8.4 Although Jesus and the apostles spent the entire month of June in or
  near Jerusalem, they did no public teaching during this period. They lived for
  the most part in tents, which they pitched in a shaded park, or garden, known
  in that day as Gethsemane. This park was situated on the western slope of the
  Mount of Olives not far from the brook Kidron. The Sabbath week ends they
  usually spent with Lazarus and his sisters at Bethany. Jesus entered within
  the walls of Jerusalem only a few times, but a large number of interested
  inquirers came out to Gethsemane to visit with him. One Friday evening
  Nicodemus and one Joseph of Arimathea ventured out to see Jesus but turned
  back through fear even after they were standing before the entrance to the
  Master's tent. And, of course, they did not perceive that Jesus knew all about
  their doings.

  142:8.5 When the rulers of the Jews learned that Jesus had returned to
  Jerusalem, they prepared to arrest him; but when they observed that he did no
  public preaching, they concluded that he had become frightened by their
  previous agitation and decided to allow him to carry on his teaching in this
  private manner without further molestation. And thus affairs moved along
  quietly until the last days of June, when one Simon, a member of the
  Sanhedrin, publicly espoused the teachings of Jesus, after so declaring
  himself before the rulers of the Jews. Immediately a new agitation for Jesus'
  apprehension sprang up and grew so strong that the Master decided to retire
  into the cities of Samaria and the Decapolis.


 PAPER 143


 GOING THROUGH SAMARIA



  143:0.1 AT THE end of June, A.D. 27, because of the increasing opposition of
  the Jewish religious rulers, Jesus and the twelve departed from Jerusalem,
  after sending their tents and meager personal effects to be stored at the home
  of Lazarus at Bethany. Going north into Samaria, they tarried over the Sabbath
  at Bethel. Here they preached for several days to the people who came from
  Gophna and Ephraim. A group of citizens from Arimathea and Thamna came over to
  invite Jesus to visit their villages. The Master and his apostles spent more
  than two weeks teaching the Jews and Samaritans of this region, many of whom
  came from as far as Antipatris to hear the good news of the kingdom.

  143:0.2 The people of southern Samaria heard Jesus gladly, and the apostles,
  with the exception of Judas Iscariot, succeeded in overcoming much of their
  prejudice against the Samaritans. It was very difficult for Judas to love
  these Samaritans. The last week of July Jesus and his associates made ready to
  depart for the new Greek cities of Phasaelis and Archelais near the Jordan.




   1. PREACHING AT ARCHELAIS

  143:1.1 The first half of the month of August the apostolic party made its
  headquarters at the Greek cities of Archelais and Phasaelis, where they had
  their first experience preaching to well-nigh exclusive gatherings of gentiles
  -- Greeks, Romans, and Syrians -- for few Jews dwelt in these two Greek towns.
  In contacting with these Roman citizens, the apostles encountered new
  difficulties in the proclamation of the message of the coming kingdom, and
  they met with new objections to the teachings of Jesus. At one of the many
  evening conferences with his apostles, Jesus listened attentively to these
  objections to the gospel of the kingdom as the twelve repeated their
  experiences with the subjects of their personal labors.

  143:1.2 A question asked by Philip was typical of their difficulties. Said
  Philip: "Master, these Greeks and Romans make light of our message, saying
  that such teachings are fit for only weaklings and slaves. They assert that
  the religion of the heathen is superior to our teaching because it inspires to
  the acquirement of a strong, robust, and aggressive character. They affirm
  that we would convert all men into enfeebled specimens of passive nonresisters
  who would soon perish from the face of the earth. They like you, Master, and
  freely admit that your teaching is heavenly and ideal, but they will not take
  us seriously. They assert that your religion is not for this world; that men
  cannot live as you teach. And now, Master, what shall we say to these
  gentiles?"

  143:1.3 After Jesus had heard similar objections to the gospel of the kingdom
  presented by Thomas, Nathaniel, Simon Zelotes, and Matthew, he said to the
  twelve:

  143:1.4 "I have come into this world to do the will of my Father and to reveal
  his loving character to all mankind. That, my brethren, is my mission. And
  this one thing I will do, regardless of the misunderstanding of my teachings
  by Jews or gentiles of this day or of another generation. But you should not
  overlook the fact that even divine love has its severe disciplines. A father's
  love for his son oftentimes impels the father to restrain the unwise acts of
  his thoughtless offspring. The child does not always comprehend the wise and
  loving motives of the father's restraining discipline. But I declare to you
  that my Father in Paradise does rule a universe of universes by the compelling
  power of his love. Love is the greatest of all spirit realities. Truth is a
  liberating revelation, but love is the supreme relationship. And no matter
  what blunders your fellow men make in their world management of today, in an
  age to come the gospel which I declare to you will rule this very world. The
  ultimate goal of human progress is the reverent recognition of the fatherhood
  of God and the loving materialization of the brotherhood of man.

  143:1.5 "But who told you that my gospel was intended only for slaves and
  weaklings? Do you, my chosen apostles, resemble weaklings? Did John look like
  a weakling? Do you observe that I am enslaved by fear? True, the poor and
  oppressed of this generation have the gospel preached to them. The religions
  of this world have neglected the poor, but my Father is no respecter of
  persons. Besides, the poor of this day are the first to heed the call to
  repentance and acceptance of sonship. The gospel of the kingdom is to be
  preached to all men -- Jew and gentile, Greek and Roman, rich and poor, free
  and bond -- and equally to young and old, male and female.

  143:1.6 "Because my Father is a God of love and delights in the practice of
  mercy, do not imbibe the idea that the service of the kingdom is to be one of
  monotonous ease. The Paradise ascent is the supreme adventure of all time, the
  rugged achievement of eternity. The service of the kingdom on earth will call
  for all the courageous manhood that you and your coworkers can muster. Many of
  you will be put to death for your loyalty to the gospel of this kingdom. It is
  easy to die in the line of physical battle when your courage is strengthened
  by the presence of your fighting comrades, but it requires a higher and more
  profound form of human courage and devotion calmly and all alone to lay down
  your life for the love of a truth enshrined in your mortal heart.

  143:1.7 "Today, the unbelievers may taunt you with preaching a gospel of
  nonresistance and with living lives of nonviolence, but you are the first
  volunteers of a long line of sincere believers in the gospel of this kingdom
  who will astonish all mankind by their heroic devotion to these teachings. No
  armies of the world have ever displayed more courage and bravery than will be
  portrayed by you and your loyal successors who shall go forth to all the world
  proclaiming the good news -- the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.
  The courage of the flesh is the lowest form of bravery. Mind bravery is a
  higher type of human courage, but the highest and supreme is uncompromising
  loyalty to the enlightened convictions of profound spiritual realities. And
  such courage constitutes the heroism of the God-knowing man. And you are all
  God-knowing men; you are in very truth the personal associates of the Son of
  Man."



  143:1.8 This was not all that Jesus said on that occasion, but it is the
  introduction of his address, and he went on at great length in amplification
  and in illustration of this pronouncement. This was one of the most
  impassioned addresses which Jesus ever delivered to the twelve. Seldom did the
  Master speak to his apostles with evident strong feeling, but this was one of
  those few occasions when he spoke with manifest earnestness, accompanied by
  marked emotion.



  143:1.9 The result upon the public preaching and personal ministry of the
  apostles was immediate; from that very day their message took on a new note of
  courageous dominance. The twelve continued to acquire the spirit of positive
  aggression in the new gospel of the kingdom. From this day forward they did
  not occupy themselves so much with the preaching of the negative virtues and
  the passive injunctions of their Master's many-sided teaching.





2. LESSON ON SELF-MASTERY

  143:2.1 The Master was a perfected specimen of human self-control. When he was
  reviled, he reviled not; when he suffered, he uttered no threats against his
  tormentors; when he was denounced by his enemies, he simply committed himself
  to the righteous judgment of the Father in heaven.



  143:2.2 At one of the evening conferences, Andrew asked Jesus: "Master, are we
  to practice self-denial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-
  control of your teaching? Wherein does your teaching differ from that of
  John?" Jesus answered: "John indeed taught you the way of righteousness in
  accordance with the light and laws of his fathers, and that was the religion
  of self-examination and self-denial. But I come with a new message of self-
  forgetfulness and self-control. I show to you the way of life as revealed to
  me by my Father in heaven.

  143:2.3 "Verily, verily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater
  than he who captures a city. Self-mastery is the measure of man's moral nature
  and the indicator of his spiritual development. In the old order you fasted
  and prayed; as the new creature of the rebirth of the spirit, you are taught
  to believe and rejoice. In the Father's kingdom you are to become new
  creatures; old things are to pass away; behold I show you how all things are
  to become new. And by your love for one another you are to convince the world
  that you have passed from bondage to liberty, from death into life
  everlasting.

  143:2.4 "By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to the rules
  of living; by the new way you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth and
  thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of
  your mind, and so are you endowed with the power of the certain and joyous
  performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God. Forget not
  -- it is your personal faith in the exceedingly great and precious promises of
  God that ensures your becoming partakers of the divine nature. Thus by your
  faith and the spirit's transformation, you become in reality the temples of
  God, and his spirit actually dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells
  within you, you are no longer bondslaves of the flesh but free and liberated
  sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit endows you with the liberty of
  self-mastery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bondage and the
  slavery of self-denial.

  143:2.5 "Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up
  your acts to the influence of the evil one when in reality you have but been
  led astray by your own natural tendencies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long
  ago tell you that the human heart is deceitful above all things and sometimes
  even desperately wicked? How easy for you to become self-deceived and thereby
  fall into foolish fears, divers lusts, enslaving pleasures, malice, envy, and
  even vengeful hatred!

  143:2.6 "Salvation is by the regeneration of the spirit and not by the self-
  righteous deeds of the flesh. You are justified by faith and fellowshipped by
  grace, not by fear and the self-denial of the flesh, albeit the Father's
  children who have been born of the spirit are ever and always masters of the
  self and all that pertains to the desires of the flesh. When you know that you
  are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who follow in the
  way of this heavenly peace are destined to be sanctified to the eternal
  service of the ever-advancing sons of the eternal God. Henceforth, it is not a
  duty but rather your exalted privilege to cleanse yourselves from all evils of
  mind and body while you seek for perfection in the love of God.

  143:2.7 "Your sonship is grounded in faith, and you are to remain unmoved by
  fear. Your joy is born of trust in the divine word, and you shall not
  therefore be led to doubt the reality of the Father's love and mercy. It is
  the very goodness of God that leads men into true and genuine repentance. Your
  secret of the mastery of self is bound up with your faith in the indwelling
  spirit, which ever works by love. Even this saving faith you have not of
  yourselves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the children of this
  living faith, you are no longer the bondslaves of self but rather the
  triumphant masters of yourselves, the liberated sons of God.

  143:2.8 "If, then, my children, you are born of the spirit, you are forever
  delivered from the self-conscious bondage of a life of self-denial and
  watchcare over the desires of the flesh, and you are translated into the
  joyous kingdom of the spirit, whence you spontaneously show forth the fruits
  of the spirit in your daily lives; and the fruits of the spirit are the
  essence of the highest type of enjoyable and ennobling self-control, even the
  heights of terrestrial mortal attainment -- true self-mastery."





3. DIVERSION AND RELAXATION

  143:3.1 About this time a state of great nervous and emotional tension
  developed among the apostles and their immediate disciple associates. They had
  hardly become accustomed to living and working together. They were
  experiencing increasing difficulties in maintaining harmonious relations with
  John's disciples. The contact with the gentiles and the Samaritans was a great
  trial to these Jews. And besides all this, the recent utterances of Jesus had
  augmented their disturbed state of mind. Andrew was almost beside himself; he
  did not know what next to do, and so he went to the Master with his problems
  and perplexities. When Jesus had listened to the apostolic chief relate his
  troubles, he said: "Andrew, you cannot talk men out of their perplexities when
  they reach such a stage of involvement, and when so many persons with strong
  feelings are concerned. I cannot do what you ask of me -- I will not
  participate in these personal social difficulties -- but I will join you in
  the enjoyment of a three-day period of rest and relaxation. Go to your
  brethren and announce that all of you are to go with me up on Mount Sartaba,
  where I desire to rest for a day or two.

  143:3.2 "Now you should go to each of your eleven brethren and talk with him
  privately, saying: `The Master desires that we go apart with him for a season
  to rest and relax. Since we all have recently experienced much vexation of
  spirit and stress of mind, I suggest that no mention be made of our trials and
  troubles while on this holiday. Can I depend upon you to co-operate with me in
  this matter?' In this way privately and personally approach each of your
  brethren." And Andrew did as the Master had instructed him.



  143:3.3 This was a marvelous occasion in the experience of each of them; they
  never forgot the day going up the mountain. Throughout the entire trip hardly
  a word was said about their troubles. Upon reaching the top of the mountain,
  Jesus seated them about him while he said: "My brethren, you must all learn
  the value of rest and the efficacy of relaxation. You must realize that the
  best method of solving some entangled problems is to forsake them for a time.
  Then when you go back fresh from your rest or worship, you are able to attack
  your troubles with a clearer head and a steadier hand, not to mention a more
  resolute heart. Again, many times your problem is found to have shrunk in size
  and proportions while you have been resting your mind and body."

  143:3.4 The next day Jesus assigned to each of the twelve a topic for
  discussion. The whole day was devoted to reminiscences and to talking over
  matters not related to their religious work. They were momentarily shocked
  when Jesus even neglected to give thanks -- verbally -- when he broke bread
  for their noontide lunch. This was the first time they had ever observed him
  to neglect such formalities.

  143:3.5 When they went up the mountain, Andrew's head was full of problems.
  John was inordinately perplexed in his heart. James was grievously troubled in
  his soul. Matthew was hard pressed for funds inasmuch as they had been
  sojourning among the gentiles. Peter was overwrought and had recently been
  more temperamental than usual. Judas was suffering from a periodic attack of
  sensitiveness and selfishness. Simon was unusually upset in his efforts to
  reconcile his patriotism with the love of the brotherhood of man. Philip was
  more and more nonplused by the way things were going. Nathaniel had been less
  humorous since they had come in contact with the gentile populations, and
  Thomas was in the midst of a severe season of depression. Only the twins were
  normal and unperturbed. All of them were exceedingly perplexed about how to
  get along peaceably with John's disciples.

  143:3.6 The third day when they started down the mountain and back to their
  camp, a great change had come over them. They had made the important discovery
  that many human perplexities are in reality nonexistent, that many pressing
  troubles are the creations of exaggerated fear and the offspring of augmented
  apprehension. They had learned that all such perplexities are best handled by
  being forsaken; by going off they had left such problems to solve themselves.

  143:3.7 Their return from this holiday marked the beginning of a period of
  greatly improved relations with the followers of John. Many of the twelve
  really gave way to mirth when they noted the changed state of everybody's mind
  and observed the freedom from nervous irritability which had come to them as a
  result of their three days' vacation from the routine duties of life. There is
  always danger that monotony of human contact will greatly multiply
  perplexities and magnify difficulties.



  143:3.8 Not many of the gentiles in the two Greek cities of Archelais and
  Phasaelis believed in the gospel, but the twelve apostles gained a valuable
  experience in this their first extensive work with exclusively gentile
  populations. On a Monday morning, about the middle of the month, Jesus said to
  Andrew: "We go into Samaria." And they set out at once for the city of Sychar,
  near Jacob's well.





4. THE JEWS AND THE SAMARITANS

  143:4.1 For more than six hundred years the Jews of Judea, and later on those
  of Galilee also, had been at enmity with the Samaritans. This ill feeling
  between the Jews and the Samaritans came about in this way: About seven
  hundred years B.C., Sargon, king of Assyria, in subduing a revolt in central
  Palestine, carried away and into captivity over twenty-five thousand Jews of
  the northern kingdom of Israel and installed in their place an almost equal
  number of the descendants of the Cuthites, Sepharvites, and the Hamathites.
  Later on, Ashurbanipal sent still other colonies to dwell in Samaria.

  143:4.2 The religious enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans dated from
  the return of the former from the Babylonian captivity, when the Samaritans
  worked to prevent the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Later they offended the Jews by
  extending friendly assistance to the armies of Alexander. In return for their
  friendship Alexander gave the Samaritans permission to build a temple on Mount
  Gerizim, where they worshiped Yahweh and their tribal gods and offered
  sacrifices much after the order of the temple services at Jerusalem. At least
  they continued this worship up to the time of the Maccabees, when John
  Hyrcanus destroyed their temple on Mount Gerizim. The Apostle Philip, in his
  labors for the Samaritans after the death of Jesus, held many meetings on the
  site of this old Samaritan temple.

  143:4.3 The antagonisms between the Jews and the Samaritans were time-honored
  and historic; increasingly since the days of Alexander they had had no
  dealings with each other. The twelve apostles were not averse to preaching in
  the Greek and other gentile cities of the Decapolis and Syria, but it was a
  severe test of their loyalty to the Master when he said, "Let us go into
  Samaria." But in the year and more they had been with Jesus, they had
  developed a form of personal loyalty which transcended even their faith in his
  teachings and their prejudices against the Samaritans.





5. THE WOMAN OF SYCHAR

  143:5.1 When the Master and the twelve arrived at Jacob's well, Jesus, being
  weary from the journey, tarried by the well while Philip took the apostles
  with him to assist in bringing food and tents from Sychar, for they were
  disposed to stay in this vicinity for a while. Peter and the Zebedee sons
  would have remained with Jesus, but he requested that they go with their
  brethren, saying: "Have no fear for me; these Samaritans will be friendly;
  only our brethren, the Jews, seek to harm us." And it was almost six o'clock
  on this summer's evening when Jesus sat down by the well to await the return
  of the apostles.

  143:5.2 The water of Jacob's well was less mineral than that from the wells of
  Sychar and was therefore much valued for drinking purposes. Jesus was thirsty,
  but there was no way of getting water from the well. When, therefore, a woman
  of Sychar came up with her water pitcher and prepared to draw from the well,
  Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." This woman of Samaria knew Jesus was a
  Jew by his appearance and dress, and she surmised that he was a Galilean Jew
  from his accent. Her name was Nalda and she was a comely creature. She was
  much surprised to have a Jewish man thus speak to her at the well and ask for
  water, for it was not deemed proper in those days for a self-respecting man to
  speak to a woman in public, much less for a Jew to converse with a Samaritan.
  Therefore Nalda asked Jesus, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink
  of me, a Samaritan woman?" Jesus answered: "I have indeed asked you for a
  drink, but if you could only understand, you would ask me for a draught of the
  living water." Then said Nalda: "But, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and
  the well is deep; whence, then, have you this living water? Are you greater
  than our father Jacob who gave us this well, and who drank thereof himself and
  his sons and his cattle also?"

  143:5.3 Jesus replied: "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
  but whosoever drinks of the water of the living spirit shall never thirst. And
  this living water shall become in him a well of refreshment springing up even
  to eternal life." Nalda then said: "Give me this water that I thirst not
  neither come all the way hither to draw. Besides, anything which a Samaritan
  woman could receive from such a commendable Jew would be a pleasure."

  143:5.4 Nalda did not know how to take Jesus' willingness to talk with her.
  She beheld in the Master's face the countenance of an upright and holy man,
  but she mistook friendliness for commonplace familiarity, and she
  misinterpreted his figure of speech as a form of making advances to her. And
  being a woman of lax morals, she was minded openly to become flirtatious, when
  Jesus, looking straight into her eyes, with a commanding voice said, "Woman,
  go get your husband and bring him hither." This command brought Nalda to her
  senses. She saw that she had misjudged the Master's kindness; she perceived
  that she had misconstrued his manner of speech. She was frightened; she began
  to realize that she stood in the presence of an unusual person, and groping
  about in her mind for a suitable reply, in great confusion, she said, "But,
  Sir, I cannot call my husband, for I have no husband." Then said Jesus: "You
  have spoken the truth, for, while you may have once had a husband, he with
  whom you are now living is not your husband. Better it would be if you would
  cease to trifle with my words and seek for the living water which I have this
  day offered you."

  143:5.5 By this time Nalda was sobered, and her better self was awakened. She
  was not an immoral woman wholly by choice. She had been ruthlessly and
  unjustly cast aside by her husband and in dire straits had consented to live
  with a certain Greek as his wife, but without marriage. Nalda now felt greatly
  ashamed that she had so unthinkingly spoken to Jesus, and she most penitently
  addressed the Master, saying: "My Lord, I repent of my manner of speaking to
  you, for I perceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet." And she was
  just about to seek direct and personal help from the Master when she did what
  so many have done before and since -- dodged the issue of personal salvation
  by turning to the discussion of theology and philosophy. She quickly turned
  the conversation from her own needs to a theological controversy. Pointing
  over to Mount Gerizim, she continued: "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,
  and yet you would say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to
  worship; which, then, is the right place to worship God?"

  143:5.6 Jesus perceived the attempt of the woman's soul to avoid direct and
  searching contact with its Maker, but he also saw that there was present in
  her soul a desire to know the better way of life. After all, there was in
  Nalda's heart a true thirst for the living water; therefore he dealt patiently
  with her, saying: "Woman, let me say to you that the day is soon coming when
  neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. But now
  you worship that which you know not, a mixture of the religion of many pagan
  gods and gentile philosophies. The Jews at least know whom they worship; they
  have removed all confusion by concentrating their worship upon one God,
  Yahweh. But you should believe me when I say that the hour will soon come --
  even now is -- when all sincere worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
  and in truth, for it is just such worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit,
  and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Your
  salvation comes not from knowing how others should worship or where but by
  receiving into your own heart this living water which I am offering you even
  now."

  143:5.7 But Nalda would make one more effort to avoid the discussion of the
  embarrassing question of her personal life on earth and the status of her soul
  before God. Once more she resorted to questions of general religion, saying:
  "Yes, I know, Sir, that John has preached about the coming of the Converter,
  he who will be called the Deliverer, and that, when he shall come, he will
  declare to us all things" -- and Jesus, interrupting Nalda, said with
  startling assurance, "I who speak to you am he."

  143:5.8 This was the first direct, positive, and undisguised pronouncement of
  his divine nature and sonship which Jesus had made on earth; and it was made
  to a woman, a Samaritan woman, and a woman of questionable character in the
  eyes of men up to this moment, but a woman whom the divine eye beheld as
  having been sinned against more than as sinning of her own desire and as now
  being a human soul who desired salvation, desired it sincerely and
  wholeheartedly, and that was enough.

  143:5.9 As Nalda was about to voice her real and personal longing for better
  things and a more noble way of living, just as she was ready to speak the real
  desire of her heart, the twelve apostles returned from Sychar, and coming upon
  this scene of Jesus' talking so intimately with this woman -- this Samaritan
  woman, and alone -- they were more than astonished. They quickly deposited
  their supplies and drew aside, no man daring to reprove him, while Jesus said
  to Nalda: "Woman, go your way; God has forgiven you. Henceforth you will live
  a new life. You have received the living water, and a new joy will spring up
  within your soul, and you shall become a daughter of the Most High." And the
  woman, perceiving the disapproval of the apostles, left her waterpot and fled
  to the city.

  143:5.10 As she entered the city, she proclaimed to everyone she met: "Go out
  to Jacob's well and go quickly, for there you will see a man who told me all I
  ever did. Can this be the Converter?" And ere the sun went down, a great crowd
  had assembled at Jacob's well to hear Jesus. And the Master talked to them
  more about the water of life, the gift of the indwelling spirit.

  143:5.11 The apostles never ceased to be shocked by Jesus' willingness to talk
  with women, women of questionable character, even immoral women. It was very
  difficult for Jesus to teach his apostles that women, even so-called immoral
  women, have souls which can choose God as their Father, thereby becoming
  daughters of God and candidates for life everlasting. Even nineteen centuries
  later many show the same unwillingness to grasp the Master's teachings. Even
  the Christian religion has been persistently built up around the fact of the
  death of Christ instead of around the truth of his life. The world should be
  more concerned with his happy and God-revealing life than with his tragic and
  sorrowful death.

  143:5.12 Nalda told this entire story to the Apostle John the next day, but he
  never revealed it fully to the other apostles, and Jesus did not speak of it
  in detail to the twelve.

  143:5.13 Nalda told John that Jesus had told her "all I ever did." John many
  times wanted to ask Jesus about this visit with Nalda, but he never did. Jesus
  told her only one thing about herself, but his look into her eyes and the
  manner of his dealing with her had so brought all of her checkered life in
  panoramic review before her mind in a moment of time that she associated all
  of this self-revelation of her past life with the look and the word of the
  Master. Jesus never told her she had had five husbands. She had lived with
  four different men since her husband cast her aside, and this, with all her
  past, came up so vividly in her mind at the moment when she realized Jesus was
  a man of God that she subsequently repeated to John that Jesus had really told
  her all about herself.





6. THE SAMARITAN REVIVAL



 143:6.1 On the evening that Nalda drew the crowd out from Sychar to see Jesus,
 the twelve had just returned with food, and they besought Jesus to eat with
 them instead of talking to the people, for they had been without food all day
 and were hungry. But Jesus knew that darkness would soon be upon them; so he
 persisted in his determination to talk to the people before he sent them away.
 When Andrew sought to persuade him to eat a bite before speaking to the crowd,
 Jesus said, "I have meat to eat that you do not know about." When the apostles
 heard this, they said among themselves: "Has any man brought him aught to eat?
 Can it be that the woman gave him food as well as drink?" When Jesus heard them
 talking among themselves, before he spoke to the people, he turned aside and
 said to the twelve: "My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me and to
 accomplish His work. You should no longer say it is such and such a time until
 the harvest. Behold these people coming out from a Samaritan city to hear us; I
 tell you the fields are already white for the harvest. He who reaps receives
 wages and gathers this fruit to eternal life; consequently the sowers and the
 reapers rejoice together. For herein is the saying true: `One sows and another
 reaps.' I am now sending you to reap that whereon you have not labored; others
 have labored, and you are about to enter into their labor." This he said in
 reference to the preaching of John the Baptist.

  143:6.2 Jesus and the apostles went into Sychar and preached two days before
  they established their camp on Mount Gerizim. And many of the dwellers in
  Sychar believed the gospel and made request for baptism, but the apostles of
  Jesus did not yet baptize.



  143:6.3 The first night of the camp on Mount Gerizim the apostles expected
  that Jesus would rebuke them for their attitude toward the woman at Jacob's
  well, but he made no reference to the matter. Instead he gave them that
  memorable talk on "The realities which are central in the kingdom of God." In
  any religion it is very easy to allow values to become disproportionate and to
  permit facts to occupy the place of truth in one's theology. The fact of the
  cross became the very center of subsequent Christianity; but it is not the
  central truth of the religion which may be derived from the life and teachings
  of Jesus of Nazareth.

  143:6.4 The theme of Jesus' teaching on Mount Gerizim was: That he wants all
  men to see God as a Father-friend just as he (Jesus) is a brother-friend. And
  again and again he impressed upon them that love is the greatest relationship
  in the world -- in the universe -- just as truth is the greatest pronouncement
  of the observation of these divine relationships.

  143:6.5 Jesus declared himself so fully to the Samaritans because he could
  safely do so, and because he knew that he would not again visit the heart of
  Samaria to preach the gospel of the kingdom.

  143:6.6 Jesus and the twelve camped on Mount Gerizim until the end of August.
  They preached the good news of the kingdom -- the fatherhood of God -- to the
  Samaritans in the cities by day and spent the nights at the camp. The work
  which Jesus and the twelve did in these Samaritan cities yielded many souls
  for the kingdom and did much to prepare the way for the marvelous work of
  Philip in these regions after Jesus' death and resurrection, subsequent to the
  dispersion of the apostles to the ends of the earth by the bitter persecution
  of believers at Jerusalem.





7. TEACHINGS ABOUT PRAYER AND WORSHIP

  143:7.1 At the evening conferences on Mount Gerizim, Jesus taught many great
  truths, and in particular he laid emphasis on the following:



  143:7.2 True religion is the act of an individual soul in its self-conscious
  relations with the Creator; organized religion is man's attempt to socialize
  the worship of individual religionists.



  143:7.3 Worship -- contemplation of the spiritual -- must alternate with
  service, contact with material reality. Work should alternate with play;
  religion should be balanced by humor. Profound philosophy should be relieved
  by rhythmic poetry. The strain of living -- the time tension of personality --
  should be relaxed by the restfulness of worship. The feelings of insecurity
  arising from the fear of personality isolation in the universe should be
  antidoted by the faith contemplation of the Father and by the attempted
  realization of the Supreme.



  143:7.4 Prayer is designed to make man less thinking but more realizing; it is
  not designed to increase knowledge but rather to expand insight.



  143:7.5 Worship is intended to anticipate the better life ahead and then to
  reflect these new spiritual significances back onto the life which now is.
  Prayer is spiritually sustaining, but worship is divinely creative.



  143:7.6 Worship is the technique of looking to the One for the inspiration of
  service to the many. Worship is the yardstick which measures the extent of the
  soul's detachment from the material universe and its simultaneous and secure
  attachment to the spiritual realities of all creation.



  143:7.7 Prayer is self-reminding -- sublime thinking; worship is self-
  forgetting -- superthinking. Worship is effortless attention, true and ideal
  soul rest, a form of restful spiritual exertion.



  143:7.8 Worship is the act of a part identifying itself with the Whole; the
  finite with the Infinite; the son with the Father; time in the act of striking
  step with eternity. Worship is the act of the son's personal communion with
  the divine Father, the assumption of refreshing, creative, fraternal, and
  romantic attitudes by the human soul-spirit.



  143:7.9 Although the apostles grasped only a few of his teachings at the camp,
  other worlds did, and other generations on earth will.


 PAPER 144


 AT GILBOA AND IN THE DECAPOLIS



  144:0.1 SEPTEMBER and October were spent in retirement at a secluded camp upon
  the slopes of Mount Gilboa. The month of September Jesus spent here alone with
  his apostles, teaching and instructing them in the truths of the kingdom.

  144:0.2 There were a number of reasons why Jesus and his apostles were in
  retirement at this time on the borders of Samaria and the Decapolis. The
  Jerusalem religious rulers were very antagonistic; Herod Antipas still held
  John in prison, fearing either to release or execute him, while he continued
  to entertain suspicions that John and Jesus were in some way associated. These
  conditions made it unwise to plan for aggressive work in either Judea or
  Galilee. There was a third reason: the slowly augmenting tension between the
  leaders of John's disciples and the apostles of Jesus, which grew worse with
  the increasing number of believers.

  144:0.3 Jesus knew that the days of the preliminary work of teaching and
  preaching were about over, that the next move involved the beginning of the
  full and final effort of his life on earth, and he did not wish the launching
  of this undertaking to be in any manner either trying or embarrassing to John
  the Baptist. Jesus had therefore decided to spend some time in retirement
  rehearsing his apostles and then to do some quiet work in the cities of the
  Decapolis until John should be either executed or released to join them in a
  united effort.





1. THE GILBOA ENCAMPMENT



  144:1.1 As time passed, the twelve became more devoted to Jesus and
  increasingly committed to the work of the kingdom. Their devotion was in large
  part a matter of personal loyalty. They did not grasp his many-sided teaching;
  they did not fully comprehend the nature of Jesus or the significance of his
  bestowal on earth.

  144:1.2 Jesus made it plain to his apostles that they were in retirement for
  three reasons:

1. To confirm their understanding of, and faith in, the gospel of the kingdom.

2. To allow opposition to their work in both Judea and Galilee to quiet down.

3. To await the fate of John the Baptist.

  144:1.3 While tarrying on Gilboa, Jesus told the twelve much about his early
  life and his experiences on Mount Hermon; he also revealed something of what
  happened in the hills during the forty days immediately after his baptism. And
  he directly charged them that they should tell no man about these experiences
  until after he had returned to the Father.

  144:1.4 During these September weeks they rested, visited, recounted their
  experiences since Jesus first called them to service, and engaged in an
  earnest effort to co-ordinate what the Master had so far taught them. In a
  measure they all sensed that this would be their last opportunity for
  prolonged rest. They realized that their next public effort in either Judea or
  Galilee would mark the beginning of the final proclamation of the coming
  kingdom, but they had little or no settled idea as to what the kingdom would
  be when it came. John and Andrew thought the kingdom had already come; Peter
  and James believed that it was yet to come; Nathaniel and Thomas frankly
  confessed they were puzzled; Matthew, Philip, and Simon Zelotes were uncertain
  and confused; the twins were blissfully ignorant of the controversy; and Judas
  Iscariot was silent, noncommittal.



  144:1.5 Much of this time Jesus was alone on the mountain near the camp.
  Occasionally he took with him Peter, James, or John, but more often he went
  off to pray or commune alone. Subsequent to the baptism of Jesus and the forty
  days in the Perean hills, it is hardly proper to speak of these seasons of
  communion with his Father as prayer, nor is it consistent to speak of Jesus as
  worshiping, but it is altogether correct to allude to these seasons as
  personal communion with his Father.



  144:1.6 The central theme of the discussions throughout the entire month of
  September was prayer and worship. After they had discussed worship for some
  days, Jesus finally delivered his memorable discourse on prayer in answer to
  Thomas's request: "Master, teach us how to pray."

  144:1.7 John had taught his disciples a prayer, a prayer for salvation in the
  coming kingdom. Although Jesus never forbade his followers to use John's form
  of prayer, the apostles very early perceived that their Master did not fully
  approve of the practice of uttering set and formal prayers. Nevertheless,
  believers constantly requested to be taught how to pray. The twelve longed to
  know what form of petition Jesus would approve. And it was chiefly because of
  this need for some simple petition for the common people that Jesus at this
  time consented, in answer to Thomas's request, to teach them a suggestive form
  of prayer. Jesus gave this lesson one afternoon in the third week of their
  sojourn on Mount Gilboa.





2. THE DISCOURSE ON PRAYER



  144:2.1 "John indeed taught you a simple form of prayer: `O Father, cleanse us
  from sin, show us your glory, reveal your love, and let your spirit sanctify
  our hearts forevermore, Amen!' He taught this prayer that you might have
  something to teach the multitude. He did not intend that you should use such a
  set and formal petition as the expression of your own souls in prayer.

  144:2.2 "Prayer is entirely a personal and spontaneous expression of the
  attitude of the soul toward the spirit; prayer should be the communion of
  sonship and the expression of fellowship. Prayer, when indited by the spirit,
  leads to co-operative spiritual progress. The ideal prayer is a form of
  spiritual communion which leads to intelligent worship. True praying is the
  sincere attitude of reaching heavenward for the attainment of your ideals.

  144:2.3 "Prayer is the breath of the soul and should lead you to be persistent
  in your attempt to ascertain the Father's will. If any one of you has a
  neighbor, and you go to him at midnight and say: `Friend, lend me three
  loaves, for a friend of mine on a journey has come to see me, and I have
  nothing to set before him'; and if your neighbor answers, `Trouble me not, for
  the door is now shut and the children and I are in bed; therefore I cannot
  rise and give you bread,' you will persist, explaining that your friend
  hungers, and that you have no food to offer him. I say to you, though your
  neighbor will not rise and give you bread because he is your friend, yet
  because of your importunity he will get up and give you as many loaves as you
  need. If, then, persistence will win favors even from mortal man, how much
  more will your persistence in the spirit win the bread of life for you from
  the willing hands of the Father in heaven. Again I say to you: Ask and it
  shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to
  you. For every one who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who
  knocks the door of salvation will be opened.

  144:2.4 "Which of you who is a father, if his son asks unwisely, would
  hesitate to give in accordance with parental wisdom rather than in the terms
  of the son's faulty petition? If the child needs a loaf, will you give him a
  stone just because he unwisely asks for it? If your son needs a fish, will you
  give him a watersnake just because it may chance to come up in the net with
  the fish and the child foolishly asks for the serpent? If you, then, being
  mortal and finite, know how to answer prayer and give good and appropriate
  gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the
  spirit and many additional blessings to those who ask him? Men ought always to
  pray and not become discouraged.

  144:2.5 "Let me tell you the story of a certain judge who lived in a wicked
  city. This judge feared not God nor had respect for man. Now there was a needy
  widow in that city who came repeatedly to this unjust judge, saying, `Protect
  me from my adversary.' For some time he would not give ear to her, but
  presently he said to himself: `Though I fear not God nor have regard for man,
  yet because this widow ceases not to trouble me, I will vindicate her lest she
  wear me out by her continual coming.' These stories I tell you to encourage
  you to persist in praying and not to intimate that your petitions will change
  the just and righteous Father above. Your persistence, however, is not to win
  favor with God but to change your earth attitude and to enlarge your soul's
  capacity for spirit receptivity.

  144:2.6 "But when you pray, you exercise so little faith. Genuine faith will
  remove mountains of material difficulty which may chance to lie in the path of
  soul expansion and spiritual progress."





3. THE BELIEVER'S PRAYER



  144:3.1 But the apostles were not yet satisfied; they desired Jesus to give
  them a model prayer which they could teach the new disciples. After listening
  to this discourse on prayer, James Zebedee said: "Very good, Master, but we do
  not desire a form of prayer for ourselves so much as for the newer believers
  who so frequently beseech us, `Teach us how acceptably to pray to the Father
  in heaven.'"

  144:3.2 When James had finished speaking, Jesus said: "If, then, you still
  desire such a prayer, I would present the one which I taught my brothers and
  sisters in Nazareth":



  144:3.3 Our Father who is in heaven,

Hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come; your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our bread for tomorrow;

Refresh our souls with the water of life.

And forgive us every one our debts

As we also have forgiven our debtors.

Save us in temptation, deliver us from evil,

And increasingly make us perfect like yourself.



  144:3.4 It is not strange that the apostles desired Jesus to teach them a
  model prayer for believers. John the Baptist had taught his followers several
  prayers; all great teachers had formulated prayers for their pupils. The
  religious teachers of the Jews had some twenty-five or thirty set prayers
  which they recited in the synagogues and even on the street corners. Jesus was
  particularly averse to praying in public. Up to this time the twelve had heard
  him pray only a few times. They observed him spending entire nights at prayer
  or worship, and they were very curious to know the manner or form of his
  petitions. They were really hard pressed to know what to answer the multitudes
  when they asked to be taught how to pray as John had taught his disciples.

  144:3.5 Jesus taught the twelve always to pray in secret; to go off by
  themselves amidst the quiet surroundings of nature or to go in their rooms and
  shut the doors when they engaged in prayer.

  144:3.6 After Jesus' death and ascension to the Father it became the practice
  of many believers to finish this so-called Lord's prayer by the addition of --
  "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." Still later on, two lines were lost in
  copying, and there was added to this prayer an extra clause, reading: "For
  yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forevermore."

  144:3.7 Jesus gave the apostles the prayer in collective form as they had
  prayed it in the Nazareth home. He never taught a formal personal prayer, only
  group, family, or social petitions. And he never volunteered to do that.



  144:3.8 Jesus taught that effective prayer must be:

1. Unselfish -- not alone for oneself.

2. Believing -- according to faith.

3. Sincere -- honest of heart.

4. Intelligent -- according to light.

5. Trustful -- in submission to the Father's all-wise will.

  144:3.9 When Jesus spent whole nights on the mountain in prayer, it was mainly
  for his disciples, particularly for the twelve. The Master prayed very little
  for himself, although he engaged in much worship of the nature of
  understanding communion with his Paradise Father.





4. MORE ABOUT PRAYER



  144:4.1 For days after the discourse on prayer the apostles continued to ask
  the Master questions regarding this all-important and worshipful practice.
  Jesus' instruction to the apostles during these days, regarding prayer and
  worship, may be summarized and restated in modern phraseology as follows:

  144:4.2 The earnest and longing repetition of any petition, when such a prayer
  is the sincere expression of a child of God and is uttered in faith, no matter
  how ill-advised or impossible of direct answer, never fails to expand the
  soul's capacity for spiritual receptivity.

  144:4.3 In all praying, remember that sonship is a gift. No child has aught to
  do with earning the status of son or daughter. The earth child comes into
  being by the will of its parents. Even so, the child of God comes into grace
  and the new life of the spirit by the will of the Father in heaven. Therefore
  must the kingdom of heaven -- divine sonship -- be received as by a little
  child. You earn righteousness -- progressive character development -- but you
  receive sonship by grace and through faith.

  144:4.4 Prayer led Jesus up to the supercommunion of his soul with the Supreme
  Rulers of the universe of universes. Prayer will lead the mortals of earth up
  to the communion of true worship. The soul's spiritual capacity for
  receptivity determines the quantity of heavenly blessings which can be
  personally appropriated and consciously realized as an answer to prayer.

  144:4.5 Prayer and its associated worship is a technique of detachment from
  the daily routine of life, from the monotonous grind of material existence. It
  is an avenue of approach to spiritualized self-realization and individuality
  of intellectual and religious attainment.

  144:4.6 Prayer is an antidote for harmful introspection. At least, prayer as
  the Master taught it is such a beneficent ministry to the soul. Jesus
  consistently employed the beneficial influence of praying for one's fellows.
  The Master usually prayed in the plural, not in the singular. Only in the
  great crises of his earth life did Jesus ever pray for himself.

  144:4.7 Prayer is the breath of the spirit life in the midst of the material
  civilization of the races of mankind. Worship is salvation for the pleasure-
  seeking generations of mortals.

  144:4.8 As prayer may be likened to recharging the spiritual batteries of the
  soul, so worship may be compared to the act of tuning in the soul to catch the
  universe broadcasts of the infinite spirit of the Universal Father.

  144:4.9 Prayer is the sincere and longing look of the child to its spirit
  Father; it is a psychologic process of exchanging the human will for the
  divine will. Prayer is a part of the divine plan for making over that which is
  into that which ought to be.



  144:4.10 One of the reasons why Peter, James, and John, who so often
  accompanied Jesus on his long night vigils, never heard Jesus pray, was
  because their Master so rarely uttered his prayers as spoken words.
  Practically all of Jesus' praying was done in the spirit and in the heart --
  silently.

  144:4.11 Of all the apostles, Peter and James came the nearest to
  comprehending the Master's teaching about prayer and worship.





5. OTHER FORMS OF PRAYER



  144:5.1 From time to time, during the remainder of Jesus' sojourn on earth, he
  brought to the notice of the apostles several additional forms of prayer, but
  he did this only in illustration of other matters, and he enjoined that these
  "parable prayers" should not be taught to the multitudes. Many of them were
  from other inhabited planets, but this fact Jesus did not reveal to the
  twelve. Among these prayers were the following:



  144:5.2 Our Father in whom consist the universe realms,

Uplifted be your name and all-glorious your character.

Your presence encompasses us, and your glory is manifested

Imperfectly through us as it is in perfection shown on high.

Give us this day the vivifying forces of light,

And let us not stray into the evil bypaths of our imagination,

For yours is the glorious indwelling, the everlasting power,

And to us, the eternal gift of the infinite love of your Son.

Even so, and everlastingly true.



***



  144:5.3 Our creative Parent, who is in the center of the universe,

Bestow upon us your nature and give to us your character.

Make us sons and daughters of yours by grace

And glorify your name through our eternal achievement.

Your adjusting and controlling spirit give to live and dwell within us

That we may do your will on this sphere as angels do your bidding in light.

Sustain us this day in our progress along the path of truth.

Deliver us from inertia, evil, and all sinful transgression.

Be patient with us as we show loving-kindness to our fellows.

Shed abroad the spirit of your mercy in our creature hearts.

Lead us by your own hand, step by step, through the uncertain maze of life,

And when our end shall come, receive into your own bosom our faithful spirits.

Even so, not our desires but your will be done.



***



  144:5.4 Our perfect and righteous heavenly Father,

This day guide and direct our journey.

Sanctify our steps and co-ordinate our thoughts.

Ever lead us in the ways of eternal progress.

Fill us with wisdom to the fullness of power

And vitalize us with your infinite energy.

Inspire us with the divine consciousness of

The presence and guidance of the seraphic hosts.

Guide us ever upward in the pathway of light;

Justify us fully in the day of the great judgment.

Make us like yourself in eternal glory

And receive us into your endless service on high.



***



  144:5.5 Our Father who is in the mystery,

Reveal to us your holy character.

Give your children on earth this day

To see the way, the light, and the truth.

Show us the pathway of eternal progress

And give us the will to walk therein.

Establish within us your divine kingship

And thereby bestow upon us the full mastery of self.

Let us not stray into paths of darkness and death;

Lead us everlastingly beside the waters of life.

Hear these our prayers for your own sake;

Be pleased to make us more and more like yourself.

At the end, for the sake of the divine Son,

Receive us into the eternal arms.

Even so, not our will but yours be done.



***



  144:5.6 Glorious Father and Mother, in one parent combined,

Loyal would we be to your divine nature.

Your own self to live again in and through us

By the gift and bestowal of your divine spirit,

Thus reproducing you imperfectly in this sphere

As you are perfectly and majestically shown on high.

Give us day by day your sweet ministry of brotherhood

And lead us moment by moment in the pathway of loving service.

Be you ever and unfailingly patient with us

Even as we show forth your patience to our children.

Give us the divine wisdom that does all things well

And the infinite love that is gracious to every creature.

Bestow upon us your patience and loving-kindness

That our charity may enfold the weak of the realm.

And when our career is finished, make it an honor to your name,

A pleasure to your good spirit, and a satisfaction to our soul helpers.

Not as we wish, our loving Father, but as you desire the eternal good of your
mortal children,

Even so may it be.



***



  144:5.7 Our all-faithful Source and all-powerful Center,

Reverent and holy be the name of your all-gracious Son.

Your bounties and your blessings have descended upon us,

Thus empowering us to perform your will and execute your bidding.

Give us moment by moment the sustenance of the tree of life;

Refresh us day by day with the living waters of the river thereof.

Step by step lead us out of darkness and into the divine light.

Renew our minds by the transformations of the indwelling spirit,

And when the mortal end shall finally come upon us,

Receive us to yourself and send us forth in eternity.

Crown us with celestial diadems of fruitful service,

And we shall glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Influence.

Even so, throughout a universe without end.



***



  144:5.8 Our Father who dwells in the secret places of the universe,

Honored be your name, reverenced your mercy, and respected your judgment.

Let the sun of righteousness shine upon us at noontime,

While we beseech you to guide our wayward steps in the twilight.

Lead us by the hand in the ways of your own choosing

And forsake us not when the path is hard and the hours are dark.

Forget us not as we so often neglect and forget you.

But be you merciful and love us as we desire to love you.

Look down upon us in kindness and forgive us in mercy

As we in justice forgive those who distress and injure us.

May the love, devotion, and bestowal of the majestic Son

Make available life everlasting with your endless mercy and love.

May the God of universes bestow upon us the full measure of his spirit;

Give us grace to yield to the leading of this spirit.

By the loving ministry of devoted seraphic hosts

May the Son guide and lead us to the end of the age.

Make us ever and increasingly like yourself

And at our end receive us into the eternal Paradise embrace.

Even so, in the name of the bestowal Son

And for the honor and glory of the Supreme Father.



  144:5.9 Though the apostles were not at liberty to present these prayer
  lessons in their public teachings, they profited much from all of these
  revelations in their personal religious experiences. Jesus utilized these and
  other prayer models as illustrations in connection with the intimate
  instruction of the twelve, and specific permission has been granted for
  transcribing these seven specimen prayers into this record.





6. CONFERENCE WITH JOHN'S APOSTLES



  144:6.1 Around the first of October, Philip and some of his fellow apostles
  were in a near-by village buying food when they met some of the apostles of
  John the Baptist. As a result of this chance meeting in the market place there
  came about a three weeks' conference at the Gilboa camp between the apostles
  of Jesus and the apostles of John, for John had recently appointed twelve of
  his leaders to be apostles, following the precedent of Jesus. John had done
  this in response to the urging of Abner, the chief of his loyal supporters.
  Jesus was present at the Gilboa camp throughout the first week of this joint
  conference but absented himself the last two weeks.

  144:6.2 By the beginning of the second week of this month, Abner had assembled
  all of his associates at the Gilboa camp and was prepared to go into council
  with the apostles of Jesus. For three weeks these twenty-four men were in
  session three times a day and for six days each week. The first week Jesus
  mingled with them between their forenoon, afternoon, and evening sessions.
  They wanted the Master to meet with them and preside over their joint
  deliberations, but he steadfastly refused to participate in their discussions,
  though he did consent to speak to them on three occasions. These talks by
  Jesus to the twenty-four were on sympathy, co-operation, and tolerance.

  144:6.3 Andrew and Abner alternated in presiding over these joint meetings of
  the two apostolic groups. These men had many difficulties to discuss and
  numerous problems to solve. Again and again would they take their troubles to
  Jesus, only to hear him say: "I am concerned only with your personal and
  purely religious problems. I am the representative of the Father to the
  individual, not to the group. If you are in personal difficulty in your
  relations with God, come to me, and I will hear you and counsel you in the
  solution of your problem. But when you enter upon the co-ordination of
  divergent human interpretations of religious questions and upon the
  socialization of religion, you are destined to solve all such problems by your
  own decisions. Albeit, I am ever sympathetic and always interested, and when
  you arrive at your conclusions touching these matters of nonspiritual import,
  provided you are all agreed, then I pledge in advance my full approval and
  hearty co-operation. And now, in order to leave you unhampered in your
  deliberations, I am leaving you for two weeks. Be not anxious about me, for I
  will return to you. I will be about my Father's business, for we have other
  realms besides this one."

  144:6.4 After thus speaking, Jesus went down the mountainside, and they saw
  him no more for two full weeks. And they never knew where he went or what he
  did during these days. It was some time before the twenty-four could settle
  down to the serious consideration of their problems, they were so disconcerted
  by the absence of the Master. However, within a week they were again in the
  heart of their discussions, and they could not go to Jesus for help.



  144:6.5 The first item the group agreed upon was the adoption of the prayer
  which Jesus had so recently taught them. It was unanimously voted to accept
  this prayer as the one to be taught believers by both groups of apostles.

  144:6.6 They next decided that, as long as John lived, whether in prison or
  out, both groups of twelve apostles would go on with their work, and that
  joint meetings for one week would be held every three months at places to be
  agreed upon from time to time.

  144:6.7 But the most serious of all their problems was the question of
  baptism. Their difficulties were all the more aggravated because Jesus had
  refused to make any pronouncement upon the subject. They finally agreed: As
  long as John lived, or until they might jointly modify this decision, only the
  apostles of John would baptize believers, and only the apostles of Jesus would
  finally instruct the new disciples. Accordingly, from that time until after
  the death of John, two of the apostles of John accompanied Jesus and his
  apostles to baptize believers, for the joint council had unanimously voted
  that baptism was to become the initial step in the outward alliance with the
  affairs of the kingdom.

  144:6.8 It was next agreed, in case of the death of John, that the apostles of
  John would present themselves to Jesus and become subject to his direction,
  and that they would baptize no more unless authorized by Jesus or his
  apostles.

  144:6.9 And then was it voted that, in case of John's death, the apostles of
  Jesus would begin to baptize with water as the emblem of the baptism of the
  divine Spirit. As to whether or not repentance should be attached to the
  preaching of baptism was left optional; no decision was made binding upon the
  group. John's apostles preached, "Repent and be baptized." Jesus' apostles
  proclaimed, "Believe and be baptized."



  144:6.10 And this is the story of the first attempt of Jesus' followers to co-
  ordinate divergent efforts, compose differences of opinion, organize group
  undertakings, legislate on outward observances, and socialize personal
  religious practices.

  144:6.11 Many other minor matters were considered and their solutions
  unanimously agreed upon. These twenty-four men had a truly remarkable
  experience these two weeks when they were compelled to face problems and
  compose difficulties without Jesus. They learned to differ, to debate, to
  contend, to pray, and to compromise, and throughout it all to remain
  sympathetic with the other person's viewpoint and to maintain at least some
  degree of tolerance for his honest opinions.



  144:6.12 On the afternoon of their final discussion of financial questions,
  Jesus returned, heard of their deliberations, listened to their decisions, and
  said: "These, then, are your conclusions, and I shall help you each to carry
  out the spirit of your united decisions."



  144:6.13 Two months and a half from this time John was executed, and
  throughout this period the apostles of John remained with Jesus and the
  twelve. They all worked together and baptized believers during this season of
  labor in the cities of the Decapolis. The Gilboa camp was broken up on
  November 2, A.D. 27.





7. IN THE DECAPOLIS CITIES



  144:7.1 Throughout the months of November and December, Jesus and the twenty-
  four worked quietly in the Greek cities of the Decapolis, chiefly in
  Scythopolis, Gerasa, Abila, and Gadara. This was really the end of that
  preliminary period of taking over John's work and organization. Always does
  the socialized religion of a new revelation pay the price of compromise with
  the established forms and usages of the preceding religion which it seeks to
  salvage. Baptism was the price which the followers of Jesus paid in order to
  carry with them, as a socialized religious group, the followers of John the
  Baptist. John's followers, in joining Jesus' followers, gave up just about
  everything except water baptism.

  144:7.2 Jesus did little public teaching on this mission to the cities of the
  Decapolis. He spent considerable time teaching the twenty-four and had many
  special sessions with John's twelve apostles. In time they became more
  understanding as to why Jesus did not go to visit John in prison, and why he
  made no effort to secure his release. But they never could understand why
  Jesus did no marvelous works, why he refused to produce outward signs of his
  divine authority. Before coming to the Gilboa camp, they had believed in Jesus
  mostly because of John's testimony, but soon they were beginning to believe as
  a result of their own contact with the Master and his teachings.

  144:7.3 For these two months the group worked most of the time in pairs, one
  of Jesus' apostles going out with one of John's. The apostle of John baptized,
  the apostle of Jesus instructed, while they both preached the gospel of the
  kingdom as they understood it. And they won many souls among these gentiles
  and apostate Jews.

  144:7.4 Abner, the chief of John's apostles, became a devout believer in Jesus
  and was later on made the head of a group of seventy teachers whom the Master
  commissioned to preach the gospel.





8. IN CAMP NEAR PELLA



  144:8.1 The latter part of December they all went over near the Jordan, close
  by Pella, where they again began to teach and preach. Both Jews and gentiles
  came to this camp to hear the gospel. It was while Jesus was teaching the
  multitude one afternoon that some of John's special friends brought the Master
  the last message which he ever had from the Baptist.

  144:8.2 John had now been in prison a year and a half, and most of this time
  Jesus had labored very quietly; so it was not strange that John should be led
  to wonder about the kingdom. John's friends interrupted Jesus' teaching to say
  to him: "John the Baptist has sent us to ask -- are you truly the Deliverer,
  or shall we look for another?"

  144:8.3 Jesus paused to say to John's friends: "Go back and tell John that he
  is not forgotten. Tell him what you have seen and heard, that the poor have
  good tidings preached to them." And when Jesus had spoken further to the
  messengers of John, he turned again to the multitude and said: "Do not think
  that John doubts the gospel of the kingdom. He makes inquiry only to assure
  his disciples who are also my disciples. John is no weakling. Let me ask you
  who heard John preach before Herod put him in prison: What did you behold in
  John -- a reed shaken with the wind? A man of changeable moods and clothed in
  soft raiment? As a rule they who are gorgeously appareled and who live
  delicately are in kings' courts and in the mansions of the rich. But what did
  you see when you beheld John? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and much more than
  a prophet. Of John it was written: `Behold, I send my messenger before your
  face; he shall prepare the way before you.'

  144:8.4 "Verily, verily, I say to you, among those born of women there has not
  arisen a greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is but small in the kingdom
  of heaven is greater because he has been born of the spirit and knows that he
  has become a son of God."

  144:8.5 Many who heard Jesus that day submitted themselves to John's baptism,
  thereby publicly professing entrance into the kingdom. And the apostles of
  John were firmly knit to Jesus from that day forward. This occurrence marked
  the real union of John's and Jesus' followers.

  144:8.6 After the messengers had conversed with Abner, they departed for
  Machaerus to tell all this to John. He was greatly comforted, and his faith
  was strengthened by the words of Jesus and the message of Abner.

  144:8.7 On this afternoon Jesus continued to teach, saying: "But to what shall
  I liken this generation? Many of you will receive neither John's message nor
  my teaching. You are like the children playing in the market place who call to
  their fellows and say: `We piped for you and you did not dance; we wailed and
  you did not mourn.' And so with some of you. John came neither eating nor
  drinking, and they said he had a devil. The Son of Man comes eating and
  drinking, and these same people say: `Behold, a gluttonous man and a
  winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!' Truly, wisdom is justified by
  her children.

  144:8.8 "It would appear that the Father in heaven has hidden some of these
  truths from the wise and haughty, while he has revealed them to babes. But the
  Father does all things well; the Father reveals himself to the universe by the
  methods of his own choosing. Come, therefore, all you who labor and are heavy
  laden, and you shall find rest for your souls. Take upon you the divine yoke,
  and you will experience the peace of God, which passes all understanding."





9. DEATH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST



  144:9.1 John the Baptist was executed by order of Herod Antipas on the evening
  of January 10, A.D. 28. The next day a few of John's disciples who had gone to
  Machaerus heard of his execution and, going to Herod, made request for his
  body, which they put in a tomb, later giving it burial at Sebaste, the home of
  Abner. The following day, January 12, they started north to the camp of John's
  and Jesus' apostles near Pella, and they told Jesus about the death of John.
  When Jesus heard their report, he dismissed the multitude and, calling the
  twenty-four together, said: "John is dead. Herod has beheaded him. Tonight go
  into joint council and arrange your affairs accordingly. There shall be delay
  no longer. The hour has come to proclaim the kingdom openly and with power.
  Tomorrow we go into Galilee."

  144:9.2 Accordingly, early on the morning of January 13, A.D. 28, Jesus and
  the apostles, accompanied by some twenty-five disciples, made their way to
  Capernaum and lodged that night in Zebedee's house.


PAPER 145


 FOUR EVENTFUL DAYS AT CAPERNAUM



  145:0.1 JESUS and the apostles arrived in Capernaum the evening of Tuesday,
  January 13. As usual, they made their headquarters at the home of Zebedee in
  Bethsaida. Now that John the Baptist had been sent to his death, Jesus
  prepared to launch out in the first open and public preaching tour of Galilee.
  The news that Jesus had returned rapidly spread throughout the city, and early
  the next day, Mary the mother of Jesus hastened away, going over to Nazareth
  to visit her son Joseph.

  145:0.2 Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Jesus spent at the Zebedee house
  instructing his apostles preparatory to their first extensive public preaching
  tour. He also received and taught many earnest inquirers, both singly and in
  groups. Through Andrew, he arranged to speak in the synagogue on the coming
  Sabbath day.

  145:0.3 Late on Friday evening Jesus' baby sister, Ruth, secretly paid him a
  visit. They spent almost an hour together in a boat anchored a short distance
  from the shore. No human being, save John Zebedee, ever knew of this visit,
  and he was admonished to tell no man. Ruth was the only member of Jesus'
  family who consistently and unwaveringly believed in the divinity of his earth
  mission from the times of her earliest spiritual consciousness right on down
  through his eventful ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension; and she
  finally passed on to the worlds beyond never having doubted the supernatural
  character of her father-brother's mission in the flesh. Baby Ruth was the
  chief comfort of Jesus, as regards his earth family, throughout the trying
  ordeal of his trial, rejection, and crucifixion.





1. THE DRAUGHT OF FISHES



  145:1.1 On Friday morning of this same week, when Jesus was teaching by the
  seaside, the people crowded him so near the water's edge that he signaled to
  some fishermen occupying a near-by boat to come to his rescue. Entering the
  boat, he continued to teach the assembled multitude for more than two hours.
  This boat was named "Simon"; it was the former fishing vessel of Simon Peter
  and had been built by Jesus' own hands. On this particular morning the boat
  was being used by David Zebedee and two associates, who had just come in near
  shore from a fruitless night of fishing on the lake. They were cleaning and
  mending their nets when Jesus requested them to come to his assistance.

  145:1.2 After Jesus had finished teaching the people, he said to David: "As
  you were delayed by coming to my help, now let me work with you. Let us go
  fishing; put out into yonder deep and let down your nets for a draught." But
  Simon, one of David's assistants, answered: "Master, it is useless. We toiled
  all night and took nothing; however, at your bidding we will put out and let
  down the nets." And Simon consented to follow Jesus' directions because of a
  gesture made by his master, David. When they had proceeded to the place
  designated by Jesus, they let down their nets and enclosed such a multitude of
  fish that they feared the nets would break, so much so that they signaled to
  their associates on the shore to come to their assistance. When they had
  filled all three boats with fish, almost to sinking, this Simon fell down at
  Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, Master, for I am a sinful man." Simon
  and all who were concerned in this episode were amazed at the draught of
  fishes. From that day David Zebedee, this Simon, and their associates forsook
  their nets and followed Jesus.

  145:1.3 But this was in no sense a miraculous draught of fishes. Jesus was a
  close student of nature; he was an experienced fisherman and knew the habits
  of the fish in the Sea of Galilee. On this occasion he merely directed these
  men to the place where the fish were usually to be found at this time of day.
  But Jesus' followers always regarded this as a miracle.





2. AFTERNOON AT THE SYNAGOGUE



  145:2.1 The next Sabbath, at the afternoon service in the synagogue, Jesus
  preached his sermon on "The Will of the Father in Heaven." In the morning
  Simon Peter had preached on "The Kingdom." At the Thursday evening meeting of
  the synagogue Andrew had taught, his subject being "The New Way." At this
  particular time more people believed in Jesus in Capernaum than in any other
  one city on earth.

  145:2.2 As Jesus taught in the synagogue this Sabbath afternoon, according to
  custom he took the first text from the law, reading from the Book of Exodus:
  "And you shall serve the Lord, your God, and he shall bless your bread and
  your water, and all sickness shall be taken away from you." He chose the
  second text from the Prophets, reading from Isaiah: "Arise and shine, for your
  light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Darkness may
  cover the earth and gross darkness the people, but the spirit of the Lord
  shall arise upon you, and the divine glory shall be seen with you. Even the
  gentiles shall come to this light, and many great minds shall surrender to the
  brightness of this light."

  145:2.3 This sermon was an effort on Jesus' part to make clear the fact that
  religion is a personal experience. Among other things, the Master said:

  145:2.4 "You well know that, while a kindhearted father loves his family as a
  whole, he so regards them as a group because of his strong affection for each
  individual member of that family. No longer must you approach the Father in
  heaven as a child of Israel but as a child of God. As a group, you are indeed
  the children of Israel, but as individuals, each one of you is a child of God.
  I have come, not to reveal the Father to the children of Israel, but rather to
  bring this knowledge of God and the revelation of his love and mercy to the
  individual believer as a genuine personal experience. The prophets have all
  taught you that Yahweh cares for his people, that God loves Israel. But I have
  come among you to proclaim a greater truth, one which many of the later
  prophets also grasped, that God loves you -- every one of you -- as
  individuals. All these generations have you had a national or racial religion;
  now have I come to give you a personal religion.

  145:2.5 "But even this is not a new idea. Many of the spiritually minded among
  you have known this truth, inasmuch as some of the prophets have so instructed
  you. Have you not read in the Scriptures where the Prophet Jeremiah says: `In
  those days they shall no more say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the
  children's teeth are set on edge. Every man shall die for his own iniquity;
  every man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the
  days shall come when I will make a new covenant with my people, not according
  to the covenant which I made with their fathers when I brought them out of the
  land of Egypt, but according to the new way. I will even write my law in their
  hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. In that day they
  shall not say, one man to his neighbor, do you know the Lord? Nay! For they
  shall all know me personally, from the least to the greatest.'

  145:2.6 "Have you not read these promises? Do you not believe the Scriptures?
  Do you not understand that the prophet's words are fulfilled in what you
  behold this very day? And did not Jeremiah exhort you to make religion an
  affair of the heart, to relate yourselves to God as individuals? Did not the
  prophet tell you that the God of heaven would search your individual hearts?
  And were you not warned that the natural human heart is deceitful above all
  things and oftentimes desperately wicked?

  145:2.7 "Have you not read also where Ezekiel taught even your fathers that
  religion must become a reality in your individual experiences? No more shall
  you use the proverb which says, `The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the
  children's teeth are set on edge.' `As I live,' says the Lord God, `behold all
  souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son. Only
  the soul that sins shall die.' And then Ezekiel foresaw even this day when he
  spoke in behalf of God, saying: `A new heart also will I give you, and a new
  spirit will I put within you.'

  145:2.8 "No more should you fear that God will punish a nation for the sin of
  an individual; neither will the Father in heaven punish one of his believing
  children for the sins of a nation, albeit the individual member of any family
  must often suffer the material consequences of family mistakes and group
  transgressions. Do you not realize that the hope of a better nation -- or a
  better world -- is bound up in the progress and enlightenment of the
  individual?"

  145:2.9 Then the Master portrayed that the Father in heaven, after man
  discerns this spiritual freedom, wills that his children on earth should begin
  that eternal ascent of the Paradise career which consists in the creature's
  conscious response to the divine urge of the indwelling spirit to find the
  Creator, to know God and to seek to become like him.



  145:2.10 The apostles were greatly helped by this sermon. All of them realized
  more fully that the gospel of the kingdom is a message directed to the
  individual, not to the nation.

  145:2.11 Even though the people of Capernaum were familiar with Jesus'
  teaching, they were astonished at his sermon on this Sabbath day. He taught,
  indeed, as one having authority and not as the scribes.



  145:2.12 Just as Jesus finished speaking, a young man in the congregation who
  had been much agitated by his words was seized with a violent epileptic attack
  and loudly cried out. At the end of the seizure, when recovering
  consciousness, he spoke in a dreamy state, saying: "What have we to do with
  you, Jesus of Nazareth? You are the holy one of God; have you come to destroy
  us?" Jesus bade the people be quiet and, taking the young man by the hand,
  said, "Come out of it" -- and he was immediately awakened.

  145:2.13 This young man was not possessed of an unclean spirit or demon; he
  was a victim of ordinary epilepsy. But he had been taught that his affliction
  was due to possession by an evil spirit. He believed this teaching and behaved
  accordingly in all that he thought or said concerning his ailment. The people
  all believed that such phenomena were directly caused by the presence of
  unclean spirits. Accordingly they believed that Jesus had cast a demon out of
  this man. But Jesus did not at that time cure his epilepsy. Not until later on
  that day, after sundown, was this man really healed. Long after the day of
  Pentecost the Apostle John, who was the last to write of Jesus' doings,
  avoided all reference to these so-called acts of "casting out devils," and
  this he did in view of the fact that such cases of demon possession never
  occurred after Pentecost.

  145:2.14 As a result of this commonplace incident the report was rapidly
  spread through Capernaum that Jesus had cast a demon out of a man and
  miraculously healed him in the synagogue at the conclusion of his afternoon
  sermon. The Sabbath was just the time for the rapid and effective spreading of
  such a startling rumor. This report was also carried to all the smaller
  settlements around Capernaum, and many of the people believed it.



  145:2.15 The cooking and the housework at the large Zebedee home, where Jesus
  and the twelve made their headquarters, was for the most part done by Simon
  Peter's wife and her mother. Peter's home was near that of Zebedee; and Jesus
  and his friends stopped there on the way from the synagogue because Peter's
  wife's mother had for several days been sick with chills and fever. Now it
  chanced that, at about the time Jesus stood over this sick woman, holding her
  hand, smoothing her brow, and speaking words of comfort and encouragement, the
  fever left her. Jesus had not yet had time to explain to his apostles that no
  miracle had been wrought at the synagogue; and with this incident so fresh and
  vivid in their minds, and recalling the water and the wine at Cana, they
  seized upon this coincidence as another miracle, and some of them rushed out
  to spread the news abroad throughout the city.

  145:2.16 Amatha, Peter's mother-in-law, was suffering from malarial fever. She
  was not miraculously healed by Jesus at this time. Not until several hours
  later, after sundown, was her cure effected in connection with the
  extraordinary event which occurred in the front yard of the Zebedee home.



  145:2.17 And these cases are typical of the manner in which a wonder-seeking
  generation and a miracle-minded people unfailingly seized upon all such
  coincidences as the pretext for proclaiming that another miracle had been
  wrought by Jesus.





3. THE HEALING AT SUNDOWN



  145:3.1 By the time Jesus and his apostles had made ready to partake of their
  evening meal near the end of this eventful Sabbath day, all Capernaum and its
  environs were agog over these reputed miracles of healing; and all who were
  sick or afflicted began preparations to go to Jesus or to have themselves
  carried there by their friends just as soon as the sun went down. According to
  Jewish teaching it was not permissible even to go in quest of health during
  the sacred hours of the Sabbath.

  145:3.2 Therefore, as soon as the sun sank beneath the horizon, scores of
  afflicted men, women, and children began to make their way toward the Zebedee
  home in Bethsaida. One man started out with his paralyzed daughter just as
  soon as the sun sank behind his neighbor's house.

  145:3.3 The whole day's events had set the stage for this extraordinary
  sundown scene. Even the text Jesus had used for his afternoon sermon had
  intimated that sickness should be banished; and he had spoken with such
  unprecedented power and authority! His message was so compelling! While he
  made no appeal to human authority, he did speak directly to the consciences
  and souls of men. Though he did not resort to logic, legal quibbles, or clever
  sayings, he did make a powerful, direct, clear, and personal appeal to the
  hearts of his hearers.



  145:3.4 That Sabbath was a great day in the earth life of Jesus, yes, in the
  life of a universe. To all local universe intents and purposes the little
  Jewish city of Capernaum was the real capital of Nebadon. The handful of Jews
  in the Capernaum synagogue were not the only beings to hear that momentous
  closing statement of Jesus' sermon: "Hate is the shadow of fear; revenge the
  mask of cowardice." Neither could his hearers forget his blessed words,
  declaring, "Man is the son of God, not a child of the devil."



  145:3.5 Soon after the setting of the sun, as Jesus and the apostles still
  lingered about the supper table, Peter's wife heard voices in the front yard
  and, on going to the door, saw a large company of sick folks assembling, and
  that the road from Capernaum was crowded by those who were on their way to
  seek healing at Jesus' hands. On seeing this sight, she went at once and
  informed her husband, who told Jesus.

  145:3.6 When the Master stepped out of the front entrance of Zebedee's house,
  his eyes met an array of stricken and afflicted humanity. He gazed upon almost
  one thousand sick and ailing human beings; at least that was the number of
  persons gathered together before him. Not all present were afflicted; some had
  come assisting their loved ones in this effort to secure healing.

  145:3.7 The sight of these afflicted mortals, men, women, and children,
  suffering in large measure as a result of the mistakes and misdeeds of his own
  trusted Sons of universe administration, peculiarly touched the human heart of
  Jesus and challenged the divine mercy of this benevolent Creator Son. But
  Jesus well knew he could never build an enduring spiritual movement upon the
  foundation of purely material wonders. It had been his consistent policy to
  refrain from exhibiting his creator prerogatives. Not since Cana had the
  supernatural or miraculous attended his teaching; still, this afflicted
  multitude touched his sympathetic heart and mightily appealed to his
  understanding affection.

  145:3.8 A voice from the front yard exclaimed: "Master, speak the word,
  restore our health, heal our diseases, and save our souls." No sooner had
  these words been uttered than a vast retinue of seraphim, physical
  controllers, Life Carriers, and midwayers, such as always attended this
  incarnated Creator of a universe, made themselves ready to act with creative
  power should their Sovereign give the signal. This was one of those moments in
  the earth career of Jesus in which divine wisdom and human compassion were so
  interlocked in the judgment of the Son of Man that he sought refuge in appeal
  to his Father's will.

  145:3.9 When Peter implored the Master to heed their cry for help, Jesus,
  looking down upon the afflicted throng, answered: "I have come into the world
  to reveal the Father and establish his kingdom. For this purpose have I lived
  my life to this hour. If, therefore, it should be the will of Him who sent me
  and not inconsistent with my dedication to the proclamation of the gospel of
  the kingdom of heaven, I would desire to see my children made whole -- and --"
  but the further words of Jesus were lost in the tumult.

  145:3.10 Jesus had passed the responsibility of this healing decision to the
  ruling of his Father. Evidently the Father's will interposed no objection, for
  the words of the Master had scarcely been uttered when the assembly of
  celestial personalities serving under the command of Jesus' Personalized
  Thought Adjuster was mightily astir. The vast retinue descended into the midst
  of this motley throng of afflicted mortals, and in a moment of time 683 men,
  women, and children were made whole, were perfectly healed of all their
  physical diseases and other material disorders. Such a scene was never
  witnessed on earth before that day, nor since. And for those of us who were
  present to behold this creative wave of healing, it was indeed a thrilling
  spectacle.



  145:3.11 But of all the beings who were astonished at this sudden and
  unexpected outbreak of supernatural healing, Jesus was the most surprised. In
  a moment when his human interests and sympathies were focused upon the scene
  of suffering and affliction there spread out before him, he neglected to bear
  in his human mind the admonitory warnings of his Personalized Adjuster
  regarding the impossibility of limiting the time element of the creator
  prerogatives of a Creator Son under certain conditions and in certain
  circumstances. Jesus desired to see these suffering mortals made whole if his
  Father's will would not thereby be violated. The Personalized Adjuster of
  Jesus instantly ruled that such an act of creative energy at that time would
  not transgress the will of the Paradise Father, and by such a decision -- in
  view of Jesus' preceding expression of healing desire -- the creative act was.
  What a Creator Son desires and his Father wills IS. Not in all of Jesus'
  subsequent earth life did another such en masse physical healing of mortals
  take place.



  145:3.12 As might have been expected, the fame of this sundown healing at
  Bethsaida in Capernaum spread throughout all Galilee and Judea and to the
  regions beyond. Once more were the fears of Herod aroused, and he sent
  watchers to report on the work and teachings of Jesus and to ascertain if he
  was the former carpenter of Nazareth or John the Baptist risen from the dead.

  145:3.13 Chiefly because of this unintended demonstration of physical healing,
  henceforth, throughout the remainder of his earth career, Jesus became as much
  a physician as a preacher. True, he continued his teaching, but his personal
  work consisted mostly in ministering to the sick and the distressed, while his
  apostles did the work of public preaching and baptizing believers.

  145:3.14 But the majority of those who were recipients of supernatural or
  creative physical healing at this sundown demonstration of divine energy were
  not permanently spiritually benefited by this extraordinary manifestation of
  mercy. A small number were truly edified by this physical ministry, but the
  spiritual kingdom was not advanced in the hearts of men by this amazing
  eruption of timeless creative healing.

  145:3.15 The healing wonders which every now and then attended Jesus' mission
  on earth were not a part of his plan of proclaiming the kingdom. They were
  incidentally inherent in having on earth a divine being of well-nigh unlimited
  creator prerogatives in association with an unprecedented combination of
  divine mercy and human sympathy. But such so-called miracles gave Jesus much
  trouble in that they provided prejudice-raising publicity and afforded much
  unsought notoriety.





4. THE EVENING AFTER



  145:4.1 Throughout the evening following this great outburst of healing, the
  rejoicing and happy throng overran Zebedee's home, and the apostles of Jesus
  were keyed up to the highest pitch of emotional enthusiasm. From a human
  standpoint, this was probably the greatest day of all the great days of their
  association with Jesus. At no time before or after did their hopes surge to
  such heights of confident expectation. Jesus had told them only a few days
  before, and when they were yet within the borders of Samaria, that the hour
  had come when the kingdom was to be proclaimed in power, and now their eyes
  had seen what they supposed was the fulfillment of that promise. They were
  thrilled by the vision of what was to come if this amazing manifestation of
  healing power was just the beginning. Their lingering doubts of Jesus'
  divinity were banished. They were literally intoxicated with the ecstasy of
  their bewildered enchantment.

  145:4.2 But when they sought for Jesus, they could not find him. The Master
  was much perturbed by what had happened. These men, women, and children who
  had been healed of diverse diseases lingered late into the evening, hoping for
  Jesus' return that they might thank him. The apostles could not understand the
  Master's conduct as the hours passed and he remained in seclusion; their joy
  would have been full and perfect but for his continued absence. When Jesus did
  return to their midst, the hour was late, and practically all of the
  beneficiaries of the healing episode had gone to their homes. Jesus refused
  the congratulations and adoration of the twelve and the others who had
  lingered to greet him, only saying: "Rejoice not that my Father is powerful to
  heal the body, but rather that he is mighty to save the soul. Let us go to our
  rest, for tomorrow we must be about the Father's business."

  145:4.3 And again did twelve disappointed, perplexed, and heart-sorrowing men
  go to their rest; few of them, except the twins, slept much that night. No
  sooner would the Master do something to cheer the souls and gladden the hearts
  of his apostles, than he seemed immediately to dash their hopes in pieces and
  utterly to demolish the foundations of their courage and enthusiasm. As these
  bewildered fishermen looked into each other's eyes, there was but one thought:
  "We cannot understand him. What does all this mean?"





5. EARLY SUNDAY MORNING



  145:5.1 Neither did Jesus sleep much that Saturday night. He realized that the
  world was filled with physical distress and overrun with material
  difficulties, and he contemplated the great danger of being compelled to
  devote so much of his time to the care of the sick and afflicted that his
  mission of establishing the spiritual kingdom in the hearts of men would be
  interfered with or at least subordinated to the ministry of things physical.
  Because of these and similar thoughts which occupied the mortal mind of Jesus
  during the night, he arose that Sunday morning long before daybreak and went
  all alone to one of his favorite places for communion with the Father. The
  theme of Jesus' prayer on this early morning was for wisdom and judgment that
  he might not allow his human sympathy, joined with his divine mercy, to make
  such an appeal to him in the presence of mortal suffering that all of his time
  would be occupied with physical ministry to the neglect of the spiritual.
  Though he did not wish altogether to avoid ministering to the sick, he knew
  that he must also do the more important work of spiritual teaching and
  religious training.

  145:5.2 Jesus went out in the hills to pray so many times because there were
  no private rooms suitable for his personal devotions.

  145:5.3 Peter could not sleep that night; so, very early, shortly after Jesus
  had gone out to pray, he aroused James and John, and the three went to find
  their Master. After more than an hour's search they found Jesus and besought
  him to tell them the reason for his strange conduct. They desired to know why
  he appeared to be troubled by the mighty outpouring of the spirit of healing
  when all the people were overjoyed and his apostles so much rejoiced.

  145:5.4 For more than four hours Jesus endeavored to explain to these three
  apostles what had happened. He taught them about what had transpired and
  explained the dangers of such manifestations. Jesus confided to them the
  reason for his coming forth to pray. He sought to make plain to his personal
  associates the real reasons why the kingdom of the Father could not be built
  upon wonder-working and physical healing. But they could not comprehend his
  teaching.

  145:5.5 Meanwhile, early Sunday morning, other crowds of afflicted souls and
  many curiosity seekers began to gather about the house of Zebedee. They
  clamored to see Jesus. Andrew and the apostles were so perplexed that, while
  Simon Zelotes talked to the assembly, Andrew, with several of his associates,
  went to find Jesus. When Andrew had located Jesus in company with the three,
  he said: "Master, why do you leave us alone with the multitude? Behold, all
  men seek you; never before have so many sought after your teaching. Even now
  the house is surrounded by those who have come from near and far because of
  your mighty works. Will you not return with us to minister to them?"

  145:5.6 When Jesus heard this, he answered: "Andrew, have I not taught you and
  these others that my mission on earth is the revelation of the Father, and my
  message the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven? How is it, then, that you
  would have me turn aside from my work for the gratification of the curious and
  for the satisfaction of those who seek for signs and wonders? Have we not been
  among these people all these months, and have they flocked in multitudes to
  hear the good news of the kingdom? Why have they now come to besiege us? Is it
  not because of the healing of their physical bodies rather than as a result of
  the reception of spiritual truth for the salvation of their souls? When men
  are attracted to us because of extraordinary manifestations, many of them come
  seeking not for truth and salvation but rather in quest of healing for their
  physical ailments and to secure deliverance from their material difficulties.

  145:5.7 "All this time I have been in Capernaum, and both in the synagogue and
  by the seaside have I proclaimed the good news of the kingdom to all who had
  ears to hear and hearts to receive the truth. It is not the will of my Father
  that I should return with you to cater to these curious ones and to become
  occupied with the ministry of things physical to the exclusion of the
  spiritual. I have ordained you to preach the gospel and minister to the sick,
  but I must not become engrossed in healing to the exclusion of my teaching.
  No, Andrew, I will not return with you. Go and tell the people to believe in
  that which we have taught them and to rejoice in the liberty of the sons of
  God, and make ready for our departure for the other cities of Galilee, where
  the way has already been prepared for the preaching of the good tidings of the
  kingdom. It was for this purpose that I came forth from the Father. Go, then,
  and prepare for our immediate departure while I here await your return."

  145:5.8 When Jesus had spoken, Andrew and his fellow apostles sorrowfully made
  their way back to Zebedee's house, dismissed the assembled multitude, and
  quickly made ready for the journey as Jesus had directed. And so, on the
  afternoon of Sunday, January 18, A.D. 28, Jesus and the apostles started out
  upon their first really public and open preaching tour of the cities of
  Galilee. On this first tour they preached the gospel of the kingdom in many
  cities, but they did not visit Nazareth.

  145:5.9 That Sunday afternoon, shortly after Jesus and his apostles had left
  for Rimmon, his brothers James and Jude came to see him, calling at Zebedee's
  house. About noon of that day Jude had sought out his brother James and
  insisted that they go to Jesus. By the time James consented to go with Jude,
  Jesus had already departed.

  145:5.10 The apostles were loath to leave the great interest which had been
  aroused at Capernaum. Peter calculated that no less than one thousand
  believers could have been baptized into the kingdom. Jesus listened to them
  patiently, but he would not consent to return. Silence prevailed for a season,
  and then Thomas addressed his fellow apostles, saying: "Let's go! The Master
  has spoken. No matter if we cannot fully comprehend the mysteries of the
  kingdom of heaven, of one thing we are certain: We follow a teacher who seeks
  no glory for himself." And reluctantly they went forth to preach the good
  tidings in the cities of Galilee.


PAPER 146


 FIRST PREACHING TOUR OF GALILEE



  146:0.1 THE first public preaching tour of Galilee began on Sunday, January
  18, A.D. 28, and continued for about two months, ending with the return to
  Capernaum on March 17. On this tour Jesus and the twelve apostles, assisted by
  the former apostles of John, preached the gospel and baptized believers in
  Rimmon, Jotapata, Ramah, Zebulun, Iron, Gischala, Chorazin, Madon, Cana, Nain,
  and Endor. In these cities they tarried and taught, while in many other
  smaller towns they proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom as they passed
  through.

  146:0.2 This was the first time Jesus permitted his associates to preach
  without restraint. On this tour he cautioned them on only three occasions; he
  admonished them to remain away from Nazareth and to be discreet when passing
  through Capernaum and Tiberias. It was a source of great satisfaction to the
  apostles at last to feel they were at liberty to preach and teach without
  restriction, and they threw themselves into the work of preaching the gospel,
  ministering to the sick, and baptizing believers, with great earnestness and
  joy.





1. PREACHING AT RIMMON

  146:1.1 The small city of Rimmon had once been dedicated to the worship of a
  Babylonian god of the air, Ramman. Many of the earlier Babylonian and later
  Zoroastrian teachings were still embraced in the beliefs of the Rimmonites;
  therefore did Jesus and the twenty-four devote much of their time to the task
  of making plain the difference between these older beliefs and the new gospel
  of the kingdom. Peter here preached one of the great sermons of his early
  career on "Aaron and the Golden Calf."

  146:1.2 Although many of the citizens of Rimmon became believers in Jesus'
  teachings, they made great trouble for their brethren in later years. It is
  difficult to convert nature worshipers to the full fellowship of the adoration
  of a spiritual ideal during the short space of a single lifetime.



  146:1.3 Many of the better of the Babylonian and Persian ideas of light and
  darkness, good and evil, time and eternity, were later incorporated in the
  doctrines of so-called Christianity, and their inclusion rendered the
  Christian teachings more immediately acceptable to the peoples of the Near
  East. In like manner, the inclusion of many of Plato's theories of the ideal
  spirit or invisible patterns of all things visible and material, as later
  adapted by Philo to the Hebrew theology, made Paul's Christian teachings more
  easy of acceptance by the western Greeks.



  146:1.4 It was at Rimmon that Todan first heard the gospel of the kingdom, and
  he later carried this message into Mesopotamia and far beyond. He was among
  the first to preach the good news to those who dwelt beyond the Euphrates.





2. AT JOTAPATA

  146:2.1 While the common people of Jotapata heard Jesus and his apostles
  gladly and many accepted the gospel of the kingdom, it was the discourse of
  Jesus to the twenty-four on the second evening of their sojourn in this small
  town that distinguishes the Jotapata mission. Nathaniel was confused in his
  mind about the Master's teachings concerning prayer, thanksgiving, and
  worship, and in response to his question Jesus spoke at great length in
  further explanation of his teaching. Summarized in modern phraseology, this
  discourse may be presented as emphasizing the following points:



  146:2.2 1. The conscious and persistent regard for iniquity in the heart of
  man gradually destroys the prayer connection of the human soul with the spirit
  circuits of communication between man and his Maker. Naturally God hears the
  petition of his child, but when the human heart deliberately and persistently
  harbors the concepts of iniquity, there gradually ensues the loss of personal
  communion between the earth child and his heavenly Father.



  146:2.3 2. That prayer which is inconsistent with the known and established
  laws of God is an abomination to the Paradise Deities. If man will not listen
  to the Gods as they speak to their creation in the laws of spirit, mind, and
  matter, the very act of such deliberate and conscious disdain by the creature
  turns the ears of spirit personalities away from hearing the personal
  petitions of such lawless and disobedient mortals. Jesus quoted to his
  apostles from the Prophet Zechariah: "But they refused to hearken and pulled
  away the shoulder and stopped their ears that they should not hear. Yes, they
  made their hearts adamant like a stone, lest they should hear my law and the
  words which I sent by my spirit through the prophets; therefore did the
  results of their evil thinking come as a great wrath upon their guilty heads.
  And so it came to pass that they cried for mercy, but there was no ear open to
  hear." And then Jesus quoted the proverb of the wise man who said: "He who
  turns away his ear from hearing the divine law, even his prayer shall be an
  abomination."



  146:2.4 3. By opening the human end of the channel of the God-man
  communication, mortals make immediately available the ever-flowing stream of
  divine ministry to the creatures of the worlds. When man hears God's spirit
  speak within the human heart, inherent in such an experience is the fact that
  God simultaneously hears that man's prayer. Even the forgiveness of sin
  operates in this same unerring fashion. The Father in heaven has forgiven you
  even before you have thought to ask him, but such forgiveness is not available
  in your personal religious experience until such a time as you forgive your
  fellow men. God's forgiveness in fact is not conditioned upon your forgiving
  your fellows, but in experience it is exactly so conditioned. And this fact of
  the synchrony of divine and human forgiveness was thus recognized and linked
  together in the prayer which Jesus taught the apostles.



  146:2.5 4. There is a basic law of justice in the universe which mercy is
  powerless to circumvent. The unselfish glories of Paradise are not possible of
  reception by a thoroughly selfish creature of the realms of time and space.
  Even the infinite love of God cannot force the salvation of eternal survival
  upon any mortal creature who does not choose to survive. Mercy has great
  latitude of bestowal, but, after all, there are mandates of justice which even
  love combined with mercy cannot effectively abrogate. Again Jesus quoted from
  the Hebrew scriptures: "I have called and you refused to hear; I stretched out
  my hand, but no man regarded. You have set at naught all my counsel, and you
  have rejected my reproof, and because of this rebellious attitude it becomes
  inevitable that you shall call upon me and fail to receive an answer. Having
  rejected the way of life, you may seek me diligently in your times of
  suffering, but you will not find me."



  146:2.6 5. They who would receive mercy must show mercy; judge not that you be
  not judged. With the spirit with which you judge others you also shall be
  judged. Mercy does not wholly abrogate universe fairness. In the end it will
  prove true: "Whoso stops his ears to the cry of the poor, he also shall some
  day cry for help, and no one will hear him." The sincerity of any prayer is
  the assurance of its being heard; the spiritual wisdom and universe
  consistency of any petition is the determiner of the time, manner, and degree
  of the answer. A wise father does not literally answer the foolish prayers of
  his ignorant and inexperienced children, albeit the children may derive much
  pleasure and real soul satisfaction from the making of such absurd petitions.



  146:2.7 6. When you have become wholly dedicated to the doing of the will of
  the Father in heaven, the answer to all your petitions will be forthcoming
  because your prayers will be in full accordance with the Father's will, and
  the Father's will is ever manifest throughout his vast universe. What the true
  son desires and the infinite Father wills IS. Such a prayer cannot remain
  unanswered, and no other sort of petition can possibly be fully answered.



  146:2.8 7. The cry of the righteous is the faith act of the child of God which
  opens the door of the Father's storehouse of goodness, truth, and mercy, and
  these good gifts have long been in waiting for the son's approach and personal
  appropriation. Prayer does not change the divine attitude toward man, but it
  does change man's attitude toward the changeless Father. The motive of the
  prayer gives it right of way to the divine ear, not the social, economic, or
  outward religious status of the one who prays.



  146:2.9 8. Prayer may not be employed to avoid the delays of time or to
  transcend the handicaps of space. Prayer is not designed as a technique for
  aggrandizing self or for gaining unfair advantage over one's fellows. A
  thoroughly selfish soul cannot pray in the true sense of the word. Said Jesus:
  "Let your supreme delight be in the character of God, and he shall surely give
  you the sincere desires of your heart." "Commit your way to the Lord; trust in
  him, and he will act." "For the Lord hears the cry of the needy, and he will
  regard the prayer of the destitute."



  146:2.10 9. "I have come forth from the Father; if, therefore, you are ever in
  doubt as to what you would ask of the Father, ask in my name, and I will
  present your petition in accordance with your real needs and desires and in
  accordance with my Father's will." Guard against the great danger of becoming
  self-centered in your prayers. Avoid praying much for yourself; pray more for
  the spiritual progress of your brethren. Avoid materialistic praying; pray in
  the spirit and for the abundance of the gifts of the spirit.



  146:2.11 10. When you pray for the sick and afflicted, do not expect that your
  petitions will take the place of loving and intelligent ministry to the
  necessities of these afflicted ones. Pray for the welfare of your families,
  friends, and fellows, but especially pray for those who curse you, and make
  loving petitions for those who persecute you. "But when to pray, I will not
  say. Only the spirit that dwells within you may move you to the utterance of
  those petitions which are expressive of your inner relationship with the
  Father of spirits."



  146:2.12 11. Many resort to prayer only when in trouble. Such a practice is
  thoughtless and misleading. True, you do well to pray when harassed, but you
  should also be mindful to speak as a son to your Father even when all goes
  well with your soul. Let your real petitions always be in secret. Do not let
  men hear your personal prayers. Prayers of thanksgiving are appropriate for
  groups of worshipers, but the prayer of the soul is a personal matter. There
  is but one form of prayer which is appropriate for all God's children, and
  that is: "Nevertheless, your will be done."



  146:2.13 12. All believers in this gospel should pray sincerely for the
  extension of the kingdom of heaven. Of all the prayers of the Hebrew
  scriptures he commented most approvingly on the petition of the Psalmist:
  "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Purge
  me from secret sins and keep back your servant from presumptuous
  transgression." Jesus commented at great length on the relation of prayer to
  careless and offending speech, quoting: "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth;
  keep the door of my lips." "The human tongue," said Jesus, "is a member which
  few men can tame, but the spirit within can transform this unruly member into
  a kindly voice of tolerance and an inspiring minister of mercy."



  146:2.14 13. Jesus taught that the prayer for divine guidance over the pathway
  of earthly life was next in importance to the petition for a knowledge of the
  Father's will. In reality this means a prayer for divine wisdom. Jesus never
  taught that human knowledge and special skill could be gained by prayer. But
  he did teach that prayer is a factor in the enlargement of one's capacity to
  receive the presence of the divine spirit. When Jesus taught his associates to
  pray in the spirit and in truth, he explained that he referred to praying
  sincerely and in accordance with one's enlightenment, to praying
  wholeheartedly and intelligently, earnestly and steadfastly.



  146:2.15 14. Jesus warned his followers against thinking that their prayers
  would be rendered more efficacious by ornate repetitions, eloquent
  phraseology, fasting, penance, or sacrifices. But he did exhort his believers
  to employ prayer as a means of leading up through thanksgiving to true
  worship. Jesus deplored that so little of the spirit of thanksgiving was to be
  found in the prayers and worship of his followers. He quoted from the
  Scriptures on this occasion, saying: "It is a good thing to give thanks to the
  Lord and to sing praises to the name of the Most High, to acknowledge his
  loving-kindness every morning and his faithfulness every night, for God has
  made me glad through his work. In everything I will give thanks according to
  the will of God."



  146:2.16 15. And then Jesus said: "Be not constantly overanxious about your
  common needs. Be not apprehensive concerning the problems of your earthly
  existence, but in all these things by prayer and supplication, with the spirit
  of sincere thanksgiving, let your needs be spread out before your Father who
  is in heaven." Then he quoted from the Scriptures: "I will praise the name of
  God with a song and will magnify him with thanksgiving. And this will please
  the Lord better than the sacrifice of an ox or bullock with horns and hoofs."



  146:2.17 16. Jesus taught his followers that, when they had made their prayers
  to the Father, they should remain for a time in silent receptivity to afford
  the indwelling spirit the better opportunity to speak to the listening soul.
  The spirit of the Father speaks best to man when the human mind is in an
  attitude of true worship. We worship God by the aid of the Father's indwelling
  spirit and by the illumination of the human mind through the ministry of
  truth. Worship, taught Jesus, makes one increasingly like the being who is
  worshiped. Worship is a transforming experience whereby the finite gradually
  approaches and ultimately attains the presence of the Infinite.



  146:2.18 And many other truths did Jesus tell his apostles about man's
  communion with God, but not many of them could fully encompass his teaching.





3. THE STOP AT RAMAH

  146:3.1 At Ramah Jesus had the memorable discussion with the aged Greek
  philosopher who taught that science and philosophy were sufficient to satisfy
  the needs of human experience. Jesus listened with patience and sympathy to
  this Greek teacher, allowing the truth of many things he said but pointing out
  that, when he was through, he had failed in his discussion of human existence
  to explain "whence, why, and whither," and added: "Where you leave off, we
  begin. Religion is a revelation to man's soul dealing with spiritual realities
  which the mind alone could never discover or fully fathom. Intellectual
  strivings may reveal the facts of life, but the gospel of the kingdom unfolds
  the truths of being. You have discussed the material shadows of truth; will
  you now listen while I tell you about the eternal and spiritual realities
  which cast these transient time shadows of the material facts of mortal
  existence?" For more than an hour Jesus taught this Greek the saving truths of
  the gospel of the kingdom. The old philosopher was susceptible to the Master's
  mode of approach, and being sincerely honest of heart, he quickly believed
  this gospel of salvation.

  146:3.2 The apostles were a bit disconcerted by the open manner of Jesus'
  assent to many of the Greek's propositions, but Jesus afterward privately said
  to them: "My children, marvel not that I was tolerant of the Greek's
  philosophy. True and genuine inward certainty does not in the least fear
  outward analysis, nor does truth resent honest criticism. You should never
  forget that intolerance is the mask covering up the entertainment of secret
  doubts as to the trueness of one's belief. No man is at any time disturbed by
  his neighbor's attitude when he has perfect confidence in the truth of that
  which he wholeheartedly believes. Courage is the confidence of thoroughgoing
  honesty about those things which one professes to believe. Sincere men are
  unafraid of the critical examination of their true convictions and noble
  ideals."



  146:3.3 On the second evening at Ramah, Thomas asked Jesus this question:
  "Master, how can a new believer in your teaching really know, really be
  certain, about the truth of this gospel of the kingdom?"

  146:3.4 And Jesus said to Thomas: "Your assurance that you have entered into
  the kingdom family of the Father, and that you will eternally survive with the
  children of the kingdom, is wholly a matter of personal experience -- faith in
  the word of truth. Spiritual assurance is the equivalent of your personal
  religious experience in the eternal realities of divine truth and is otherwise
  equal to your intelligent understanding of truth realities plus your spiritual
  faith and minus your honest doubts.

  146:3.5 "The Son is naturally endowed with the life of the Father. Having been
  endowed with the living spirit of the Father, you are therefore sons of God.
  You survive your life in the material world of the flesh because you are
  identified with the Father's living spirit, the gift of eternal life. Many,
  indeed, had this life before I came forth from the Father, and many more have
  received this spirit because they believed my word; but I declare that, when I
  return to the Father, he will send his spirit into the hearts of all men.

  146:3.6 "While you cannot observe the divine spirit at work in your minds,
  there is a practical method of discovering the degree to which you have
  yielded the control of your soul powers to the teaching and guidance of this
  indwelling spirit of the heavenly Father, and that is the degree of your love
  for your fellow men. This spirit of the Father partakes of the love of the
  Father, and as it dominates man, it unfailingly leads in the directions of
  divine worship and loving regard for one's fellows. At first you believe that
  you are sons of God because my teaching has made you more conscious of the
  inner leadings of our Father's indwelling presence; but presently the Spirit
  of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and
  teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of
  truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speaking for the spiritual endowments of your
  souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will unfailingly
  bear witness with the Father's indwelling presence, your spirit, then dwelling
  in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in reality the
  sons of God.

  146:3.7 "Every earth child who follows the leading of this spirit shall
  eventually know the will of God, and he who surrenders to the will of my
  Father shall abide forever. The way from the earth life to the eternal estate
  has not been made plain to you, but there is a way, there always has been, and
  I have come to make that way new and living. He who enters the kingdom has
  eternal life already -- he shall never perish. But much of this you will the
  better understand when I shall have returned to the Father and you are able to
  view your present experiences in retrospect."

  146:3.8 And all who heard these blessed words were greatly cheered. The Jewish
  teachings had been confused and uncertain regarding the survival of the
  righteous, and it was refreshing and inspiring for Jesus' followers to hear
  these very definite and positive words of assurance about the eternal survival
  of all true believers.



  146:3.9 The apostles continued to preach and baptize believers, while they
  kept up the practice of visiting from house to house, comforting the downcast
  and ministering to the sick and afflicted. The apostolic organization was
  expanded in that each of Jesus' apostles now had one of John's as an
  associate; Abner was the associate of Andrew; and this plan prevailed until
  they went down to Jerusalem for the next Passover.



  146:3.10 The special instruction given by Jesus during their stay at Zebulun
  had chiefly to do with further discussions of the mutual obligations of the
  kingdom and embraced teaching designed to make clear the differences between
  personal religious experience and the amities of social religious obligations.
  This was one of the few times the Master ever discussed the social aspects of
  religion. Throughout his entire earth life Jesus gave his followers very
  little instruction regarding the socialization of religion.

  146:3.11 In Zebulun the people were of a mixed race, hardly Jew or gentile,
  and few of them really believed in Jesus, notwithstanding they had heard of
  the healing of the sick at Capernaum.





4. THE GOSPEL AT IRON

  146:4.1 At Iron, as in many of even the smaller cities of Galilee and Judea,
  there was a synagogue, and during the earlier times of Jesus' ministry it was
  his custom to speak in these synagogues on the Sabbath day. Sometimes he would
  speak at the morning service, and Peter or one of the other apostles would
  preach at the afternoon hour. Jesus and the apostles would also often teach
  and preach at the week-day evening assemblies at the synagogue. Although the
  religious leaders at Jerusalem became increasingly antagonistic toward Jesus,
  they exercised no direct control over the synagogues outside of that city. It
  was not until later in Jesus' public ministry that they were able to create
  such a widespread sentiment against him as to bring about the almost universal
  closing of the synagogues to his teaching. At this time all the synagogues of
  Galilee and Judea were open to him.

  146:4.2 Iron was the site of extensive mineral mines for those days, and since
  Jesus had never shared the life of the miner, he spent most of his time, while
  sojourning at Iron, in the mines. While the apostles visited the homes and
  preached in the public places, Jesus worked in the mines with these
  underground laborers. The fame of Jesus as a healer had spread even to this
  remote village, and many sick and afflicted sought help at his hands, and many
  were greatly benefited by his healing ministry. But in none of these cases did
  the Master perform a so-called miracle of healing save in that of the leper.



  146:4.3 Late on the afternoon of the third day at Iron, as Jesus was returning
  from the mines, he chanced to pass through a narrow side street on his way to
  his lodging place. As he drew near the squalid hovel of a certain leprous man,
  the afflicted one, having heard of his fame as a healer, made bold to accost
  him as he passed his door, saying as he knelt before him: "Lord, if only you
  would, you could make me clean. I have heard the message of your teachers, and
  I would enter the kingdom if I could be made clean." And the leper spoke in
  this way because among the Jews lepers were forbidden even to attend the
  synagogue or otherwise engage in public worship. This man really believed that
  he could not be received into the coming kingdom unless he could find a cure
  for his leprosy. And when Jesus saw him in his affliction and heard his words
  of clinging faith, his human heart was touched, and the divine mind was moved
  with compassion. As Jesus looked upon him, the man fell upon his face and
  worshiped. Then the Master stretched forth his hand and, touching him, said:
  "I will -- be clean." And immediately he was healed; the leprosy no longer
  afflicted him.

  146:4.4 When Jesus had lifted the man upon his feet, he charged him: "See that
  you tell no man about your healing but rather go quietly about your business,
  showing yourself to the priest and offering those sacrifices commanded by
  Moses in testimony of your cleansing." But this man did not do as Jesus had
  instructed him. Instead, he began to publish abroad throughout the town that
  Jesus had cured his leprosy, and since he was known to all the village, the
  people could plainly see that he had been cleansed of his disease. He did not
  go to the priests as Jesus had admonished him. As a result of his spreading
  abroad the news that Jesus had healed him, the Master was so thronged by the
  sick that he was forced to rise early the next day and leave the village.
  Although Jesus did not again enter the town, he remained two days in the
  outskirts near the mines, continuing to instruct the believing miners further
  regarding the gospel of the kingdom.

  146:4.5 This cleansing of the leper was the first so-called miracle which
  Jesus had intentionally and deliberately performed up to this time. And this
  was a case of real leprosy.



  146:4.6 From Iron they went to Gischala, spending two days proclaiming the
  gospel, and then departed for Chorazin, where they spent almost a week
  preaching the good news; but they were unable to win many believers for the
  kingdom in Chorazin. In no place where Jesus had taught had he met with such a
  general rejection of his message. The sojourn at Chorazin was very depressing
  to most of the apostles, and Andrew and Abner had much difficulty in upholding
  the courage of their associates. And so, passing quietly through Capernaum,
  they went on to the village of Madon, where they fared little better. There
  prevailed in the minds of most of the apostles the idea that their failure to
  meet with success in these towns so recently visited was due to Jesus'
  insistence that they refrain, in their teaching and preaching, from referring
  to him as a healer. How they wished he would cleanse another leper or in some
  other manner so manifest his power as to attract the attention of the people!
  But the Master was unmoved by their earnest urging.





5. BACK IN CANA

  146:5.1 The apostolic party was greatly cheered when Jesus announced,
  "Tomorrow we go to Cana." They knew they would have a sympathetic hearing at
  Cana, for Jesus was well known there. They were doing well with their work of
  bringing people into the kingdom when, on the third day, there arrived in Cana
  a certain prominent citizen of Capernaum, Titus, who was a partial believer,
  and whose son was critically ill. He heard that Jesus was at Cana; so he
  hastened over to see him. The believers at Capernaum thought Jesus could heal
  any sickness.

  146:5.2 When this nobleman had located Jesus in Cana, he besought him to hurry
  over to Capernaum and heal his afflicted son. While the apostles stood by in
  breathless expectancy, Jesus, looking at the father of the sick boy, said:
  "How long shall I bear with you? The power of God is in your midst, but except
  you see signs and behold wonders, you refuse to believe." But the nobleman
  pleaded with Jesus, saying: "My Lord, I do believe, but come ere my child
  perishes, for when I left him he was even then at the point of death." And
  when Jesus had bowed his head a moment in silent meditation, he suddenly
  spoke, "Return to your home; your son will live." Titus believed the word of
  Jesus and hastened back to Capernaum. And as he was returning, his servants
  came out to meet him, saying, "Rejoice, for your son is improved -- he lives."
  Then Titus inquired of them at what hour the boy began to mend, and when the
  servants answered "yesterday about the seventh hour the fever left him," the
  father recalled that it was about that hour when Jesus had said, "Your son
  will live." And Titus henceforth believed with a whole heart, and all his
  family also believed. This son became a mighty minister of the kingdom and
  later yielded up his life with those who suffered in Rome. Though the entire
  household of Titus, their friends, and even the apostles regarded this episode
  as a miracle, it was not. At least this was not a miracle of curing physical
  disease. It was merely a case of preknowledge concerning the course of natural
  law, just such knowledge as Jesus frequently resorted to subsequent to his
  baptism.

  146:5.3 Again was Jesus compelled to hasten away from Cana because of the
  undue attention attracted by the second episode of this sort to attend his
  ministry in this village. The townspeople remembered the water and the wine,
  and now that he was supposed to have healed the nobleman's son at so great a
  distance, they came to him, not only bringing the sick and afflicted but also
  sending messengers requesting that he heal sufferers at a distance. And when
  Jesus saw that the whole countryside was aroused, he said, "Let us go to
  Nain."





6. NAIN AND THE WIDOW'S SON

  146:6.1 These people believed in signs; they were a wonder-seeking generation.
  By this time the people of central and southern Galilee had become miracle
  minded regarding Jesus and his personal ministry. Scores, hundreds, of honest
  persons suffering from purely nervous disorders and afflicted with emotional
  disturbances came into Jesus' presence and then returned home to their friends
  announcing that Jesus had healed them. And such cases of mental healing these
  ignorant and simple-minded people regarded as physical healing, miraculous
  cures.



  146:6.2 When Jesus sought to leave Cana and go to Nain, a great multitude of
  believers and many curious people followed after him. They were bent on
  beholding miracles and wonders, and they were not to be disappointed. As Jesus
  and his apostles drew near the gate of the city, they met a funeral procession
  on its way to the near-by cemetery, carrying the only son of a widowed mother
  of Nain. This woman was much respected, and half of the village followed the
  bearers of the bier of this supposedly dead boy. When the funeral procession
  had come up to Jesus and his followers, the widow and her friends recognized
  the Master and besought him to bring the son back to life. Their miracle
  expectancy was aroused to such a high pitch they thought Jesus could cure any
  human disease, and why could not such a healer even raise the dead? Jesus,
  while being thus importuned, stepped forward and, raising the covering of the
  bier, examined the boy. Discovering that the young man was not really dead, he
  perceived the tragedy which his presence could avert; so, turning to the
  mother, he said: "Weep not. Your son is not dead; he sleeps. He will be
  restored to you." And then, taking the young man by the hand, he said, "Awake
  and arise." And the youth who was supposed to be dead presently sat up and
  began to speak, and Jesus sent them back to their homes.

  146:6.3 Jesus endeavored to calm the multitude and vainly tried to explain
  that the lad was not really dead, that he had not brought him back from the
  grave, but it was useless. The multitude which followed him, and the whole
  village of Nain, were aroused to the highest pitch of emotional frenzy. Fear
  seized many, panic others, while still others fell to praying and wailing over
  their sins. And it was not until long after nightfall that the clamoring
  multitude could be dispersed. And, of course, notwithstanding Jesus' statement
  that the boy was not dead, everyone insisted that a miracle had been wrought,
  even the dead raised. Although Jesus told them the boy was merely in a deep
  sleep, they explained that that was the manner of his speaking and called
  attention to the fact that he always in great modesty tried to hide his
  miracles.

  146:6.4 So the word went abroad throughout Galilee and into Judea that Jesus
  had raised the widow's son from the dead, and many who heard this report
  believed it. Never was Jesus able to make even all his apostles fully
  understand that the widow's son was not really dead when he bade him awake and
  arise. But he did impress them sufficiently to keep it out of all subsequent
  records except that of Luke, who recorded it as the episode had been related
  to him. And again was Jesus so besieged as a physician that he departed early
  the next day for Endor.





7. AT ENDOR

  146:7.1 At Endor Jesus escaped for a few days from the clamoring multitudes in
  quest of physical healing. During their sojourn at this place the Master
  recounted for the instruction of the apostles the story of King Saul and the
  witch of Endor. Jesus plainly told his apostles that the stray and rebellious
  midwayers who had oftentimes impersonated the supposed spirits of the dead
  would soon be brought under control so that they could no more do these
  strange things. He told his followers that, after he returned to the Father,
  and after they had poured out their spirit upon all flesh, no more could such
  semispirit beings -- so-called unclean spirits -- possess the feeble- and
  evil-minded among mortals.

  146:7.2 Jesus further explained to his apostles that the spirits of departed
  human beings do not come back to the world of their origin to communicate with
  their living fellows. Only after the passing of a dispensational age would it
  be possible for the advancing spirit of mortal man to return to earth and then
  only in exceptional cases and as a part of the spiritual administration of the
  planet.

  146:7.3 When they had rested two days, Jesus said to his apostles: "On the
  morrow let us return to Capernaum to tarry and teach while the countryside
  quiets down. At home they will have by this time partly recovered from this
  sort of excitement."


PAPER 147


 THE INTERLUDE VISIT TO JERUSALEM

  147:0.1 JESUS and the apostles arrived in Capernaum on Wednesday, March 17,
  and spent two weeks at the Bethsaida headquarters before they departed for
  Jerusalem. These two weeks the apostles taught the people by the seaside while
  Jesus spent much time alone in the hills about his Father's business. During
  this period Jesus, accompanied by James and John Zebedee, made two secret
  trips to Tiberias, where they met with the believers and instructed them in
  the gospel of the kingdom.

  147:0.2 Many of the household of Herod believed in Jesus and attended these
  meetings. It was the influence of these believers among Herod's official
  family that had helped to lessen that ruler's enmity toward Jesus. These
  believers at Tiberias had fully explained to Herod that the "kingdom" which
  Jesus proclaimed was spiritual in nature and not a political venture. Herod
  rather believed these members of his own household and therefore did not
  permit himself to become unduly alarmed by the spreading abroad of the reports
  concerning Jesus' teaching and healing. He had no objections to Jesus' work as
  a healer or religious teacher. Notwithstanding the favorable attitude of many
  of Herod's advisers, and even of Herod himself, there existed a group of his
  subordinates who were so influenced by the religious leaders at Jerusalem that
  they remained bitter and threatening enemies of Jesus and the apostles and,
  later on, did much to hamper their public activities. The greatest danger to
  Jesus lay in the Jerusalem religious leaders and not in Herod. And it was for
  this very reason that Jesus and the apostles spent so much time and did most
  of their public preaching in Galilee rather than at Jerusalem and in Judea.



1. THE CENTURION'S SERVANT

  147:1.1 On the day before they made ready to go to Jerusalem for the feast of
  the Passover, Mangus, a centurion, or captain, of the Roman guard stationed at
  Capernaum, came to the rulers of the synagogue, saying: "My faithful orderly
  is sick and at the point of death. Would you, therefore, go to Jesus in my
  behalf and beseech him to heal my servant?" The Roman captain did this because
  he thought the Jewish leaders would have more influence with Jesus. So the
  elders went to see Jesus and their spokesman said: "Teacher, we earnestly
  request you to go over to Capernaum and save the favorite servant of the Roman
  centurion, who is worthy of your notice because he loves our nation and even
  built us the very synagogue wherein you have so many times spoken."

  147:1.2 And when Jesus had heard them, he said, "I will go with you." And as
  he went with them over to the centurion's house, and before they had entered
  his yard, the Roman soldier sent his friends out to greet Jesus, instructing
  them to say: "Lord, trouble not yourself to enter my house, for I am not
  worthy that you should come under my roof. Neither did I think myself worthy
  to come to you; wherefore I sent the elders of your own people. But I know
  that you can speak the word where you stand and my servant will be healed. For
  I am myself under the orders of others, and I have soldiers under me, and I
  say to this one go, and he goes; to another come, and he comes, and to my
  servants do this or do that, and they do it."

  147:1.3 And when Jesus heard these words, he turned and said to his apostles
  and those who were with them: "I marvel at the belief of the gentile. Verily,
  verily, I say to you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."
  Jesus, turning from the house, said, "Let us go hence." And the friends of the
  centurion went into the house and told Mangus what Jesus had said. And from
  that hour the servant began to mend and was eventually restored to his normal
  health and usefulness.

  147:1.4 But we never knew just what happened on this occasion. This is simply
  the record, and as to whether or not invisible beings ministered healing to
  the centurion's servant, was not revealed to those who accompanied Jesus. We
  only know of the fact of the servant's complete recovery.





2. THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM



  147:2.1 Early on the morning of Tuesday, March 30, Jesus and the apostolic
  party started on their journey to Jerusalem for the Passover, going by the
  route of the Jordan valley. They arrived on the afternoon of Friday, April 2,
  and established their headquarters, as usual, at Bethany. Passing through
  Jericho, they paused to rest while Judas made a deposit of some of their
  common funds in the bank of a friend of his family. This was the first time
  Judas had carried a surplus of money, and this deposit was left undisturbed
  until they passed through Jericho again when on that last and eventful journey
  to Jerusalem just before the trial and death of Jesus.

  147:2.2 The party had an uneventful trip to Jerusalem, but they had hardly got
  themselves settled at Bethany when from near and far those seeking healing for
  their bodies, comfort for troubled minds, and salvation for their souls, began
  to congregate, so much so that Jesus had little time for rest. Therefore they
  pitched tents at Gethsemane, and the Master would go back and forth from
  Bethany to Gethsemane to avoid the crowds which so constantly thronged him.
  The apostolic party spent almost three weeks at Jerusalem, but Jesus enjoined
  them to do no public preaching, only private teaching and personal work.

  147:2.3 At Bethany they quietly celebrated the Passover. And this was the
  first time that Jesus and all of the twelve partook of the bloodless Passover
  feast. The apostles of John did not eat the Passover with Jesus and his
  apostles; they celebrated the feast with Abner and many of the early believers
  in John's preaching. This was the second Passover Jesus had observed with his
  apostles in Jerusalem.

  147:2.4 When Jesus and the twelve departed for Capernaum, the apostles of John
  did not return with them. Under the direction of Abner they remained in
  Jerusalem and the surrounding country, quietly laboring for the extension of
  the kingdom, while Jesus and the twelve returned to work in Galilee. Never
  again were the twenty-four all together until a short time before the
  commissioning and sending forth of the seventy evangelists. But the two groups
  were co-operative, and notwithstanding their differences of opinion, the best
  of feelings prevailed.





3. AT THE POOL OF BETHESDA

  147:3.1 The afternoon of the second Sabbath in Jerusalem, as the Master and
  the apostles were about to participate in the temple services, John said to
  Jesus, "Come with me, I would show you something." John conducted Jesus out
  through one of the Jerusalem gates to a pool of water called Bethesda.
  Surrounding this pool was a structure of five porches under which a large
  group of sufferers lingered in quest of healing. This was a hot spring whose
  reddish-tinged water would bubble up at irregular intervals because of gas
  accumulations in the rock caverns underneath the pool. This periodic
  disturbance of the warm waters was believed by many to be due to supernatural
  influences, and it was a popular belief that the first person who entered the
  water after such a disturbance would be healed of whatever infirmity he had.



  147:3.2 The apostles were somewhat restless under the restrictions imposed by
  Jesus, and John, the youngest of the twelve, was especially restive under this
  restraint. He had brought Jesus to the pool thinking that the sight of the
  assembled sufferers would make such an appeal to the Master's compassion that
  he would be moved to perform a miracle of healing, and thereby would all
  Jerusalem be astounded and presently be won to believe in the gospel of the
  kingdom. Said John to Jesus: "Master, see all of these suffering ones; is
  there nothing we can do for them?" And Jesus replied: "John, why would you
  tempt me to turn aside from the way I have chosen? Why do you go on desiring
  to substitute the working of wonders and the healing of the sick for the
  proclamation of the gospel of eternal truth? My son, I may not do that which
  you desire, but gather together these sick and afflicted that I may speak
  words of good cheer and eternal comfort to them."

  147:3.3 In speaking to those assembled, Jesus said: "Many of you are here,
  sick and afflicted, because of your many years of wrong living. Some suffer
  from the accidents of time, others as a result of the mistakes of their
  forebears, while some of you struggle under the handicaps of the imperfect
  conditions of your temporal existence. But my Father works, and I would work,
  to improve your earthly state but more especially to insure your eternal
  estate. None of us can do much to change the difficulties of life unless we
  discover the Father in heaven so wills. After all, we are all beholden to do
  the will of the Eternal. If you could all be healed of your physical
  afflictions, you would indeed marvel, but it is even greater that you should
  be cleansed of all spiritual disease and find yourselves healed of all moral
  infirmities. You are all God's children; you are the sons of the heavenly
  Father. The bonds of time may seem to afflict you, but the God of eternity
  loves you. And when the time of judgment shall come, fear not, you shall all
  find, not only justice, but an abundance of mercy. Verily, verily, I say to
  you: He who hears the gospel of the kingdom and believes in this teaching of
  sonship with God, has eternal life; already are such believers passing from
  judgment and death to light and life. And the hour is coming in which even
  those who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the resurrection."

  147:3.4 And many of those who heard believed the gospel of the kingdom. Some
  of the afflicted were so inspired and spiritually revivified that they went
  about proclaiming that they had also been cured of their physical ailments.

  147:3.5 One man who had been many years downcast and grievously afflicted by
  the infirmities of his troubled mind, rejoiced at Jesus' words and, picking up
  his bed, went forth to his home, even though it was the Sabbath day. This
  afflicted man had waited all these years for somebody to help him; he was such
  a victim of the feeling of his own helplessness that he had never once
  entertained the idea of helping himself which proved to be the one thing he
  had to do in order to effect recovery -- take up his bed and walk.

  147:3.6 Then said Jesus to John: "Let us depart ere the chief priests and the
  scribes come upon us and take offense that we spoke words of life to these
  afflicted ones." And they returned to the temple to join their companions, and
  presently all of them departed to spend the night at Bethany. But John never
  told the other apostles of this visit of himself and Jesus to the pool of
  Bethesda on this Sabbath afternoon.





4. THE RULE OF LIVING

  147:4.1 On the evening of this same Sabbath day, at Bethany, while Jesus, the
  twelve, and a group of believers were assembled about the fire in Lazarus's
  garden, Nathaniel asked Jesus this question: "Master, although you have taught
  us the positive version of the old rule of life, instructing us that we should
  do to others as we wish them to do to us, I do not fully discern how we can
  always abide by such an injunction. Let me illustrate my contention by citing
  the example of a lustful man who thus wickedly looks upon his intended consort
  in sin. How can we teach that this evil-intending man should do to others as
  he would they should do to him?"

  147:4.2 When Jesus heard Nathaniel's question, he immediately stood upon his
  feet and, pointing his finger at the apostle, said: "Nathaniel, Nathaniel!
  What manner of thinking is going on in your heart? Do you not receive my
  teachings as one who has been born of the spirit? Do you not hear the truth as
  men of wisdom and spiritual understanding? When I admonished you to do to
  others as you would have them do to you, I spoke to men of high ideals, not to
  those who would be tempted to distort my teaching into a license for the
  encouragement of evil doing."

  147:4.3 When the Master had spoken, Nathaniel stood up and said: "But, Master,
  you should not think that I approve of such an interpretation of your
  teaching. I asked the question because I conjectured that many such men might
  thus misjudge your admonition, and I hoped you would give us further
  instruction regarding these matters." And then when Nathaniel had sat down,
  Jesus continued speaking: "I well know, Nathaniel, that no such idea of evil
  is approved in your mind, but I am disappointed in that you all so often fail
  to put a genuinely spiritual interpretation upon my commonplace teachings,
  instruction which must be given you in human language and as men must speak.
  Let me now teach you concerning the differing levels of meaning attached to
  the interpretation of this rule of living, this admonition to `do to others
  that which you desire others to do to you':



  147:4.4 "1. The level of the flesh. Such a purely selfish and lustful
  interpretation would be well exemplified by the supposition of your question.

  147:4.5 "2. The level of the feelings. This plane is one level higher than
  that of the flesh and implies that sympathy and pity would enhance one's
  interpretation of this rule of living.

  147:4.6 "3. The level of mind. Now come into action the reason of mind and the
  intelligence of experience. Good judgment dictates that such a rule of living
  should be interpreted in consonance with the highest idealism embodied in the
  nobility of profound self-respect.

  147:4.7 "4. The level of brotherly love. Still higher is discovered the level
  of unselfish devotion to the welfare of one's fellows. On this higher plane of
  wholehearted social service growing out of the consciousness of the fatherhood
  of God and the consequent recognition of the brotherhood of man, there is
  discovered a new and far more beautiful interpretation of this basic rule of
  life.



  147:4.8 "5. The moral level. And then when you attain true philosophic levels
  of interpretation, when you have real insight into the rightness and wrongness
  of things, when you perceive the eternal fitness of human relationships, you
  will begin to view such a problem of interpretation as you would imagine a
  high-minded, idealistic, wise, and impartial third person would so view and
  interpret such an injunction as applied to your personal problems of
  adjustment to your life situations.

  147:4.9 "6. The spiritual level. And then last, but greatest of all, we attain
  the level of spirit insight and spiritual interpretation which impels us to
  recognize in this rule of life the divine command to treat all men as we
  conceive God would treat them. That is the universe ideal of human
  relationships. And this is your attitude toward all such problems when your
  supreme desire is ever to do the Father's will. I would, therefore, that you
  should do to all men that which you know I would do to them in like
  circumstances."

  147:4.10 Nothing Jesus had said to the apostles up to this time had ever more
  astonished them. They continued to discuss the Master's words long after he
  had retired. While Nathaniel was slow to recover from his supposition that
  Jesus had misunderstood the spirit of his question, the others were more than
  thankful that their philosophic fellow apostle had had the courage to ask such
  a thought-provoking question.





5. VISITING SIMON THE PHARISEE

  147:5.1 Though Simon was not a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, he was an
  influential Pharisee of Jerusalem. He was a half-hearted believer, and
  notwithstanding that he might be severely criticized therefor, he dared to
  invite Jesus and his personal associates, Peter, James, and John, to his home
  for a social meal. Simon had long observed the Master and was much impressed
  with his teachings and even more so with his personality.

  147:5.2 The wealthy Pharisees were devoted to almsgiving, and they did not
  shun publicity regarding their philanthropy. Sometimes they would even blow a
  trumpet as they were about to bestow charity upon some beggar. It was the
  custom of these Pharisees, when they provided a banquet for distinguished
  guests, to leave the doors of the house open so that even the street beggars
  might come in and, standing around the walls of the room behind the couches of
  the diners, be in position to receive portions of food which might be tossed
  to them by the banqueters.

  147:5.3 On this particular occasion at Simon's house, among those who came in
  off the street was a woman of unsavory reputation who had recently become a
  believer in the good news of the gospel of the kingdom. This woman was well
  known throughout all Jerusalem as the former keeper of one of the so-called
  high-class brothels located hard by the temple court of the gentiles. She had,
  on accepting the teachings of Jesus, closed up her nefarious place of business
  and had induced the majority of the women associated with her to accept the
  gospel and change their mode of living; notwithstanding this, she was still
  held in great disdain by the Pharisees and was compelled to wear her hair down
  -- the badge of harlotry. This unnamed woman had brought with her a large
  flask of perfumed anointing lotion and, standing behind Jesus as he reclined
  at meat, began to anoint his feet while she also wet his feet with her tears
  of gratitude, wiping them with the hair of her head. And when she had finished
  this anointing, she continued weeping and kissing his feet.

  147:5.4 When Simon saw all this, he said to himself: "This man, if he were a
  prophet, would have perceived who and what manner of woman this is who thus
  touches him; that she is a notorious sinner." And Jesus, knowing what was
  going on in Simon's mind, spoke up, saying: "Simon, I have something which I
  would like to say to you." Simon answered, "Teacher, say on." Then said Jesus:
  "A certain wealthy moneylender had two debtors. The one owed him five hundred
  denarii and the other fifty. Now, when neither of them had wherewith to pay,
  he forgave them both. Which of them do you think, Simon, would love him most?"
  Simon answered, "He, I suppose, whom he forgave the most." And Jesus said,
  "You have rightly judged," and pointing to the woman, he continued: "Simon,
  take a good look at this woman. I entered your house as an invited guest, yet
  you gave me no water for my feet. This grateful woman has washed my feet with
  tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave me no kiss of
  friendly greeting, but this woman, ever since she came in, has not ceased to
  kiss my feet. My head with oil you neglected to anoint, but she has anointed
  my feet with precious lotions. And what is the meaning of all this? Simply
  that her many sins have been forgiven, and this has led her to love much. But
  those who have received but little forgiveness sometimes love but little." And
  turning around toward the woman, he took her by the hand and, lifting her up,
  said: "You have indeed repented of your sins, and they are forgiven. Be not
  discouraged by the thoughtless and unkind attitude of your fellows; go on in
  the joy and liberty of the kingdom of heaven."

  147:5.5 When Simon and his friends who sat at meat with him heard these words,
  they were the more astonished, and they began to whisper among themselves,
  "Who is this man that he even dares to forgive sins?" And when Jesus heard
  them thus murmuring, he turned to dismiss the woman, saying, "Woman, go in
  peace; your faith has saved you."

  147:5.6 As Jesus arose with his friends to leave, he turned to Simon and said:
  "I know your heart, Simon, how you are torn betwixt faith and doubts, how you
  are distraught by fear and troubled by pride; but I pray for you that you may
  yield to the light and may experience in your station in life just such mighty
  transformations of mind and spirit as may be comparable to the tremendous
  changes which the gospel of the kingdom has already wrought in the heart of
  your unbidden and unwelcome guest. And I declare to all of you that the Father
  has opened the doors of the heavenly kingdom to all who have the faith to
  enter, and no man or association of men can close those doors even to the most
  humble soul or supposedly most flagrant sinner on earth if such sincerely seek
  an entrance." And Jesus, with Peter, James, and John, took leave of their host
  and went to join the rest of the apostles at the camp in the garden of
  Gethsemane.

  147:5.7 That same evening Jesus made the long-to-be-remembered address to the
  apostles regarding the relative value of status with God and progress in the
  eternal ascent to Paradise. Said Jesus: "My children, if there exists a true
  and living connection between the child and the Father, the child is certain
  to progress continuously toward the Father's ideals. True, the child may at
  first make slow progress, but the progress is none the less sure. The
  important thing is not the rapidity of your progress but rather its certainty.
  Your actual achievement is not so important as the fact that the direction of
  your progress is Godward. What you are becoming day by day is of infinitely
  more importance than what you are today.

  147:5.8 "This transformed woman whom some of you saw at Simon's house today
  is, at this moment, living on a level which is vastly below that of Simon and
  his well-meaning associates; but while these Pharisees are occupied with the
  false progress of the illusion of traversing deceptive circles of meaningless
  ceremonial services, this woman has, in dead earnest, started out on the long
  and eventful search for God, and her path toward heaven is not blocked by
  spiritual pride and moral self-satisfaction. The woman is, humanly speaking,
  much farther away from God than Simon, but her soul is in progressive motion;
  she is on the way toward an eternal goal. There are present in this woman
  tremendous spiritual possibilities for the future. Some of you may not stand
  high in actual levels of soul and spirit, but you are making daily progress on
  the living way opened up, through faith, to God. There are tremendous
  possibilities in each of you for the future. Better by far to have a small but
  living and growing faith than to be possessed of a great intellect with its
  dead stores of worldly wisdom and spiritual unbelief."

  147:5.9 But Jesus earnestly warned his apostles against the foolishness of the
  child of God who presumes upon the Father's love. He declared that the
  heavenly Father is not a lax, loose, or foolishly indulgent parent who is ever
  ready to condone sin and forgive recklessness. He cautioned his hearers not
  mistakenly to apply his illustrations of father and son so as to make it
  appear that God is like some overindulgent and unwise parents who conspire
  with the foolish of earth to encompass the moral undoing of their thoughtless
  children, and who are thereby certainly and directly contributing to the
  delinquency and early demoralization of their own offspring. Said Jesus: "My
  Father does not indulgently condone those acts and practices of his children
  which are self-destructive and suicidal to all moral growth and spiritual
  progress. Such sinful practices are an abomination in the sight of God."

  147:5.10 Many other semiprivate meetings and banquets did Jesus attend with
  the high and the low, the rich and the poor, of Jerusalem before he and his
  apostles finally departed for Capernaum. And many, indeed, became believers in
  the gospel of the kingdom and were subsequently baptized by Abner and his
  associates, who remained behind to foster the interests of the kingdom in
  Jerusalem and thereabouts.



6. RETURNING TO CAPERNAUM



  147:6.1 The last week of April, Jesus and the twelve departed from their
  Bethany headquarters near Jerusalem and began their journey back to Capernaum
  by way of Jericho and the Jordan.

  147:6.2 The chief priests and the religious leaders of the Jews held many
  secret meetings for the purpose of deciding what to do with Jesus. They were
  all agreed that something should be done to put a stop to his teaching, but
  they could not agree on the method. They had hoped that the civil authorities
  would dispose of him as Herod had put an end to John, but they discovered that
  Jesus was so conducting his work that the Roman officials were not much
  alarmed by his preaching. Accordingly, at a meeting which was held the day
  before Jesus' departure for Capernaum, it was decided that he would have to be
  apprehended on a religious charge and be tried by the Sanhedrin. Therefore a
  commission of six secret spies was appointed to follow Jesus, to observe his
  words and acts, and when they had amassed sufficient evidence of lawbreaking
  and blasphemy, to return to Jerusalem with their report. These six Jews caught
  up with the apostolic party, numbering about thirty, at Jericho and, under the
  pretense of desiring to become disciples, attached themselves to Jesus' family
  of followers, remaining with the group up to the time of the beginning of the
  second preaching tour in Galilee; whereupon three of them returned to
  Jerusalem to submit their report to the chief priests and the Sanhedrin.

  147:6.3 Peter preached to the assembled multitude at the crossing of the
  Jordan, and the following morning they moved up the river toward Amathus. They
  wanted to proceed straight on to Capernaum, but such a crowd gathered here
  they remained three days, preaching, teaching, and baptizing. They did not
  move toward home until early Sabbath morning, the first day of May. The
  Jerusalem spies were sure they would now secure their first charge against
  Jesus -- that of Sabbath breaking -- since he had presumed to start his
  journey on the Sabbath day. But they were doomed to disappointment because,
  just before their departure, Jesus called Andrew into his presence and before
  them all instructed him to proceed for a distance of only one thousand yards,
  the legal Jewish Sabbath day's journey.

  147:6.4 But the spies did not have long to wait for their opportunity to
  accuse Jesus and his associates of Sabbath breaking. As the company passed
  along the narrow road, the waving wheat, which was just then ripening, was
  near at hand on either side, and some of the apostles, being hungry, plucked
  the ripe grain and ate it. It was customary for travelers to help themselves
  to grain as they passed along the road, and therefore no thought of wrongdoing
  was attached to such conduct. But the spies seized upon this as a pretext for
  assailing Jesus. When they saw Andrew rub the grain in his hand, they went up
  to him and said: "Do you not know that it is unlawful to pluck and rub the
  grain on the Sabbath day?" And Andrew answered: "But we are hungry and rub
  only sufficient for our needs; and since when did it become sinful to eat
  grain on the Sabbath day?" But the Pharisees answered: "You do no wrong in
  eating, but you do break the law in plucking and rubbing out the grain between
  your hands; surely your Master would not approve of such acts." Then said
  Andrew: "But if it is not wrong to eat the grain, surely the rubbing out
  between our hands is hardly more work than the chewing of the grain, which you
  allow; wherefore do you quibble over such trifles?" When Andrew intimated that
  they were quibblers, they were indignant, and rushing back to where Jesus
  walked along, talking to Matthew, they protested, saying: "Behold, Teacher,
  your apostles do that which is unlawful on the Sabbath day; they pluck, rub,
  and eat the grain. We are sure you will command them to cease." And then said
  Jesus to the accusers: "You are indeed zealous for the law, and you do well to
  remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; but did you never read in the
  Scripture that, one day when David was hungry, he and they who were with him
  entered the house of God and ate the showbread, which it was not lawful for
  anyone to eat save the priests? and David also gave this bread to those who
  were with him. And have you not read in our law that it is lawful to do many
  needful things on the Sabbath day? And shall I not, before the day is
  finished, see you eat that which you have brought along for the needs of this
  day? My good men, you do well to be zealous for the Sabbath, but you would do
  better to guard the health and well-being of your fellows. I declare that the
  Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. And if you are here
  present with us to watch my words, then will I openly proclaim that the Son of
  Man is lord even of the Sabbath."

  147:6.5 The Pharisees were astonished and confounded by his words of
  discernment and wisdom. For the remainder of the day they kept by themselves
  and dared not ask any more questions.

  147:6.6 Jesus' antagonism to the Jewish traditions and slavish ceremonials was
  always positive. It consisted in what he did and in what he affirmed. The
  Master spent little time in negative denunciations. He taught that those who
  know God can enjoy the liberty of living without deceiving themselves by the
  licenses of sinning. Said Jesus to the apostles: "Men, if you are enlightened
  by the truth and really know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you
  know not the divine way, you are unfortunate and already breakers of the law."



7. BACK IN CAPERNAUM



  147:7.1 It was around noon on Monday, May 3, when Jesus and the twelve came to
  Bethsaida by boat from Tarichea. They traveled by boat in order to escape
  those who journeyed with them. But by the next day the others, including the
  official spies from Jerusalem, had again found Jesus.

  147:7.2 On Tuesday evening Jesus was conducting one of his customary classes
  of questions and answers when the leader of the six spies said to him: "I was
  today talking with one of John's disciples who is here attending upon your
  teaching, and we were at a loss to understand why you never command your
  disciples to fast and pray as we Pharisees fast and as John bade his
  followers." And Jesus, referring to a statement by John, answered this
  questioner: "Do the sons of the bridechamber fast while the bridegroom is with
  them? As long as the bridegroom remains with them, they can hardly fast. But
  the time is coming when the bridegroom shall be taken away, and during those
  times the children of the bridechamber undoubtedly will fast and pray. To pray
  is natural for the children of light, but fasting is not a part of the gospel
  of the kingdom of heaven. Be reminded that a wise tailor does not sew a piece
  of new and unshrunk cloth upon an old garment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink
  and produce a worse rent. Neither do men put new wine into old wine skins,
  lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins perish.
  The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. Therefore do my
  disciples show wisdom in that they do not bring too much of the old order over
  into the new teaching of the gospel of the kingdom. You who have lost your
  teacher may be justified in fasting for a time. Fasting may be an appropriate
  part of the law of Moses, but in the coming kingdom the sons of God shall
  experience freedom from fear and joy in the divine spirit." And when they
  heard these words, the disciples of John were comforted while the Pharisees
  themselves were the more confounded.

  147:7.3 Then the Master proceeded to warn his hearers against entertaining the
  notion that all olden teaching should be replaced entirely by new doctrines.
  Said Jesus: "That which is old and also true must abide. Likewise, that which
  is new but false must be rejected. But that which is new and also true, have
  the faith and courage to accept. Remember it is written: `Forsake not an old
  friend, for the new is not comparable to him. As new wine, so is a new friend;
  if it becomes old, you shall drink it with gladness.'"



8. THE FEAST OF SPIRITUAL GOODNESS



  147:8.1 That night, long after the usual listeners had retired, Jesus
  continued to teach his apostles. He began this special instruction by quoting
  from the Prophet Isaiah:

  147:8.2 "`Why have you fasted? For what reason do you afflict your souls while
  you continue to find pleasure in oppression and to take delight in injustice?
  Behold, you fast for the sake of strife and contention and to smite with the
  fist of wickedness. But you shall not fast in this way to make your voices
  heard on high.

  147:8.3 "`Is it such a fast that I have chosen -- a day for a man to afflict
  his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, to grovel in sackcloth
  and ashes? Will you dare to call this a fast and an acceptable day in the
  sight of the Lord? Is not this the fast I should choose: to loose the bonds of
  wickedness, to undo the knots of heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free,
  and to break every yoke? Is it not to share my bread with the hungry and to
  bring those who are homeless and poor to my house? And when I see those who
  are naked, I will clothe them.

  147:8.4 "`Then shall your light break forth as the morning while your health
  springs forth speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you while the glory
  of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then will you call upon the Lord, and he
  shall answer; you will cry out, and he shall say -- Here am I. And all this he
  will do if you refrain from oppression, condemnation, and vanity. The Father
  rather desires that you draw out your heart to the hungry, and that you
  minister to the afflicted souls; then shall your light shine in obscurity, and
  even your darkness shall be as the noonday. Then shall the Lord guide you
  continually, satisfying your soul and renewing your strength. You shall become
  like a watered garden, like a spring whose waters fail not. And they who do
  these things shall restore the wasted glories; they shall raise up the
  foundations of many generations; they shall be called the rebuilders of broken
  walls, the restorers of safe paths in which to dwell.'"

  147:8.5 And then long into the night Jesus propounded to his apostles the
  truth that it was their faith that made them secure in the kingdom of the
  present and the future, and not their affliction of soul nor fasting of body.
  He exhorted the apostles at least to live up to the ideas of the prophet of
  old and expressed the hope that they would progress far beyond even the ideals
  of Isaiah and the older prophets. His last words that night were: "Grow in
  grace by means of that living faith which grasps the fact that you are the
  sons of God while at the same time it recognizes every man as a brother."

  147:8.6 It was after two o'clock in the morning when Jesus ceased speaking and
  every man went to his place for sleep.




PAPER 148


 TRAINING EVANGELISTS AT BETHSAIDA



  148:0.1 FROM May 3 to October 3, A.D. 28, Jesus and the apostolic party were
  in residence at the Zebedee home at Bethsaida. Throughout this five months'
  period of the dry season an enormous camp was maintained by the seaside near
  the Zebedee residence, which had been greatly enlarged to accommodate the
  growing family of Jesus. This seaside camp, occupied by an ever-changing
  population of truth seekers, healing candidates, and curiosity devotees,
  numbered from five hundred to fifteen hundred. This tented city was under the
  general supervision of David Zebedee, assisted by the Alpheus twins. The
  encampment was a model in order and sanitation as well as in its general
  administration. The sick of different types were segregated and were under the
  supervision of a believer physician, a Syrian named Elman.

  148:0.2 Throughout this period the apostles would go fishing at least one day
  a week, selling their catch to David for consumption by the seaside
  encampment. The funds thus received were turned over to the group treasury.
  The twelve were permitted to spend one week out of each month with their
  families or friends.

  148:0.3 While Andrew continued in general charge of the apostolic activities,
  Peter was in full charge of the school of the evangelists. The apostles all
  did their share in teaching groups of evangelists each forenoon, and both
  teachers and pupils taught the people during the afternoons. After the evening
  meal, five nights a week, the apostles conducted question classes for the
  benefit of the evangelists. Once a week Jesus presided at this question hour,
  answering the holdover questions from previous sessions.

  148:0.4 In five months several thousand came and went at this encampment.
  Interested persons from every part of the Roman Empire and from the lands east
  of the Euphrates were in frequent attendance. This was the longest settled and
  well-organized period of the Master's teaching. Jesus' immediate family spent
  most of this time at either Nazareth or Cana.

  148:0.5 The encampment was not conducted as a community of common interests,
  as was the apostolic family. David Zebedee managed this large tent city so
  that it became a self-sustaining enterprise, notwithstanding that no one was
  ever turned away. This ever-changing camp was an indispensable feature of
  Peter's evangelistic training school.





1. A NEW SCHOOL OF THE PROPHETS



  148:1.1 Peter, James, and Andrew were the committee designated by Jesus to
  pass upon applicants for admission to the school of evangelists. All the races
  and nationalities of the Roman world and the East, as far as India, were
  represented among the students in this new school of the prophets. This school
  was conducted on the plan of learning and doing. What the students learned
  during the forenoon they taught to the assembly by the seaside during the
  afternoon. After supper they informally discussed both the learning of the
  forenoon and the teaching of the afternoon.

  148:1.2 Each of the apostolic teachers taught his own view of the gospel of
  the kingdom. They made no effort to teach just alike; there was no
  standardized or dogmatic formulation of theologic doctrines. Though they all
  taught the same truth, each apostle presented his own personal interpretation
  of the Master's teaching. And Jesus upheld this presentation of the diversity
  of personal experience in the things of the kingdom, unfailingly harmonizing
  and co-ordinating these many and divergent views of the gospel at his weekly
  question hours. Notwithstanding this great degree of personal liberty in
  matters of teaching, Simon Peter tended to dominate the theology of the school
  of evangelists. Next to Peter, James Zebedee exerted the greatest personal
  influence.

  148:1.3 The one hundred and more evangelists trained during this five months
  by the seaside represented the material from which (excepting Abner and John's
  apostles) the later seventy gospel teachers and preachers were drawn. The
  school of evangelists did not have everything in common to the same degree as
  did the twelve.

  148:1.4 These evangelists, though they taught and preached the gospel, did not
  baptize believers until after they were later ordained and commissioned by
  Jesus as the seventy messengers of the kingdom. Only seven of the large number
  healed at the sundown scene at this place were to be found among these
  evangelistic students. The nobleman's son of Capernaum was one of those
  trained for gospel service in Peter's school.





2. THE BETHSAIDA HOSPITAL



  148:2.1 In connection with the seaside encampment, Elman, the Syrian
  physician, with the assistance of a corps of twenty-five young women and
  twelve men, organized and conducted for four months what should be regarded as
  the kingdom's first hospital. At this infirmary, located a short distance to
  the south of the main tented city, they treated the sick in accordance with
  all known material methods as well as by the spiritual practices of prayer and
  faith encouragement. Jesus visited the sick of this encampment not less than
  three times a week and made personal contact with each sufferer. As far as we
  know, no so-called miracles of supernatural healing occurred among the one
  thousand afflicted and ailing persons who went away from this infirmary
  improved or cured. However, the vast majority of these benefited individuals
  ceased not to proclaim that Jesus had healed them.

  148:2.2 Many of the cures effected by Jesus in connection with his ministry in
  behalf of Elman's patients did, indeed, appear to resemble the working of
  miracles, but we were instructed that they were only just such transformations
  of mind and spirit as may occur in the experience of expectant and faith-
  dominated persons who are under the immediate and inspirational influence of a
  strong, positive, and beneficent personality whose ministry banishes fear and
  destroys anxiety.

  148:2.3 Elman and his associates endeavored to teach the truth to these sick
  ones concerning the "possession of evil spirits," but they met with little
  success. The belief that physical sickness and mental derangement could be
  caused by the dwelling of a so-called unclean spirit in the mind or body of
  the afflicted person was well-nigh universal.

  148:2.4 In all his contact with the sick and afflicted, when it came to the
  technique of treatment or the revelation of the unknown causes of disease,
  Jesus did not disregard the instructions of his Paradise brother, Immanuel,
  given ere he embarked upon the venture of the Urantia incarnation.
  Notwithstanding this, those who ministered to the sick learned many helpful
  lessons by observing the manner in which Jesus inspired the faith and
  confidence of the sick and suffering.

  148:2.5 The camp disbanded a short time before the season for the increase in
  chills and fever drew on.





3. THE FATHER'S BUSINESS



  148:3.1 Throughout this period Jesus conducted public services at the
  encampment less than a dozen times and spoke only once in the Capernaum
  synagogue, the second Sabbath before their departure with the newly trained
  evangelists upon their second public preaching tour of Galilee.

  148:3.2 Not since his baptism had the Master been so much alone as during this
  period of the evangelists' training encampment at Bethsaida. Whenever any one
  of the apostles ventured to ask Jesus why he was absent so much from their
  midst, he would invariably answer that he was "about the Father's business."

  148:3.3 During these periods of absence, Jesus was accompanied by only two of
  the apostles. He had released Peter, James, and John temporarily from their
  assignment as his personal companions that they might also participate in the
  work of training the new evangelistic candidates, numbering more than one
  hundred. When the Master desired to go to the hills about the Father's
  business, he would summon to accompany him any two of the apostles who might
  be at liberty. In this way each of the twelve enjoyed an opportunity for close
  association and intimate contact with Jesus.

  148:3.4 It has not been revealed for the purposes of this record, but we have
  been led to infer that the Master, during many of these solitary seasons in
  the hills, was in direct and executive association with many of his chief
  directors of universe affairs. Ever since about the time of his baptism this
  incarnated Sovereign of our universe had become increasingly and consciously
  active in the direction of certain phases of universe administration. And we
  have always held the opinion that, in some way not revealed to his immediate
  associates, during these weeks of decreased participation in the affairs of
  earth he was engaged in the direction of those high spirit intelligences who
  were charged with the running of a vast universe, and that the human Jesus
  chose to designate such activities on his part as being "about his Father's
  business."

  148:3.5 Many times, when Jesus was alone for hours, but when two of his
  apostles were near by, they observed his features undergo rapid and
  multitudinous changes, although they heard him speak no words. Neither did
  they observe any visible manifestation of celestial beings who might have been
  in communication with their Master, such as some of them did witness on a
  subsequent occasion.





4. EVIL, SIN, AND INIQUITY



  148:4.1 It was the habit of Jesus two evenings each week to hold special
  converse with individuals who desired to talk with him, in a certain secluded
  and sheltered corner of the Zebedee garden. At one of these evening
  conversations in private Thomas asked the Master this question: "Why is it
  necessary for men to be born of the spirit in order to enter the kingdom? Is
  rebirth necessary to escape the control of the evil one? Master, what is
  evil?" When Jesus heard these questions, he said to Thomas:



  148:4.2 "Do not make the mistake of confusing evil with the evil one, more
  correctly the iniquitous one. He whom you call the evil one is the son of
  self-love, the high administrator who knowingly went into deliberate rebellion
  against the rule of my Father and his loyal Sons. But I have already
  vanquished these sinful rebels. Make clear in your mind these different
  attitudes toward the Father and his universe. Never forget these laws of
  relation to the Father's will:

  148:4.3 "Evil is the unconscious or unintended transgression of the divine
  law, the Father's will. Evil is likewise the measure of the imperfectness of
  obedience to the Father's will.

  148:4.4 "Sin is the conscious, knowing, and deliberate transgression of the
  divine law, the Father's will. Sin is the measure of unwillingness to be
  divinely led and spiritually directed.

  148:4.5 "Iniquity is the willful, determined, and persistent transgression of
  the divine law, the Father's will. Iniquity is the measure of the continued
  rejection of the Father's loving plan of personality survival and the Sons'
  merciful ministry of salvation.

  148:4.6 "By nature, before the rebirth of the spirit, mortal man is subject to
  inherent evil tendencies, but such natural imperfections of behavior are
  neither sin nor iniquity. Mortal man is just beginning his long ascent to the
  perfection of the Father in Paradise. To be imperfect or partial in natural
  endowment is not sinful. Man is indeed subject to evil, but he is in no sense
  the child of the evil one unless he has knowingly and deliberately chosen the
  paths of sin and the life of iniquity. Evil is inherent in the natural order
  of this world, but sin is an attitude of conscious rebellion which was brought
  to this world by those who fell from spiritual light into gross darkness.

  148:4.7 "You are confused, Thomas, by the doctrines of the Greeks and the
  errors of the Persians. You do not understand the relationships of evil and
  sin because you view mankind as beginning on earth with a perfect Adam and
  rapidly degenerating, through sin, to man's present deplorable estate. But why
  do you refuse to comprehend the meaning of the record which discloses how
  Cain, the son of Adam, went over into the land of Nod and there got himself a
  wife? And why do you refuse to interpret the meaning of the record which
  portrays the sons of God finding wives for themselves among the daughters of
  men?

  148:4.8 "Men are, indeed, by nature evil, but not necessarily sinful. The new
  birth -- the baptism of the spirit -- is essential to deliverance from evil
  and necessary for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, but none of this
  detracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Neither does this inherent
  presence of potential evil mean that man is in some mysterious way estranged
  from the Father in heaven so that, as an alien, foreigner, or stepchild, he
  must in some manner seek for legal adoption by the Father. All such notions
  are born, first, of your misunderstanding of the Father and, second, of your
  ignorance of the origin, nature, and destiny of man.

  148:4.9 "The Greeks and others have taught you that man is descending from
  godly perfection steadily down toward oblivion or destruction; I have come to
  show that man, by entrance into the kingdom, is ascending certainly and surely
  up to God and divine perfection. Any being who in any manner falls short of
  the divine and spiritual ideals of the eternal Father's will is potentially
  evil, but such beings are in no sense sinful, much less iniquitous.

  148:4.10 "Thomas, have you not read about this in the Scriptures, where it is
  written: `You are the children of the Lord your God.' `I will be his Father
  and he shall be my son.' `I have chosen him to be my son -- I will be his
  Father.' `Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth;
  even every one who is called by my name, for I have created them for my
  glory.' `You are the sons of the living God.' `They who have the spirit of God
  are indeed the sons of God.' While there is a material part of the human
  father in the natural child, there is a spiritual part of the heavenly Father
  in every faith son of the kingdom."



  148:4.11 All this and much more Jesus said to Thomas, and much of it the
  apostle comprehended, although Jesus admonished him to "speak not to the
  others concerning these matters until after I shall have returned to the
  Father." And Thomas did not mention this interview until after the Master had
  departed from this world.





5. THE PURPOSE OF AFFLICTION



  148:5.1 At another of these private interviews in the garden Nathaniel asked
  Jesus: "Master, though I am beginning to understand why you refuse to practice
  healing indiscriminately, I am still at a loss to understand why the loving
  Father in heaven permits so many of his children on earth to suffer so many
  afflictions." The Master answered Nathaniel, saying:



  148:5.2 "Nathaniel, you and many others are thus perplexed because you do not
  comprehend how the natural order of this world has been so many times upset by
  the sinful adventures of certain rebellious traitors to the Father's will. And
  I have come to make a beginning of setting these things in order. But many
  ages will be required to restore this part of the universe to former paths and
  thus release the children of men from the extra burdens of sin and rebellion.
  The presence of evil alone is sufficient test for the ascension of man -- sin
  is not essential to survival.

  148:5.3 "But, my son, you should know that the Father does not purposely
  afflict his children. Man brings down upon himself unnecessary affliction as a
  result of his persistent refusal to walk in the better ways of the divine
  will. Affliction is potential in evil, but much of it has been produced by sin
  and iniquity. Many unusual events have transpired on this world, and it is not
  strange that all thinking men should be perplexed by the scenes of suffering
  and affliction which they witness. But of one thing you may be sure: The
  Father does not send affliction as an arbitrary punishment for wrongdoing. The
  imperfections and handicaps of evil are inherent; the penalties of sin are
  inevitable; the destroying consequences of iniquity are inexorable. Man should
  not blame God for those afflictions which are the natural result of the life
  which he chooses to live; neither should man complain of those experiences
  which are a part of life as it is lived on this world. It is the Father's will
  that mortal man should work persistently and consistently toward the
  betterment of his estate on earth. Intelligent application would enable man to
  overcome much of his earthly misery.

  148:5.4 "Nathaniel, it is our mission to help men solve their spiritual
  problems and in this way to quicken their minds so that they may be the better
  prepared and inspired to go about solving their manifold material problems. I
  know of your confusion as you have read the Scriptures. All too often there
  has prevailed a tendency to ascribe to God the responsibility for everything
  which ignorant man fails to understand. The Father is not personally
  responsible for all you may fail to comprehend. Do not doubt the love of the
  Father just because some just and wise law of his ordaining chances to afflict
  you because you have innocently or deliberately transgressed such a divine
  ordinance.

  148:5.5 "But, Nathaniel, there is much in the Scriptures which would have
  instructed you if you had only read with discernment. Do you not remember that
  it is written: `My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be
  weary of his correction, for whom the Lord loves he corrects, even as the
  father corrects the son in whom he takes delight.' `The Lord does not afflict
  willingly.' `Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now do I keep the law.
  Affliction was good for me that I might thereby learn the divine statutes.' `I
  know your sorrows. The eternal God is your refuge, while underneath are the
  everlasting arms.' `The Lord also is a refuge for the oppressed, a haven of
  rest in times of trouble.' `The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of
  affliction; the Lord will not forget the sick.' `As a father shows compassion
  for his children, so is the Lord compassionate to those who fear him. He knows
  your body; he remembers that you are dust.' `He heals the brokenhearted and
  binds up their wounds.' `He is the hope of the poor, the strength of the needy
  in his distress, a refuge from the storm, and a shadow from the devastating
  heat.' `He gives power to the faint, and to them who have no might he
  increases strength.' `A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax
  he will not quench.' `When you pass through the waters of affliction, I will
  be with you, and when the rivers of adversity overflow you, I will not forsake
  you.' `He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the
  captives, and to comfort all who mourn.' `There is correction in suffering;
  affliction does not spring forth from the dust.'"





6. THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF SUFFERING -- DISCOURSE ON JOB



  148:6.1 It was this same evening at Bethsaida that John also asked Jesus why
  so many apparently innocent people suffered from so many diseases and
  experienced so many afflictions. In answering John's questions, among many
  other things, the Master said:



  148:6.2 "My son, you do not comprehend the meaning of adversity or the mission
  of suffering. Have you not read that masterpiece of Semitic literature -- the
  Scripture story of the afflictions of Job? Do you not recall how this
  wonderful parable begins with the recital of the material prosperity of the
  Lord's servant? You well remember that Job was blessed with children, wealth,
  dignity, position, health, and everything else which men value in this
  temporal life. According to the time-honored teachings of the children of
  Abraham such material prosperity was all-sufficient evidence of divine favor.
  But such material possessions and such temporal prosperity do not indicate
  God's favor. My Father in heaven loves the poor just as much as the rich; he
  is no respecter of persons.

  148:6.3 "Although transgression of divine law is sooner or later followed by
  the harvest of punishment, while men certainly eventually do reap what they
  sow, still you should know that human suffering is not always a punishment for
  antecedent sin. Both Job and his friends failed to find the true answer for
  their perplexities. And with the light you now enjoy you would hardly assign
  to either Satan or God the parts they play in this unique parable. While Job
  did not, through suffering, find the resolution of his intellectual troubles
  or the solution of his philosophical difficulties, he did achieve great
  victories; even in the very face of the breakdown of his theological defenses
  he ascended to those spiritual heights where he could sincerely say, `I abhor
  myself'; then was there granted him the salvation of a vision of God. So even
  through misunderstood suffering, Job ascended to the superhuman plane of moral
  understanding and spiritual insight. When the suffering servant obtains a
  vision of God, there follows a soul peace which passes all human
  understanding.

  148:6.4 "The first of Job's friends, Eliphaz, exhorted the sufferer to exhibit
  in his afflictions the same fortitude he had prescribed for others during the
  days of his prosperity. Said this false comforter: `Trust in your religion,
  Job; remember that it is the wicked and not the righteous who suffer. You must
  deserve this punishment, else you would not be afflicted. You well know that
  no man can be righteous in God's sight. You know that the wicked never really
  prosper. Anyway, man seems predestined to trouble, and perhaps the Lord is
  only chastising you for your own good.' No wonder poor Job failed to get much
  comfort from such an interpretation of the problem of human suffering.

  148:6.5 "But the counsel of his second friend, Bildad, was even more
  depressing, notwithstanding its soundness from the standpoint of the then
  accepted theology. Said Bildad: `God cannot be unjust. Your children must have
  been sinners since they perished; you must be in error, else you would not be
  so afflicted. And if you are really righteous, God will certainly deliver you
  from your afflictions. You should learn from the history of God's dealings
  with man that the Almighty destroys only the wicked.'

  148:6.6 "And then you remember how Job replied to his friends, saying: `I well
  know that God does not hear my cry for help. How can God be just and at the
  same time so utterly disregard my innocence? I am learning that I can get no
  satisfaction from appealing to the Almighty. Cannot you discern that God
  tolerates the persecution of the good by the wicked? And since man is so weak,
  what chance has he for consideration at the hands of an omnipotent God? God
  has made me as I am, and when he thus turns upon me, I am defenseless. And why
  did God ever create me just to suffer in this miserable fashion?'

  148:6.7 "And who can challenge the attitude of Job in view of the counsel of
  his friends and the erroneous ideas of God which occupied his own mind? Do you
  not see that Job longed for a human God, that he hungered to commune with a
  divine Being who knows man's mortal estate and understands that the just must
  often suffer in innocence as a part of this first life of the long Paradise
  ascent? Wherefore has the Son of Man come forth from the Father to live such a
  life in the flesh that he will be able to comfort and succor all those who
  must henceforth be called upon to endure the afflictions of Job.

  148:6.8 "Job's third friend, Zophar, then spoke still less comforting words
  when he said: `You are foolish to claim to be righteous, seeing that you are
  thus afflicted. But I admit that it is impossible to comprehend God's ways.
  Perhaps there is some hidden purpose in all your miseries.' And when Job had
  listened to all three of his friends, he appealed directly to God for help,
  pleading the fact that `man, born of woman, is few of days and full of
  trouble.'

  148:6.9 "Then began the second session with his friends. Eliphaz grew more
  stern, accusing, and sarcastic. Bildad became indignant at Job's contempt for
  his friends. Zophar reiterated his melancholy advice. Job by this time had
  become disgusted with his friends and appealed again to God, and now he
  appealed to a just God against the God of injustice embodied in the philosophy
  of his friends and enshrined even in his own religious attitude. Next Job took
  refuge in the consolation of a future life in which the inequities of mortal
  existence may be more justly rectified. Failure to receive help from man
  drives Job to God. Then ensues the great struggle in his heart between faith
  and doubt. Finally, the human sufferer begins to see the light of life; his
  tortured soul ascends to new heights of hope and courage; he may suffer on and
  even die, but his enlightened soul now utters that cry of triumph, `My
  Vindicator lives!'

  148:6.10 "Job was altogether right when he challenged the doctrine that God
  afflicts children in order to punish their parents. Job was ever ready to
  admit that God is righteous, but he longed for some soul-satisfying revelation
  of the personal character of the Eternal. And that is our mission on earth. No
  more shall suffering mortals be denied the comfort of knowing the love of God
  and understanding the mercy of the Father in heaven. While the speech of God
  spoken from the whirlwind was a majestic concept for the day of its utterance,
  you have already learned that the Father does not thus reveal himself, but
  rather that he speaks within the human heart as a still, small voice, saying,
  `This is the way; walk therein.' Do you not comprehend that God dwells within
  you, that he has become what you are that he may make you what he is!"

  148:6.11 Then Jesus made this final statement: "The Father in heaven does not
  willingly afflict the children of men. Man suffers, first, from the accidents
  of time and the imperfections of the evil of an immature physical existence.
  Next, he suffers the inexorable consequences of sin -- the transgression of
  the laws of life and light. And finally, man reaps the harvest of his own
  iniquitous persistence in rebellion against the righteous rule of heaven on
  earth. But man's miseries are not a personal visitation of divine judgment.
  Man can, and will, do much to lessen his temporal sufferings. But once and for
  all be delivered from the superstition that God afflicts man at the behest of
  the evil one. Study the Book of Job just to discover how many wrong ideas of
  God even good men may honestly entertain; and then note how even the painfully
  afflicted Job found the God of comfort and salvation in spite of such
  erroneous teachings. At last his faith pierced the clouds of suffering to
  discern the light of life pouring forth from the Father as healing mercy and
  everlasting righteousness."

  148:6.12 John pondered these sayings in his heart for many days. His entire
  afterlife was markedly changed as a result of this conversation with the
  Master in the garden, and he did much, in later times, to cause the other
  apostles to change their viewpoints regarding the source, nature, and purpose
  of commonplace human afflictions. But John never spoke of this conference
  until after the Master had departed.





7. THE MAN WITH THE WITHERED HAND



  148:7.1 The second Sabbath before the departure of the apostles and the new
  corps of evangelists on the second preaching tour of Galilee, Jesus spoke in
  the Capernaum synagogue on the "Joys of Righteous Living." When Jesus had
  finished speaking, a large group of those who were maimed, halt, sick, and
  afflicted crowded up around him, seeking healing. Also in this group were the
  apostles, many of the new evangelists, and the Pharisaic spies from Jerusalem.
  Everywhere that Jesus went (except when in the hills about the Father's
  business) the six Jerusalem spies were sure to follow.

  148:7.2 The leader of the spying Pharisees, as Jesus stood talking to the
  people, induced a man with a withered hand to approach him and ask if it would
  be lawful to be healed on the Sabbath day or should he seek help on another
  day. When Jesus saw the man, heard his words, and perceived that he had been
  sent by the Pharisees, he said: "Come forward while I ask you a question. If
  you had a sheep and it should fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, would you
  reach down, lay hold on it, and lift it out? Is it lawful to do such things on
  the Sabbath day?" And the man answered: "Yes, Master, it would be lawful thus
  to do well on the Sabbath day." Then said Jesus, speaking to all of them: "I
  know wherefore you have sent this man into my presence. You would find cause
  for offense in me if you could tempt me to show mercy on the Sabbath day. In
  silence you all agreed that it was lawful to lift the unfortunate sheep out of
  the pit, even on the Sabbath, and I call you to witness that it is lawful to
  exhibit loving-kindness on the Sabbath day not only to animals but also to
  men. How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! I proclaim that it is
  lawful to do good to men on the Sabbath day." And as they all stood before him
  in silence, Jesus, addressing the man with the withered hand, said: "Stand up
  here by my side that all may see you. And now that you may know that it is my
  Father's will that you do good on the Sabbath day, if you have the faith to be
  healed, I bid you stretch out your hand."

  148:7.3 And as this man stretched forth his withered hand, it was made whole.
  The people were minded to turn upon the Pharisees, but Jesus bade them be
  calm, saying: "I have just told you that it is lawful to do good on the
  Sabbath, to save life, but I did not instruct you to do harm and give way to
  the desire to kill." The angered Pharisees went away, and notwithstanding it
  was the Sabbath day, they hastened forthwith to Tiberias and took counsel with
  Herod, doing everything in their power to arouse his prejudice in order to
  secure the Herodians as allies against Jesus. But Herod refused to take action
  against Jesus, advising that they carry their complaints to Jerusalem.

  148:7.4 This is the first case of a miracle to be wrought by Jesus in response
  to the challenge of his enemies. And the Master performed this so-called
  miracle, not as a demonstration of his healing power, but as an effective
  protest against making the Sabbath rest of religion a veritable bondage of
  meaningless restrictions upon all mankind. This man returned to his work as a
  stone mason, proving to be one of those whose healing was followed by a life
  of thanksgiving and righteousness.





8. LAST WEEK AT BETHSAIDA



  148:8.1 The last week of the sojourn at Bethsaida the Jerusalem spies became
  much divided in their attitude toward Jesus and his teachings. Three of these
  Pharisees were tremendously impressed by what they had seen and heard.
  Meanwhile, at Jerusalem, Abraham, a young and influential member of the
  Sanhedrin, publicly espoused the teachings of Jesus and was baptized in the
  pool of Siloam by Abner. All Jerusalem was agog over this event, and
  messengers were immediately dispatched to Bethsaida recalling the six spying
  Pharisees.



  148:8.2 The Greek philosopher who had been won for the kingdom on the previous
  tour of Galilee returned with certain wealthy Jews of Alexandria, and once
  more they invited Jesus to come to their city for the purpose of establishing
  a joint school of philosophy and religion as well as an infirmary for the
  sick. But Jesus courteously declined the invitation.



  148:8.3 About this time there arrived at the Bethsaida encampment a trance
  prophet from Bagdad, one Kirmeth. This supposed prophet had peculiar visions
  when in trance and dreamed fantastic dreams when his sleep was disturbed. He
  created a considerable disturbance at the camp, and Simon Zelotes was in favor
  of dealing rather roughly with the self-deceived pretender, but Jesus
  intervened and allowed him entire freedom of action for a few days. All who
  heard his preaching soon recognized that his teaching was not sound as judged
  by the gospel of the kingdom. He shortly returned to Bagdad, taking with him
  only a half dozen unstable and erratic souls. But before Jesus interceded for
  the Bagdad prophet, David Zebedee, with the assistance of a self-appointed
  committee, had taken Kirmeth out into the lake and, after repeatedly plunging
  him into the water, had advised him to depart hence -- to organize and build a
  camp of his own.



  148:8.4 On this same day, Beth-Marion, a Phoenician woman, became so fanatical
  that she went out of her head and, after almost drowning from trying to walk
  on the water, was sent away by her friends.



  148:8.5 The new Jerusalem convert, Abraham the Pharisee, gave all of his
  worldly goods to the apostolic treasury, and this contribution did much to
  make possible the immediate sending forth of the one hundred newly trained
  evangelists. Andrew had already announced the closing of the encampment, and
  everybody prepared either to go home or else to follow the evangelists into
  Galilee.





9. HEALING THE PARALYTIC



  148:9.1 On Friday afternoon, October 1, when Jesus was holding his last
  meeting with the apostles, evangelists, and other leaders of the disbanding
  encampment, and with the six Pharisees from Jerusalem seated in the front row
  of this assembly in the spacious and enlarged front room of the Zebedee home,
  there occurred one of the strangest and most unique episodes of all Jesus'
  earth life. The Master was, at this time, speaking as he stood in this large
  room, which had been built to accommodate these gatherings during the rainy
  season. The house was entirely surrounded by a vast concourse of people who
  were straining their ears to catch some part of Jesus' discourse.

  148:9.2 While the house was thus thronged with people and entirely surrounded
  by eager listeners, a man long afflicted with paralysis was carried down from
  Capernaum on a small couch by his friends. This paralytic had heard that Jesus
  was about to leave Bethsaida, and having talked with Aaron the stone mason,
  who had been so recently made whole, he resolved to be carried into Jesus'
  presence, where he could seek healing. His friends tried to gain entrance to
  Zebedee's house by both the front and back doors, but too many people were
  crowded together. But the paralytic refused to accept defeat; he directed his
  friends to procure ladders by which they ascended to the roof of the room in
  which Jesus was speaking, and after loosening the tiles, they boldly lowered
  the sick man on his couch by ropes until the afflicted one rested on the floor
  immediately in front of the Master. When Jesus saw what they had done, he
  ceased speaking, while those who were with him in the room marveled at the
  perseverance of the sick man and his friends. Said the paralytic: "Master, I
  would not disturb your teaching, but I am determined to be made whole. I am
  not like those who received healing and immediately forgot your teaching. I
  would be made whole that I might serve in the kingdom of heaven." Now,
  notwithstanding that this man's affliction had been brought upon him by his
  own misspent life, Jesus, seeing his faith, said to the paralytic: "Son, fear
  not; your sins are forgiven. Your faith shall save you."

  148:9.3 When the Pharisees from Jerusalem, together with other scribes and
  lawyers who sat with them, heard this pronouncement by Jesus, they began to
  say to themselves: "How dare this man thus speak? Does he not understand that
  such words are blasphemy? Who can forgive sin but God?" Jesus, perceiving in
  his spirit that they thus reasoned within their own minds and among
  themselves, spoke to them, saying: "Why do you so reason in your hearts? Who
  are you that you sit in judgment over me? What is the difference whether I say
  to this paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or arise, take up your bed, and
  walk? But that you who witness all this may finally know that the Son of Man
  has authority and power on earth to forgive sins, I will say to this afflicted
  man, Arise, take up your bed, and go to your own house." And when Jesus had
  thus spoken, the paralytic arose, and as they made way for him, he walked out
  before them all. And those who saw these things were amazed. Peter dismissed
  the assemblage, while many prayed and glorified God, confessing that they had
  never before seen such strange happenings.



  148:9.4 And it was about this time that the messengers of the Sanhedrin
  arrived to bid the six spies return to Jerusalem. When they heard this
  message, they fell to earnest debate among themselves; and after they had
  finished their discussions, the leader and two of his associates returned with
  the messengers to Jerusalem, while three of the spying Pharisees confessed
  faith in Jesus and, going immediately to the lake, were baptized by Peter and
  fellowshipped by the apostles as children of the kingdom.


PAPER 149


 THE SECOND PREACHING TOUR



  149:0.1 THE second public preaching tour of Galilee began on Sunday, October
  3, A.D. 28, and continued for almost three months, ending on December 30.
  Participating in this effort were Jesus and his twelve apostles, assisted by
  the newly recruited corps of 117 evangelists and by numerous other interested
  persons. On this tour they visited Gadara, Ptolemais, Japhia, Dabaritta,
  Megiddo, Jezreel, Scythopolis, Tarichea, Hippos, Gamala, Bethsaida-Julias, and
  many other cities and villages.

  149:0.2 Before the departure on this Sunday morning Andrew and Peter asked
  Jesus to give the final charge to the new evangelists, but the Master
  declined, saying that it was not his province to do those things which others
  could acceptably perform. After due deliberation it was decided that James
  Zebedee should administer the charge. At the conclusion of James's remarks
  Jesus said to the evangelists: "Go now forth to do the work as you have been
  charged, and later on, when you have shown yourselves competent and faithful,
  I will ordain you to preach the gospel of the kingdom."

  149:0.3 On this tour only James and John traveled with Jesus. Peter and the
  other apostles each took with them about one dozen of the evangelists and
  maintained close contact with them while they carried on their work of
  preaching and teaching. As fast as believers were ready to enter the kingdom,
  the apostles would administer baptism. Jesus and his two companions traveled
  extensively during these three months, often visiting two cities in one day to
  observe the work of the evangelists and to encourage them in their efforts to
  establish the kingdom. This entire second preaching tour was principally an
  effort to afford practical experience for this corps of 117 newly trained
  evangelists.



  149:0.4 Throughout this period and subsequently, up to the time of the final
  departure of Jesus and the twelve for Jerusalem, David Zebedee maintained a
  permanent headquarters for the work of the kingdom in his father's house at
  Bethsaida. This was the clearinghouse for Jesus' work on earth and the relay
  station for the messenger service which David carried on between the workers
  in various parts of Palestine and adjacent regions. He did all of this on his
  own initiative but with the approval of Andrew. David employed forty to fifty
  messengers in this intelligence division of the rapidly enlarging and
  extending work of the kingdom. While thus employed, he partially supported
  himself by spending some of his time at his old work of fishing.





1. THE WIDESPREAD FAME OF JESUS



  149:1.1 By the time the camp at Bethsaida had been broken up, the fame of
  Jesus, particularly as a healer, had spread to all parts of Palestine and
  through all of Syria and the surrounding countries. For weeks after they left
  Bethsaida, the sick continued to arrive, and when they did not find the
  Master, on learning from David where he was, they would go in search of him.
  On this tour Jesus did not deliberately perform any so-called miracles of
  healing. Nevertheless, scores of afflicted found restoration of health and
  happiness as a result of the reconstructive power of the intense faith which
  impelled them to seek for healing.

  149:1.2 There began to appear about the time of this mission -- and continued
  throughout the remainder of Jesus' life on earth -- a peculiar and unexplained
  series of healing phenomena. In the course of this three months' tour more
  than one hundred men, women, and children from Judea, Idumea, Galilee, Syria,
  Tyre, and Sidon, and from beyond the Jordan were beneficiaries of this
  unconscious healing by Jesus and, returning to their homes, added to the
  enlargement of Jesus' fame. And they did this notwithstanding that Jesus
  would, every time he observed one of these cases of spontaneous healing,
  directly charge the beneficiary to "tell no man."



  149:1.3 It was never revealed to us just what occurred in these cases of
  spontaneous or unconscious healing. The Master never explained to his apostles
  how these healings were effected, other than that on several occasions he
  merely said, "I perceive that power has gone forth from me." On one occasion
  he remarked when touched by an ailing child, "I perceive that life has gone
  forth from me."

  149:1.4 In the absence of direct word from the Master regarding the nature of
  these cases of spontaneous healing, it would be presuming on our part to
  undertake to explain how they were accomplished, but it will be permissible to
  record our opinion of all such healing phenomena. We believe that many of
  these apparent miracles of healing, as they occurred in the course of Jesus'
  earth ministry, were the result of the coexistence of the following three
  powerful, potent, and associated influences:



  149:1.5 1. The presence of strong, dominant, and living faith in the heart of
  the human being who persistently sought healing, together with the fact that
  such healing was desired for its spiritual benefits rather than for purely
  physical restoration.



  149:1.6 2. The existence, concomitant with such human faith, of the great
  sympathy and compassion of the incarnated and mercy-dominated Creator Son of
  God, who actually possessed in his person almost unlimited and timeless
  creative healing powers and prerogatives.



  149:1.7 3. Along with the faith of the creature and the life of the Creator it
  should also be noted that this God-man was the personified expression of the
  Father's will. If, in the contact of the human need and the divine power to
  meet it, the Father did not will otherwise, the two became one, and the
  healing occurred unconsciously to the human Jesus but was immediately
  recognized by his divine nature. The explanation, then, of many of these cases
  of healing must be found in a great law which has long been known to us,
  namely, What the Creator Son desires and the eternal Father wills IS.



  149:1.8 It is, then, our opinion that, in the personal presence of Jesus,
  certain forms of profound human faith were literally and truly compelling in
  the manifestation of healing by certain creative forces and personalities of
  the universe who were at that time so intimately associated with the Son of
  Man. It therefore becomes a fact of record that Jesus did frequently suffer
  men to heal themselves in his presence by their powerful, personal faith.

  149:1.9 Many others sought healing for wholly selfish purposes. A rich widow
  of Tyre, with her retinue, came seeking to be healed of her infirmities, which
  were many; and as she followed Jesus about through Galilee, she continued to
  offer more and more money, as if the power of God were something to be
  purchased by the highest bidder. But never would she become interested in the
  gospel of the kingdom; it was only the cure of her physical ailments that she
  sought.





2. ATTITUDE OF THE PEOPLE



  149:2.1 Jesus understood the minds of men. He knew what was in the heart of
  man, and had his teachings been left as he presented them, the only commentary
  being the inspired interpretation afforded by his earth life, all nations and
  all religions of the world would speedily have embraced the gospel of the
  kingdom. The well-meant efforts of Jesus' early followers to restate his
  teachings so as to make them the more acceptable to certain nations, races,
  and religions, only resulted in making such teachings the less acceptable to
  all other nations, races, and religions.

  149:2.2 The Apostle Paul, in his efforts to bring the teachings of Jesus to
  the favorable notice of certain groups in his day, wrote many letters of
  instruction and admonition. Other teachers of Jesus' gospel did likewise, but
  none of them realized that some of these writings would subsequently be
  brought together by those who would set them forth as the embodiment of the
  teachings of Jesus. And so, while so-called Christianity does contain more of
  the Master's gospel than any other religion, it does also contain much that
  Jesus did not teach. Aside from the incorporation of many teachings from the
  Persian mysteries and much of the Greek philosophy into early Christianity,
  two great mistakes were made:



  149:2.3 1. The effort to connect the gospel teaching directly onto the Jewish
  theology, as illustrated by the Christian doctrines of the atonement -- the
  teaching that Jesus was the sacrificed Son who would satisfy the Father's
  stern justice and appease the divine wrath. These teachings originated in a
  praiseworthy effort to make the gospel of the kingdom more acceptable to
  disbelieving Jews. Though these efforts failed as far as winning the Jews was
  concerned, they did not fail to confuse and alienate many honest souls in all
  subsequent generations.



  149:2.4 2. The second great blunder of the Master's early followers, and one
  which all subsequent generations have persisted in perpetuating, was to
  organize the Christian teaching so completely about the person of Jesus. This
  overemphasis of the personality of Jesus in the theology of Christianity has
  worked to obscure his teachings, and all of this has made it increasingly
  difficult for Jews, Mohammedans, Hindus, and other Eastern religionists to
  accept the teachings of Jesus. We would not belittle the place of the person
  of Jesus in a religion which might bear his name, but we would not permit such
  consideration to eclipse his inspired life or to supplant his saving message:
  the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.



  149:2.5 The teachers of the religion of Jesus should approach other religions
  with the recognition of the truths which are held in common (many of which
  come directly or indirectly from Jesus' message) while they refrain from
  placing so much emphasis on the differences.



  149:2.6 While, at that particular time, the fame of Jesus rested chiefly upon
  his reputation as a healer, it does not follow that it continued so to rest.
  As time passed, more and more he was sought for spiritual help. But it was the
  physical cures that made the most direct and immediate appeal to the common
  people. Jesus was increasingly sought by the victims of moral enslavement and
  mental harassments, and he invariably taught them the way of deliverance.
  Fathers sought his advice regarding the management of their sons, and mothers
  came for help in the guidance of their daughters. Those who sat in darkness
  came to him, and he revealed to them the light of life. His ear was ever open
  to the sorrows of mankind, and he always helped those who sought his ministry.

  149:2.7 When the Creator himself was on earth, incarnated in the likeness of
  mortal flesh, it was inevitable that some extraordinary things should happen.
  But you should never approach Jesus through these so-called miraculous
  occurrences. Learn to approach the miracle through Jesus, but do not make the
  mistake of approaching Jesus through the miracle. And this admonition is
  warranted, notwithstanding that Jesus of Nazareth is the only founder of a
  religion who performed supermaterial acts on earth.



  149:2.8 The most astonishing and the most revolutionary feature of Michael's
  mission on earth was his attitude toward women. In a day and generation when a
  man was not supposed to salute even his own wife in a public place, Jesus
  dared to take women along as teachers of the gospel in connection with his
  third tour of Galilee. And he had the consummate courage to do this in the
  face of the rabbinic teaching which declared that it was "better that the
  words of the law should be burned than delivered to women."

  149:2.9 In one generation Jesus lifted women out of the disrespectful oblivion
  and the slavish drudgery of the ages. And it is the one shameful thing about
  the religion that presumed to take Jesus' name that it lacked the moral
  courage to follow this noble example in its subsequent attitude toward women.



  149:2.10 As Jesus mingled with the people, they found him entirely free from
  the superstitions of that day. He was free from religious prejudices; he was
  never intolerant. He had nothing in his heart resembling social antagonism.
  While he complied with the good in the religion of his fathers, he did not
  hesitate to disregard man-made traditions of superstition and bondage. He
  dared to teach that catastrophes of nature, accidents of time, and other
  calamitous happenings are not visitations of divine judgments or mysterious
  dispensations of Providence. He denounced slavish devotion to meaningless
  ceremonials and exposed the fallacy of materialistic worship. He boldly
  proclaimed man's spiritual freedom and dared to teach that mortals of the
  flesh are indeed and in truth sons of the living God.

  149:2.11 Jesus transcended all the teachings of his forebears when he boldly
  substituted clean hearts for clean hands as the mark of true religion. He put
  reality in the place of tradition and swept aside all pretensions of vanity
  and hypocrisy. And yet this fearless man of God did not give vent to
  destructive criticism or manifest an utter disregard of the religious, social,
  economic, and political usages of his day. He was not a militant
  revolutionist; he was a progressive evolutionist. He engaged in the
  destruction of that which was only when he simultaneously offered his fellows
  the superior thing which ought to be.



  149:2.12 Jesus received the obedience of his followers without exacting it.
  Only three men who received his personal call refused to accept the invitation
  to discipleship. He exercised a peculiar drawing power over men, but he was
  not dictatorial. He commanded confidence, and no man ever resented his giving
  a command. He assumed absolute authority over his disciples, but no one ever
  objected. He permitted his followers to call him Master.

  149:2.13 The Master was admired by all who met him except by those who
  entertained deep-seated religious prejudices or those who thought they
  discerned political dangers in his teachings. Men were astonished at the
  originality and authoritativeness of his teaching. They marveled at his
  patience in dealing with backward and troublesome inquirers. He inspired hope
  and confidence in the hearts of all who came under his ministry. Only those
  who had not met him feared him, and he was hated only by those who regarded
  him as the champion of that truth which was destined to overthrow the evil and
  error which they had determined to hold in their hearts at all cost.

  149:2.14 On both friends and foes he exercised a strong and peculiarly
  fascinating influence. Multitudes would follow him for weeks, just to hear his
  gracious words and behold his simple life. Devoted men and women loved Jesus
  with a well-nigh superhuman affection. And the better they knew him the more
  they loved him. And all this is still true; even today and in all future ages,
  the more man comes to know this God-man, the more he will love and follow
  after him.





3. HOSTILITY OF THE RELIGIOUS LEADERS



  149:3.1 Notwithstanding the favorable reception of Jesus and his teachings by
  the common people, the religious leaders at Jerusalem became increasingly
  alarmed and antagonistic. The Pharisees had formulated a systematic and
  dogmatic theology. Jesus was a teacher who taught as the occasion served; he
  was not a systematic teacher. Jesus taught not so much from the law as from
  life, by parables. (And when he employed a parable for illustrating his
  message, he designed to utilize just one feature of the story for that
  purpose. Many wrong ideas concerning the teachings of Jesus may be secured by
  attempting to make allegories out of his parables.)

  149:3.2 The religious leaders at Jerusalem were becoming well-nigh frantic as
  a result of the recent conversion of young Abraham and by the desertion of the
  three spies who had been baptized by Peter, and who were now out with the
  evangelists on this second preaching tour of Galilee. The Jewish leaders were
  increasingly blinded by fear and prejudice, while their hearts were hardened
  by the continued rejection of the appealing truths of the gospel of the
  kingdom. When men shut off the appeal to the spirit that dwells within them,
  there is little that can be done to modify their attitude.

  149:3.3 When Jesus first met with the evangelists at the Bethsaida camp, in
  concluding his address, he said: "You should remember that in body and mind --
  emotionally -- men react individually. The only uniform thing about men is the
  indwelling spirit. Though divine spirits may vary somewhat in the nature and
  extent of their experience, they react uniformly to all spiritual appeals.
  Only through, and by appeal to, this spirit can mankind ever attain unity and
  brotherhood." But many of the leaders of the Jews had closed the doors of
  their hearts to the spiritual appeal of the gospel. From this day on they
  ceased not to plan and plot for the Master's destruction. They were convinced
  that Jesus must be apprehended, convicted, and executed as a religious
  offender, a violator of the cardinal teachings of the Jewish sacred law.





4. PROGRESS OF THE PREACHING TOUR



  149:4.1 Jesus did very little public work on this preaching tour, but he
  conducted many evening classes with the believers in most of the cities and
  villages where he chanced to sojourn with James and John. At one of these
  evening sessions one of the younger evangelists asked Jesus a question about
  anger, and the Master among other things, said in reply:



  149:4.2 "Anger is a material manifestation which represents, in a general way,
  the measure of the failure of the spiritual nature to gain control of the
  combined intellectual and physical natures. Anger indicates your lack of
  tolerant brotherly love plus your lack of self-respect and self-control. Anger
  depletes the health, debases the mind, and handicaps the spirit teacher of
  man's soul. Have you not read in the Scriptures that `wrath kills the foolish
  man,' and that man `tears himself in his anger'? That `he who is slow of wrath
  is of great understanding,' while `he who is hasty of temper exalts folly'?
  You all know that `a soft answer turns away wrath,' and how `grievous words
  stir up anger.' `Discretion defers anger,' while `he who has no control over
  his own self is like a defenseless city without walls.' `Wrath is cruel and
  anger is outrageous.' `Angry men stir up strife, while the furious multiply
  their transgressions.' `Be not hasty in spirit, for anger rests in the bosom
  of fools.'" Before Jesus ceased speaking, he said further: "Let your hearts be
  so dominated by love that your spirit guide will have little trouble in
  delivering you from the tendency to give vent to those outbursts of animal
  anger which are inconsistent with the status of divine sonship."



  149:4.3 On this same occasion the Master talked to the group about the
  desirability of possessing well-balanced characters. He recognized that it was
  necessary for most men to devote themselves to the mastery of some vocation,
  but he deplored all tendency toward overspecialization, toward becoming
  narrow-minded and circumscribed in life's activities. He called attention to
  the fact that any virtue, if carried to extremes, may become a vice. Jesus
  always preached temperance and taught consistency -- proportionate adjustment
  of life problems. He pointed out that overmuch sympathy and pity may
  degenerate into serious emotional instability; that enthusiasm may drive on
  into fanaticism. He discussed one of their former associates whose imagination
  had led him off into visionary and impractical undertakings. At the same time
  he warned them against the dangers of the dullness of overconservative
  mediocrity.

  149:4.4 And then Jesus discoursed on the dangers of courage and faith, how
  they sometimes lead unthinking souls on to recklessness and presumption. He
  also showed how prudence and discretion, when carried too far, lead to
  cowardice and failure. He exhorted his hearers to strive for originality while
  they shunned all tendency toward eccentricity. He pleaded for sympathy without
  sentimentality, piety without sanctimoniousness. He taught reverence free from
  fear and superstition.

  149:4.5 It was not so much what Jesus taught about the balanced character that
  impressed his associates as the fact that his own life was such an eloquent
  exemplification of his teaching. He lived in the midst of stress and storm,
  but he never wavered. His enemies continually laid snares for him, but they
  never entrapped him. The wise and learned endeavored to trip him, but he did
  not stumble. They sought to embroil him in debate, but his answers were always
  enlightening, dignified, and final. When he was interrupted in his discourses
  with multitudinous questions, his answers were always significant and
  conclusive. Never did he resort to ignoble tactics in meeting the continuous
  pressure of his enemies, who did not hesitate to employ every sort of false,
  unfair, and unrighteous mode of attack upon him.

  149:4.6 While it is true that many men and women must assiduously apply
  themselves to some definite pursuit as a livelihood vocation, it is
  nevertheless wholly desirable that human beings should cultivate a wide range
  of cultural familiarity with life as it is lived on earth. Truly educated
  persons are not satisfied with remaining in ignorance of the lives and doings
  of their fellows.





5. LESSON REGARDING CONTENTMENT



  149:5.1 When Jesus was visiting the group of evangelists working under the
  supervision of Simon Zelotes, during their evening conference Simon asked the
  Master: "Why are some persons so much more happy and contented than others? Is
  contentment a matter of religious experience?" Among other things, Jesus said
  in answer to Simon's question:



  149:5.2 "Simon, some persons are naturally more happy than others. Much, very
  much, depends upon the willingness of man to be led and directed by the
  Father's spirit which lives within him. Have you not read in the Scriptures
  the words of the wise man, `The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord,
  searching all the inward parts'? And also that such spirit-led mortals say:
  `The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a goodly
  heritage.' `A little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of
  many wicked,' for `a good man shall be satisfied from within himself.' `A
  merry heart makes a cheerful countenance and is a continual feast. Better is a
  little with the reverence of the Lord than great treasure and trouble
  therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and
  hatred therewith. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues
  without rectitude.' `A merry heart does good like a medicine.' `Better is a
  handful with composure than a superabundance with sorrow and vexation of
  spirit.'

  149:5.3 "Much of man's sorrow is born of the disappointment of his ambitions
  and the wounding of his pride. Although men owe a duty to themselves to make
  the best of their lives on earth, having thus sincerely exerted themselves,
  they should cheerfully accept their lot and exercise ingenuity in making the
  most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man's troubles
  take origin in the fear soil of his own natural heart. `The wicked flee when
  no man pursues.' `The wicked are like the troubled sea, for it cannot rest,
  but its waters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the
  wicked.'

  149:5.4 "Seek not, then, for false peace and transient joy but rather for the
  assurance of faith and the sureties of divine sonship which yield composure,
  contentment, and supreme joy in the spirit."



  149:5.5 Jesus hardly regarded this world as a "vale of tears." He rather
  looked upon it as the birth sphere of the eternal and immortal spirits of
  Paradise ascension, the "vale of soul making."





6. THE "FEAR OF THE LORD"



  149:6.1 It was at Gamala, during the evening conference, that Philip said to
  Jesus: "Master, why is it that the Scriptures instruct us to `fear the Lord,'
  while you would have us look to the Father in heaven without fear? How are we
  to harmonize these teachings?" And Jesus replied to Philip, saying:



  149:6.2 "My children, I am not surprised that you ask such questions. In the
  beginning it was only through fear that man could learn reverence, but I have
  come to reveal the Father's love so that you will be attracted to the worship
  of the Eternal by the drawing of a son's affectionate recognition and
  reciprocation of the Father's profound and perfect love. I would deliver you
  from the bondage of driving yourselves through slavish fear to the irksome
  service of a jealous and wrathful King-God. I would instruct you in the
  Father-son relationship of God and man so that you may be joyfully led into
  that sublime and supernal free worship of a loving, just, and merciful Father-
  God.

  149:6.3 "The `fear of the Lord' has had different meanings in the successive
  ages, coming up from fear, through anguish and dread, to awe and reverence.
  And now from reverence I would lead you up, through recognition, realization,
  and appreciation, to love. When man recognizes only the works of God, he is
  led to fear the Supreme; but when man begins to understand and experience the
  personality and character of the living God, he is led increasingly to love
  such a good and perfect, universal and eternal Father. And it is just this
  changing of the relation of man to God that constitutes the mission of the Son
  of Man on earth.

  149:6.4 "Intelligent children do not fear their father in order that they may
  receive good gifts from his hand; but having already received the abundance of
  good things bestowed by the dictates of the father's affection for his sons
  and daughters, these much loved children are led to love their father in
  responsive recognition and appreciation of such munificent beneficence. The
  goodness of God leads to repentance; the beneficence of God leads to service;
  the mercy of God leads to salvation; while the love of God leads to
  intelligent and freehearted worship.

  149:6.5 "Your forebears feared God because he was mighty and mysterious. You
  shall adore him because he is magnificent in love, plenteous in mercy, and
  glorious in truth. The power of God engenders fear in the heart of man, but
  the nobility and righteousness of his personality beget reverence, love, and
  willing worship. A dutiful and affectionate son does not fear or dread even a
  mighty and noble father. I have come into the world to put love in the place
  of fear, joy in the place of sorrow, confidence in the place of dread, loving
  service and appreciative worship in the place of slavish bondage and
  meaningless ceremonies. But it is still true of those who sit in darkness that
  `the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' But when the light has more
  fully come, the sons of God are led to praise the Infinite for what he is
  rather than to fear him for what he does.

  149:6.6 "When children are young and unthinking, they must necessarily be
  admonished to honor their parents; but when they grow older and become
  somewhat more appreciative of the benefits of the parental ministry and
  protection, they are led up, through understanding respect and increasing
  affection, to that level of experience where they actually love their parents
  for what they are more than for what they have done. The father naturally
  loves his child, but the child must develop his love for the father from the
  fear of what the father can do, through awe, dread, dependence, and reverence,
  to the appreciative and affectionate regard of love.

  149:6.7 "You have been taught that you should `fear God and keep his
  commandments, for that is the whole duty of man.' But I have come to give you
  a new and higher commandment. I would teach you to `love God and learn to do
  his will, for that is the highest privilege of the liberated sons of God.'
  Your fathers were taught to `fear God -- the Almighty King.' I teach you,
  `Love God -- the all-merciful Father.'

  149:6.8 "In the kingdom of heaven, which I have come to declare, there is no
  high and mighty king; this kingdom is a divine family. The universally
  recognized and unreservedly worshiped center and head of this far-flung
  brotherhood of intelligent beings is my Father and your Father. I am his Son,
  and you are also his sons. Therefore it is eternally true that you and I are
  brethren in the heavenly estate, and all the more so since we have become
  brethren in the flesh of the earthly life. Cease, then, to fear God as a king
  or serve him as a master; learn to reverence him as the Creator; honor him as
  the Father of your spirit youth; love him as a merciful defender; and
  ultimately worship him as the loving and all-wise Father of your more mature
  spiritual realization and appreciation.

  149:6.9 "Out of your wrong concepts of the Father in heaven grow your false
  ideas of humility and springs much of your hypocrisy. Man may be a worm of the
  dust by nature and origin, but when he becomes indwelt by my Father's spirit,
  that man becomes divine in his destiny. The bestowal spirit of my Father will
  surely return to the divine source and universe level of origin, and the human
  soul of mortal man which shall have become the reborn child of this indwelling
  spirit shall certainly ascend with the divine spirit to the very presence of
  the eternal Father.

  149:6.10 "Humility, indeed, becomes mortal man who receives all these gifts
  from the Father in heaven, albeit there is a divine dignity attached to all
  such faith candidates for the eternal ascent of the heavenly kingdom. The
  meaningless and menial practices of an ostentatious and false humility are
  incompatible with the appreciation of the source of your salvation and the
  recognition of the destiny of your spirit-born souls. Humility before God is
  altogether appropriate in the depths of your hearts; meekness before men is
  commendable; but the hypocrisy of self-conscious and attention-craving
  humility is childish and unworthy of the enlightened sons of the kingdom.

  149:6.11 "You do well to be meek before God and self-controlled before men,
  but let your meekness be of spiritual origin and not the self-deceptive
  display of a self-conscious sense of self-righteous superiority. The prophet
  spoke advisedly when he said, `Walk humbly with God,' for, while the Father in
  heaven is the Infinite and the Eternal, he also dwells `with him who is of a
  contrite mind and a humble spirit.' My Father disdains pride, loathes
  hypocrisy, and abhors iniquity. And it was to emphasize the value of sincerity
  and perfect trust in the loving support and faithful guidance of the heavenly
  Father that I have so often referred to the little child as illustrative of
  the attitude of mind and the response of spirit which are so essential to the
  entrance of mortal man into the spirit realities of the kingdom of heaven.

  149:6.12 "Well did the Prophet Jeremiah describe many mortals when he said:
  `You are near God in the mouth but far from him in the heart.' And have you
  not also read that direful warning of the prophet who said: `The priests
  thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money. At the same
  time they profess piety and proclaim that the Lord is with them.' Have you not
  been well warned against those who `speak peace to their neighbors when
  mischief is in their hearts,' those who `flatter with the lips while the heart
  is given to double-dealing'? Of all the sorrows of a trusting man, none are so
  terrible as to be `wounded in the house of a trusted friend.'"





7. RETURNING TO BETHSAIDA



  149:7.1 Andrew, in consultation with Simon Peter and with the approval of
  Jesus, had instructed David at Bethsaida to dispatch messengers to the various
  preaching groups with instructions to terminate the tour and return to
  Bethsaida some time on Thursday, December 30. By supper time on that rainy day
  all of the apostolic party and the teaching evangelists had arrived at the
  Zebedee home.

  149:7.2 The group remained together over the Sabbath day, being accommodated
  in the homes of Bethsaida and near-by Capernaum, after which the entire party
  was granted a two weeks' recess to go home to their families, visit their
  friends, or go fishing. The two or three days they were together in Bethsaida
  were, indeed, exhilarating and inspiring; even the older teachers were edified
  by the young preachers as they narrated their experiences.

  149:7.3 Of the 117 evangelists who participated in this second preaching tour
  of Galilee, only about seventy-five survived the test of actual experience and
  were on hand to be assigned to service at the end of the two weeks' recess.
  Jesus, with Andrew, Peter, James, and John, remained at the Zebedee home and
  spent much time in conference regarding the welfare and extension of the
  kingdom.


 PAPER 150


 THE THIRD PREACHING TOUR



  150:0.1 ON SUNDAY evening, January 16, A.D. 29, Abner, with the apostles of
  John, reached Bethsaida and went into joint conference with Andrew and the
  apostles of Jesus the next day. Abner and his associates made their
  headquarters at Hebron and were in the habit of coming up to Bethsaida
  periodically for these conferences.

  150:0.2 Among the many matters considered by this joint conference was the
  practice of anointing the sick with certain forms of oil in connection with
  prayers for healing. Again did Jesus decline to participate in their
  discussions or to express himself regarding their conclusions. The apostles of
  John had always used the anointing oil in their ministry to the sick and
  afflicted, and they sought to establish this as a uniform practice for both
  groups, but the apostles of Jesus refused to bind themselves by such a
  regulation.

  150:0.3 On Tuesday, January 18, the twenty-four were joined by the tested
  evangelists, about seventy-five in number, at the Zebedee house in Bethsaida
  preparatory to being sent forth on the third preaching tour of Galilee. This
  third mission continued for a period of seven weeks.

  150:0.4 The evangelists were sent out in groups of five, while Jesus and the
  twelve traveled together most of the time, the apostles going out two and two
  to baptize believers as occasion required. For a period of almost three weeks
  Abner and his associates also worked with the evangelistic groups, advising
  them and baptizing believers. They visited Magdala, Tiberias, Nazareth, and
  all the principal cities and villages of central and southern Galilee, all the
  places previously visited and many others. This was their last message to
  Galilee, except to the northern portions.





1. THE WOMEN'S EVANGELISTIC CORPS



  150:1.1 Of all the daring things which Jesus did in connection with his earth
  career, the most amazing was his sudden announcement on the evening of January
  16: "On the morrow we will set apart ten women for the ministering work of the
  kingdom." At the beginning of the two weeks' period during which the apostles
  and the evangelists were to be absent from Bethsaida on their furlough, Jesus
  requested David to summon his parents back to their home and to dispatch
  messengers calling to Bethsaida ten devout women who had served in the
  administration of the former encampment and the tented infirmary. These women
  had all listened to the instruction given the young evangelists, but it had
  never occurred to either themselves or their teachers that Jesus would dare to
  commission women to teach the gospel of the kingdom and minister to the sick.
  These ten women selected and commissioned by Jesus were: Susanna, the daughter
  of the former chazan of the Nazareth synagogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the
  steward of Herod Antipas; Elizabeth, the daughter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias
  and Sepphoris; Martha, the elder sister of Andrew and Peter; Rachel, the
  sister-in-law of Jude, the Master's brother in the flesh; Nasanta, the
  daughter of Elman, the Syrian physician; Milcha, a cousin of the Apostle
  Thomas; Ruth, the eldest daughter of Matthew Levi; Celta, the daughter of a
  Roman centurion; and Agaman, a widow of Damascus. Subsequently, Jesus added
  two other women to this group -- Mary Magdalene and Rebecca, the daughter of
  Joseph of Arimathea.

  150:1.2 Jesus authorized these women to effect their own organization and
  directed Judas to provide funds for their equipment and for pack animals. The
  ten elected Susanna as their chief and Joanna as their treasurer. From this
  time on they furnished their own funds; never again did they draw upon Judas
  for support.

  150:1.3 It was most astounding in that day, when women were not even allowed
  on the main floor of the synagogue (being confined to the women's gallery), to
  behold them being recognized as authorized teachers of the new gospel of the
  kingdom. The charge which Jesus gave these ten women as he set them apart for
  gospel teaching and ministry was the emancipation proclamation which set free
  all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his
  spiritual inferior. This was a decided shock to even the twelve apostles.
  Notwithstanding they had many times heard the Master say that "in the kingdom
  of heaven there is neither rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor female, all
  are equally the sons and daughters of God," they were literally stunned when
  he proposed formally to commission these ten women as religious teachers and
  even to permit their traveling about with them. The whole country was stirred
  up by this proceeding, the enemies of Jesus making great capital out of this
  move, but everywhere the women believers in the good news stood stanchly
  behind their chosen sisters and voiced no uncertain approval of this tardy
  acknowledgment of woman's place in religious work. And this liberation of
  women, giving them due recognition, was practiced by the apostles immediately
  after the Master's departure, albeit they fell back to the olden customs in
  subsequent generations. Throughout the early days of the Christian church
  women teachers and ministers were called deaconesses and were accorded general
  recognition. But Paul, despite the fact that he conceded all this in theory,
  never really incorporated it into his own attitude and personally found it
  difficult to carry out in practice.





2. THE STOP AT MAGDALA



  150:2.1 As the apostolic party journeyed from Bethsaida, the women traveled in
  the rear. During the conference time they always sat in a group in front and
  to the right of the speaker. Increasingly, women had become believers in the
  gospel of the kingdom, and it had been a source of much difficulty and no end
  of embarrassment when they had desired to hold personal converse with Jesus or
  one of the apostles. Now all this was changed. When any of the women believers
  desired to see the Master or confer with the apostles, they went to Susanna,
  and in company with one of the twelve women evangelists, they would go at once
  into the presence of the Master or one of his apostles.

  150:2.2 It was at Magdala that the women first demonstrated their usefulness
  and vindicated the wisdom of their choosing. Andrew had imposed rather strict
  rules upon his associates about doing personal work with women, especially
  with those of questionable character. When the party entered Magdala, these
  ten women evangelists were free to enter the evil resorts and preach the glad
  tidings directly to all their inmates. And when visiting the sick, these women
  were able to draw very close in their ministry to their afflicted sisters. As
  the result of the ministry of these ten women (afterward known as the twelve
  women) at this place, Mary Magdalene was won for the kingdom. Through a
  succession of misfortunes and in consequence of the attitude of reputable
  society toward women who commit such errors of judgment, this woman had found
  herself in one of the nefarious resorts of Magdala. It was Martha and Rachel
  who made plain to Mary that the doors of the kingdom were open to even such as
  she. Mary believed the good news and was baptized by Peter the next day.

  150:2.3 Mary Magdalene became the most effective teacher of the gospel among
  this group of twelve women evangelists. She was set apart for such service,
  together with Rebecca, at Jotapata about four weeks subsequent to her
  conversion. Mary and Rebecca, with the others of this group, went on through
  the remainder of Jesus' life on earth, laboring faithfully and effectively for
  the enlightenment and uplifting of their downtrodden sisters; and when the
  last and tragic episode in the drama of Jesus' life was being enacted,
  notwithstanding the apostles all fled but one, these women were all present,
  and not one either denied or betrayed him.





3. SABBATH AT TIBERIAS



  150:3.1 The Sabbath services of the apostolic party had been put in the hands
  of the women by Andrew, upon instructions from Jesus. This meant, of course,
  that they could not be held in the new synagogue. The women selected Joanna to
  have charge of this occasion, and the meeting was held in the banquet room of
  Herod's new palace, Herod being away in residence at Julias in Perea. Joanna
  read from the Scriptures concerning woman's work in the religious life of
  Israel, making reference to Miriam, Deborah, Esther, and others.



  150:3.2 Late that evening Jesus gave the united group a memorable talk on
  "Magic and Superstition." In those days the appearance of a bright and
  supposedly new star was regarded as a token indicating that a great man had
  been born on earth. Such a star having then recently been observed, Andrew
  asked Jesus if these beliefs were well founded. In the long answer to Andrew's
  question the Master entered upon a thoroughgoing discussion of the whole
  subject of human superstition. The statement which Jesus made at this time may
  be summarized in modern phraseology as follows:



  150:3.3 1. The courses of the stars in the heavens have nothing whatever to do
  with the events of human life on earth. Astronomy is a proper pursuit of
  science, but astrology is a mass of superstitious error which has no place in
  the gospel of the kingdom.



  150:3.4 2. The examination of the internal organs of an animal recently killed
  can reveal nothing about weather, future events, or the outcome of human
  affairs.



  150:3.5 3. The spirits of the dead do not come back to communicate with their
  families or their onetime friends among the living.



  150:3.6 4. Charms and relics are impotent to heal disease, ward off disaster,
  or influence evil spirits; the belief in all such material means of
  influencing the spiritual world is nothing but gross superstition.



  150:3.7 5. Casting lots, while it may be a convenient way of settling many
  minor difficulties, is not a method designed to disclose the divine will. Such
  outcomes are purely matters of material chance. The only means of communion
  with the spiritual world is embraced in the spirit endowment of mankind, the
  indwelling spirit of the Father, together with the outpoured spirit of the Son
  and the omnipresent influence of the Infinite Spirit.



  150:3.8 6. Divination, sorcery, and witchcraft are superstitions of ignorant
  minds, as also are the delusions of magic. The belief in magic numbers, omens
  of good luck, and harbingers of bad luck, is pure and unfounded superstition.



  150:3.9 7. The interpretation of dreams is largely a superstitious and
  groundless system of ignorant and fantastic speculation. The gospel of the
  kingdom must have nothing in common with the soothsayer priests of primitive
  religion.



  150:3.10 8. The spirits of good or evil cannot dwell within material symbols
  of clay, wood, or metal; idols are nothing more than the material of which
  they are made.



  150:3.11 9. The practices of the enchanters, the wizards, the magicians, and
  the sorcerers, were derived from the superstitions of the Egyptians, the
  Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the ancient Canaanites. Amulets and all sorts
  of incantations are futile either to win the protection of good spirits or to
  ward off supposed evil spirits.



  150:3.12 10. He exposed and denounced their belief in spells, ordeals,
  bewitching, cursing, signs, mandrakes, knotted cords, and all other forms of
  ignorant and enslaving superstition.





4. SENDING THE APOSTLES OUT TWO AND TWO



  150:4.1 The next evening, having gathered together the twelve apostles, the
  apostles of John, and the newly commissioned women's group, Jesus said: "You
  see for yourselves that the harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
  Let us all, therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest that he send forth still
  more laborers into his fields. While I remain to comfort and instruct the
  younger teachers, I would send out the older ones two and two that they may
  pass quickly over all Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom while it is
  yet convenient and peaceful." Then he designated the pairs of apostles as he
  desired them to go forth, and they were: Andrew and Peter, James and John
  Zebedee, Philip and Nathaniel, Thomas and Matthew, James and Judas Alpheus,
  Simon Zelotes and Judas Iscariot.

  150:4.2 Jesus arranged the date for meeting the twelve at Nazareth, and in
  parting, he said: "On this mission go not to any city of the gentiles, neither
  go into Samaria, but go instead to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
  Preach the gospel of the kingdom and proclaim the saving truth that man is a
  son of God. Remember that the disciple is hardly above his master nor a
  servant greater than his lord. It is enough for the disciple to be equal with
  his master and the servant to become like his lord. If some people have dared
  to call the master of the house an associate of Beelzebub, how much more shall
  they so regard those of his household! But you should not fear these
  unbelieving enemies. I declare to you that there is nothing covered up that is
  not going to be revealed; there is nothing hidden that shall not be known.
  What I have taught you privately, that preach with wisdom in the open. What I
  have revealed to you in the inner chamber, that you are to proclaim in due
  season from the housetops. And I say to you, my friends and disciples, be not
  afraid of those who can kill the body, but who are not able to destroy the
  soul; rather put your trust in Him who is able to sustain the body and save
  the soul.

  150:4.3 "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet I declare that not one
  of them is forgotten in God's sight. Know you not that the very hairs of your
  head are all numbered? Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than a great
  many sparrows. Be not ashamed of my teaching; go forth proclaiming peace and
  good will, but be not deceived -- peace will not always attend your preaching.
  I came to bring peace on earth, but when men reject my gift, division and
  turmoil result. When all of a family receive the gospel of the kingdom, truly
  peace abides in that house; but when some of the family enter the kingdom and
  others reject the gospel, such division can produce only sorrow and sadness.
  Labor earnestly to save the whole family lest a man's foes become those of his
  own household. But, when you have done your utmost for all of every family, I
  declare to you that he who loves father or mother more than this gospel is not
  worthy of the kingdom."

  150:4.4 When the twelve had heard these words, they made ready to depart. And
  they did not again come together until the time of their assembling at
  Nazareth to meet with Jesus and the other disciples as the Master had
  arranged.





5. WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?



  150:5.1 One evening at Shunem, after John's apostles had returned to Hebron,
  and after Jesus' apostles had been sent out two and two, when the Master was
  engaged in teaching a group of twelve of the younger evangelists who were
  laboring under the direction of Jacob, together with the twelve women, Rachel
  asked Jesus this question: "Master, what shall we answer when women ask us,
  What shall I do to be saved?" When Jesus heard this question, he answered:



  150:5.2 "When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall
  answer, Believe this gospel of the kingdom; accept divine forgiveness. By
  faith recognize the indwelling spirit of God, whose acceptance makes you a son
  of God. Have you not read in the Scriptures where it says, `In the Lord have I
  righteousness and strength.' Also where the Father says, `My righteousness is
  near; my salvation has gone forth, and my arms shall enfold my people.' `My
  soul shall be joyful in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the
  garments of salvation and has covered me with the robe of his righteousness.'
  Have you not also read of the Father that his name `shall be called the Lord
  our righteousness.' `Take away the filthy rags of self-righteousness and
  clothe my son with the robe of divine righteousness and eternal salvation.' It
  is forever true, `the just shall live by faith.' Entrance into the Father's
  kingdom is wholly free, but progress -- growth in grace -- is essential to
  continuance therein.

  150:5.3 "Salvation is the gift of the Father and is revealed by his Sons.
  Acceptance by faith on your part makes you a partaker of the divine nature, a
  son or a daughter of God. By faith you are justified; by faith are you saved;
  and by this same faith are you eternally advanced in the way of progressive
  and divine perfection. By faith was Abraham justified and made aware of
  salvation by the teachings of Melchizedek. All down through the ages has this
  same faith saved the sons of men, but now has a Son come forth from the Father
  to make salvation more real and acceptable."



  150:5.4 When Jesus had left off speaking, there was great rejoicing among
  those who had heard these gracious words, and they all went on in the days
  that followed proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom with new power and with
  renewed energy and enthusiasm. And the women rejoiced all the more to know
  they were included in these plans for the establishment of the kingdom on
  earth.

  150:5.5 In summing up his final statement, Jesus said: "You cannot buy
  salvation; you cannot earn righteousness. Salvation is the gift of God, and
  righteousness is the natural fruit of the spirit-born life of sonship in the
  kingdom. You are not to be saved because you live a righteous life; rather is
  it that you live a righteous life because you have already been saved, have
  recognized sonship as the gift of God and service in the kingdom as the
  supreme delight of life on earth. When men believe this gospel, which is a
  revelation of the goodness of God, they will be led to voluntary repentance of
  all known sin. Realization of sonship is incompatible with the desire to sin.
  Kingdom believers hunger for righteousness and thirst for divine perfection."





6. THE EVENING LESSONS



  150:6.1 At the evening discussions Jesus talked upon many subjects. During the
  remainder of this tour -- before they all reunited at Nazareth -- he discussed
  "The Love of God," "Dreams and Visions," "Malice," "Humility and Meekness,"
  "Courage and Loyalty," "Music and Worship," "Service and Obedience," "Pride
  and Presumption," "Forgiveness in Relation to Repentance," "Peace and
  Perfection," "Evil Speaking and Envy," "Evil, Sin, and Temptation," "Doubts
  and Unbelief," "Wisdom and Worship." With the older apostles away, these
  younger groups of both men and women more freely entered into these
  discussions with the Master.

  150:6.2 After spending two or three days with one group of twelve evangelists,
  Jesus would move on to join another group, being informed as to the
  whereabouts and movements of all these workers by David's messengers. This
  being their first tour, the women remained much of the time with Jesus.
  Through the messenger service each of these groups was kept fully informed
  concerning the progress of the tour, and the receipt of news from other groups
  was always a source of encouragement to these scattered and separated workers.

  150:6.3 Before their separation it had been arranged that the twelve apostles,
  together with the evangelists and the women's corps, should assemble at
  Nazareth to meet the Master on Friday, March 4. Accordingly, about this time,
  from all parts of central and southern Galilee these various groups of
  apostles and evangelists began moving toward Nazareth. By midafternoon, Andrew
  and Peter, the last to arrive, had reached the encampment prepared by the
  early arrivals and situated on the highlands to the north of the city. And
  this was the first time Jesus had visited Nazareth since the beginning of his
  public ministry.





7. THE SOJOURN AT NAZARETH



  150:7.1 This Friday afternoon Jesus walked about Nazareth quite unobserved and
  wholly unrecognized. He passed by the home of his childhood and the carpenter
  shop and spent a half hour on the hill which he so much enjoyed when a lad.
  Not since the day of his baptism by John in the Jordan had the Son of Man had
  such a flood of human emotion stirred up within his soul. While coming down
  from the mount, he heard the familiar sounds of the trumpet blast announcing
  the going down of the sun, just as he had so many, many times heard it when a
  boy growing up in Nazareth. Before returning to the encampment, he walked down
  by the synagogue where he had gone to school and indulged his mind in many
  reminiscences of his childhood days. Earlier in the day Jesus had sent Thomas
  to arrange with the ruler of the synagogue for his preaching at the Sabbath
  morning service.

  150:7.2 The people of Nazareth were never reputed for piety and righteous
  living. As the years passed, this village became increasingly contaminated by
  the low moral standards of near-by Sepphoris. Throughout Jesus' youth and
  young manhood there had been a division of opinion in Nazareth regarding him;
  there was much resentment when he moved to Capernaum. While the inhabitants of
  Nazareth had heard much about the doings of their former carpenter, they were
  offended that he had never included his native village in any of his earlier
  preaching tours. They had indeed heard of Jesus' fame, but the majority of the
  citizens were angry because he had done none of his great works in the city of
  his youth. For months the people of Nazareth had discussed Jesus much, but
  their opinions were, on the whole, unfavorable to him.

  150:7.3 Thus did the Master find himself in the midst of, not a welcome
  homecoming, but a decidedly hostile and hypercritical atmosphere. But this was
  not all. His enemies, knowing that he was to spend this Sabbath day in
  Nazareth and supposing that he would speak in the synagogue, had hired
  numerous rough and uncouth men to harass him and in every way possible make
  trouble.

  150:7.4 Most of the older of Jesus' friends, including the doting chazan
  teacher of his youth, were dead or had left Nazareth, and the younger
  generation was prone to resent his fame with strong jealousy. They failed to
  remember his early devotion to his father's family, and they were bitter in
  their criticism of his neglect to visit his brother and his married sisters
  living in Nazareth. The attitude of Jesus' family toward him had also tended
  to increase this unkind feeling of the citizenry. The orthodox among the Jews
  even presumed to criticize Jesus because he walked too fast on the way to the
  synagogue this Sabbath morning.





8. THE SABBATH SERVICE



  150:8.1 This Sabbath was a beautiful day, and all Nazareth, friends and foes,
  turned out to hear this former citizen of their town discourse in the
  synagogue. Many of the apostolic retinue had to remain without the synagogue;
  there was not room for all who had come to hear him. As a young man Jesus had
  often spoken in this place of worship, and this morning, when the ruler of the
  synagogue handed him the roll of sacred writings from which to read the
  Scripture lesson, none present seemed to recall that this was the very
  manuscript which he had presented to this synagogue.

  150:8.2 The services on this day were conducted just as when Jesus had
  attended them as a boy. He ascended the speaking platform with the ruler of
  the synagogue, and the service was begun by the recital of two prayers:
  "Blessed is the Lord, King of the world, who forms the light and creates the
  darkness, who makes peace and creates everything; who, in mercy, gives light
  to the earth and to those who dwell upon it and in goodness, day by day and
  every day, renews the works of creation. Blessed is the Lord our God for the
  glory of his handiworks and for the light-giving lights which he has made for
  his praise. Selah. Blessed is the Lord our God, who has formed the lights."

  150:8.3 After a moment's pause they again prayed: "With great love has the
  Lord our God loved us, and with much overflowing pity has he pitied us, our
  Father and our King, for the sake of our fathers who trusted in him. You
  taught them the statutes of life; have mercy upon us and teach us. Enlighten
  our eyes in the law; cause our hearts to cleave to your commandments; unite
  our hearts to love and fear your name, and we shall not be put to shame, world
  without end. For you are a God who prepares salvation, and us have you chosen
  from among all nations and tongues, and in truth have you brought us near your
  great name -- selah -- that we may lovingly praise your unity. Blessed is the
  Lord, who in love chose his people Israel."

  150:8.4 The congregation then recited the Shema, the Jewish creed of faith.
  This ritual consisted in repeating numerous passages from the law and
  indicated that the worshipers took upon themselves the yoke of the kingdom of
  heaven, also the yoke of the commandments as applied to the day and the night.

  150:8.5 And then followed the third prayer: "True it is that you are Yahweh,
  our God and the God of our fathers; our King and the King of our fathers; our
  Savior and the Savior of our fathers; our Creator and the rock of our
  salvation; our help and our deliverer. Your name is from everlasting, and
  there is no God beside you. A new song did they that were delivered sing to
  your name by the seashore; together did all praise and own you King and say,
  Yahweh shall reign, world without end. Blessed is the Lord who saves Israel."

  150:8.6 The ruler of the synagogue then took his place before the ark, or
  chest, containing the sacred writings and began the recitation of the nineteen
  prayer eulogies, or benedictions. But on this occasion it was desirable to
  shorten the service in order that the distinguished guest might have more time
  for his discourse; accordingly, only the first and last of the benedictions
  were recited. The first was: "Blessed is the Lord our God, and the God of our
  fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; the
  great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who shows mercy and kindness, who
  creates all things, who remembers the gracious promises to the fathers and
  brings a savior to their children's children for his own name's sake, in love.
  O King, helper, savior, and shield! Blessed are you, O Yahweh, the shield of
  Abraham."

  150:8.7 Then followed the last benediction: "O bestow on your people Israel
  great peace forever, for you are King and the Lord of all peace. And it is
  good in your eyes to bless Israel at all times and at every hour with peace.
  Blessed are you, Yahweh, who blesses his people Israel with peace." The
  congregation looked not at the ruler as he recited the benedictions. Following
  the benedictions he offered an informal prayer suitable for the occasion, and
  when this was concluded, all the congregation joined in saying amen.

  150:8.8 Then the chazan went over to the ark and brought out a roll, which he
  presented to Jesus that he might read the Scripture lesson. It was customary
  to call upon seven persons to read not less than three verses of the law, but
  this practice was waived on this occasion that the visitor might read the
  lesson of his own selection. Jesus, taking the roll, stood up and began to
  read from Deuteronomy: "For this commandment which I give you this day is not
  hidden from you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should
  say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it down to us that we may hear
  and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, who will go over
  the sea for us to bring the commandment to us that we may hear and do it? No,
  the word of life is very near to you, even in your presence and in your heart,
  that you may know and obey it."

  150:8.9 And when he had ceased reading from the law, he turned to Isaiah and
  began to read: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me
  to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the
  captives and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who
  are bruised and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."

  150:8.10 Jesus closed the book and, after handing it back to the ruler of the
  synagogue, sat down and began to discourse to the people. He began by saying:
  "Today are these Scriptures fulfilled." And then Jesus spoke for almost
  fifteen minutes on "The Sons and Daughters of God." Many of the people were
  pleased with the discourse, and they marveled at his graciousness and wisdom.

  150:8.11 It was customary in the synagogue, after the conclusion of the formal
  service, for the speaker to remain so that those who might be interested could
  ask him questions. Accordingly, on this Sabbath morning Jesus stepped down
  into the crowd which pressed forward to ask questions. In this group were many
  turbulent individuals whose minds were bent on mischief, while about the
  fringe of this crowd there circulated those debased men who had been hired to
  make trouble for Jesus. Many of the disciples and evangelists who had remained
  without now pressed into the synagogue and were not slow to recognize that
  trouble was brewing. They sought to lead the Master away, but he would not go
  with them.





9. THE NAZARETH REJECTION



  150:9.1 Jesus found himself surrounded in the synagogue by a great throng of
  his enemies and a sprinkling of his own followers, and in reply to their rude
  questions and sinister banterings he half humorously remarked: "Yes, I am
  Joseph's son; I am the carpenter, and I am not surprised that you remind me of
  the proverb, `Physician heal yourself,' and that you challenge me to do in
  Nazareth what you have heard I did at Capernaum; but I call you to witness
  that even the Scriptures declare that `a prophet is not without honor save in
  his own country and among his own people.'"

  150:9.2 But they jostled him and, pointing accusing fingers at him, said: "You
  think you are better than the people of Nazareth; you moved away from us, but
  your brother is a common workman, and your sisters still live among us. We
  know your mother, Mary. Where are they today? We hear big things about you,
  but we notice that you do no wonders when you come back." Jesus answered them:
  "I love the people who dwell in the city where I grew up, and I would rejoice
  to see you all enter the kingdom of heaven, but the doing of the works of God
  is not for me to determine. The transformations of grace are wrought in
  response to the living faith of those who are the beneficiaries."

  150:9.3 Jesus would have good-naturedly managed the crowd and effectively
  disarmed even his violent enemies had it not been for the tactical blunder of
  one of his own apostles, Simon Zelotes, who, with the help of Nahor, one of
  the younger evangelists, had meanwhile gathered together a group of Jesus'
  friends from among the crowd and, assuming a belligerent attitude, had served
  notice on the enemies of the Master to go hence. Jesus had long taught the
  apostles that a soft answer turns away wrath, but his followers were not
  accustomed to seeing their beloved teacher, whom they so willingly called
  Master, treated with such discourtesy and disdain. It was too much for them,
  and they found themselves giving expression to passionate and vehement
  resentment, all of which only tended to arouse the mob spirit in this ungodly
  and uncouth assembly. And so, under the leadership of hirelings, these
  ruffians laid hold upon Jesus and rushed him out of the synagogue to the brow
  of a near-by precipitous hill, where they were minded to shove him over the
  edge to his death below. But just as they were about to push him over the edge
  of the cliff, Jesus turned suddenly upon his captors and, facing them, quietly
  folded his arms. He said nothing, but his friends were more than astonished
  when, as he started to walk forward, the mob parted and permitted him to pass
  on unmolested.

  150:9.4 Jesus, followed by his disciples, proceeded to their encampment, where
  all this was recounted. And they made ready that evening to go back to
  Capernaum early the next day, as Jesus had directed. This turbulent ending of
  the third public preaching tour had a sobering effect upon all of Jesus'
  followers. They were beginning to realize the meaning of some of the Master's
  teachings; they were awaking to the fact that the kingdom would come only
  through much sorrow and bitter disappointment.

  150:9.5 They left Nazareth this Sunday morning, and traveling by different
  routes, they all finally assembled at Bethsaida by noon on Thursday, March 10.
  They came together as a sober and serious group of disillusioned preachers of
  the gospel of truth and not as an enthusiastic and all-conquering band of
  triumphant crusaders.


 PAPER 151


 TARRYING AND TEACHING BY THE SEASIDE



  151:0.1 BY MARCH 10 all of the preaching and teaching groups had forgathered
  at Bethsaida. Thursday night and Friday many of them went out to fish, while
  on the Sabbath day they attended the synagogue to hear an aged Jew of Damascus
  discourse on the glory of father Abraham. Jesus spent most of this Sabbath day
  alone in the hills. That Saturday night the Master talked for more than an
  hour to the assembled groups on "The mission of adversity and the spiritual
  value of disappointment." This was a memorable occasion, and his hearers never
  forgot the lesson he imparted.

  151:0.2 Jesus had not fully recovered from the sorrow of his recent rejection
  at Nazareth; the apostles were aware of a peculiar sadness mingled with his
  usual cheerful demeanor. James and John were with him much of the time, Peter
  being more than occupied with the many responsibilities having to do with the
  welfare and direction of the new corps of evangelists. This time of waiting
  before starting for the Passover at Jerusalem, the women spent in visiting
  from house to house, teaching the gospel, and ministering to the sick in
  Capernaum and the surrounding cities and villages.





1. THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER



  151:1.1 About this time Jesus first began to employ the parable method of
  teaching the multitudes that so frequently gathered about him. Since Jesus had
  talked with the apostles and others long into the night, on this Sunday
  morning very few of the group were up for breakfast; so he went out by the
  seaside and sat alone in the boat, the old fishing boat of Andrew and Peter,
  which was always kept at his disposal, and meditated on the next move to be
  made in the work of extending the kingdom. But the Master was not to be alone
  for long. Very soon the people from Capernaum and near-by villages began to
  arrive, and by ten o'clock that morning almost one thousand were assembled on
  shore near Jesus' boat and were clamoring for attention. Peter was now up and,
  making his way to the boat, said to Jesus, "Master, shall I talk to them?" But
  Jesus answered, "No, Peter, I will tell them a story." And then Jesus began
  the recital of the parable of the sower, one of the first of a long series of
  such parables which he taught the throngs that followed after him. This boat
  had an elevated seat on which he sat (for it was the custom to sit when
  teaching) while he talked to the crowd assembled along the shore. After Peter
  had spoken a few words, Jesus said:

  151:1.2 "A sower went forth to sow, and it came to pass as he sowed that some
  seed fell by the wayside to be trodden underfoot and devoured by the birds of
  heaven. Other seed fell upon the rocky places where there was little earth,
  and immediately it sprang up because there was no depth to the soil, but as
  soon as the sun shone, it withered because it had no root whereby to secure
  moisture. Other seed fell among the thorns, and as the thorns grew up, it was
  choked so that it yielded no grain. Still other seed fell upon good ground
  and, growing, yielded, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some a
  hundredfold." And when he had finished speaking this parable, he said to the
  multitude, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."



  151:1.3 The apostles and those who were with them, when they heard Jesus teach
  the people in this manner, were greatly perplexed; and after much talking
  among themselves, that evening in the Zebedee garden Matthew said to Jesus:
  "Master, what is the meaning of the dark sayings which you present to the
  multitude? Why do you speak in parables to those who seek the truth?" And
  Jesus answered:

  151:1.4 "In patience have I instructed you all this time. To you it is given
  to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to the undiscerning
  multitudes and to those who seek our destruction, from now on, the mysteries
  of the kingdom shall be presented in parables. And this we will do so that
  those who really desire to enter the kingdom may discern the meaning of the
  teaching and thus find salvation, while those who listen only to ensnare us
  may be the more confounded in that they will see without seeing and will hear
  without hearing. My children, do you not perceive the law of the spirit which
  decrees that to him who has shall be given so that he shall have an abundance;
  but from him who has not shall be taken away even that which he has. Therefore
  will I henceforth speak to the people much in parables to the end that our
  friends and those who desire to know the truth may find that which they seek,
  while our enemies and those who love not the truth may hear without
  understanding. Many of these people follow not in the way of the truth. The
  prophet did, indeed, describe all such undiscerning souls when he said: `For
  this people's heart has waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and
  their eyes they have closed lest they should discern the truth and understand
  it in their hearts.'"

  151:1.5 The apostles did not fully comprehend the significance of the Master's
  words. As Andrew and Thomas talked further with Jesus, Peter and the other
  apostles withdrew to another portion of the garden where they engaged in
  earnest and prolonged discussion.





2. INTERPRETATION OF THE PARABLE



  151:2.1 Peter and the group about him came to the conclusion that the parable
  of the sower was an allegory, that each feature had some hidden meaning, and
  so they decided to go to Jesus and ask for an explanation. Accordingly, Peter
  approached the Master, saying: "We are not able to penetrate the meaning of
  this parable, and we desire that you explain it to us since you say it is
  given us to know the mysteries of the kingdom." And when Jesus heard this, he
  said to Peter: "My son, I desire to withhold nothing from you, but first
  suppose you tell me what you have been talking about; what is your
  interpretation of the parable?"

  151:2.2 After a moment of silence, Peter said: "Master, we have talked much
  concerning the parable, and this is the interpretation I have decided upon:
  The sower is the gospel preacher; the seed is the word of God. The seed which
  fell by the wayside represents those who do not understand the gospel
  teaching. The birds which snatched away the seed that fell upon the hardened
  ground represent Satan, or the evil one, who steals away that which has been
  sown in the hearts of these ignorant ones. The seed which fell upon the rocky
  places, and which sprang up so suddenly, represents those superficial and
  unthinking persons who, when they hear the glad tidings, receive the message
  with joy; but because the truth has no real root in their deeper
  understanding, their devotion is short-lived in the face of tribulation and
  persecution. When trouble comes, these believers stumble; they fall away when
  tempted. The seed which fell among thorns represents those who hear the word
  willingly, but who allow the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of
  riches to choke the word of truth so that it becomes unfruitful. Now the seed
  which fell on good ground and sprang up to bear, some thirty, some sixty, and
  some a hundredfold, represents those who, when they have heard the truth,
  receive it with varying degrees of appreciation -- owing to their differing
  intellectual endowments -- and hence manifest these varying degrees of
  religious experience."

  151:2.3 Jesus, after listening to Peter's interpretation of the parable, asked
  the other apostles if they did not also have suggestions to offer. To this
  invitation only Nathaniel responded. Said he: "Master, while I recognize many
  good things about Simon Peter's interpretation of the parable, I do not fully
  agree with him. My idea of this parable would be: The seed represents the
  gospel of the kingdom, while the sower stands for the messengers of the
  kingdom. The seed which fell by the wayside on hardened ground represents
  those who have heard but little of the gospel, along with those who are
  indifferent to the message, and who have hardened their hearts. The birds of
  the sky that snatched away the seed which fell by the wayside represent one's
  habits of life, the temptation of evil, and the desires of the flesh. The seed
  which fell among the rocks stands for those emotional souls who are quick to
  receive new teaching and equally quick to give up the truth when confronted
  with the difficulties and realities of living up to this truth; they lack
  spiritual perception. The seed which fell among the thorns represents those
  who are attracted to the truths of the gospel; they are minded to follow its
  teachings, but they are prevented by the pride of life, jealousy, envy, and
  the anxieties of human existence. The seed which fell on good soil, springing
  up to bear, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold, represents the
  natural and varying degrees of ability to comprehend truth and respond to its
  spiritual teachings by men and women who possess diverse endowments of spirit
  illumination."

  151:2.4 When Nathaniel had finished speaking, the apostles and their
  associates fell into serious discussion and engaged in earnest debate, some
  contending for the correctness of Peter's interpretation, while almost an
  equal number sought to defend Nathaniel's explanation of the parable.
  Meanwhile Peter and Nathaniel had withdrawn to the house, where they were
  involved in a vigorous and determined effort the one to convince and change
  the mind of the other.

  151:2.5 The Master permitted this confusion to pass the point of most intense
  expression; then he clapped his hands and called them about him. When they had
  all gathered around him once more, he said, "Before I tell you about this
  parable, do any of you have aught to say?" Following a moment of silence,
  Thomas spoke up: "Yes, Master, I wish to say a few words. I remember that you
  once told us to beware of this very thing. You instructed us that, when using
  illustrations for our preaching, we should employ true stories, not fables,
  and that we should select a story best suited to the illustration of the one
  central and vital truth which we wished to teach the people, and that, having
  so used the story, we should not attempt to make a spiritual application of
  all the minor details involved in the telling of the story. I hold that Peter
  and Nathaniel are both wrong in their attempts to interpret this parable. I
  admire their ability to do these things, but I am equally sure that all such
  attempts to make a natural parable yield spiritual analogies in all its
  features can only result in confusion and serious misconception of the true
  purpose of such a parable. That I am right is fully proved by the fact that,
  whereas we were all of one mind an hour ago, now are we divided into two
  separate groups who hold different opinions concerning this parable and hold
  such opinions so earnestly as to interfere, in my opinion, with our ability
  fully to grasp the great truth which you had in mind when you presented this
  parable to the multitude and subsequently asked us to make comment upon it."

  151:2.6 The words which Thomas spoke had a quieting effect on all of them. He
  caused them to recall what Jesus had taught them on former occasions, and
  before Jesus resumed speaking, Andrew arose, saying: "I am persuaded that
  Thomas is right, and I would like to have him tell us what meaning he attaches
  to the parable of the sower." After Jesus had beckoned Thomas to speak, he
  said: "My brethren, I did not wish to prolong this discussion, but if you so
  desire, I will say that I think this parable was spoken to teach us one great
  truth. And that is that our teaching of the gospel of the kingdom, no matter
  how faithfully and efficiently we execute our divine commissions, is going to
  be attended by varying degrees of success; and that all such differences in
  results are directly due to conditions inherent in the circumstances of our
  ministry, conditions over which we have little or no control."

  151:2.7 When Thomas had finished speaking, the majority of his fellow
  preachers were about ready to agree with him, even Peter and Nathaniel were on
  their way over to speak with him, when Jesus arose and said: "Well done,
  Thomas; you have discerned the true meaning of parables; but both Peter and
  Nathaniel have done you all equal good in that they have so fully shown the
  danger of undertaking to make an allegory out of my parables. In your own
  hearts you may often profitably engage in such flights of the speculative
  imagination, but you make a mistake when you seek to offer such conclusions as
  a part of your public teaching."

  151:2.8 Now that the tension was over, Peter and Nathaniel congratulated each
  other on their interpretations, and with the exception of the Alpheus twins,
  each of the apostles ventured to make an interpretation of the parable of the
  sower before they retired for the night. Even Judas Iscariot offered a very
  plausible interpretation. The twelve would often, among themselves, attempt to
  figure out the Master's parables as they would an allegory, but never again
  did they regard such speculations seriously. This was a very profitable
  session for the apostles and their associates, especially so since from this
  time on Jesus more and more employed parables in connection with his public
  teaching.





3. MORE ABOUT PARABLES



  151:3.1 The apostles were parable-minded, so much so that the whole of the
  next evening was devoted to the further discussion of parables. Jesus
  introduced the evening's conference by saying: "My beloved, you must always
  make a difference in teaching so as to suit your presentation of truth to the
  minds and hearts before you. When you stand before a multitude of varying
  intellects and temperaments, you cannot speak different words for each class
  of hearers, but you can tell a story to convey your teaching; and each group,
  even each individual, will be able to make his own interpretation of your
  parable in accordance with his own intellectual and spiritual endowments. You
  are to let your light shine but do so with wisdom and discretion. No man, when
  he lights a lamp, covers it up with a vessel or puts it under the bed; he puts
  his lamp on a stand where all can behold the light. Let me tell you that
  nothing is hid in the kingdom of heaven which shall not be made manifest;
  neither are there any secrets which shall not ultimately be made known.
  Eventually, all these things shall come to light. Think not only of the
  multitudes and how they hear the truth; take heed also to yourselves how you
  hear. Remember that I have many times told you: To him who has shall be given
  more, while from him who has not shall be taken away even that which he thinks
  he has."



  151:3.2 The continued discussion of parables and further instruction as to
  their interpretation may be summarized and expressed in modern phraseology as
  follows:



  151:3.3 1. Jesus advised against the use of either fables or allegories in
  teaching the truths of the gospel. He did recommend the free use of parables,
  especially nature parables. He emphasized the value of utilizing the analogy
  existing between the natural and the spiritual worlds as a means of teaching
  truth. He frequently alluded to the natural as "the unreal and fleeting shadow
  of spirit realities."



  151:3.4 2. Jesus narrated three or four parables from the Hebrew scriptures,
  calling attention to the fact that this method of teaching was not wholly new.
  However, it became almost a new method of teaching as he employed it from this
  time onward.



  151:3.5 3. In teaching the apostles the value of parables, Jesus called
  attention to the following points:

  151:3.6 The parable provides for a simultaneous appeal to vastly different
  levels of mind and spirit. The parable stimulates the imagination, challenges
  the discrimination, and provokes critical thinking; it promotes sympathy
  without arousing antagonism.

  151:3.7 The parable proceeds from the things which are known to the
  discernment of the unknown. The parable utilizes the material and natural as a
  means of introducing the spiritual and the supermaterial.

  151:3.8 Parables favor the making of impartial moral decisions. The parable
  evades much prejudice and puts new truth gracefully into the mind and does all
  this with the arousal of a minimum of the self-defense of personal resentment.

  151:3.9 To reject the truth contained in parabolical analogy requires
  conscious intellectual action which is directly in contempt of one's honest
  judgment and fair decision. The parable conduces to the forcing of thought
  through the sense of hearing.

  151:3.10 The use of the parable form of teaching enables the teacher to
  present new and even startling truths while at the same time he largely avoids
  all controversy and outward clashing with tradition and established authority.

  151:3.11 The parable also possesses the advantage of stimulating the memory of
  the truth taught when the same familiar scenes are subsequently encountered.



  151:3.12 In this way Jesus sought to acquaint his followers with many of the
  reasons underlying his practice of increasingly using parables in his public
  teaching.



  151:3.13 Toward the close of the evening's lesson Jesus made his first comment
  on the parable of the sower. He said the parable referred to two things:
  First, it was a review of his own ministry up to that time and a forecast of
  what lay ahead of him for the remainder of his life on earth. And second, it
  was also a hint as to what the apostles and other messengers of the kingdom
  might expect in their ministry from generation to generation as time passed.

  151:3.14 Jesus also resorted to the use of parables as the best possible
  refutation of the studied effort of the religious leaders at Jerusalem to
  teach that all of his work was done by the assistance of demons and the prince
  of devils. The appeal to nature was in contravention of such teaching since
  the people of that day looked upon all natural phenomena as the product of the
  direct act of spiritual beings and supernatural forces. He also determined
  upon this method of teaching because it enabled him to proclaim vital truths
  to those who desired to know the better way while at the same time affording
  his enemies less opportunity to find cause for offense and for accusations
  against him.

  151:3.15 Before he dismissed the group for the night, Jesus said: "Now will I
  tell you the last of the parable of the sower. I would test you to know how
  you will receive this: The kingdom of heaven is also like a man who cast good
  seed upon the earth; and while he slept by night and went about his business
  by day, the seed sprang up and grew, and although he knew not how it came
  about, the plant came to fruit. First there was the blade, then the ear, then
  the full grain in the ear. And then when the grain was ripe, he put forth the
  sickle, and the harvest was finished. He who has an ear to hear, let him
  hear."

  151:3.16 Many times did the apostles turn this saying over in their minds, but
  the Master never made further mention of this addition to the parable of the
  sower.





4. MORE PARABLES BY THE SEA



  151:4.1 The next day Jesus again taught the people from the boat, saying: "The
  kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while he
  slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and hastened away. And
  so when the young blades sprang up and later were about to bring forth fruit,
  there appeared also the weeds. Then the servants of this householder came and
  said to him: `Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Whence then come
  these weeds?' And he replied to his servants, `An enemy has done this.' The
  servants then asked their master, `Would you have us go out and pluck up these
  weeds?' But he answered them and said: `No, lest while you are gathering them
  up, you uproot the wheat also. Rather let them both grow together until the
  time of the harvest, when I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the weeds
  and bind them in bundles to burn and then gather up the wheat to be stored in
  my barn.'"



  151:4.2 After the people had asked a few questions, Jesus spoke another
  parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man
  sowed in his field. Now a mustard seed is the least of seeds, but when it is
  full grown, it becomes the greatest of all herbs and is like a tree so that
  the birds of heaven are able to come and rest in the branches thereof."



  151:4.3 "The kingdom of heaven is also like leaven which a woman took and hid
  in three measures of meal, and in this way it came about that all of the meal
  was leavened."



  151:4.4 "The kingdom of heaven is also like a treasure hidden in a field,
  which a man discovered. In his joy he went forth to sell all he had that he
  might have the money to buy the field."



  151:4.5 "The kingdom of heaven is also like a merchant seeking goodly pearls;
  and having found one pearl of great price, he went out and sold everything he
  possessed that he might be able to buy the extraordinary pearl."



  151:4.6 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a sweep net which was cast into
  the sea, and it gathered up every kind of fish. Now, when the net was filled,
  the fishermen drew it up on the beach, where they sat down and sorted out the
  fish, gathering the good into vessels while the bad they threw away."



  151:4.7 Many other parables spoke Jesus to the multitudes. In fact, from this
  time forward he seldom taught the masses except by this means. After speaking
  to a public audience in parables, he would, during the evening classes, more
  fully and explicitly expound his teachings to the apostles and the
  evangelists.





5. THE VISIT TO KHERESA



  151:5.1 The multitude continued to increase throughout the week. On Sabbath
  Jesus hastened away to the hills, but when Sunday morning came, the crowds
  returned. Jesus spoke to them in the early afternoon after the preaching of
  Peter, and when he had finished, he said to his apostles: "I am weary of the
  throngs; let us cross over to the other side that we may rest for a day."

  151:5.2 On the way across the lake they encountered one of those violent and
  sudden windstorms which are characteristic of the Sea of Galilee, especially
  at this season of the year. This body of water is almost seven hundred feet
  below the level of the sea and is surrounded by high banks, especially on the
  west. There are steep gorges leading up from the lake into the hills, and as
  the heated air rises in a pocket over the lake during the day, there is a
  tendency after sunset for the cooling air of the gorges to rush down upon the
  lake. These gales come on quickly and sometimes go away just as suddenly.

  151:5.3 It was just such an evening gale that caught the boat carrying Jesus
  over to the other side on this Sunday evening. Three other boats containing
  some of the younger evangelists were trailing after. This tempest was severe,
  notwithstanding that it was confined to this region of the lake, there being
  no evidence of a storm on the western shore. The wind was so strong that the
  waves began to wash over the boat. The high wind had torn the sail away before
  the apostles could furl it, and they were now entirely dependent on their oars
  as they laboriously pulled for the shore, a little more than a mile and a half
  distant.

  151:5.4 Meanwhile Jesus lay asleep in the stern of the boat under a small
  overhead shelter. The Master was weary when they left Bethsaida, and it was to
  secure rest that he had directed them to sail him across to the other side.
  These ex-fishermen were strong and experienced oarsmen, but this was one of
  the worst gales they had ever encountered. Although the wind and the waves
  tossed their boat about as though it were a toy ship, Jesus slumbered on
  undisturbed. Peter was at the right-hand oar near the stern. When the boat
  began to fill with water, he dropped his oar and, rushing over to Jesus, shook
  him vigorously in order to awaken him, and when he was aroused, Peter said:
  "Master, don't you know we are in a violent storm? If you do not save us, we
  will all perish."

  151:5.5 As Jesus came out in the rain, he looked first at Peter, and then
  peering into the darkness at the struggling oarsmen, he turned his glance back
  upon Simon Peter, who, in his agitation, had not yet returned to his oar, and
  said: "Why are all of you so filled with fear? Where is your faith? Peace, be
  quiet." Jesus had hardly uttered this rebuke to Peter and the other apostles,
  he had hardly bidden Peter seek peace wherewith to quiet his troubled soul,
  when the disturbed atmosphere, having established its equilibrium, settled
  down into a great calm. The angry waves almost immediately subsided, while the
  dark clouds, having spent themselves in a short shower, vanished, and the
  stars of heaven shone overhead. All this was purely coincidental as far as we
  can judge; but the apostles, particularly Simon Peter, never ceased to regard
  the episode as a nature miracle. It was especially easy for the men of that
  day to believe in nature miracles inasmuch as they firmly believed that all
  nature was a phenomenon directly under the control of spirit forces and
  supernatural beings.

  151:5.6 Jesus plainly explained to the twelve that he had spoken to their
  troubled spirits and had addressed himself to their fear-tossed minds, that he
  had not commanded the elements to obey his word, but it was of no avail. The
  Master's followers always persisted in placing their own interpretation on all
  such coincidental occurrences. From this day on they insisted on regarding the
  Master as having absolute power over the natural elements. Peter never grew
  weary of reciting how "even the winds and the waves obey him."

  151:5.7 It was late in the evening when Jesus and his associates reached the
  shore, and since it was a calm and beautiful night, they all rested in the
  boats, not going ashore until shortly after sunrise the next morning. When
  they were gathered together, about forty in all, Jesus said: "Let us go up
  into yonder hills and tarry for a few days while we ponder over the problems
  of the Father's kingdom."





6. THE KHERESA LUNATIC



  151:6.1 Although most of the near-by eastern shore of the lake sloped up
  gently to the highlands beyond, at this particular spot there was a steep
  hillside, the shore in some places dropping sheer down into the lake. Pointing
  up to the side of the near-by hill, Jesus said: "Let us go up on this hillside
  for our breakfast and under some of the shelters rest and talk."

  151:6.2 This entire hillside was covered with caverns which had been hewn out
  of the rock. Many of these niches were ancient sepulchres. About halfway up
  the hillside on a small, relatively level spot was the cemetery of the little
  village of Kheresa. As Jesus and his associates passed near this burial
  ground, a lunatic who lived in these hillside caverns rushed up to them. This
  demented man was well known about these parts, having onetime been bound with
  fetters and chains and confined in one of the grottos. Long since he had
  broken his shackles and now roamed at will among the tombs and abandoned
  sepulchres.

  151:6.3 This man, whose name was Amos, was afflicted with a periodic form of
  insanity. There were considerable spells when he would find some clothing and
  deport himself fairly well among his fellows. During one of these lucid
  intervals he had gone over to Bethsaida, where he heard the preaching of Jesus
  and the apostles, and at that time had become a halfhearted believer in the
  gospel of the kingdom. But soon a stormy phase of his trouble appeared, and he
  fled to the tombs, where he moaned, cried out aloud, and so conducted himself
  as to terrorize all who chanced to meet him.

  151:6.4 When Amos recognized Jesus, he fell down at his feet and exclaimed: "I
  know you, Jesus, but I am possessed of many devils, and I beseech that you
  will not torment me." This man truly believed that his periodic mental
  affliction was due to the fact that, at such times, evil or unclean spirits
  entered into him and dominated his mind and body. His troubles were mostly
  emotional -- his brain was not grossly diseased.

  151:6.5 Jesus, looking down upon the man crouching like an animal at his feet,
  reached down and, taking him by the hand, stood him up and said to him: "Amos,
  you are not possessed of a devil; you have already heard the good news that
  you are a son of God. I command you to come out of this spell." And when Amos
  heard Jesus speak these words, there occurred such a transformation in his
  intellect that he was immediately restored to his right mind and the normal
  control of his emotions. By this time a considerable crowd had assembled from
  the near-by village, and these people, augmented by the swine herders from the
  highland above them, were astonished to see the lunatic sitting with Jesus and
  his followers, in possession of his right mind and freely conversing with
  them.

  151:6.6 As the swine herders rushed into the village to spread the news of the
  taming of the lunatic, the dogs charged upon a small and untended herd of
  about thirty swine and drove most of them over a precipice into the sea. And
  it was this incidental occurrence, in connection with the presence of Jesus
  and the supposed miraculous curing of the lunatic, that gave origin to the
  legend that Jesus had cured Amos by casting a legion of devils out of him, and
  that these devils had entered into the herd of swine, causing them forthwith
  to rush headlong to their destruction in the sea below. Before the day was
  over, this episode was published abroad by the swine tenders, and the whole
  village believed it. Amos most certainly believed this story; he saw the swine
  tumbling over the brow of the hill shortly after his troubled mind had quieted
  down, and he always believed that they carried with them the very evil spirits
  which had so long tormented and afflicted him. And this had a good deal to do
  with the permanency of his cure. It is equally true that all of Jesus'
  apostles (save Thomas) believed that the episode of the swine was directly
  connected with the cure of Amos.



  151:6.7 Jesus did not obtain the rest he was looking for. Most of that day he
  was thronged by those who came in response to the word that Amos had been
  cured, and who were attracted by the story that the demons had gone out of the
  lunatic into the herd of swine. And so, after only one night of rest, early
  Tuesday morning Jesus and his friends were awakened by a delegation of these
  swine-raising gentiles who had come to urge that he depart from their midst.
  Said their spokesman to Peter and Andrew: "Fishermen of Galilee, depart from
  us and take your prophet with you. We know he is a holy man, but the gods of
  our country do not know him, and we stand in danger of losing many swine. The
  fear of you has descended upon us, so that we pray you to go hence." And when
  Jesus heard them, he said to Andrew, "Let us return to our place."

  151:6.8 As they were about to depart, Amos besought Jesus to permit him to go
  back with them, but the Master would not consent. Said Jesus to Amos: "Forget
  not that you are a son of God. Return to your own people and show them what
  great things God has done for you." And Amos went about publishing that Jesus
  had cast a legion of devils out of his troubled soul, and that these evil
  spirits had entered into a herd of swine, driving them to quick destruction.
  And he did not stop until he had gone into all the cities of the Decapolis,
  declaring what great things Jesus had done for him.


 PAPER 152


 EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CAPERNAUM CRISIS



  152:0.1 THE story of the cure of Amos, the Kheresa lunatic, had already
  reached Bethsaida and Capernaum, so that a great crowd was waiting for Jesus
  when his boat landed that Tuesday forenoon. Among this throng were the new
  observers from the Jerusalem Sanhedrin who had come down to Capernaum to find
  cause for the Master's apprehension and conviction. As Jesus spoke with those
  who had assembled to greet him, Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue,
  made his way through the crowd and, falling down at his feet, took him by the
  hand and besought that he would hasten away with him, saying: "Master, my
  little daughter, an only child, lies in my home at the point of death. I pray
  that you will come and heal her." When Jesus heard the request of this father,
  he said: "I will go with you."

  152:0.2 As Jesus went along with Jairus, the large crowd which had heard the
  father's request followed on to see what would happen. Shortly before they
  reached the ruler's house, as they hastened through a narrow street and as the
  throng jostled him, Jesus suddenly stopped, exclaiming, "Someone touched me."
  And when those who were near him denied that they had touched him, Peter spoke
  up: "Master, you can see that this crowd presses you, threatening to crush us,
  and yet you say `someone has touched me.' What do you mean?" Then Jesus said:
  "I asked who touched me, for I perceived that living energy had gone forth
  from me." As Jesus looked about him, his eyes fell upon a near-by woman, who,
  coming forward, knelt at his feet and said: "For years I have been afflicted
  with a scourging hemorrhage. I have suffered many things from many physicians;
  I have spent all my substance, but none could cure me. Then I heard of you,
  and I thought if I may but touch the hem of his garment, I shall certainly be
  made whole. And so I pressed forward with the crowd as it moved along until,
  standing near you, Master, I touched the border of your garment, and I was
  made whole; I know that I have been healed of my affliction."

  152:0.3 When Jesus heard this, he took the woman by the hand and, lifting her
  up, said: "Daughter, your faith has made you whole; go in peace." It was her
  faith and not her touch that made her whole. And this case is a good
  illustration of many apparently miraculous cures which attended upon Jesus'
  earth career, but which he in no sense consciously willed. The passing of time
  demonstrated that this woman was really cured of her malady. Her faith was of
  the sort that laid direct hold upon the creative power resident in the
  Master's person. With the faith she had, it was only necessary to approach the
  Master's person. It was not at all necessary to touch his garment; that was
  merely the superstitious part of her belief. Jesus called this woman, Veronica
  of Caesarea-Philippi, into his presence to correct two errors which might have
  lingered in her mind, or which might have persisted in the minds of those who
  witnessed this healing: He did not want Veronica to go away thinking that her
  fear in attempting to steal her cure had been honored, or that her
  superstition in associating the touch of his garment with her healing had been
  effective. He desired all to know that it was her pure and living faith that
  had wrought the cure.





1. AT JAIRUS'S HOUSE



  152:1.1 Jairus was, of course, terribly impatient of this delay in reaching
  his home; so they now hastened on at quickened pace. Even before they entered
  the ruler's yard, one of his servants came out, saying: "Trouble not the
  Master; your daughter is dead." But Jesus seemed not to heed the servant's
  words, for, taking with him Peter, James, and John, he turned and said to the
  grief-stricken father: "Fear not; only believe." When he entered the house, he
  found the flute-players already there with the mourners, who were making an
  unseemly tumult; already were the relatives engaged in weeping and wailing.
  And when he had put all the mourners out of the room, he went in with the
  father and mother and his three apostles. He had told the mourners that the
  damsel was not dead, but they laughed him to scorn. Jesus now turned to the
  mother, saying: "Your daughter is not dead; she is only asleep." And when the
  house had quieted down, Jesus, going up to where the child lay, took her by
  the hand and said, "Daughter, I say to you, awake and arise!" And when the
  girl heard these words, she immediately rose up and walked across the room.
  And presently, after she had recovered from her daze, Jesus directed that they
  should give her something to eat, for she had been a long time without food.

  152:1.2 Since there was much agitation in Capernaum against Jesus, he called
  the family together and explained that the maiden had been in a state of coma
  following a long fever, and that he had merely aroused her, that he had not
  raised her from the dead. He likewise explained all this to his apostles, but
  it was futile; they all believed he had raised the little girl from the dead.
  What Jesus said in explanation of many of these apparent miracles had little
  effect on his followers. They were miracle-minded and lost no opportunity to
  ascribe another wonder to Jesus. Jesus and the apostles returned to Bethsaida
  after he had specifically charged all of them that they should tell no man.



  152:1.3 When he came out of Jairus's house, two blind men led by a dumb boy
  followed him and cried out for healing. About this time Jesus' reputation as a
  healer was at its very height. Everywhere he went the sick and the afflicted
  were waiting for him. The Master now looked much worn, and all of his friends
  were becoming concerned lest he continue his work of teaching and healing to
  the point of actual collapse.



  152:1.4 Jesus' apostles, let alone the common people, could not understand the
  nature and attributes of this God-man. Neither has any subsequent generation
  been able to evaluate what took place on earth in the person of Jesus of
  Nazareth. And there can never occur an opportunity for either science or
  religion to check up on these remarkable events for the simple reason that
  such an extraordinary situation can never again occur, either on this world or
  on any other world in Nebadon. Never again, on any world in this entire
  universe, will a being appear in the likeness of mortal flesh, at the same
  time embodying all the attributes of creative energy combined with spiritual
  endowments which transcend time and most other material limitations.

  152:1.5 Never before Jesus was on earth, nor since, has it been possible so
  directly and graphically to secure the results attendant upon the strong and
  living faith of mortal men and women. To repeat these phenomena, we would have
  to go into the immediate presence of Michael, the Creator, and find him as he
  was in those days -- the Son of Man. Likewise, today, while his absence
  prevents such material manifestations, you should refrain from placing any
  sort of limitation on the possible exhibition of his spiritual power. Though
  the Master is absent as a material being, he is present as a spiritual
  influence in the hearts of men. By going away from the world, Jesus made it
  possible for his spirit to live alongside that of his Father which indwells
  the minds of all mankind.





2. FEEDING THE FIVE THOUSAND



  152:2.1 Jesus continued to teach the people by day while he instructed the
  apostles and evangelists at night. On Friday he declared a furlough of one
  week that all his followers might go home or to their friends for a few days
  before preparing to go up to Jerusalem for the Passover. But more than one
  half of his disciples refused to leave him, and the multitude was daily
  increasing in size, so much so that David Zebedee desired to establish a new
  encampment, but Jesus refused consent. The Master had so little rest over the
  Sabbath that on Sunday morning, March 27, he sought to get away from the
  people. Some of the evangelists were left to talk to the multitude while Jesus
  and the twelve planned to escape, unnoticed, to the opposite shore of the
  lake, where they proposed to obtain much needed rest in a beautiful park south
  of Bethsaida-Julias. This region was a favorite resorting place for Capernaum
  folks; they were all familiar with these parks on the eastern shore.

  152:2.2 But the people would not have it so. They saw the direction taken by
  Jesus' boat, and hiring every craft available, they started out in pursuit.
  Those who could not obtain boats fared forth on foot to walk around the upper
  end of the lake.

  152:2.3 By late afternoon more than a thousand persons had located the Master
  in one of the parks, and he spoke to them briefly, being followed by Peter.
  Many of these people had brought food with them, and after eating the evening
  meal, they gathered about in small groups while Jesus' apostles and disciples
  taught them.

  152:2.4 Monday afternoon the multitude had increased to more than three
  thousand. And still -- way into the evening -- the people continued to flock
  in, bringing all manner of sick folks with them. Hundreds of interested
  persons had made their plans to stop over at Capernaum to see and hear Jesus
  on their way to the Passover, and they simply refused to be disappointed. By
  Wednesday noon about five thousand men, women, and children were assembled
  here in this park to the south of Bethsaida-Julias. The weather was pleasant,
  it being near the end of the rainy season in this locality.



  152:2.5 Philip had provided a three days' supply of food for Jesus and the
  twelve, which was in the custody of the Mark lad, their boy of all chores. By
  afternoon of this, the third day for almost half of this multitude, the food
  the people had brought with them was nearly exhausted. David Zebedee had no
  tented city here to feed and accommodate the crowds. Neither had Philip made
  food provision for such a multitude. But the people, even though they were
  hungry, would not go away. It was being quietly whispered about that Jesus,
  desiring to avoid trouble with both Herod and the Jerusalem leaders, had
  chosen this quiet spot outside the jurisdiction of all his enemies as the
  proper place to be crowned king. The enthusiasm of the people was rising every
  hour. Not a word was said to Jesus, though, of course, he knew all that was
  going on. Even the twelve apostles were still tainted with such notions, and
  especially the younger evangelists. The apostles who favored this attempt to
  proclaim Jesus king were Peter, John, Simon Zelotes, and Judas Iscariot. Those
  opposing the plan were Andrew, James, Nathaniel, and Thomas. Matthew, Philip,
  and the Alpheus twins were noncommittal. The ringleader of this plot to make
  him king was Joab, one of the young evangelists.



  152:2.6 This was the stage setting about five o'clock on Wednesday afternoon,
  when Jesus asked James Alpheus to summon Andrew and Philip. Said Jesus: "What
  shall we do with the multitude? They have been with us now three days, and
  many of them are hungry. They have no food." Philip and Andrew exchanged
  glances, and then Philip answered: "Master, you should send these people away
  so that they may go to the villages around about and buy themselves food." And
  Andrew, fearing the materialization of the king plot, quickly joined with
  Philip, saying: "Yes, Master, I think it best that you dismiss the multitude
  so that they may go their way and buy food while you secure rest for a
  season." By this time others of the twelve had joined the conference. Then
  said Jesus: "But I do not desire to send them away hungry; can you not feed
  them?" This was too much for Philip, and he spoke right up: "Master, in this
  country place where can we buy bread for this multitude? Two hundred denarii
  worth would not be enough for lunch."

  152:2.7 Before the apostles had an opportunity to express themselves, Jesus
  turned to Andrew and Philip, saying: "I do not want to send these people away.
  Here they are, like sheep without a shepherd. I would like to feed them. What
  food have we with us?" While Philip was conversing with Matthew and Judas,
  Andrew sought out the Mark lad to ascertain how much was left of their store
  of provisions. He returned to Jesus, saying: "The lad has left only five
  barley loaves and two dried fishes" -- and Peter promptly added, "We have yet
  to eat this evening."

  152:2.8 For a moment Jesus stood in silence. There was a faraway look in his
  eyes. The apostles said nothing. Jesus turned suddenly to Andrew and said,
  "Bring me the loaves and fishes." And when Andrew had brought the basket to
  Jesus, the Master said: "Direct the people to sit down on the grass in
  companies of one hundred and appoint a leader over each group while you bring
  all of the evangelists here with us."

  152:2.9 Jesus took up the loaves in his hands, and after he had given thanks,
  he broke the bread and gave to his apostles, who passed it on to their
  associates, who in turn carried it to the multitude. Jesus in like manner
  broke and distributed the fishes. And this multitude did eat and were filled.
  And when they had finished eating, Jesus said to the disciples: "Gather up the
  broken pieces that remain over so that nothing will be lost." And when they
  had finished gathering up the fragments, they had twelve basketfuls. They who
  ate of this extraordinary feast numbered about five thousand men, women, and
  children.



  152:2.10 And this is the first and only nature miracle which Jesus performed
  as a result of his conscious preplanning. It is true that his disciples were
  disposed to call many things miracles which were not, but this was a genuine
  supernatural ministration. In this case, so we were taught, Michael multiplied
  food elements as he always does except for the elimination of the time factor
  and the visible life channel.





3. THE KING-MAKING EPISODE



  152:3.1 The feeding of the five thousand by supernatural energy was another of
  those cases where human pity plus creative power equaled that which happened.
  Now that the multitude had been fed to the full, and since Jesus' fame was
  then and there augmented by this stupendous wonder, the project to seize the
  Master and proclaim him king required no further personal direction. The idea
  seemed to spread through the crowd like a contagion. The reaction of the
  multitude to this sudden and spectacular supplying of their physical needs was
  profound and overwhelming. For a long time the Jews had been taught that the
  Messiah, the son of David, when he should come, would cause the land again to
  flow with milk and honey, and that the bread of life would be bestowed upon
  them as manna from heaven was supposed to have fallen upon their forefathers
  in the wilderness. And was not all of this expectation now fulfilled right
  before their eyes? When this hungry, undernourished multitude had finished
  gorging itself with the wonder-food, there was but one unanimous reaction:
  "Here is our king." The wonder-working deliverer of Israel had come. In the
  eyes of these simple-minded people the power to feed carried with it the right
  to rule. No wonder, then, that the multitude, when it had finished feasting,
  rose as one man and shouted, "Make him king!"

  152:3.2 This mighty shout enthused Peter and those of the apostles who still
  retained the hope of seeing Jesus assert his right to rule. But these false
  hopes were not to live for long. This mighty shout of the multitude had hardly
  ceased to reverberate from the near-by rocks when Jesus stepped upon a huge
  stone and, lifting up his right hand to command their attention, said: "My
  children, you mean well, but you are short-sighted and material-minded." There
  was a brief pause; this stalwart Galilean was there majestically posed in the
  enchanting glow of that eastern twilight. Every inch he looked a king as he
  continued to speak to this breathless multitude: "You would make me king, not
  because your souls have been lighted with a great truth, but because your
  stomachs have been filled with bread. How many times have I told you that my
  kingdom is not of this world? This kingdom of heaven which we proclaim is a
  spiritual brotherhood, and no man rules over it seated upon a material throne.
  My Father in heaven is the all-wise and the all-powerful Ruler over this
  spiritual brotherhood of the sons of God on earth. Have I so failed in
  revealing to you the Father of spirits that you would make a king of his Son
  in the flesh! Now all of you go hence to your own homes. If you must have a
  king, let the Father of lights be enthroned in the heart of each of you as the
  spirit Ruler of all things."



  152:3.3 These words of Jesus sent the multitude away stunned and disheartened.
  Many who had believed in him turned back and followed him no more from that
  day. The apostles were speechless; they stood in silence gathered about the
  twelve baskets of the fragments of food; only the chore boy, the Mark lad,
  spoke, "And he refused to be our king." Jesus, before going off to be alone in
  the hills, turned to Andrew and said: "Take your brethren back to Zebedee's
  house and pray with them, especially for your brother, Simon Peter."





4. SIMON PETER'S NIGHT VISION



  152:4.1 The apostles, without their Master -- sent off by themselves --
  entered the boat and in silence began to row toward Bethsaida on the western
  shore of the lake. None of the twelve was so crushed and downcast as Simon
  Peter. Hardly a word was spoken; they were all thinking of the Master alone in
  the hills. Had he forsaken them? He had never before sent them all away and
  refused to go with them. What could all this mean?

  152:4.2 Darkness descended upon them, for there had arisen a strong and
  contrary wind which made progress almost impossible. As the hours of darkness
  and hard rowing passed, Peter grew weary and fell into a deep sleep of
  exhaustion. Andrew and James put him to rest on the cushioned seat in the
  stern of the boat. While the other apostles toiled against the wind and the
  waves, Peter dreamed a dream; he saw a vision of Jesus coming to them walking
  on the sea. When the Master seemed to walk on by the boat, Peter cried out,
  "Save us, Master, save us." And those who were in the rear of the boat heard
  him say some of these words. As this apparition of the night season continued
  in Peter's mind, he dreamed that he heard Jesus say: "Be of good cheer; it is
  I; be not afraid." This was like the balm of Gilead to Peter's disturbed soul;
  it soothed his troubled spirit, so that (in his dream) he cried out to the
  Master: "Lord, if it really is you, bid me come and walk with you on the
  water." And when Peter started to walk upon the water, the boisterous waves
  frightened him, and as he was about to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"
  And many of the twelve heard him utter this cry. Then Peter dreamed that Jesus
  came to the rescue and, stretching forth his hand, took hold and lifted him
  up, saying: "O, you of little faith, wherefore did you doubt?"

  152:4.3 In connection with the latter part of his dream Peter arose from the
  seat whereon he slept and actually stepped overboard and into the water. And
  he awakened from his dream as Andrew, James, and John reached down and pulled
  him out of the sea.

  152:4.4 To Peter this experience was always real. He sincerely believed that
  Jesus came to them that night. He only partially convinced John Mark, which
  explains why Mark left a portion of the story out of his narrative. Luke, the
  physician, who made careful search into these matters, concluded that the
  episode was a vision of Peter's and therefore refused to give place to this
  story in the preparation of his narrative.





5. BACK IN BETHSAIDA



  152:5.1 Thursday morning, before daylight, they anchored their boat offshore
  near Zebedee's house and sought sleep until about noontime. Andrew was first
  up and, going for a walk by the sea, found Jesus, in company with their chore
  boy, sitting on a stone by the water's edge. Notwithstanding that many of the
  multitude and the young evangelists searched all night and much of the next
  day about the eastern hills for Jesus, shortly after midnight he and the Mark
  lad had started to walk around the lake and across the river, back to
  Bethsaida.



  152:5.2 Of the five thousand who were miraculously fed, and who, when their
  stomachs were full and their hearts empty, would have made him king, only
  about five hundred persisted in following after him. But before these received
  word that he was back in Bethsaida, Jesus asked Andrew to assemble the twelve
  apostles and their associates, including the women, saying, "I desire to speak
  with them." And when all were ready, Jesus said:



  152:5.3 "How long shall I bear with you? Are you all slow of spiritual
  comprehension and deficient in living faith? All these months have I taught
  you the truths of the kingdom, and yet are you dominated by material motives
  instead of spiritual considerations. Have you not even read in the Scriptures
  where Moses exhorted the unbelieving children of Israel, saying: `Fear not,
  stand still and see the salvation of the Lord'? Said the singer: `Put your
  trust in the Lord.' `Be patient, wait upon the Lord and be of good courage. He
  shall strengthen your heart.' `Cast your burden on the Lord, and he shall
  sustain you. Trust him at all times and pour out your heart to him, for God is
  your refuge.' `He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide
  under the shadow of the Almighty.' `It is better to trust the Lord than to put
  confidence in human princes.'

  152:5.4 "And now do you all see that the working of miracles and the
  performance of material wonders will not win souls for the spiritual kingdom?
  We fed the multitude, but it did not lead them to hunger for the bread of life
  neither to thirst for the waters of spiritual righteousness. When their hunger
  was satisfied, they sought not entrance into the kingdom of heaven but rather
  sought to proclaim the Son of Man king after the manner of the kings of this
  world, only that they might continue to eat bread without having to toil
  therefor. And all this, in which many of you did more or less participate,
  does nothing to reveal the heavenly Father or to advance his kingdom on earth.
  Have we not sufficient enemies among the religious leaders of the land without
  doing that which is likely to estrange also the civil rulers? I pray that the
  Father will anoint your eyes that you may see and open your ears that you may
  hear, to the end that you may have full faith in the gospel which I have
  taught you."



  152:5.5 Jesus then announced that he wished to withdraw for a few days of rest
  with his apostles before they made ready to go up to Jerusalem for the
  Passover, and he forbade any of the disciples or the multitude to follow him.
  Accordingly they went by boat to the region of Gennesaret for two or three
  days of rest and sleep. Jesus was preparing for a great crisis of his life on
  earth, and he therefore spent much time in communion with the Father in
  heaven.

  152:5.6 The news of the feeding of the five thousand and the attempt to make
  Jesus king aroused widespread curiosity and stirred up the fears of both the
  religious leaders and the civil rulers throughout all Galilee and Judea. While
  this great miracle did nothing to further the gospel of the kingdom in the
  souls of material-minded and halfhearted believers, it did serve the purpose
  of bringing to a head the miracle-seeking and king-craving proclivities of
  Jesus' immediate family of apostles and close disciples. This spectacular
  episode brought an end to the early era of teaching, training, and healing,
  thereby preparing the way for the inauguration of this last year of
  proclaiming the higher and more spiritual phases of the new gospel of the
  kingdom -- divine sonship, spiritual liberty, and eternal salvation.





6. AT GENNESARET



  152:6.1 While resting at the home of a wealthy believer in the Gennesaret
  region, Jesus held informal conferences with the twelve every afternoon. The
  ambassadors of the kingdom were a serious, sober, and chastened group of
  disillusioned men. But even after all that had happened, and as subsequent
  events disclosed, these twelve men were not yet fully delivered from their
  inbred and long-cherished notions about the coming of the Jewish Messiah.
  Events of the preceding few weeks had moved too swiftly for these astonished
  fishermen to grasp their full significance. It requires time for men and women
  to effect radical and extensive changes in their basic and fundamental
  concepts of social conduct, philosophic attitudes, and religious convictions.

  152:6.2 While Jesus and the twelve were resting at Gennesaret, the multitudes
  dispersed, some going to their homes, others going on up to Jerusalem for the
  Passover. In less than one month's time the enthusiastic and open followers of
  Jesus, who numbered more than fifty thousand in Galilee alone, shrank to less
  than five hundred. Jesus desired to give his apostles such an experience with
  the fickleness of popular acclaim that they would not be tempted to rely on
  such manifestations of transient religious hysteria after he should leave them
  alone in the work of the kingdom, but he was only partially successful in this
  effort.



  152:6.3 The second night of their sojourn at Gennesaret the Master again told
  the apostles the parable of the sower and added these words: "You see, my
  children, the appeal to human feelings is transitory and utterly
  disappointing; the exclusive appeal to the intellect of man is likewise empty
  and barren; it is only by making your appeal to the spirit which lives within
  the human mind that you can hope to achieve lasting success and accomplish
  those marvelous transformations of human character that are presently shown in
  the abundant yielding of the genuine fruits of the spirit in the daily lives
  of all who are thus delivered from the darkness of doubt by the birth of the
  spirit into the light of faith -- the kingdom of heaven."



  152:6.4 Jesus taught the appeal to the emotions as the technique of arresting
  and focusing the intellectual attention. He designated the mind thus aroused
  and quickened as the gateway to the soul, where there resides that spiritual
  nature of man which must recognize truth and respond to the spiritual appeal
  of the gospel in order to afford the permanent results of true character
  transformations.

  152:6.5 Jesus thus endeavored to prepare the apostles for the impending shock
  -- the crisis in the public attitude toward him which was only a few days
  distant. He explained to the twelve that the religious rulers of Jerusalem
  would conspire with Herod Antipas to effect their destruction. The twelve
  began to realize more fully (though not finally) that Jesus was not going to
  sit on David's throne. They saw more fully that spiritual truth was not to be
  advanced by material wonders. They began to realize that the feeding of the
  five thousand and the popular movement to make Jesus king was the apex of the
  miracle-seeking, wonder-working expectance of the people and the height of
  Jesus' acclaim by the populace. They vaguely discerned and dimly foresaw the
  approaching times of spiritual sifting and cruel adversity. These twelve men
  were slowly awaking to the realization of the real nature of their task as
  ambassadors of the kingdom, and they began to gird themselves for the trying
  and testing ordeals of the last year of the Master's ministry on earth.



  152:6.6 Before they left Gennesaret, Jesus instructed them regarding the
  miraculous feeding of the five thousand, telling them just why he engaged in
  this extraordinary manifestation of creative power and also assuring them that
  he did not thus yield to his sympathy for the multitude until he had
  ascertained that it was "according to the Father's will."





7. AT JERUSALEM



  152:7.1 Sunday, April 3, Jesus, accompanied only by the twelve apostles,
  started from Bethsaida on the journey to Jerusalem. To avoid the multitudes
  and to attract as little attention as possible, they journeyed by way of
  Gerasa and Philadelphia. He forbade them to do any public teaching on this
  trip; neither did he permit them to teach or preach while sojourning in
  Jerusalem. They arrived at Bethany, near Jerusalem, late on Wednesday evening,
  April 6. For this one night they stopped at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and
  Mary, but the next day they separated. Jesus, with John, stayed at the home of
  a believer named Simon, near the house of Lazarus in Bethany. Judas Iscariot
  and Simon Zelotes stopped with friends in Jerusalem, while the rest of the
  apostles sojourned, two and two, in different homes.

  152:7.2 Jesus entered Jerusalem only once during this Passover, and that was
  on the great day of the feast. Many of the Jerusalem believers were brought
  out by Abner to meet Jesus at Bethany. During this sojourn at Jerusalem the
  twelve learned how bitter the feeling was becoming toward their Master. They
  departed from Jerusalem all believing that a crisis was impending.

  152:7.3 On Sunday, April 24, Jesus and the apostles left Jerusalem for
  Bethsaida, going by way of the coast cities of Joppa, Caesarea, and Ptolemais.
  Thence, overland they went by Ramah and Chorazin to Bethsaida, arriving on
  Friday, April 29. Immediately on reaching home, Jesus dispatched Andrew to ask
  of the ruler of the synagogue permission to speak the next day, that being the
  Sabbath, at the afternoon service. And Jesus well knew that that would be the
  last time he would ever be permitted to speak in the Capernaum synagogue.


PAPER 153


 THE CRISIS AT CAPERNAUM



  153:0.1 ON FRIDAY evening, the day of their arrival at Bethsaida, and on
  Sabbath morning, the apostles noticed that Jesus was seriously occupied with
  some momentous problem; they were cognizant that the Master was giving unusual
  thought to some important matter. He ate no breakfast and but little at
  noontide. All of Sabbath morning and the evening before, the twelve and their
  associates were gathered together in small groups about the house, in the
  garden, and along the seashore. There was a tension of uncertainty and a
  suspense of apprehension resting upon all of them. Jesus had said little to
  them since they left Jerusalem.

  153:0.2 Not in months had they seen the Master so preoccupied and
  uncommunicative. Even Simon Peter was depressed, if not downcast. Andrew was
  at a loss to know what to do for his dejected associates. Nathaniel said they
  were in the midst of the "lull before the storm." Thomas expressed the opinion
  that "something out of the ordinary is about to happen." Philip advised David
  Zebedee to "forget about plans for feeding and lodging the multitude until we
  know what the Master is thinking about." Matthew was putting forth renewed
  efforts to replenish the treasury. James and John talked over the forthcoming
  sermon in the synagogue and speculated much as to its probable nature and
  scope. Simon Zelotes expressed the belief, in reality a hope, that "the Father
  in heaven may be about to intervene in some unexpected manner for the
  vindication and support of his Son," while Judas Iscariot dared to indulge the
  thought that possibly Jesus was oppressed with regrets that "he did not have
  the courage and daring to permit the five thousand to proclaim him king of the
  Jews."

  153:0.3 It was from among such a group of depressed and disconsolate followers
  that Jesus went forth on this beautiful Sabbath afternoon to preach his epoch-
  making sermon in the Capernaum synagogue. The only word of cheerful greeting
  or well-wishing from any of his immediate followers came from one of the
  unsuspecting Alpheus twins, who, as Jesus left the house on his way to the
  synagogue, saluted him cheerily and said: "We pray the Father will help you,
  and that we may have bigger multitudes than ever."





1. THE SETTING OF THE STAGE



  153:1.1 A distinguished congregation greeted Jesus at three o'clock on this
  exquisite Sabbath afternoon in the new Capernaum synagogue. Jairus presided
  and handed Jesus the Scriptures to read. The day before, fifty-three Pharisees
  and Sadducees had arrived from Jerusalem; more than thirty of the leaders and
  rulers of the neighboring synagogues were also present. These Jewish religious
  leaders were acting directly under orders from the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, and
  they constituted the orthodox vanguard which had come to inaugurate open
  warfare on Jesus and his disciples. Sitting by the side of these Jewish
  leaders, in the synagogue seats of honor, were the official observers of Herod
  Antipas, who had been directed to ascertain the truth concerning the
  disturbing reports that an attempt had been made by the populace to proclaim
  Jesus the king of the Jews, over in the domains of his brother Philip.

  153:1.2 Jesus comprehended that he faced the immediate declaration of avowed
  and open warfare by his increasing enemies, and he elected boldly to assume
  the offensive. At the feeding of the five thousand he had challenged their
  ideas of the material Messiah; now he chose again openly to attack their
  concept of the Jewish deliverer. This crisis, which began with the feeding of
  the five thousand, and which terminated with this Sabbath afternoon sermon,
  was the outward turning of the tide of popular fame and acclaim. Henceforth,
  the work of the kingdom was to be increasingly concerned with the more
  important task of winning lasting spiritual converts for the truly religious
  brotherhood of mankind. This sermon marks the crisis in the transition from
  the period of discussion, controversy, and decision to that of open warfare
  and final acceptance or final rejection.

  153:1.3 The Master well knew that many of his followers were slowly but surely
  preparing their minds finally to reject him. He likewise knew that many of his
  disciples were slowly but certainly passing through that training of mind and
  that discipline of soul which would enable them to triumph over doubt and
  courageously to assert their full-fledged faith in the gospel of the kingdom.
  Jesus fully understood how men prepare themselves for the decisions of a
  crisis and the performance of sudden deeds of courageous choosing by the slow
  process of the reiterated choosing between the recurring situations of good
  and evil. He subjected his chosen messengers to repeated rehearsals in
  disappointment and provided them with frequent and testing opportunities for
  choosing between the right and the wrong way of meeting spiritual trials. He
  knew he could depend on his followers, when they met the final test, to make
  their vital decisions in accordance with prior and habitual mental attitudes
  and spirit reactions.



  153:1.4 This crisis in Jesus' earth life began with the feeding of the five
  thousand and ended with this sermon in the synagogue; the crisis in the lives
  of the apostles began with this sermon in the synagogue and continued for a
  whole year, ending only with the Master's trial and crucifixion.



  153:1.5 As they sat there in the synagogue that afternoon before Jesus began
  to speak, there was just one great mystery, just one supreme question, in the
  minds of all. Both his friends and his foes pondered just one thought, and
  that was: "Why did he himself so deliberately and effectively turn back the
  tide of popular enthusiasm?" And it was immediately before and immediately
  after this sermon that the doubts and disappointments of his disgruntled
  adherents grew into unconscious opposition and eventually turned into actual
  hatred. It was after this sermon in the synagogue that Judas Iscariot
  entertained his first conscious thought of deserting. But he did, for the time
  being, effectively master all such inclinations.

  153:1.6 Everyone was in a state of perplexity. Jesus had left them dumfounded
  and confounded. He had recently engaged in the greatest demonstration of
  supernatural power to characterize his whole career. The feeding of the five
  thousand was the one event of his earth life which made the greatest appeal to
  the Jewish concept of the expected Messiah. But this extraordinary advantage
  was immediately and unexplainedly offset by his prompt and unequivocal refusal
  to be made king.

  153:1.7 On Friday evening, and again on Sabbath morning, the Jerusalem leaders
  had labored long and earnestly with Jairus to prevent Jesus' speaking in the
  synagogue, but it was of no avail. Jairus' only reply to all this pleading
  was: "I have granted this request, and I will not violate my word."





2. THE EPOCHAL SERMON



  153:2.1 Jesus introduced this sermon by reading from the law as found in
  Deuteronomy: "But it shall come to pass, if this people will not hearken to
  the voice of God, that the curses of transgression shall surely overtake them.
  The Lord shall cause you to be smitten by your enemies; you shall be removed
  into all the kingdoms of the earth. And the Lord shall bring you and the king
  you have set up over you into the hands of a strange nation. You shall become
  an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations. Your sons and your
  daughters shall go into captivity. The strangers among you shall rise high in
  authority while you are brought very low. And these things shall be upon you
  and your seed forever because you would not hearken to the word of the Lord.
  Therefore shall you serve your enemies who shall come against you. You shall
  endure hunger and thirst and wear this alien yoke of iron. The Lord shall
  bring against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, a nation
  whose tongue you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, a
  nation which will have little regard for you. And they shall besiege you in
  all your towns until the high fortified walls wherein you have trusted come
  down; and all the land shall fall into their hands. And it shall come to pass
  that you will be driven to eat the fruit of your own bodies, the flesh of your
  sons and daughters, during this time of siege, because of the straitness
  wherewith your enemies shall press you."

  153:2.2 And when Jesus had finished this reading, he turned to the Prophets
  and read from Jeremiah: "`If you will not hearken to the words of my servants
  the prophets whom I have sent you, then will I make this house like Shiloh,
  and I will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.' And the
  priests and the teachers heard Jeremiah speak these words in the house of the
  Lord. And it came to pass that, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all
  that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and
  teachers laid hold of him, saying, `You shall surely die.' And all the people
  crowded around Jeremiah in the house of the Lord. And when the princes of
  Judah heard these things, they sat in judgment on Jeremiah. Then spoke the
  priests and the teachers to the princes and to all the people, saying: `This
  man is worthy to die, for he has prophesied against our city, and you have
  heard him with your own ears.' Then spoke Jeremiah to all the princes and to
  all the people: `The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against
  this city all the words which you have heard. Now, therefore, amend your ways
  and reform your doings and obey the voice of the Lord your God that you may
  escape the evil which has been pronounced against you. As for me, behold I am
  in your hands. Do with me as seems good and right in your eyes. But know you
  for certain that, if you put me to death, you shall bring innocent blood upon
  yourselves and upon this people, for of a truth the Lord has sent me to speak
  all these words in your ears.'

  153:2.3 "The priests and teachers of that day sought to kill Jeremiah, but the
  judges would not consent, albeit, for his words of warning, they did let him
  down by cords in a filthy dungeon until he sank in mire up to his armpits.
  That is what this people did to the Prophet Jeremiah when he obeyed the Lord's
  command to warn his brethren of their impending political downfall. Today, I
  desire to ask you: What will the chief priests and religious leaders of this
  people do with the man who dares to warn them of the day of their spiritual
  doom? Will you also seek to put to death the teacher who dares to proclaim the
  word of the Lord, and who fears not to point out wherein you refuse to walk in
  the way of light which leads to the entrance to the kingdom of heaven?

  153:2.4 "What is it you seek as evidence of my mission on earth? We have left
  you undisturbed in your positions of influence and power while we preached
  glad tidings to the poor and the outcast. We have made no hostile attack upon
  that which you hold in reverence but have rather proclaimed new liberty for
  man's fear-ridden soul. I came into the world to reveal my Father and to
  establish on earth the spiritual brotherhood of the sons of God, the kingdom
  of heaven. And notwithstanding that I have so many times reminded you that my
  kingdom is not of this world, still has my Father granted you many
  manifestations of material wonders in addition to more evidential spiritual
  transformations and regenerations.

  153:2.5 "What new sign is it that you seek at my hands? I declare that you
  already have sufficient evidence to enable you to make your decision. Verily,
  verily, I say to many who sit before me this day, you are confronted with the
  necessity of choosing which way you will go; and I say to you, as Joshua said
  to your forefathers, `choose you this day whom you will serve.' Today, many of
  you stand at the parting of the ways.

  153:2.6 "Some of you, when you could not find me after the feasting of the
  multitude on the other side, hired the Tiberias fishing fleet, which a week
  before had taken shelter near by during a storm, to go in pursuit of me, and
  what for? Not for truth and righteousness or that you might the better know
  how to serve and minister to your fellow men! No, but rather that you might
  have more bread for which you had not labored. It was not to fill your souls
  with the word of life, but only that you might fill the belly with the bread
  of ease. And long have you been taught that the Messiah, when he should come,
  would work those wonders which would make life pleasant and easy for all the
  chosen people. It is not strange, then, that you who have been thus taught
  should long for the loaves and the fishes. But I declare to you that such is
  not the mission of the Son of Man. I have come to proclaim spiritual liberty,
  teach eternal truth, and foster living faith.

  153:2.7 "My brethren, hanker not after the meat which perishes but rather seek
  for the spiritual food that nourishes even to eternal life; and this is the
  bread of life which the Son gives to all who will take it and eat, for the
  Father has given the Son this life without measure. And when you asked me,
  `What must we do to perform the works of God?' I plainly told you: `This is
  the work of God, that you believe him whom he has sent.'"

  153:2.8 And then said Jesus, pointing up to the device of a pot of manna which
  decorated the lintel of this new synagogue, and which was embellished with
  grape clusters: "You have thought that your forefathers in the wilderness ate
  manna -- the bread of heaven -- but I say to you that this was the bread of
  earth. While Moses did not give your fathers bread from heaven, my Father now
  stands ready to give you the true bread of life. The bread of heaven is that
  which comes down from God and gives eternal life to the men of the world. And
  when you say to me, Give us this living bread, I will answer: I am this bread
  of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger, while he who believes me shall
  never thirst. You have seen me, lived with me, and beheld my works, yet you
  believe not that I came forth from the Father. But to those who do believe --
  fear not. All those led of the Father shall come to me, and he who comes to me
  shall in nowise be cast out.

  153:2.9 "And now let me declare to you, once and for all time, that I have
  come down upon the earth, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent
  me. And this is the final will of Him who sent me, that of all those he has
  given me I should not lose one. And this is the will of the Father: That every
  one who beholds the Son and who believes him shall have eternal life. Only
  yesterday did I feed you with bread for your bodies; today I offer you the
  bread of life for your hungry souls. Will you now take the bread of the spirit
  as you then so willingly ate the bread of this world?"



  153:2.10 As Jesus paused for a moment to look over the congregation, one of
  the teachers from Jerusalem (a member of the Sanhedrin) rose up and asked: "Do
  I understand you to say that you are the bread which comes down from heaven,
  and that the manna which Moses gave to our fathers in the wilderness did not?"
  And Jesus answered the Pharisee, "You understood aright." Then said the
  Pharisee: "But are you not Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, the
  carpenter? Are not your father and mother, as well as your brothers and
  sisters, well known to many of us? How then is it that you appear here in
  God's house and declare that you have come down from heaven?"

  153:2.11 By this time there was much murmuring in the synagogue, and such a
  tumult was threatened that Jesus stood up and said: "Let us be patient; the
  truth never suffers from honest examination. I am all that you say but more.
  The Father and I are one; the Son does only that which the Father teaches him,
  while all those who are given to the Son by the Father, the Son will receive
  to himself. You have read where it is written in the Prophets, `You shall all
  be taught by God,' and that `Those whom the Father teaches will hear also his
  Son.' Every one who yields to the teaching of the Father's indwelling spirit
  will eventually come to me. Not that any man has seen the Father, but the
  Father's spirit does live within man. And the Son who came down from heaven,
  he has surely seen the Father. And those who truly believe this Son already
  have eternal life.

  153:2.12 "I am this bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness
  and are dead. But this bread which comes down from God, if a man eats thereof,
  he shall never die in spirit. I repeat, I am this living bread, and every soul
  who attains the realization of this united nature of God and man shall live
  forever. And this bread of life which I give to all who will receive is my own
  living and combined nature. The Father in the Son and the Son one with the
  Father -- that is my life-giving revelation to the world and my saving gift to
  all nations."

  153:2.13 When Jesus had finished speaking, the ruler of the synagogue
  dismissed the congregation, but they would not depart. They crowded up around
  Jesus to ask more questions while others murmured and disputed among
  themselves. And this state of affairs continued for more than three hours. It
  was well past seven o'clock before the audience finally dispersed.





3. THE AFTER MEETING



  153:3.1 Many were the questions asked Jesus during this after meeting. Some
  were asked by his perplexed disciples, but more were asked by caviling
  unbelievers who sought only to embarrass and entrap him.

  153:3.2 One of the visiting Pharisees, mounting a lampstand, shouted out this
  question: "You tell us that you are the bread of life. How can you give us
  your flesh to eat or your blood to drink? What avail is your teaching if it
  cannot be carried out?" And Jesus answered this question, saying: "I did not
  teach you that my flesh is the bread of life nor that my blood is the water
  thereof. But I did say that my life in the flesh is a bestowal of the bread of
  heaven. The fact of the Word of God bestowed in the flesh and the phenomenon
  of the Son of Man subject to the will of God, constitute a reality of
  experience which is equivalent to the divine sustenance. You cannot eat my
  flesh nor can you drink my blood, but you can become one in spirit with me
  even as I am one in spirit with the Father. You can be nourished by the
  eternal word of God, which is indeed the bread of life, and which has been
  bestowed in the likeness of mortal flesh; and you can be watered in soul by
  the divine spirit, which is truly the water of life. The Father has sent me
  into the world to show how he desires to indwell and direct all men; and I
  have so lived this life in the flesh as to inspire all men likewise ever to
  seek to know and do the will of the indwelling heavenly Father."

  153:3.3 Then one of the Jerusalem spies who had been observing Jesus and his
  apostles, said: "We notice that neither you nor your apostles wash your hands
  properly before you eat bread. You must well know that such a practice as
  eating with defiled and unwashed hands is a transgression of the law of the
  elders. Neither do you properly wash your drinking cups and eating vessels.
  Why is it that you show such disrespect for the traditions of the fathers and
  the laws of our elders?" And when Jesus heard him speak, he answered: "Why is
  it that you transgress the commandments of God by the laws of your tradition?
  The commandment says, `Honor your father and your mother,' and directs that
  you share with them your substance if necessary; but you enact a law of
  tradition which permits undutiful children to say that the money wherewith the
  parents might have been assisted has been `given to God.' The law of the
  elders thus relieves such crafty children of their responsibility,
  notwithstanding that the children subsequently use all such monies for their
  own comfort. Why is it that you in this way make void the commandment by your
  own tradition? Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, saying: `This
  people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do
  they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.'

  153:3.4 "You can see how it is that you desert the commandment while you hold
  fast to the tradition of men. Altogether willing are you to reject the word of
  God while you maintain your own traditions. And in many other ways do you dare
  to set up your own teachings above the law and the prophets."

  153:3.5 Jesus then directed his remarks to all present. He said: "But hearken
  to me all of you. It is not that which enters into the mouth that spiritually
  defiles the man, but rather that which proceeds out of the mouth and from the
  heart." But even the apostles failed fully to grasp the meaning of his words,
  for Simon Peter also asked him: "Lest some of your hearers be unnecessarily
  offended, would you explain to us the meaning of these words?" And then said
  Jesus to Peter: "Are you also hard of understanding? Know you not that every
  plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now
  your attention to those who would know the truth. You cannot compel men to
  love the truth. Many of these teachers are blind guides. And you know that, if
  the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hearken while I
  tell you the truth concerning those things which morally defile and
  spiritually contaminate men. I declare it is not that which enters the body by
  the mouth or gains access to the mind through the eyes and ears, that defiles
  the man. Man is only defiled by that evil which may originate within the
  heart, and which finds expression in the words and deeds of such unholy
  persons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil
  thoughts, wicked projects of murder, theft, and adulteries, together with
  jealousy, pride, anger, revenge, railings, and false witness? And it is just
  such things that defile men, and not that they eat bread with ceremonially
  unclean hands."

  153:3.6 The Pharisaic commissioners of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin were now almost
  convinced that Jesus must be apprehended on a charge of blasphemy or on one of
  flouting the sacred law of the Jews; wherefore their efforts to involve him in
  the discussion of, and possible attack upon, some of the traditions of the
  elders, or so-called oral laws of the nation. No matter how scarce water might
  be, these traditionally enslaved Jews would never fail to go through with the
  required ceremonial washing of the hands before every meal. It was their
  belief that "it is better to die than to transgress the commandments of the
  elders." The spies asked this question because it had been reported that Jesus
  had said, "Salvation is a matter of clean hearts rather than of clean hands."
  But such beliefs, when they once become a part of one's religion, are hard to
  get away from. Even many years after this day the Apostle Peter was still held
  in the bondage of fear to many of these traditions about things clean and
  unclean, only being finally delivered by experiencing an extraordinary and
  vivid dream. All of this can the better be understood when it is recalled that
  these Jews looked upon eating with unwashed hands in the same light as
  commerce with a harlot, and both were equally punishable by excommunication.

  153:3.7 Thus did the Master elect to discuss and expose the folly of the whole
  rabbinic system of rules and regulations which was represented by the oral law
  -- the traditions of the elders, all of which were regarded as more sacred and
  more binding upon the Jews than even the teachings of the Scriptures. And
  Jesus spoke out with less reserve because he knew the hour had come when he
  could do nothing more to prevent an open rupture of relations with these
  religious leaders.





4. LAST WORDS IN THE SYNAGOGUE



  153:4.1 In the midst of the discussions of this after meeting, one of the
  Pharisees from Jerusalem brought to Jesus a distraught youth who was possessed
  of an unruly and rebellious spirit. Leading this demented lad up to Jesus, he
  said: "What can you do for such affliction as this? Can you cast out devils?"
  And when the Master looked upon the youth, he was moved with compassion and,
  beckoning for the lad to come to him, took him by the hand and said: "You know
  who I am; come out of him; and I charge one of your loyal fellows to see that
  you do not return." And immediately the lad was normal and in his right mind.
  And this is the first case where Jesus really cast an "evil spirit" out of a
  human being. All of the previous cases were only supposed possession of the
  devil; but this was a genuine case of demoniac possession, even such as
  sometimes occurred in those days and right up to the day of Pentecost, when
  the Master's spirit was poured out upon all flesh, making it forever
  impossible for these few celestial rebels to take such advantage of certain
  unstable types of human beings.

  153:4.2 When the people marveled, one of the Pharisees stood up and charged
  that Jesus could do these things because he was in league with devils; that he
  admitted in the language which he employed in casting out this devil that they
  were known to each other; and he went on to state that the religious teachers
  and leaders at Jerusalem had decided that Jesus did all his so-called miracles
  by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Said the Pharisee: "Have
  nothing to do with this man; he is in partnership with Satan."

  153:4.3 Then said Jesus: "How can Satan cast out Satan? A kingdom divided
  against itself cannot stand; if a house be divided against itself, it is soon
  brought to desolation. Can a city withstand a siege if it is not united? If
  Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his
  kingdom stand? But you should know that no one can enter into the house of a
  strong man and despoil his goods except he first overpower and bind that
  strong man. And so, if I by the power of Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do
  your sons cast them out? Therefore shall they be your judges. But if I, by the
  spirit of God, cast out devils, then has the kingdom of God truly come upon
  you. If you were not blinded by prejudice and misled by fear and pride, you
  would easily perceive that one who is greater than devils stands in your
  midst. You compel me to declare that he who is not with me is against me,
  while he who gathers not with me scatters abroad. Let me utter a solemn
  warning to you who would presume, with your eyes open and with premeditated
  malice, knowingly to ascribe the works of God to the doings of devils! Verily,
  verily, I say to you, all your sins shall be forgiven, even all of your
  blasphemies, but whosoever shall blaspheme against God with deliberation and
  wicked intention shall never obtain forgiveness. Since such persistent workers
  of iniquity will never seek nor receive forgiveness, they are guilty of the
  sin of eternally rejecting divine forgiveness.

  153:4.4 "Many of you have this day come to the parting of the ways; you have
  come to a beginning of the making of the inevitable choice between the will of
  the Father and the self-chosen ways of darkness. And as you now choose, so
  shall you eventually be. You must either make the tree good and its fruit
  good, or else will the tree become corrupt and its fruit corrupt. I declare
  that in my Father's eternal kingdom the tree is known by its fruits. But some
  of you who are as vipers, how can you, having already chosen evil, bring forth
  good fruits? After all, out of the abundance of the evil in your hearts your
  mouths speak."

  153:4.5 Then stood up another Pharisee, who said: "Teacher, we would have you
  give us a predetermined sign which we will agree upon as establishing your
  authority and right to teach. Will you agree to such an arrangement?" And when
  Jesus heard this, he said: "This faithless and sign-seeking generation seeks a
  token, but no sign shall be given you other than that which you already have,
  and that which you shall see when the Son of Man departs from among you."

  153:4.6 And when he had finished speaking, his apostles surrounded him and led
  him from the synagogue. In silence they journeyed home with him to Bethsaida.
  They were all amazed and somewhat terror-stricken by the sudden change in the
  Master's teaching tactics. They were wholly unaccustomed to seeing him perform
  in such a militant manner.





5. THE SATURDAY EVENING



  153:5.1 Time and again had Jesus dashed to pieces the hopes of his apostles,
  repeatedly had he crushed their fondest expectations, but no time of
  disappointment or season of sorrow had ever equaled that which now overtook
  them. And, too, there was now admixed with their depression a real fear for
  their safety. They were all surprisingly startled by the suddenness and
  completeness of the desertion of the populace. They were also somewhat
  frightened and disconcerted by the unexpected boldness and assertive
  determination exhibited by the Pharisees who had come down from Jerusalem. But
  most of all they were bewildered by Jesus' sudden change of tactics. Under
  ordinary circumstances they would have welcomed the appearance of this more
  militant attitude, but coming as it did, along with so much that was
  unexpected, it startled them.

  153:5.2 And now, on top of all of these worries, when they reached home, Jesus
  refused to eat. For hours he isolated himself in one of the upper rooms. It
  was almost midnight when Joab, the leader of the evangelists, returned and
  reported that about one third of his associates had deserted the cause. All
  through the evening loyal disciples had come and gone, reporting that the
  revulsion of feeling toward the Master was general in Capernaum. The leaders
  from Jerusalem were not slow to feed this feeling of disaffection and in every
  way possible to seek to promote the movement away from Jesus and his
  teachings. During these trying hours the twelve women were in session over at
  Peter's house. They were tremendously upset, but none of them deserted.

  153:5.3 It was a little after midnight when Jesus came down from the upper
  chamber and stood among the twelve and their associates, numbering about
  thirty in all. He said: "I recognize that this sifting of the kingdom
  distresses you, but it is unavoidable. Still, after all the training you have
  had, was there any good reason why you should stumble at my words? Why is it
  that you are filled with fear and consternation when you see the kingdom being
  divested of these lukewarm multitudes and these halfhearted disciples? Why do
  you grieve when the new day is dawning for the shining forth in new glory of
  the spiritual teachings of the kingdom of heaven? If you find it difficult to
  endure this test, what, then, will you do when the Son of Man must return to
  the Father? When and how will you prepare yourselves for the time when I
  ascend to the place whence I came to this world?

  153:5.4 "My beloved, you must remember that it is the spirit that quickens;
  the flesh and all that pertains thereto is of little profit. The words which I
  have spoken to you are spirit and life. Be of good cheer! I have not deserted
  you. Many shall be offended by the plain speaking of these days. Already you
  have heard that many of my disciples have turned back; they walk no more with
  me. From the beginning I knew that these halfhearted believers would fall out
  by the way. Did I not choose you twelve men and set you apart as ambassadors
  of the kingdom? And now at such a time as this would you also desert? Let each
  of you look to his own faith, for one of you stands in grave danger." And when
  Jesus had finished speaking, Simon Peter said: "Yes, Lord, we are sad and
  perplexed, but we will never forsake you. You have taught us the words of
  eternal life. We have believed in you and followed with you all this time. We
  will not turn back, for we know that you are sent by God." And as Peter ceased
  speaking, they all with one accord nodded their approval of his pledge of
  loyalty.

  153:5.5 Then said Jesus: "Go to your rest, for busy times are upon us; active
  days are just ahead."


PAPER 154


 LAST DAYS AT CAPERNAUM



  154:0.1 ON THE eventful Saturday night of April 30, as Jesus was speaking
  words of comfort and courage to his downcast and bewildered disciples, at
  Tiberias a council was being held between Herod Antipas and a group of special
  commissioners representing the Jerusalem Sanhedrin. These scribes and
  Pharisees urged Herod to arrest Jesus; they did their best to convince him
  that Jesus was stirring up the populace to dissension and even to rebellion.
  But Herod refused to take action against him as a political offender. Herod's
  advisers had correctly reported the episode across the lake when the people
  sought to proclaim Jesus king and how he rejected the proposal.

  154:0.2 One of Herod's official family, Chuza, whose wife belonged to the
  women's ministering corps, had informed him that Jesus did not propose to
  meddle with the affairs of earthly rule; that he was only concerned with the
  establishment of the spiritual brotherhood of his believers, which brotherhood
  he called the kingdom of heaven. Herod had confidence in Chuza's reports, so
  much so that he refused to interfere with Jesus' activities. Herod was also
  influenced at this time, in his attitude toward Jesus, by his superstitious
  fear of John the Baptist. Herod was one of those apostate Jews who, while he
  believed nothing, feared everything. He had a bad conscience for having put
  John to death, and he did not want to become entangled in these intrigues
  against Jesus. He knew of many cases of sickness which had been apparently
  healed by Jesus, and he regarded him as either a prophet or a relatively
  harmless religious fanatic.

  154:0.3 When the Jews threatened to report to Caesar that he was shielding a
  traitorous subject, Herod ordered them out of his council chamber. Thus
  matters rested for one week, during which time Jesus prepared his followers
  for the impending dispersion.





1. A WEEK OF COUNSEL



  154:1.1 From May 1 to May 7 Jesus held intimate counsel with his followers at
  the Zebedee house. Only the tried and trusted disciples were admitted to these
  conferences. At this time there were only about one hundred disciples who had
  the moral courage to brave the opposition of the Pharisees and openly declare
  their adherence to Jesus. With this group he held sessions morning, afternoon,
  and evening. Small companies of inquirers assembled each afternoon by the
  seaside, where some of the evangelists or apostles discoursed to them. These
  groups seldom numbered more than fifty.

  154:1.2 On Friday of this week official action was taken by the rulers of the
  Capernaum synagogue closing the house of God to Jesus and all his followers.
  This action was taken at the instigation of the Jerusalem Pharisees. Jairus
  resigned as chief ruler and openly aligned himself with Jesus.

  154:1.3 The last of the seaside meetings was held on Sabbath afternoon, May 7.
  Jesus talked to less than one hundred and fifty who had assembled at that
  time. This Saturday night marked the time of the lowest ebb in the tide of
  popular regard for Jesus and his teachings. From then on there was a steady,
  slow, but more healthful and dependable growth in favorable sentiment; a new
  following was built up which was better grounded in spiritual faith and true
  religious experience. The more or less composite and compromising transition
  stage between the materialistic concepts of the kingdom held by the Master's
  followers and those more idealistic and spiritual concepts taught by Jesus,
  had now definitely ended. From now on there was a more open proclamation of
  the gospel of the kingdom in its larger scope and in its far-flung spiritual
  implications.





2. A WEEK OF REST



  154:2.1 Sunday, May 8, A.D. 29, at Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin passed a decree
  closing all the synagogues of Palestine to Jesus and his followers. This was a
  new and unprecedented usurpation of authority by the Jerusalem Sanhedrin.
  Theretofore each synagogue had existed and functioned as an independent
  congregation of worshipers and was under the rule and direction of its own
  board of governors. Only the synagogues of Jerusalem had been subject to the
  authority of the Sanhedrin. This summary action of the Sanhedrin was followed
  by the resignation of five of its members. One hundred messengers were
  immediately dispatched to convey and enforce this decree. Within the short
  space of two weeks every synagogue in Palestine had bowed to this manifesto of
  the Sanhedrin except the synagogue at Hebron. The rulers of the Hebron
  synagogue refused to acknowledge the right of the Sanhedrin to exercise such
  jurisdiction over their assembly. This refusal to accede to the Jerusalem
  decree was based on their contention of congregational autonomy rather than on
  sympathy with Jesus' cause. Shortly thereafter the Hebron synagogue was
  destroyed by fire.



  154:2.2 This same Sunday morning, Jesus declared a week's holiday, urging all
  of his disciples to return to their homes or friends to rest their troubled
  souls and speak words of encouragement to their loved ones. He said: "Go to
  your several places to play or fish while you pray for the extension of the
  kingdom."

  154:2.3 This week of rest enabled Jesus to visit many families and groups
  about the seaside. He also went fishing with David Zebedee on several
  occasions, and while he went about alone much of the time, there always lurked
  near by two or three of David's most trusted messengers, who had no uncertain
  orders from their chief respecting the safeguarding of Jesus. There was no
  public teaching of any sort during this week of rest.



  154:2.4 This was the week that Nathaniel and James Zebedee suffered from more
  than a slight illness. For three days and nights they were acutely afflicted
  with a painful digestive disturbance. On the third night Jesus sent Salome,
  James's mother, to her rest, while he ministered to his suffering apostles. Of
  course Jesus could have instantly healed these two men, but that is not the
  method of either the Son or the Father in dealing with these commonplace
  difficulties and afflictions of the children of men on the evolutionary worlds
  of time and space. Never once, throughout all of his eventful life in the
  flesh, did Jesus engage in any sort of supernatural ministration to any member
  of his earth family or in behalf of any one of his immediate followers.

  154:2.5 Universe difficulties must be met and planetary obstacles must be
  encountered as a part of the experience training provided for the growth and
  development, the progressive perfection, of the evolving souls of mortal
  creatures. The spiritualization of the human soul requires intimate experience
  with the educational solving of a wide range of real universe problems. The
  animal nature and the lower forms of will creatures do not progress favorably
  in environmental ease. Problematic situations, coupled with exertion stimuli,
  conspire to produce those activities of mind, soul, and spirit which
  contribute mightily to the achievement of worthy goals of mortal progression
  and to the attainment of higher levels of spirit destiny.





3. THE SECOND TIBERIAS CONFERENCE



  154:3.1 On May 16 the second conference at Tiberias between the authorities at
  Jerusalem and Herod Antipas was convened. Both the religious and the political
  leaders from Jerusalem were in attendance. The Jewish leaders were able to
  report to Herod that practically all the synagogues in both Galilee and Judea
  were closed to Jesus' teachings. A new effort was made to have Herod place
  Jesus under arrest, but he refused to do their bidding. On May 18, however,
  Herod did agree to the plan of permitting the Sanhedrin authorities to seize
  Jesus and carry him to Jerusalem to be tried on religious charges, provided
  the Roman ruler of Judea concurred in such an arrangement. Meanwhile, Jesus'
  enemies were industriously spreading the rumor throughout Galilee that Herod
  had become hostile to Jesus, and that he meant to exterminate all who believed
  in his teachings.

  154:3.2 On Saturday night, May 21, word reached Tiberias that the civil
  authorities at Jerusalem had no objection to the agreement between Herod and
  the Pharisees that Jesus be seized and carried to Jerusalem for trial before
  the Sanhedrin on charges of flouting the sacred laws of the Jewish nation.
  Accordingly, just before midnight of this day, Herod signed the decree which
  authorized the officers of the Sanhedrin to seize Jesus within Herod's domains
  and forcibly to carry him to Jerusalem for trial. Strong pressure from many
  sides was brought to bear upon Herod before he consented to grant this
  permission, and he well knew that Jesus could not expect a fair trial before
  his bitter enemies at Jerusalem.





4. SATURDAY NIGHT IN CAPERNAUM



  154:4.1 On this same Saturday night, in Capernaum a group of fifty leading
  citizens met at the synagogue to discuss the momentous question: "What shall
  we do with Jesus?" They talked and debated until after midnight, but they
  could not find any common ground for agreement. Aside from a few persons who
  inclined to the belief that Jesus might be the Messiah, at least a holy man,
  or perhaps a prophet, the meeting was divided into four nearly equal groups
  who held, respectively, the following views of Jesus:

1. That he was a deluded and harmless religious fanatic.

2. That he was a dangerous and designing agitator who might stir up rebellion.

3. That he was in league with devils, that he might even be a prince of devils.

4. That he was beside himself, that he was mad, mentally unbalanced.

  154:4.2 There was much talk about Jesus' preaching doctrines which were
  upsetting for the common people; his enemies maintained that his teachings
  were impractical, that everything would go to pieces if everybody made an
  honest effort to live in accordance with his ideas. And the men of many
  subsequent generations have said the same things. Many intelligent and well-
  meaning men, even in the more enlightened age of these revelations, maintain
  that modern civilization could not have been built upon the teachings of Jesus
  -- and they are partially right. But all such doubters forget that a much
  better civilization could have been built upon his teachings, and sometime
  will be. This world has never seriously tried to carry out the teachings of
  Jesus on a large scale, notwithstanding that halfhearted attempts have often
  been made to follow the doctrines of so-called Christianity.





5. THE EVENTFUL SUNDAY MORNING



  154:5.1 May 22 was an eventful day in the life of Jesus. On this Sunday
  morning, before daybreak, one of David's messengers arrived in great haste
  from Tiberias, bringing the word that Herod had authorized, or was about to
  authorize, the arrest of Jesus by the officers of the Sanhedrin. The receipt
  of the news of this impending danger caused David Zebedee to arouse his
  messengers and send them out to all the local groups of disciples, summoning
  them for an emergency council at seven o'clock that morning. When the sister-
  in-law of Jude (Jesus' brother) heard this alarming report, she hastened word
  to all of Jesus' family who dwelt near by, summoning them forthwith to
  assemble at Zebedee's house. And in response to this hasty call, presently
  there were assembled Mary, James, Joseph, Jude, and Ruth.

  154:5.2 At this early morning meeting Jesus imparted his farewell instructions
  to the assembled disciples; that is, he bade them farewell for the time being,
  knowing well that they would soon be dispersed from Capernaum. He directed
  them all to seek God for guidance and to carry on the work of the kingdom
  regardless of consequences. The evangelists were to labor as they saw fit
  until such time as they might be called. He selected twelve of the evangelists
  to accompany him; the twelve apostles he directed to remain with him no matter
  what happened. The twelve women he instructed to remain at the Zebedee house
  and at Peter's house until he should send for them.

  154:5.3 Jesus consented to David Zebedee's continuing his countrywide
  messenger service, and in bidding the Master farewell presently, David said:
  "Go forth to your work, Master. Don't let the bigots catch you, and never
  doubt that the messengers will follow after you. My men will never lose
  contact with you, and through them you shall know of the kingdom in other
  parts, and by them we will all know about you. Nothing that might happen to me
  will interfere with this service, for I have appointed first and second
  leaders, even a third. I am neither a teacher nor a preacher, but it is in my
  heart to do this, and none can stop me."

  154:5.4 About 7:30 this morning Jesus began his parting address to almost one
  hundred believers who had crowded indoors to hear him. This was a solemn
  occasion for all present, but Jesus seemed unusually cheerful; he was once
  more like his normal self. The seriousness of weeks had gone, and he inspired
  all of them with his words of faith, hope, and courage.



   6

. JESUS' FAMILY ARRIVES



  154:6.1 It was about eight o'clock on this Sunday morning when five members of
  Jesus' earth family arrived on the scene in response to the urgent summons of
  Jude's sister-in-law. Of all his family in the flesh, only one, Ruth, believed
  wholeheartedly and continuously in the divinity of his mission on earth. Jude
  and James, and even Joseph, still retained much of their faith in Jesus, but
  they had permitted pride to interfere with their better judgment and real
  spiritual inclinations. Mary was likewise torn between love and fear, between
  mother love and family pride. Though she was harassed by doubts, she could
  never quite forget the visit of Gabriel ere Jesus was born. The Pharisees had
  been laboring to persuade Mary that Jesus was beside himself, demented. They
  urged her to go with her sons and seek to dissuade him from further efforts at
  public teaching. They assured Mary that soon Jesus' health would break, and
  that only dishonor and disgrace could come upon the entire family as a result
  of allowing him to go on. And so, when the word came from Jude's sister-in-
  law, all five of them started at once for Zebedee's house, having been
  together at Mary's home, where they had met with the Pharisees the evening
  before. They had talked with the Jerusalem leaders long into the night, and
  all were more or less convinced that Jesus was acting strangely, that he had
  acted strangely for some time. While Ruth could not explain all of his
  conduct, she insisted that he had always treated his family fairly and refused
  to agree to the program of trying to dissuade him from further work.

  154:6.2 On the way to Zebedee's house they talked these things over and agreed
  among themselves to try to persuade Jesus to come home with them, for, said
  Mary: "I know I could influence my son if he would only come home and listen
  to me." James and Jude had heard rumors concerning the plans to arrest Jesus
  and take him to Jerusalem for trial. They also feared for their own safety. As
  long as Jesus was a popular figure in the public eye, his family allowed
  matters to drift along, but now that the people of Capernaum and the leaders
  at Jerusalem had suddenly turned against him, they began keenly to feel the
  pressure of the supposed disgrace of their embarrassing position.

  154:6.3 They had expected to meet Jesus, take him aside, and urge him to go
  home with them. They had thought to assure him that they would forget his
  neglect of them -- they would forgive and forget -- if he would only give up
  the foolishness of trying to preach a new religion which could bring only
  trouble to himself and dishonor upon his family. To all of this Ruth would say
  only: "I will tell my brother that I think he is a man of God, and that I hope
  he would be willing to die before he would allow these wicked Pharisees to
  stop his preaching." Joseph promised to keep Ruth quiet while the others
  labored with Jesus.

  154:6.4 When they reached the Zebedee house, Jesus was in the very midst of
  delivering his parting address to the disciples. They sought to gain entrance
  to the house, but it was crowded to overflowing. Finally they established
  themselves on the back porch and had word passed in to Jesus, from person to
  person, so that it finally was whispered to him by Simon Peter, who
  interrupted his talking for the purpose, and who said: "Behold, your mother
  and your brothers are outside, and they are very anxious to speak with you."
  Now it did not occur to his mother how important was the giving of this
  parting message to his followers, neither did she know that his address was
  likely to be terminated any moment by the arrival of his apprehenders. She
  really thought, after so long an apparent estrangement, in view of the fact
  that she and his brothers had shown the grace actually to come to him, that
  Jesus would cease speaking and come to them the moment he received word they
  were waiting.

  154:6.5 It was just another of those instances in which his earth family could
  not comprehend that he must be about his Father's business. And so Mary and
  his brothers were deeply hurt when, notwithstanding that he paused in his
  speaking to receive the message, instead of his rushing out to greet them,
  they heard his musical voice speak with increased volume: "Say to my mother
  and my brothers that they should have no fear for me. The Father who sent me
  into the world will not forsake me; neither shall any harm come upon my
  family. Bid them be of good courage and put their trust in the Father of the
  kingdom. But, after all, who is my mother and who are my brothers?" And
  stretching forth his hands toward all of his disciples assembled in the room,
  he said: "I have no mother; I have no brothers. Behold my mother and behold my
  brethren! For whosoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same
  is my mother, my brother, and my sister."

  154:6.6 And when Mary heard these words, she collapsed in Jude's arms. They
  carried her out in the garden to revive her while Jesus spoke the concluding
  words of his parting message. He would then have gone out to confer with his
  mother and his brothers, but a messenger arrived in haste from Tiberias
  bringing word that the officers of the Sanhedrin were on their way with
  authority to arrest Jesus and carry him to Jerusalem. Andrew received this
  message and, interrupting Jesus, told it to him.

  154:6.7 Andrew did not recall that David had posted some twenty-five sentinels
  about the Zebedee house, and that no one could take them by surprise; so he
  asked Jesus what should be done. The Master stood there in silence while his
  mother, having heard the words, "I have no mother," was recovering from the
  shock in the garden. It was at just this time that a woman in the room stood
  up and exclaimed, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and blessed are the
  breasts that nursed you." Jesus turned aside a moment from his conversation
  with Andrew to answer this woman by saying, "No, rather is the one blessed who
  hears the word of God and dares to obey it."



  154:6.8 Mary and Jesus' brothers thought that Jesus did not understand them,
  that he had lost interest in them, little realizing that it was they who
  failed to understand Jesus. Jesus fully understood how difficult it is for men
  to break with their past. He knew how human beings are swayed by the
  preacher's eloquence, and how the conscience responds to emotional appeal as
  the mind does to logic and reason, but he also knew how far more difficult it
  is to persuade men to disown the past.

  154:6.9 It is forever true that all who may think they are misunderstood or
  not appreciated have in Jesus a sympathizing friend and an understanding
  counselor. He had warned his apostles that a man's foes may be they of his own
  household, but he had hardly realized how near this prediction would come to
  apply to his own experience. Jesus did not forsake his earth family to do his
  Father's work -- they forsook him. Later on, after the Master's death and
  resurrection, when James became connected with the early Christian movement,
  he suffered immeasurably as a result of his failure to enjoy this earlier
  association with Jesus and his disciples.



  154:6.10 In passing through these events, Jesus chose to be guided by the
  limited knowledge of his human mind. He desired to undergo the experience with
  his associates as a mere man. And it was in the human mind of Jesus to see his
  family before he left. He did not wish to stop in the midst of his discourse
  and thus render their first meeting after so long a separation such a public
  affair. He had intended to finish his address and then have a visit with them
  before leaving, but this plan was thwarted by the conspiracy of events which
  immediately followed.

  154:6.11 The haste of their flight was augmented by the arrival of a party of
  David's messengers at the rear entrance of the Zebedee home. The commotion
  produced by these men frightened the apostles into thinking that these new
  arrivals might be their apprehenders, and in fear of immediate arrest, they
  hastened through the front entrance to the waiting boat. And all of this
  explains why Jesus did not see his family waiting on the back porch.

  154:6.12 But he did say to David Zebedee as he entered the boat in hasty
  flight: "Tell my mother and my brothers that I appreciate their coming, and
  that I intended to see them. Admonish them to find no offense in me but rather
  to seek for a knowledge of the will of God and for grace and courage to do
  that will."





7. THE HASTY FLIGHT



  154:7.1 And so it was on this Sunday morning, the twenty-second of May, in the
  year A.D. 29, that Jesus, with his twelve apostles and the twelve evangelists,
  engaged in this hasty flight from the Sanhedrin officers who were on their way
  to Bethsaida with authority from Herod Antipas to arrest him and take him to
  Jerusalem for trial on charges of blasphemy and other violations of the sacred
  laws of the Jews. It was almost half past eight this beautiful morning when
  this company of twenty-five manned the oars and pulled for the eastern shore
  of the Sea of Galilee.

  154:7.2 Following the Master's boat was another and smaller craft, containing
  six of David's messengers, who had instructions to maintain contact with Jesus
  and his associates and to see that information of their whereabouts and safety
  was regularly transmitted to the home of Zebedee in Bethsaida, which had
  served as headquarters for the work of the kingdom for some time. But Jesus
  was never again to make his home at the house of Zebedee. From now on,
  throughout the remainder of his earth life, the Master truly "had not where to
  lay his head." No more did he have even the semblance of a settled abode.

  154:7.3 They rowed over to near the village of Kheresa, put their boat in the
  custody of friends, and began the wanderings of this eventful last year of the
  Master's life on earth. For a time they remained in the domains of Philip,
  going from Kheresa up to Caesarea-Philippi, thence making their way over to
  the coast of Phoenicia.



  154:7.4 The crowd lingered about the home of Zebedee watching these two boats
  make their way over the lake toward the eastern shore, and they were well
  started when the Jerusalem officers hurried up and began their search for
  Jesus. They refused to believe he had escaped them, and while Jesus and his
  party were journeying northward through Batanea, the Pharisees and their
  assistants spent almost a full week vainly searching for him in the
  neighborhood of Capernaum.

  154:7.5 Jesus' family returned to their home in Capernaum and spent almost a
  week in talking, debating, and praying. They were filled with confusion and
  consternation. They enjoyed no peace of mind until Thursday afternoon, when
  Ruth returned from a visit to the Zebedee house, where she learned from David
  that her father-brother was safe and in good health and making his way toward
  the Phoenician coast.


 PAPER 155


 FLEEING THROUGH NORTHERN GALILEE



  155:0.1 SOON after landing near Kheresa on this eventful Sunday, Jesus and the
  twenty-four went a little way to the north, where they spent the night in a
  beautiful park south of Bethsaida-Julias. They were familiar with this camping
  place, having stopped there in days gone by. Before retiring for the night,
  the Master called his followers around him and discussed with them the plans
  for their projected tour through Batanea and northern Galilee to the
  Phoenician coast.





1. WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE?

  155:1.1 Said Jesus: "You should all recall how the Psalmist spoke of these
  times, saying, `Why do the heathen rage and the peoples plot in vain? The
  kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers of the people take counsel
  together, against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break the
  bonds of mercy asunder and let us cast away the cords of love.'

  155:1.2 "Today you see this fulfilled before your eyes. But you shall not see
  the remainder of the Psalmist's prophecy fulfilled, for he entertained
  erroneous ideas about the Son of Man and his mission on earth. My kingdom is
  founded on love, proclaimed in mercy, and established by unselfish service. My
  Father does not sit in heaven laughing in derision at the heathen. He is not
  wrathful in his great displeasure. True is the promise that the Son shall have
  these so-called heathen (in reality his ignorant and untaught brethren) for an
  inheritance. And I will receive these gentiles with open arms of mercy and
  affection. All this loving-kindness shall be shown the so-called heathen,
  notwithstanding the unfortunate declaration of the record which intimates that
  the triumphant Son `shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them to
  pieces like a potter's vessel.' The Psalmist exhorted you to `serve the Lord
  with fear' -- I bid you enter into the exalted privileges of divine sonship by
  faith; he commands you to rejoice with trembling; I bid you rejoice with
  assurance. He says, `Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish when his
  wrath is kindled.' But you who have lived with me well know that anger and
  wrath are not a part of the establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the
  hearts of men. But the Psalmist did glimpse the true light when, in finishing
  this exhortation, he said: `Blessed are they who put their trust in this
  Son.'"

  155:1.3 Jesus continued to teach the twenty-four, saying: "The heathen are not
  without excuse when they rage at us. Because their outlook is small and
  narrow, they are able to concentrate their energies enthusiastically. Their
  goal is near and more or less visible; wherefore do they strive with valiant
  and effective execution. You who have professed entrance into the kingdom of
  heaven are altogether too vacillating and indefinite in your teaching conduct.
  The heathen strike directly for their objectives; you are guilty of too much
  chronic yearning. If you desire to enter the kingdom, why do you not take it
  by spiritual assault even as the heathen take a city they lay siege to? You
  are hardly worthy of the kingdom when your service consists so largely in an
  attitude of regretting the past, whining over the present, and vainly hoping
  for the future. Why do the heathen rage? Because they know not the truth. Why
  do you languish in futile yearning? Because you obey not the truth. Cease your
  useless yearning and go forth bravely doing that which concerns the
  establishment of the kingdom.

  155:1.4 "In all that you do, become not one-sided and overspecialized. The
  Pharisees who seek our destruction verily think they are doing God's service.
  They have become so narrowed by tradition that they are blinded by prejudice
  and hardened by fear. Consider the Greeks, who have a science without
  religion, while the Jews have a religion without science. And when men become
  thus misled into accepting a narrow and confused disintegration of truth,
  their only hope of salvation is to become truth-co-ordinated -- converted.

  155:1.5 "Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you, by truth co-
  ordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of
  righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you that they may gain
  what you have so acquired. The measure wherewith truth seekers are drawn to
  you represents the measure of your truth endowment, your righteousness. The
  extent to which you have to go with your message to the people is, in a way,
  the measure of your failure to live the whole or righteous life, the truth-co-
  ordinated life."

  155:1.6 And many other things the Master taught his apostles and the
  evangelists before they bade him good night and sought rest upon their
  pillows.





2. THE EVANGELISTS IN CHORAZIN

  155:2.1 On Monday morning, May 23, Jesus directed Peter to go over to Chorazin
  with the twelve evangelists while he, with the eleven, departed for Caesarea-
  Philippi, going by way of the Jordan to the Damascus-Capernaum road, thence
  northeast to the junction with the road to Caesarea-Philippi, and then on into
  that city, where they tarried and taught for two weeks. They arrived during
  the afternoon of Tuesday, May 24.

  155:2.2 Peter and the evangelists sojourned in Chorazin for two weeks,
  preaching the gospel of the kingdom to a small but earnest company of
  believers. But they were not able to win many new converts. No city of all
  Galilee yielded so few souls for the kingdom as Chorazin. In accordance with
  Peter's instructions the twelve evangelists had less to say about healing --
  things physical -- while they preached and taught with increased vigor the
  spiritual truths of the heavenly kingdom. These two weeks at Chorazin
  constituted a veritable baptism of adversity for the twelve evangelists in
  that it was the most difficult and unproductive period in their careers up to
  this time. Being thus deprived of the satisfaction of winning souls for the
  kingdom, each of them the more earnestly and honestly took stock of his own
  soul and its progress in the spiritual paths of the new life.

  155:2.3 When it appeared that no more people were minded to seek entrance into
  the kingdom, Peter, on Tuesday, June 7, called his associates together and
  departed for Caesarea-Philippi to join Jesus and the apostles. They arrived
  about noontime on Wednesday and spent the entire evening in rehearsing their
  experiences among the unbelievers of Chorazin. During the discussions of this
  evening Jesus made further reference to the parable of the sower and taught
  them much about the meaning of the apparent failure of life undertakings.





3. AT CAESAREA-PHILIPPI

  155:3.1 Although Jesus did no public work during this two weeks' sojourn near
  Caesarea-Philippi, the apostles held numerous quiet evening meetings in the
  city, and many of the believers came out to the camp to talk with the Master.
  Very few were added to the group of believers as a result of this visit. Jesus
  talked with the apostles each day, and they more clearly discerned that a new
  phase of the work of preaching the kingdom of heaven was now beginning. They
  were commencing to comprehend that the "kingdom of heaven is not meat and
  drink but the realization of the spiritual joy of the acceptance of divine
  sonship."

  155:3.2 The sojourn at Caesarea-Philippi was a real test to the eleven
  apostles; it was a difficult two weeks for them to live through. They were
  well-nigh depressed, and they missed the periodic stimulation of Peter's
  enthusiastic personality. In these times it was truly a great and testing
  adventure to believe in Jesus and go forth to follow after him. Though they
  made few converts during these two weeks, they did learn much that was highly
  profitable from their daily conferences with the Master.

  155:3.3 The apostles learned that the Jews were spiritually stagnant and dying
  because they had crystallized truth into a creed; that when truth becomes
  formulated as a boundary line of self-righteous exclusiveness instead of
  serving as signposts of spiritual guidance and progress, such teachings lose
  their creative and life-giving power and ultimately become merely preservative
  and fossilizing.

  155:3.4 Increasingly they learned from Jesus to look upon human personalities
  in terms of their possibilities in time and in eternity. They learned that
  many souls can best be led to love the unseen God by being first taught to
  love their brethren whom they can see. And it was in this connection that new
  meaning became attached to the Master's pronouncement concerning unselfish
  service for one's fellows: "Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of my
  brethren, you did it to me."

  155:3.5 One of the great lessons of this sojourn at Caesarea had to do with
  the origin of religious traditions, with the grave danger of allowing a sense
  of sacredness to become attached to nonsacred things, common ideas, or
  everyday events. From one conference they emerged with the teaching that true
  religion was man's heartfelt loyalty to his highest and truest convictions.

  155:3.6 Jesus warned his believers that, if their religious longings were only
  material, increasing knowledge of nature would, by progressive displacement of
  the supposed supernatural origin of things, ultimately deprive them of their
  faith in God. But that, if their religion were spiritual, never could the
  progress of physical science disturb their faith in eternal realities and
  divine values.

  155:3.7 They learned that, when religion is wholly spiritual in motive, it
  makes all life more worth while, filling it with high purposes, dignifying it
  with transcendent values, inspiring it with superb motives, all the while
  comforting the human soul with a sublime and sustaining hope. True religion is
  designed to lessen the strain of existence; it releases faith and courage for
  daily living and unselfish serving. Faith promotes spiritual vitality and
  righteous fruitfulness.

  155:3.8 Jesus repeatedly taught his apostles that no civilization could long
  survive the loss of the best in its religion. And he never grew weary of
  pointing out to the twelve the great danger of accepting religious symbols and
  ceremonies in the place of religious experience. His whole earth life was
  consistently devoted to the mission of thawing out the frozen forms of
  religion into the liquid liberties of enlightened sonship.





4. ON THE WAY TO PHOENICIA

  155:4.1 On Thursday morning, June 9, after receiving word regarding the
  progress of the kingdom brought by the messengers of David from Bethsaida,
  this group of twenty-five teachers of truth left Caesarea-Philippi to begin
  their journey to the Phoenician coast. They passed around the marsh country,
  by way of Luz, to the point of junction with the Magdala-Mount Lebanon trail
  road, thence to the crossing with the road leading to Sidon, arriving there
  Friday afternoon.

  155:4.2 While pausing for lunch under the shadow of an overhanging ledge of
  rock, near Luz, Jesus delivered one of the most remarkable addresses which his
  apostles ever listened to throughout all their years of association with him.
  No sooner had they seated themselves to break bread than Simon Peter asked
  Jesus: "Master, since the Father in heaven knows all things, and since his
  spirit is our support in the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth,
  why is it that we flee from the threats of our enemies? Why do we refuse to
  confront the foes of truth?" But before Jesus had begun to answer Peter's
  question, Thomas broke in, asking: "Master, I should really like to know just
  what is wrong with the religion of our enemies at Jerusalem. What is the real
  difference between their religion and ours? Why is it we are at such diversity
  of belief when we all profess to serve the same God?" And when Thomas had
  finished, Jesus said: "While I would not ignore Peter's question, knowing full
  well how easy it would be to misunderstand my reasons for avoiding an open
  clash with the rulers of the Jews at just this time, still it will prove more
  helpful to all of you if I choose rather to answer Thomas's question. And that
  I will proceed to do when you have finished your lunch."





5. THE DISCOURSE ON TRUE RELIGION

  155:5.1 This memorable discourse on religion, summarized and restated in
  modern phraseology, gave expression to the following truths:



  155:5.2 While the religions of the world have a double origin -- natural and
  revelatory -- at any one time and among any one people there are to be found
  three distinct forms of religious devotion. And these three manifestations of
  the religious urge are:



  155:5.3 1. Primitive religion. The seminatural and instinctive urge to fear
  mysterious energies and worship superior forces, chiefly a religion of the
  physical nature, the religion of fear.



  155:5.4 2. The religion of civilization. The advancing religious concepts and
  practices of the civilizing races -- the religion of the mind -- the
  intellectual theology of the authority of established religious tradition.



  155:5.5 3. True religion -- the religion of revelation. The revelation of
  supernatural values, a partial insight into eternal realities, a glimpse of
  the goodness and beauty of the infinite character of the Father in heaven --
  the religion of the spirit as demonstrated in human experience.



  155:5.6 The religion of the physical senses and the superstitious fears of
  natural man, the Master refused to belittle, though he deplored the fact that
  so much of this primitive form of worship should persist in the religious
  forms of the more intelligent races of mankind. Jesus made it clear that the
  great difference between the religion of the mind and the religion of the
  spirit is that, while the former is upheld by ecclesiastical authority, the
  latter is wholly based on human experience.



  155:5.7 And then the Master, in his hour of teaching, went on to make clear
  these truths:



  155:5.8 Until the races become highly intelligent and more fully civilized,
  there will persist many of those childlike and superstitious ceremonies which
  are so characteristic of the evolutionary religious practices of primitive and
  backward peoples. Until the human race progresses to the level of a higher and
  more general recognition of the realities of spiritual experience, large
  numbers of men and women will continue to show a personal preference for those
  religions of authority which require only intellectual assent, in contrast to
  the religion of the spirit, which entails active participation of mind and
  soul in the faith adventure of grappling with the rigorous realities of
  progressive human experience.

  155:5.9 The acceptance of the traditional religions of authority presents the
  easy way out for man's urge to seek satisfaction for the longings of his
  spiritual nature. The settled, crystallized, and established religions of
  authority afford a ready refuge to which the distracted and distraught soul of
  man may flee when harassed by fear and tormented by uncertainty. Such a
  religion requires of its devotees, as the price to be paid for its
  satisfactions and assurances, only a passive and purely intellectual assent.

  155:5.10 And for a long time there will live on earth those timid, fearful,
  and hesitant individuals who will prefer thus to secure their religious
  consolations, even though, in so casting their lot with the religions of
  authority, they compromise the sovereignty of personality, debase the dignity
  of self-respect, and utterly surrender the right to participate in that most
  thrilling and inspiring of all possible human experiences: the personal quest
  for truth, the exhilaration of facing the perils of intellectual discovery,
  the determination to explore the realities of personal religious experience,
  the supreme satisfaction of experiencing the personal triumph of the actual
  realization of the victory of spiritual faith over intellectual doubt as it is
  honestly won in the supreme adventure of all human existence -- man seeking
  God, for himself and as himself, and finding him.

  155:5.11 The religion of the spirit means effort, struggle, conflict, faith,
  determination, love, loyalty, and progress. The religion of the mind -- the
  theology of authority -- requires little or none of these exertions from its
  formal believers. Tradition is a safe refuge and an easy path for those
  fearful and halfhearted souls who instinctively shun the spirit struggles and
  mental uncertainties associated with those faith voyages of daring adventure
  out upon the high seas of unexplored truth in search for the farther shores of
  spiritual realities as they may be discovered by the progressive human mind
  and experienced by the evolving human soul.



  155:5.12 And Jesus went on to say: "At Jerusalem the religious leaders have
  formulated the various doctrines of their traditional teachers and the
  prophets of other days into an established system of intellectual beliefs, a
  religion of authority. The appeal of all such religions is largely to the
  mind. And now are we about to enter upon a deadly conflict with such a
  religion since we will so shortly begin the bold proclamation of a new
  religion -- a religion which is not a religion in the present-day meaning of
  that word, a religion that makes its chief appeal to the divine spirit of my
  Father which resides in the mind of man; a religion which shall derive its
  authority from the fruits of its acceptance that will so certainly appear in
  the personal experience of all who really and truly become believers in the
  truths of this higher spiritual communion."

  155:5.13 Pointing out each of the twenty-four and calling them by name, Jesus
  said: "And now, which one of you would prefer to take this easy path of
  conformity to an established and fossilized religion, as defended by the
  Pharisees at Jerusalem, rather than to suffer the difficulties and
  persecutions attendant upon the mission of proclaiming a better way of
  salvation to men while you realize the satisfaction of discovering for
  yourselves the beauties of the realities of a living and personal experience
  in the eternal truths and supreme grandeurs of the kingdom of heaven? Are you
  fearful, soft, and ease-seeking? Are you afraid to trust your future in the
  hands of the God of truth, whose sons you are? Are you distrustful of the
  Father, whose children you are? Will you go back to the easy path of the
  certainty and intellectual settledness of the religion of traditional
  authority, or will you gird yourselves to go forward with me into that
  uncertain and troublous future of proclaiming the new truths of the religion
  of the spirit, the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of men?"

  155:5.14 All twenty-four of his hearers rose to their feet, intending to
  signify their united and loyal response to this, one of the few emotional
  appeals which Jesus ever made to them, but he raised his hand and stopped
  them, saying: "Go now apart by yourselves, each man alone with the Father, and
  there find the unemotional answer to my question, and having found such a true
  and sincere attitude of soul, speak that answer freely and boldly to my Father
  and your Father, whose infinite life of love is the very spirit of the
  religion we proclaim."

  155:5.15 The evangelists and apostles went apart by themselves for a short
  time. Their spirits were uplifted, their minds were inspired, and their
  emotions mightily stirred by what Jesus had said. But when Andrew called them
  together, the Master said only: "Let us resume our journey. We go into
  Phoenicia to tarry for a season, and all of you should pray the Father to
  transform your emotions of mind and body into the higher loyalties of mind and
  the more satisfying experiences of the spirit."

  155:5.16 As they journeyed on down the road, the twenty-four were silent, but
  presently they began to talk one with another, and by three o'clock that
  afternoon they could not go farther; they came to a halt, and Peter, going up
  to Jesus, said: "Master, you have spoken to us the words of life and truth. We
  would hear more; we beseech you to speak to us further concerning these
  matters."





6. THE SECOND DISCOURSE ON RELIGION

  155:6.1 And so, while they paused in the shade of the hillside, Jesus
  continued to teach them regarding the religion of the spirit, in substance
  saying:



  155:6.2 You have come out from among those of your fellows who choose to
  remain satisfied with a religion of mind, who crave security and prefer
  conformity. You have elected to exchange your feelings of authoritative
  certainty for the assurances of the spirit of adventurous and progressive
  faith. You have dared to protest against the grueling bondage of institutional
  religion and to reject the authority of the traditions of record which are now
  regarded as the word of God. Our Father did indeed speak through Moses,
  Elijah, Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to minister words of
  truth to the world when these prophets of old made an end of their utterances.
  My Father is no respecter of races or generations in that the word of truth is
  vouchsafed one age and withheld from another. Commit not the folly of calling
  that divine which is wholly human, and fail not to discern the words of truth
  which come not through the traditional oracles of supposed inspiration.



  155:6.3 I have called upon you to be born again, to be born of the spirit. I
  have called you out of the darkness of authority and the lethargy of tradition
  into the transcendent light of the realization of the possibility of making
  for yourselves the greatest discovery possible for the human soul to make --
  the supernal experience of finding God for yourself, in yourself, and of
  yourself, and of doing all this as a fact in your own personal experience. And
  so may you pass from death to life, from the authority of tradition to the
  experience of knowing God; thus will you pass from darkness to light, from a
  racial faith inherited to a personal faith achieved by actual experience; and
  thereby will you progress from a theology of mind handed down by your
  ancestors to a true religion of spirit which shall be built up in your souls
  as an eternal endowment.

  155:6.4 Your religion shall change from the mere intellectual belief in
  traditional authority to the actual experience of that living faith which is
  able to grasp the reality of God and all that relates to the divine spirit of
  the Father. The religion of the mind ties you hopelessly to the past; the
  religion of the spirit consists in progressive revelation and ever beckons you
  on toward higher and holier achievements in spiritual ideals and eternal
  realities.

  155:6.5 While the religion of authority may impart a present feeling of
  settled security, you pay for such a transient satisfaction the price of the
  loss of your spiritual freedom and religious liberty. My Father does not
  require of you as the price of entering the kingdom of heaven that you should
  force yourself to subscribe to a belief in things which are spiritually
  repugnant, unholy, and untruthful. It is not required of you that your own
  sense of mercy, justice, and truth should be outraged by submission to an
  outworn system of religious forms and ceremonies. The religion of the spirit
  leaves you forever free to follow the truth wherever the leadings of the
  spirit may take you. And who can judge -- perhaps this spirit may have
  something to impart to this generation which other generations have refused to
  hear?

  155:6.6 Shame on those false religious teachers who would drag hungry souls
  back into the dim and distant past and there leave them! And so are these
  unfortunate persons doomed to become frightened by every new discovery, while
  they are discomfited by every new revelation of truth. The prophet who said,
  "He will be kept in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on God," was not a mere
  intellectual believer in authoritative theology. This truth-knowing human had
  discovered God; he was not merely talking about God.

  155:6.7 I admonish you to give up the practice of always quoting the prophets
  of old and praising the heroes of Israel, and instead aspire to become living
  prophets of the Most High and spiritual heroes of the coming kingdom. To honor
  the God-knowing leaders of the past may indeed be worth while, but why, in so
  doing, should you sacrifice the supreme experience of human existence: finding
  God for yourselves and knowing him in your own souls?

  155:6.8 Every race of mankind has its own mental outlook upon human existence;
  therefore must the religion of the mind ever run true to these various racial
  viewpoints. Never can the religions of authority come to unification. Human
  unity and mortal brotherhood can be achieved only by and through the
  superendowment of the religion of the spirit. Racial minds may differ, but all
  mankind is indwelt by the same divine and eternal spirit. The hope of human
  brotherhood can only be realized when, and as, the divergent mind religions of
  authority become impregnated with, and overshadowed by, the unifying and
  ennobling religion of the spirit -- the religion of personal spiritual
  experience.

  155:6.9 The religions of authority can only divide men and set them in
  conscientious array against each other; the religion of the spirit will
  progressively draw men together and cause them to become understandingly
  sympathetic with one another. The religions of authority require of men
  uniformity in belief, but this is impossible of realization in the present
  state of the world. The religion of the spirit requires only unity of
  experience -- uniformity of destiny -- making full allowance for diversity of
  belief. The religion of the spirit requires only uniformity of insight, not
  uniformity of viewpoint and outlook. The religion of the spirit does not
  demand uniformity of intellectual views, only unity of spirit feeling. The
  religions of authority crystallize into lifeless creeds; the religion of the
  spirit grows into the increasing joy and liberty of ennobling deeds of loving
  service and merciful ministration.

  155:6.10 But watch, lest any of you look with disdain upon the children of
  Abraham because they have fallen on these evil days of traditional barrenness.
  Our forefathers gave themselves up to the persistent and passionate search for
  God, and they found him as no other whole race of men have ever known him
  since the times of Adam, who knew much of this as he was himself a Son of God.
  My Father has not failed to mark the long and untiring struggle of Israel,
  ever since the days of Moses, to find God and to know God. For weary
  generations the Jews have not ceased to toil, sweat, groan, travail, and
  endure the sufferings and experience the sorrows of a misunderstood and
  despised people, all in order that they might come a little nearer the
  discovery of the truth about God. And, notwithstanding all the failures and
  falterings of Israel, our fathers progressively, from Moses to the times of
  Amos and Hosea, did reveal increasingly to the whole world an ever clearer and
  more truthful picture of the eternal God. And so was the way prepared for the
  still greater revelation of the Father which you have been called to share.

  155:6.11 Never forget there is only one adventure which is more satisfying and
  thrilling than the attempt to discover the will of the living God, and that is
  the supreme experience of honestly trying to do that divine will. And fail not
  to remember that the will of God can be done in any earthly occupation. Some
  callings are not holy and others secular. All things are sacred in the lives
  of those who are spirit led; that is, subordinated to truth, ennobled by love,
  dominated by mercy, and restrained by fairness -- justice. The spirit which my
  Father and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but
  also the spirit of idealistic beauty.

  155:6.12 You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the
  olden records of theologic authority. Those who are born of the spirit of God
  shall henceforth discern the word of God regardless of whence it appears to
  take origin. Divine truth must not be discounted because the channel of its
  bestowal is apparently human. Many of your brethren have minds which accept
  the theory of God while they spiritually fail to realize the presence of God.
  And that is just the reason why I have so often taught you that the kingdom of
  heaven can best be realized by acquiring the spiritual attitude of a sincere
  child. It is not the mental immaturity of the child that I commend to you but
  rather the spiritual simplicity of such an easy-believing and fully-trusting
  little one. It is not so important that you should know about the fact of God
  as that you should increasingly grow in the ability to feel the presence of
  God.

  155:6.13 When you once begin to find God in your soul, presently you will
  begin to discover him in other men's souls and eventually in all the creatures
  and creations of a mighty universe. But what chance does the Father have to
  appear as a God of supreme loyalties and divine ideals in the souls of men who
  give little or no time to the thoughtful contemplation of such eternal
  realities? While the mind is not the seat of the spiritual nature, it is
  indeed the gateway thereto.

  155:6.14 But do not make the mistake of trying to prove to other men that you
  have found God; you cannot consciously produce such valid proof, albeit there
  are two positive and powerful demonstrations of the fact that you are God-
  knowing, and they are:



  155:6.15 1. The fruits of the spirit of God showing forth in your daily
  routine life.



  155:6.16 2. The fact that your entire life plan furnishes positive proof that
  you have unreservedly risked everything you are and have on the adventure of
  survival after death in the pursuit of the hope of finding the God of
  eternity, whose presence you have foretasted in time.



  155:6.17 Now, mistake not, my Father will ever respond to the faintest flicker
  of faith. He takes note of the physical and superstitious emotions of the
  primitive man. And with those honest but fearful souls whose faith is so weak
  that it amounts to little more than an intellectual conformity to a passive
  attitude of assent to religions of authority, the Father is ever alert to
  honor and foster even all such feeble attempts to reach out for him. But you
  who have been called out of darkness into the light are expected to believe
  with a whole heart; your faith shall dominate the combined attitudes of body,
  mind, and spirit.

  155:6.18 You are my apostles, and to you religion shall not become a theologic
  shelter to which you may flee in fear of facing the rugged realities of
  spiritual progress and idealistic adventure; but rather shall your religion
  become the fact of real experience which testifies that God has found you,
  idealized, ennobled, and spiritualized you, and that you have enlisted in the
  eternal adventure of finding the God who has thus found and sonshipped you.



  155:6.19 And when Jesus had finished speaking, he beckoned to Andrew and,
  pointing to the west toward Phoenicia, said: "Let us be on our way."




PAPER 156


 THE SOJOURN AT TYRE AND SIDON



  156:0.1 ON FRIDAY afternoon, June 10, Jesus and his associates arrived in the
  environs of Sidon, where they stopped at the home of a well-to-do woman who
  had been a patient in the Bethsaida hospital during the times when Jesus was
  at the height of his popular favor. The evangelists and the apostles were
  lodged with her friends in the immediate neighborhood, and they rested over
  the Sabbath day amid these refreshing surroundings. They spent almost two and
  one-half weeks in Sidon and vicinity before they prepared to visit the coast
  cities to the north.

  156:0.2 This June Sabbath day was one of great quiet. The evangelists and
  apostles were altogether absorbed in their meditations regarding the
  discourses of the Master on religion to which they had listened en route to
  Sidon. They were all able to appreciate something of what he had told them,
  but none of them fully grasped the import of his teaching.





1. THE SYRIAN WOMAN



  156:1.1 There lived near the home of Karuska, where the Master lodged, a
  Syrian woman who had heard much of Jesus as a great healer and teacher, and on
  this Sabbath afternoon she came over, bringing her little daughter. The child,
  about twelve years old, was afflicted with a grievous nervous disorder
  characterized by convulsions and other distressing manifestations.

  156:1.2 Jesus had charged his associates to tell no one of his presence at the
  home of Karuska, explaining that he desired to have a rest. While they had
  obeyed their Master's instructions, the servant of Karuska had gone over to
  the house of this Syrian woman, Norana, to inform her that Jesus lodged at the
  home of her mistress and had urged this anxious mother to bring her afflicted
  daughter for healing. This mother, of course, believed that her child was
  possessed by a demon, an unclean spirit.

  156:1.3 When Norana arrived with her daughter, the Alpheus twins explained
  through an interpreter that the Master was resting and could not be disturbed;
  whereupon Norana replied that she and the child would remain right there until
  the Master had finished his rest. Peter also endeavored to reason with her and
  to persuade her to go home. He explained that Jesus was weary with much
  teaching and healing, and that he had come to Phoenicia for a period of quiet
  and rest. But it was futile; Norana would not leave. To Peter's entreaties she
  replied only: "I will not depart until I have seen your Master. I know he can
  cast the demon out of my child, and I will not go until the healer has looked
  upon my daughter."

  156:1.4 Then Thomas sought to send the woman away but met only with failure.
  To him she said: "I have faith that your Master can cast out this demon which
  torments my child. I have heard of his mighty works in Galilee, and I believe
  in him. What has happened to you, his disciples, that you would send away
  those who come seeking your Master's help?" And when she had thus spoken,
  Thomas withdrew.

  156:1.5 Then came forward Simon Zelotes to remonstrate with Norana. Said
  Simon: "Woman, you are a Greek-speaking gentile. It is not right that you
  should expect the Master to take the bread intended for the children of the
  favored household and cast it to the dogs." But Norana refused to take offense
  at Simon's thrust. She replied only: "Yes, teacher, I understand your words. I
  am only a dog in the eyes of the Jews, but as concerns your Master, I am a
  believing dog. I am determined that he shall see my daughter, for I am
  persuaded that, if he shall but look upon her, he will heal her. And even you,
  my good man, would not dare to deprive the dogs of the privilege of obtaining
  the crumbs which chance to fall from the children's table."

  156:1.6 At just this time the little girl was seized with a violent convulsion
  before them all, and the mother cried out: "There, you can see that my child
  is possessed by an evil spirit. If our need does not impress you, it would
  appeal to your Master, who I have been told loves all men and dares even to
  heal the gentiles when they believe. You are not worthy to be his disciples. I
  will not go until my child has been cured."

  156:1.7 Jesus, who had heard all of this conversation through an open window,
  now came outside, much to their surprise, and said: "O woman, great is your
  faith, so great that I cannot withhold that which you desire; go your way in
  peace. Your daughter already has been made whole." And the little girl was
  well from that hour. As Norana and the child took leave, Jesus entreated them
  to tell no one of this occurrence; and while his associates did comply with
  this request, the mother and the child ceased not to proclaim the fact of the
  little girl's healing throughout all the countryside and even in Sidon, so
  much so that Jesus found it advisable to change his lodgings within a few
  days.



  156:1.8 The next day, as Jesus taught his apostles, commenting on the cure of
  the daughter of the Syrian woman, he said: "And so it has been all the way
  along; you see for yourselves how the gentiles are able to exercise saving
  faith in the teachings of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. Verily, verily,
  I tell you that the Father's kingdom shall be taken by the gentiles if the
  children of Abraham are not minded to show faith enough to enter therein."



2. TEACHING IN SIDON



  156:2.1 In entering Sidon, Jesus and his associates passed over a bridge, the
  first one many of them had ever seen. As they walked over this bridge, Jesus,
  among other things, said: "This world is only a bridge; you may pass over it,
  but you should not think to build a dwelling place upon it."



  156:2.2 As the twenty-four began their labors in Sidon, Jesus went to stay in
  a home just north of the city, the house of Justa and her mother, Bernice.
  Jesus taught the twenty-four each morning at the home of Justa, and they went
  abroad in Sidon to teach and preach during the afternoons and evenings.

  156:2.3 The apostles and the evangelists were greatly cheered by the manner in
  which the gentiles of Sidon received their message; during their short sojourn
  many were added to the kingdom. This period of about six weeks in Phoenicia
  was a very fruitful time in the work of winning souls, but the later Jewish
  writers of the Gospels were wont lightly to pass over the record of this warm
  reception of Jesus' teachings by these gentiles at this very time when such a
  large number of his own people were in hostile array against him.

  156:2.4 In many ways these gentile believers appreciated Jesus' teachings more
  fully than the Jews. Many of these Greek-speaking Syrophoenicians came to know
  not only that Jesus was like God but also that God was like Jesus. These so-
  called heathen achieved a good understanding of the Master's teachings about
  the uniformity of the laws of this world and the entire universe. They grasped
  the teaching that God is no respecter of persons, races, or nations; that
  there is no favoritism with the Universal Father; that the universe is wholly
  and ever law-abiding and unfailingly dependable. These gentiles were not
  afraid of Jesus; they dared to accept his message. All down through the ages
  men have not been unable to comprehend Jesus; they have been afraid to.



  156:2.5 Jesus made it clear to the twenty-four that he had not fled from
  Galilee because he lacked courage to confront his enemies. They comprehended
  that he was not yet ready for an open clash with established religion, and
  that he did not seek to become a martyr. It was during one of these
  conferences at the home of Justa that the Master first told his disciples that
  "even though heaven and earth shall pass away, my words of truth shall not."



  156:2.6 The theme of Jesus' instructions during the sojourn at Sidon was
  spiritual progression. He told them they could not stand still; they must go
  forward in righteousness or retrogress into evil and sin. He admonished them
  to "forget those things which are in the past while you push forward to
  embrace the greater realities of the kingdom." He besought them not to be
  content with their childhood in the gospel but to strive for the attainment of
  the full stature of divine sonship in the communion of the spirit and in the
  fellowship of believers.

  156:2.7 Said Jesus: "My disciples must not only cease to do evil but learn to
  do well; you must not only be cleansed from all conscious sin, but you must
  refuse to harbor even the feelings of guilt. If you confess your sins, they
  are forgiven; therefore must you maintain a conscience void of offense."

  156:2.8 Jesus greatly enjoyed the keen sense of humor which these gentiles
  exhibited. It was the sense of humor displayed by Norana, the Syrian woman, as
  well as her great and persistent faith, that so touched the Master's heart and
  appealed to his mercy. Jesus greatly regretted that his people -- the Jews --
  were so lacking in humor. He once said to Thomas: "My people take themselves
  too seriously; they are just about devoid of an appreciation of humor. The
  burdensome religion of the Pharisees could never have had origin among a
  people with a sense of humor. They also lack consistency; they strain at gnats
  and swallow camels."





3. THE JOURNEY UP THE COAST



  156:3.1 On Tuesday, June 28, the Master and his associates left Sidon, going
  up the coast to Porphyreon and Heldua. They were well received by the
  gentiles, and many were added to the kingdom during this week of teaching and
  preaching. The apostles preached in Porphyreon and the evangelists taught in
  Heldua. While the twenty-four were thus engaged in their work, Jesus left them
  for a period of three or four days, paying a visit to the coast city of
  Beirut, where he visited with a Syrian named Malach, who was a believer, and
  who had been at Bethsaida the year before.

  156:3.2 On Wednesday, July 6, they all returned to Sidon and tarried at the
  home of Justa until Sunday morning, when they departed for Tyre, going south
  along the coast by way of Sarepta, arriving at Tyre on Monday, July 11. By
  this time the apostles and the evangelists were becoming accustomed to working
  among these so-called gentiles, who were in reality mainly descended from the
  earlier Canaanite tribes of still earlier Semitic origin. All of these peoples
  spoke the Greek language. It was a great surprise to the apostles and
  evangelists to observe the eagerness of these gentiles to hear the gospel and
  to note the readiness with which many of them believed.





4. AT TYRE



  156:4.1 From July 11 to July 24 they taught in Tyre. Each of the apostles took
  with him one of the evangelists, and thus two and two they taught and preached
  in all parts of Tyre and its environs. The polyglot population of this busy
  seaport heard them gladly, and many were baptized into the outward fellowship
  of the kingdom. Jesus maintained his headquarters at the home of a Jew named
  Joseph, a believer, who lived three or four miles south of Tyre, not far from
  the tomb of Hiram who had been king of the city-state of Tyre during the times
  of David and Solomon.

  156:4.2 Daily, for this period of two weeks, the apostles and evangelists
  entered Tyre by way of Alexander's mole to conduct small meetings, and each
  night most of them would return to the encampment at Joseph's house south of
  the city. Every day believers came out from the city to talk with Jesus at his
  resting place. The Master spoke in Tyre only once, on the afternoon of July
  20, when he taught the believers concerning the Father's love for all mankind
  and about the mission of the Son to reveal the Father to all races of men.
  There was such an interest in the gospel of the kingdom among these gentiles
  that, on this occasion, the doors of the Melkarth temple were opened to him,
  and it is interesting to record that in subsequent years a Christian church
  was built on the very site of this ancient temple.

  156:4.3 Many of the leaders in the manufacture of Tyrian purple, the dye that
  made Tyre and Sidon famous the world over, and which contributed so much to
  their world-wide commerce and consequent enrichment, believed in the kingdom.
  When, shortly thereafter, the supply of the sea animals which were the source
  of this dye began to diminish, these dye makers went forth in search of new
  habitats of these shellfish. And thus migrating to the ends of the earth, they
  carried with them the message of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
  man -- the gospel of the kingdom.





5. JESUS' TEACHING AT TYRE



  156:5.1 On this Wednesday afternoon, in the course of his address, Jesus first
  told his followers the story of the white lily which rears its pure and snowy
  head high into the sunshine while its roots are grounded in the slime and muck
  of the darkened soil beneath. "Likewise," said he, "mortal man, while he has
  his roots of origin and being in the animal soil of human nature, can by faith
  raise his spiritual nature up into the sunlight of heavenly truth and actually
  bear the noble fruits of the spirit."

  156:5.2 It was during this same sermon that Jesus made use of his first and
  only parable having to do with his own trade -- carpentry. In the course of
  his admonition to "Build well the foundations for the growth of a noble
  character of spiritual endowments," he said: "In order to yield the fruits of
  the spirit, you must be born of the spirit. You must be taught by the spirit
  and be led by the spirit if you would live the spirit-filled life among your
  fellows. But do not make the mistake of the foolish carpenter who wastes
  valuable time squaring, measuring, and smoothing his worm-eaten and inwardly
  rotting timber and then, when he has thus bestowed all of his labor upon the
  unsound beam, must reject it as unfit to enter into the foundations of the
  building which he would construct to withstand the assaults of time and storm.
  Let every man make sure that the intellectual and moral foundations of
  character are such as will adequately support the superstructure of the
  enlarging and ennobling spiritual nature, which is thus to transform the
  mortal mind and then, in association with that re-created mind, is to achieve
  the evolvement of the soul of immortal destiny. Your spirit nature -- the
  jointly created soul -- is a living growth, but the mind and morals of the
  individual are the soil from which these higher manifestations of human
  development and divine destiny must spring. The soil of the evolving soul is
  human and material, but the destiny of this combined creature of mind and
  spirit is spiritual and divine."

  156:5.3 On the evening of this same day Nathaniel asked Jesus: "Master, why do
  we pray that God will lead us not into temptation when we well know from your
  revelation of the Father that he never does such things?" Jesus answered
  Nathaniel:

  156:5.4 "It is not strange that you ask such questions seeing that you are
  beginning to know the Father as I know him, and not as the early Hebrew
  prophets so dimly saw him. You well know how our forefathers were disposed to
  see God in almost everything that happened. They looked for the hand of God in
  all natural occurrences and in every unusual episode of human experience. They
  connected God with both good and evil. They thought he softened the heart of
  Moses and hardened the heart of Pharaoh. When man had a strong urge to do
  something, good or evil, he was in the habit of accounting for these unusual
  emotions by remarking: `The Lord spoke to me saying, do thus and so, or go
  here and there.' Accordingly, since men so often and so violently ran into
  temptation, it became the habit of our forefathers to believe that God led
  them thither for testing, punishing, or strengthening. But you, indeed, now
  know better. You know that men are all too often led into temptation by the
  urge of their own selfishness and by the impulses of their animal natures.
  When you are in this way tempted, I admonish you that, while you recognize
  temptation honestly and sincerely for just what it is, you intelligently
  redirect the energies of spirit, mind, and body, which are seeking expression,
  into higher channels and toward more idealistic goals. In this way may you
  transform your temptations into the highest types of uplifting mortal ministry
  while you almost wholly avoid these wasteful and weakening conflicts between
  the animal and spiritual natures.

  156:5.5 "But let me warn you against the folly of undertaking to surmount
  temptation by the effort of supplanting one desire by another and supposedly
  superior desire through the mere force of the human will. If you would be
  truly triumphant over the temptations of the lesser and lower nature, you must
  come to that place of spiritual advantage where you have really and truly
  developed an actual interest in, and love for, those higher and more
  idealistic forms of conduct which your mind is desirous of substituting for
  these lower and less idealistic habits of behavior that you recognize as
  temptation. You will in this way be delivered through spiritual transformation
  rather than be increasingly overburdened with the deceptive suppression of
  mortal desires. The old and the inferior will be forgotten in the love for the
  new and the superior. Beauty is always triumphant over ugliness in the hearts
  of all who are illuminated by the love of truth. There is mighty power in the
  expulsive energy of a new and sincere spiritual affection. And again I say to
  you, be not overcome by evil but rather overcome evil with good."

  156:5.6 Long into the night the apostles and evangelists continued to ask
  questions, and from the many answers we would present the following thoughts,
  restated in modern phraseology:

  156:5.7 Forceful ambition, intelligent judgment, and seasoned wisdom are the
  essentials of material success. Leadership is dependent on natural ability,
  discretion, will power, and determination. Spiritual destiny is dependent on
  faith, love, and devotion to truth -- hunger and thirst for righteousness --
  the wholehearted desire to find God and to be like him.

  156:5.8 Do not become discouraged by the discovery that you are human. Human
  nature may tend toward evil, but it is not inherently sinful. Be not downcast
  by your failure wholly to forget some of your regrettable experiences. The
  mistakes which you fail to forget in time will be forgotten in eternity.
  Lighten your burdens of soul by speedily acquiring a long-distance view of
  your destiny, a universe expansion of your career.

  156:5.9 Make not the mistake of estimating the soul's worth by the
  imperfections of the mind or by the appetites of the body. Judge not the soul
  nor evaluate its destiny by the standard of a single unfortunate human
  episode. Your spiritual destiny is conditioned only by your spiritual longings
  and purposes.

  156:5.10 Religion is the exclusively spiritual experience of the evolving
  immortal soul of the God-knowing man, but moral power and spiritual energy are
  mighty forces which may be utilized in dealing with difficult social
  situations and in solving intricate economic problems. These moral and
  spiritual endowments make all levels of human living richer and more
  meaningful.

  156:5.11 You are destined to live a narrow and mean life if you learn to love
  only those who love you. Human love may indeed be reciprocal, but divine love
  is outgoing in all its satisfaction-seeking. The less of love in any
  creature's nature, the greater the love need, and the more does divine love
  seek to satisfy such need. Love is never self-seeking, and it cannot be self-
  bestowed. Divine love cannot be self-contained; it must be unselfishly
  bestowed.

  156:5.12 Kingdom believers should possess an implicit faith, a whole-souled
  belief, in the certain triumph of righteousness. Kingdom builders must be
  undoubting of the truth of the gospel of eternal salvation. Believers must
  increasingly learn how to step aside from the rush of life -- escape the
  harassments of material existence -- while they refresh the soul, inspire the
  mind, and renew the spirit by worshipful communion.

  156:5.13 God-knowing individuals are not discouraged by misfortune or downcast
  by disappointment. Believers are immune to the depression consequent upon
  purely material upheavals; spirit livers are not perturbed by the episodes of
  the material world. Candidates for eternal life are practitioners of an
  invigorating and constructive technique for meeting all of the vicissitudes
  and harassments of mortal living. Every day a true believer lives, he finds it
  easier to do the right thing.

  156:5.14 Spiritual living mightily increases true self-respect. But self-
  respect is not self-admiration. Self-respect is always co-ordinate with the
  love and service of one's fellows. It is not possible to respect yourself more
  than you love your neighbor; the one is the measure of the capacity for the
  other.

  156:5.15 As the days pass, every true believer becomes more skillful in
  alluring his fellows into the love of eternal truth. Are you more resourceful
  in revealing goodness to humanity today than you were yesterday? Are you a
  better righteousness recommender this year than you were last year? Are you
  becoming increasingly artistic in your technique of leading hungry souls into
  the spiritual kingdom?

  156:5.16 Are your ideals sufficiently high to insure your eternal salvation
  while your ideas are so practical as to render you a useful citizen to
  function on earth in association with your mortal fellows? In the spirit, your
  citizenship is in heaven; in the flesh, you are still citizens of the earth
  kingdoms. Render to the Caesars the things which are material and to God those
  which are spiritual.

  156:5.17 The measure of the spiritual capacity of the evolving soul is your
  faith in truth and your love for man, but the measure of your human strength
  of character is your ability to resist the holding of grudges and your
  capacity to withstand brooding in the face of deep sorrow. Defeat is the true
  mirror in which you may honestly view your real self.

  156:5.18 As you grow older in years and more experienced in the affairs of the
  kingdom, are you becoming more tactful in dealing with troublesome mortals and
  more tolerant in living with stubborn associates? Tact is the fulcrum of
  social leverage, and tolerance is the earmark of a great soul. If you possess
  these rare and charming gifts, as the days pass you will become more alert and
  expert in your worthy efforts to avoid all unnecessary social
  misunderstandings. Such wise souls are able to avoid much of the trouble which
  is certain to be the portion of all who suffer from lack of emotional
  adjustment, those who refuse to grow up, and those who refuse to grow old
  gracefully.

  156:5.19 Avoid dishonesty and unfairness in all your efforts to preach truth
  and proclaim the gospel. Seek no unearned recognition and crave no undeserved
  sympathy. Love, freely receive from both divine and human sources regardless
  of your deserts, and love freely in return. But in all other things related to
  honor and adulation seek only that which honestly belongs to you.

  156:5.20 The God-conscious mortal is certain of salvation; he is unafraid of
  life; he is honest and consistent. He knows how bravely to endure unavoidable
  suffering; he is uncomplaining when faced by inescapable hardship.

  156:5.21 The true believer does not grow weary in well-doing just because he
  is thwarted. Difficulty whets the ardor of the truth lover, while obstacles
  only challenge the exertions of the undaunted kingdom builder.



  156:5.22 And many other things Jesus taught them before they made ready to
  depart from Tyre.

  156:5.23 The day before Jesus left Tyre for the return to the region of the
  Sea of Galilee, he called his associates together and directed the twelve
  evangelists to go back by a route different from that which he and the twelve
  apostles were to take. And after the evangelists here left Jesus, they were
  never again so intimately associated with him.





6. THE RETURN FROM PHOENICIA



  156:6.1 About noon on Sunday, July 24, Jesus and the twelve left the home of
  Joseph, south of Tyre, going down the coast to Ptolemais. Here they tarried
  for a day, speaking words of comfort to the company of believers resident
  there. Peter preached to them on the evening of July 25.

  156:6.2 On Tuesday they left Ptolemais, going east inland to near Jotapata by
  way of the Tiberias road. Wednesday they stopped at Jotapata and instructed
  the believers further in the things of the kingdom. Thursday they left
  Jotapata, going north on the Nazareth-Mount Lebanon trail to the village of
  Zebulun, by way of Ramah. They held meetings at Ramah on Friday and remained
  over the Sabbath. They reached Zebulun on Sunday, the 31st, holding a meeting
  that evening and departing the next morning.

  156:6.3 Leaving Zebulun, they journeyed over to the junction with the Magdala-
  Sidon road near Gischala, and thence they made their way to Gennesaret on the
  western shores of the lake of Galilee, south of Capernaum, where they had
  appointed to meet with David Zebedee, and where they intended to take counsel
  as to the next move to be made in the work of preaching the gospel of the
  kingdom.

  156:6.4 During a brief conference with David they learned that many leaders
  were then gathered together on the opposite side of the lake near Kheresa, and
  accordingly, that very evening a boat took them across. For one day they
  rested quietly in the hills, going on the next day to the park, near by, where
  the Master once fed the five thousand. Here they rested for three days and
  held daily conferences, which were attended by about fifty men and women, the
  remnants of the once numerous company of believers resident in Capernaum and
  its environs.



  156:6.5 While Jesus was absent from Capernaum and Galilee, the period of the
  Phoenician sojourn, his enemies reckoned that the whole movement had been
  broken up and concluded that Jesus' haste in withdrawing indicated he was so
  thoroughly frightened that he would not likely ever return to bother them. All
  active opposition to his teachings had about subsided. The believers were
  beginning to hold public meetings once more, and there was occurring a gradual
  but effective consolidation of the tried and true survivors of the great
  sifting through which the gospel believers had just passed.

  156:6.6 Philip, the brother of Herod, had become a halfhearted believer in
  Jesus and sent word that the Master was free to live and work in his domains.

  156:6.7 The mandate to close the synagogues of all Jewry to the teachings of
  Jesus and all his followers had worked adversely upon the scribes and
  Pharisees. Immediately upon Jesus' removing himself as an object of
  controversy, there occurred a reaction among the entire Jewish people; there
  was general resentment against the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin leaders at
  Jerusalem. Many of the rulers of the synagogues began surreptitiously to open
  their synagogues to Abner and his associates, claiming that these teachers
  were followers of John and not disciples of Jesus.

  156:6.8 Even Herod Antipas experienced a change of heart and, on learning that
  Jesus was sojourning across the lake in the territory of his brother Philip,
  sent word to him that, while he had signed warrants for his arrest in Galilee,
  he had not so authorized his apprehension in Perea, thus indicating that Jesus
  would not be molested if he remained outside of Galilee; and he communicated
  this same ruling to the Jews at Jerusalem.

  156:6.9 And that was the situation about the first of August, A.D. 29, when
  the Master returned from the Phoenician mission and began the reorganization
  of his scattered, tested, and depleted forces for this last and eventful year
  of his mission on earth.

  156:6.10 The issues of battle are clearly drawn as the Master and his
  associates prepare to begin the proclamation of a new religion, the religion
  of the spirit of the living God who dwells in the minds of men.


PAPER 157


 AT CAESAREA-PHILIPPI



  157:0.1 BEFORE Jesus took the twelve for a short sojourn in the vicinity of
  Caesarea-Philippi, he arranged through the messengers of David to go over to
  Capernaum on Sunday, August 7, for the purpose of meeting his family. By
  prearrangement this visit was to occur at the Zebedee boatshop. David Zebedee
  had arranged with Jude, Jesus' brother, for the presence of the entire
  Nazareth family -- Mary and all of Jesus' brothers and sisters -- and Jesus
  went with Andrew and Peter to keep this appointment. It was certainly the
  intention of Mary and the children to keep this engagement, but it so happened
  that a group of the Pharisees, knowing that Jesus was on the opposite side of
  the lake in Philip's domains, decided to call upon Mary to learn what they
  could of his whereabouts. The arrival of these Jerusalem emissaries greatly
  perturbed Mary, and noting the tension and nervousness of the entire family,
  they concluded that Jesus must have been expected to pay them a visit.
  Accordingly they installed themselves in Mary's home and, after summoning
  reinforcements, waited patiently for Jesus' arrival. And this, of course,
  effectively prevented any of the family from attempting to keep their
  appointment with Jesus. Several times during the day both Jude and Ruth
  endeavored to elude the vigilance of the Pharisees in their efforts to send
  word to Jesus, but it was of no avail.

  157:0.2 Early in the afternoon David's messengers brought Jesus word that the
  Pharisees were encamped on the doorstep of his mother's house, and therefore
  he made no attempt to visit his family. And so again, through no fault of
  either, Jesus and his earth family failed to make contact.





1. THE TEMPLE-TAX COLLECTOR



  157:1.1 As Jesus, with Andrew and Peter, tarried by the lake near the
  boatshop, a temple-tax collector came upon them and, recognizing Jesus, called
  Peter to one side and said: "Does not your Master pay the temple tax?" Peter
  was inclined to show indignation at the suggestion that Jesus should be
  expected to contribute to the maintenance of the religious activities of his
  sworn enemies, but, noting a peculiar expression on the face of the tax
  collector, he rightly surmised that it was the purpose to entrap them in the
  act of refusing to pay the customary half shekel for the support of the temple
  services at Jerusalem. Accordingly, Peter replied: "Why of course the Master
  pays the temple tax. You wait by the gate, and I will presently return with
  the tax."

  157:1.2 Now Peter had spoken hastily. Judas carried their funds, and he was
  across the lake. Neither he, his brother, nor Jesus had brought along any
  money. And knowing that the Pharisees were looking for them, they could not
  well go to Bethsaida to obtain money. When Peter told Jesus about the
  collector and that he had promised him the money, Jesus said: "If you have
  promised, then should you pay. But wherewith will you redeem your promise?
  Will you again become a fisherman that you may honor your word? Nevertheless,
  Peter, it is well in the circumstances that we pay the tax. Let us give these
  men no occasion for offense at our attitude. We will wait here while you go
  with the boat and cast for the fish, and when you have sold them at yonder
  market, pay the collector for all three of us."

  157:1.3 All of this had been overheard by the secret messenger of David who
  stood near by, and who then signaled to an associate, fishing near the shore,
  to come in quickly. When Peter made ready to go out in the boat for a catch,
  this messenger and his fisherman friend presented him with several large
  baskets of fish and assisted him in carrying them to the fish merchant near
  by, who purchased the catch, paying sufficient, with what was added by the
  messenger of David, to meet the temple tax for the three. The collector
  accepted the tax, forgoing the penalty for tardy payment because they had been
  for some time absent from Galilee.

  157:1.4 It is not strange that you have a record of Peter's catching a fish
  with a shekel in its mouth. In those days there were current many stories
  about finding treasures in the mouths of fishes; such tales of near miracles
  were commonplace. So, as Peter left them to go toward the boat, Jesus
  remarked, half-humorously: "Strange that the sons of the king must pay
  tribute; usually it is the stranger who is taxed for the upkeep of the court,
  but it behooves us to afford no stumbling block for the authorities. Go hence!
  maybe you will catch the fish with the shekel in its mouth." Jesus having thus
  spoken, and Peter so soon appearing with the temple tax, it is not surprising
  that the episode became later expanded into a miracle as recorded by the
  writer of Matthew's Gospel.

  157:1.5 Jesus, with Andrew and Peter, waited by the seashore until nearly
  sundown. Messengers brought them word that Mary's house was still under
  surveillance; therefore, when it grew dark, the three waiting men entered
  their boat and slowly rowed away toward the eastern shore of the Sea of
  Galilee.





2. AT BETHSAIDA-JULIAS



  157:2.1 On Monday, August 8, while Jesus and the twelve apostles were encamped
  in Magadan Park, near Bethsaida-Julias, more than one hundred believers, the
  evangelists, the women's corps, and others interested in the establishment of
  the kingdom, came over from Capernaum for a conference. And many of the
  Pharisees, learning that Jesus was here, came also. By this time some of the
  Sadducees were united with the Pharisees in their effort to entrap Jesus.
  Before going into the closed conference with the believers, Jesus held a
  public meeting at which the Pharisees were present, and they heckled the
  Master and otherwise sought to disturb the assembly. Said the leader of the
  disturbers: "Teacher, we would like you to give us a sign of your authority to
  teach, and then, when the same shall come to pass, all men will know that you
  have been sent by God." And Jesus answered them: "When it is evening, you say
  it will be fair weather, for the heaven is red; in the morning it will be foul
  weather, for the heaven is red and lowering. When you see a cloud rising in
  the west, you say showers will come; when the wind blows from the south, you
  say scorching heat will come. How is it that you so well know how to discern
  the face of the heavens but are so utterly unable to discern the signs of the
  times? To those who would know the truth, already has a sign been given; but
  to an evil-minded and hypocritical generation no sign shall be given."



  157:2.2 When Jesus had thus spoken, he withdrew and prepared for the evening
  conference with his followers. At this conference it was decided to undertake
  a united mission throughout all the cities and villages of the Decapolis as
  soon as Jesus and the twelve should return from their proposed visit to
  Caesarea-Philippi. The Master participated in planning for the Decapolis
  mission and, in dismissing the company, said: "I say to you, beware of the
  leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Be not deceived by their show of
  much learning and by their profound loyalty to the forms of religion. Be only
  concerned with the spirit of living truth and the power of true religion. It
  is not the fear of a dead religion that will save you but rather your faith in
  a living experience in the spiritual realities of the kingdom. Do not allow
  yourselves to become blinded by prejudice and paralyzed by fear. Neither
  permit reverence for the traditions so to pervert your understanding that your
  eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the purpose of true religion
  merely to bring peace but rather to insure progress. And there can be no peace
  in the heart or progress in the mind unless you fall wholeheartedly in love
  with truth, the ideals of eternal realities. The issues of life and death are
  being set before you -- the sinful pleasures of time against the righteous
  realities of eternity. Even now you should begin to find deliverance from the
  bondage of fear and doubt as you enter upon the living of the new life of
  faith and hope. And when the feelings of service for your fellow men arise
  within your soul, do not stifle them; when the emotions of love for your
  neighbor well up within your heart, give expression to such urges of affection
  in intelligent ministry to the real needs of your fellows."





3. PETER'S CONFESSION



  157:3.1 Early Tuesday morning Jesus and the twelve apostles left Magadan Park
  for Caesarea-Philippi, the capital of the Tetrarch Philip's domain. Caesarea-
  Philippi was situated in a region of wondrous beauty. It nestled in a charming
  valley between scenic hills where the Jordan poured forth from an underground
  cave. The heights of Mount Hermon were in full view to the north, while from
  the hills just to the south a magnificent view was had of the upper Jordan and
  the Sea of Galilee.

  157:3.2 Jesus had gone to Mount Hermon in his early experience with the
  affairs of the kingdom, and now that he was entering upon the final epoch of
  his work, he desired to return to this mount of trial and triumph, where he
  hoped the apostles might gain a new vision of their responsibilities and
  acquire new strength for the trying times just ahead. As they journeyed along
  the way, about the time of passing south of the Waters of Merom, the apostles
  fell to talking among themselves about their recent experiences in Phoenicia
  and elsewhere and to recounting how their message had been received, and how
  the different peoples regarded their Master.

  157:3.3 As they paused for lunch, Jesus suddenly confronted the twelve with
  the first question he had ever addressed to them concerning himself. He asked
  this surprising question, "Who do men say that I am?"



  157:3.4 Jesus had spent long months in training these apostles as to the
  nature and character of the kingdom of heaven, and he well knew the time had
  come when he must begin to teach them more about his own nature and his
  personal relationship to the kingdom. And now, as they were seated under the
  mulberry trees, the Master made ready to hold one of the most momentous
  sessions of his long association with the chosen apostles.



  157:3.5 More than half the apostles participated in answering Jesus' question.
  They told him that he was regarded as a prophet or as an extraordinary man by
  all who knew him; that even his enemies greatly feared him, accounting for his
  powers by the indictment that he was in league with the prince of devils. They
  told him that some in Judea and Samaria who had not met him personally
  believed he was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Peter explained that he
  had been, at sundry times and by various persons, compared with Moses, Elijah,
  Isaiah, and Jeremiah. When Jesus had listened to this report, he drew himself
  upon his feet, and looking down upon the twelve sitting about him in a
  semicircle, with startling emphasis he pointed to them with a sweeping gesture
  of his hand and asked, "But who say you that I am?" There was a moment of
  tense silence. The twelve never took their eyes off the Master, and then Simon
  Peter, springing to his feet, exclaimed: "You are the Deliverer, the Son of
  the living God." And the eleven sitting apostles arose to their feet with one
  accord, thereby indicating that Peter had spoken for all of them.

  157:3.6 When Jesus had beckoned them again to be seated, and while still
  standing before them, he said: "This has been revealed to you by my Father.
  The hour has come when you should know the truth about me. But for the time
  being I charge you that you tell this to no man. Let us go hence."

  157:3.7 And so they resumed their journey to Caesarea-Philippi, arriving late
  that evening and stopping at the home of Celsus, who was expecting them. The
  apostles slept little that night; they seemed to sense that a great event in
  their lives and in the work of the kingdom had transpired.





4. THE TALK ABOUT THE KINGDOM



  157:4.1 Since the occasions of Jesus' baptism by John and the turning of the
  water into wine at Cana, the apostles had, at various times, virtually
  accepted him as the Messiah. For short periods some of them had truly believed
  that he was the expected Deliverer. But hardly would such hopes spring up in
  their hearts than the Master would dash them to pieces by some crushing word
  or disappointing deed. They had long been in a state of turmoil due to
  conflict between the concepts of the expected Messiah which they held in their
  minds and the experience of their extraordinary association with this
  extraordinary man which they held in their hearts.

  157:4.2 It was late forenoon on this Wednesday when the apostles assembled in
  Celsus' garden for their noontime meal. During most of the night and since
  they had arisen that morning, Simon Peter and Simon Zelotes had been earnestly
  laboring with their brethren to bring them all to the point of the
  wholehearted acceptance of the Master, not merely as the Messiah, but also as
  the divine Son of the living God. The two Simons were well-nigh agreed in
  their estimate of Jesus, and they labored diligently to bring their brethren
  around to the full acceptance of their views. While Andrew continued as the
  director-general of the apostolic corps, his brother, Simon Peter, was
  becoming, increasingly and by common consent, the spokesman for the twelve.

  157:4.3 They were all seated in the garden at just about noon when the Master
  appeared. They wore expressions of dignified solemnity, and all arose to their
  feet as he approached them. Jesus relieved the tension by that friendly and
  fraternal smile which was so characteristic of him when his followers took
  themselves, or some happening related to themselves, too seriously. With a
  commanding gesture he indicated that they should be seated. Never again did
  the twelve greet their Master by arising when he came into their presence.
  They saw that he did not approve of such an outward show of respect.

  157:4.4 After they had partaken of their meal and were engaged in discussing
  plans for the forthcoming tour of the Decapolis, Jesus suddenly looked up into
  their faces and said: "Now that a full day has passed since you assented to
  Simon Peter's declaration regarding the identity of the Son of Man, I would
  ask if you still hold to your decision?" On hearing this, the twelve stood
  upon their feet, and Simon Peter, stepping a few paces forward toward Jesus,
  said: "Yes, Master, we do. We believe that you are the Son of the living God."
  And Peter sat down with his brethren.

  157:4.5 Jesus, still standing, then said to the twelve: "You are my chosen
  ambassadors, but I know that, in the circumstances, you could not entertain
  this belief as a result of mere human knowledge. This is a revelation of the
  spirit of my Father to your inmost souls. And when, therefore, you make this
  confession by the insight of the spirit of my Father which dwells within you,
  I am led to declare that upon this foundation will I build the brotherhood of
  the kingdom of heaven. Upon this rock of spiritual reality will I build the
  living temple of spiritual fellowship in the eternal realities of my Father's
  kingdom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not prevail against
  this human fraternity of the divine spirit. And while my Father's spirit shall
  ever be the divine guide and mentor of all who enter the bonds of this spirit
  fellowship, to you and your successors I now deliver the keys of the outward
  kingdom -- the authority over things temporal -- the social and economic
  features of this association of men and women as fellows of the kingdom." And
  again he charged them, for the time being, that they should tell no man that
  he was the Son of God.



  157:4.6 Jesus was beginning to have faith in the loyalty and integrity of his
  apostles. The Master conceived that a faith which could stand what his chosen
  representatives had recently passed through would undoubtedly endure the fiery
  trials which were just ahead and emerge from the apparent wreckage of all
  their hopes into the new light of a new dispensation and thereby be able to go
  forth to enlighten a world sitting in darkness. On this day the Master began
  to believe in the faith of his apostles, save one.

  157:4.7 And ever since that day this same Jesus has been building that living
  temple upon that same eternal foundation of his divine sonship, and those who
  thereby become self-conscious sons of God are the human stones which
  constitute this living temple of sonship erecting to the glory and honor of
  the wisdom and love of the eternal Father of spirits.



  157:4.8 And when Jesus had thus spoken, he directed the twelve to go apart by
  themselves in the hills to seek wisdom, strength, and spiritual guidance until
  the time of the evening meal. And they did as the Master admonished them.





5. THE NEW CONCEPT



  157:5.1 The new and vital feature of Peter's confession was the clear-cut
  recognition that Jesus was the Son of God, of his unquestioned divinity. Ever
  since his baptism and the wedding at Cana these apostles had variously
  regarded him as the Messiah, but it was not a part of the Jewish concept of
  the national deliverer that he should be divine. The Jews had not taught that
  the Messiah would spring from divinity; he was to be the "anointed one," but
  hardly had they contemplated him as being "the Son of God." In the second
  confession more emphasis was placed upon the combined nature, the supernal
  fact that he was the Son of Man and the Son of God, and it was upon this great
  truth of the union of the human nature with the divine nature that Jesus
  declared he would build the kingdom of heaven.

  157:5.2 Jesus had sought to live his life on earth and complete his bestowal
  mission as the Son of Man. His followers were disposed to regard him as the
  expected Messiah. Knowing that he could never fulfill their Messianic
  expectations, he endeavored to effect such a modification of their concept of
  the Messiah as would enable him partially to meet their expectations. But he
  now recognized that such a plan could hardly be carried through successfully.
  He therefore elected boldly to disclose the third plan -- openly to announce
  his divinity, acknowledge the truthfulness of Peter's confession, and directly
  proclaim to the twelve that he was a Son of God.

  157:5.3 For three years Jesus had been proclaiming that he was the "Son of
  Man," while for these same three years the apostles had been increasingly
  insistent that he was the expected Jewish Messiah. He now disclosed that he
  was the Son of God, and upon the concept of the combined nature of the Son of
  Man and the Son of God, he determined to build the kingdom of heaven. He had
  decided to refrain from further efforts to convince them that he was not the
  Messiah. He now proposed boldly to reveal to them what he is, and then to
  ignore their determination to persist in regarding him as the Messiah.





6. THE NEXT AFTERNOON



  157:6.1 Jesus and the apostles remained another day at the home of Celsus,
  waiting for messengers to arrive from David Zebedee with funds. Following the
  collapse of the popularity of Jesus with the masses there occurred a great
  falling off in revenue. When they reached Caesarea-Philippi, the treasury was
  empty. Matthew was loath to leave Jesus and his brethren at such a time, and
  he had no ready funds of his own to hand over to Judas as he had so many times
  done in the past. However, David Zebedee had foreseen this probable diminution
  of revenue and had accordingly instructed his messengers that, as they made
  their way through Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, they should act as collectors
  of money to be forwarded to the exiled apostles and their Master. And so, by
  evening of this day, these messengers arrived from Bethsaida bringing funds
  sufficient to sustain the apostles until their return to embark upon the
  Decapolis tour. Matthew expected to have money from the sale of his last piece
  of property in Capernaum by that time, having arranged that these funds should
  be anonymously turned over to Judas.



  157:6.2 Neither Peter nor the other apostles had a very adequate conception of
  Jesus' divinity. They little realized that this was the beginning of a new
  epoch in their Master's career on earth, the time when the teacher-healer was
  becoming the newly conceived Messiah -- the Son of God. From this time on a
  new note appeared in the Master's message. Henceforth his one ideal of living
  was the revelation of the Father, while his one idea in teaching was to
  present to his universe the personification of that supreme wisdom which can
  only be comprehended by living it. He came that we all might have life and
  have it more abundantly.

  157:6.3 Jesus now entered upon the fourth and last stage of his human life in
  the flesh. The first stage was that of his childhood, the years when he was
  only dimly conscious of his origin, nature, and destiny as a human being. The
  second stage was the increasingly self-conscious years of youth and advancing
  manhood, during which he came more clearly to comprehend his divine nature and
  human mission. This second stage ended with the experiences and revelations
  associated with his baptism. The third stage of the Master's earth experience
  extended from the baptism through the years of his ministry as teacher and
  healer and up to this momentous hour of Peter's confession at Caesarea-
  Philippi. This third period of his earth life embraced the times when his
  apostles and his immediate followers knew him as the Son of Man and regarded
  him as the Messiah. The fourth and last period of his earth career began here
  at Caesarea-Philippi and extended on to the crucifixion. This stage of his
  ministry was characterized by his acknowledgment of divinity and embraced the
  labors of his last year in the flesh. During the fourth period, while the
  majority of his followers still regarded him as the Messiah, he became known
  to the apostles as the Son of God. Peter's confession marked the beginning of
  the new period of the more complete realization of the truth of his supreme
  ministry as a bestowal Son on Urantia and for an entire universe, and the
  recognition of that fact, at least hazily, by his chosen ambassadors.

  157:6.4 Thus did Jesus exemplify in his life what he taught in his religion:
  the growth of the spiritual nature by the technique of living progress. He did
  not place emphasis, as did his later followers, upon the incessant struggle
  between the soul and the body. He rather taught that the spirit was easy
  victor over both and effective in the profitable reconciliation of much of
  this intellectual and instinctual warfare.



  157:6.5 A new significance attaches to all of Jesus' teachings from this point
  on. Before Caesarea-Philippi he presented the gospel of the kingdom as its
  master teacher. After Caesarea-Philippi he appeared not merely as a teacher
  but as the divine representative of the eternal Father, who is the center and
  circumference of this spiritual kingdom, and it was required that he do all
  this as a human being, the Son of Man.

  157:6.6 Jesus had sincerely endeavored to lead his followers into the
  spiritual kingdom as a teacher, then as a teacher-healer, but they would not
  have it so. He well knew that his earth mission could not possibly fulfill the
  Messianic expectations of the Jewish people; the olden prophets had portrayed
  a Messiah which he could never be. He sought to establish the Father's kingdom
  as the Son of Man, but his followers would not go forward in the adventure.
  Jesus, seeing this, then elected to meet his believers part way and in so
  doing prepared openly to assume the role of the bestowal Son of God.

  157:6.7 Accordingly, the apostles heard much that was new as Jesus talked to
  them this day in the garden. And some of these pronouncements sounded strange
  even to them. Among other startling announcements they listened to such as the
  following:



  157:6.8 "From this time on, if any man would have fellowship with us, let him
  assume the obligations of sonship and follow me. And when I am no more with
  you, think not that the world will treat you better than it did your Master.
  If you love me, prepare to prove this affection by your willingness to make
  the supreme sacrifice."



  157:6.9 "And mark well my words: I have not come to call the righteous, but
  sinners. The Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister and to
  bestow his life as the gift for all. I declare to you that I have come to seek
  and to save those who are lost."



  157:6.10 "No man in this world now sees the Father except the Son who came
  forth from the Father. But if the Son be lifted up, he will draw all men to
  himself, and whosoever believes this truth of the combined nature of the Son
  shall be endowed with life that is more than age-abiding."



  157:6.11 "We may not yet proclaim openly that the Son of Man is the Son of
  God, but it has been revealed to you; wherefore do I speak boldly to you
  concerning these mysteries. Though I stand before you in this physical
  presence, I came forth from God the Father. Before Abraham was, I am. I did
  come forth from the Father into this world as you have known me, and I declare
  to you that I must presently leave this world and return to the work of my
  Father."



  157:6.12 "And now can your faith comprehend the truth of these declarations in
  the face of my warning you that the Son of Man will not meet the expectations
  of your fathers as they conceived the Messiah? My kingdom is not of this
  world. Can you believe the truth about me in the face of the fact that, though
  the foxes have holes and the birds of heaven have nests, I have not where to
  lay my head?"



  157:6.13 "Nevertheless, I tell you that the Father and I are one. He who has
  seen me has seen the Father. My Father is working with me in all these things,
  and he will never leave me alone in my mission, even as I will never forsake
  you when you presently go forth to proclaim this gospel throughout the world.

  157:6.14 "And now have I brought you apart with me and by yourselves for a
  little while that you may comprehend the glory, and grasp the grandeur, of the
  life to which I have called you: the faith-adventure of the establishment of
  my Father's kingdom in the hearts of mankind, the building of my fellowship of
  living association with the souls of all who believe this gospel."



  157:6.15 The apostles listened to these bold and startling statements in
  silence; they were stunned. And they dispersed in small groups to discuss and
  ponder the Master's words. They had confessed that he was the Son of God, but
  they could not grasp the full meaning of what they had been led to do.





7. ANDREW'S CONFERENCE



  157:7.1 That evening Andrew took it upon himself to hold a personal and
  searching conference with each of his brethren, and he had profitable and
  heartening talks with all of his associates except Judas Iscariot. Andrew had
  never enjoyed such intimate personal association with Judas as with the other
  apostles and therefore had not thought it of serious account that Judas never
  had freely and confidentially related himself to the head of the apostolic
  corps. But Andrew was now so worried by Judas's attitude that, later on that
  night, after all the apostles were fast asleep, he sought out Jesus and
  presented his cause for anxiety to the Master. Said Jesus: "It is not amiss,
  Andrew, that you have come to me with this matter, but there is nothing more
  that we can do; only go on placing the utmost confidence in this apostle. And
  say nothing to his brethren concerning this talk with me."

  157:7.2 And that was all Andrew could elicit from Jesus. Always had there been
  some strangeness between this Judean and his Galilean brethren. Judas had been
  shocked by the death of John the Baptist, severely hurt by the Master's
  rebukes on several occasions, disappointed when Jesus refused to be made king,
  humiliated when he fled from the Pharisees, chagrined when he refused to
  accept the challenge of the Pharisees for a sign, bewildered by the refusal of
  his Master to resort to manifestations of power, and now, more recently,
  depressed and sometimes dejected by an empty treasury. And Judas missed the
  stimulus of the multitudes.

  157:7.3 Each of the other apostles was, in some and varying measure, likewise
  affected by these selfsame trials and tribulations, but they loved Jesus. At
  least they must have loved the Master more than did Judas, for they went
  through with him to the bitter end.

  157:7.4 Being from Judea, Judas took personal offense at Jesus' recent warning
  to the apostles to "beware the leaven of the Pharisees"; he was disposed to
  regard this statement as a veiled reference to himself. But the great mistake
  of Judas was: Time and again, when Jesus would send his apostles off by
  themselves to pray, Judas, instead of engaging in sincere communion with the
  spiritual forces of the universe, indulged in thoughts of human fear while he
  persisted in the entertainment of subtle doubts about the mission of Jesus as
  well as giving in to his unfortunate tendency to harbor feelings of revenge.



  157:7.5 And now Jesus would take his apostles along with him to Mount Hermon,
  where he had appointed to inaugurate his fourth phase of earth ministry as the
  Son of God. Some of them were present at his baptism in the Jordan and had
  witnessed the beginning of his career as the Son of Man, and he desired that
  some of them should also be present to hear his authority for the assumption
  of the new and public role of a Son of God. Accordingly, on the morning of
  Friday, August 12, Jesus said to the twelve: "Lay in provisions and prepare
  yourselves for a journey to yonder mountain, where the spirit bids me go to be
  endowed for the finish of my work on earth. And I would take my brethren along
  that they may also be strengthened for the trying times of going with me
  through this experience."


PAPER 158


 THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION



  158:0.1 IT WAS near sundown on Friday afternoon, August 12, A.D. 29, when
  Jesus and his associates reached the foot of Mount Hermon, near the very place
  where the lad Tiglath once waited while the Master ascended the mountain alone
  to settle the spiritual destinies of Urantia and technically to terminate the
  Lucifer rebellion. And here they sojourned for two days in spiritual
  preparation for the events so soon to follow.

  158:0.2 In a general way, Jesus knew beforehand what was to transpire on the
  mountain, and he much desired that all his apostles might share this
  experience. It was to fit them for this revelation of himself that he tarried
  with them at the foot of the mountain. But they could not attain those
  spiritual levels which would justify their exposure to the full experience of
  the visitation of the celestial beings so soon to appear on earth. And since
  he could not take all of his associates with him, he decided to take only the
  three who were in the habit of accompanying him on such special vigils.
  Accordingly, only Peter, James, and John shared even a part of this unique
  experience with the Master.





1. THE TRANSFIGURATION



  158:1.1 Early on the morning of Monday, August 15, Jesus and the three
  apostles began the ascent of Mount Hermon, and this was six days after the
  memorable noontide confession of Peter by the roadside under the mulberry
  trees.

  158:1.2 Jesus had been summoned to go up on the mountain, apart by himself,
  for the transaction of important matters having to do with the progress of his
  bestowal in the flesh as this experience was related to the universe of his
  own creation. It is significant that this extraordinary event was timed to
  occur while Jesus and the apostles were in the lands of the gentiles, and that
  it actually transpired on a mountain of the gentiles.

  158:1.3 They reached their destination, about halfway up the mountain, shortly
  before noon, and while eating lunch, Jesus told the three apostles something
  of his experience in the hills to the east of Jordan shortly after his baptism
  and also some more of his experience on Mount Hermon in connection with his
  former visit to this lonely retreat.

  158:1.4 When a boy, Jesus used to ascend the hill near his home and dream of
  the battles which had been fought by the armies of empires on the plain of
  Esdraelon; now he ascended Mount Hermon to receive the endowment which was to
  prepare him to descend upon the plains of the Jordan to enact the closing
  scenes of the drama of his bestowal on Urantia. The Master could have
  relinquished the struggle this day on Mount Hermon and returned to his rule of
  the universe domains, but he not only chose to meet the requirements of his
  order of divine sonship embraced in the mandate of the Eternal Son on
  Paradise, but he also elected to meet the last and full measure of the present
  will of his Paradise Father. On this day in August three of his apostles saw
  him decline to be invested with full universe authority. They looked on in
  amazement as the celestial messengers departed, leaving him alone to finish
  out his earth life as the Son of Man and the Son of God.

  158:1.5 The faith of the apostles was at a high point at the time of the
  feeding of the five thousand, and then it rapidly fell almost to zero. Now, as
  a result of the Master's admission of his divinity, the lagging faith of the
  twelve arose in the next few weeks to its highest pitch, only to undergo a
  progressive decline. The third revival of their faith did not occur until
  after the Master's resurrection.

  158:1.6 It was about three o'clock on this beautiful afternoon that Jesus took
  leave of the three apostles, saying: "I go apart by myself for a season to
  commune with the Father and his messengers; I bid you tarry here and, while
  awaiting my return, pray that the Father's will may be done in all your
  experience in connection with the further bestowal mission of the Son of Man."
  And after saying this to them, Jesus withdrew for a long conference with
  Gabriel and the Father Melchizedek, not returning until about six o'clock.
  When Jesus saw their anxiety over his prolonged absence, he said: "Why were
  you afraid? You well know I must be about my Father's business; wherefore do
  you doubt when I am not with you? I now declare that the Son of Man has chosen
  to go through his full life in your midst and as one of you. Be of good cheer;
  I will not leave you until my work is finished."

  158:1.7 As they partook of their meager evening meal, Peter asked the Master,
  "How long do we remain on this mountain away from our brethren?" And Jesus
  answered: "Until you shall see the glory of the Son of Man and know that
  whatsoever I have declared to you is true." And they talked over the affairs
  of the Lucifer rebellion while seated about the glowing embers of their fire
  until darkness drew on and the apostles' eyes grew heavy, for they had begun
  their journey very early that morning.

  158:1.8 When the three had been fast asleep for about half an hour, they were
  suddenly awakened by a near-by crackling sound, and much to their amazement
  and consternation, on looking about them, they beheld Jesus in intimate
  converse with two brilliant beings clothed in the habiliments of the light of
  the celestial world. And Jesus' face and form shone with the luminosity of a
  heavenly light. These three conversed in a strange language, but from certain
  things said, Peter erroneously conjectured that the beings with Jesus were
  Moses and Elijah; in reality, they were Gabriel and the Father Melchizedek.
  The physical controllers had arranged for the apostles to witness this scene
  because of Jesus' request.

  158:1.9 The three apostles were so badly frightened that they were slow in
  collecting their wits, but Peter, who was first to recover himself, said, as
  the dazzling vision faded from before them and they observed Jesus standing
  alone: "Jesus, Master, it is good to have been here. We rejoice to see this
  glory. We are loath to go back down to the inglorious world. If you are
  willing, let us abide here, and we will erect three tents, one for you, one
  for Moses, and one for Elijah." And Peter said this because of his confusion,
  and because nothing else came into his mind at just that moment.

  158:1.10 While Peter was yet speaking, a silvery cloud drew near and
  overshadowed the four of them. The apostles now became greatly frightened, and
  as they fell down on their faces to worship, they heard a voice, the same that
  had spoken on the occasion of Jesus' baptism, say: "This is my beloved Son;
  give heed to him." And when the cloud vanished, again was Jesus alone with the
  three, and he reached down and touched them, saying: "Arise and be not afraid;
  you shall see greater things than this." But the apostles were truly afraid;
  they were a silent and thoughtful trio as they made ready to descend the
  mountain shortly before midnight.





2. COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN



  158:2.1 For about half the distance down the mountain not a word was spoken.
  Jesus then began the conversation by remarking: "Make certain that you tell no
  man, not even your brethren, what you have seen and heard on this mountain
  until the Son of Man has risen from the dead." The three apostles were shocked
  and bewildered by the Master's words, "until the Son of Man has risen from the
  dead." They had so recently reaffirmed their faith in him as the Deliverer,
  the Son of God, and they had just beheld him transfigured in glory before
  their very eyes, and now he began to talk about "rising from the dead"!

  158:2.2 Peter shuddered at the thought of the Master's dying -- it was too
  disagreeable an idea to entertain -- and fearing that James or John might ask
  some question relative to this statement, he thought best to start up a
  diverting conversation and, not knowing what else to talk about, gave
  expression to the first thought coming into his mind, which was: "Master, why
  is it that the scribes say that Elijah must first come before the Messiah
  shall appear?" And Jesus, knowing that Peter sought to avoid reference to his
  death and resurrection, answered: "Elijah indeed comes first to prepare the
  way for the Son of Man, who must suffer many things and finally be rejected.
  But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they received him not but did
  to him whatsoever they willed." And then did the three apostles perceive that
  he referred to John the Baptist as Elijah. Jesus knew that, if they insisted
  on regarding him as the Messiah, then must John be the Elijah of the prophecy.

  158:2.3 Jesus enjoined silence about their observation of the foretaste of his
  postresurrection glory because he did not want to foster the notion that,
  being now received as the Messiah, he would in any degree fulfill their
  erroneous concepts of a wonder-working deliverer. Although Peter, James, and
  John pondered all this in their minds, they spoke not of it to any man until
  after the Master's resurrection.

  158:2.4 As they continued to descend the mountain, Jesus said to them: "You
  would not receive me as the Son of Man; therefore have I consented to be
  received in accordance with your settled determination, but, mistake not, the
  will of my Father must prevail. If you thus choose to follow the inclination
  of your own wills, you must prepare to suffer many disappointments and
  experience many trials, but the training which I have given you should suffice
  to bring you triumphantly through even these sorrows of your own choosing."

  158:2.5 Jesus did not take Peter, James, and John with him up to the mount of
  the transfiguration because they were in any sense better prepared than the
  other apostles to witness what happened, or because they were spiritually more
  fit to enjoy such a rare privilege. Not at all. He well knew that none of the
  twelve were spiritually qualified for this experience; therefore did he take
  with him only the three apostles who were assigned to accompany him at those
  times when he desired to be alone to enjoy solitary communion.





3. MEANING OF THE TRANSFIGURATION



  158:3.1 That which Peter, James, and John witnessed on the mount of
  transfiguration was a fleeting glimpse of a celestial pageant which transpired
  that eventful day on Mount Hermon. The transfiguration was the occasion of:



  158:3.2 1. The acceptance of the fullness of the bestowal of the incarnated
  life of Michael on Urantia by the Eternal Mother-Son of Paradise. As far as
  concerned the requirements of the Eternal Son, Jesus had now received
  assurance of their fulfillment. And Gabriel brought Jesus that assurance.



  158:3.3 2. The testimony of the satisfaction of the Infinite Spirit as to the
  fullness of the Urantia bestowal in the likeness of mortal flesh. The universe
  representative of the Infinite Spirit, the immediate associate of Michael on
  Salvington and his ever-present coworker, on this occasion spoke through the
  Father Melchizedek.



  158:3.4 Jesus welcomed this testimony regarding the success of his earth
  mission presented by the messengers of the Eternal Son and the Infinite
  Spirit, but he noted that his Father did not indicate that the Urantia
  bestowal was finished; only did the unseen presence of the Father bear witness
  through Jesus' Personalized Adjuster, saying, "This is my beloved Son; give
  heed to him." And this was spoken in words to be heard also by the three
  apostles.

  158:3.5 After this celestial visitation Jesus sought to know his Father's will
  and decided to pursue the mortal bestowal to its natural end. This was the
  significance of the transfiguration to Jesus. To the three apostles it was an
  event marking the entrance of the Master upon the final phase of his earth
  career as the Son of God and the Son of Man.

  158:3.6 After the formal visitation of Gabriel and the Father Melchizedek,
  Jesus held informal converse with these, his Sons of ministry, and communed
  with them concerning the affairs of the universe.





4. THE EPILEPTIC BOY



  158:4.1 It was shortly before breakfast time on this Tuesday morning when
  Jesus and his companions arrived at the apostolic camp. As they drew near,
  they discerned a considerable crowd gathered around the apostles and soon
  began to hear the loud words of argument and disputation of this group of
  about fifty persons, embracing the nine apostles and a gathering equally
  divided between Jerusalem scribes and believing disciples who had tracked
  Jesus and his associates in their journey from Magadan.

  158:4.2 Although the crowd engaged in numerous arguments, the chief
  controversy was about a certain citizen of Tiberias who had arrived the
  preceding day in quest of Jesus. This man, James of Safed, had a son about
  fourteen years old, an only child, who was severely afflicted with epilepsy.
  In addition to this nervous malady this lad had become possessed by one of
  those wandering, mischievous, and rebellious midwayers who were then present
  on earth and uncontrolled, so that the youth was both epileptic and demon-
  possessed.

  158:4.3 For almost two weeks this anxious father, a minor official of Herod
  Antipas, had wandered about through the western borders of Philip's domains,
  seeking Jesus that he might entreat him to cure this afflicted son. And he did
  not catch up with the apostolic party until about noon of this day when Jesus
  was up on the mountain with the three apostles.

  158:4.4 The nine apostles were much surprised and considerably perturbed when
  this man, accompanied by almost forty other persons who were looking for
  Jesus, suddenly came upon them. At the time of the arrival of this group the
  nine apostles, at least the majority of them, had succumbed to their old
  temptation -- that of discussing who should be greatest in the coming kingdom;
  they were busily arguing about the probable positions which would be assigned
  the individual apostles. They simply could not free themselves entirely from
  the long-cherished idea of the material mission of the Messiah. And now that
  Jesus himself had accepted their confession that he was indeed the Deliverer
  -- at least he had admitted the fact of his divinity -- what was more natural
  than that, during this period of separation from the Master, they should fall
  to talking about those hopes and ambitions which were uppermost in their
  hearts. And they were engaged in these discussions when James of Safed and his
  fellow seekers after Jesus came upon them.

  158:4.5 Andrew stepped up to greet this father and his son, saying, "Whom do
  you seek?" Said James: "My good man, I search for your Master. I seek healing
  for my afflicted son. I would have Jesus cast out this devil that possesses my
  child." And then the father proceeded to relate to the apostles how his son
  was so afflicted that he had many times almost lost his life as a result of
  these malignant seizures.

  158:4.6 As the apostles listened, Simon Zelotes and Judas Iscariot stepped
  into the presence of the father, saying: "We can heal him; you need not wait
  for the Master's return. We are ambassadors of the kingdom; no longer do we
  hold these things in secret. Jesus is the Deliverer, and the keys of the
  kingdom have been delivered to us." By this time Andrew and Thomas were in
  consultation at one side. Nathaniel and the others looked on in amazement;
  they were all aghast at the sudden boldness, if not presumption, of Simon and
  Judas. Then said the father: "If it has been given you to do these works, I
  pray that you will speak those words which will deliver my child from this
  bondage." Then Simon stepped forward and, placing his hand on the head of the
  child, looked directly into his eyes and commanded: "Come out of him, you
  unclean spirit; in the name of Jesus obey me." But the lad had only a more
  violent fit, while the scribes mocked the apostles in derision, and the
  disappointed believers suffered the taunts of these unfriendly critics.

  158:4.7 Andrew was deeply chagrined at this ill-advised effort and its dismal
  failure. He called the apostles aside for conference and prayer. After this
  season of meditation, feeling keenly the sting of their defeat and sensing the
  humiliation resting upon all of them, Andrew sought, in a second attempt, to
  cast out the demon, but only failure crowned his efforts. Andrew frankly
  confessed defeat and requested the father to remain with them overnight or
  until Jesus' return, saying: "Perhaps this sort goes not out except by the
  Master's personal command."

  158:4.8 And so, while Jesus was descending the mountain with the exuberant and
  ecstatic Peter, James, and John, their nine brethren likewise were sleepless
  in their confusion and downcast humiliation. They were a dejected and
  chastened group. But James of Safed would not give up. Although they could
  give him no idea as to when Jesus might return, he decided to stay on until
  the Master came back.





5. JESUS HEALS THE BOY



  158:5.1 As Jesus drew near, the nine apostles were more than relieved to
  welcome him, and they were greatly encouraged to behold the good cheer and
  unusual enthusiasm which marked the countenances of Peter, James, and John.
  They all rushed forward to greet Jesus and their three brethren. As they
  exchanged greetings, the crowd came up, and Jesus asked, "What were you
  disputing about as we drew near?" But before the disconcerted and humiliated
  apostles could reply to the Master's question, the anxious father of the
  afflicted lad stepped forward and, kneeling at Jesus' feet, said: "Master, I
  have a son, an only child, who is possessed by an evil spirit. Not only does
  he cry out in terror, foam at the mouth, and fall like a dead person at the
  time of seizure, but oftentimes this evil spirit which possesses him rends him
  in convulsions and sometimes has cast him into the water and even into the
  fire. With much grinding of teeth and as a result of many bruises, my child
  wastes away. His life is worse than death; his mother and I are of a sad heart
  and a broken spirit. About noon yesterday, seeking for you, I caught up with
  your disciples, and while we were waiting, your apostles sought to cast out
  this demon, but they could not do it. And now, Master, will you do this for
  us, will you heal my son?"

  158:5.2 When Jesus had listened to this recital, he touched the kneeling
  father and bade him rise while he gave the near-by apostles a searching
  survey. Then said Jesus to all those who stood before him: "O faithless and
  perverse generation, how long shall I bear with you? How long shall I be with
  you? How long ere you learn that the works of faith come not forth at the
  bidding of doubting unbelief?" And then, pointing to the bewildered father,
  Jesus said, "Bring hither your son." And when James had brought the lad before
  Jesus, he asked, "How long has the boy been afflicted in this way?" The father
  answered, "Since he was a very young child." And as they talked, the youth was
  seized with a violent attack and fell in their midst, gnashing his teeth and
  foaming at the mouth. After a succession of violent convulsions he lay there
  before them as one dead. Now did the father again kneel at Jesus' feet while
  he implored the Master, saying: "If you can cure him, I beseech you to have
  compassion on us and deliver us from this affliction." And when Jesus heard
  these words, he looked down into the father's anxious face, saying: "Question
  not my Father's power of love, only the sincerity and reach of your faith. All
  things are possible to him who really believes." And then James of Safed spoke
  those long-to-be-remembered words of commingled faith and doubt, "Lord, I
  believe. I pray you help my unbelief."

  158:5.3 When Jesus heard these words, he stepped forward and, taking the lad
  by the hand, said: "I will do this in accordance with my Father's will and in
  honor of living faith. My son, arise! Come out of him, disobedient spirit, and
  go not back into him." And placing the hand of the lad in the hand of the
  father, Jesus said: "Go your way. The Father has granted the desire of your
  soul." And all who were present, even the enemies of Jesus, were astonished at
  what they saw.

  158:5.4 It was indeed a disillusionment for the three apostles who had so
  recently enjoyed the spiritual ecstasy of the scenes and experiences of the
  transfiguration, so soon to return to this scene of the defeat and
  discomfiture of their fellow apostles. But it was ever so with these twelve
  ambassadors of the kingdom. They never failed to alternate between exaltation
  and humiliation in their life experiences.

  158:5.5 This was a true healing of a double affliction, a physical ailment and
  a spirit malady. And the lad was permanently cured from that hour. When James
  had departed with his restored son, Jesus said: "We go now to Caesarea-
  Philippi; make ready at once." And they were a quiet group as they journeyed
  southward while the crowd followed on behind.





6. IN CELSUS' GARDEN



  158:6.1 They remained overnight with Celsus, and that evening in the garden,
  after they had eaten and rested, the twelve gathered about Jesus, and Thomas
  said: "Master, while we who tarried behind still remain ignorant of what
  transpired up on the mountain, and which so greatly cheered our brethren who
  were with you, we crave to have you talk with us concerning our defeat and
  instruct us in these matters, seeing that those things which happened on the
  mountain cannot be disclosed at this time."

  158:6.2 And Jesus answered Thomas, saying: "Everything which your brethren
  heard on the mountain shall be revealed to you in due season. But I will now
  show you the cause of your defeat in that which you so unwisely attempted.
  While your Master and his companions, your brethren, ascended yonder mountain
  yesterday to seek for a larger knowledge of the Father's will and to ask for a
  richer endowment of wisdom effectively to do that divine will, you who
  remained on watch here with instructions to strive to acquire the mind of
  spiritual insight and to pray with us for a fuller revelation of the Father's
  will, failed to exercise the faith at your command but, instead, yielded to
  the temptation and fell into your old evil tendencies to seek for yourselves
  preferred places in the kingdom of heaven -- the material and temporal kingdom
  which you persist in contemplating. And you cling to these erroneous concepts
  in spite of the reiterated declaration that my kingdom is not of this world.

  158:6.3 "No sooner does your faith grasp the identity of the Son of Man than
  your selfish desire for worldly preferment creeps back upon you, and you fall
  to discussing among yourselves as to who should be greatest in the kingdom of
  heaven, a kingdom which, as you persist in conceiving it, does not exist, nor
  ever shall. Have not I told you that he who would be greatest in the kingdom
  of my Father's spiritual brotherhood must become little in his own eyes and
  thus become the server of his brethren? Spiritual greatness consists in an
  understanding love that is Godlike and not in an enjoyment of the exercise of
  material power for the exaltation of self. In what you attempted, in which you
  so completely failed, your purpose was not pure. Your motive was not divine.
  Your ideal was not spiritual. Your ambition was not altruistic. Your procedure
  was not based on love, and your goal of attainment was not the will of the
  Father in heaven.

  158:6.4 "How long will it take you to learn that you cannot time-shorten the
  course of established natural phenomena except when such things are in
  accordance with the Father's will? nor can you do spiritual work in the
  absence of spiritual power. And you can do neither of these, even when their
  potential is present, without the existence of that third and essential human
  factor, the personal experience of the possession of living faith. Must you
  always have material manifestations as an attraction for the spiritual
  realities of the kingdom? Can you not grasp the spirit significance of my
  mission without the visible exhibition of unusual works? When can you be
  depended upon to adhere to the higher and spiritual realities of the kingdom
  regardless of the outward appearance of all material manifestations?"

  158:6.5 When Jesus had thus spoken to the twelve, he added: "And now go to
  your rest, for on the morrow we return to Magadan and there take counsel
  concerning our mission to the cities and villages of the Decapolis. And in the
  conclusion of this day's experience, let me declare to each of you that which
  I spoke to your brethren on the mountain, and let these words find a deep
  lodgment in your hearts: The Son of Man now enters upon the last phase of the
  bestowal. We are about to begin those labors which shall presently lead to the
  great and final testing of your faith and devotion when I shall be delivered
  into the hands of the men who seek my destruction. And remember what I am
  saying to you: The Son of Man will be put to death, but he shall rise again."

  158:6.6 They retired for the night, sorrowful. They were bewildered; they
  could not comprehend these words. And while they were afraid to ask aught
  concerning what he had said, they did recall all of it subsequent to his
  resurrection.





7. PETER'S PROTEST



  158:7.1 Early this Wednesday morning Jesus and the twelve departed from
  Caesarea-Philippi for Magadan Park near Bethsaida-Julias. The apostles had
  slept very little that night; so they were up early and ready to go. Even the
  stolid Alpheus twins had been shocked by this talk about the death of Jesus.
  As they journeyed south, just beyond the Waters of Merom they came to the
  Damascus road, and desiring to avoid the scribes and others whom Jesus knew
  would presently be coming along after them, he directed that they go on to
  Capernaum by the Damascus road which passes through Galilee. And he did this
  because he knew that those who followed after him would go on down over the
  east Jordan road since they reckoned that Jesus and the apostles would fear to
  pass through the territory of Herod Antipas. Jesus sought to elude his critics
  and the crowd which followed him that he might be alone with his apostles this
  day.

  158:7.2 They traveled on through Galilee until well past the time for their
  lunch, when they stopped in the shade to refresh themselves. And after they
  had partaken of food, Andrew, speaking to Jesus, said: "Master, my brethren do
  not comprehend your deep sayings. We have come fully to believe that you are
  the Son of God, and now we hear these strange words about leaving us, about
  dying. We do not understand your teaching. Are you speaking to us in parables?
  We pray you to speak to us directly and in undisguised form."

  158:7.3 In answer to Andrew, Jesus said: "My brethren, it is because you have
  confessed that I am the Son of God that I am constrained to begin to unfold to
  you the truth about the end of the bestowal of the Son of Man on earth. You
  insist on clinging to the belief that I am the Messiah, and you will not
  abandon the idea that the Messiah must sit upon a throne in Jerusalem;
  wherefore do I persist in telling you that the Son of Man must presently go to
  Jerusalem, suffer many things, be rejected by the scribes, the elders, and the
  chief priests, and after all this be killed and raised from the dead. And I
  speak not a parable to you; I speak the truth to you that you may be prepared
  for these events when they suddenly come upon us." And while he was yet
  speaking, Simon Peter, rushing impetuously toward him, laid his hand upon the
  Master's shoulder and said: "Master, be it far from us to contend with you,
  but I declare that these things shall never happen to you."

  158:7.4 Peter spoke thus because he loved Jesus; but the Master's human nature
  recognized in these words of well-meant affection the subtle suggestion of
  temptation that he change his policy of pursuing to the end his earth bestowal
  in accordance with the will of his Paradise Father. And it was because he
  detected the danger of permitting the suggestions of even his affectionate and
  loyal friends to dissuade him, that he turned upon Peter and the other
  apostles, saying: "Get you behind me. You savor of the spirit of the
  adversary, the tempter. When you talk in this manner, you are not on my side
  but rather on the side of our enemy. In this way do you make your love for me
  a stumbling block to my doing the Father's will. Mind not the ways of men but
  rather the will of God."

  158:7.5 After they had recovered from the first shock of Jesus' stinging
  rebuke, and before they resumed their journey, the Master spoke further: "If
  any man would come after me, let him disregard himself, take up his
  responsibilities daily, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life
  selfishly, shall lose it, but whosoever loses his life for my sake and the
  gospel's, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and
  lose his own soul? What would a man give in exchange for eternal life? Be not
  ashamed of me and my words in this sinful and hypocritical generation, even as
  I will not be ashamed to acknowledge you when in glory I appear before my
  Father in the presence of all the celestial hosts. Nevertheless, many of you
  now standing before me shall not taste death till you see this kingdom of God
  come with power."

  158:7.6 And thus did Jesus make plain to the twelve the painful and
  conflicting path which they must tread if they would follow him. What a shock
  these words were to these Galilean fishermen who persisted in dreaming of an
  earthly kingdom with positions of honor for themselves! But their loyal hearts
  were stirred by this courageous appeal, and not one of them was minded to
  forsake him. Jesus was not sending them alone into the conflict; he was
  leading them. He asked only that they bravely follow.

  158:7.7 Slowly the twelve were grasping the idea that Jesus was telling them
  something about the possibility of his dying. They only vaguely comprehended
  what he said about his death, while his statement about rising from the dead
  utterly failed to register in their minds. As the days passed, Peter, James,
  and John, recalling their experience upon the mount of the transfiguration,
  arrived at a fuller understanding of certain of these matters.

  158:7.8 In all the association of the twelve with their Master, only a few
  times did they see that flashing eye and hear such swift words of rebuke as
  were administered to Peter and the rest of them on this occasion. Jesus had
  always been patient with their human shortcomings, but not so when faced by an
  impending threat against the program of implicitly carrying out his Father's
  will regarding the remainder of his earth career. The apostles were literally
  stunned; they were amazed and horrified. They could not find words to express
  their sorrow. Slowly they began to realize what the Master must endure, and
  that they must go through these experiences with him, but they did not awaken
  to the reality of these coming events until long after these early hints of
  the impending tragedy of his latter days.

  158:7.9 In silence Jesus and the twelve started for their camp at Magadan
  Park, going by way of Capernaum. As the afternoon wore on, though they did not
  converse with Jesus, they talked much among themselves while Andrew talked
  with the Master.





8. AT PETER'S HOUSE



  158:8.1 Entering Capernaum at twilight, they went by unfrequented
  thoroughfares directly to the home of Simon Peter for their evening meal.
  While David Zebedee made ready to take them across the lake, they lingered at
  Simon's house, and Jesus, looking up at Peter and the other apostles, asked:
  "As you walked along together this afternoon, what was it that you talked
  about so earnestly among yourselves?" The apostles held their peace because
  many of them had continued the discussion begun at Mount Hermon as to what
  positions they were to have in the coming kingdom; who should be the greatest,
  and so on. Jesus, knowing what it was that occupied their thoughts that day,
  beckoned to one of Peter's little ones and, setting the child down among them,
  said: "Verily, verily, I say to you, except you turn about and become more
  like this child, you will make little progress in the kingdom of heaven.
  Whosoever shall humble himself and become as this little one, the same shall
  become greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso receives such a little one
  receives me. And they who receive me receive also Him who sent me. If you
  would be first in the kingdom, seek to minister these good truths to your
  brethren in the flesh. But whosoever causes one of these little ones to
  stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck
  and he were cast into the sea. If the things you do with your hands, or the
  things you see with your eyes give offense in the progress of the kingdom,
  sacrifice these cherished idols, for it is better to enter the kingdom minus
  many of the beloved things of life rather than to cling to these idols and
  find yourself shut out of the kingdom. But most of all, see that you despise
  not one of these little ones, for their angels do always behold the faces of
  the heavenly hosts."

  158:8.2 When Jesus had finished speaking, they entered the boat and sailed
  across to Magadan.


 PAPER 159


 THE DECAPOLIS TOUR



  159:0.1 WHEN Jesus and the twelve arrived at Magadan Park, they found awaiting
  them a group of almost one hundred evangelists and disciples, including the
  women's corps, and they were ready immediately to begin the teaching and
  preaching tour of the cities of the Decapolis.

  159:0.2 On this Thursday morning, August 18, the Master called his followers
  together and directed that each of the apostles should associate himself with
  one of the twelve evangelists, and that with others of the evangelists they
  should go out in twelve groups to labor in the cities and villages of the
  Decapolis. The women's corps and others of the disciples he directed to remain
  with him. Jesus allotted four weeks to this tour, instructing his followers to
  return to Magadan not later than Friday, September 16. He promised to visit
  them often during this time. In the course of this month these twelve groups
  labored in Gerasa, Gamala, Hippos, Zaphon, Gadara, Abila, Edrei, Philadelphia,
  Heshbon, Dium, Scythopolis, and many other cities. Throughout this tour no
  miracles of healing or other extraordinary events occurred.





1. THE SERMON ON FORGIVENESS

  159:1.1 One evening at Hippos, in answer to a disciple's question, Jesus
  taught the lesson on forgiveness. Said the Master:



  159:1.2 "If a kindhearted man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
  does he not immediately leave the ninety and nine and go out in search of the
  one that has gone astray? And if he is a good shepherd, will he not keep up
  his quest for the lost sheep until he finds it? And then, when the shepherd
  has found his lost sheep, he lays it over his shoulder and, going home
  rejoicing, calls to his friends and neighbors, `Rejoice with me, for I have
  found my sheep that was lost.' I declare that there is more joy in heaven over
  one sinner who repents than over ninety and nine righteous persons who need no
  repentance. Even so, it is not the will of my Father in heaven that one of
  these little ones should go astray, much less that they should perish. In your
  religion God may receive repentant sinners; in the gospel of the kingdom the
  Father goes forth to find them even before they have seriously thought of
  repentance.

  159:1.3 "The Father in heaven loves his children, and therefore should you
  learn to love one another; the Father in heaven forgives you your sins;
  therefore should you learn to forgive one another. If your brother sins
  against you, go to him and with tact and patience show him his fault. And do
  all this between you and him alone. If he will listen to you, then have you
  won your brother. But if your brother will not hear you, if he persists in the
  error of his way, go again to him, taking with you one or two mutual friends
  that you may thus have two or even three witnesses to confirm your testimony
  and establish the fact that you have dealt justly and mercifully with your
  offending brother. Now if he refuses to hear your brethren, you may tell the
  whole story to the congregation, and then, if he refuses to hear the
  brotherhood, let them take such action as they deem wise; let such an unruly
  member become an outcast from the kingdom. While you cannot pretend to sit in
  judgment on the souls of your fellows, and while you may not forgive sins or
  otherwise presume to usurp the prerogatives of the supervisors of the heavenly
  hosts, at the same time, it has been committed to your hands that you should
  maintain temporal order in the kingdom on earth. While you may not meddle with
  the divine decrees concerning eternal life, you shall determine the issues of
  conduct as they concern the temporal welfare of the brotherhood on earth. And
  so, in all these matters connected with the discipline of the brotherhood,
  whatsoever you shall decree on earth, shall be recognized in heaven. Although
  you cannot determine the eternal fate of the individual, you may legislate
  regarding the conduct of the group, for, where two or three of you agree
  concerning any of these things and ask of me , it shall be done for you if
  your petition is not inconsistent with the will of my Father in heaven. And
  all this is ever true, for, where two or three believers are gathered
  together, there am I in the midst of them."



  159:1.4 Simon Peter was the apostle in charge of the workers at Hippos, and
  when he heard Jesus thus speak, he asked: "Lord, how often shall my brother
  sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?" And Jesus answered
  Peter: "Not only seven times but even to seventy times and seven. Therefore
  may the kingdom of heaven be likened to a certain king who ordered a financial
  reckoning with his stewards. And when they had begun to conduct this
  examination of accounts, one of his chief retainers was brought before him
  confessing that he owed his king ten thousand talents. Now this officer of the
  king's court pleaded that hard times had come upon him, and that he did not
  have wherewith to pay this obligation. And so the king commanded that his
  property be confiscated, and that his children be sold to pay his debt. When
  this chief steward heard this stern decree, he fell down on his face before
  the king and implored him to have mercy and grant him more time, saying,
  `Lord, have a little more patience with me, and I will pay you all.' And when
  the king looked upon this negligent servant and his family, he was moved with
  compassion. He ordered that he should be released, and that the loan should be
  wholly forgiven.

  159:1.5 "And this chief steward, having thus received mercy and forgiveness at
  the hands of the king, went about his business, and finding one of his
  subordinate stewards who owed him a mere hundred denarii, he laid hold upon
  him and, taking him by the throat, said, `Pay me all you owe.' And then did
  this fellow steward fall down before the chief steward and, beseeching him,
  said: `Only have patience with me, and I will presently be able to pay you.'
  But the chief steward would not show mercy to his fellow steward but rather
  had him cast in prison until he should pay his debt. When his fellow servants
  saw what had happened, they were so distressed that they went and told their
  lord and master, the king. When the king heard of the doings of his chief
  steward, he called this ungrateful and unforgiving man before him and said:
  `You are a wicked and unworthy steward. When you sought for compassion, I
  freely forgave you your entire debt. Why did you not also show mercy to your
  fellow steward, even as I showed mercy to you?' And the king was so very angry
  that he delivered his ungrateful chief steward to the jailers that they might
  hold him until he had paid all that was due. And even so shall my heavenly
  Father show the more abundant mercy to those who freely show mercy to their
  fellows. How can you come to God asking consideration for your shortcomings
  when you are wont to chastise your brethren for being guilty of these same
  human frailties? I say to all of you: Freely you have received the good things
  of the kingdom; therefore freely give to your fellows on earth."



  159:1.6 Thus did Jesus teach the dangers and illustrate the unfairness of
  sitting in personal judgment upon one's fellows. Discipline must be
  maintained, justice must be administered, but in all these matters the wisdom
  of the brotherhood should prevail. Jesus invested legislative and judicial
  authority in the group, not in the individual. Even this investment of
  authority in the group must not be exercised as personal authority. There is
  always danger that the verdict of an individual may be warped by prejudice or
  distorted by passion. Group judgment is more likely to remove the dangers and
  eliminate the unfairness of personal bias. Jesus sought always to minimize the
  elements of unfairness, retaliation, and vengeance.



  159:1.7 The use of the term seventy-seven as an illustration of mercy and
  forbearance was derived from the Scriptures referring to Lamech's exultation
  because of the metal weapons of his son Tubal-Cain, who, comparing these
  superior instruments with those of his enemies, exclaimed: "If Cain, with no
  weapon in his hand, was avenged seven times, I shall now be avenged seventy-
  seven."





2. THE STRANGE PREACHER

  159:2.1 Jesus went over to Gamala to visit John and those who worked with him
  at that place. That evening, after the session of questions and answers, John
  said to Jesus: "Master, yesterday I went over to Ashtaroth to see a man who
  was teaching in your name and even claiming to be able to cast out devils. Now
  this fellow had never been with us, neither does he follow after us; therefore
  I forbade him to do such things." Then said Jesus: "Forbid him not. Do you not
  perceive that this gospel of the kingdom shall presently be proclaimed in all
  the world? How can you expect that all who will believe the gospel shall be
  subject to your direction? Rejoice that already our teaching has begun to
  manifest itself beyond the bounds of our personal influence. Do you not see,
  John, that those who profess to do great works in my name must eventually
  support our cause? They certainly will not be quick to speak evil of me. My
  son, in matters of this sort it would be better for you to reckon that he who
  is not against us is for us. In the generations to come many who are not
  wholly worthy will do many strange things in my name, but I will not forbid
  them. I tell you that, even when a cup of cold water is given to a thirsty
  soul, the Father's messengers shall ever make record of such a service of
  love."

  159:2.2 This instruction greatly perplexed John. Had he not heard the Master
  say, "He who is not with me is against me"? And he did not perceive that in
  this case Jesus was referring to man's personal relation to the spiritual
  teachings of the kingdom, while in the other case reference was made to the
  outward and far-flung social relations of believers regarding the questions of
  administrative control and the jurisdiction of one group of believers over the
  work of other groups which would eventually compose the forthcoming world-wide
  brotherhood.

  159:2.3 But John oftentimes recounted this experience in connection with his
  subsequent labors in behalf of the kingdom. Nevertheless, many times did the
  apostles take offense at those who made bold to teach in the Master's name. To
  them it always seemed inappropriate that those who had never sat at Jesus'
  feet should dare to teach in his name.

  159:2.4 This man whom John forbade to teach and work in Jesus' name did not
  heed the apostle's injunction. He went right on with his efforts and raised up
  a considerable company of believers at Kanata before going on into
  Mesopotamia. This man, Aden, had been led to believe in Jesus through the
  testimony of the demented man whom Jesus healed near Kheresa, and who so
  confidently believed that the supposed evil spirits which the Master cast out
  of him entered the herd of swine and rushed them headlong over the cliff to
  their destruction.





3. INSTRUCTION FOR TEACHERS AND BELIEVERS

  159:3.1 At Edrei, where Thomas and his associates labored, Jesus spent a day
  and a night and, in the course of the evening's discussion, gave expression to
  the principles which should guide those who preach truth, and which should
  activate all who teach the gospel of the kingdom. Summarized and restated in
  modern phraseology, Jesus taught:



  159:3.2 Always respect the personality of man. Never should a righteous cause
  be promoted by force; spiritual victories can be won only by spiritual power.
  This injunction against the employment of material influences refers to
  psychic force as well as to physical force. Overpowering arguments and mental
  superiority are not to be employed to coerce men and women into the kingdom.
  Man's mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic or overawed by
  shrewd eloquence. While emotion as a factor in human decisions cannot be
  wholly eliminated, it should not be directly appealed to in the teachings of
  those who would advance the cause of the kingdom. Make your appeals directly
  to the divine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. Do not appeal to
  fear, pity, or mere sentiment. In appealing to men, be fair; exercise self-
  control and exhibit due restraint; show proper respect for the personalities
  of your pupils. Remember that I have said: "Behold, I stand at the door and
  knock, and if any man will open, I will come in."

  159:3.3 In bringing men into the kingdom, do not lessen or destroy their self-
  respect. While overmuch self-respect may destroy proper humility and end in
  pride, conceit, and arrogance, the loss of self-respect often ends in
  paralysis of the will. It is the purpose of this gospel to restore self-
  respect to those who have lost it and to restrain it in those who have it.
  Make not the mistake of only condemning the wrongs in the lives of your
  pupils; remember also to accord generous recognition for the most praiseworthy
  things in their lives. Forget not that I will stop at nothing to restore self-
  respect to those who have lost it, and who really desire to regain it.

  159:3.4 Take care that you do not wound the self-respect of timid and fearful
  souls. Do not indulge in sarcasm at the expense of my simple-minded brethren.
  Be not cynical with my fear-ridden children. Idleness is destructive of self-
  respect; therefore, admonish your brethren ever to keep busy at their chosen
  tasks, and put forth every effort to secure work for those who find themselves
  without employment.

  159:3.5 Never be guilty of such unworthy tactics as endeavoring to frighten
  men and women into the kingdom. A loving father does not frighten his children
  into yielding obedience to his just requirements.

  159:3.6 Sometime the children of the kingdom will realize that strong feelings
  of emotion are not equivalent to the leadings of the divine spirit. To be
  strongly and strangely impressed to do something or to go to a certain place,
  does not necessarily mean that such impulses are the leadings of the
  indwelling spirit.

  159:3.7 Forewarn all believers regarding the fringe of conflict which must be
  traversed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the
  higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly
  within either realm, there is little conflict or confusion, but all are doomed
  to experience more or less uncertainty during the times of transition between
  the two levels of living. In entering the kingdom, you cannot escape its
  responsibilities or avoid its obligations, but remember: The gospel yoke is
  easy and the burden of truth is light.

  159:3.8 The world is filled with hungry souls who famish in the very presence
  of the bread of life; men die searching for the very God who lives within
  them. Men seek for the treasures of the kingdom with yearning hearts and weary
  feet when they are all within the immediate grasp of living faith. Faith is to
  religion what sails are to a ship; it is an addition of power, not an added
  burden of life. There is but one struggle for those who enter the kingdom, and
  that is to fight the good fight of faith. The believer has only one battle,
  and that is against doubt -- unbelief.

  159:3.9 In preaching the gospel of the kingdom, you are simply teaching
  friendship with God. And this fellowship will appeal alike to men and women in
  that both will find that which most truly satisfies their characteristic
  longings and ideals. Tell my children that I am not only tender of their
  feelings and patient with their frailties, but that I am also ruthless with
  sin and intolerant of iniquity. I am indeed meek and humble in the presence of
  my Father, but I am equally and relentlessly inexorable where there is
  deliberate evildoing and sinful rebellion against the will of my Father in
  heaven.

  159:3.10 You shall not portray your teacher as a man of sorrows. Future
  generations shall know also the radiance of our joy, the buoyance of our good
  will, and the inspiration of our good humor. We proclaim a message of good
  news which is infectious in its transforming power. Our religion is throbbing
  with new life and new meanings. Those who accept this teaching are filled with
  joy and in their hearts are constrained to rejoice evermore. Increasing
  happiness is always the experience of all who are certain about God.

  159:3.11 Teach all believers to avoid leaning upon the insecure props of false
  sympathy. You cannot develop strong characters out of the indulgence of self-
  pity; honestly endeavor to avoid the deceptive influence of mere fellowship in
  misery. Extend sympathy to the brave and courageous while you withhold
  overmuch pity from those cowardly souls who only halfheartedly stand up before
  the trials of living. Offer not consolation to those who lie down before their
  troubles without a struggle. Sympathize not with your fellows merely that they
  may sympathize with you in return.



  159:3.12 When my children once become self-conscious of the assurance of the
  divine presence, such a faith will expand the mind, ennoble the soul,
  reinforce the personality, augment the happiness, deepen the spirit
  perception, and enhance the power to love and be loved.

  159:3.13 Teach all believers that those who enter the kingdom are not thereby
  rendered immune to the accidents of time or to the ordinary catastrophes of
  nature. Believing the gospel will not prevent getting into trouble, but it
  will insure that you shall be unafraid when trouble does overtake you. If you
  dare to believe in me and wholeheartedly proceed to follow after me, you shall
  most certainly by so doing enter upon the sure pathway to trouble. I do not
  promise to deliver you from the waters of adversity, but I do promise to go
  with you through all of them.



  159:3.14 And much more did Jesus teach this group of believers before they
  made ready for the night's sleep. And they who heard these sayings treasured
  them in their hearts and did often recite them for the edification of the
  apostles and disciples who were not present when they were spoken.





4. THE TALK WITH NATHANIEL

  159:4.1 And then went Jesus over to Abila, where Nathaniel and his associates
  labored. Nathaniel was much bothered by some of Jesus' pronouncements which
  seemed to detract from the authority of the recognized Hebrew scriptures.
  Accordingly, on this night, after the usual period of questions and answers,
  Nathaniel took Jesus away from the others and asked: "Master, could you trust
  me to know the truth about the Scriptures? I observe that you teach us only a
  portion of the sacred writings -- the best as I view it -- and I infer that
  you reject the teachings of the rabbis to the effect that the words of the law
  are the very words of God, having been with God in heaven even before the
  times of Abraham and Moses. What is the truth about the Scriptures?" When
  Jesus heard the question of his bewildered apostle, he answered:



  159:4.2 "Nathaniel, you have rightly judged; I do not regard the Scriptures as
  do the rabbis. I will talk with you about this matter on condition that you do
  not relate these things to your brethren, who are not all prepared to receive
  this teaching. The words of the law of Moses and the teachings of the
  Scriptures were not in existence before Abraham. Only in recent times have the
  Scriptures been gathered together as we now have them. While they contain the
  best of the higher thoughts and longings of the Jewish people, they also
  contain much that is far from being representative of the character and
  teachings of the Father in heaven; wherefore must I choose from among the
  better teachings those truths which are to be gleaned for the gospel of the
  kingdom.

  159:4.3 "These writings are the work of men, some of them holy men, others not
  so holy. The teachings of these books represent the views and extent of
  enlightenment of the times in which they had their origin. As a revelation of
  truth, the last are more dependable than the first. The Scriptures are faulty
  and altogether human in origin, but mistake not, they do constitute the best
  collection of religious wisdom and spiritual truth to be found in all the
  world at this time.

  159:4.4 "Many of these books were not written by the persons whose names they
  bear, but that in no way detracts from the value of the truths which they
  contain. If the story of Jonah should not be a fact, even if Jonah had never
  lived, still would the profound truth of this narrative, the love of God for
  Nineveh and the so-called heathen, be none the less precious in the eyes of
  all those who love their fellow men. The Scriptures are sacred because they
  present the thoughts and acts of men who were searching for God, and who in
  these writings left on record their highest concepts of righteousness, truth,
  and holiness. The Scriptures contain much that is true, very much, but in the
  light of your present teaching, you know that these writings also contain much
  that is misrepresentative of the Father in heaven, the loving God I have come
  to reveal to all the worlds.

  159:4.5 "Nathaniel, never permit yourself for one moment to believe the
  Scripture records which tell you that the God of love directed your
  forefathers to go forth in battle to slay all their enemies -- men, women, and
  children. Such records are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are
  not the word of God. The Scriptures always have, and always will, reflect the
  intellectual, moral, and spiritual status of those who create them. Have you
  not noted that the concepts of Yahweh grow in beauty and glory as the prophets
  make their records from Samuel to Isaiah? And you should remember that the
  Scriptures are intended for religious instruction and spiritual guidance. They
  are not the works of either historians or philosophers.

  159:4.6 "The thing most deplorable is not merely this erroneous idea of the
  absolute perfection of the Scripture record and the infallibility of its
  teachings, but rather the confusing misinterpretation of these sacred writings
  by the tradition-enslaved scribes and Pharisees at Jerusalem. And now will
  they employ both the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures and their
  misinterpretations thereof in their determined effort to withstand these newer
  teachings of the gospel of the kingdom. Nathaniel, never forget, the Father
  does not limit the revelation of truth to any one generation or to any one
  people. Many earnest seekers after the truth have been, and will continue to
  be, confused and disheartened by these doctrines of the perfection of the
  Scriptures.

  159:4.7 "The authority of truth is the very spirit that indwells its living
  manifestations, and not the dead words of the less illuminated and supposedly
  inspired men of another generation. And even if these holy men of old lived
  inspired and spirit-filled lives, that does not mean that their words were
  similarly spiritually inspired. Today we make no record of the teachings of
  this gospel of the kingdom lest, when I have gone, you speedily become divided
  up into sundry groups of truth contenders as a result of the diversity of your
  interpretation of my teachings. For this generation it is best that we live
  these truths while we shun the making of records.

  159:4.8 "Mark you well my words, Nathaniel, nothing which human nature has
  touched can be regarded as infallible. Through the mind of man divine truth
  may indeed shine forth, but always of relative purity and partial divinity.
  The creature may crave infallibility, but only the Creators possess it.

  159:4.9 "But the greatest error of the teaching about the Scriptures is the
  doctrine of their being sealed books of mystery and wisdom which only the wise
  minds of the nation dare to interpret. The revelations of divine truth are not
  sealed except by human ignorance, bigotry, and narrow-minded intolerance. The
  light of the Scriptures is only dimmed by prejudice and darkened by
  superstition. A false fear of sacredness has prevented religion from being
  safeguarded by common sense. The fear of the authority of the sacred writings
  of the past effectively prevents the honest souls of today from accepting the
  new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-knowing men of another
  generation so intensely longed to see.

  159:4.10 "But the saddest feature of all is the fact that some of the teachers
  of the sanctity of this traditionalism know this very truth. They more or less
  fully understand these limitations of Scripture, but they are moral cowards,
  intellectually dishonest. They know the truth regarding the sacred writings,
  but they prefer to withhold such disturbing facts from the people. And thus do
  they pervert and distort the Scriptures, making them the guide to slavish
  details of the daily life and an authority in things nonspiritual instead of
  appealing to the sacred writings as the repository of the moral wisdom,
  religious inspiration, and the spiritual teaching of the God-knowing men of
  other generations."



  159:4.11 Nathaniel was enlightened, and shocked, by the Master's
  pronouncement. He long pondered this talk in the depths of his soul, but he
  told no man concerning this conference until after Jesus' ascension; and even
  then he feared to impart the full story of the Master's instruction.





5. THE POSITIVE NATURE OF JESUS' RELIGION

  159:5.1 At Philadelphia, where James was working, Jesus taught the disciples
  about the positive nature of the gospel of the kingdom. When, in the course of
  his remarks, he intimated that some parts of the Scripture were more truth-
  containing than others and admonished his hearers to feed their souls upon the
  best of the spiritual food, James interrupted the Master, asking: "Would you
  be good enough, Master, to suggest to us how we may choose the better passages
  from the Scriptures for our personal edification?" And Jesus replied: "Yes,
  James, when you read the Scriptures look for those eternally true and divinely
  beautiful teachings, such as:



  159:5.2 "Create in me a clean heart, O Lord.



  159:5.3 "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.



  159:5.4 "You should love your neighbor as yourself.



  159:5.5 "For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, saying, fear
  not; I will help you.



  159:5.6 "Neither shall the nations learn war any more."



  159:5.7 And this is illustrative of the way Jesus, day by day, appropriated
  the cream of the Hebrew scriptures for the instruction of his followers and
  for inclusion in the teachings of the new gospel of the kingdom. Other
  religions had suggested the thought of the nearness of God to man, but Jesus
  made the care of God for man like the solicitude of a loving father for the
  welfare of his dependent children and then made this teaching the cornerstone
  of his religion. And thus did the doctrine of the fatherhood of God make
  imperative the practice of the brotherhood of man. The worship of God and the
  service of man became the sum and substance of his religion. Jesus took the
  best of the Jewish religion and translated it to a worthy setting in the new
  teachings of the gospel of the kingdom.

  159:5.8 Jesus put the spirit of positive action into the passive doctrines of
  the Jewish religion. In the place of negative compliance with ceremonial
  requirements, Jesus enjoined the positive doing of that which his new religion
  required of those who accepted it . Jesus' religion consisted not merely in
  believing, but in actually doing, those things which the gospel required. He
  did not teach that the essence of his religion consisted in social service,
  but rather that social service was one of the certain effects of the
  possession of the spirit of true religion.

  159:5.9 Jesus did not hesitate to appropriate the better half of a Scripture
  while he repudiated the lesser portion. His great exhortation, "Love your
  neighbor as yourself," he took from the Scripture which reads: "You shall not
  take vengeance against the children of your people, but you shall love your
  neighbor as yourself." Jesus appropriated the positive portion of this
  Scripture while rejecting the negative part. He even opposed negative or
  purely passive nonresistance. Said he: "When an enemy smites you on one cheek,
  do not stand there dumb and passive but in positive attitude turn the other;
  that is, do the best thing possible actively to lead your brother in error
  away from the evil paths into the better ways of righteous living." Jesus
  required his followers to react positively and aggressively to every life
  situation. The turning of the other cheek, or whatever act that may typify,
  demands initiative, necessitates vigorous, active, and courageous expression
  of the believer's personality.

  159:5.10 Jesus did not advocate the practice of negative submission to the
  indignities of those who might purposely seek to impose upon the practitioners
  of nonresistance to evil, but rather that his followers should be wise and
  alert in the quick and positive reaction of good to evil to the end that they
  might effectively overcome evil with good. Forget not, the truly good is
  invariably more powerful than the most malignant evil. The Master taught a
  positive standard of righteousness: "Whosoever wishes to be my disciple, let
  him disregard himself and take up the full measure of his responsibilities
  daily to follow me." And he so lived himself in that "he went about doing
  good." And this aspect of the gospel was well illustrated by many parables
  which he later spoke to his followers. He never exhorted his followers
  patiently to bear their obligations but rather with energy and enthusiasm to
  live up to the full measure of their human responsibilities and divine
  privileges in the kingdom of God.

  159:5.11 When Jesus instructed his apostles that they should, when one
  unjustly took away the coat, offer the other garment, he referred not so much
  to a literal second coat as to the idea of doing something positive to save
  the wrongdoer in the place of the olden advice to retaliate -- "an eye for an
  eye" and so on. Jesus abhorred the idea either of retaliation or of becoming
  just a passive sufferer or victim of injustice. On this occasion he taught
  them the three ways of contending with, and resisting, evil:

1. To return evil for evil -- the positive but unrighteous method.

2. To suffer evil without complaint and without resistance -- the purely
negative method.

3. To return good for evil, to assert the will so as to become master of the
situation, to overcome evil with good -- the positive and righteous method.

  159:5.12 One of the apostles once asked: "Master, what should I do if a
  stranger forced me to carry his pack for a mile?" Jesus answered: "Do not sit
  down and sigh for relief while you berate the stranger under your breath.
  Righteousness comes not from such passive attitudes. If you can think of
  nothing more effectively positive to do, you can at least carry the pack a
  second mile. That will of a certainty challenge the unrighteous and ungodly
  stranger."

  159:5.13 The Jews had heard of a God who would forgive repentant sinners and
  try to forget their misdeeds, but not until Jesus came, did men hear about a
  God who went in search of lost sheep, who took the initiative in looking for
  sinners, and who rejoiced when he found them willing to return to the Father's
  house. This positive note in religion Jesus extended even to his prayers. And
  he converted the negative golden rule into a positive admonition of human
  fairness.

  159:5.14 In all his teaching Jesus unfailingly avoided distracting details. He
  shunned flowery language and avoided the mere poetic imagery of a play upon
  words. He habitually put large meanings into small expressions. For purposes
  of illustration Jesus reversed the current meanings of many terms, such as
  salt, leaven, fishing, and little children. He most effectively employed the
  antithesis, comparing the minute to the infinite and so on. His pictures were
  striking, such as, "The blind leading the blind." But the greatest strength to
  be found in his illustrative teaching was its naturalness. Jesus brought the
  philosophy of religion from heaven down to earth. He portrayed the elemental
  needs of the soul with a new insight and a new bestowal of affection.





6. THE RETURN TO MAGADAN

  159:6.1 The mission of four weeks in the Decapolis was moderately successful.
  Hundreds of souls were received into the kingdom, and the apostles and
  evangelists had a valuable experience in carrying on their work without the
  inspiration of the immediate personal presence of Jesus.

  159:6.2 On Friday, September 16, the entire corps of workers assembled by
  prearrangement at Magadan Park. On the Sabbath day a council of more than one
  hundred believers was held at which the future plans for extending the work of
  the kingdom were fully considered. The messengers of David were present and
  made reports concerning the welfare of the believers throughout Judea,
  Samaria, Galilee, and adjoining districts.

  159:6.3 Few of Jesus' followers at this time fully appreciated the great value
  of the services of the messenger corps. Not only did the messengers keep the
  believers throughout Palestine in touch with each other and with Jesus and the
  apostles, but during these dark days they also served as collectors of funds,
  not only for the sustenance of Jesus and his associates, but also for the
  support of the families of the twelve apostles and the twelve evangelists.

  159:6.4 About this time Abner moved his base of operations from Hebron to
  Bethlehem, and this latter place was also the headquarters in Judea for
  David's messengers. David maintained an overnight relay messenger service
  between Jerusalem and Bethsaida. These runners left Jerusalem each evening,
  relaying at Sychar and Scythopolis, arriving in Bethsaida by breakfast time
  the next morning.

  159:6.5 Jesus and his associates now prepared to take a week's rest before
  they made ready to start upon the last epoch of their labors in behalf of the
  kingdom. This was their last rest, for the Perean mission developed into a
  campaign of preaching and teaching which extended right on down to the time of
  their arrival at Jerusalem and of the enactment of the closing episodes of
  Jesus' earth career.


 PAPER 160


 RODAN OF ALEXANDRIA



  160:0.1 ON SUNDAY morning, September 18, Andrew announced that no work would
  be planned for the coming week. All of the apostles, except Nathaniel and
  Thomas, went home to visit their families or to sojourn with friends. This
  week Jesus enjoyed a period of almost complete rest, but Nathaniel and Thomas
  were very busy with their discussions with a certain Greek philosopher from
  Alexandria named Rodan. This Greek had recently become a disciple of Jesus
  through the teaching of one of Abner's associates who had conducted a mission
  at Alexandria. Rodan was now earnestly engaged in the task of harmonizing his
  philosophy of life with Jesus' new religious teachings, and he had come to
  Magadan hoping that the Master would talk these problems over with him. He
  also desired to secure a firsthand and authoritative version of the gospel
  from either Jesus or one of his apostles. Though the Master declined to enter
  into such a conference with Rodan, he did receive him graciously and
  immediately directed that Nathaniel and Thomas should listen to all he had to
  say and tell him about the gospel in return.




1. RODAN'S GREEK PHILOSOPHY

  160:1.1 Early Monday morning, Rodan began a series of ten addresses to
  Nathaniel, Thomas, and a group of some two dozen believers who chanced to be
  at Magadan. These talks, condensed, combined, and restated in modern
  phraseology, present the following thoughts for consideration:



  160:1.2 Human life consists in three great drives -- urges, desires, and
  lures. Strong character, commanding personality, is only acquired by
  converting the natural urge of life into the social art of living, by
  transforming present desires into those higher longings which are capable of
  lasting attainment, while the commonplace lure of existence must be
  transferred from one's conventional and established ideas to the higher realms
  of unexplored ideas and undiscovered ideals.

  160:1.3 The more complex civilization becomes, the more difficult will become
  the art of living. The more rapid the changes in social usage, the more
  complicated will become the task of character development. Every ten
  generations mankind must learn anew the art of living if progress is to
  continue. And if man becomes so ingenious that he more rapidly adds to the
  complexities of society, the art of living will need to be remastered in less
  time, perhaps every single generation. If the evolution of the art of living
  fails to keep pace with the technique of existence, humanity will quickly
  revert to the simple urge of living -- the attainment of the satisfaction of
  present desires. Thus will humanity remain immature; society will fail in
  growing up to full maturity

  160:1.4 Social maturity is equivalent to the degree to which man is willing to
  surrender the gratification of mere transient and present desires for the
  entertainment of those superior longings the striving for whose attainment
  affords the more abundant satisfactions of progressive advancement toward
  permanent goals. But the true badge of social maturity is the willingness of a
  people to surrender the right to live peaceably and contentedly under the
  ease-promoting standards of the lure of established beliefs and conventional
  ideas for the disquieting and energy-requiring lure of the pursuit of the
  unexplored possibilities of the attainment of undiscovered goals of idealistic
  spiritual realities.

  160:1.5 Animals respond nobly to the urge of life, but only man can attain the
  art of living, albeit the majority of mankind only experience the animal urge
  to live. Animals know only this blind and instinctive urge; man is capable of
  transcending this urge to natural function. Man may elect to live upon the
  high plane of intelligent art, even that of celestial joy and spiritual
  ecstasy. Animals make no inquiry into the purposes of life; therefore they
  never worry, neither do they commit suicide. Suicide among men testifies that
  such beings have emerged from the purely animal stage of existence, and to the
  further fact that the exploratory efforts of such human beings have failed to
  attain the artistic levels of mortal experience. Animals know not the meaning
  of life; man not only possesses capacity for the recognition of values and the
  comprehension of meanings, but he also is conscious of the meaning of meanings
  -- he is self-conscious of insight.

  160:1.6 When men dare to forsake a life of natural craving for one of
  adventurous art and uncertain logic, they must expect to suffer the consequent
  hazards of emotional casualties -- conflicts, unhappiness, and uncertainties
  -- at least until the time of their attainment of some degree of intellectual
  and emotional maturity. Discouragement, worry, and indolence are positive
  evidence of moral immaturity. Human society is confronted with two problems:
  attainment of the maturity of the individual and attainment of the maturity of
  the race. The mature human being soon begins to look upon all other mortals
  with feelings of tenderness and with emotions of tolerance. Mature men view
  immature folks with the love and consideration that parents bear their
  children.

  160:1.7 Successful living is nothing more or less than the art of the mastery
  of dependable techniques for solving common problems. The first step in the
  solution of any problem is to locate the difficulty, to isolate the problem,
  and frankly to recognize its nature and gravity. The great mistake is that,
  when life problems excite our profound fears, we refuse to recognize them.
  Likewise, when the acknowledgment of our difficulties entails the reduction of
  our long-cherished conceit, the admission of envy, or the abandonment of deep-
  seated prejudices, the average person prefers to cling to the old illusions of
  safety and to the long-cherished false feelings of security. Only a brave
  person is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere
  and logical mind discovers.

  160:1.8 The wise and effective solution of any problem demands that the mind
  shall be free from bias, passion, and all other purely personal prejudices
  which might interfere with the disinterested survey of the actual factors that
  go to make up the problem presenting itself for solution. The solution of life
  problems requires courage and sincerity. Only honest and brave individuals are
  able to follow valiantly through the perplexing and confusing maze of living
  to where the logic of a fearless mind may lead. And this emancipation of the
  mind and soul can never be effected without the driving power of an
  intelligent enthusiasm which borders on religious zeal. It requires the lure
  of a great ideal to drive man on in the pursuit of a goal which is beset with
  difficult material problems and manifold intellectual hazards.

  160:1.9 Even though you are effectively armed to meet the difficult situations
  of life, you can hardly expect success unless you are equipped with that
  wisdom of mind and charm of personality which enable you to win the hearty
  support and co-operation of your fellows. You cannot hope for a large measure
  of success in either secular or religious work unless you can learn how to
  persuade your fellows, to prevail with men. You simply must have tact and
  tolerance.



  160:1.10 But the greatest of all methods of problem solving I have learned
  from Jesus, your Master. I refer to that which he so consistently practices,
  and which he has so faithfully taught you, the isolation of worshipful
  meditation. In this habit of Jesus' going off so frequently by himself to
  commune with the Father in heaven is to be found the technique, not only of
  gathering strength and wisdom for the ordinary conflicts of living, but also
  of appropriating the energy for the solution of the higher problems of a moral
  and spiritual nature. But even correct methods of solving problems will not
  compensate for inherent defects of personality or atone for the absence of the
  hunger and thirst for true righteousness.

  160:1.11 I am deeply impressed with the custom of Jesus in going apart by
  himself to engage in these seasons of solitary survey of the problems of
  living; to seek for new stores of wisdom and energy for meeting the manifold
  demands of social service; to quicken and deepen the supreme purpose of living
  by actually subjecting the total personality to the consciousness of
  contacting with divinity; to grasp for possession of new and better methods of
  adjusting oneself to the ever-changing situations of living existence; to
  effect those vital reconstructions and readjustments of one's personal
  attitudes which are so essential to enhanced insight into everything worth
  while and real; and to do all of this with an eye single to the glory of God
  -- to breathe in sincerity your Master's favorite prayer, "Not my will, but
  yours, be done."

  160:1.12 This worshipful practice of your Master brings that relaxation which
  renews the mind; that illumination which inspires the soul; that courage which
  enables one bravely to face one's problems; that self-understanding which
  obliterates debilitating fear; and that consciousness of union with divinity
  which equips man with the assurance that enables him to dare to be Godlike.
  The relaxation of worship, or spiritual communion as practiced by the Master,
  relieves tension, removes conflicts, and mightily augments the total resources
  of the personality. And all this philosophy, plus the gospel of the kingdom,
  constitutes the new religion as I understand it.



  160:1.13 Prejudice blinds the soul to the recognition of truth, and prejudice
  can be removed only by the sincere devotion of the soul to the adoration of a
  cause that is all-embracing and all-inclusive of one's fellow men. Prejudice
  is inseparably linked to selfishness. Prejudice can be eliminated only by the
  abandonment of self-seeking and by substituting therefor the quest of the
  satisfaction of the service of a cause that is not only greater than self, but
  one that is even greater than all humanity -- the search for God, the
  attainment of divinity. The evidence of maturity of personality consists in
  the transformation of human desire so that it constantly seeks for the
  realization of those values which are highest and most divinely real.

  160:1.14 In a continually changing world, in the midst of an evolving social
  order, it is impossible to maintain settled and established goals of destiny.
  Stability of personality can be experienced only by those who have discovered
  and embraced the living God as the eternal goal of infinite attainment. And
  thus to transfer one's goal from time to eternity, from earth to Paradise,
  from the human to the divine, requires that man shall become regenerated,
  converted, be born again; that he shall become the re-created child of the
  divine spirit; that he shall gain entrance into the brotherhood of the kingdom
  of heaven. All philosophies and religions which fall short of these ideals are
  immature. The philosophy which I teach, linked with the gospel which you
  preach, represents the new religion of maturity, the ideal of all future
  generations. And this is true because our ideal is final, infallible, eternal,
  universal, absolute, and infinite.

  160:1.15 My philosophy gave me the urge to search for the realities of true
  attainment, the goal of maturity. But my urge was impotent; my search lacked
  driving power; my quest suffered from the absence of certainty of
  directionization. And these deficiencies have been abundantly supplied by this
  new gospel of Jesus, with its enhancement of insights, elevation of ideals,
  and settledness of goals. Without doubts and misgivings I can now
  wholeheartedly enter upon the eternal venture.





2. THE ART OF LIVING

  160:2.1 There are just two ways in which mortals may live together: the
  material or animal way and the spiritual or human way. By the use of signals
  and sounds animals are able to communicate with each other in a limited way.
  But such forms of communication do not convey meanings, values, or ideas. The
  one distinction between man and the animal is that man can communicate with
  his fellows by means of symbols which most certainly designate and identify
  meanings, values, ideas, and even ideals.

  160:2.2 Since animals cannot communicate ideas to each other, they cannot
  develop personality. Man develops personality because he can thus communicate
  with his fellows concerning both ideas and ideals.

  160:2.3 It is this ability to communicate and share meanings that constitutes
  human culture and enables man, through social associations, to build
  civilizations. Knowledge and wisdom become cumulative because of man's ability
  to communicate these possessions to succeeding generations. And thereby arise
  the cultural activities of the race: art, science, religion, and philosophy.

  160:2.4 Symbolic communication between human beings predetermines the bringing
  into existence of social groups. The most effective of all social groups is
  the family, more particularly the two parents. Personal affection is the
  spiritual bond which holds together these material associations. Such an
  effective relationship is also possible between two persons of the same sex,
  as is so abundantly illustrated in the devotions of genuine friendships.

  160:2.5 These associations of friendship and mutual affection are socializing
  and ennobling because they encourage and facilitate the following essential
  factors of the higher levels of the art of living:



  160:2.6 1. Mutual self-expression and self-understanding. Many noble human
  impulses die because there is no one to hear their expression. Truly, it is
  not good for man to be alone. Some degree of recognition and a certain amount
  of appreciation are essential to the development of human character. Without
  the genuine love of a home, no child can achieve the full development of
  normal character. Character is something more than mere mind and morals. Of
  all social relations calculated to develop character, the most effective and
  ideal is the affectionate and understanding friendship of man and woman in the
  mutual embrace of intelligent wedlock. Marriage, with its manifold relations,
  is best designed to draw forth those precious impulses and those higher
  motives which are indispensable to the development of a strong character. I do
  not hesitate thus to glorify family life, for your Master has wisely chosen
  the father-child relationship as the very cornerstone of this new gospel of
  the kingdom. And such a matchless community of relationship, man and woman in
  the fond embrace of the highest ideals of time, is so valuable and satisfying
  an experience that it is worth any price, any sacrifice, requisite for its
  possession.



  160:2.7 2. Union of souls -- the mobilization of wisdom. Every human being
  sooner or later acquires a certain concept of this world and a certain vision
  of the next. Now it is possible, through personality association, to unite
  these views of temporal existence and eternal prospects. Thus does the mind of
  one augment its spiritual values by gaining much of the insight of the other.
  In this way men enrich the soul by pooling their respective spiritual
  possessions. Likewise, in this same way, man is enabled to avoid that ever-
  present tendency to fall victim to distortion of vision, prejudice of
  viewpoint, and narrowness of judgment. Fear, envy, and conceit can be
  prevented only by intimate contact with other minds. I call your attention to
  the fact that the Master never sends you out alone to labor for the extension
  of the kingdom; he always sends you out two and two. And since wisdom is
  superknowledge, it follows that, in the union of wisdom, the social group,
  small or large, mutually shares all knowledge.



  160:2.8 3. The enthusiasm for living. Isolation tends to exhaust the energy
  charge of the soul. Association with one's fellows is essential to the renewal
  of the zest for life and is indispensable to the maintenance of the courage to
  fight those battles consequent upon the ascent to the higher levels of human
  living. Friendship enhances the joys and glorifies the triumphs of life.
  Loving and intimate human associations tend to rob suffering of its sorrow and
  hardship of much of its bitterness. The presence of a friend enhances all
  beauty and exalts every goodness. By intelligent symbols man is able to
  quicken and enlarge the appreciative capacities of his friends. One of the
  crowning glories of human friendship is this power and possibility of the
  mutual stimulation of the imagination. Great spiritual power is inherent in
  the consciousness of wholehearted devotion to a common cause, mutual loyalty
  to a cosmic Deity.



  160:2.9 4. The enhanced defense against all evil. Personality association and
  mutual affection is an efficient insurance against evil. Difficulties, sorrow,
  disappointment, and defeat are more painful and disheartening when borne
  alone. Association does not transmute evil into righteousness, but it does aid
  in greatly lessening the sting. Said your Master, "Happy are they who mourn"
  -- if a friend is at hand to comfort. There is positive strength in the
  knowledge that you live for the welfare of others, and that these others
  likewise live for your welfare and advancement. Man languishes in isolation.
  Human beings unfailingly become discouraged when they view only the transitory
  transactions of time. The present, when divorced from the past and the future,
  becomes exasperatingly trivial. Only a glimpse of the circle of eternity can
  inspire man to do his best and can challenge the best in him to do its utmost.
  And when man is thus at his best, he lives most unselfishly for the good of
  others, his fellow sojourners in time and eternity.



  160:2.10 I repeat, such inspiring and ennobling association finds its ideal
  possibilities in the human marriage relation. True, much is attained out of
  marriage, and many, many marriages utterly fail to produce these moral and
  spiritual fruits. Too many times marriage is entered by those who seek other
  values which are lower than these superior accompaniments of human maturity.
  Ideal marriage must be founded on something more stable than the fluctuations
  of sentiment and the fickleness of mere sex attraction; it must be based on
  genuine and mutual personal devotion. And thus, if you can build up such
  trustworthy and effective small units of human association, when these are
  assembled in the aggregate, the world will behold a great and glorified social
  structure, the civilization of mortal maturity. Such a race might begin to
  realize something of your Master's ideal of "peace on earth and good will
  among men." While such a society would not be perfect or entirely free from
  evil, it would at least approach the stabilization of maturity.





3. THE LURES OF MATURITY

  160:3.1 The effort toward maturity necessitates work, and work requires
  energy. Whence the power to accomplish all this? The physical things can be
  taken for granted, but the Master has well said, "Man cannot live by bread
  alone." Granted the possession of a normal body and reasonably good health, we
  must next look for those lures which will act as a stimulus to call forth
  man's slumbering spiritual forces. Jesus has taught us that God lives in man;
  then how can we induce man to release these soul-bound powers of divinity and
  infinity? How shall we induce men to let go of God that he may spring forth to
  the refreshment of our own souls while in transit outward and then to serve
  the purpose of enlightening, uplifting, and blessing countless other souls?
  How best can I awaken these latent powers for good which lie dormant in your
  souls? One thing I am sure of: Emotional excitement is not the ideal spiritual
  stimulus. Excitement does not augment energy; it rather exhausts the powers of
  both mind and body. Whence then comes the energy to do these great things?
  Look to your Master. Even now he is out in the hills taking in power while we
  are here giving out energy. The secret of all this problem is wrapped up in
  spiritual communion, in worship. From the human standpoint it is a question of
  combined meditation and relaxation. Meditation makes the contact of mind with
  spirit; relaxation determines the capacity for spiritual receptivity. And this
  interchange of strength for weakness, courage for fear, the will of God for
  the mind of self, constitutes worship. At least, that is the way the
  philosopher views it.

  160:3.2 When these experiences are frequently repeated, they crystallize into
  habits, strength-giving and worshipful habits, and such habits eventually
  formulate themselves into a spiritual character, and such a character is
  finally recognized by one's fellows as a mature personality. These practices
  are difficult and time-consuming at first, but when they become habitual, they
  are at once restful and time-saving. The more complex society becomes, and the
  more the lures of civilization multiply, the more urgent will become the
  necessity for God-knowing individuals to form such protective habitual
  practices designed to conserve and augment their spiritual energies.

  160:3.3 Another requirement for the attainment of maturity is the co-operative
  adjustment of social groups to an ever-changing environment. The immature
  individual arouses the antagonisms of his fellows; the mature man wins the
  hearty co-operation of his associates, thereby many times multiplying the
  fruits of his life efforts.

  160:3.4 My philosophy tells me that there are times when I must fight, if need
  be, for the defense of my concept of righteousness, but I doubt not that the
  Master, with a more mature type of personality, would easily and gracefully
  gain an equal victory by his superior and winsome technique of tact and
  tolerance. All too often, when we battle for the right, it turns out that both
  the victor and the vanquished have sustained defeat. I heard the Master say
  only yesterday that the "wise man, when seeking entrance through the locked
  door, would not destroy the door but rather would seek for the key wherewith
  to unlock it." Too often we engage in a fight merely to convince ourselves
  that we are not afraid.

  160:3.5 This new gospel of the kingdom renders a great service to the art of
  living in that it supplies a new and richer incentive for higher living. It
  presents a new and exalted goal of destiny, a supreme life purpose. And these
  new concepts of the eternal and divine goal of existence are in themselves
  transcendent stimuli, calling forth the reaction of the very best that is
  resident in man's higher nature. On every mountaintop of intellectual thought
  are to be found relaxation for the mind, strength for the soul, and communion
  for the spirit. From such vantage points of high living, man is able to
  transcend the material irritations of the lower levels of thinking -- worry,
  jealousy, envy, revenge, and the pride of immature personality. These high-
  climbing souls deliver themselves from a multitude of the crosscurrent
  conflicts of the trifles of living, thus becoming free to attain consciousness
  of the higher currents of spirit concept and celestial communication. But the
  life purpose must be jealously guarded from the temptation to seek for easy
  and transient attainment; likewise must it be so fostered as to become immune
  to the disastrous threats of fanaticism.





4. THE BALANCE OF MATURITY

  160:4.1 While you have an eye single to the attainment of eternal realities,
  you must also make provision for the necessities of temporal living. While the
  spirit is our goal, the flesh is a fact. Occasionally the necessities of
  living may fall into our hands by accident, but in general, we must
  intelligently work for them. The two major problems of life are: making a
  temporal living and the achievement of eternal survival. And even the problem
  of making a living requires religion for its ideal solution. These are both
  highly personal problems. True religion, in fact, does not function apart from
  the individual.



  160:4.2 The essentials of the temporal life, as I see them, are:

1. Good physical health.

2. Clear and clean thinking.

3. Ability and skill.

4. Wealth -- the goods of life.

5. Ability to withstand defeat.

6. Culture -- education and wisdom.

  160:4.3 Even the physical problems of bodily health and efficiency are best
  solved when they are viewed from the religious standpoint of our Master's
  teaching: That the body and mind of man are the dwelling place of the gift of
  the Gods, the spirit of God becoming the spirit of man. The mind of man thus
  becomes the mediator between material things and spiritual realities.



  160:4.4 It requires intelligence to secure one's share of the desirable things
  of life. It is wholly erroneous to suppose that faithfulness in doing one's
  daily work will insure the rewards of wealth. Barring the occasional and
  accidental acquirement of wealth, the material rewards of the temporal life
  are found to flow in certain well-organized channels, and only those who have
  access to these channels may expect to be well rewarded for their temporal
  efforts. Poverty must ever be the lot of all men who seek for wealth in
  isolated and individual channels. Wise planning, therefore, becomes the one
  thing essential to worldly prosperity. Success requires not only devotion to
  one's work but also that one should function as a part of some one of the
  channels of material wealth. If you are unwise, you can bestow a devoted life
  upon your generation without material reward; if you are an accidental
  beneficiary of the flow of wealth, you may roll in luxury even though you have
  done nothing worth while for your fellow men.

  160:4.5 Ability is that which you inherit, while skill is what you acquire.
  Life is not real to one who cannot do some one thing well, expertly. Skill is
  one of the real sources of the satisfaction of living. Ability implies the
  gift of foresight, farseeing vision. Be not deceived by the tempting rewards
  of dishonest achievement; be willing to toil for the later returns inherent in
  honest endeavor. The wise man is able to distinguish between means and ends;
  otherwise, sometimes overplanning for the future defeats its own high purpose.
  As a pleasure seeker you should aim always to be a producer as well as a
  consumer.

  160:4.6 Train your memory to hold in sacred trust the strength-giving and
  worth-while episodes of life, which you can recall at will for your pleasure
  and edification. Thus build up for yourself and in yourself reserve galleries
  of beauty, goodness, and artistic grandeur. But the noblest of all memories
  are the treasured recollections of the great moments of a superb friendship.
  And all of these memory treasures radiate their most precious and exalting
  influences under the releasing touch of spiritual worship.

  160:4.7 But life will become a burden of existence unless you learn how to
  fail gracefully. There is an art in defeat which noble souls always acquire;
  you must know how to lose cheerfully; you must be fearless of disappointment.
  Never hesitate to admit failure. Make no attempt to hide failure under
  deceptive smiles and beaming optimism. It sounds well always to claim success,
  but the end results are appalling. Such a technique leads directly to the
  creation of a world of unreality and to the inevitable crash of ultimate
  disillusionment.

  160:4.8 Success may generate courage and promote confidence, but wisdom comes
  only from the experiences of adjustment to the results of one's failures. Men
  who prefer optimistic illusions to reality can never become wise. Only those
  who face facts and adjust them to ideals can achieve wisdom. Wisdom embraces
  both the fact and the ideal and therefore saves its devotees from both of
  those barren extremes of philosophy -- the man whose idealism excludes facts
  and the materialist who is devoid of spiritual outlook. Those timid souls who
  can only keep up the struggle of life by the aid of continuous false illusions
  of success are doomed to suffer failure and experience defeat as they
  ultimately awaken from the dream world of their own imaginations.

  160:4.9 And it is in this business of facing failure and adjusting to defeat
  that the far-reaching vision of religion exerts its supreme influence. Failure
  is simply an educational episode -- a cultural experiment in the acquirement
  of wisdom -- in the experience of the God-seeking man who has embarked on the
  eternal adventure of the exploration of a universe. To such men defeat is but
  a new tool for the achievement of higher levels of universe reality.

  160:4.10 The career of a God-seeking man may prove to be a great success in
  the light of eternity, even though the whole temporal-life enterprise may
  appear as an overwhelming failure, provided each life failure yielded the
  culture of wisdom and spirit achievement. Do not make the mistake of confusing
  knowledge, culture, and wisdom. They are related in life, but they represent
  vastly differing spirit values; wisdom ever dominates knowledge and always
  glorifies culture.





5. THE RELIGION OF THE IDEAL

  160:5.1 You have told me that your Master regards genuine human religion as
  the individual's experience with spiritual realities. I have regarded religion
  as man's experience of reacting to something which he regards as being worthy
  of the homage and devotion of all mankind. In this sense, religion symbolizes
  our supreme devotion to that which represents our highest concept of the
  ideals of reality and the farthest reach of our minds toward eternal
  possibilities of spiritual attainment.

  160:5.2 When men react to religion in the tribal, national, or racial sense,
  it is because they look upon those without their group as not being truly
  human. We always look upon the object of our religious loyalty as being worthy
  of the reverence of all men. Religion can never be a matter of mere
  intellectual belief or philosophic reasoning; religion is always and forever a
  mode of reacting to the situations of life; it is a species of conduct.
  Religion embraces thinking, feeling, and acting reverently toward some reality
  which we deem worthy of universal adoration.

  160:5.3 If something has become a religion in your experience, it is self-
  evident that you already have become an active evangel of that religion since
  you deem the supreme concept of your religion as being worthy of the worship
  of all mankind, all universe intelligences. If you are not a positive and
  missionary evangel of your religion, you are self-deceived in that what you
  call a religion is only a traditional belief or a mere system of intellectual
  philosophy. If your religion is a spiritual experience, your object of worship
  must be the universal spirit reality and ideal of all your spiritualized
  concepts. All religions based on fear, emotion, tradition, and philosophy I
  term the intellectual religions, while those based on true spirit experience I
  would term the true religions. The object of religious devotion may be
  material or spiritual, true or false, real or unreal, human or divine.
  Religions can therefore be either good or evil.

  160:5.4 Morality and religion are not necessarily the same. A system of
  morals, by grasping an object of worship, may become a religion. A religion,
  by losing its universal appeal to loyalty and supreme devotion, may evolve
  into a system of philosophy or a code of morals. This thing, being, state, or
  order of existence, or possibility of attainment which constitutes the supreme
  ideal of religious loyalty, and which is the recipient of the religious
  devotion of those who worship, is God. Regardless of the name applied to this
  ideal of spirit reality, it is God.

  160:5.5 The social characteristics of a true religion consist in the fact that
  it invariably seeks to convert the individual and to transform the world.
  Religion implies the existence of undiscovered ideals which far transcend the
  known standards of ethics and morality embodied in even the highest social
  usages of the most mature institutions of civilization. Religion reaches out
  for undiscovered ideals, unexplored realities, superhuman values, divine
  wisdom, and true spirit attainment. True religion does all of this; all other
  beliefs are not worthy of the name. You cannot have a genuine spiritual
  religion without the supreme and supernal ideal of an eternal God. A religion
  without this God is an invention of man, a human institution of lifeless
  intellectual beliefs and meaningless emotional ceremonies. A religion might
  claim as the object of its devotion a great ideal. But such ideals of
  unreality are not attainable; such a concept is illusionary. The only ideals
  susceptible of human attainment are the divine realities of the infinite
  values resident in the spiritual fact of the eternal God.

  160:5.6 The word God, the idea of God as contrasted with the ideal of God, can
  become a part of any religion, no matter how puerile or false that religion
  may chance to be. And this idea of God can become anything which those who
  entertain it may choose to make it. The lower religions shape their ideas of
  God to meet the natural state of the human heart; the higher religions demand
  that the human heart shall be changed to meet the demands of the ideals of
  true religion.



  160:5.7 The religion of Jesus transcends all our former concepts of the idea
  of worship in that he not only portrays his Father as the ideal of infinite
  reality but positively declares that this divine source of values and the
  eternal center of the universe is truly and personally attainable by every
  mortal creature who chooses to enter the kingdom of heaven on earth, thereby
  acknowledging the acceptance of sonship with God and brotherhood with man.
  That, I submit, is the highest concept of religion the world has ever known,
  and I pronounce that there can never be a higher since this gospel embraces
  the infinity of realities, the divinity of values, and the eternity of
  universal attainments. Such a concept constitutes the achievement of the
  experience of the idealism of the supreme and the ultimate.

  160:5.8 I am not only intrigued by the consummate ideals of this religion of
  your Master, but I am mightily moved to profess my belief in his announcement
  that these ideals of spirit realities are attainable; that you and I can enter
  upon this long and eternal adventure with his assurance of the certainty of
  our ultimate arrival at the portals of Paradise. My brethren, I am a believer,
  I have embarked; I am on my way with you in this eternal venture. The Master
  says he came from the Father, and that he will show us the way. I am fully
  persuaded he speaks the truth. I am finally convinced that there are no
  attainable ideals of reality or values of perfection apart from the eternal
  and Universal Father.

  160:5.9 I come, then, to worship, not merely the God of existences, but the
  God of the possibility of all future existences. Therefore must your devotion
  to a supreme ideal, if that ideal is real, be devotion to this God of past,
  present, and future universes of things and beings. And there is no other God,
  for there cannot possibly be any other God. All other gods are figments of the
  imagination, illusions of mortal mind, distortions of false logic, and the
  self-deceptive idols of those who create them. Yes, you can have a religion
  without this God, but it does not mean anything. And if you seek to substitute
  the word God for the reality of this ideal of the living God, you have only
  deluded yourself by putting an idea in the place of an ideal, a divine
  reality. Such beliefs are merely religions of wishful fancy.

  160:5.10 I see in the teachings of Jesus, religion at its best. This gospel
  enables us to seek for the true God and to find him. But are we willing to pay
  the price of this entrance into the kingdom of heaven? Are we willing to be
  born again? to be remade? Are we willing to be subject to this terrible and
  testing process of self-destruction and soul reconstruction? Has not the
  Master said: "Whoso would save his life must lose it. Think not that I have
  come to bring peace but rather a soul struggle"? True, after we pay the price
  of dedication to the Father's will, we do experience great peace provided we
  continue to walk in these spiritual paths of consecrated living.

  160:5.11 Now are we truly forsaking the lures of the known order of existence
  while we unreservedly dedicate our quest to the lures of the unknown and
  unexplored order of the existence of a future life of adventure in the spirit
  worlds of the higher idealism of divine reality. And we seek for those symbols
  of meaning wherewith to convey to our fellow men these concepts of the reality
  of the idealism of the religion of Jesus, and we will not cease to pray for
  that day when all mankind shall be thrilled by the communal vision of this
  supreme truth. Just now, our focalized concept of the Father, as held in our
  hearts, is that God is spirit; as conveyed to our fellows, that God is love.

  160:5.12 The religion of Jesus demands living and spiritual experience. Other
  religions may consist in traditional beliefs, emotional feelings, philosophic
  consciousness, and all of that, but the teaching of the Master requires the
  attainment of actual levels of real spirit progression.

  160:5.13 The consciousness of the impulse to be like God is not true religion.
  The feelings of the emotion to worship God are not true religion. The
  knowledge of the conviction to forsake self and serve God is not true
  religion. The wisdom of the reasoning that this religion is the best of all is
  not religion as a personal and spiritual experience. True religion has
  reference to destiny and reality of attainment as well as to the reality and
  idealism of that which is wholeheartedly faith-accepted. And all of this must
  be made personal to us by the revelation of the Spirit of Truth.



  160:5.14 And thus ended the dissertations of the Greek philosopher, one of the
  greatest of his race, who had become a believer in the gospel of Jesus.


PAPER 161


 FURTHER DISCUSSIONS WITH RODAN



  161:0.1 ON SUNDAY, September 25, A.D. 29, the apostles and the evangelists
  assembled at Magadan. After a long conference that evening with his
  associates, Jesus surprised all by announcing that early the next day he and
  the twelve apostles would start for Jerusalem to attend the feast of
  tabernacles. He directed that the evangelists visit the believers in Galilee,
  and that the women's corps return for a while to Bethsaida.

  161:0.2 When the hour came to leave for Jerusalem, Nathaniel and Thomas were
  still in the midst of their discussions with Rodan of Alexandria, and they
  secured the Master's permission to remain at Magadan for a few days. And so,
  while Jesus and the ten were on their way to Jerusalem, Nathaniel and Thomas
  were engaged in earnest debate with Rodan. The week prior, in which Rodan had
  expounded his philosophy, Thomas and Nathaniel had alternated in presenting
  the gospel of the kingdom to the Greek philosopher. Rodan discovered that he
  had been well instructed in Jesus' teachings by one of the former apostles of
  John the Baptist who had been his teacher at Alexandria.





1. THE PERSONALITY OF GOD



  161:1.1 There was one matter on which Rodan and the two apostles did not see
  alike, and that was the personality of God. Rodan readily accepted all that
  was presented to him regarding the attributes of God, but he contended that
  the Father in heaven is not, cannot be, a person as man conceives personality.
  While the apostles found themselves in difficulty trying to prove that God is
  a person, Rodan found it still more difficult to prove he is not a person.

  161:1.2 Rodan contended that the fact of personality consists in the
  coexistent fact of full and mutual communication between beings of equality,
  beings who are capable of sympathetic understanding. Said Rodan: "In order to
  be a person, God must have symbols of spirit communication which would enable
  him to become fully understood by those who make contact with him. But since
  God is infinite and eternal, the Creator of all other beings, it follows that,
  as regards beings of equality, God is alone in the universe. There are none
  equal to him; there are none with whom he can communicate as an equal. God
  indeed may be the source of all personality, but as such he is transcendent to
  personality, even as the Creator is above and beyond the creature."

  161:1.3 This contention greatly troubled Thomas and Nathaniel, and they had
  asked Jesus to come to their rescue, but the Master refused to enter into
  their discussions. He did say to Thomas: "It matters little what idea of the
  Father you may entertain as long as you are spiritually acquainted with the
  ideal of his infinite and eternal nature."

  161:1.4 Thomas contended that God does communicate with man, and therefore
  that the Father is a person, even within the definition of Rodan. This the
  Greek rejected on the ground that God does not reveal himself personally; that
  he is still a mystery. Then Nathaniel appealed to his own personal experience
  with God, and that Rodan allowed, affirming that he had recently had similar
  experiences, but these experiences, he contended, proved only the reality of
  God, not his personality.

  161:1.5 By Monday night Thomas gave up. But by Tuesday night Nathaniel had won
  Rodan to believe in the personality of the Father, and he effected this change
  in the Greek's views by the following steps of reasoning:



  161:1.6 1. The Father in Paradise does enjoy equality of communication with at
  least two other beings who are fully equal to himself and wholly like himself
  -- the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. In view of the doctrine of the
  Trinity, the Greek was compelled to concede the personality possibility of the
  Universal Father. (It was the later consideration of these discussions which
  led to the enlarged conception of the Trinity in the minds of the twelve
  apostles. Of course, it was the general belief that Jesus was the Eternal
  Son.)



  161:1.7 2. Since Jesus was equal with the Father, and since this Son had
  achieved the manifestation of personality to his earth children, such a
  phenomenon constituted proof of the fact, and demonstration of the
  possibility, of the possession of personality by all three of the Godheads and
  forever settled the question regarding the ability of God to communicate with
  man and the possibility of man's communicating with God.



  161:1.8 3. That Jesus was on terms of mutual association and perfect
  communication with man; that Jesus was the Son of God. That the relation of
  Son and Father presupposes equality of communication and mutuality of
  sympathetic understanding; that Jesus and the Father were one. That Jesus
  maintained at one and the same time understanding communication with both God
  and man, and that, since both God and man comprehended the meaning of the
  symbols of Jesus' communication, both God and man possessed the attributes of
  personality in so far as the requirements of the ability of intercommunication
  were concerned. That the personality of Jesus demonstrated the personality of
  God, while it proved conclusively the presence of God in man. That two things
  which are related to the same thing are related to each other.



  161:1.9 4. That personality represents man's highest concept of human reality
  and divine values; that God also represents man's highest concept of divine
  reality and infinite values; therefore, that God must be a divine and infinite
  personality, a personality in reality although infinitely and eternally
  transcending man's concept and definition of personality, but nevertheless
  always and universally a personality.



  161:1.10 5. That God must be a personality since he is the Creator of all
  personality and the destiny of all personality. Rodan had been tremendously
  influenced by the teaching of Jesus, "Be you therefore perfect, even as your
  Father in heaven is perfect."



  161:1.11 When Rodan heard these arguments, he said: "I am convinced. I will
  confess God as a person if you will permit me to qualify my confession of such
  a belief by attaching to the meaning of personality a group of extended
  values, such as superhuman, transcendent, supreme, infinite, eternal, final,
  and universal. I am now convinced that, while God must be infinitely more than
  a personality, he cannot be anything less. I am satisfied to end the argument
  and to accept Jesus as the personal revelation of the Father and the
  satisfaction of all unsatisfied factors in logic, reason, and philosophy."





2. THE DIVINE NATURE OF JESUS



  161:2.1 Since Nathaniel and Thomas had so fully approved Rodan's views of the
  gospel of the kingdom, there remained only one more point to consider, the
  teaching dealing with the divine nature of Jesus, a doctrine only so recently
  publicly announced. Nathaniel and Thomas jointly presented their views of the
  divine nature of the Master, and the following narrative is a condensed,
  rearranged, and restated presentation of their teaching:



  161:2.2 1. Jesus has admitted his divinity, and we believe him. Many
  remarkable things have happened in connection with his ministry which we can
  understand only by believing that he is the Son of God as well as the Son of
  Man.



  161:2.3 2. His life association with us exemplifies the ideal of human
  friendship; only a divine being could possibly be such a human friend. He is
  the most truly unselfish person we have ever known. He is the friend even of
  sinners; he dares to love his enemies. He is very loyal to us. While he does
  not hesitate to reprove us, it is plain to all that he truly loves us. The
  better you know him, the more you will love him. You will be charmed by his
  unswerving devotion. Through all these years of our failure to comprehend his
  mission, he has been a faithful friend. While he makes no use of flattery, he
  does treat us all with equal kindness; he is invariably tender and
  compassionate. He has shared his life and everything else with us. We are a
  happy community; we share all things in common. We do not believe that a mere
  human could live such a blameless life under such trying circumstances.



  161:2.4 3. We think Jesus is divine because he never does wrong; he makes no
  mistakes. His wisdom is extraordinary; his piety superb. He lives day by day
  in perfect accord with the Father's will. He never repents of misdeeds because
  he transgresses none of the Father's laws. He prays for us and with us, but he
  never asks us to pray for him. We believe that he is consistently sinless. We
  do not think that one who is only human ever professed to live such a life. He
  claims to live a perfect life, and we acknowledge that he does. Our piety
  springs from repentance, but his piety springs from righteousness. He even
  professes to forgive sins and does heal diseases. No mere man would sanely
  profess to forgive sin; that is a divine prerogative. And he has seemed to be
  thus perfect in his righteousness from the times of our first contact with
  him. We grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth, but our Master
  exhibits maturity of righteousness to start with. All men, good and evil,
  recognize these elements of goodness in Jesus. And yet never is his piety
  obtrusive or ostentatious. He is both meek and fearless. He seems to approve
  of our belief in his divinity. He is either what he professes to be, or else
  he is the greatest hypocrite and fraud the world has ever known. We are
  persuaded that he is just what he claims to be.



  161:2.5 4. The uniqueness of his character and the perfection of his emotional
  control convince us that he is a combination of humanity and divinity. He
  unfailingly responds to the spectacle of human need; suffering never fails to
  appeal to him. His compassion is moved alike by physical suffering, mental
  anguish, or spiritual sorrow. He is quick to recognize and generous to
  acknowledge the presence of faith or any other grace in his fellow men. He is
  so just and fair and at the same time so merciful and considerate. He grieves
  over the spiritual obstinacy of the people and rejoices when they consent to
  see the light of truth.



  161:2.6 5. He seems to know the thoughts of men's minds and to understand the
  longings of their hearts. And he is always sympathetic with our troubled
  spirits. He seems to possess all our human emotions, but they are
  magnificently glorified. He strongly loves goodness and equally hates sin. He
  possesses a superhuman consciousness of the presence of Deity. He prays like a
  man but performs like a God. He seems to foreknow things; he even now dares to
  speak about his death, some mystic reference to his future glorification.
  While he is kind, he is also brave and courageous. He never falters in doing
  his duty.



  161:2.7 6. We are constantly impressed by the phenomenon of his superhuman
  knowledge. Hardly does a day pass but something transpires to disclose that
  the Master knows what is going on away from his immediate presence. He also
  seems to know about the thoughts of his associates. He undoubtedly has
  communion with celestial personalities; he unquestionably lives on a spiritual
  plane far above the rest of us. Everything seems to be open to his unique
  understanding. He asks us questions to draw us out, not to gain information.



  161:2.8 7. Recently the Master does not hesitate to assert his superhumanity.
  From the day of our ordination as apostles right on down to recent times, he
  has never denied that he came from the Father above. He speaks with the
  authority of a divine teacher. The Master does not hesitate to refute the
  religious teachings of today and to declare the new gospel with positive
  authority. He is assertive, positive, and authoritative. Even John the
  Baptist, when he heard Jesus speak, declared that he was the Son of God. He
  seems to be so sufficient within himself. He craves not the support of the
  multitude; he is indifferent to the opinions of men. He is brave and yet so
  free from pride.



  161:2.9 8. He constantly talks about God as an ever-present associate in all
  that he does. He goes about doing good, for God seems to be in him. He makes
  the most astounding assertions about himself and his mission on earth,
  statements which would be absurd if he were not divine. He once declared,
  "Before Abraham was, I am." He has definitely claimed divinity; he professes
  to be in partnership with God. He well-nigh exhausts the possibilities of
  language in the reiteration of his claims of intimate association with the
  heavenly Father. He even dares to assert that he and the Father are one. He
  says that any one who has seen him has seen the Father. And he says and does
  all these tremendous things with such childlike naturalness. He alludes to his
  association with the Father in the same manner that he refers to his
  association with us. He seems to be so sure about God and speaks of these
  relations in such a matter-of-fact way.



  161:2.10 9. In his prayer life he appears to communicate directly with his
  Father. We have heard few of his prayers, but these few would indicate that he
  talks with God, as it were, face to face. He seems to know the future as well
  as the past. He simply could not be all of this and do all of these
  extraordinary things unless he were something more than human. We know he is
  human, we are sure of that, but we are almost equally sure that he is also
  divine. We believe that he is divine. We are convinced that he is the Son of
  Man and the Son of God.



  161:2.11 When Nathaniel and Thomas had concluded their conferences with Rodan,
  they hurried on toward Jerusalem to join their fellow apostles, arriving on
  Friday of that week. This had been a great experience in the lives of all
  three of these believers, and the other apostles learned much from the
  recounting of these experiences by Nathaniel and Thomas.

  161:2.12 Rodan made his way back to Alexandria, where he long taught his
  philosophy in the school of Meganta. He became a mighty man in the later
  affairs of the kingdom of heaven; he was a faithful believer to the end of his
  earth days, yielding up his life in Greece with others when the persecutions
  were at their height.





3. JESUS' HUMAN AND DIVINE MINDS



  161:3.1 Consciousness of divinity was a gradual growth in the mind of Jesus up
  to the occasion of his baptism. After he became fully self-conscious of his
  divine nature, prehuman existence, and universe prerogatives, he seems to have
  possessed the power of variously limiting his human consciousness of his
  divinity. It appears to us that from his baptism until the crucifixion it was
  entirely optional with Jesus whether to depend only on the human mind or to
  utilize the knowledge of both the human and the divine minds. At times he
  appeared to avail himself of only that information which was resident in the
  human intellect. On other occasions he appeared to act with such fullness of
  knowledge and wisdom as could be afforded only by the utilization of the
  superhuman content of his divine consciousness.

  161:3.2 We can understand his unique performances only by accepting the theory
  that he could, at will, self-limit his divinity consciousness. We are fully
  cognizant that he frequently withheld from his associates his foreknowledge of
  events, and that he was aware of the nature of their thinking and planning. We
  understand that he did not wish his followers to know too fully that he was
  able to discern their thoughts and to penetrate their plans. He did not desire
  too far to transcend the concept of the human as it was held in the minds of
  his apostles and disciples.

  161:3.3 We are utterly at a loss to differentiate between his practice of
  self-limiting his divine consciousness and his technique of concealing his
  preknowledge and thought discernment from his human associates. We are
  convinced that he used both of these techniques, but we are not always able,
  in a given instance, to specify which method he may have employed. We
  frequently observed him acting with only the human content of consciousness;
  then would we behold him in conference with the directors of the celestial
  hosts of the universe and discern the undoubted functioning of the divine
  mind. And then on almost numberless occasions did we witness the working of
  this combined personality of man and God as it was activated by the apparent
  perfect union of the human and the divine minds. This is the limit of our
  knowledge of such phenomena; we really do not actually know the full truth
  about this mystery.




PAPER 162


 AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES



  162:0.1 WHEN Jesus started up to Jerusalem with the ten apostles, he planned
  to go through Samaria, that being the shorter route. Accordingly, they passed
  down the eastern shore of the lake and, by way of Scythopolis, entered the
  borders of Samaria. Near nightfall Jesus sent Philip and Matthew over to a
  village on the eastern slopes of Mount Gilboa to secure lodging for the
  company. It so happened that these villagers were greatly prejudiced against
  the Jews, even more so than the average Samaritans, and these feelings were
  heightened at this particular time as so many were on their way to the feast
  of tabernacles. These people knew very little about Jesus, and they refused
  him lodging because he and his associates were Jews. When Matthew and Philip
  manifested indignation and informed these Samaritans that they were declining
  to entertain the Holy One of Israel, the infuriated villagers chased them out
  of the little town with sticks and stones.

  162:0.2 After Philip and Matthew had returned to their fellows and reported
  how they had been driven out of the village, James and John stepped up to
  Jesus and said: "Master, we pray you to give us permission to bid fire come
  down from heaven to devour these insolent and impenitent Samaritans." But when
  Jesus heard these words of vengeance, he turned upon the sons of Zebedee and
  severely rebuked them: "You know not what manner of attitude you manifest.
  Vengeance savors not of the outlook of the kingdom of heaven. Rather than
  dispute, let us journey over to the little village by the Jordan ford." Thus
  because of sectarian prejudice these Samaritans denied themselves the honor of
  showing hospitality to the Creator Son of a universe.

  162:0.3 Jesus and the ten stopped for the night at the village near the Jordan
  ford. Early the next day they crossed the river and continued on to Jerusalem
  by way of the east Jordan highway, arriving at Bethany late Wednesday evening.
  Thomas and Nathaniel arrived on Friday, having been delayed by their
  conferences with Rodan.



  162:0.4 Jesus and the twelve remained in the vicinity of Jerusalem until the
  end of the following month (October), about four and one-half weeks. Jesus
  himself went into the city only a few times, and these brief visits were made
  during the days of the feast of tabernacles. He spent a considerable portion
  of October with Abner and his associates at Bethlehem.





1. THE DANGERS OF THE VISIT TO JERUSALEM



  162:1.1 Long before they fled from Galilee, the followers of Jesus had
  implored him to go to Jerusalem to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom in order
  that his message might have the prestige of having been preached at the center
  of Jewish culture and learning; but now that he had actually come to Jerusalem
  to teach, they were afraid for his life. Knowing that the Sanhedrin had sought
  to bring Jesus to Jerusalem for trial and recalling the Master's recently
  reiterated declarations that he must be subject to death, the apostles had
  been literally stunned by his sudden decision to attend the feast of
  tabernacles. To all their previous entreaties that he go to Jerusalem he had
  replied, "The hour has not yet come." Now, to their protests of fear he
  answered only, "But the hour has come."

  162:1.2 During the feast of tabernacles Jesus went boldly into Jerusalem on
  several occasions and publicly taught in the temple. This he did in spite of
  the efforts of his apostles to dissuade him. Though they had long urged him to
  proclaim his message in Jerusalem, they now feared to see him enter the city
  at this time, knowing full well that the scribes and Pharisees were bent on
  bringing about his death.

  162:1.3 Jesus' bold appearance in Jerusalem more than ever confused his
  followers. Many of his disciples, and even Judas Iscariot, the apostle, had
  dared to think that Jesus had fled in haste into Phoenicia because he feared
  the Jewish leaders and Herod Antipas. They failed to comprehend the
  significance of the Master's movements. His presence in Jerusalem at the feast
  of tabernacles, even in opposition to the advice of his followers, sufficed
  forever to put an end to all whisperings about fear and cowardice.

  162:1.4 During the feast of tabernacles, thousands of believers from all parts
  of the Roman Empire saw Jesus, heard him teach, and many even journeyed out to
  Bethany to confer with him regarding the progress of the kingdom in their home
  districts.

  162:1.5 There were many reasons why Jesus was able publicly to preach in the
  temple courts throughout the days of the feast, and chief of these was the
  fear that had come over the officers of the Sanhedrin as a result of the
  secret division of sentiment in their own ranks. It was a fact that many of
  the members of the Sanhedrin either secretly believed in Jesus or else were
  decidedly averse to arresting him during the feast, when such large numbers of
  people were present in Jerusalem, many of whom either believed in him or were
  at least friendly to the spiritual movement which he sponsored.

  162:1.6 The efforts of Abner and his associates throughout Judea had also done
  much to consolidate sentiment favorable to the kingdom, so much so that the
  enemies of Jesus dared not be too outspoken in their opposition. This was one
  of the reasons why Jesus could publicly visit Jerusalem and live to go away.
  One or two months before this he would certainly have been put to death.

  162:1.7 But the audacious boldness of Jesus in publicly appearing in Jerusalem
  overawed his enemies; they were not prepared for such a daring challenge.
  Several times during this month the Sanhedrin made feeble attempts to place
  the Master under arrest, but nothing came of these efforts. His enemies were
  so taken aback by Jesus' unexpected public appearance in Jerusalem that they
  conjectured he must have been promised protection by the Roman authorities.
  Knowing that Philip (Herod Antipas's brother) was almost a follower of Jesus,
  the members of the Sanhedrin speculated that Philip had secured for Jesus
  promises of protection against his enemies. Jesus had departed from their
  jurisdiction before they awakened to the realization that they had been
  mistaken in the belief that his sudden and bold appearance in Jerusalem had
  been due to a secret understanding with the Roman officials.

  162:1.8 Only the twelve apostles had known that Jesus intended to attend the
  feast of tabernacles when they had departed from Magadan. The other followers
  of the Master were greatly astonished when he appeared in the temple courts
  and began publicly to teach, and the Jewish authorities were surprised beyond
  expression when it was reported that he was teaching in the temple.

  162:1.9 Although his disciples had not expected Jesus to attend the feast, the
  vast majority of the pilgrims from afar who had heard of him entertained the
  hope that they might see him at Jerusalem. And they were not disappointed, for
  on several occasions he taught in Solomon's Porch and elsewhere in the temple
  courts. These teachings were really the official or formal announcement of the
  divinity of Jesus to the Jewish people and to the whole world.

  162:1.10 The multitudes who listened to the Master's teachings were divided in
  their opinions. Some said he was a good man; some a prophet; some that he was
  truly the Messiah; others said he was a mischievous meddler, that he was
  leading the people astray with his strange doctrines. His enemies hesitated to
  denounce him openly for fear of his friendly believers, while his friends
  feared to acknowledge him openly for fear of the Jewish leaders, knowing that
  the Sanhedrin was determined to put him to death. But even his enemies
  marveled at his teaching, knowing that he had not been instructed in the
  schools of the rabbis.

  162:1.11 Every time Jesus went to Jerusalem, his apostles were filled with
  terror. They were the more afraid as, from day to day, they listened to his
  increasingly bold pronouncements regarding the nature of his mission on earth.
  They were unaccustomed to hearing Jesus make such positive claims and such
  amazing assertions even when preaching among his friends.





2. THE FIRST TEMPLE TALK

  162:2.1 The first afternoon that Jesus taught in the temple, a considerable
  company sat listening to his words depicting the liberty of the new gospel and
  the joy of those who believe the good news, when a curious listener
  interrupted him to ask: "Teacher, how is it you can quote the Scriptures and
  teach the people so fluently when I am told that you are untaught in the
  learning of the rabbis?" Jesus replied: "No man has taught me the truths which
  I declare to you. And this teaching is not mine but His who sent me. If any
  man really desires to do my Father's will, he shall certainly know about my
  teaching, whether it be God's or whether I speak for myself. He who speaks for
  himself seeks his own glory, but when I declare the words of the Father, I
  thereby seek the glory of Him who sent me. But before you try to enter into
  the new light, should you not rather follow the light you already have? Moses
  gave you the law, yet how many of you honestly seek to fulfill its demands?
  Moses in this law enjoins you, saying, `You shall not kill'; notwithstanding
  this command some of you seek to kill the Son of Man."



  162:2.2 When the crowd heard these words, they fell to wrangling among
  themselves. Some said he was mad; some that he had a devil. Others said this
  was indeed the prophet of Galilee whom the scribes and Pharisees had long
  sought to kill. Some said the religious authorities were afraid to molest him;
  others thought that they laid not hands upon him because they had become
  believers in him. After considerable debate one of the crowd stepped forward
  and asked Jesus, "Why do the rulers seek to kill you?" And he replied: "The
  rulers seek to kill me because they resent my teaching about the good news of
  the kingdom, a gospel that sets men free from the burdensome traditions of a
  formal religion of ceremonies which these teachers are determined to uphold at
  any cost. They circumcise in accordance with the law on the Sabbath day, but
  they would kill me because I once on the Sabbath day set free a man held in
  the bondage of affliction. They follow after me on the Sabbath to spy on me
  but would kill me because on another occasion I chose to make a grievously
  stricken man completely whole on the Sabbath day. They seek to kill me because
  they well know that, if you honestly believe and dare to accept my teaching,
  their system of traditional religion will be overthrown, forever destroyed.
  Thus will they be deprived of authority over that to which they have devoted
  their lives since they steadfastly refuse to accept this new and more glorious
  gospel of the kingdom of God. And now do I appeal to every one of you: Judge
  not according to outward appearances but rather judge by the true spirit of
  these teachings; judge righteously."

  162:2.3 Then said another inquirer: "Yes, Teacher, we do look for the Messiah,
  but when he comes, we know that his appearance will be in mystery. We know
  whence you are. You have been among your brethren from the beginning. The
  deliverer will come in power to restore the throne of David's kingdom. Do you
  really claim to be the Messiah?" And Jesus replied: "You claim to know me and
  to know whence I am. I wish your claims were true, for indeed then would you
  find abundant life in that knowledge. But I declare that I have not come to
  you for myself; I have been sent by the Father, and he who sent me is true and
  faithful. By refusing to hear me, you are refusing to receive Him who sends
  me. You, if you will receive this gospel, shall come to know Him who sent me.
  I know the Father, for I have come from the Father to declare and reveal him
  to you."

  162:2.4 The agents of the scribes wanted to lay hands upon him, but they
  feared the multitude, for many believed in him. Jesus' work since his baptism
  had become well known to all Jewry, and as many of these people recounted
  these things, they said among themselves: "Even though this teacher is from
  Galilee, and even though he does not meet all of our expectations of the
  Messiah, we wonder if the deliverer, when he does come, will really do
  anything more wonderful than this Jesus of Nazareth has already done?"

  162:2.5 When the Pharisees and their agents heard the people talking this way,
  they took counsel with their leaders and decided that something should be done
  forthwith to put a stop to these public appearances of Jesus in the temple
  courts. The leaders of the Jews, in general, were disposed to avoid a clash
  with Jesus, believing that the Roman authorities had promised him immunity.
  They could not otherwise account for his boldness in coming at this time to
  Jerusalem; but the officers of the Sanhedrin did not wholly believe this
  rumor. They reasoned that the Roman rulers would not do such a thing secretly
  and without the knowledge of the highest governing body of the Jewish nation.

  162:2.6 Accordingly, Eber, the proper officer of the Sanhedrin, with two
  assistants was dispatched to arrest Jesus. As Eber made his way toward Jesus,
  the Master said: "Fear not to approach me. Draw near while you listen to my
  teaching. I know you have been sent to apprehend me, but you should understand
  that nothing will befall the Son of Man until his hour comes. You are not
  arrayed against me; you come only to do the bidding of your masters, and even
  these rulers of the Jews verily think they are doing God's service when they
  secretly seek my destruction.

  162:2.7 "I bear none of you ill will. The Father loves you, and therefore do I
  long for your deliverance from the bondage of prejudice and the darkness of
  tradition. I offer you the liberty of life and the joy of salvation. I
  proclaim the new and living way, the deliverance from evil and the breaking of
  the bondage of sin. I have come that you might have life, and have it
  eternally. You seek to be rid of me and my disquieting teachings. If you could
  only realize that I am to be with you only a little while! In just a short
  time I go to Him who sent me into this world. And then will many of you
  diligently seek me, but you shall not discover my presence, for where I am
  about to go you cannot come. But all who truly seek to find me shall sometime
  attain the life that leads to my Father's presence."

  162:2.8 Some of the scoffers said among themselves: "Where will this man go
  that we cannot find him? Will he go to live among the Greeks? Will he destroy
  himself? What can he mean when he declares that soon he will depart from us,
  and that we cannot go where he goes?"

  162:2.9 Eber and his assistants refused to arrest Jesus; they returned to
  their meeting place without him. When, therefore, the chief priests and the
  Pharisees upbraided Eber and his assistants because they had not brought Jesus
  with them, Eber only replied: "We feared to arrest him in the midst of the
  multitude because many believe in him. Besides, we never heard a man speak
  like this man. There is something out of the ordinary about this teacher. You
  would all do well to go over to hear him." And when the chief rulers heard
  these words, they were astonished and spoke tauntingly to Eber: "Are you also
  led astray? Are you about to believe in this deceiver? Have you heard that any
  of our learned men or any of the rulers have believed in him? Have any of the
  scribes or the Pharisees been deceived by his clever teachings? How does it
  come that you are influenced by the behavior of this ignorant multitude who
  know not the law or the prophets? Do you not know that such untaught people
  are accursed?" And then answered Eber: "Even so, my masters, but this man
  speaks to the multitude words of mercy and hope. He cheers the downhearted,
  and his words were comforting even to our souls. What can there be wrong in
  these teachings even though he may not be the Messiah of the Scriptures? And
  even then does not our law require fairness? Do we condemn a man before we
  hear him?" And the chief of the Sanhedrin was wroth with Eber and, turning
  upon him, said: "Have you gone mad? Are you by any chance also from Galilee?
  Search the Scriptures, and you will discover that out of Galilee arises no
  prophet, much less the Messiah."

  162:2.10 The Sanhedrin disbanded in confusion, and Jesus withdrew to Bethany
  for the night.





3. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY

  162:3.1 It was during this visit to Jerusalem that Jesus dealt with a certain
  woman of evil repute who was brought into his presence by her accusers and his
  enemies. The distorted record you have of this episode would suggest that this
  woman had been brought before Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees, and that
  Jesus so dealt with them as to indicate that these religious leaders of the
  Jews might themselves have been guilty of immorality. Jesus well knew that,
  while these scribes and Pharisees were spiritually blind and intellectually
  prejudiced by their loyalty to tradition, they were to be numbered among the
  most thoroughly moral men of that day and generation.



  162:3.2 What really happened was this: Early the third morning of the feast,
  as Jesus approached the temple, he was met by a group of the hired agents of
  the Sanhedrin who were dragging a woman along with them. As they came near,
  the spokesman said: "Master, this woman was taken in adultery -- in the very
  act. Now, the law of Moses commands that we should stone such a woman. What do
  you say should be done with her?"

  162:3.3 It was the plan of Jesus' enemies, if he upheld the law of Moses
  requiring that the self-confessed transgressor be stoned, to involve him in
  difficulty with the Roman rulers, who had denied the Jews the right to inflict
  the death penalty without the approval of a Roman tribunal. If he forbade
  stoning the woman, they would accuse him before the Sanhedrin of setting
  himself up above Moses and the Jewish law. If he remained silent, they would
  accuse him of cowardice. But the Master so managed the situation that the
  whole plot fell to pieces of its own sordid weight.

  162:3.4 This woman, once comely, was the wife of an inferior citizen of
  Nazareth, a man who had been a troublemaker for Jesus throughout his youthful
  days. The man, having married this woman, did most shamefully force her to
  earn their living by making commerce of her body. He had come up to the feast
  at Jerusalem that his wife might thus prostitute her physical charms for
  financial gain. He had entered into a bargain with the hirelings of the Jewish
  rulers thus to betray his own wife in her commercialized vice. And so they
  came with the woman and her companion in transgression for the purpose of
  ensnaring Jesus into making some statement which could be used against him in
  case of his arrest.

  162:3.5 Jesus, looking over the crowd, saw her husband standing behind the
  others. He knew what sort of man he was and perceived that he was a party to
  the despicable transaction. Jesus first walked around to near where this
  degenerate husband stood and wrote upon the sand a few words which caused him
  to depart in haste. Then he came back before the woman and wrote again upon
  the ground for the benefit of her would-be accusers; and when they read his
  words, they, too, went away, one by one. And when the Master had written in
  the sand the third time, the woman's companion in evil took his departure, so
  that, when the Master raised himself up from this writing, he beheld the woman
  standing alone before him. Jesus said: "Woman, where are your accusers? did no
  man remain to stone you?" And the woman, lifting up her eyes, answered, "No
  man, Lord." And then said Jesus: "I know about you; neither do I condemn you.
  Go your way in peace." And this woman, Hildana, forsook her wicked husband and
  joined herself to the disciples of the kingdom.





4. THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES

  162:4.1 The presence of people from all of the known world, from Spain to
  India, made the feast of tabernacles an ideal occasion for Jesus for the first
  time publicly to proclaim his full gospel in Jerusalem. At this feast the
  people lived much in the open air, in leafy booths. It was the feast of the
  harvest ingathering, and coming, as it did, in the cool of the autumn months,
  it was more generally attended by the Jews of the world than was the Passover
  at the end of the winter or Pentecost at the beginning of summer. The apostles
  at last beheld their Master making the bold announcement of his mission on
  earth before all the world, as it were.

  162:4.2 This was the feast of feasts, since any sacrifice not made at the
  other festivals could be made at this time. This was the occasion of the
  reception of the temple offerings; it was a combination of vacation pleasures
  with the solemn rites of religious worship. Here was a time of racial
  rejoicing, mingled with sacrifices, Levitical chants, and the solemn blasts of
  the silvery trumpets of the priests. At night the impressive spectacle of the
  temple and its pilgrim throngs was brilliantly illuminated by the great
  candelabras which burned brightly in the court of the women as well as by the
  glare of scores of torches standing about the temple courts. The entire city
  was gaily decorated except the Roman castle of Antonia, which looked down in
  grim contrast upon this festive and worshipful scene. And how the Jews did
  hate this ever-present reminder of the Roman yoke!

  162:4.3 Seventy bullocks were sacrificed during the feast, the symbol of the
  seventy nations of heathendom. The ceremony of the outpouring of the water
  symbolized the outpouring of the divine spirit. This ceremony of the water
  followed the sunrise procession of the priests and Levites. The worshipers
  passed down the steps leading from the court of Israel to the court of the
  women while successive blasts were blown upon the silvery trumpets. And then
  the faithful marched on toward the beautiful gate, which opened upon the court
  of the gentiles. Here they turned about to face westward, to repeat their
  chants, and to continue their march for the symbolic water.



  162:4.4 On the last day of the feast almost four hundred and fifty priests
  with a corresponding number of Levites officiated. At daybreak the pilgrims
  assembled from all parts of the city, each carrying in the right hand a sheaf
  of myrtle, willow, and palm branches, while in the left hand each one carried
  a branch of the paradise apple -- the citron, or the "forbidden fruit." These
  pilgrims divided into three groups for this early morning ceremony. One band
  remained at the temple to attend the morning sacrifices; another group marched
  down below Jerusalem to near Maza to cut the willow branches for the adornment
  of the sacrificial altar, while the third group formed a procession to march
  from the temple behind the water priest, who, to the sound of the silvery
  trumpets, bore the golden pitcher which was to contain the symbolic water, out
  through Ophel to near Siloam, where was located the fountain gate. After the
  golden pitcher had been filled at the pool of Siloam, the procession marched
  back to the temple, entering by way of the water gate and going directly to
  the court of the priests, where the priest bearing the water pitcher was
  joined by the priest bearing the wine for the drink offering. These two
  priests then repaired to the silver funnels leading to the base of the altar
  and poured the contents of the pitchers therein. The execution of this rite of
  pouring the wine and the water was the signal for the assembled pilgrims to
  begin the chanting of the Psalms from 113 to 118 inclusive, in alternation
  with the Levites. And as they repeated these lines, they would wave their
  sheaves at the altar. Then followed the sacrifices for the day, associated
  with the repeating of the Psalm for the day, the Psalm for the last day of the
  feast being the eighty-second, beginning with the fifth verse.





5. SERMON ON THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

  162:5.1 On the evening of the next to the last day of the feast, when the
  scene was brilliantly illuminated by the lights of the candelabras and the
  torches, Jesus stood up in the midst of the assembled throng and said:

  162:5.2 "I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in
  darkness but shall have the light of life. Presuming to place me on trial and
  assuming to sit as my judges, you declare that, if I bear witness of myself,
  my witness cannot be true. But never can the creature sit in judgment on the
  Creator. Even if I do bear witness about myself, my witness is everlastingly
  true, for I know whence I came, who I am, and whither I go. You who would kill
  the Son of Man know not whence I came, who I am, or whither I go. You only
  judge by the appearances of the flesh; you do not perceive the realities of
  the spirit. I judge no man, not even my archenemy. But if I should choose to
  judge, my judgment would be true and righteous, for I would judge not alone
  but in association with my Father, who sent me into the world, and who is the
  source of all true judgment. You even allow that the witness of two reliable
  persons may be accepted -- well, then, I bear witness of these truths; so also
  does my Father in heaven. And when I told you this yesterday, in your darkness
  you asked me, `Where is your Father?' Truly, you know neither me nor my
  Father, for if you had known me, you would also have known the Father.

  162:5.3 "I have already told you that I am going away, and that you will seek
  me and not find me, for where I am going you cannot come. You who would reject
  this light are from beneath; I am from above. You who prefer to sit in
  darkness are of this world; I am not of this world, and I live in the eternal
  light of the Father of lights. You all have had abundant opportunity to learn
  who I am, but you shall have still other evidence confirming the identity of
  the Son of Man. I am the light of life, and every one who deliberately and
  with understanding rejects this saving light shall die in his sins. Much I
  have to tell you, but you are unable to receive my words. However, he who sent
  me is true and faithful; my Father loves even his erring children. And all
  that my Father has spoken I also proclaim to the world.

  162:5.4 "When the Son of Man is lifted up, then shall you all know that I am
  he, and that I have done nothing of myself but only as the Father has taught
  me. I speak these words to you and to your children. And he who sent me is
  even now with me; he has not left me alone, for I do always that which is
  pleasing in his sight."



  162:5.5 As Jesus thus taught the pilgrims in the temple courts, many believed.
  And no man dared to lay hands upon him.





6. DISCOURSE ON THE WATER OF LIFE

  162:6.1 On the last day, the great day of the feast, as the procession from
  the pool of Siloam passed through the temple courts, and just after the water
  and the wine had been poured down upon the altar by the priests, Jesus,
  standing among the pilgrims, said: "If any man thirst, let him come to me and
  drink. From the Father above I bring to this world the water of life. He who
  believes me shall be filled with the spirit which this water represents, for
  even the Scriptures have said, `Out of him shall flow rivers of living
  waters.' When the Son of Man has finished his work on earth, there shall be
  poured out upon all flesh the living Spirit of Truth. Those who receive this
  spirit shall never know spiritual thirst."

  162:6.2 Jesus did not interrupt the service to speak these words. He addressed
  the worshipers immediately after the chanting of the Hallel, the responsive
  reading of the Psalms accompanied by waving of the branches before the altar.
  Just here was a pause while the sacrifices were being prepared, and it was at
  this time that the pilgrims heard the fascinating voice of the Master declare
  that he was the giver of living water to every spirit-thirsting soul.

  162:6.3 At the conclusion of this early morning service Jesus continued to
  teach the multitude, saying: "Have you not read in the Scripture: `Behold, as
  the waters are poured out upon the dry ground and spread over the parched
  soil, so will I give the spirit of holiness to be poured out upon your
  children for a blessing even to your children's children'? Why will you thirst
  for the ministry of the spirit while you seek to water your souls with the
  traditions of men, poured from the broken pitchers of ceremonial service? That
  which you see going on about this temple is the way in which your fathers
  sought to symbolize the bestowal of the divine spirit upon the children of
  faith, and you have done well to perpetuate these symbols, even down to this
  day. But now has come to this generation the revelation of the Father of
  spirits through the bestowal of his Son, and all of this will certainly be
  followed by the bestowal of the spirit of the Father and the Son upon the
  children of men. To every one who has faith shall this bestowal of the spirit
  become the true teacher of the way which leads to life everlasting, to the
  true waters of life in the kingdom of heaven on earth and in the Father's
  Paradise over there."

  162:6.4 And Jesus continued to answer the questions of both the multitude and
  the Pharisees. Some thought he was a prophet; some believed him to be the
  Messiah; others said he could not be the Christ, seeing that he came from
  Galilee, and that the Messiah must restore David's throne. Still they dared
  not arrest him.





7. THE DISCOURSE ON SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

  162:7.1 On the afternoon of the last day of the feast and after the apostles
  had failed in their efforts to persuade him to flee from Jerusalem, Jesus
  again went into the temple to teach. Finding a large company of believers
  assembled in Solomon's Porch, he spoke to them, saying:



  162:7.2 "If my words abide in you and you are minded to do the will of my
  Father, then are you truly my disciples. You shall know the truth, and the
  truth shall make you free. I know how you will answer me: We are the children
  of Abraham, and we are in bondage to none; how then shall we be made free?
  Even so, I do not speak of outward subjection to another's rule; I refer to
  the liberties of the soul. Verily, verily, I say to you, everyone who commits
  sin is the bond-servant of sin. And you know that the bond servant is not
  likely to abide forever in the master's house. You also know that the son does
  remain in his father's house. If, therefore, the Son shall make you free,
  shall make you sons, you shall be free indeed.

  162:7.3 "I know that you are Abraham's seed, yet your leaders seek to kill me
  because my word has not been allowed to have its transforming influence in
  their hearts. Their souls are sealed by prejudice and blinded by the pride of
  revenge. I declare to you the truth which the eternal Father shows me, while
  these deluded teachers seek to do the things which they have learned only from
  their temporal fathers. And when you reply that Abraham is your father, then
  do I tell you that, if you were the children of Abraham, you would do the
  works of Abraham. Some of you believe my teaching, but others seek to destroy
  me because I have told you the truth which I received from God. But Abraham
  did not so treat the truth of God. I perceive that some among you are
  determined to do the works of the evil one. If God were your Father, you would
  know me and love the truth which I reveal. Will you not see that I come forth
  from the Father, that I am sent by God, that I am not doing this work of
  myself? Why do you not understand my words? Is it because you have chosen to
  become the children of evil? If you are the children of darkness, you will
  hardly walk in the light of the truth which I reveal. The children of evil
  follow only in the ways of their father, who was a deceiver and stood not for
  the truth because there came to be no truth in him. But now comes the Son of
  Man speaking and living the truth, and many of you refuse to believe.

  162:7.4 "Which of you convicts me of sin? If I, then, proclaim and live the
  truth shown me by the Father, why do you not believe? He who is of God hears
  gladly the words of God; for this cause many of you hear not my words, because
  you are not of God. Your teachers have even presumed to say that I do my works
  by the power of the prince of devils. One near by has just said that I have a
  devil, that I am a child of the devil. But all of you who deal honestly with
  your own souls know full well that I am not a devil. You know that I honor the
  Father even while you would dishonor me. I seek not my own glory, only the
  glory of my Paradise Father. And I do not judge you, for there is one who
  judges for me.

  162:7.5 "Verily, verily, I say to you who believe the gospel that, if a man
  will keep this word of truth alive in his heart, he shall never taste death.
  And now just at my side a scribe says this statement proves that I have a
  devil, seeing that Abraham is dead, also the prophets. And he asks: `Are you
  so much greater than Abraham and the prophets that you dare to stand here and
  say that whoso keeps your word shall not taste death? Who do you claim to be
  that you dare to utter such blasphemies?' And I say to all such that, if I
  glorify myself, my glory is as nothing. But it is the Father who shall glorify
  me, even the same Father whom you call God. But you have failed to know this
  your God and my Father, and I have come to bring you together; to show you how
  to become truly the sons of God. Though you know not the Father, I truly know
  him. Even Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and by faith he saw it and was
  glad."



  162:7.6 When the unbelieving Jews and the agents of the Sanhedrin who had
  gathered about by this time heard these words, they raised a tumult, shouting:
  "You are not fifty years of age, and yet you talk about seeing Abraham; you
  are a child of the devil!" Jesus was unable to continue the discourse. He only
  said as he departed, "Verily, verily, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am."
  Many of the unbelievers rushed forth for stones to cast at him, and the agents
  of the Sanhedrin sought to place him under arrest, but the Master quickly made
  his way through the temple corridors and escaped to a secret meeting place
  near Bethany where Martha, Mary, and Lazarus awaited him.





8. THE VISIT WITH MARTHA AND MARY

  162:8.1 It had been arranged that Jesus should lodge with Lazarus and his
  sisters at a friend's house, while the apostles were scattered here and there
  in small groups, these precautions being taken because the Jewish authorities
  were again becoming bold with their plans to arrest him.

  162:8.2 For years it had been the custom for these three to drop everything
  and listen to Jesus' teaching whenever he chanced to visit them. With the loss
  of their parents, Martha had assumed the responsibilities of the home life,
  and so on this occasion, while Lazarus and Mary sat at Jesus' feet drinking in
  his refreshing teaching, Martha made ready to serve the evening meal. It
  should be explained that Martha was unnecessarily distracted by numerous
  needless tasks, and that she was cumbered by many trivial cares; that was her
  disposition.

  162:8.3 As Martha busied herself with all these supposed duties, she was
  perturbed because Mary did nothing to help. Therefore she went to Jesus and
  said: "Master, do you not care that my sister has left me alone to do all of
  the serving? Will you not bid her to come and help me?" Jesus answered:
  "Martha, Martha, why are you always anxious about so many things and troubled
  by so many trifles? Only one thing is really worth while, and since Mary has
  chosen this good and needful part, I shall not take it away from her. But when
  will both of you learn to live as I have taught you: both serving in co-
  operation and both refreshing your souls in unison? Can you not learn that
  there is a time for everything -- that the lesser matters of life should give
  way before the greater things of the heavenly kingdom?"





9. AT BETHLEHEM WITH ABNER

  162:9.1 Throughout the week that followed the feast of tabernacles, scores of
  believers forgathered at Bethany and received instruction from the twelve
  apostles. The Sanhedrin made no effort to molest these gatherings since Jesus
  was not present; he was throughout this time working with Abner and his
  associates in Bethlehem. The day following the close of the feast, Jesus had
  departed for Bethany, and he did not again teach in the temple during this
  visit to Jerusalem.



  162:9.2 At this time, Abner was making his headquarters at Bethlehem, and from
  that center many workers had been sent to the cities of Judea and southern
  Samaria and even to Alexandria. Within a few days of his arrival, Jesus and
  Abner completed the arrangements for the consolidation of the work of the two
  groups of apostles.

  162:9.3 Throughout his visit to the feast of tabernacles, Jesus had divided
  his time about equally between Bethany and Bethlehem. At Bethany he spent
  considerable time with his apostles; at Bethlehem he gave much instruction to
  Abner and the other former apostles of John. And it was this intimate contact
  that finally led them to believe in him. These former apostles of John the
  Baptist were influenced by the courage he displayed in his public teaching in
  Jerusalem as well as by the sympathetic understanding they experienced in his
  private teaching at Bethlehem. These influences finally and fully won over
  each of Abner's associates to a wholehearted acceptance of the kingdom and all
  that such a step implied.



  162:9.4 Before leaving Bethlehem for the last time, the Master made
  arrangements for them all to join him in the united effort which was to
  precede the ending of his earth career in the flesh. It was agreed that Abner
  and his associates were to join Jesus and the twelve in the near future at
  Magadan Park.

  162:9.5 In accordance with this understanding, early in November Abner and his
  eleven fellows cast their lot with Jesus and the twelve and labored with them
  as one organization right on down to the crucifixion.

  162:9.6 In the latter part of October Jesus and the twelve withdrew from the
  immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. On Sunday, October 30, Jesus and his
  associates left the city of Ephraim, where he had been resting in seclusion
  for a few days, and, going by the west Jordan highway directly to Magadan
  Park, arrived late on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 2.

  162:9.7 The apostles were greatly relieved to have the Master back on friendly
  soil; no more did they urge him to go up to Jerusalem to proclaim the gospel
  of the kingdom.



PAPER 163


 ORDINATION OF THE SEVENTY AT MAGADAN



  163:0.1 A FEW days after the return of Jesus and the twelve to Magadan from
  Jerusalem, Abner and a group of some fifty disciples arrived from Bethlehem.
  At this time there were also assembled at Magadan Camp the evangelistic corps,
  the women's corps, and about one hundred and fifty other true and tried
  disciples from all parts of Palestine. After devoting a few days to visiting
  and the reorganization of the camp, Jesus and the twelve began a course of
  intensive training for this special group of believers, and from this well-
  trained and experienced aggregation of disciples the Master subsequently chose
  the seventy teachers and sent them forth to proclaim the gospel of the
  kingdom. This regular instruction began on Friday, November 4, and continued
  until Sabbath, November 19.

  163:0.2 Jesus gave a talk to this company each morning. Peter taught methods
  of public preaching; Nathaniel instructed them in the art of teaching; Thomas
  explained how to answer questions; while Matthew directed the organization of
  their group finances. The other apostles also participated in this training in
  accordance with their special experience and natural talents.



   1

. ORDINATION OF THE SEVENTY



  163:1.1 The seventy were ordained by Jesus on Sabbath afternoon, November 19,
  at the Magadan Camp, and Abner was placed at the head of these gospel
  preachers and teachers. This corps of seventy consisted of Abner and ten of
  the former apostles of John, fifty-one of the earlier evangelists, and eight
  other disciples who had distinguished themselves in the service of the
  kingdom.

  163:1.2 About two o'clock on this Sabbath afternoon, between showers of rain,
  a company of believers, augmented by the arrival of David and the majority of
  his messenger corps and numbering over four hundred, assembled on the shore of
  the lake of Galilee to witness the ordination of the seventy.

  163:1.3 Before Jesus laid his hands upon the heads of the seventy to set them
  apart as gospel messengers, addressing them, he said: "The harvest is indeed
  plenteous, but the laborers are few; therefore I exhort all of you to pray
  that the Lord of the harvest will send still other laborers into his harvest.
  I am about to set you apart as messengers of the kingdom; I am about to send
  you to Jew and gentile as lambs among wolves. As you go your ways, two and
  two, I instruct you to carry neither purse nor extra clothing, for you go
  forth on this first mission for only a short season. Salute no man by the way,
  attend only to your work. Whenever you go to stay at a home, first say: Peace
  be to this household. If those who love peace live therein, you shall abide
  there; if not, then shall you depart. And having selected this home, remain
  there for your stay in that city, eating and drinking whatever is set before
  you. And you do this because the laborer is worthy of his sustenance. Move not
  from house to house because a better lodging may be offered. Remember, as you
  go forth proclaiming peace on earth and good will among men, you must contend
  with bitter and self-deceived enemies; therefore be as wise as serpents while
  you are also as harmless as doves.

  163:1.4 "And everywhere you go, preach, saying, `The kingdom of heaven is at
  hand,' and minister to all who may be sick in either mind or body. Freely you
  have received of the good things of the kingdom; freely give. If the people of
  any city receive you, they shall find an abundant entrance into the Father's
  kingdom; but if the people of any city refuse to receive this gospel, still
  shall you proclaim your message as you depart from that unbelieving community,
  saying, even as you leave, to those who reject your teaching: `Notwithstanding
  you reject the truth, it remains that the kingdom of God has come near you.'
  He who hears you hears me. And he who hears me hears Him who sent me. He who
  rejects your gospel message rejects me. And he who rejects me rejects Him who
  sent me."

  163:1.5 When Jesus had thus spoken to the seventy, he began with Abner and, as
  they knelt in a circle about him, laid his hands upon the head of every man.

  163:1.6 Early the next morning Abner sent the seventy messengers into all the
  cities of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. And these thirty-five couples went
  forth preaching and teaching for about six weeks, all of them returning to the
  new camp near Pella, in Perea, on Friday, December 30.





2. THE RICH YOUNG MAN AND OTHERS



  163:2.1 Over fifty disciples who sought ordination and appointment to
  membership in the seventy were rejected by the committee appointed by Jesus to
  select these candidates. This committee consisted of Andrew, Abner, and the
  acting head of the evangelistic corps. In all cases where this committee of
  three were not unanimous in agreement, they brought the candidate to Jesus,
  and while the Master never rejected a single person who craved ordination as a
  gospel messenger, there were more than a dozen who, when they had talked with
  Jesus, no more desired to become gospel messengers.



  163:2.2 One earnest disciple came to Jesus, saying: "Master, I would be one of
  your new apostles, but my father is very old and near death; could I be
  permitted to return home to bury him?" To this man Jesus said: "My son, the
  foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man has
  nowhere to lay his head. You are a faithful disciple, and you can remain such
  while you return home to minister to your loved ones, but not so with my
  gospel messengers. They have forsaken all to follow me and proclaim the
  kingdom. If you would be an ordained teacher, you must let others bury the
  dead while you go forth to publish the good news." And this man went away in
  great disappointment.

  163:2.3 Another disciple came to the Master and said: "I would become an
  ordained messenger, but I would like to go to my home for a short while to
  comfort my family." And Jesus replied: "If you would be ordained, you must be
  willing to forsake all. The gospel messengers cannot have divided affections.
  No man, having put his hand to the plough, if he turns back, is worthy to
  become a messenger of the kingdom."



  163:2.4 Then Andrew brought to Jesus a certain rich young man who was a devout
  believer, and who desired to receive ordination. This young man, Matadormus,
  was a member of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin; he had heard Jesus teach and had been
  subsequently instructed in the gospel of the kingdom by Peter and the other
  apostles. Jesus talked with Matadormus concerning the requirements of
  ordination and requested that he defer decision until after he had thought
  more fully about the matter. Early the next morning, as Jesus was going for a
  walk, this young man accosted him and said: "Master, I would know from you the
  assurances of eternal life. Seeing that I have observed all the commandments
  from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eternal life?"
  In answer to this question Jesus said: "If you keep all the commandments -- do
  not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do
  not defraud, honor your parents -- you do well, but salvation is the reward of
  faith, not merely of works. Do you believe this gospel of the kingdom?" And
  Matadormus answered: "Yes, Master, I do believe everything you and your
  apostles have taught me." And Jesus said, "Then are you indeed my disciple and
  a child of the kingdom."

  163:2.5 Then said the young man: "But, Master, I am not content to be your
  disciple; I would be one of your new messengers." When Jesus heard this, he
  looked down upon him with a great love and said: "I will have you to be one of
  my messengers if you are willing to pay the price, if you will supply the one
  thing which you lack." Matadormus replied: "Master, I will do anything if I
  may be allowed to follow you." Jesus, kissing the kneeling young man on the
  forehead, said: "If you would be my messenger, go and sell all that you have
  and, when you have bestowed the proceeds upon the poor or upon your brethren,
  come and follow me, and you shall have treasure in the kingdom of heaven."

  163:2.6 When Matadormus heard this, his countenance fell. He arose and went
  away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. This wealthy young Pharisee had
  been raised to believe that wealth was the token of God's favor. Jesus knew
  that he was not free from the love of himself and his riches. The Master
  wanted to deliver him from the love of wealth, not necessarily from the
  wealth. While the disciples of Jesus did not part with all their worldly
  goods, the apostles and the seventy did. Matadormus desired to be one of the
  seventy new messengers, and that was the reason for Jesus' requiring him to
  part with all of his temporal possessions.



  163:2.7 Almost every human being has some one thing which is held on to as a
  pet evil, and which the entrance into the kingdom of heaven requires as a part
  of the price of admission. If Matadormus had parted with his wealth, it
  probably would have been put right back into his hands for administration as
  treasurer of the seventy. For later on, after the establishment of the church
  at Jerusalem, he did obey the Master's injunction, although it was then too
  late to enjoy membership in the seventy, and he became the treasurer of the
  Jerusalem church, of which James the Lord's brother in the flesh was the head.

  163:2.8 Thus always it was and forever will be: Men must arrive at their own
  decisions. There is a certain range of the freedom of choice which mortals may
  exercise. The forces of the spiritual world will not coerce man; they allow
  him to go the way of his own choosing.

  163:2.9 Jesus foresaw that Matadormus, with his riches, could not possibly
  become an ordained associate of men who had forsaken all for the gospel; at
  the same time, he saw that, without his riches, he would become the ultimate
  leader of all of them. But, like Jesus' own brethren, he never became great in
  the kingdom because he deprived himself of that intimate and personal
  association with the Master which might have been his experience had he been
  willing to do at this time the very thing which Jesus asked, and which,
  several years subsequently, he actually did.

  163:2.10 Riches have nothing directly to do with entrance into the kingdom of
  heaven, but the love of wealth does. The spiritual loyalties of the kingdom
  are incompatible with servility to materialistic mammon. Man may not share his
  supreme loyalty to a spiritual ideal with a material devotion.

  163:2.11 Jesus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He required only
  the twelve and the seventy to dedicate all of their worldly possessions to the
  common cause. Even then, he provided for the profitable liquidation of their
  property, as in the case of the Apostle Matthew. Jesus many times advised his
  well-to-do disciples as he taught the rich man of Rome. The Master regarded
  the wise investment of excess earnings as a legitimate form of insurance
  against future and unavoidable adversity. When the apostolic treasury was
  overflowing, Judas put funds on deposit to be used subsequently when they
  might suffer greatly from a diminution of income. This Judas did after
  consultation with Andrew. Jesus never personally had anything to do with the
  apostolic finances except in the disbursement of alms. But there was one
  economic abuse which he many times condemned, and that was the unfair
  exploitation of the weak, unlearned, and less fortunate of men by their
  strong, keen, and more intelligent fellows. Jesus declared that such inhuman
  treatment of men, women, and children was incompatible with the ideals of the
  brotherhood of the kingdom of heaven.





3. THE DISCUSSION ABOUT WEALTH



  163:3.1 By the time Jesus had finished talking with Matadormus, Peter and a
  number of the apostles had gathered about him, and as the rich young man was
  departing, Jesus turned around to face the apostles and said: "You see how
  difficult it is for those who have riches to enter fully into the kingdom of
  God! Spiritual worship cannot be shared with material devotions; no man can
  serve two masters. You have a saying that it is `easier for a camel to go
  through the eye of a needle than for the heathen to inherit eternal life.' And
  I declare that it is as easy for this camel to go through the needle's eye as
  for these self-satisfied rich ones to enter the kingdom of heaven."

  163:3.2 When Peter and the apostles heard these words, they were astonished
  exceedingly, so much so that Peter said: "Who then, Lord, can be saved? Shall
  all who have riches be kept out of the kingdom?" And Jesus replied: "No,
  Peter, but all who put their trust in riches shall hardly enter into the
  spiritual life that leads to eternal progress. But even then, much which is
  impossible to man is not beyond the reach of the Father in heaven; rather
  should we recognize that with God all things are possible."

  163:3.3 As they went off by themselves, Jesus was grieved that Matadormus did
  not remain with them, for he greatly loved him. And when they had walked down
  by the lake, they sat there beside the water, and Peter, speaking for the
  twelve (who were all present by this time), said: "We are troubled by your
  words to the rich young man. Shall we require those who would follow you to
  give up all their worldly goods?" And Jesus said: "No, Peter, only those who
  would become apostles, and who desire to live with me as you do and as one
  family. But the Father requires that the affections of his children be pure
  and undivided. Whatever thing or person comes between you and the love of the
  truths of the kingdom, must be surrendered. If one's wealth does not invade
  the precincts of the soul, it is of no consequence in the spiritual life of
  those who would enter the kingdom."

  163:3.4 And then said Peter, "But, Master, we have left everything to follow
  you, what then shall we have?" And Jesus spoke to all of the twelve: "Verily,
  verily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife,
  brethren, parents, or children for my sake and for the sake of the kingdom of
  heaven who shall not receive manifold more in this world, perhaps with some
  persecutions, and in the world to come eternal life. But many who are first
  shall be last, while the last shall often be first. The Father deals with his
  creatures in accordance with their needs and in obedience to his just laws of
  merciful and loving consideration for the welfare of a universe.

  163:3.5 "The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who was a large employer
  of men, and who went out early in the morning to hire laborers to work in his
  vineyard. When he had agreed with the laborers to pay them a denarius a day,
  he sent them into the vineyard. Then he went out about nine o'clock, and
  seeing others standing in the market place idle, he said to them: `Go you also
  to work in my vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will pay you.' And they went
  at once to work. Again he went out about twelve and about three and did
  likewise. And going to the market place about five in the afternoon, he found
  still others standing idle, and he inquired of them, `Why do you stand here
  idle all the day?' And the men answered, `Because nobody has hired us.' Then
  said the householder: `Go you also to work in my vineyard, and whatever is
  right I will pay you.'

  163:3.6 "When evening came, this owner of the vineyard said to his steward:
  `Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last hired and
  ending with the first.' When those who were hired about five o'clock came,
  they received a denarius each, and so it was with each of the other laborers.
  When the men who were hired at the beginning of the day saw how the later
  comers were paid, they expected to receive more than the amount agreed upon.
  But like the others every man received only a denarius. And when each had
  received his pay, they complained to the householder, saying: `These men who
  were hired last worked only one hour, and yet you have paid them the same as
  us who have borne the burden of the day in the scorching sun.'

  163:3.7 "Then answered the householder: `My friends, I do you no wrong. Did
  not each of you agree to work for a denarius a day? Take now that which is
  yours and go your way, for it is my desire to give to those who came last as
  much as I have given to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my
  own? or do you begrudge my generosity because I desire to be good and to show
  mercy?'"





4. FAREWELL TO THE SEVENTY



  163:4.1 It was a stirring time about the Magadan Camp the day the seventy went
  forth on their first mission. Early that morning, in his last talk with the
  seventy, Jesus placed emphasis on the following:



  163:4.2 1. The gospel of the kingdom must be proclaimed to all the world, to
  gentile as well as to Jew.



  163:4.3 2. While ministering to the sick, refrain from teaching the
  expectation of miracles.



  163:4.4 3. Proclaim a spiritual brotherhood of the sons of God, not an outward
  kingdom of worldly power and material glory.



  163:4.5 4. Avoid loss of time through overmuch social visiting and other
  trivialities which might detract from wholehearted devotion to preaching the
  gospel.



  163:4.6 5. If the first house to be selected for a headquarters proves to be a
  worthy home, abide there throughout the sojourn in that city.



  163:4.7 6. Make clear to all faithful believers that the time for an open
  break with the religious leaders of the Jews at Jerusalem has now come.



  163:4.8 7. Teach that man's whole duty is summed up in this one commandment:
  Love the Lord your God with all your mind and soul and your neighbor as
  yourself. (This they were to teach as man's whole duty in place of the 613
  rules of living expounded by the Pharisees.)



  163:4.9 When Jesus had talked thus to the seventy in the presence of all the
  apostles and disciples, Simon Peter took them off by themselves and preached
  to them their ordination sermon, which was an elaboration of the Master's
  charge given at the time he laid his hands upon them and set them apart as
  messengers of the kingdom. Peter exhorted the seventy to cherish in their
  experience the following virtues:



  163:4.10 1. Consecrated devotion. To pray always for more laborers to be sent
  forth into the gospel harvest. He explained that, when one so prays, he will
  the more likely say, "Here am I; send me." He admonished them to neglect not
  their daily worship.



  163:4.11 2. True courage. He warned them that they would encounter hostility
  and be certain to meet with persecution. Peter told them their mission was no
  undertaking for cowards and advised those who were afraid to step out before
  they started. But none withdrew.



  163:4.12 3. Faith and trust. They must go forth on this short mission wholly
  unprovided for; they must trust the Father for food and shelter and all other
  things needful.



  163:4.13 4. Zeal and initiative. They must be possessed with zeal and
  intelligent enthusiasm; they must attend strictly to their Master's business.
  Oriental salutation was a lengthy and elaborate ceremony; therefore had they
  been instructed to "salute no man by the way," which was a common method of
  exhorting one to go about his business without the waste of time. It had
  nothing to do with the matter of friendly greeting.



  163:4.14 5. Kindness and courtesy. The Master had instructed them to avoid
  unnecessary waste of time in social ceremonies, but he enjoined courtesy
  toward all with whom they should come in contact. They were to show every
  kindness to those who might entertain them in their homes. They were strictly
  warned against leaving a modest home to be entertained in a more comfortable
  or influential one.



  163:4.15 6. Ministry to the sick. The seventy were charged by Peter to search
  out the sick in mind and body and to do everything in their power to bring
  about the alleviation or cure of their maladies.



  163:4.16 And when they had been thus charged and instructed, they started out,
  two and two, on their mission in Galilee, Samaria, and Judea.

  163:4.17 Although the Jews had a peculiar regard for the number seventy,
  sometimes considering the nations of heathendom as being seventy in number,
  and although these seventy messengers were to go with the gospel to all
  peoples, still as far as we can discern, it was only coincidental that this
  group happened to number just seventy. Certain it was that Jesus would have
  accepted no less than half a dozen others, but they were unwilling to pay the
  price of forsaking wealth and families.





5. MOVING THE CAMP TO PELLA



  163:5.1 Jesus and the twelve now prepared to establish their last headquarters
  in Perea, near Pella, where the Master was baptized in the Jordan. The last
  ten days of November were spent in council at Magadan, and on Tuesday,
  December 6, the entire company of almost three hundred started out at daybreak
  with all their effects to lodge that night near Pella by the river. This was
  the same site, by the spring, that John the Baptist had occupied with his camp
  several years before.

  163:5.2 After the breaking up of the Magadan Camp, David Zebedee returned to
  Bethsaida and began immediately to curtail the messenger service. The kingdom
  was taking on a new phase. Daily, pilgrims arrived from all parts of Palestine
  and even from remote regions of the Roman Empire. Believers occasionally came
  from Mesopotamia and from the lands east of the Tigris. Accordingly, on
  Sunday, December 18, David, with the help of his messenger corps, loaded on to
  the pack animals the camp equipage, then stored in his father's house, with
  which he had formerly conducted the camp of Bethsaida by the lake. Bidding
  farewell to Bethsaida for the time being, he proceeded down the lake shore and
  along the Jordan to a point about one-half mile north of the apostolic camp;
  and in less than a week he was prepared to offer hospitality to almost fifteen
  hundred pilgrim visitors. The apostolic camp could accommodate about five
  hundred. This was the rainy season in Palestine, and these accommodations were
  required to take care of the ever-increasing number of inquirers, mostly
  earnest, who came into Perea to see Jesus and to hear his teaching.

  163:5.3 David did all this on his own initiative, though he had taken counsel
  with Philip and Matthew at Magadan. He employed the larger part of his former
  messenger corps as his helpers in conducting this camp; he now used less than
  twenty men on regular messenger duty. Near the end of December and before the
  return of the seventy, almost eight hundred visitors were gathered about the
  Master, and they found lodging in David's camp.





6. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY



  163:6.1 On Friday, December 30, while Jesus was away in the near-by hills with
  Peter, James, and John, the seventy messengers were arriving by couples,
  accompanied by numerous believers, at the Pella headquarters. All seventy were
  assembled at the teaching site about five o'clock when Jesus returned to the
  camp. The evening meal was delayed for more than an hour while these
  enthusiasts for the gospel of the kingdom related their experiences. David's
  messengers had brought much of this news to the apostles during previous
  weeks, but it was truly inspiring to hear these newly ordained teachers of the
  gospel personally tell how their message had been received by hungry Jews and
  gentiles. At last Jesus was able to see men going out to spread the good news
  without his personal presence. The Master now knew that he could leave this
  world without seriously hindering the progress of the kingdom.

  163:6.2 When the seventy related how "even the devils were subject" to them,
  they referred to the wonderful cures they had wrought in the cases of victims
  of nervous disorders. Nevertheless, there had been a few cases of real spirit
  possession relieved by these ministers, and referring to these, Jesus said:
  "It is not strange that these disobedient minor spirits should be subject to
  you, seeing that I beheld Satan falling as lightning from heaven. But rejoice
  not so much over this, for I declare to you that, as soon as I return to my
  Father, we will send forth our spirits into the very minds of men so that no
  more can these few lost spirits enter the minds of unfortunate mortals. I
  rejoice with you that you have power with men, but be not lifted up because of
  this experience but the rather rejoice that your names are written on the
  rolls of heaven, and that you are thus to go forward in an endless career of
  spiritual conquest."

  163:6.3 And it was at this time, just before partaking of the evening meal,
  that Jesus experienced one of those rare moments of emotional ecstasy which
  his followers had occasionally witnessed. He said: "I thank you, my Father,
  Lord of heaven and earth, that, while this wonderful gospel was hidden from
  the wise and self-righteous, the spirit has revealed these spiritual glories
  to these children of the kingdom. Yes, my Father, it must have been pleasing
  in your sight to do this, and I rejoice to know that the good news will spread
  to all the world even after I shall have returned to you and the work which
  you have given me to perform. I am mightily moved as I realize you are about
  to deliver all authority into my hands, that only you really know who I am,
  and that only I really know you, and those to whom I have revealed you. And
  when I have finished this revelation to my brethren in the flesh, I will
  continue the revelation to your creatures on high."

  163:6.4 When Jesus had thus spoken to the Father, he turned aside to speak to
  his apostles and ministers: "Blessed are the eyes which see and the ears which
  hear these things. Let me say to you that many prophets and many of the great
  men of the past ages have desired to behold what you now see, but it was not
  granted them. And many generations of the children of light yet to come will,
  when they hear of these things, envy you who have heard and seen them."

  163:6.5 Then, speaking to all the disciples, he said: "You have heard how many
  cities and villages have received the good news of the kingdom, and how my
  ministers and teachers have been received by both the Jew and the gentile. And
  blessed indeed are these communities which have elected to believe the gospel
  of the kingdom. But woe upon the light-rejecting inhabitants of Chorazin,
  Bethsaida-Julias, and Capernaum, the cities which did not well receive these
  messengers. I declare that, if the mighty works done in these places had been
  done in Tyre and Sidon, the people of these so-called heathen cities would
  have long since repented in sackcloth and ashes. It shall indeed be more
  tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment."



  163:6.6 The next day being the Sabbath, Jesus went apart with the seventy and
  said to them: "I did indeed rejoice with you when you came back bearing the
  good tidings of the reception of the gospel of the kingdom by so many people
  scattered throughout Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. But why were you so
  surprisingly elated? Did you not expect that your message would manifest power
  in its delivery? Did you go forth with so little faith in this gospel that you
  come back in surprise at its effectiveness? And now, while I would not quench
  your spirit of rejoicing, I would sternly warn you against the subtleties of
  pride, spiritual pride. If you could understand the downfall of Lucifer, the
  iniquitous one, you would solemnly shun all forms of spiritual pride.

  163:6.7 "You have entered upon this great work of teaching mortal man that he
  is a son of God. I have shown you the way; go forth to do your duty and be not
  weary in well doing. To you and to all who shall follow in your steps down
  through the ages, let me say: I always stand near, and my invitation-call is,
  and ever shall be, Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I
  will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am true and
  loyal, and you shall find spiritual rest for your souls."



  163:6.8 And they found the Master's words to be true when they put his
  promises to the test. And since that day countless thousands also have tested
  and proved the surety of these same promises.





7. PREPARATION FOR THE LAST MISSION



  163:7.1 The next few days were busy times in the Pella camp; preparations for
  the Perean mission were being completed. Jesus and his associates were about
  to enter upon their last mission, the three months' tour of all Perea, which
  terminated only upon the Master's entering Jerusalem for his final labors on
  earth. Throughout this period the headquarters of Jesus and the twelve
  apostles was maintained here at the Pella camp.

  163:7.2 It was no longer necessary for Jesus to go abroad to teach the people.
  They now came to him in increasing numbers each week and from all parts, not
  only from Palestine but from the whole Roman world and from the Near East.
  Although the Master participated with the seventy in the tour of Perea, he
  spent much of his time at the Pella camp, teaching the multitude and
  instructing the twelve. Throughout this three months' period at least ten of
  the apostles remained with Jesus.

  163:7.3 The women's corps also prepared to go out, two and two, with the
  seventy to labor in the larger cities of Perea. This original group of twelve
  women had recently trained a larger corps of fifty women in the work of home
  visitation and in the art of ministering to the sick and the afflicted.
  Perpetua, Simon Peter's wife, became a member of this new division of the
  women's corps and was intrusted with the leadership of the enlarged women's
  work under Abner. After Pentecost she remained with her illustrious husband,
  accompanying him on all of his missionary tours; and on the day Peter was
  crucified in Rome, she was fed to the wild beasts in the arena. This new
  women's corps also had as members the wives of Philip and Matthew and the
  mother of James and John.

  163:7.4 The work of the kingdom now prepared to enter upon its terminal phase
  under the personal leadership of Jesus. And this present phase was one of
  spiritual depth in contrast with the miracle-minded and wonder-seeking
  multitudes who followed after the Master during the former days of popularity
  in Galilee. However, there were still any number of his followers who were
  material-minded, and who failed to grasp the truth that the kingdom of heaven
  is the spiritual brotherhood of man founded on the eternal fact of the
  universal fatherhood of God.


PAPER 164


 AT THE FEAST OF DEDICATION



  164:0.1 AS THE camp at Pella was being established, Jesus, taking with him
  Nathaniel and Thomas, secretly went up to Jerusalem to attend the feast of the
  dedication. Not until they passed over the Jordan at the Bethany ford, did the
  two apostles become aware that their Master was going on to Jerusalem. When
  they perceived that he really intended to be present at the feast of
  dedication, they remonstrated with him most earnestly, and using every sort of
  argument, they sought to dissuade him. But their efforts were of no avail;
  Jesus was determined to visit Jerusalem. To all their entreaties and to all
  their warnings emphasizing the folly and danger of placing himself in the
  hands of the Sanhedrin, he would reply only, "I would give these teachers in
  Israel another opportunity to see the light, before my hour comes."

  164:0.2 On they went toward Jerusalem, the two apostles continuing to express
  their feelings of fear and to voice their doubts about the wisdom of such an
  apparently presumptuous undertaking. They reached Jericho about half past four
  and prepared to lodge there for the night.





1. STORY OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN



  164:1.1 That evening a considerable company gathered about Jesus and the two
  apostles to ask questions, many of which the apostles answered, while others
  the Master discussed. In the course of the evening a certain lawyer, seeking
  to entangle Jesus in a compromising disputation, said: "Teacher, I would like
  to ask you just what I should do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered,
  "What is written in the law and the prophets; how do you read the Scriptures?"
  The lawyer, knowing the teachings of both Jesus and the Pharisees, answered:
  "To love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your
  neighbor as yourself." Then said Jesus: "You have answered right; this, if you
  really do, will lead to life everlasting."

  164:1.2 But the lawyer was not wholly sincere in asking this question, and
  desiring to justify himself while also hoping to embarrass Jesus, he ventured
  to ask still another question. Drawing a little closer to the Master, he said,
  "But, Teacher, I should like you to tell me just who is my neighbor?" The
  lawyer asked this question hoping to entrap Jesus into making some statement
  that would contravene the Jewish law which defined one's neighbor as "the
  children of one's people." The Jews looked upon all others as "gentile dogs."
  This lawyer was somewhat familiar with Jesus' teachings and therefore well
  knew that the Master thought differently; thus he hoped to lead him into
  saying something which could be construed as an attack upon the sacred law.

  164:1.3 But Jesus discerned the lawyer's motive, and instead of falling into
  the trap, he proceeded to tell his hearers a story, a story which would be
  fully appreciated by any Jericho audience. Said Jesus: "A certain man was
  going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell into the hands of cruel
  brigands, who robbed him, stripped him and beat him, and departing, left him
  half dead. Very soon, by chance, a certain priest was going down that way, and
  when he came upon the wounded man, seeing his sorry plight, he passed by on
  the other side of the road. And in like manner a Levite also, when he came
  along and saw the man, passed by on the other side. Now, about this time, a
  certain Samaritan, as he journeyed down to Jericho, came across this wounded
  man; and when he saw how he had been robbed and beaten, he was moved with
  compassion, and going over to him, he bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and
  wine, and setting the man upon his own beast, brought him here to the inn and
  took care of him. And on the morrow he took out some money and, giving it to
  the host, said: `Take good care of my friend, and if the expense is more, when
  I come back again, I will repay you.' Now let me ask you: Which of these three
  turned out to be the neighbor of him who fell among the robbers?" And when the
  lawyer perceived that he had fallen into his own snare, he answered, "He who
  showed mercy on him." And Jesus said, "Go and do likewise."

  164:1.4 The lawyer answered, "He who showed mercy," that he might refrain from
  even speaking that odious word, Samaritan. The lawyer was forced to give the
  very answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" which Jesus wished given,
  and which, if Jesus had so stated, would have directly involved him in the
  charge of heresy. Jesus not only confounded the dishonest lawyer, but he told
  his hearers a story which was at the same time a beautiful admonition to all
  his followers and a stunning rebuke to all Jews regarding their attitude
  toward the Samaritans. And this story has continued to promote brotherly love
  among all who have subsequently believed the gospel of Jesus.





2. AT JERUSALEM



  164:2.1 Jesus had attended the feast of tabernacles that he might proclaim the
  gospel to the pilgrims from all parts of the empire; he now went up to the
  feast of the dedication for just one purpose: to give the Sanhedrin and the
  Jewish leaders another chance to see the light. The principal event of these
  few days in Jerusalem occurred on Friday night at the home of Nicodemus. Here
  were gathered together some twenty-five Jewish leaders who believed Jesus'
  teaching. Among this group were fourteen men who were then, or had recently
  been, members of the Sanhedrin. This meeting was attended by Eber, Matadormus,
  and Joseph of Arimathea.

  164:2.2 On this occasion Jesus' hearers were all learned men, and both they
  and his two apostles were amazed at the breadth and depth of the remarks which
  the Master made to this distinguished group. Not since the times when he had
  taught in Alexandria, Rome, and in the islands of the Mediterranean, had he
  exhibited such learning and shown such a grasp of the affairs of men, both
  secular and religious.

  164:2.3 When this little meeting broke up, all went away mystified by the
  Master's personality, charmed by his gracious manner, and in love with the
  man. They had sought to advise Jesus concerning his desire to win the
  remaining members of the Sanhedrin. The Master listened attentively, but
  silently, to all their proposals. He well knew none of their plans would work.
  He surmised that the majority of the Jewish leaders never would accept the
  gospel of the kingdom; nevertheless, he gave them all this one more chance to
  choose. But when he went forth that night, with Nathaniel and Thomas, to lodge
  on the Mount of Olives, he had not yet decided upon the method he would pursue
  in bringing his work once more to the notice of the Sanhedrin.

  164:2.4 That night Nathaniel and Thomas slept little; they were too much
  amazed by what they had heard at Nicodemus's house. They thought much over the
  final remark of Jesus regarding the offer of the former and present members of
  the Sanhedrin to go with him before the seventy. The Master said: "No, my
  brethren, it would be to no purpose. You would multiply the wrath to be
  visited upon your own heads, but you would not in the least mitigate the
  hatred which they bear me. Go, each of you, about the Father's business as the
  spirit leads you while I once more bring the kingdom to their notice in the
  manner which my Father may direct."





3. HEALING THE BLIND BEGGAR



  164:3.1 The next morning the three went over to Martha's home at Bethany for
  breakfast and then went immediately into Jerusalem. This Sabbath morning, as
  Jesus and his two apostles drew near the temple, they encountered a well-known
  beggar, a man who had been born blind, sitting at his usual place. Although
  these mendicants did not solicit or receive alms on the Sabbath day, they were
  permitted thus to sit in their usual places. Jesus paused and looked upon the
  beggar. As he gazed upon this man who had been born blind, the idea came into
  his mind as to how he would once more bring his mission on earth to the notice
  of the Sanhedrin and the other Jewish leaders and religious teachers.

  164:3.2 As the Master stood there before the blind man, engrossed in deep
  thought, Nathaniel, pondering the possible cause of this man's blindness,
  asked: "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he should be born
  blind?"



  164:3.3 The rabbis taught that all such cases of blindness from birth were
  caused by sin. Not only were children conceived and born in sin, but a child
  could be born blind as a punishment for some specific sin committed by its
  father. They even taught that a child itself might sin before it was born into
  the world. They also taught that such defects could be caused by some sin or
  other indulgence of the mother while carrying the child.

  164:3.4 There was, throughout all these regions, a lingering belief in
  reincarnation. The older Jewish teachers, together with Plato, Philo, and many
  of the Essenes, tolerated the theory that men may reap in one incarnation what
  they have sown in a previous existence; thus in one life they were believed to
  be expiating the sins committed in preceding lives. The Master found it
  difficult to make men believe that their souls had not had previous
  existences.

  164:3.5 However, inconsistent as it seems, while such blindness was supposed
  to be the result of sin, the Jews held that it was meritorious in a high
  degree to give alms to these blind beggars. It was the custom of these blind
  men constantly to chant to the passers-by, "O tenderhearted, gain merit by
  assisting the blind."



  164:3.6 Jesus entered into the discussion of this case with Nathaniel and
  Thomas, not only because he had already decided to use this blind man as the
  means of that day bringing his mission once more prominently to the notice of
  the Jewish leaders, but also because he always encouraged his apostles to seek
  for the true causes of all phenomena, natural or spiritual. He had often
  warned them to avoid the common tendency to assign spiritual causes to
  commonplace physical events.

  164:3.7 Jesus decided to use this beggar in his plans for that day's work, but
  before doing anything for the blind man, Josiah by name, he proceeded to
  answer Nathaniel's question. Said the Master: "Neither did this man sin nor
  his parents that the works of God might be manifest in him. This blindness has
  come upon him in the natural course of events, but we must now do the works of
  Him who sent me, while it is still day, for the night will certainly come when
  it will be impossible to do the work we are about to perform. When I am in the
  world, I am the light of the world, but in only a little while I will not be
  with you."

  164:3.8 When Jesus had spoken, he said to Nathaniel and Thomas: "Let us create
  the sight of this blind man on this Sabbath day that the scribes and Pharisees
  may have the full occasion which they seek for accusing the Son of Man." Then,
  stooping over, he spat on the ground and mixed the clay with the spittle, and
  speaking of all this so that the blind man could hear, he went up to Josiah
  and put the clay over his sightless eyes, saying: "Go, my son, wash away this
  clay in the pool of Siloam, and immediately you shall receive your sight." And
  when Josiah had so washed in the pool of Siloam, he returned to his friends
  and family, seeing.

  164:3.9 Having always been a beggar, he knew nothing else; so, when the first
  excitement of the creation of his sight had passed, he returned to his usual
  place of alms-seeking. His friends, neighbors, and all who had known him
  aforetime, when they observed that he could see, all said, "Is this not Josiah
  the blind beggar?" Some said it was he, while others said, "No, it is one like
  him, but this man can see." But when they asked the man himself, he answered,
  "I am he."

  164:3.10 When they began to inquire of him how he was able to see, he answered
  them: "A man called Jesus came by this way, and when talking about me with his
  friends, he made clay with spittle, anointed my eyes, and directed that I
  should go and wash in the pool of Siloam. I did what this man told me, and
  immediately I received my sight. And that is only a few hours ago. I do not
  yet know the meaning of much that I see." And when the people who began to
  gather about him asked where they could find the strange man who had healed
  him, Josiah could answer only that he did not know.



  164:3.11 This is one of the strangest of all the Master's miracles. This man
  did not ask for healing. He did not know that the Jesus who had directed him
  to wash at Siloam, and who had promised him vision, was the prophet of Galilee
  who had preached in Jerusalem during the feast of tabernacles. This man had
  little faith that he would receive his sight, but the people of that day had
  great faith in the efficacy of the spittle of a great or holy man; and from
  Jesus' conversation with Nathaniel and Thomas, Josiah had concluded that his
  would-be benefactor was a great man, a learned teacher or a holy prophet;
  accordingly he did as Jesus directed him.

  164:3.12 Jesus made use of the clay and the spittle and directed him to wash
  in the symbolic pool of Siloam for three reasons:



  164:3.13 1. This was not a miracle response to the individual's faith. This
  was a wonder which Jesus chose to perform for a purpose of his own, but which
  he so arranged that this man might derive lasting benefit therefrom.



  164:3.14 2. As the blind man had not asked for healing, and since the faith he
  had was slight, these material acts were suggested for the purpose of
  encouraging him. He did believe in the superstition of the efficacy of
  spittle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisacred place. But he would
  hardly have gone there had it not been necessary to wash away the clay of his
  anointing. There was just enough ceremony about the transaction to induce him
  to act.



  164:3.15 3. But Jesus had a third reason for resorting to these material means
  in connection with this unique transaction: This was a miracle wrought purely
  in obedience to his own choosing, and thereby he desired to teach his
  followers of that day and all subsequent ages to refrain from despising or
  neglecting material means in the healing of the sick. He wanted to teach them
  that they must cease to regard miracles as the only method of curing human
  diseases.



  164:3.16 Jesus gave this man his sight by miraculous working, on this Sabbath
  morning and in Jerusalem near the temple, for the prime purpose of making this
  act an open challenge to the Sanhedrin and all the Jewish teachers and
  religious leaders. This was his way of proclaiming an open break with the
  Pharisees. He was always positive in everything he did. And it was for the
  purpose of bringing these matters before the Sanhedrin that Jesus brought his
  two apostles to this man early in the afternoon of this Sabbath day and
  deliberately provoked those discussions which compelled the Pharisees to take
  notice of the miracle.





4. JOSIAH BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN



  164:4.1 By midafternoon the healing of Josiah had raised such a discussion
  around the temple that the leaders of the Sanhedrin decided to convene the
  council in its usual temple meeting place. And they did this in violation of a
  standing rule which forbade the meeting of the Sanhedrin on the Sabbath day.
  Jesus knew that Sabbath breaking would be one of the chief charges to be
  brought against him when the final test came, and he desired to be brought
  before the Sanhedrin for adjudication of the charge of having healed a blind
  man on the Sabbath day, when the very session of the high Jewish court sitting
  in judgment on him for this act of mercy would be deliberating on these
  matters on the Sabbath day and in direct violation of their own self-imposed
  laws.

  164:4.2 But they did not call Jesus before them; they feared to. Instead, they
  sent forthwith for Josiah. After some preliminary questioning, the spokesman
  for the Sanhedrin (about fifty members being present) directed Josiah to tell
  them what had happened to him. Since his healing that morning Josiah had
  learned from Thomas, Nathaniel, and others that the Pharisees were angry about
  his healing on the Sabbath, and that they were likely to make trouble for all
  concerned; but Josiah did not yet perceive that Jesus was he who was called
  the Deliverer. So, when the Pharisees questioned him, he said: "This man came
  along, put clay upon my eyes, told me to go wash in Siloam, and I do now see."

  164:4.3 One of the older Pharisees, after making a lengthy speech, said: "This
  man cannot be from God because you can see that he does not observe the
  Sabbath. He violates the law, first, in making the clay, then, in sending this
  beggar to wash in Siloam on the Sabbath day. Such a man cannot be a teacher
  sent from God."

  164:4.4 Then one of the younger men who secretly believed in Jesus, said: "If
  this man is not sent by God, how can he do these things? We know that one who
  is a common sinner cannot perform such miracles. We all know this beggar and
  that he was born blind; now he sees. Will you still say that this prophet does
  all these wonders by the power of the prince of devils?" And for every
  Pharisee who dared to accuse and denounce Jesus one would arise to ask
  entangling and embarrassing questions, so that a serious division arose among
  them. The presiding officer saw whither they were drifting, and in order to
  allay the discussion, he prepared further to question the man himself. Turning
  to Josiah, he said: "What do you have to say about this man, this Jesus, whom
  you claim opened your eyes?" And Josiah answered, "I think he is a prophet."

  164:4.5 The leaders were greatly troubled and, knowing not what else to do,
  decided to send for Josiah's parents to learn whether he had actually been
  born blind. They were loath to believe that the beggar had been healed.

  164:4.6 It was well known about Jerusalem, not only that Jesus was denied
  entrance into all synagogues, but that all who believed in his teaching were
  likewise cast out of the synagogue, excommunicated from the congregation of
  Israel; and this meant denial of all rights and privileges of every sort
  throughout all Jewry except the right to buy the necessaries of life.

  164:4.7 When, therefore, Josiah's parents, poor and fear-burdened souls,
  appeared before the august Sanhedrin, they were afraid to speak freely. Said
  the spokesman of the court: "Is this your son? and do we understand aright
  that he was born blind? If this is true, how is it that he can now see?" And
  then Josiah's father, seconded by his mother, answered: "We know that this is
  our son, and that he was born blind, but how it is that he has come to see, or
  who it was that opened his eyes, we know not. Ask him; he is of age; let him
  speak for himself."

  164:4.8 They now called Josiah up before them a second time. They were not
  getting along well with their scheme of holding a formal trial, and some were
  beginning to feel strange about doing this on the Sabbath; accordingly, when
  they recalled Josiah, they attempted to ensnare him by a different mode of
  attack. The officer of the court spoke to the former blind man, saying: "Why
  do you not give God the glory for this? why do you not tell us the whole truth
  about what happened? We all know that this man is a sinner. Why do you refuse
  to discern the truth? You know that both you and this man stand convicted of
  Sabbath breaking. Will you not atone for your sin by acknowledging God as your
  healer, if you still claim that your eyes have this day been opened?"

  164:4.9 But Josiah was neither dumb nor lacking in humor; so he replied to the
  officer of the court: "Whether this man is a sinner, I know not; but one thing
  I do know -- that, whereas I was blind, now I see." And since they could not
  entrap Josiah, they sought further to question him, asking: "Just how did he
  open your eyes? what did he actually do to you? what did he say to you? did he
  ask you to believe in him?"

  164:4.10 Josiah replied, somewhat impatiently: "I have told you exactly how it
  all happened, and if you did not believe my testimony, why would you hear it
  again? Would you by any chance also become his disciples?" When Josiah had
  thus spoken, the Sanhedrin broke up in confusion, almost violence, for the
  leaders rushed upon Josiah, angrily exclaiming: "You may talk about being this
  man's disciple, but we are disciples of Moses, and we are the teachers of the
  laws of God. We know that God spoke through Moses, but as for this man Jesus,
  we know not whence he is."

  164:4.11 Then Josiah, standing upon a stool, shouted abroad to all who could
  hear, saying: "Hearken, you who claim to be the teachers of all Israel, while
  I declare to you that herein is a great marvel since you confess that you know
  not whence this man is, and yet you know of a certainty, from the testimony
  which you have heard, that he opened my eyes. We all know that God does not
  perform such works for the ungodly; that God would do such a thing only at the
  request of a true worshiper -- for one who is holy and righteous. You know
  that not since the beginning of the world have you ever heard of the opening
  of the eyes of one who was born blind. Look, then, all of you, upon me and
  realize what has been done this day in Jerusalem! I tell you, if this man were
  not from God, he could not do this." And as the Sanhedrists departed in anger
  and confusion, they shouted to him: "You were altogether born in sin, and do
  you now presume to teach us? Maybe you were not really born blind, and even if
  your eyes were opened on the Sabbath day, this was done by the power of the
  prince of devils." And they went at once to the synagogue to cast out Josiah.

  164:4.12 Josiah entered this trial with meager ideas about Jesus and the
  nature of his healing. Most of the daring testimony which he so cleverly and
  courageously bore before this supreme tribunal of all Israel developed in his
  mind as the trial proceeded along such unfair and unjust lines.





5. TEACHING IN SOLOMON'S PORCH



  164:5.1 All of the time this Sabbath-breaking session of the Sanhedrin was in
  progress in one of the temple chambers, Jesus was walking about near at hand,
  teaching the people in Solomon's Porch, hoping that he would be summoned
  before the Sanhedrin where he could tell them the good news of the liberty and
  joy of divine sonship in the kingdom of God. But they were afraid to send for
  him. They were always disconcerted by these sudden and public appearances of
  Jesus in Jerusalem. The very occasion they had so ardently sought, Jesus now
  gave them, but they feared to bring him before the Sanhedrin even as a
  witness, and even more they feared to arrest him.

  164:5.2 This was midwinter in Jerusalem, and the people sought the partial
  shelter of Solomon's Porch; and as Jesus lingered, the crowds asked him many
  questions, and he taught them for more than two hours. Some of the Jewish
  teachers sought to entrap him by publicly asking him: "How long will you hold
  us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, why do you not plainly tell us?" Said
  Jesus: "I have told you about myself and my Father many times, but you will
  not believe me. Can you not see that the works I do in my Father's name bear
  witness for me? But many of you believe not because you belong not to my fold.
  The teacher of truth attracts only those who hunger for the truth and who
  thirst for righteousness. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they
  follow me. And to all who follow my teaching I give eternal life; they shall
  never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has
  given me these children, is greater than all, so that no one is able to pluck
  them out of my Father's hand. The Father and I are one." Some of the
  unbelieving Jews rushed over to where they were still building the temple to
  pick up stones to cast at Jesus, but the believers restrained them.

  164:5.3 Jesus continued his teaching: "Many loving works have I shown you from
  the Father, so that now would I inquire for which one of these good works do
  you think to stone me?" And then answered one of the Pharisees: "For no good
  work would we stone you but for blasphemy, inasmuch as you, being a man, dare
  to make yourself equal with God." And Jesus answered: "You charge the Son of
  Man with blasphemy because you refused to believe me when I declared to you
  that I was sent by God. If I do not the works of God, believe me not, but if I
  do the works of God, even though you believe not in me, I should think you
  would believe the works. But that you may be certain of what I proclaim, let
  me again assert that the Father is in me and I in the Father, and that, as the
  Father dwells in me, so will I dwell in every one who believes this gospel."
  And when the people heard these words, many of them rushed out to lay hands
  upon the stones to cast at him, but he passed out through the temple
  precincts; and meeting Nathaniel and Thomas, who had been in attendance upon
  the session of the Sanhedrin, he waited with them near the temple until Josiah
  came from the council chamber.

  164:5.4 Jesus and the two apostles did not go in search of Josiah at his home
  until they heard he had been cast out of the synagogue. When they came to his
  house, Thomas called him out in the yard, and Jesus, speaking to him, said:
  "Josiah, do you believe in the Son of God?" And Josiah answered, "Tell me who
  he is that I may believe in him." And Jesus said: "You have both seen and
  heard him, and it is he who now speaks to you." And Josiah said, "Lord, I
  believe," and falling down, he worshiped.

  164:5.5 When Josiah learned that he had been cast out of the synagogue, he was
  at first greatly downcast, but he was much encouraged when Jesus directed that
  he should immediately prepare to go with them to the camp at Pella. This
  simple-minded man of Jerusalem had indeed been cast out of a Jewish synagogue,
  but behold the Creator of a universe leading him forth to become associated
  with the spiritual nobility of that day and generation.

  164:5.6 And now Jesus left Jerusalem, not again to return until near the time
  when he prepared to leave this world. With the two apostles and Josiah the
  Master went back to Pella. And Josiah proved to be one of the recipients of
  the Master's miraculous ministry who turned out fruitfully, for he became a
  lifelong preacher of the gospel of the kingdom.


 PAPER 165


 THE PEREAN MISSION BEGINS



  165:0.1 ON TUESDAY, January 3, A.D. 30, Abner, the former chief of the twelve
  apostles of John the Baptist, a Nazarite and onetime head of the Nazarite
  school at Engedi, now chief of the seventy messengers of the kingdom, called
  his associates together and gave them final instructions before sending them
  on a mission to all of the cities and villages of Perea. This Perean mission
  continued for almost three months and was the last ministry of the Master.
  From these labors Jesus went directly to Jerusalem to pass through his final
  experiences in the flesh. The seventy, supplemented by the periodic labors of
  Jesus and the twelve apostles, worked in the following cities and towns and
  some fifty additional villages: Zaphon, Gadara, Macad, Arbela, Ramath, Edrei,
  Bosora, Caspin, Mispeh, Gerasa, Ragaba, Succoth, Amathus, Adam, Penuel,
  Capitolias, Dion, Hatita, Gadda, Philadelphia, Jogbehah, Gilead, Beth-Nimrah,
  Tyrus, Elealah, Livias, Heshbon, Callirrhoe, Beth-Peor, Shittim, Sibmah,
  Medeba, Beth-Meon, Areopolis, and Aroer.

  165:0.2 Throughout this tour of Perea the women's corps, now numbering sixty-
  two, took over most of the work of ministration to the sick. This was the
  final period of the development of the higher spiritual aspects of the gospel
  of the kingdom, and there was, accordingly, an absence of miracle working. No
  other part of Palestine was so thoroughly worked by the apostles and disciples
  of Jesus, and in no other region did the better classes of citizens so
  generally accept the Master's teaching.

  165:0.3 Perea at this time was about equally gentile and Jewish, the Jews
  having been generally removed from these regions during the times of Judas
  Maccabeus. Perea was the most beautiful and picturesque province of all
  Palestine. It was generally referred to by the Jews as "the land beyond the
  Jordan."

  165:0.4 Throughout this period Jesus divided his time between the camp at
  Pella and trips with the twelve to assist the seventy in the various cities
  where they taught and preached. Under Abner's instructions the seventy
  baptized all believers, although Jesus had not so charged them.





1. AT THE PELLA CAMP



  165:1.1 By the middle of January more than twelve hundred persons were
  gathered together at Pella, and Jesus taught this multitude at least once each
  day when he was in residence at the camp, usually speaking at nine o'clock in
  the morning if not prevented by rain. Peter and the other apostles taught each
  afternoon. The evenings Jesus reserved for the usual sessions of questions and
  answers with the twelve and other advanced disciples. The evening groups
  averaged about fifty.

  165:1.2 By the middle of March, the time when Jesus began his journey toward
  Jerusalem, over four thousand persons composed the large audience which heard
  Jesus or Peter preach each morning. The Master chose to terminate his work on
  earth when the interest in his message had reached a high point, the highest
  point attained under this second or nonmiraculous phase of the progress of the
  kingdom. While three quarters of the multitude were truth seekers, there were
  also present a large number of Pharisees from Jerusalem and elsewhere,
  together with many doubters and cavilers.

  165:1.3 Jesus and the twelve apostles devoted much of their time to the
  multitude assembled at the Pella camp. The twelve paid little or no attention
  to the field work, only going out with Jesus to visit Abner's associates from
  time to time. Abner was very familiar with the Perean district since this was
  the field in which his former master, John the Baptist, had done most of his
  work. After beginning the Perean mission, Abner and the seventy never returned
  to the Pella camp.





2. SERMON ON THE GOOD SHEPHERD



  165:2.1 A company of over three hundred Jerusalemites, Pharisees and others,
  followed Jesus north to Pella when he hastened away from the jurisdiction of
  the Jewish rulers at the ending of the feast of the dedication; and it was in
  the presence of these Jewish teachers and leaders, as well as in the hearing
  of the twelve apostles, that Jesus preached the sermon on the "Good Shepherd."
  After half an hour of informal discussion, speaking to a group of about one
  hundred, Jesus said:



  165:2.2 "On this night I have much to tell you, and since many of you are my
  disciples and some of you my bitter enemies, I will present my teaching in a
  parable, so that you may each take for yourself that which finds a reception
  in your heart.

  165:2.3 "Tonight, here before me are men who would be willing to die for me
  and for this gospel of the kingdom, and some of them will so offer themselves
  in the years to come; and here also are some of you, slaves of tradition, who
  have followed me down from Jerusalem, and who, with your darkened and deluded
  leaders, seek to kill the Son of Man. The life which I now live in the flesh
  shall judge both of you, the true shepherds and the false shepherds. If the
  false shepherd were blind, he would have no sin, but you claim that you see;
  you profess to be teachers in Israel; therefore does your sin remain upon you.

  165:2.4 "The true shepherd gathers his flock into the fold for the night in
  times of danger. And when the morning has come, he enters into the fold by the
  door, and when he calls, the sheep know his voice. Every shepherd who gains
  entrance to the sheepfold by any other means than by the door is a thief and a
  robber. The true shepherd enters the fold after the porter has opened the door
  for him, and his sheep, knowing his voice, come out at his word; and when they
  that are his are thus brought forth, the true shepherd goes before them; he
  leads the way and the sheep follow him. His sheep follow him because they know
  his voice; they will not follow a stranger. They will flee from the stranger
  because they know not his voice. This multitude which is gathered about us
  here are like sheep without a shepherd, but when we speak to them, they know
  the shepherd's voice, and they follow after us; at least, those who hunger for
  truth and thirst for righteousness do. Some of you are not of my fold; you
  know not my voice, and you do not follow me. And because you are false
  shepherds, the sheep know not your voice and will not follow you."

  165:2.5 And when Jesus had spoken this parable, no one asked him a question.
  After a time he began again to speak and went on to discuss the parable:

  165:2.6 "You who would be the undershepherds of my Father's flocks must not
  only be worthy leaders, but you must also feed the flock with good food; you
  are not true shepherds unless you lead your flocks into green pastures and
  beside still waters.

  165:2.7 "And now, lest some of you too easily comprehend this parable, I will
  declare that I am both the door to the Father's sheepfold and at the same time
  the true shepherd of my Father's flocks. Every shepherd who seeks to enter the
  fold without me shall fail, and the sheep will not hear his voice. I, with
  those who minister with me, am the door. Every soul who enters upon the
  eternal way by the means I have created and ordained shall be saved and will
  be able to go on to the attainment of the eternal pastures of Paradise.

  165:2.8 "But I also am the true shepherd who is willing even to lay down his
  life for the sheep. The thief breaks into the fold only to steal, and to kill,
  and to destroy; but I have come that you all may have life and have it more
  abundantly. He who is a hireling, when danger arises, will flee and allow the
  sheep to be scattered and destroyed; but the true shepherd will not flee when
  the wolf comes; he will protect his flock and, if necessary, lay down his life
  for his sheep. Verily, verily, I say to you, friends and enemies, I am the
  true shepherd; I know my own and my own know me. I will not flee in the face
  of danger. I will finish this service of the completion of my Father's will,
  and I will not forsake the flock which the Father has intrusted to my keeping.

  165:2.9 "But I have many other sheep not of this fold, and these words are
  true not only of this world. These other sheep also hear and know my voice,
  and I have promised the Father that they shall all be brought into one fold,
  one brotherhood of the sons of God. And then shall you all know the voice of
  one shepherd, the true shepherd, and shall all acknowledge the fatherhood of
  God.

  165:2.10 "And so shall you know why the Father loves me and has put all of his
  flocks in this domain in my hands for keeping; it is because the Father knows
  that I will not falter in the safeguarding of the sheepfold, that I will not
  desert my sheep, and that, if it shall be required, I will not hesitate to lay
  down my life in the service of his manifold flocks. But, mind you, if I lay
  down my life, I will take it up again. No man nor any other creature can take
  away my life. I have the right and the power to lay down my life, and I have
  the same power and right to take it up again. You cannot understand this, but
  I received such authority from my Father even before this world was."



  165:2.11 When they heard these words, his apostles were confused, his
  disciples were amazed, while the Pharisees from Jerusalem and around about
  went out into the night, saying, "He is either mad or has a devil." But even
  some of the Jerusalem teachers said: "He speaks like one having authority;
  besides, who ever saw one having a devil open the eyes of a man born blind and
  do all of the wonderful things which this man has done?"

  165:2.12 On the morrow about half of these Jewish teachers professed belief in
  Jesus, and the other half in dismay returned to Jerusalem and their homes.





3. SABBATH SERMON AT PELLA



  165:3.1 By the end of January the Sabbath-afternoon multitudes numbered almost
  three thousand. On Saturday, January 28, Jesus preached the memorable sermon
  on "Trust and Spiritual Preparedness." After preliminary remarks by Simon
  Peter, the Master said:



  165:3.2 "What I have many times said to my apostles and to my disciples, I now
  declare to this multitude: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is
  hypocrisy, born of prejudice and nurtured in traditional bondage, albeit many
  of these Pharisees are honest of heart and some of them abide here as my
  disciples. Presently all of you shall understand my teaching, for there is
  nothing now covered that shall not be revealed. That which is now hid from you
  shall all be made known when the Son of Man has completed his mission on earth
  and in the flesh.

  165:3.3 "Soon, very soon, will the things which our enemies now plan in
  secrecy and in darkness be brought out into the light and be proclaimed from
  the housetops. But I say to you, my friends, when they seek to destroy the Son
  of Man, be not afraid of them. Fear not those who, although they may be able
  to kill the body, after that have no more power over you. I admonish you to
  fear none, in heaven or on earth, but to rejoice in the knowledge of Him who
  has power to deliver you from all unrighteousness and to present you blameless
  before the judgment seat of a universe.

  165:3.4 "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And yet, when these birds
  flit about in quest of their sustenance, not one of them exists without the
  knowledge of the Father, the source of all life. To the seraphic guardians the
  very hairs of your head are numbered. And if all of this is true, why should
  you live in fear of the many trifles which come up in your daily lives? I say
  to you: Fear not; you are of much more value than many sparrows.

  165:3.5 "All of you who have had the courage to confess faith in my gospel
  before men I will presently acknowledge before the angels of heaven; but he
  who shall knowingly deny the truth of my teachings before men shall be denied
  by his guardian of destiny even before the angels of heaven.

  165:3.6 "Say what you will about the Son of Man, and it shall be forgiven you;
  but he who presumes to blaspheme against God shall hardly find forgiveness.
  When men go so far as knowingly to ascribe the doings of God to the forces of
  evil, such deliberate rebels will hardly seek forgiveness for their sins.

  165:3.7 "And when our enemies bring you before the rulers of the synagogues
  and before other high authorities, be not concerned about what you should say
  and be not anxious as to how you should answer their questions, for the spirit
  that dwells within you shall certainly teach you in that very hour what you
  should say in honor of the gospel of the kingdom.

  165:3.8 "How long will you tarry in the valley of decision? Why do you halt
  between two opinions? Why should Jew or gentile hesitate to accept the good
  news that he is a son of the eternal God? How long will it take us to persuade
  you to enter joyfully into your spiritual inheritance? I came into this world
  to reveal the Father to you and to lead you to the Father. The first I have
  done, but the last I may not do without your consent; the Father never compels
  any man to enter the kingdom. The invitation ever has been and always will be:
  Whosoever will, let him come and freely partake of the water of life."



  165:3.9 When Jesus had finished speaking, many went forth to be baptized by
  the apostles in the Jordan while he listened to the questions of those who
  remained.





4. DIVIDING THE INHERITANCE



  165:4.1 As the apostles baptized believers, the Master talked with those who
  tarried. And a certain young man said to him: "Master, my father died leaving
  much property to me and my brother, but my brother refuses to give me that
  which is my own. Will you, then, bid my brother divide this inheritance with
  me?" Jesus was mildly indignant that this material-minded youth should bring
  up for discussion such a question of business; but he proceeded to use the
  occasion for the impartation of further instruction. Said Jesus: "Man, who
  made me a divider over you? Where did you get the idea that I give attention
  to the material affairs of this world?" And then, turning to all who were
  about him, he said: "Take heed and keep yourselves free from covetousness; a
  man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he may possess.
  Happiness comes not from the power of wealth, and joy springs not from riches.
  Wealth, in itself, is not a curse, but the love of riches many times leads to
  such devotion to the things of this world that the soul becomes blinded to the
  beautiful attractions of the spiritual realities of the kingdom of God on
  earth and to the joys of eternal life in heaven.



  165:4.2 "Let me tell you a story of a certain rich man whose ground brought
  forth plentifully; and when he had become very rich, he began to reason with
  himself, saying: `What shall I do with all my riches? I now have so much that
  I have no place to store my wealth.' And when he had meditated on his problem,
  he said: `This I will do; I will pull down my barns and build greater ones,
  and thus will I have abundant room in which to store my fruits and my goods.
  Then can I say to my soul, soul, you have much wealth laid up for many years;
  take now your ease; eat, drink, and be merry, for you are rich and increased
  in goods.'

  165:4.3 "But this rich man was also foolish. In providing for the material
  requirements of his mind and body, he had failed to lay up treasures in heaven
  for the satisfaction of the spirit and for the salvation of the soul. And even
  then he was not to enjoy the pleasure of consuming his hoarded wealth, for
  that very night was his soul required of him. That night there came the
  brigands who broke into his house to kill him, and after they had plundered
  his barns, they burned that which remained. And for the property which escaped
  the robbers his heirs fell to fighting among themselves. This man laid up
  treasures for himself on earth, but he was not rich toward God."



  165:4.4 Jesus thus dealt with the young man and his inheritance because he
  knew that his trouble was covetousness. Even if this had not been the case,
  the Master would not have interfered, for he never meddled with the temporal
  affairs of even his apostles, much less his disciples.

  165:4.5 When Jesus had finished his story, another man rose up and asked him:
  "Master, I know that your apostles have sold all their earthly possessions to
  follow you, and that they have all things in common as do the Essenes, but
  would you have all of us who are your disciples do likewise? Is it a sin to
  possess honest wealth?" And Jesus replied to this question: "My friend, it is
  not a sin to have honorable wealth; but it is a sin if you convert the wealth
  of material possessions into treasures which may absorb your interests and
  divert your affections from devotion to the spiritual pursuits of the kingdom.
  There is no sin in having honest possessions on earth provided your treasure
  is in heaven, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. There
  is a great difference between wealth which leads to covetousness and
  selfishness and that which is held and dispensed in the spirit of stewardship
  by those who have an abundance of this world's goods, and who so bountifully
  contribute to the support of those who devote all their energies to the work
  of the kingdom. Many of you who are here and without money are fed and lodged
  in yonder tented city because liberal men and women of means have given funds
  to your host, David Zebedee, for such purposes.

  165:4.6 "But never forget that, after all, wealth is unenduring. The love of
  riches all too often obscures and even destroys the spiritual vision. Fail not
  to recognize the danger of wealth's becoming, not your servant, but your
  master."



  165:4.7 Jesus did not teach nor countenance improvidence, idleness,
  indifference to providing the physical necessities for one's family, or
  dependence upon alms. But he did teach that the material and temporal must be
  subordinated to the welfare of the soul and the progress of the spiritual
  nature in the kingdom of heaven.



  165:4.8 Then, as the people went down by the river to witness the baptizing,
  the first man came privately to Jesus about his inheritance inasmuch as he
  thought Jesus had dealt harshly with him; and when the Master had again heard
  him, he replied: "My son, why do you miss the opportunity to feed upon the
  bread of life on a day like this in order to indulge your covetous
  disposition? Do you not know that the Jewish laws of inheritance will be
  justly administered if you will go with your complaint to the court of the
  synagogue? Can you not see that my work has to do with making sure that you
  know about your heavenly inheritance? Have you not read the Scripture: `There
  is he who waxes rich by his wariness and much pinching, and this is the
  portion of his reward: Whereas he says, I have found rest and now shall be
  able to eat continually of my goods, yet he knows not what time shall bring
  upon him, and also that he must leave all these things to others when he
  dies.' Have you not read the commandment: `You shall not covet.' And again,
  `They have eaten and filled themselves and waxed fat, and then did they turn
  to other gods.' Have you read in the Psalms that `the Lord abhors the
  covetous,' and that `the little a righteous man has is better than the riches
  of many wicked.' `If riches increase, set not your heart upon them.' Have you
  read where Jeremiah said, `Let not the rich man glory in his riches'; and
  Ezekiel spoke truth when he said, `With their mouths they make a show of love,
  but their hearts are set upon their own selfish gain'."

  165:4.9 Jesus sent the young man away, saying to him, "My son, what shall it
  profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul?"

  165:4.10 To another standing near by who asked Jesus how the wealthy would
  stand in the day of judgment, he replied: "I have come to judge neither the
  rich nor the poor, but the lives men live will sit in judgment on all.
  Whatever else may concern the wealthy in the judgment, at least three
  questions must be answered by all who acquire great wealth, and these
  questions are:

  165:4.11 "1. How much wealth did you accumulate?

  165:4.12 "2. How did you get this wealth?

  165:4.13 "3. How did you use your wealth?"



  165:4.14 Then Jesus went into his tent to rest for a while before the evening
  meal. When the apostles had finished with the baptizing, they came also and
  would have talked with him about wealth on earth and treasure in heaven, but
  he was asleep.





5. TALKS TO THE APOSTLES ON WEALTH



  165:5.1 That evening after supper, when Jesus and the twelve gathered together
  for their daily conference, Andrew asked: "Master, while we were baptizing the
  believers, you spoke many words to the lingering multitude which we did not
  hear. Would you be willing to repeat these words for our benefit?" And in
  response to Andrew's request, Jesus said:



  165:5.2 "Yes, Andrew, I will speak to you about these matters of wealth and
  self-support, but my words to you, the apostles, must be somewhat different
  from those spoken to the disciples and the multitude since you have forsaken
  everything, not only to follow me, but to be ordained as ambassadors of the
  kingdom. Already have you had several years' experience, and you know that the
  Father whose kingdom you proclaim will not forsake you. You have dedicated
  your lives to the ministry of the kingdom; therefore be not anxious or worried
  about the things of the temporal life, what you shall eat, nor yet for your
  body, what you shall wear. The welfare of the soul is more than food and
  drink; the progress in the spirit is far above the need of raiment. When you
  are tempted to doubt the sureness of your bread, consider the ravens; they sow
  not neither reap, they have no storehouses or barns, and yet the Father
  provides food for every one of them that seeks it. And of how much more value
  are you than many birds! Besides, all of your anxiety or fretting doubts can
  do nothing to supply your material needs. Which of you by anxiety can add a
  handbreadth to your stature or a day to your life? Since such matters are not
  in your hands, why do you give anxious thought to any of these problems?

  165:5.3 "Consider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they
  spin; yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
  of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and
  tomorrow is cut down and cast into the fire, how much more shall he clothe
  you, the ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom. O you of little faith! When you
  wholeheartedly devote yourselves to the proclamation of the gospel of the
  kingdom, you should not be of doubtful minds concerning the support of
  yourselves or the families you have forsaken. If you give your lives truly to
  the gospel, you shall live by the gospel. If you are only believing disciples,
  you must earn your own bread and contribute to the sustenance of all who teach
  and preach and heal. If you are anxious about your bread and water, wherein
  are you different from the nations of the world who so diligently seek such
  necessities? Devote yourselves to your work, believing that both the Father
  and I know that you have need of all these things. Let me assure you, once and
  for all, that, if you dedicate your lives to the work of the kingdom, all your
  real needs shall be supplied. Seek the greater thing, and the lesser will be
  found therein; ask for the heavenly, and the earthly shall be included. The
  shadow is certain to follow the substance.

  165:5.4 "You are only a small group, but if you have faith, if you will not
  stumble in fear, I declare that it is my Father's good pleasure to give you
  this kingdom. You have laid up your treasures where the purse waxes not old,
  where no thief can despoil, and where no moth can destroy. And as I told the
  people, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  165:5.5 "But in the work which is just ahead of us, and in that which remains
  for you after I go to the Father, you will be grievously tried. You must all
  be on your watch against fear and doubts. Every one of you, gird up the loins
  of your minds and let your lamps be kept burning. Keep yourselves like men who
  are watching for their master to return from the marriage feast so that, when
  he comes and knocks, you may quickly open to him. Such watchful servants are
  blessed by the master who finds them faithful at such a great moment. Then
  will the master make his servants sit down while he himself serves them.
  Verily, verily, I say to you that a crisis is just ahead in your lives, and it
  behooves you to watch and be ready.

  165:5.6 "You well understand that no man would suffer his house to be broken
  into if he knew what hour the thief was to come. Be you also on watch for
  yourselves, for in an hour that you least suspect and in a manner you think
  not, shall the Son of Man depart."



  165:5.7 For some minutes the twelve sat in silence. Some of these warnings
  they had heard before but not in the setting presented to them at this time.





6. ANSWER TO PETER'S QUESTION



  165:6.1 As they sat thinking, Simon Peter asked: "Do you speak this parable to
  us, your apostles, or is it for all the disciples?" And Jesus answered:



  165:6.2 "In the time of testing, a man's soul is revealed; trial discloses
  what really is in the heart. When the servant is tested and proved, then may
  the lord of the house set such a servant over his household and safely trust
  this faithful steward to see that his children are fed and nurtured. Likewise,
  will I soon know who can be trusted with the welfare of my children when I
  shall have returned to the Father. As the lord of the household shall set the
  true and tried servant over the affairs of his family, so will I exalt those
  who endure the trials of this hour in the affairs of my kingdom.

  165:6.3 "But if the servant is slothful and begins to say in his heart, `My
  master delays his coming,' and begins to mistreat his fellow servants and to
  eat and drink with the drunken, then the lord of that servant will come at a
  time when he looks not for him and, finding him unfaithful, will cast him out
  in disgrace. Therefore you do well to prepare yourselves for that day when you
  will be visited suddenly and in an unexpected manner. Remember, much has been
  given to you; therefore will much be required of you. Fiery trials are drawing
  near you. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and I am on watch until this
  is accomplished. You preach peace on earth, but my mission will not bring
  peace in the material affairs of men -- not for a time, at least. Division can
  only be the result where two members of a family believe in me and three
  members reject this gospel. Friends, relatives, and loved ones are destined to
  be set against each other by the gospel you preach. True, each of these
  believers shall have great and lasting peace in his own heart, but peace on
  earth will not come until all are willing to believe and enter into their
  glorious inheritance of sonship with God. Nevertheless, go into all the world
  proclaiming this gospel to all nations, to every man, woman, and child."



  165:6.4 And this was the end of a full and busy Sabbath day. On the morrow
  Jesus and the twelve went into the cities of northern Perea to visit with the
  seventy, who were working in these regions under Abner's supervision.


PAPER 166


 LAST VISIT TO NORTHERN PEREA



  166:0.1 FROM February 11 to 20, Jesus and the twelve made a tour of all the
  cities and villages of northern Perea where the associates of Abner and the
  members of the women's corps were working. They found these messengers of the
  gospel meeting with success, and Jesus repeatedly called the attention of his
  apostles to the fact that the gospel of the kingdom could spread without the
  accompaniment of miracles and wonders.

  166:0.2 This entire mission of three months in Perea was successfully carried
  on with little help from the twelve apostles, and the gospel from this time on
  reflected, not so much Jesus' personality, as his teachings. But his followers
  did not long follow his instructions, for soon after Jesus' death and
  resurrection they departed from his teachings and began to build the early
  church around the miraculous concepts and the glorified memories of his
  divine-human personality.





1. THE PHARISEES AT RAGABA



  166:1.1 On Sabbath, February 18, Jesus was at Ragaba, where there lived a
  wealthy Pharisee named Nathaniel; and since quite a number of his fellow
  Pharisees were following Jesus and the twelve around the country, he made a
  breakfast on this Sabbath morning for all of them, about twenty in number, and
  invited Jesus as the guest of honor.

  166:1.2 By the time Jesus arrived at this breakfast, most of the Pharisees,
  with two or three lawyers, were already there and seated at the table. The
  Master immediately took his seat at the left of Nathaniel without going to the
  water basins to wash his hands. Many of the Pharisees, especially those
  favorable to Jesus' teachings, knew that he washed his hands only for purposes
  of cleanliness, that he abhorred these purely ceremonial performances; so they
  were not surprised at his coming directly to the table without having twice
  washed his hands. But Nathaniel was shocked by this failure of the Master to
  comply with the strict requirements of Pharisaic practice. Neither did Jesus
  wash his hands, as did the Pharisees, after each course of food nor at the end
  of the meal.

  166:1.3 After considerable whispering between Nathaniel and an unfriendly
  Pharisee on his right and after much lifting of eyebrows and sneering curling
  of lips by those who sat opposite the Master, Jesus finally said: "I had
  thought that you invited me to this house to break bread with you and
  perchance to inquire of me concerning the proclamation of the new gospel of
  the kingdom of God; but I perceive that you have brought me here to witness an
  exhibition of ceremonial devotion to your own self-righteousness. That service
  you have now done me; what next will you honor me with as your guest on this
  occasion?"

  166:1.4 When the Master had thus spoken, they cast their eyes upon the table
  and remained silent. And since no one spoke, Jesus continued: "Many of you
  Pharisees are here with me as friends, some are even my disciples, but the
  majority of the Pharisees are persistent in their refusal to see the light and
  acknowledge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought before them
  in great power. How carefully you cleanse the outside of the cups and the
  platters while the spiritual-food vessels are filthy and polluted! You make
  sure to present a pious and holy appearance to the people, but your inner
  souls are filled with self-righteousness, covetousness, extortion, and all
  manner of spiritual wickedness. Your leaders even dare to plot and plan the
  murder of the Son of Man. Do not you foolish men understand that the God of
  heaven looks at the inner motives of the soul as well as on your outer
  pretenses and your pious professions? Think not that the giving of alms and
  the paying of tithes will cleanse you from unrighteousness and enable you to
  stand clean in the presence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Pharisees
  who have persisted in rejecting the light of life! You are meticulous in
  tithing and ostentatious in almsgiving, but you knowingly spurn the visitation
  of God and reject the revelation of his love. Though it is all right for you
  to give attention to these minor duties, you should not have left these
  weightier requirements undone. Woe upon all who shun justice, spurn mercy, and
  reject truth! Woe upon all those who despise the revelation of the Father
  while they seek the chief seats in the synagogue and crave flattering
  salutations in the market places!"



  166:1.5 When Jesus would have risen to depart, one of the lawyers who was at
  the table, addressing him, said: "But, Master, in some of your statements you
  reproach us also. Is there nothing good in the scribes, the Pharisees, or the
  lawyers?" And Jesus, standing, replied to the lawyer: "You, like the
  Pharisees, delight in the first places at the feasts and in wearing long robes
  while you put heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, on men's shoulders. And
  when the souls of men stagger under these heavy burdens, you will not so much
  as lift with one of your fingers. Woe upon you who take your greatest delight
  in building tombs for the prophets your fathers killed! And that you consent
  to what your fathers did is made manifest when you now plan to kill those who
  come in this day doing what the prophets did in their day -- proclaiming the
  righteousness of God and revealing the mercy of the heavenly Father. But of
  all the generations that are past, the blood of the prophets and the apostles
  shall be required of this perverse and self-righteous generation. Woe upon all
  of you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowledge from the common
  people! You yourselves refuse to enter into the way of truth, and at the same
  time you would hinder all others who seek to enter therein. But you cannot
  thus shut up the doors of the kingdom of heaven; these we have opened to all
  who have the faith to enter, and these portals of mercy shall not be closed by
  the prejudice and arrogance of false teachers and untrue shepherds who are
  like whited sepulchres which, while outwardly they appear beautiful, are
  inwardly full of dead men's bones and all manner of spiritual uncleanness."

  166:1.6 And when Jesus had finished speaking at Nathaniel's table, he went out
  of the house without partaking of food. And of the Pharisees who heard these
  words, some became believers in his teaching and entered into the kingdom, but
  the larger number persisted in the way of darkness, becoming all the more
  determined to lie in wait for him that they might catch some of his words
  which could be used to bring him to trial and judgment before the Sanhedrin at
  Jerusalem.



  166:1.7 There were just three things to which the Pharisees paid particular
  attention:

1. The practice of strict tithing.

2. Scrupulous observance of the laws of purification.

3. Avoidance of association with all non-Pharisees.

  166:1.8 At this time Jesus sought to expose the spiritual barrenness of the
  first two practices, while he reserved his remarks designed to rebuke the
  Pharisees' refusal to engage in social intercourse with non-Pharisees for
  another and subsequent occasion when he would again be dining with many of
  these same men.





2. THE TEN LEPERS



  166:2.1 The next day Jesus went with the twelve over to Amathus, near the
  border of Samaria, and as they approached the city, they encountered a group
  of ten lepers who sojourned near this place. Nine of this group were Jews, one
  a Samaritan. Ordinarily these Jews would have refrained from all association
  or contact with this Samaritan, but their common affliction was more than
  enough to overcome all religious prejudice. They had heard much of Jesus and
  his earlier miracles of healing, and since the seventy made a practice of
  announcing the time of Jesus' expected arrival when the Master was out with
  the twelve on these tours, the ten lepers had been made aware that he was
  expected to appear in this vicinity at about this time; and they were,
  accordingly, posted here on the outskirts of the city where they hoped to
  attract his attention and ask for healing. When the lepers saw Jesus drawing
  near them, not daring to approach him, they stood afar off and cried to him:
  "Master, have mercy on us; cleanse us from our affliction. Heal us as you have
  healed others."

  166:2.2 Jesus had just been explaining to the twelve why the gentiles of
  Perea, together with the less orthodox Jews, were more willing to believe the
  gospel preached by the seventy than were the more orthodox and tradition-bound
  Jews of Judea. He had called their attention to the fact that their message
  had likewise been more readily received by the Galileans, and even by the
  Samaritans. But the twelve apostles were hardly yet willing to entertain kind
  feelings for the long-despised Samaritans.

  166:2.3 Accordingly, when Simon Zelotes observed the Samaritan among the
  lepers, he sought to induce the Master to pass on into the city without even
  hesitating to exchange greetings with them. Said Jesus to Simon: "But what if
  the Samaritan loves God as well as the Jews? Should we sit in judgment on our
  fellow men? Who can tell? if we make these ten men whole, perhaps the
  Samaritan will prove more grateful even than the Jews. Do you feel certain
  about your opinions, Simon?" And Simon quickly replied, "If you cleanse them,
  you will soon find out." And Jesus replied: "So shall it be, Simon, and you
  will soon know the truth regarding the gratitude of men and the loving mercy
  of God."

  166:2.4 Jesus, going near the lepers, said: "If you would be made whole, go
  forthwith and show yourselves to the priests as required by the law of Moses."
  And as they went, they were made whole. But when the Samaritan saw that he was
  being healed, he turned back and, going in quest of Jesus, began to glorify
  God with a loud voice. And when he had found the Master, he fell on his knees
  at his feet and gave thanks for his cleansing. The nine others, the Jews, had
  also discovered their healing, and while they also were grateful for their
  cleansing, they continued on their way to show themselves to the priests.

  166:2.5 As the Samaritan remained kneeling at Jesus' feet, the Master, looking
  about at the twelve, especially at Simon Zelotes, said: "Were not ten
  cleansed? Where, then, are the other nine, the Jews? Only one, this alien, has
  returned to give glory to God." And then he said to the Samaritan, "Arise and
  go your way; your faith has made you whole."

  166:2.6 Jesus looked again at his apostles as the stranger departed. And the
  apostles all looked at Jesus, save Simon Zelotes, whose eyes were downcast.
  The twelve said not a word. Neither did Jesus speak; it was not necessary that
  he should.



  166:2.7 Though all ten of these men really believed they had leprosy, only
  four were thus afflicted. The other six were cured of a skin disease which had
  been mistaken for leprosy. But the Samaritan really had leprosy.



  166:2.8 Jesus enjoined the twelve to say nothing about the cleansing of the
  lepers, and as they went on into Amathus, he remarked: "You see how it is that
  the children of the house, even when they are insubordinate to their Father's
  will, take their blessings for granted. They think it a small matter if they
  neglect to give thanks when the Father bestows healing upon them, but the
  strangers, when they receive gifts from the head of the house, are filled with
  wonder and are constrained to give thanks in recognition of the good things
  bestowed upon them." And still the apostles said nothing in reply to the
  Master's words.





3. THE SERMON AT GERASA



  166:3.1 As Jesus and the twelve visited with the messengers of the kingdom at
  Gerasa, one of the Pharisees who believed in him asked this question: "Lord,
  will there be few or many really saved?" And Jesus, answering, said:



  166:3.2 "You have been taught that only the children of Abraham will be saved;
  that only the gentiles of adoption can hope for salvation. Some of you have
  reasoned that, since the Scriptures record that only Caleb and Joshua from
  among all the hosts that went out of Egypt lived to enter the promised land,
  only a comparatively few of those who seek the kingdom of heaven shall find
  entrance thereto.

  166:3.3 "You also have another saying among you, and one that contains much
  truth: That the way which leads to eternal life is straight and narrow, that
  the door which leads thereto is likewise narrow so that, of those who seek
  salvation, few can find entrance through this door. You also have a teaching
  that the way which leads to destruction is broad, that the entrance thereto is
  wide, and that there are many who choose to go this way. And this proverb is
  not without its meaning. But I declare that salvation is first a matter of
  your personal choosing. Even if the door to the way of life is narrow, it is
  wide enough to admit all who sincerely seek to enter, for I am that door. And
  the Son will never refuse entrance to any child of the universe who, by faith,
  seeks to find the Father through the Son.

  166:3.4 "But herein is the danger to all who would postpone their entrance
  into the kingdom while they continue to pursue the pleasures of immaturity and
  indulge the satisfactions of selfishness: Having refused to enter the kingdom
  as a spiritual experience, they may subsequently seek entrance thereto when
  the glory of the better way becomes revealed in the age to come. And when,
  therefore, those who spurned the kingdom when I came in the likeness of
  humanity seek to find an entrance when it is revealed in the likeness of
  divinity, then will I say to all such selfish ones: I know not whence you are.
  You had your chance to prepare for this heavenly citizenship, but you refused
  all such proffers of mercy; you rejected all invitations to come while the
  door was open. Now, to you who have refused salvation, the door is shut. This
  door is not open to those who would enter the kingdom for selfish glory.
  Salvation is not for those who are unwilling to pay the price of wholehearted
  dedication to doing my Father's will. When in spirit and soul you have turned
  your backs upon the Father's kingdom, it is useless in mind and body to stand
  before this door and knock, saying, `Lord open to us; we would also be great
  in the kingdom.' Then will I declare that you are not of my fold. I will not
  receive you to be among those who have fought the good fight of faith and won
  the reward of unselfish service in the kingdom on earth. And when you say,
  `Did we not eat and drink with you, and did you not teach in our streets?'
  then shall I again declare that you are spiritual strangers; that we were not
  fellow servants in the Father's ministry of mercy on earth; that I do not know
  you; and then shall the Judge of all the earth say to you: `Depart from us,
  all you who have taken delight in the works of iniquity.'

  166:3.5 "But fear not; every one who sincerely desires to find eternal life by
  entrance into the kingdom of God shall certainly find such everlasting
  salvation. But you who refuse this salvation will some day see the prophets of
  the seed of Abraham sit down with the believers of the gentile nations in this
  glorified kingdom to partake of the bread of life and to refresh themselves
  with the water thereof. And they who shall thus take the kingdom in spiritual
  power and by the persistent assaults of living faith will come from the north
  and the south and from the east and the west. And, behold, many who are first
  will be last, and those who are last will many times be first."

  166:3.6 This was indeed a new and strange version of the old and familiar
  proverb of the straight and narrow way.

  166:3.7 Slowly the apostles and many of the disciples were learning the
  meaning of Jesus' early declaration: "Unless you are born again, born of the
  spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God." Nevertheless, to all who are
  honest of heart and sincere in faith, it remains eternally true: "Behold, I
  stand at the doors of men's hearts and knock, and if any man will open to me,
  I will come in and sup with him and will feed him with the bread of life; we
  shall be one in spirit and purpose, and so shall we ever be brethren in the
  long and fruitful service of the search for the Paradise Father." And so,
  whether few or many are to be saved altogether depends on whether few or many
  will heed the invitation: "I am the door, I am the new and living way, and
  whosoever wills may enter to embark upon the endless truth-search for eternal
  life."

  166:3.8 Even the apostles were unable fully to comprehend his teaching as to
  the necessity for using spiritual force for the purpose of breaking through
  all material resistance and for surmounting every earthly obstacle which might
  chance to stand in the way of grasping the all-important spiritual values of
  the new life in the spirit as the liberated sons of God.





4. TEACHING ABOUT ACCIDENTS



  166:4.1 While most Palestinians ate only two meals a day, it was the custom of
  Jesus and the apostles, when on a journey, to pause at midday for rest and
  refreshment. And it was at such a noontide stop on the way to Philadelphia
  that Thomas asked Jesus: "Master, from hearing your remarks as we journeyed
  this morning, I would like to inquire whether spiritual beings are concerned
  in the production of strange and extraordinary events in the material world
  and, further, to ask whether the angels and other spirit beings are able to
  prevent accidents."

  166:4.2 In answer to Thomas's inquiry, Jesus said: "Have I been so long with
  you, and yet you continue to ask me such questions? Have you failed to observe
  how the Son of Man lives as one with you and consistently refuses to employ
  the forces of heaven for his personal sustenance? Do we not all live by the
  same means whereby all men exist? Do you see the power of the spiritual world
  manifested in the material life of this world, save for the revelation of the
  Father and the sometime healing of his afflicted children?

  166:4.3 "All too long have your fathers believed that prosperity was the token
  of divine approval; that adversity was the proof of God's displeasure. I
  declare that such beliefs are superstitions. Do you not observe that far
  greater numbers of the poor joyfully receive the gospel and immediately enter
  the kingdom? If riches evidence divine favor, why do the rich so many times
  refuse to believe this good news from heaven?

  166:4.4 "The Father causes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust; the
  sun likewise shines on the righteous and the unrighteous. You know about those
  Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with the sacrifices, but I tell you these
  Galileans were not in any manner sinners above all their fellows just because
  this happened to them. You also know about the eighteen men upon whom the
  tower of Siloam fell, killing them. Think not that these men who were thus
  destroyed were offenders above all their brethren in Jerusalem. These folks
  were simply innocent victims of one of the accidents of time.

  166:4.5 "There are three groups of events which may occur in your lives:



  166:4.6 "1. You may share in those normal happenings which are a part of the
  life you and your fellows live on the face of the earth.



  166:4.7 "2. You may chance to fall victim to one of the accidents of nature,
  one of the mischances of men, knowing full well that such occurrences are in
  no way prearranged or otherwise produced by the spiritual forces of the realm.



  166:4.8 "3. You may reap the harvest of your direct efforts to comply with the
  natural laws governing the world.



  166:4.9 "There was a certain man who planted a fig tree in his yard, and when
  he had many times sought fruit thereon and found none, he called the
  vinedressers before him and said: `Here have I come these three seasons
  looking for fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut down this barren
  tree; why should it encumber the ground?' But the head gardener answered his
  master: `Let it alone for one more year so that I may dig around it and put on
  fertilizer, and then, next year, if it bears no fruit, it shall be cut down.'
  And when they had thus complied with the laws of fruitfulness, since the tree
  was living and good, they were rewarded with an abundant yield.

  166:4.10 "In the matter of sickness and health, you should know that these
  bodily states are the result of material causes; health is not the smile of
  heaven, neither is affliction the frown of God.

  166:4.11 "The Father's human children have equal capacity for the reception of
  material blessings; therefore does he bestow things physical upon the children
  of men without discrimination. When it comes to the bestowal of spiritual
  gifts, the Father is limited by man's capacity for receiving these divine
  endowments. Although the Father is no respecter of persons, in the bestowal of
  spiritual gifts he is limited by man's faith and by his willingness always to
  abide by the Father's will."



  166:4.12 As they journeyed on toward Philadelphia, Jesus continued to teach
  them and to answer their questions having to do with accidents, sickness, and
  miracles, but they were not able fully to comprehend this instruction. One
  hour of teaching will not wholly change the beliefs of a lifetime, and so
  Jesus found it necessary to reiterate his message, to tell again and again
  that which he wished them to understand; and even then they failed to grasp
  the meaning of his earth mission until after his death and resurrection.





5. THE CONGREGATION AT PHILADELPHIA



  166:5.1 Jesus and the twelve were on their way to visit Abner and his
  associates, who were preaching and teaching in Philadelphia. Of all the cities
  of Perea, in Philadelphia the largest group of Jews and gentiles, rich and
  poor, learned and unlearned, embraced the teachings of the seventy, thereby
  entering into the kingdom of heaven. The synagogue of Philadelphia had never
  been subject to the supervision of the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem and therefore
  had never been closed to the teachings of Jesus and his associates. At this
  very time, Abner was teaching three times a day in the Philadelphia synagogue.

  166:5.2 This very synagogue later on became a Christian church and was the
  missionary headquarters for the promulgation of the gospel through the regions
  to the east. It was long a stronghold of the Master's teachings and stood
  alone in this region as a center of Christian learning for centuries.

  166:5.3 The Jews at Jerusalem had always had trouble with the Jews of
  Philadelphia. And after the death and resurrection of Jesus the Jerusalem
  church, of which James the Lord's brother was head, began to have serious
  difficulties with the Philadelphia congregation of believers. Abner became the
  head of the Philadelphia church, continuing as such until his death. And this
  estrangement with Jerusalem explains why nothing is heard of Abner and his
  work in the Gospel records of the New Testament. This feud between Jerusalem
  and Philadelphia lasted throughout the lifetimes of James and Abner and
  continued for some time after the destruction of Jerusalem. Philadelphia was
  really the headquarters of the early church in the south and east as Antioch
  was in the north and west.



  166:5.4 It was the apparent misfortune of Abner to be at variance with all of
  the leaders of the early Christian church. He fell out with Peter and James
  (Jesus' brother) over questions of administration and the jurisdiction of the
  Jerusalem church; he parted company with Paul over differences of philosophy
  and theology. Abner was more Babylonian than Hellenic in his philosophy, and
  he stubbornly resisted all attempts of Paul to remake the teachings of Jesus
  so as to present less that was objectionable, first to the Jews, then to the
  Greco-Roman believers in the mysteries.

  166:5.5 Thus was Abner compelled to live a life of isolation. He was head of a
  church which was without standing at Jerusalem. He had dared to defy James the
  Lord's brother, who was subsequently supported by Peter. Such conduct
  effectively separated him from all his former associates. Then he dared to
  withstand Paul. Although he was wholly sympathetic with Paul in his mission to
  the gentiles, and though he supported him in his contentions with the church
  at Jerusalem, he bitterly opposed the version of Jesus' teachings which Paul
  elected to preach. In his last years Abner denounced Paul as the "clever
  corrupter of the life teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the living
  God."

  166:5.6 During the later years of Abner and for some time thereafter, the
  believers at Philadelphia held more strictly to the religion of Jesus, as he
  lived and taught, than any other group on earth.

  166:5.7 Abner lived to be 89 years old, dying at Philadelphia on the 21st day
  of November, A.D. 74. And to the very end he was a faithful believer in, and
  teacher of, the gospel of the heavenly kingdom.


PAPER 167


 THE VISIT TO PHILADELPHIA



  167:0.1 THROUGHOUT this period of the Perean ministry, when mention is made of
  Jesus and the apostles visiting the various localities where the seventy were
  at work, it should be recalled that, as a rule, only ten were with him since
  it was the practice to leave at least two of the apostles at Pella to instruct
  the multitude. As Jesus prepared to go on to Philadelphia, Simon Peter and his
  brother, Andrew, returned to the Pella encampment to teach the crowds there
  assembled. When the Master left the camp at Pella to visit about Perea, it was
  not uncommon for from three to five hundred of the campers to follow him. When
  he arrived at Philadelphia, he was accompanied by over six hundred followers.

  167:0.2 No miracles had attended the recent preaching tour through the
  Decapolis, and, excepting the cleansing of the ten lepers, thus far there had
  been no miracles on this Perean mission. This was a period when the gospel was
  proclaimed with power, without miracles, and most of the time without the
  personal presence of Jesus or even of his apostles.



  167:0.3 Jesus and the ten apostles arrived at Philadelphia on Wednesday,
  February 22, and spent Thursday and Friday resting from their recent travels
  and labors. That Friday night James spoke in the synagogue, and a general
  council was called for the following evening. They were much rejoiced over the
  progress of the gospel at Philadelphia and among the near-by villages. The
  messengers of David also brought word of the further advancement of the
  kingdom throughout Palestine, as well as good news from Alexandria and
  Damascus.





1. BREAKFAST WITH THE PHARISEES



  167:1.1 There lived in Philadelphia a very wealthy and influential Pharisee
  who had accepted the teachings of Abner, and who invited Jesus to his house
  Sabbath morning for breakfast. It was known that Jesus was expected in
  Philadelphia at this time; so a large number of visitors, among them many
  Pharisees, had come over from Jerusalem and from elsewhere. Accordingly, about
  forty of these leading men and a few lawyers were bidden to this breakfast,
  which had been arranged in honor of the Master.

  167:1.2 As Jesus lingered by the door, speaking with Abner, and after the host
  had seated himself, there came into the room one of the leading Pharisees of
  Jerusalem, a member of the Sanhedrin, and as was his habit, he made straight
  for the seat of honor at the left of the host. But since this place had been
  reserved for the Master and that on the right for Abner, the host beckoned the
  Jerusalem Pharisee to sit four seats to the left, and this dignitary was much
  offended because he did not receive the seat of honor.

  167:1.3 Soon they were all seated and enjoying the visiting among themselves
  since the majority of those present were disciples of Jesus or else were
  friendly to the gospel. Only his enemies took notice of the fact that he did
  not observe the ceremonial washing of his hands before he sat down to eat.
  Abner washed his hands at the beginning of the meal but not during the
  serving.

  167:1.4 Near the end of the meal there came in from the street a man long
  afflicted with a chronic disease and now in a dropsical condition. This man
  was a believer, having recently been baptized by Abner's associates. He made
  no request of Jesus for healing, but the Master knew full well that this
  afflicted man came to this breakfast hoping thereby to escape the crowds which
  thronged him and thus be more likely to engage his attention. This man knew
  that few miracles were then being performed; however, he had reasoned in his
  heart that his sorry plight might possibly appeal to the Master's compassion.
  And he was not mistaken, for, when he entered the room, both Jesus and the
  self-righteous Pharisee from Jerusalem took notice of him. The Pharisee was
  not slow to voice his resentment that such a one should be permitted to enter
  the room. But Jesus looked upon the sick man and smiled so benignly that he
  drew near and sat down upon the floor. As the meal was ending, the Master
  looked over his fellow guests and then, after glancing significantly at the
  man with dropsy, said: "My friends, teachers in Israel and learned lawyers, I
  would like to ask you a question: Is it lawful to heal the sick and afflicted
  on the Sabbath day, or not?" But those who were there present knew Jesus too
  well; they held their peace; they answered not his question.



  167:1.5 Then went Jesus over to where the sick man sat and, taking him by the
  hand, said: "Arise and go your way. You have not asked to be healed, but I
  know the desire of your heart and the faith of your soul." Before the man left
  the room, Jesus returned to his seat and, addressing those at the table, said:
  "Such works my Father does, not to tempt you into the kingdom, but to reveal
  himself to those who are already in the kingdom. You can perceive that it
  would be like the Father to do just such things because which one of you,
  having a favorite animal that fell in the well on the Sabbath day, would not
  go right out and draw him up?" And since no one would answer him, and inasmuch
  as his host evidently approved of what was going on, Jesus stood up and spoke
  to all present: "My brethren, when you are bidden to a marriage feast, sit not
  down in the chief seat, lest, perchance, a more honored man than you has been
  invited, and the host will have to come to you and request that you give your
  place to this other and honored guest. In this event, with shame you will be
  required to take a lower place at the table. When you are bidden to a feast,
  it would be the part of wisdom, on arriving at the festive table, to seek for
  the lowest place and take your seat therein, so that, when the host looks over
  the guests, he may say to you: `My friend, why sit in the seat of the least?
  come up higher'; and thus will such a one have glory in the presence of his
  fellow guests. Forget not, every one who exalts himself shall be humbled,
  while he who truly humbles himself shall be exalted. Therefore, when you
  entertain at dinner or give a supper, invite not always your friends, your
  brethren, your kinsmen, or your rich neighbors that they in return may bid you
  to their feasts, and thus will you be recompensed. When you give a banquet,
  sometimes bid the poor, the maimed, and the blind. In this way you shall be
  blessed in your heart, for you well know that the lame and the halt cannot
  repay you for your loving ministry."





2. PARABLE OF THE GREAT SUPPER



  167:2.1 As Jesus finished speaking at the breakfast table of the Pharisee, one
  of the lawyers present, desiring to relieve the silence, thoughtlessly said:
  "Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God" -- that being a
  common saying of those days. And then Jesus spoke a parable, which even his
  friendly host was compelled to take to heart. He said:

  167:2.2 "A certain ruler gave a great supper, and having bidden many guests,
  he dispatched his servants at suppertime to say to those who were invited,
  `Come, for everything is now ready.' And they all with one accord began to
  make excuses. The first said, `I have just bought a farm, and I must needs to
  go prove it; I pray you have me excused.' Another said, `I have bought five
  yoke of oxen, and I must go to receive them; I pray you have me excused.' And
  another said, `I have just married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.' So
  the servants went back and reported this to their master. When the master of
  the house heard this, he was very angry, and turning to his servants, he said:
  `I have made ready this marriage feast; the fatlings are killed, and all is in
  readiness for my guests, but they have spurned my invitation; they have gone
  every man after his lands and his merchandise, and they even show disrespect
  to my servants who bid them come to my feast. Go out quickly, therefore, into
  the streets and lanes of the city, out into the highways and the byways, and
  bring hither the poor and the outcast, the blind and the lame, that the
  marriage feast may have guests.' And the servants did as their lord commanded,
  and even then there was room for more guests. Then said the lord to his
  servants: `Go now out into the roads and the countryside and constrain those
  who are there to come in that my house may be filled. I declare that none of
  those who were first bidden shall taste of my supper.' And the servants did as
  their master commanded, and the house was filled."



  167:2.3 And when they heard these words, they departed; every man went to his
  own place. At least one of the sneering Pharisees present that morning
  comprehended the meaning of this parable, for he was baptized that day and
  made public confession of his faith in the gospel of the kingdom. Abner
  preached on this parable that night at the general council of believers.

  167:2.4 The next day all of the apostles engaged in the philosophic exercise
  of endeavoring to interpret the meaning of this parable of the great supper.
  Though Jesus listened with interest to all of these differing interpretations,
  he steadfastly refused to offer them further help in understanding the
  parable. He would only say, "Let every man find out the meaning for himself
  and in his own soul."





3. THE WOMAN WITH THE SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY



  167:3.1 Abner had arranged for the Master to teach in the synagogue on this
  Sabbath day, the first time Jesus had appeared in a synagogue since they had
  all been closed to his teachings by order of the Sanhedrin. At the conclusion
  of the service Jesus looked down before him upon an elderly woman who wore a
  downcast expression, and who was much bent in form. This woman had long been
  fear-ridden, and all joy had passed out of her life. As Jesus stepped down
  from the pulpit, he went over to her and, touching her bowed-over form on the
  shoulder, said: "Woman, if you would only believe, you could be wholly loosed
  from your spirit of infirmity." And this woman, who had been bowed down and
  bound up by the depressions of fear for more than eighteen years, believed the
  words of the Master and by faith straightened up immediately. When this woman
  saw that she had been made straight, she lifted up her voice and glorified
  God.

  167:3.2 Notwithstanding that this woman's affliction was wholly mental, her
  bowed-over form being the result of her depressed mind, the people thought
  that Jesus had healed a real physical disorder. Although the congregation of
  the synagogue at Philadelphia was friendly toward the teachings of Jesus, the
  chief ruler of the synagogue was an unfriendly Pharisee. And as he shared the
  opinion of the congregation that Jesus had healed a physical disorder, and
  being indignant because Jesus had presumed to do such a thing on the Sabbath,
  he stood up before the congregation and said: "Are there not six days in which
  men should do all their work? In these working days come, therefore, and be
  healed, but not on the Sabbath day."

  167:3.3 When the unfriendly ruler had thus spoken, Jesus returned to the
  speaker's platform and said: "Why play the part of hypocrites? Does not every
  one of you, on the Sabbath, loose his ox from the stall and lead him forth for
  watering? If such a service is permissible on the Sabbath day, should not this
  woman, a daughter of Abraham who has been bound down by evil these eighteen
  years, be loosed from this bondage and led forth to partake of the waters of
  liberty and life, even on this Sabbath day?" And as the woman continued to
  glorify God, his critic was put to shame, and the congregation rejoiced with
  her that she had been healed.

  167:3.4 As a result of his public criticism of Jesus on this Sabbath the chief
  ruler of the synagogue was deposed, and a follower of Jesus was put in his
  place.



  167:3.5 Jesus frequently delivered such victims of fear from their spirit of
  infirmity, from their depression of mind, and from their bondage of fear. But
  the people thought that all such afflictions were either physical disorders or
  possession of evil spirits.



  167:3.6 Jesus taught again in the synagogue on Sunday, and many were baptized
  by Abner at noon on that day in the river which flowed south of the city. On
  the morrow Jesus and the ten apostles would have started back to the Pella
  encampment but for the arrival of one of David's messengers, who brought an
  urgent message to Jesus from his friends at Bethany, near Jerusalem.





4. THE MESSAGE FROM BETHANY



  167:4.1 Very late on Sunday night, February 26, a runner from Bethany arrived
  at Philadelphia, bringing a message from Martha and Mary which said, "Lord, he
  whom you love is very sick." This message reached Jesus at the close of the
  evening conference and just as he was taking leave of the apostles for the
  night. At first Jesus made no reply. There occurred one of those strange
  interludes, a time when he appeared to be in communication with something
  outside of, and beyond, himself. And then, looking up, he addressed the
  messenger in the hearing of the apostles, saying: "This sickness is really not
  to the death. Doubt not that it may be used to glorify God and exalt the Son."



  167:4.2 Jesus was very fond of Martha, Mary, and their brother, Lazarus; he
  loved them with a fervent affection. His first and human thought was to go to
  their assistance at once, but another idea came into his combined mind. He had
  almost given up hope that the Jewish leaders at Jerusalem would ever accept
  the kingdom, but he still loved his people, and there now occurred to him a
  plan whereby the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem might have one more chance
  to accept his teachings; and he decided, his Father willing, to make this last
  appeal to Jerusalem the most profound and stupendous outward working of his
  entire earth career. The Jews clung to the idea of a wonder-working deliverer.
  And though he refused to stoop to the performance of material wonders or to
  the enactment of temporal exhibitions of political power, he did now ask the
  Father's consent for the manifestation of his hitherto unexhibited power over
  life and death.



  167:4.3 The Jews were in the habit of burying their dead on the day of their
  demise; this was a necessary practice in such a warm climate. It often
  happened that they put in the tomb one who was merely comatose, so that on the
  second, or even the third day, such a one would come forth from the tomb. But
  it was the belief of the Jews that, while the spirit or soul might linger near
  the body for two or three days, it never tarried after the third day; that
  decay was well advanced by the fourth day, and that no one ever returned from
  the tomb after the lapse of such a period. And it was for these reasons that
  Jesus tarried yet two full days in Philadelphia before he made ready to start
  for Bethany.



  167:4.4 Accordingly, early on Wednesday morning he said to his apostles: "Let
  us prepare at once to go into Judea again." And when the apostles heard their
  Master say this, they drew off by themselves for a time to take counsel of one
  another. James assumed the direction of the conference, and they all agreed
  that it was only folly to allow Jesus to go again into Judea, and they came
  back as one man and so informed him. Said James: "Master, you were in
  Jerusalem a few weeks back, and the leaders sought your death, while the
  people were minded to stone you. At that time you gave these men their chance
  to receive the truth, and we will not permit you to go again into Judea."

  167:4.5 Then said Jesus: "But do you not understand that there are twelve
  hours of the day in which work may safely be done? If a man walks in the day,
  he does not stumble inasmuch as he has light. If a man walks in the night, he
  is liable to stumble since he is without light. As long as my day lasts, I
  fear not to enter Judea. I would do one more mighty work for these Jews; I
  would give them one more chance to believe, even on their own terms --
  conditions of outward glory and the visible manifestation of the power of the
  Father and the love of the Son. Besides, do you not realize that our friend
  Lazarus has fallen asleep, and I would go to awake him out of this sleep!"

  167:4.6 Then said one of the apostles: "Master, if Lazarus has fallen asleep,
  then will he the more surely recover." It was the custom of the Jews at that
  time to speak of death as a form of sleep, but as the apostles did not
  understand that Jesus meant that Lazarus had departed from this world, he now
  said plainly: "Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes, even if the
  others are not thereby saved, that I was not there, to the end that you shall
  now have new cause to believe in me; and by that which you will witness, you
  should all be strengthened in preparation for that day when I shall take leave
  of you and go to the Father."

  167:4.7 When they could not persuade him to refrain from going into Judea, and
  when some of the apostles were loath even to accompany him, Thomas addressed
  his fellows, saying: "We have told the Master our fears, but he is determined
  to go to Bethany. I am satisfied it means the end; they will surely kill him,
  but if that is the Master's choice, then let us acquit ourselves like men of
  courage; let us go also that we may die with him." And it was ever so; in
  matters requiring deliberate and sustained courage, Thomas was always the
  mainstay of the twelve apostles.





5. ON THE WAY TO BETHANY



  167:5.1 On the way to Judea Jesus was followed by a company of almost fifty of
  his friends and enemies. At their noon lunchtime, on Wednesday, he talked to
  his apostles and this group of followers on the "Terms of Salvation," and at
  the end of this lesson told the parable of the Pharisee and the publican (a
  tax collector). Said Jesus: "You see, then, that the Father gives salvation to
  the children of men, and this salvation is a free gift to all who have the
  faith to receive sonship in the divine family. There is nothing man can do to
  earn this salvation. Works of self-righteousness cannot buy the favor of God,
  and much praying in public will not atone for lack of living faith in the
  heart. Men you may deceive by your outward service, but God looks into your
  souls. What I am telling you is well illustrated by two men who went into the
  temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee
  stood and prayed to himself: `O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest
  of men, extortioners, unlearned, unjust, adulterers, or even like this
  publican. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' But the
  publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven but
  smote his breast, saying, `God be merciful to me a sinner.' I tell you that
  the publican went home with God's approval rather than the Pharisee, for every
  one who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be
  exalted."



  167:5.2 That night, in Jericho, the unfriendly Pharisees sought to entrap the
  Master by inducing him to discuss marriage and divorce, as did their fellows
  one time in Galilee, but Jesus artfully avoided their efforts to bring him
  into conflict with their laws concerning divorce. As the publican and the
  Pharisee illustrated good and bad religion, their divorce practices served to
  contrast the better marriage laws of the Jewish code with the disgraceful
  laxity of the Pharisaic interpretations of these Mosaic divorce statutes. The
  Pharisee judged himself by the lowest standard; the publican squared himself
  by the highest ideal. Devotion, to the Pharisee, was a means of inducing self-
  righteous inactivity and the assurance of false spiritual security; devotion,
  to the publican, was a means of stirring up his soul to the realization of the
  need for repentance, confession, and the acceptance, by faith, of merciful
  forgiveness. The Pharisee sought justice; the publican sought mercy. The law
  of the universe is: Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find.

  167:5.3 Though Jesus refused to be drawn into a controversy with the Pharisees
  concerning divorce, he did proclaim a positive teaching of the highest ideals
  regarding marriage. He exalted marriage as the most ideal and highest of all
  human relationships. Likewise, he intimated strong disapproval of the lax and
  unfair divorce practices of the Jerusalem Jews, who at that time permitted a
  man to divorce his wife for the most trifling of reasons, such as being a poor
  cook, a faulty housekeeper, or for no better reason than that he had become
  enamoured of a better-looking woman.

  167:5.4 The Pharisees had even gone so far as to teach that divorce of this
  easy variety was a special dispensation granted the Jewish people,
  particularly the Pharisees. And so, while Jesus refused to make pronouncements
  dealing with marriage and divorce, he did most bitterly denounce these
  shameful floutings of the marriage relationship and pointed out their
  injustice to women and children. He never sanctioned any divorce practice
  which gave man any advantage over woman; the Master countenanced only those
  teachings which accorded women equality with men.

  167:5.5 Although Jesus did not offer new mandates governing marriage and
  divorce, he did urge the Jews to live up to their own laws and higher
  teachings. He constantly appealed to the written Scriptures in his effort to
  improve their practices along these social lines. While thus upholding the
  high and ideal concepts of marriage, Jesus skillfully avoided clashing with
  his questioners about the social practices represented by either their written
  laws or their much-cherished divorce privileges.

  167:5.6 It was very difficult for the apostles to understand the Master's
  reluctance to make positive pronouncements relative to scientific, social,
  economic, and political problems. They did not fully realize that his earth
  mission was exclusively concerned with revelations of spiritual and religious
  truths.

  167:5.7 After Jesus had talked about marriage and divorce, later on that
  evening his apostles privately asked many additional questions, and his
  answers to these inquiries relieved their minds of many misconceptions. At the
  conclusion of this conference Jesus said: "Marriage is honorable and is to be
  desired by all men. The fact that the Son of Man pursues his earth mission
  alone is in no way a reflection on the desirability of marriage. That I should
  so work is the Father's will, but this same Father has directed the creation
  of male and female, and it is the divine will that men and women should find
  their highest service and consequent joy in the establishment of homes for the
  reception and training of children, in the creation of whom these parents
  become copartners with the Makers of heaven and earth. And for this cause
  shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they
  two shall become as one."

  167:5.8 And in this way Jesus relieved the minds of the apostles of many
  worries about marriage and cleared up many misunderstandings regarding
  divorce; at the same time he did much to exalt their ideals of social union
  and to augment their respect for women and children and for the home.





6. BLESSING THE LITTLE CHILDREN



  167:6.1 That evening Jesus' message regarding marriage and the blessedness of
  children spread all over Jericho, so that the next morning, long before Jesus
  and the apostles prepared to leave, even before breakfast time, scores of
  mothers came to where Jesus lodged, bringing their children in their arms and
  leading them by their hands, and desired that he bless the little ones. When
  the apostles went out to view this assemblage of mothers with their children,
  they endeavored to send them away, but these women refused to depart until the
  Master laid his hands on their children and blessed them. And when the
  apostles loudly rebuked these mothers, Jesus, hearing the tumult, came out and
  indignantly reproved them, saying: "Suffer little children to come to me;
  forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Verily, verily, I say
  to you, whosoever receives not the kingdom of God as a little child shall
  hardly enter therein to grow up to the full stature of spiritual manhood."

  167:6.2 And when the Master had spoken to his apostles, he received all of the
  children, laying his hands on them, while he spoke words of courage and hope
  to their mothers.



  167:6.3 Jesus often talked to his apostles about the celestial mansions and
  taught that the advancing children of God must there grow up spiritually as
  children grow up physically on this world. And so does the sacred oftentimes
  appear to be the common, as on this day these children and their mothers
  little realized that the onlooking intelligences of Nebadon beheld the
  children of Jericho playing with the Creator of a universe.



  167:6.4 Woman's status in Palestine was much improved by Jesus' teaching; and
  so it would have been throughout the world if his followers had not departed
  so far from that which he painstakingly taught them.



  167:6.5 It was also at Jericho, in connection with the discussion of the early
  religious training of children in habits of divine worship, that Jesus
  impressed upon his apostles the great value of beauty as an influence leading
  to the urge to worship, especially with children. The Master by precept and
  example taught the value of worshiping the Creator in the midst of the natural
  surroundings of creation. He preferred to commune with the heavenly Father
  amidst the trees and among the lowly creatures of the natural world. He
  rejoiced to contemplate the Father through the inspiring spectacle of the
  starry realms of the Creator Sons.

  167:6.6 When it is not possible to worship God in the tabernacles of nature,
  men should do their best to provide houses of beauty, sanctuaries of appealing
  simplicity and artistic embellishment, so that the highest of human emotions
  may be aroused in association with the intellectual approach to spiritual
  communion with God. Truth, beauty, and holiness are powerful and effective
  aids to true worship. But spirit communion is not promoted by mere massive
  ornateness and overmuch embellishment with man's elaborate and ostentatious
  art. Beauty is most religious when it is most simple and naturelike. How
  unfortunate that little children should have their first introduction to
  concepts of public worship in cold and barren rooms so devoid of the beauty
  appeal and so empty of all suggestion of good cheer and inspiring holiness!
  The child should be introduced to worship in nature's outdoors and later
  accompany his parents to public houses of religious assembly which are at
  least as materially attractive and artistically beautiful as the home in which
  he is daily domiciled.





7. THE TALK ABOUT ANGELS



  167:7.1 As they journeyed up the hills from Jericho to Bethany, Nathaniel
  walked most of the way by the side of Jesus, and their discussion of children
  in relation to the kingdom of heaven led indirectly to the consideration of
  the ministry of angels. Nathaniel finally asked the Master this question:
  "Seeing that the high priest is a Sadducee, and since the Sadducees do not
  believe in angels, what shall we teach the people regarding the heavenly
  ministers?" Then, among other things, Jesus said:

  167:7.2 "The angelic hosts are a separate order of created beings; they are
  entirely different from the material order of mortal creatures, and they
  function as a distinct group of universe intelligences. Angels are not of that
  group of creatures called `the Sons of God' in the Scriptures; neither are
  they the glorified spirits of mortal men who have gone on to progress through
  the mansions on high. Angels are a direct creation, and they do not reproduce
  themselves. The angelic hosts have only a spiritual kinship with the human
  race. As man progresses in the journey to the Father in Paradise, he does
  traverse a state of being at one time analogous to the state of the angels,
  but mortal man never becomes an angel.

  167:7.3 "The angels never die, as man does. The angels are immortal unless,
  perchance, they become involved in sin as did some of them with the deceptions
  of Lucifer. The angels are the spirit servants in heaven, and they are neither
  all-wise nor all-powerful. But all of the loyal angels are truly pure and
  holy.

  167:7.4 "And do you not remember that I said to you once before that, if you
  had your spiritual eyes anointed, you would then see the heavens opened and
  behold the angels of God ascending and descending? It is by the ministry of
  the angels that one world may be kept in touch with other worlds, for have I
  not repeatedly told you that I have other sheep not of this fold? And these
  angels are not the spies of the spirit world who watch upon you and then go
  forth to tell the Father the thoughts of your heart and to report on the deeds
  of the flesh. The Father has no need of such service inasmuch as his own
  spirit lives within you. But these angelic spirits do function to keep one
  part of the heavenly creation informed concerning the doings of other and
  remote parts of the universe. And many of the angels, while functioning in the
  government of the Father and the universes of the Sons, are assigned to the
  service of the human races. When I taught you that many of these seraphim are
  ministering spirits, I spoke not in figurative language nor in poetic strains.
  And all this is true, regardless of your difficulty in comprehending such
  matters.

  167:7.5 "Many of these angels are engaged in the work of saving men, for have
  I not told you of the seraphic joy when one soul elects to forsake sin and
  begin the search for God? I did even tell you of the joy in the presence of
  the angels of heaven over one sinner who repents, thereby indicating the
  existence of other and higher orders of celestial beings who are likewise
  concerned in the spiritual welfare and with the divine progress of mortal man.

  167:7.6 "Also are these angels very much concerned with the means whereby
  man's spirit is released from the tabernacles of the flesh and his soul
  escorted to the mansions in heaven. Angels are the sure and heavenly guides of
  the soul of man during that uncharted and indefinite period of time which
  intervenes between the death of the flesh and the new life in the spirit
  abodes."



  167:7.7 And he would have spoken further with Nathaniel regarding the ministry
  of angels, but he was interrupted by the approach of Martha, who had been
  informed that the Master was drawing near to Bethany by friends who had
  observed him ascending the hills to the east. And she now hastened to greet
  him.


 PAPER 168


 THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS



  168:0.1 IT WAS shortly after noon when Martha started out to meet Jesus as he
  came over the brow of the hill near Bethany. Her brother, Lazarus, had been
  dead four days and had been laid away in their private tomb at the far end of
  the garden late on Sunday afternoon. The stone at the entrance of the tomb had
  been rolled in place on the morning of this day, Thursday.

  168:0.2 When Martha and Mary sent word to Jesus concerning Lazarus's illness,
  they were confident the Master would do something about it. They knew that
  their brother was desperately sick, and though they hardly dared hope that
  Jesus would leave his work of teaching and preaching to come to their
  assistance, they had such confidence in his power to heal disease that they
  thought he would just speak the curative words, and Lazarus would immediately
  be made whole. And when Lazarus died a few hours after the messenger left
  Bethany for Philadelphia, they reasoned that it was because the Master did not
  learn of their brother's illness until it was too late, until he had already
  been dead for several hours.

  168:0.3 But they, with all of their believing friends, were greatly puzzled by
  the message which the runner brought back Tuesday forenoon when he reached
  Bethany. The messenger insisted that he heard Jesus say, "...this sickness is
  really not to the death." Neither could they understand why he sent no word to
  them nor otherwise proffered assistance.

  168:0.4 Many friends from near-by hamlets and others from Jerusalem came over
  to comfort the sorrow-stricken sisters. Lazarus and his sisters were the
  children of a well-to-do and honorable Jew, one who had been the leading
  resident of the little village of Bethany. And notwithstanding that all three
  had long been ardent followers of Jesus, they were highly respected by all who
  knew them. They had inherited extensive vineyards and olive orchards in this
  vicinity, and that they were wealthy was further attested by the fact that
  they could afford a private burial tomb on their own premises. Both of their
  parents had already been laid away in this tomb.

  168:0.5 Mary had given up the thought of Jesus' coming and was abandoned to
  her grief, but Martha clung to the hope that Jesus would come, even up to the
  time on that very morning when they rolled the stone in front of the tomb and
  sealed the entrance. Even then she instructed a neighbor lad to keep watch
  down the Jericho road from the brow of the hill to the east of Bethany; and it
  was this lad who brought tidings to Martha that Jesus and his friends were
  approaching.

  168:0.6 When Martha met Jesus, she fell at his feet, exclaiming, "Master, if
  you had been here, my brother would not have died!" Many fears were passing
  through Martha's mind, but she gave expression to no doubt, nor did she
  venture to criticize or question the Master's conduct as related to Lazarus's
  death. When she had spoken, Jesus reached down and, lifting her upon her feet,
  said, "Only have faith, Martha, and your brother shall rise again." Then
  answered Martha: "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection of the
  last day; and even now I believe that whatever you shall ask of God, our
  Father will give you."

  168:0.7 Then said Jesus, looking straight into the eyes of Martha: "I am the
  resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he
  live. In truth, whosoever lives and believes in me shall never really die.
  Martha, do you believe this?" And Martha answered the Master: "Yes, I have
  long believed that you are the Deliverer, the Son of the living God, even he
  who should come to this world."

  168:0.8 Jesus having inquired for Mary, Martha went at once into the house
  and, whispering to her sister, said, "The Master is here and has asked for
  you." And when Mary heard this, she rose up quickly and hastened out to meet
  Jesus, who still tarried at the place, some distance from the house, where
  Martha had first met him. The friends who were with Mary, seeking to comfort
  her, when they saw that she rose up quickly and went out, followed her,
  supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep.

  168:0.9 Many of those present were Jesus' bitter enemies. That is why Martha
  had come out to meet him alone, and also why she went in secretly to inform
  Mary that he had asked for her. Martha, while craving to see Jesus, desired to
  avoid any possible unpleasantness which might be caused by his coming suddenly
  into the midst of a large group of his Jerusalem enemies. It had been Martha's
  intention to remain in the house with their friends while Mary went to greet
  Jesus, but in this she failed, for they all followed Mary and so found
  themselves unexpectedly in the presence of the Master.

  168:0.10 Martha led Mary to Jesus, and when she saw him, she fell at his feet,
  exclaiming, "If you had only been here, my brother would not have died!" And
  when Jesus saw how they all grieved over the death of Lazarus, his soul was
  moved with compassion.

  168:0.11 When the mourners saw that Mary had gone to greet Jesus, they
  withdrew for a short distance while both Martha and Mary talked with the
  Master and received further words of comfort and exhortation to maintain
  strong faith in the Father and complete resignation to the divine will.

  168:0.12 The human mind of Jesus was mightily moved by the contention between
  his love for Lazarus and the bereaved sisters and his disdain and contempt for
  the outward show of affection manifested by some of these unbelieving and
  murderously intentioned Jews. Jesus indignantly resented the show of forced
  and outward mourning for Lazarus by some of these professed friends inasmuch
  as such false sorrow was associated in their hearts with so much bitter enmity
  toward himself. Some of these Jews, however, were sincere in their mourning,
  for they were real friends of the family.





1. AT THE TOMB OF LAZARUS



  168:1.1 After Jesus had spent a few moments in comforting Martha and Mary,
  apart from the mourners, he asked them, "Where have you laid him?" Then Martha
  said, "Come and see." And as the Master followed on in silence with the two
  sorrowing sisters, he wept. When the friendly Jews who followed after them saw
  his tears, one of them said: "Behold how he loved him. Could not he who opened
  the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dying?" By this time they were
  standing before the family tomb, a small natural cave, or declivity, in the
  ledge of rock which rose up some thirty feet at the far end of the garden
  plot.



  168:1.2 It is difficult to explain to human minds just why Jesus wept. While
  we have access to the registration of the combined human emotions and divine
  thoughts, as of record in the mind of the Personalized Adjuster, we are not
  altogether certain about the real cause of these emotional manifestations. We
  are inclined to believe that Jesus wept because of a number of thoughts and
  feelings which were going through his mind at this time, such as:



  168:1.3 1. He felt a genuine and sorrowful sympathy for Martha and Mary; he
  had a real and deep human affection for these sisters who had lost their
  brother.



  168:1.4 2. He was perturbed in his mind by the presence of the crowd of
  mourners, some sincere and some merely pretenders. He always resented these
  outward exhibitions of mourning. He knew the sisters loved their brother and
  had faith in the survival of believers. These conflicting emotions may
  possibly explain why he groaned as they came near the tomb.



  168:1.5 3. He truly hesitated about bringing Lazarus back to the mortal life.
  His sisters really needed him, but Jesus regretted having to summon his friend
  back to experience the bitter persecution which he well knew Lazarus would
  have to endure as a result of being the subject of the greatest of all
  demonstrations of the divine power of the Son of Man.



  168:1.6 And now we may relate an interesting and instructive fact: Although
  this narrative unfolds as an apparently natural and normal event in human
  affairs, it has some very interesting side lights. While the messenger went to
  Jesus on Sunday, telling him of Lazarus's illness, and while Jesus sent word
  that it was "not to the death," at the same time he went in person up to
  Bethany and even asked the sisters, "Where have you laid him?" Even though all
  of this seems to indicate that the Master was proceeding after the manner of
  this life and in accordance with the limited knowledge of the human mind,
  nevertheless, the records of the universe reveal that Jesus' Personalized
  Adjuster issued orders for the indefinite detention of Lazarus's Thought
  Adjuster on the planet subsequent to Lazarus's death, and that this order was
  made of record just fifteen minutes before Lazarus breathed his last.

  168:1.7 Did the divine mind of Jesus know, even before Lazarus died, that he
  would raise him from the dead? We do not know. We know only what we are
  herewith placing on record.



  168:1.8 Many of Jesus' enemies were inclined to sneer at his manifestations of
  affection, and they said among themselves: "If he thought so much of this man,
  why did he tarry so long before coming to Bethany? If he is what they claim,
  why did he not save his dear friend? What is the good of healing strangers in
  Galilee if he cannot save those whom he loves?" And in many other ways they
  mocked and made light of the teachings and works of Jesus.

  168:1.9 And so, on this Thursday afternoon at about half past two o'clock, was
  the stage all set in this little hamlet of Bethany for the enactment of the
  greatest of all works connected with the earth ministry of Michael of Nebadon,
  the greatest manifestation of divine power during his incarnation in the
  flesh, since his own resurrection occurred after he had been liberated from
  the bonds of mortal habitation.

  168:1.10 The small group assembled before Lazarus's tomb little realized the
  presence near at hand of a vast concourse of all orders of celestial beings
  assembled under the leadership of Gabriel and now in waiting, by direction of
  the Personalized Adjuster of Jesus, vibrating with expectancy and ready to
  execute the bidding of their beloved Sovereign.

  168:1.11 When Jesus spoke those words of command, "Take away the stone," the
  assembled celestial hosts made ready to enact the drama of the resurrection of
  Lazarus in the likeness of his mortal flesh. Such a form of resurrection
  involves difficulties of execution which far transcend the usual technique of
  the resurrection of mortal creatures in morontia form and requires far more
  celestial personalities and a far greater organization of universe facilities.

  168:1.12 When Martha and Mary heard this command of Jesus directing that the
  stone in front of the tomb be rolled away, they were filled with conflicting
  emotions. Mary hoped that Lazarus was to be raised from the dead, but Martha,
  while to some extent sharing her sister's faith, was more exercised by the
  fear that Lazarus would not be presentable, in his appearance, to Jesus, the
  apostles, and their friends. Said Martha: "Must we roll away the stone? My
  brother has now been dead four days, so that by this time decay of the body
  has begun." Martha also said this because she was not certain as to why the
  Master had requested that the stone be removed; she thought maybe Jesus wanted
  only to take one last look at Lazarus. She was not settled and constant in her
  attitude. As they hesitated to roll away the stone, Jesus said: "Did I not
  tell you at the first that this sickness was not to the death? Have I not come
  to fulfill my promise? And after I came to you, did I not say that, if you
  would only believe, you should see the glory of God? Wherefore do you doubt?
  How long before you will believe and obey?"

  168:1.13 When Jesus had finished speaking, his apostles, with the assistance
  of willing neighbors, laid hold upon the stone and rolled it away from the
  entrance to the tomb.



  168:1.14 It was the common belief of the Jews that the drop of gall on the
  point of the sword of the angel of death began to work by the end of the third
  day, so that it was taking full effect on the fourth day. They allowed that
  the soul of man might linger about the tomb until the end of the third day,
  seeking to reanimate the dead body; but they firmly believed that such a soul
  had gone on to the abode of departed spirits ere the fourth day had dawned.

  168:1.15 These beliefs and opinions regarding the dead and the departure of
  the spirits of the dead served to make sure, in the minds of all who were now
  present at Lazarus's tomb and subsequently to all who might hear of what was
  about to occur, that this was really and truly a case of the raising of the
  dead by the personal working of one who declared he was "the resurrection and
  the life."





2. THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS



  168:2.1 As this company of some forty-five mortals stood before the tomb, they
  could dimly see the form of Lazarus, wrapped in linen bandages, resting on the
  right lower niche of the burial cave. While these earth creatures stood there
  in almost breathless silence, a vast host of celestial beings had swung into
  their places preparatory to answering the signal for action when it should be
  given by Gabriel, their commander.

  168:2.2 Jesus lifted up his eyes and said: "Father, I am thankful that you
  heard and granted my request. I know that you always hear me, but because of
  those who stand here with me, I thus speak with you, that they may believe
  that you have sent me into the world, and that they may know that you are
  working with me in that which we are about to do." And when he had prayed, he
  cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth!"

  168:2.3 Though these human observers remained motionless, the vast celestial
  host was all astir in unified action in obedience to the Creator's word. In
  just twelve seconds of earth time the hitherto lifeless form of Lazarus began
  to move and presently sat up on the edge of the stone shelf whereon it had
  rested. His body was bound about with grave cloths, and his face was covered
  with a napkin. And as he stood up before them -- alive -- Jesus said, "Loose
  him and let him go."

  168:2.4 All, save the apostles, with Martha and Mary, fled to the house. They
  were pale with fright and overcome with astonishment. While some tarried, many
  hastened to their homes.

  168:2.5 Lazarus greeted Jesus and the apostles and asked the meaning of the
  grave cloths and why he had awakened in the garden. Jesus and the apostles
  drew to one side while Martha told Lazarus of his death, burial, and
  resurrection. She had to explain to him that he had died on Sunday and was now
  brought back to life on Thursday, inasmuch as he had had no consciousness of
  time since falling asleep in death.



  168:2.6 As Lazarus came out of the tomb, the Personalized Adjuster of Jesus,
  now chief of his kind in this local universe, gave command to the former
  Adjuster of Lazarus, now in waiting, to resume abode in the mind and soul of
  the resurrected man.



  168:2.7 Then went Lazarus over to Jesus and, with his sisters, knelt at the
  Master's feet to give thanks and offer praise to God. Jesus, taking Lazarus by
  the hand, lifted him up, saying: "My son, what has happened to you will also
  be experienced by all who believe this gospel except that they shall be
  resurrected in a more glorious form. You shall be a living witness of the
  truth which I spoke -- I am the resurrection and the life. But let us all now
  go into the house and partake of nourishment for these physical bodies."



  168:2.8 As they walked toward the house, Gabriel dismissed the extra groups of
  the assembled heavenly host while he made record of the first instance on
  Urantia, and the last, where a mortal creature had been resurrected in the
  likeness of the physical body of death.



  168:2.9 Lazarus could hardly comprehend what had occurred. He knew he had been
  very sick, but he could recall only that he had fallen asleep and been
  awakened. He was never able to tell anything about these four days in the tomb
  because he was wholly unconscious. Time is nonexistent to those who sleep the
  sleep of death.

  168:2.10 Though many believed in Jesus as a result of this mighty work, others
  only hardened their hearts the more to reject him. By noon the next day this
  story had spread over all Jerusalem. Scores of men and women went to Bethany
  to look upon Lazarus and talk with him, and the alarmed and disconcerted
  Pharisees hastily called a meeting of the Sanhedrin that they might determine
  what should be done about these new developments.





3. MEETING OF THE SANHEDRIN



  168:3.1 Even though the testimony of this man raised from the dead did much to
  consolidate the faith of the mass of believers in the gospel of the kingdom,
  it had little or no influence on the attitude of the religious leaders and
  rulers at Jerusalem except to hasten their decision to destroy Jesus and stop
  his work.



  168:3.2 At one o'clock the next day, Friday, the Sanhedrin met to deliberate
  further on the question, "What shall we do with Jesus of Nazareth?" After more
  than two hours of discussion and acrimonious debate, a certain Pharisee
  presented a resolution calling for Jesus' immediate death, proclaiming that he
  was a menace to all Israel and formally committing the Sanhedrin to the
  decision of death, without trial and in defiance of all precedent.

  168:3.3 Time and again had this august body of Jewish leaders decreed that
  Jesus be apprehended and brought to trial on charges of blasphemy and numerous
  other accusations of flouting the Jewish sacred law. They had once before even
  gone so far as to declare he should die, but this was the first time the
  Sanhedrin had gone on record as desiring to decree his death in advance of a
  trial. But this resolution did not come to a vote since fourteen members of
  the Sanhedrin resigned in a body when such an unheard-of action was proposed.
  While these resignations were not formally acted upon for almost two weeks,
  this group of fourteen withdrew from the Sanhedrin on that day, never again to
  sit in the council. When these resignations were subsequently acted upon, five
  other members were thrown out because their associates believed they
  entertained friendly feelings toward Jesus. With the ejection of these
  nineteen men the Sanhedrin was in a position to try and to condemn Jesus with
  a solidarity bordering on unanimity.

  168:3.4 The following week Lazarus and his sisters were summoned to appear
  before the Sanhedrin. When their testimony had been heard, no doubt could be
  entertained that Lazarus had been raised from the dead. Though the
  transactions of the Sanhedrin virtually admitted the resurrection of Lazarus,
  the record carried a resolution attributing this and all other wonders worked
  by Jesus to the power of the prince of devils, with whom Jesus was declared to
  be in league.

  168:3.5 No matter what the source of his wonder-working power, these Jewish
  leaders were persuaded that, if he were not immediately stopped, very soon all
  the common people would believe in him; and further, that serious
  complications with the Roman authorities would arise since so many of his
  believers regarded him as the Messiah, Israel's deliverer.

  168:3.6 It was at this same meeting of the Sanhedrin that Caiaphas the high
  priest first gave expression to that old Jewish adage, which he so many times
  repeated: "It is better that one man die, than that the community perish."

  168:3.7 Although Jesus had received warning of the doings of the Sanhedrin on
  this dark Friday afternoon, he was not in the least perturbed and continued
  resting over the Sabbath with friends in Bethpage, a hamlet near Bethany.
  Early Sunday morning Jesus and the apostles assembled, by prearrangement, at
  the home of Lazarus, and taking leave of the Bethany family, they started on
  their journey back to the Pella encampment.





4. THE ANSWER TO PRAYER



  168:4.1 On the way from Bethany to Pella the apostles asked Jesus many
  questions, all of which the Master freely answered except those involving the
  details of the resurrection of the dead. Such problems were beyond the
  comprehension capacity of his apostles; therefore did the Master decline to
  discuss these questions with them. Since they had departed from Bethany in
  secret, they were alone. Jesus therefore embraced the opportunity to say many
  things to the ten which he thought would prepare them for the trying days just
  ahead.

  168:4.2 The apostles were much stirred up in their minds and spent
  considerable time discussing their recent experiences as they were related to
  prayer and its answering. They all recalled Jesus' statement to the Bethany
  messenger at Philadelphia, when he said plainly, "This sickness is not really
  to the death." And yet, in spite of this promise, Lazarus actually died. All
  that day, again and again, they reverted to the discussion of this question of
  the answer to prayer.

  168:4.3 Jesus' answers to their many questions may be summarized as follows:



  168:4.4 1. Prayer is an expression of the finite mind in an effort to approach
  the Infinite. The making of a prayer must, therefore, be limited by the
  knowledge, wisdom, and attributes of the finite; likewise must the answer be
  conditioned by the vision, aims, ideals, and prerogatives of the Infinite.
  There never can be observed an unbroken continuity of material phenomena
  between the making of a prayer and the reception of the full spiritual answer
  thereto.



  168:4.5 2. When a prayer is apparently unanswered, the delay often betokens a
  better answer, although one which is for some good reason greatly delayed.
  When Jesus said that Lazarus's sickness was really not to the death, he had
  already been dead eleven hours. No sincere prayer is denied an answer except
  when the superior viewpoint of the spiritual world has devised a better
  answer, an answer which meets the petition of the spirit of man as contrasted
  with the prayer of the mere mind of man.



  168:4.6 3. The prayers of time, when indited by the spirit and expressed in
  faith, are often so vast and all-encompassing that they can be answered only
  in eternity; the finite petition is sometimes so fraught with the grasp of the
  Infinite that the answer must long be postponed to await the creation of
  adequate capacity for receptivity; the prayer of faith may be so all-embracing
  that the answer can be received only on Paradise.



  168:4.7 4. The answers to the prayer of the mortal mind are often of such a
  nature that they can be received and recognized only after that same praying
  mind has attained the immortal state. The prayer of the material being can
  many times be answered only when such an individual has progressed to the
  spirit level.



  168:4.8 5. The prayer of a God-knowing person may be so distorted by ignorance
  and so deformed by superstition that the answer thereto would be highly
  undesirable. Then must the intervening spirit beings so translate such a
  prayer that, when the answer arrives, the petitioner wholly fails to recognize
  it as the answer to his prayer.



  168:4.9 6. All true prayers are addressed to spiritual beings, and all such
  petitions must be answered in spiritual terms, and all such answers must
  consist in spiritual realities. Spirit beings cannot bestow material answers
  to the spirit petitions of even material beings. Material beings can pray
  effectively only when they "pray in the spirit."



  168:4.10 7. No prayer can hope for an answer unless it is born of the spirit
  and nurtured by faith. Your sincere faith implies that you have in advance
  virtually granted your prayer hearers the full right to answer your petitions
  in accordance with that supreme wisdom and that divine love which your faith
  depicts as always actuating those beings to whom you pray.



  168:4.11 8. The child is always within his rights when he presumes to petition
  the parent; and the parent is always within his parental obligations to the
  immature child when his superior wisdom dictates that the answer to the
  child's prayer be delayed, modified, segregated, transcended, or postponed to
  another stage of spiritual ascension.



  168:4.12 9. Do not hesitate to pray the prayers of spirit longing; doubt not
  that you shall receive the answer to your petitions. These answers will be on
  deposit, awaiting your achievement of those future spiritual levels of actual
  cosmic attainment, on this world or on others, whereon it will become possible
  for you to recognize and appropriate the long-waiting answers to your earlier
  but ill-timed petitions.



  168:4.13 10. All genuine spirit-born petitions are certain of an answer. Ask
  and you shall receive. But you should remember that you are progressive
  creatures of time and space; therefore must you constantly reckon with the
  time-space factor in the experience of your personal reception of the full
  answers to your manifold prayers and petitions.





5. WHAT BECAME OF LAZARUS



  168:5.1 Lazarus remained at the Bethany home, being the center of great
  interest to many sincere believers and to numerous curious individuals, until
  the day of the crucifixion of Jesus, when he received warning that the
  Sanhedrin had decreed his death. The rulers of the Jews were determined to put
  a stop to the further spread of the teachings of Jesus, and they well judged
  that it would be useless to put Jesus to death if they permitted Lazarus, who
  represented the very peak of his wonder-working, to live and bear testimony to
  the fact that Jesus had raised him from the dead. Already had Lazarus suffered
  bitter persecution from them.

  168:5.2 And so Lazarus took hasty leave of his sisters at Bethany, fleeing
  down through Jericho and across the Jordan, never permitting himself to rest
  long until he had reached Philadelphia. Lazarus knew Abner well, and here he
  felt safe from the murderous intrigues of the wicked Sanhedrin.

  168:5.3 Soon after this Martha and Mary disposed of their lands at Bethany and
  joined their brother in Perea. Meantime, Lazarus had become the treasurer of
  the church at Philadelphia. He became a strong supporter of Abner in his
  controversy with Paul and the Jerusalem church and ultimately died, when 67
  years old, of the same sickness that carried him off when he was a younger man
  at Bethany.


PAPER 169


 LAST TEACHING AT PELLA



  169:0.1 LATE on Monday evening, March 6, Jesus and the ten apostles arrived at
  the Pella camp. This was the last week of Jesus' sojourn there, and he was
  very active in teaching the multitude and instructing the apostles. He
  preached every afternoon to the crowds and each night answered questions for
  the apostles and certain of the more advanced disciples residing at the camp.

  169:0.2 Word regarding the resurrection of Lazarus had reached the encampment
  two days before the Master's arrival, and the entire assembly was agog. Not
  since the feeding of the five thousand had anything occurred which so aroused
  the imagination of the people. And thus it was at the very height of the
  second phase of the public ministry of the kingdom that Jesus planned to teach
  this one short week at Pella and then to begin the tour of southern Perea
  which led right up to the final and tragic experiences of the last week in
  Jerusalem.



  169:0.3 The Pharisees and the chief priests had begun to formulate their
  charges and to crystallize their accusations. They objected to the Master's
  teachings on these grounds:



  169:0.4 1. He is a friend of publicans and sinners; he receives the ungodly
  and even eats with them.



  169:0.5 2. He is a blasphemer; he talks about God as being his Father and
  thinks he is equal with God.



  169:0.6 3. He is a lawbreaker. He heals disease on the Sabbath and in many
  other ways flouts the sacred law of Israel.



  169:0.7 4. He is in league with devils. He works wonders and does seeming
  miracles by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils.





1. PARABLE OF THE LOST SON



  169:1.1 On Thursday afternoon Jesus talked to the multitude about the "Grace
  of Salvation." In the course of this sermon he retold the story of the lost
  sheep and the lost coin and then added his favorite parable of the prodigal
  son. Said Jesus:



  169:1.2 "You have been admonished by the prophets from Samuel to John that you
  should seek for God -- search for truth. Always have they said, `Seek the Lord
  while he may be found.' And all such teaching should be taken to heart. But I
  have come to show you that, while you are seeking to find God, God is likewise
  seeking to find you. Many times have I told you the story of the good shepherd
  who left the ninety and nine sheep in the fold while he went forth searching
  for the one that was lost, and how, when he had found the straying sheep, he
  laid it over his shoulder and tenderly carried it back to the fold. And when
  the lost sheep had been restored to the fold, you remember that the good
  shepherd called in his friends and bade them rejoice with him over the finding
  of the sheep that had been lost. Again I say there is more joy in heaven over
  one sinner who repents than over the ninety and nine just persons who need no
  repentance. The fact that souls are lost only increases the interest of the
  heavenly Father. I have come to this world to do my Father's bidding, and it
  has truly been said of the Son of Man that he is a friend of publicans and
  sinners.

  169:1.3 "You have been taught that divine acceptance comes after your
  repentance and as a result of all your works of sacrifice and penitence, but I
  assure you that the Father accepts you even before you have repented and sends
  the Son and his associates to find you and bring you, with rejoicing, back to
  the fold, the kingdom of sonship and spiritual progress. You are all like
  sheep which have gone astray, and I have come to seek and to save those who
  are lost.

  169:1.4 "And you should also remember the story of the woman who, having had
  ten pieces of silver made into a necklace of adornment, lost one piece, and
  how she lit the lamp and diligently swept the house and kept up the search
  until she found the lost piece of silver. And as soon as she found the coin
  that was lost, she called together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice
  with me, for I have found the piece that was lost.' So again I say, there is
  always joy in the presence of the angels of heaven over one sinner who repents
  and returns to the Father's fold. And I tell you this story to impress upon
  you that the Father and his Son go forth to search for those who are lost, and
  in this search we employ all influences capable of rendering assistance in our
  diligent efforts to find those who are lost, those who stand in need of
  salvation. And so, while the Son of Man goes out in the wilderness to seek for
  the sheep gone astray, he also searches for the coin which is lost in the
  house. The sheep wanders away, unintentionally; the coin is covered by the
  dust of time and obscured by the accumulation of the things of men.

  169:1.5 "And now I would like to tell you the story of a thoughtless son of a
  well-to-do farmer who deliberately left his father's house and went off into a
  foreign land, where he fell into much tribulation. You recall that the sheep
  strayed away without intention, but this youth left his home with
  premeditation. It was like this:



  169:1.6 "A certain man had two sons; one, the younger, was lighthearted and
  carefree, always seeking for a good time and shirking responsibility, while
  his older brother was serious, sober, hard-working, and willing to bear
  responsibility. Now these two brothers did not get along well together; they
  were always quarreling and bickering. The younger lad was cheerful and
  vivacious, but indolent and unreliable; the older son was steady and
  industrious, at the same time self-centered, surly, and conceited. The younger
  son enjoyed play but shunned work; the older devoted himself to work but
  seldom played. This association became so disagreeable that the younger son
  came to his father and said: `Father, give me the third portion of your
  possessions which would fall to me and allow me to go out into the world to
  seek my own fortune.' And when the father heard this request, knowing how
  unhappy the young man was at home and with his older brother, he divided his
  property, giving the youth his share.

  169:1.7 "Within a few weeks the young man gathered together all his funds and
  set out upon a journey to a far country, and finding nothing profitable to do
  which was also pleasurable, he soon wasted all his inheritance in riotous
  living. And when he had spent all, there arose a prolonged famine in that
  country, and he found himself in want. And so, when he suffered hunger and his
  distress was great, he found employment with one of the citizens of that
  country, who sent him into the fields to feed swine. And the young man would
  fain have filled himself with the husks which the swine ate, but no one would
  give him anything.

  169:1.8 "One day, when he was very hungry, he came to himself and said: `How
  many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare while I perish
  with hunger, feeding swine off here in a foreign country! I will arise and go
  to my father, and I will say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and
  against you. I am no more worthy to be called your son; only be willing to
  make me one of your hired servants.' And when the young man had reached this
  decision, he arose and started out for his father's house.

  169:1.9 "Now this father had grieved much for his son; he had missed the
  cheerful, though thoughtless, lad. This father loved this son and was always
  on the lookout for his return, so that on the day he approached his home, even
  while he was yet afar off, the father saw him and, being moved with loving
  compassion, ran out to meet him, and with affectionate greeting he embraced
  and kissed him. And after they had thus met, the son looked up into his
  father's tearful face and said: `Father, I have sinned against heaven and in
  your sight; I am no more worthy to be called a son' -- but the lad did not
  find opportunity to complete his confession because the overjoyed father said
  to the servants who had by this time come running up: `Bring quickly his best
  robe, the one I have saved, and put it on him and put the son's ring on his
  hand and fetch sandals for his feet.'

  169:1.10 "And then, after the happy father had led the footsore and weary lad
  into the house, he called to his servants: `Bring on the fatted calf and kill
  it, and let us eat and make merry, for this my son was dead and is alive
  again; he was lost and is found.' And they all gathered about the father to
  rejoice with him over the restoration of his son.

  169:1.11 "About this time, while they were celebrating, the elder son came in
  from his day's work in the field, and as he drew near the house, he heard the
  music and the dancing. And when he came up to the back door, he called out one
  of the servants and inquired as to the meaning of all this festivity. And then
  said the servant: `Your long-lost brother has come home, and your father has
  killed the fatted calf to rejoice over his son's safe return. Come in that you
  also may greet your brother and receive him back into your father's house.'

  169:1.12 "But when the older brother heard this, he was so hurt and angry he
  would not go into the house. When his father heard of his resentment of the
  welcome of his younger brother, he went out to entreat him. But the older son
  would not yield to his father's persuasion. He answered his father, saying:
  `Here these many years have I served you, never transgressing the least of
  your commands, and yet you never gave me even a kid that I might make merry
  with my friends. I have remained here to care for you all these years, and you
  never made rejoicing over my faithful service, but when this your son returns,
  having squandered your substance with harlots, you make haste to kill the
  fatted calf and make merry over him.'

  169:1.13 "Since this father truly loved both of his sons, he tried to reason
  with this older one: `But, my son, you have all the while been with me, and
  all this which I have is yours. You could have had a kid at any time you had
  made friends to share your merriment. But it is only proper that you should
  now join with me in being glad and merry because of your brother's return.
  Think of it, my son, your brother was lost and is found; he has returned alive
  to us!'"



  169:1.14 This was one of the most touching and effective of all the parables
  which Jesus ever presented to impress upon his hearers the Father's
  willingness to receive all who seek entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

  169:1.15 Jesus was very partial to telling these three stories at the same
  time. He presented the story of the lost sheep to show that, when men
  unintentionally stray away from the path of life, the Father is mindful of
  such lost ones and goes out, with his Sons, the true shepherds of the flock,
  to seek the lost sheep. He then would recite the story of the coin lost in the
  house to illustrate how thorough is the divine searching for all who are
  confused, confounded, or otherwise spiritually blinded by the material cares
  and accumulations of life. And then he would launch forth into the telling of
  this parable of the lost son, the reception of the returning prodigal, to show
  how complete is the restoration of the lost son into his Father's house and
  heart.

  169:1.16 Many, many times during his years of teaching, Jesus told and retold
  this story of the prodigal son. This parable and the story of the good
  Samaritan were his favorite means of teaching the love of the Father and the
  neighborliness of man.





2. PARABLE OF THE SHREWD STEWARD



  169:2.1 One evening Simon Zelotes, commenting on one of Jesus' statements,
  said: "Master, what did you mean when you said today that many of the children
  of the world are wiser in their generation than are the children of the
  kingdom since they are skillful in making friends with the mammon of
  unrighteousness?" Jesus answered:



  169:2.2 "Some of you, before you entered the kingdom, were very shrewd in
  dealing with your business associates. If you were unjust and often unfair,
  you were nonetheless prudent and farseeing in that you transacted your
  business with an eye single to your present profit and future safety. Likewise
  should you now so order your lives in the kingdom as to provide for your
  present joy while you also make certain of your future enjoyment of treasures
  laid up in heaven. If you were so diligent in making gains for yourselves when
  in the service of self, why should you show less diligence in gaining souls
  for the kingdom since you are now servants of the brotherhood of man and
  stewards of God?

  169:2.3 "You may all learn a lesson from the story of a certain rich man who
  had a shrewd but unjust steward. This steward had not only oppressed his
  master's clients for his own selfish gain, but he had also directly wasted and
  squandered his master's funds. When all this finally came to the ears of his
  master, he called the steward before him and asked the meaning of these rumors
  and required that he should give immediate accounting of his stewardship and
  prepare to turn his master's affairs over to another.

  169:2.4 "Now this unfaithful steward began to say to himself: `What shall I do
  since I am about to lose this stewardship? I have not the strength to dig; to
  beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do to make certain that, when I am put
  out of this stewardship, I will be welcomed into the houses of all who do
  business with my master.' And then, calling in each of his lord's debtors, he
  said to the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A hundred
  measures of oil.' Then said the steward, `Take your wax board bond, sit down
  quickly, and change it to fifty.' Then he said to another debtor, `How much do
  you owe?' And he replied, `A hundred measures of wheat.' Then said the
  steward, `Take your bond and write fourscore.' And this he did with numerous
  other debtors. And so did this dishonest steward seek to make friends for
  himself after he would be discharged from his stewardship. Even his lord and
  master, when he subsequently found out about this, was compelled to admit that
  his unfaithful steward had at least shown sagacity in the manner in which he
  had sought to provide for future days of want and adversity.

  169:2.5 "And it is in this way that the sons of this world sometimes show more
  wisdom in their preparation for the future than do the children of light. I
  say to you who profess to be acquiring treasure in heaven: Take lessons from
  those who make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, and likewise so
  conduct your lives that you make eternal friendship with the forces of
  righteousness in order that, when all things earthly fail, you shall be
  joyfully received into the eternal habitations.

  169:2.6 "I affirm that he who is faithful in little will also be faithful in
  much, while he who is unrighteous in little will also be unrighteous in much.
  If you have not shown foresight and integrity in the affairs of this world,
  how can you hope to be faithful and prudent when you are trusted with the
  stewardship of the true riches of the heavenly kingdom? If you are not good
  stewards and faithful bankers, if you have not been faithful in that which is
  another's, who will be foolish enough to give you great treasure in your own
  name?

  169:2.7 "And again I assert that no man can serve two masters; either he will
  hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one while he despises
  the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."



  169:2.8 When the Pharisees who were present heard this, they began to sneer
  and scoff since they were much given to the acquirement of riches. These
  unfriendly hearers sought to engage Jesus in unprofitable argumentation, but
  he refused to debate with his enemies. When the Pharisees fell to wrangling
  among themselves, their loud speaking attracted large numbers of the multitude
  encamped thereabouts; and when they began to dispute with each other, Jesus
  withdrew, going to his tent for the night.





3. THE RICH MAN AND THE BEGGAR



  169:3.1 When the meeting became too noisy, Simon Peter, standing up, took
  charge, saying: "Men and brethren, it is not seemly thus to dispute among
  yourselves. The Master has spoken, and you do well to ponder his words. And
  this is no new doctrine which he proclaimed to you. Have you not also heard
  the allegory of the Nazarites concerning the rich man and the beggar? Some of
  us heard John the Baptist thunder this parable of warning to those who love
  riches and covet dishonest wealth. And while this olden parable is not
  according to the gospel we preach, you would all do well to heed its lessons
  until such a time as you comprehend the new light of the kingdom of heaven.
  The story as John told it was like this:

  169:3.2 "There was a certain rich man named Dives, who, being clothed in
  purple and fine linen, lived in mirth and splendor every day. And there was a
  certain beggar named Lazarus, who laid at this rich man's gate, covered with
  sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's
  table; yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that
  the beggar died and was carried away by the angels to rest in Abraham's bosom.
  And then, presently, this rich man also died and was buried with great pomp
  and regal splendor. When the rich man departed from this world, he waked up in
  Hades, and finding himself in torment, he lifted up his eyes and beheld
  Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. And then Dives cried aloud: `Father
  Abraham, have mercy on me and send over Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his
  finger in water to cool my tongue, for I am in great anguish because of my
  punishment.' And then Abraham replied: `My son, you should remember that in
  your lifetime you enjoyed the good things while Lazarus in like manner
  suffered the evil. But now all this is changed, seeing that Lazarus is
  comforted while you are tormented. And besides, between us and you there is a
  great gulf so that we cannot go to you, neither can you come over to us.' Then
  said Dives to Abraham: `I pray you send Lazarus back to my father's house,
  inasmuch as I have five brothers, that he may so testify as to prevent my
  brothers from coming to this place of torment.' But Abraham said: `My son,
  they have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And then answered
  Dives: `No, No, Father Abraham! but if one go to them from the dead, they will
  repent.' And then said Abraham: `If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
  neither will they be persuaded even if one were to rise from the dead.'"

  169:3.3 After Peter had recited this ancient parable of the Nazarite
  brotherhood, and since the crowd had quieted down, Andrew arose and dismissed
  them for the night. Although both the apostles and his disciples frequently
  asked Jesus questions about the parable of Dives and Lazarus, he never
  consented to make comment thereon.





4. THE FATHER AND HIS KINGDOM



  169:4.1 Jesus always had trouble trying to explain to the apostles that, while
  they proclaimed the establishment of the kingdom of God, the Father in heaven
  was not a king. At the time Jesus lived on earth and taught in the flesh, the
  people of Urantia knew mostly of kings and emperors in the governments of the
  nations, and the Jews had long contemplated the coming of the kingdom of God.
  For these and other reasons, the Master thought best to designate the
  spiritual brotherhood of man as the kingdom of heaven and the spirit head of
  this brotherhood as the Father in heaven. Never did Jesus refer to his Father
  as a king. In his intimate talks with the apostles he always referred to
  himself as the Son of Man and as their elder brother. He depicted all his
  followers as servants of mankind and messengers of the gospel of the kingdom.

  169:4.2 Jesus never gave his apostles a systematic lesson concerning the
  personality and attributes of the Father in heaven. He never asked men to
  believe in his Father; he took it for granted they did. Jesus never belittled
  himself by offering arguments in proof of the reality of the Father. His
  teaching regarding the Father all centered in the declaration that he and the
  Father are one; that he who has seen the Son has seen the Father; that the
  Father, like the Son, knows all things; that only the Son really knows the
  Father, and he to whom the Son will reveal him; that he who knows the Son
  knows also the Father; and that the Father sent him into the world to reveal
  their combined natures and to show forth their conjoint work. He never made
  other pronouncements about his Father except to the woman of Samaria at
  Jacob's well, when he declared, "God is spirit."



  169:4.3 You learn about God from Jesus by observing the divinity of his life,
  not by depending on his teachings. From the life of the Master you may each
  assimilate that concept of God which represents the measure of your capacity
  to perceive realities spiritual and divine, truths real and eternal. The
  finite can never hope to comprehend the Infinite except as the Infinite was
  focalized in the time-space personality of the finite experience of the human
  life of Jesus of Nazareth.

  169:4.4 Jesus well knew that God can be known only by the realities of
  experience; never can he be understood by the mere teaching of the mind. Jesus
  taught his apostles that, while they never could fully understand God, they
  could most certainly know him, even as they had known the Son of Man. You can
  know God, not by understanding what Jesus said, but by knowing what Jesus was.
  Jesus was a revelation of God.



  169:4.5 Except when quoting the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus referred to Deity by
  only two names: God and Father. And when the Master made reference to his
  Father as God, he usually employed the Hebrew word signifying the plural God
  (the Trinity) and not the word Yahweh, which stood for the progressive
  conception of the tribal God of the Jews.

  169:4.6 Jesus never called the Father a king, and he very much regretted that
  the Jewish hope for a restored kingdom and John's proclamation of a coming
  kingdom made it necessary for him to denominate his proposed spiritual
  brotherhood the kingdom of heaven. With the one exception -- the declaration
  that "God is spirit" -- Jesus never referred to Deity in any manner other than
  in terms descriptive of his own personal relationship with the First Source
  and Center of Paradise.

  169:4.7 Jesus employed the word God to designate the idea of Deity and the
  word Father to designate the experience of knowing God. When the word Father
  is employed to denote God, it should be understood in its largest possible
  meaning. The word God cannot be defined and therefore stands for the infinite
  concept of the Father, while the term Father, being capable of partial
  definition, may be employed to represent the human concept of the divine
  Father as he is associated with man during the course of mortal existence.

  169:4.8 To the Jews, Elohim was the God of gods, while Yahweh was the God of
  Israel. Jesus accepted the concept of Elohim and called this supreme group of
  beings God. In the place of the concept of Yahweh, the racial deity, he
  introduced the idea of the fatherhood of God and the world-wide brotherhood of
  man. He exalted the Yahweh concept of a deified racial Father to the idea of a
  Father of all the children of men, a divine Father of the individual believer.
  And he further taught that this God of universes and this Father of all men
  were one and the same Paradise Deity.

  169:4.9 Jesus never claimed to be the manifestation of Elohim (God) in the
  flesh. He never declared that he was a revelation of Elohim (God) to the
  worlds. He never taught that he who had seen him had seen Elohim (God). But he
  did proclaim himself as the revelation of the Father in the flesh, and he did
  say that whoso had seen him had seen the Father. As the divine Son he claimed
  to represent only the Father.

  169:4.10 He was, indeed, the Son of even the Elohim God; but in the likeness
  of mortal flesh and to the mortal sons of God, he chose to limit his life
  revelation to the portrayal of his Father's character in so far as such a
  revelation might be comprehensible to mortal man. As regards the character of
  the other persons of the Paradise Trinity, we shall have to be content with
  the teaching that they are altogether like the Father, who has been revealed
  in personal portraiture in the life of his incarnated Son, Jesus of Nazareth.



  169:4.11 Although Jesus revealed the true nature of the heavenly Father in his
  earth life, he taught little about him. In fact, he taught only two things:
  that God in himself is spirit, and that, in all matters of relationship with
  his creatures, he is a Father. On this evening Jesus made the final
  pronouncement of his relationship with God when he declared: "I have come out
  from the Father, and I have come into the world; again, I will leave the world
  and go to the Father."

  169:4.12 But mark you! never did Jesus say, "Whoso has heard me has heard
  God." But he did say, "He who has seen me has seen the Father." To hear Jesus'
  teaching is not equivalent to knowing God, but to see Jesus is an experience
  which in itself is a revelation of the Father to the soul. The God of
  universes rules the far-flung creation, but it is the Father in heaven who
  sends forth his spirit to dwell within your minds.

  169:4.13 Jesus is the spiritual lens in human likeness which makes visible to
  the material creature Him who is invisible. He is your elder brother who, in
  the flesh, makes known to you a Being of infinite attributes whom not even the
  celestial hosts can presume fully to understand. But all of this must consist
  in the personal experience of the individual believer. God who is spirit can
  be known only as a spiritual experience. God can be revealed to the finite
  sons of the material worlds, by the divine Son of the spiritual realms, only
  as a Father. You can know the Eternal as a Father; you can worship him as the
  God of universes, the infinite Creator of all existences.


PAPER 170


 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN



  170:0.1 SATURDAY afternoon, March 11, Jesus preached his last sermon at Pella.
  This was among the notable addresses of his public ministry, embracing a full
  and complete discussion of the kingdom of heaven. He was aware of the
  confusion which existed in the minds of his apostles and disciples regarding
  the meaning and significance of the terms "kingdom of heaven" and "kingdom of
  God," which he used as interchangeable designations of his bestowal mission.
  Although the very term kingdom of heaven should have been enough to separate
  what it stood for from all connection with earthly kingdoms and temporal
  governments, it was not. The idea of a temporal king was too deep-rooted in
  the Jewish mind thus to be dislodged in a single generation. Therefore Jesus
  did not at first openly oppose this long-nourished concept of the kingdom.

  170:0.2 This Sabbath afternoon the Master sought to clarify the teaching about
  the kingdom of heaven; he discussed the subject from every viewpoint and
  endeavored to make clear the many different senses in which the term had been
  used. In this narrative we will amplify the address by adding numerous
  statements made by Jesus on previous occasions and by including some remarks
  made only to the apostles during the evening discussions of this same day. We
  will also make certain comments dealing with the subsequent outworking of the
  kingdom idea as it is related to the later Christian church.







1. CONCEPTS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

  170:1.1 In connection with the recital of Jesus' sermon it should be noted
  that throughout the Hebrew scriptures there was a dual concept of the kingdom
  of heaven. The prophets presented the kingdom of God as:



  170:1.2 1. A present reality; and as



  170:1.3 2. A future hope -- when the kingdom would be realized in fullness
  upon the appearance of the Messiah. This is the kingdom concept which John the
  Baptist taught.

  170:1.4 From the very first Jesus and the apostles taught both of these
  concepts. There were two other ideas of the kingdom which should be borne in
  mind:



  170:1.5 3. The later Jewish concept of a world-wide and transcendental kingdom
  of supernatural origin and miraculous inauguration.



  170:1.6 4. The Persian teachings portraying the establishment of a divine
  kingdom as the achievement of the triumph of good over evil at the end of the
  world.



  170:1.7 Just before the advent of Jesus on earth, the Jews combined and
  confused all of these ideas of the kingdom into their apocalyptic concept of
  the Messiah's coming to establish the age of the Jewish triumph, the eternal
  age of God's supreme rule on earth, the new world, the era in which all
  mankind would worship Yahweh. In choosing to utilize this concept of the
  kingdom of heaven, Jesus elected to appropriate the most vital and culminating
  heritage of both the Jewish and Persian religions.

  170:1.8 The kingdom of heaven, as it has been understood and misunderstood
  down through the centuries of the Christian era, embraced four distinct groups
  of ideas:

1. The concept of the Jews.

2. The concept of the Persians.

3. The personal-experience concept of Jesus -- "the kingdom of heaven within
you."

4. The composite and confused concepts which the founders and promulgators of
Christianity have sought to impress upon the world.

  170:1.9 At different times and in varying circumstances it appears that Jesus
  may have presented numerous concepts of the "kingdom" in his public teachings,
  but to his apostles he always taught the kingdom as embracing man's personal
  experience in relation to his fellows on earth and to the Father in heaven.
  Concerning the kingdom, his last word always was, "The kingdom is within you."

  170:1.10 Centuries of confusion regarding the meaning of the term "kingdom of
  heaven" have been due to three factors:

1. The confusion occasioned by observing the idea of the "kingdom" as it passed
through the various progressive phases of its recasting by Jesus and his
apostles.

2. The confusion which was inevitably associated with the transplantation of
early Christianity from a Jewish to a gentile soil.

3. The confusion which was inherent in the fact that Christianity became a
religion which was organized about the central idea of Jesus' person; the gospel
of the kingdom became more and more a religion about him.

   2. JESUS' CONCEPT OF THE KINGDOM

  170:2.1 The Master made it clear that the kingdom of heaven must begin with,
  and be centered in, the dual concept of the truth of the fatherhood of God and
  the correlated fact of the brotherhood of man. The acceptance of such a
  teaching, Jesus declared, would liberate man from the age-long bondage of
  animal fear and at the same time enrich human living with the following
  endowments of the new life of spiritual liberty:



  170:2.2 1. The possession of new courage and augmented spiritual power. The
  gospel of the kingdom was to set man free and inspire him to dare to hope for
  eternal life.



  170:2.3 2. The gospel carried a message of new confidence and true consolation
  for all men, even for the poor.



  170:2.4 3. It was in itself a new standard of moral values, a new ethical
  yardstick wherewith to measure human conduct. It portrayed the ideal of a
  resultant new order of human society.



  170:2.5 4. It taught the pre-eminence of the spiritual compared with the
  material; it glorified spiritual realities and exalted superhuman ideals.



  170:2.6 5. This new gospel held up spiritual attainment as the true goal of
  living. Human life received a new endowment of moral value and divine dignity.



  170:2.7 6. Jesus taught that eternal realities were the result (reward) of
  righteous earthly striving. Man's mortal sojourn on earth acquired new
  meanings consequent upon the recognition of a noble destiny.



  170:2.8 7. The new gospel affirmed that human salvation is the revelation of a
  far-reaching divine purpose to be fulfilled and realized in the future destiny
  of the endless service of the salvaged sons of God.



  170:2.9 These teachings cover the expanded idea of the kingdom which was
  taught by Jesus. This great concept was hardly embraced in the elementary and
  confused kingdom teachings of John the Baptist.

  170:2.10 The apostles were unable to grasp the real meaning of the Master's
  utterances regarding the kingdom. The subsequent distortion of Jesus'
  teachings, as they are recorded in the New Testament, is because the concept
  of the gospel writers was colored by the belief that Jesus was then absent
  from the world for only a short time; that he would soon return to establish
  the kingdom in power and glory -- just such an idea as they held while he was
  with them in the flesh. But Jesus did not connect the establishment of the
  kingdom with the idea of his return to this world. That centuries have passed
  with no signs of the appearance of the "New Age" is in no way out of harmony
  with Jesus' teaching.

  170:2.11 The great effort embodied in this sermon was the attempt to translate
  the concept of the kingdom of heaven into the ideal of the idea of doing the
  will of God. Long had the Master taught his followers to pray: "Your kingdom
  come; your will be done"; and at this time he earnestly sought to induce them
  to abandon the use of the term kingdom of God in favor of the more practical
  equivalent, the will of God. But he did not succeed.

  170:2.12 Jesus desired to substitute for the idea of the kingdom, king, and
  subjects, the concept of the heavenly family, the heavenly Father, and the
  liberated sons of God engaged in joyful and voluntary service for their fellow
  men and in the sublime and intelligent worship of God the Father.

  170:2.13 Up to this time the apostles had acquired a double viewpoint of the
  kingdom; they regarded it as:

1. A matter of personal experience then present in the hearts of true believers,
and

2. A question of racial or world phenomena; that the kingdom was in the future,
something to look forward to.

  170:2.14 They looked upon the coming of the kingdom in the hearts of men as a
  gradual development, like the leaven in the dough or like the growing of the
  mustard seed. They believed that the coming of the kingdom in the racial or
  world sense would be both sudden and spectacular. Jesus never tired of telling
  them that the kingdom of heaven was their personal experience of realizing the
  higher qualities of spiritual living; that these realities of the spirit
  experience are progressively translated to new and higher levels of divine
  certainty and eternal grandeur.

  170:2.15 On this afternoon the Master distinctly taught a new concept of the
  double nature of the kingdom in that he portrayed the following two phases:

  170:2.16 "First. The kingdom of God in this world, the supreme desire to do
  the will of God, the unselfish love of man which yields the good fruits of
  improved ethical and moral conduct.

  170:2.17 "Second. The kingdom of God in heaven, the goal of mortal believers,
  the estate wherein the love for God is perfected, and wherein the will of God
  is done more divinely."

  170:2.18 Jesus taught that, by faith, the believer enters the kingdom now. In
  the various discourses he taught that two things are essential to faith-
  entrance into the kingdom:

1. Faith, sincerity. To come as a little child, to receive the bestowal of
sonship as a gift; to submit to the doing of the Father's will without
questioning and in the full confidence and genuine trustfulness of the Father's
wisdom; to come into the kingdom free from prejudice and preconception; to be
open-minded and teachable like an unspoiled child.

2. Truth hunger. The thirst for righteousness, a change of mind, the acquirement
of the motive to be like God and to find God.

  170:2.19 Jesus taught that sin is not the child of a defective nature but
  rather the offspring of a knowing mind dominated by an unsubmissive will.
  Regarding sin, he taught that God has forgiven; that we make such forgiveness
  personally available by the act of forgiving our fellows. When you forgive
  your brother in the flesh, you thereby create the capacity in your own soul
  for the reception of the reality of God's forgiveness of your own misdeeds.

  170:2.20 By the time the Apostle John began to write the story of Jesus' life
  and teachings, the early Christians had experienced so much trouble with the
  kingdom-of-God idea as a breeder of persecution that they had largely
  abandoned the use of the term. John talks much about the "eternal life." Jesus
  often spoke of it as the "kingdom of life." He also frequently referred to
  "the kingdom of God within you." He once spoke of such an experience as
  "family fellowship with God the Father." Jesus sought to substitute many terms
  for the kingdom but always without success. Among others, he used: the family
  of God, the Father's will, the friends of God, the fellowship of believers,
  the brotherhood of man, the Father's fold, the children of God, the fellowship
  of the faithful, the Father's service, and the liberated sons of God.

  170:2.21 But he could not escape the use of the kingdom idea. It was more than
  fifty years later, not until after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman
  armies, that this concept of the kingdom began to change into the cult of
  eternal life as its social and institutional aspects were taken over by the
  rapidly expanding and crystallizing Christian church.





3. IN RELATION TO RIGHTEOUSNESS

  170:3.1 Jesus was always trying to impress upon his apostles and disciples
  that they must acquire, by faith, a righteousness which would exceed the
  righteousness of slavish works which some of the scribes and Pharisees paraded
  so vaingloriously before the world.

  170:3.2 Though Jesus taught that faith, simple childlike belief, is the key to
  the door of the kingdom, he also taught that, having entered the door, there
  are the progressive steps of righteousness which every believing child must
  ascend in order to grow up to the full stature of the robust sons of God.

  170:3.3 It is in the consideration of the technique of receiving God's
  forgiveness that the attainment of the righteousness of the kingdom is
  revealed. Faith is the price you pay for entrance into the family of God; but
  forgiveness is the act of God which accepts your faith as the price of
  admission. And the reception of the forgiveness of God by a kingdom believer
  involves a definite and actual experience and consists in the following four
  steps, the kingdom steps of inner righteousness:



  170:3.4 1. God's forgiveness is made actually available and is personally
  experienced by man just in so far as he forgives his fellows.



  170:3.5 2. Man will not truly forgive his fellows unless he loves them as
  himself.



  170:3.6 3. To thus love your neighbor as yourself is the highest ethics.



  170:3.7 4. Moral conduct, true righteousness, becomes, then, the natural
  result of such love.



  170:3.8 It therefore is evident that the true and inner religion of the
  kingdom unfailingly and increasingly tends to manifest itself in practical
  avenues of social service. Jesus taught a living religion that impelled its
  believers to engage in the doing of loving service. But Jesus did not put
  ethics in the place of religion. He taught religion as a cause and ethics as a
  result.

  170:3.9 The righteousness of any act must be measured by the motive; the
  highest forms of good are therefore unconscious. Jesus was never concerned
  with morals or ethics as such. He was wholly concerned with that inward and
  spiritual fellowship with God the Father which so certainly and directly
  manifests itself as outward and loving service for man. He taught that the
  religion of the kingdom is a genuine personal experience which no man can
  contain within himself; that the consciousness of being a member of the family
  of believers leads inevitably to the practice of the precepts of the family
  conduct, the service of one's brothers and sisters in the effort to enhance
  and enlarge the brotherhood.

  170:3.10 The religion of the kingdom is personal, individual; the fruits, the
  results, are familial, social. Jesus never failed to exalt the sacredness of
  the individual as contrasted with the community. But he also recognized that
  man develops his character by unselfish service; that he unfolds his moral
  nature in loving relations with his fellows.

  170:3.11 By teaching that the kingdom is within, by exalting the individual,
  Jesus struck the deathblow of the old society in that he ushered in the new
  dispensation of true social righteousness. This new order of society the world
  has little known because it has refused to practice the principles of the
  gospel of the kingdom of heaven. And when this kingdom of spiritual pre-
  eminence does come upon the earth, it will not be manifested in mere improved
  social and material conditions, but rather in the glories of those enhanced
  and enriched spiritual values which are characteristic of the approaching age
  of improved human relations and advancing spiritual attainments.





4. JESUS' TEACHING ABOUT THE KINGDOM

  170:4.1 Jesus never gave a precise definition of the kingdom. At one time he
  would discourse on one phase of the kingdom, and at another time he would
  discuss a different aspect of the brotherhood of God's reign in the hearts of
  men. In the course of this Sabbath afternoon's sermon Jesus noted no less than
  five phases, or epochs, of the kingdom, and they were:

1. The personal and inward experience of the spiritual life of the fellowship of
the individual believer with God the Father.

2. The enlarging brotherhood of gospel believers, the social aspects of the
enhanced morals and quickened ethics resulting from the reign of God's spirit in
the hearts of individual believers.

3. The supermortal brotherhood of invisible spiritual beings which prevails on
earth and in heaven, the superhuman kingdom of God.

4. The prospect of the more perfect fulfillment of the will of God, the advance
toward the dawn of a new social order in connection with improved spiritual
living -- the next age of man.

5. The kingdom in its fullness, the future spiritual age of light and life on
earth.

  170:4.2 Wherefore must we always examine the Master's teaching to ascertain
  which of these five phases he may have reference to when he makes use of the
  term kingdom of heaven. By this process of gradually changing man's will and
  thus affecting human decisions, Michael and his associates are likewise
  gradually but certainly changing the entire course of human evolution, social
  and otherwise.



  170:4.3 The Master on this occasion placed emphasis on the following five
  points as representing the cardinal features of the gospel of the kingdom:

1. The pre-eminence of the individual.

2. The will as the determining factor in man's experience.

3. Spiritual fellowship with God the Father.

4. The supreme satisfactions of the loving service of man.

5. The transcendency of the spiritual over the material in human personality.

  170:4.4 This world has never seriously or sincerely or honestly tried out
  these dynamic ideas and divine ideals of Jesus' doctrine of the kingdom of
  heaven. But you should not become discouraged by the apparently slow progress
  of the kingdom idea on Urantia. Remember that the order of progressive
  evolution is subjected to sudden and unexpected periodical changes in both the
  material and the spiritual worlds. The bestowal of Jesus as an incarnated Son
  was just such a strange and unexpected event in the spiritual life of the
  world. Neither make the fatal mistake, in looking for the age manifestation of
  the kingdom, of failing to effect its establishment within your own souls.

  170:4.5 Although Jesus referred one phase of the kingdom to the future and
  did, on numerous occasions, intimate that such an event might appear as a part
  of a world crisis; and though he did likewise most certainly, on several
  occasions, definitely promise sometime to return to Urantia, it should be
  recorded that he never positively linked these two ideas together. He promised
  a new revelation of the kingdom on earth and at some future time; he also
  promised sometime to come back to this world in person; but he did not say
  that these two events were synonymous. From all we know these promises may, or
  may not, refer to the same event.

  170:4.6 His apostles and disciples most certainly linked these two teachings
  together. When the kingdom failed to materialize as they had expected,
  recalling the Master's teaching concerning a future kingdom and remembering
  his promise to come again, they jumped to the conclusion that these promises
  referred to an identical event; and therefore they lived in hope of his
  immediate second coming to establish the kingdom in its fullness and with
  power and glory. And so have successive believing generations lived on earth
  entertaining the same inspiring but disappointing hope.





5. LATER IDEAS OF THE KINGDOM

  170:5.1 Having summarized the teachings of Jesus about the kingdom of heaven,
  we are permitted to narrate certain later ideas which became attached to the
  concept of the kingdom and to engage in a prophetic forecast of the kingdom as
  it may evolve in the age to come.

  170:5.2 Throughout the first centuries of the Christian propaganda, the idea
  of the kingdom of heaven was tremendously influenced by the then rapidly
  spreading notions of Greek idealism, the idea of the natural as the shadow of
  the spiritual -- the temporal as the time shadow of the eternal.

  170:5.3 But the great step which marked the transplantation of the teachings
  of Jesus from a Jewish to a gentile soil was taken when the Messiah of the
  kingdom became the Redeemer of the church, a religious and social organization
  growing out of the activities of Paul and his successors and based on the
  teachings of Jesus as they were supplemented by the ideas of Philo and the
  Persian doctrines of good and evil.

  170:5.4 The ideas and ideals of Jesus, embodied in the teaching of the gospel
  of the kingdom, nearly failed of realization as his followers progressively
  distorted his pronouncements. The Master's concept of the kingdom was notably
  modified by two great tendencies:



  170:5.5 1. The Jewish believers persisted in regarding him as the Messiah.
  They believed that Jesus would very soon return actually to establish the
  world-wide and more or less material kingdom.



  170:5.6 2. The gentile Christians began very early to accept the doctrines of
  Paul, which led increasingly to the general belief that Jesus was the Redeemer
  of the children of the church, the new and institutional successor of the
  earlier concept of the purely spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom.



  170:5.7 The church, as a social outgrowth of the kingdom, would have been
  wholly natural and even desirable. The evil of the church was not its
  existence, but rather that it almost completely supplanted the Jesus concept
  of the kingdom. Paul's institutionalized church became a virtual substitute
  for the kingdom of heaven which Jesus had proclaimed.

  170:5.8 But doubt not, this same kingdom of heaven which the Master taught
  exists within the heart of the believer, will yet be proclaimed to this
  Christian church, even as to all other religions, races, and nations on earth
  -- even to every individual.

  170:5.9 The kingdom of Jesus' teaching, the spiritual ideal of individual
  righteousness and the concept of man's divine fellowship with God, became
  gradually submerged into the mystic conception of the person of Jesus as the
  Redeemer-Creator and spiritual head of a socialized religious community. In
  this way a formal and institutional church became the substitute for the
  individually spirit-led brotherhood of the kingdom.

  170:5.10 The church was an inevitable and useful social result of Jesus' life
  and teachings; the tragedy consisted in the fact that this social reaction to
  the teachings of the kingdom so fully displaced the spiritual concept of the
  real kingdom as Jesus taught and lived it.

  170:5.11 The kingdom, to the Jews, was the Israelite community; to the
  gentiles it became the Christian church. To Jesus the kingdom was the sum of
  those individuals who had confessed their faith in the fatherhood of God,
  thereby declaring their wholehearted dedication to the doing of the will of
  God, thus becoming members of the spiritual brotherhood of man.

  170:5.12 The Master fully realized that certain social results would appear in
  the world as a consequence of the spread of the gospel of the kingdom; but he
  intended that all such desirable social manifestations should appear as
  unconscious and inevitable outgrowths, or natural fruits, of this inner
  personal experience of individual believers, this purely spiritual fellowship
  and communion with the divine spirit which indwells and activates all such
  believers.

  170:5.13 Jesus foresaw that a social organization, or church, would follow the
  progress of the true spiritual kingdom, and that is why he never opposed the
  apostles' practicing the rite of John's baptism. He taught that the truth-
  loving soul, the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, for God, is
  admitted by faith to the spiritual kingdom; at the same time the apostles
  taught that such a believer is admitted to the social organization of
  disciples by the outward rite of baptism.

  170:5.14 When Jesus' immediate followers recognized their partial failure to
  realize his ideal of the establishment of the kingdom in the hearts of men by
  the spirit's domination and guidance of the individual believer, they set
  about to save his teaching from being wholly lost by substituting for the
  Master's ideal of the kingdom the gradual creation of a visible social
  organization, the Christian church. And when they had accomplished this
  program of substitution, in order to maintain consistency and to provide for
  the recognition of the Master's teaching regarding the fact of the kingdom,
  they proceeded to set the kingdom off into the future. The church, just as
  soon as it was well established, began to teach that the kingdom was in
  reality to appear at the culmination of the Christian age, at the second
  coming of Christ.

  170:5.15 In this manner the kingdom became the concept of an age, the idea of
  a future visitation, and the ideal of the final redemption of the saints of
  the Most High. The early Christians (and all too many of the later ones)
  generally lost sight of the Father-and-son idea embodied in Jesus' teaching of
  the kingdom, while they substituted therefor the well-organized social
  fellowship of the church. The church thus became in the main a social
  brotherhood which effectively displaced Jesus' concept and ideal of a
  spiritual brotherhood.

  170:5.16 Jesus' ideal concept largely failed, but upon the foundation of the
  Master's personal life and teachings, supplemented by the Greek and Persian
  concepts of eternal life and augmented by Philo's doctrine of the temporal
  contrasted with the spiritual, Paul went forth to build up one of the most
  progressive human societies which has ever existed on Urantia.

  170:5.17 The concept of Jesus is still alive in the advanced religions of the
  world. Paul's Christian church is the socialized and humanized shadow of what
  Jesus intended the kingdom of heaven to be -- and what it most certainly will
  yet become. Paul and his successors partly transferred the issues of eternal
  life from the individual to the church. Christ thus became the head of the
  church rather than the elder brother of each individual believer in the
  Father's family of the kingdom. Paul and his contemporaries applied all of
  Jesus' spiritual implications regarding himself and the individual believer to
  the church as a group of believers; and in doing this, they struck a deathblow
  to Jesus' concept of the divine kingdom in the heart of the individual
  believer.

  170:5.18 And so, for centuries, the Christian church has labored under great
  embarrassment because it dared to lay claim to those mysterious powers and
  privileges of the kingdom, powers and privileges which can be exercised and
  experienced only between Jesus and his spiritual believer brothers. And thus
  it becomes apparent that membership in the church does not necessarily mean
  fellowship in the kingdom; one is spiritual, the other mainly social.

  170:5.19 Sooner or later another and greater John the Baptist is due to arise
  proclaiming "the kingdom of God is at hand" -- meaning a return to the high
  spiritual concept of Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom is the will of his
  heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer -- and
  doing all this without in any way referring either to the visible church on
  earth or to the anticipated second coming of Christ. There must come a revival
  of the actual teachings of Jesus, such a restatement as will undo the work of
  his early followers who went about to create a sociophilosophical system of
  belief regarding the fact of Michael's sojourn on earth. In a short time the
  teaching of this story about Jesus nearly supplanted the preaching of Jesus'
  gospel of the kingdom. In this way a historical religion displaced that
  teaching in which Jesus had blended man's highest moral ideas and spiritual
  ideals with man's most sublime hope for the future -- eternal life. And that
  was the gospel of the kingdom.

  170:5.20 It is just because the gospel of Jesus was so many-sided that within
  a few centuries students of the records of his teachings became divided up
  into so many cults and sects. This pitiful subdivision of Christian believers
  results from failure to discern in the Master's manifold teachings the divine
  oneness of his matchless life. But someday the true believers in Jesus will
  not be thus spiritually divided in their attitude before unbelievers. Always
  we may have diversity of intellectual comprehension and interpretation, even
  varying degrees of socialization, but lack of spiritual brotherhood is both
  inexcusable and reprehensible.

  170:5.21 Mistake not! there is in the teachings of Jesus an eternal nature
  which will not permit them forever to remain unfruitful in the hearts of
  thinking men. The kingdom as Jesus conceived it has to a large extent failed
  on earth; for the time being, an outward church has taken its place; but you
  should comprehend that this church is only the larval stage of the thwarted
  spiritual kingdom, which will carry it through this material age and over into
  a more spiritual dispensation where the Master's teachings may enjoy a fuller
  opportunity for development. Thus does the so-called Christian church become
  the cocoon in which the kingdom of Jesus' concept now slumbers. The kingdom of
  the divine brotherhood is still alive and will eventually and certainly come
  forth from this long submergence, just as surely as the butterfly eventually
  emerges as the beautiful unfolding of its less attractive creature of
  metamorphic development.






PAPER 171


 ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM



  171:0.1 THE day after the memorable sermon on "The Kingdom of Heaven," Jesus
  announced that on the following day he and the apostles would depart for the
  Passover at Jerusalem, visiting numerous cities in southern Perea on the way.

  171:0.2 The address on the kingdom and the announcement that he was going to
  the Passover set all his followers to thinking that he was going up to
  Jerusalem to inaugurate the temporal kingdom of Jewish supremacy. No matter
  what Jesus said about the nonmaterial character of the kingdom, he could not
  wholly remove from the minds of his Jewish hearers the idea that the Messiah
  was to establish some kind of nationalistic government with headquarters at
  Jerusalem.

  171:0.3 What Jesus said in his Sabbath sermon only tended to confuse the
  majority of his followers; very few were enlightened by the Master's
  discourse. The leaders understood something of his teachings regarding the
  inner kingdom, "the kingdom of heaven within you," but they also knew that he
  had spoken about another and future kingdom, and it was this kingdom they
  believed he was now going up to Jerusalem to establish. When they were
  disappointed in this expectation, when he was rejected by the Jews, and later
  on, when Jerusalem was literally destroyed, they still clung to this hope,
  sincerely believing that the Master would soon return to the world in great
  power and majestic glory to establish the promised kingdom.



  171:0.4 It was on this Sunday afternoon that Salome the mother of James and
  John Zebedee came to Jesus with her two apostle sons and, in the manner of
  approaching an Oriental potentate, sought to have Jesus promise in advance to
  grant whatever request she might make. But the Master would not promise;
  instead, he asked her, "What do you want me to do for you?" Then answered
  Salome: "Master, now that you are going up to Jerusalem to establish the
  kingdom, I would ask you in advance to promise me that these my sons shall
  have honor with you, the one to sit on your right hand and the other to sit on
  your left hand in your kingdom."

  171:0.5 When Jesus heard Salome's request, he said: "Woman, you know not what
  you ask." And then, looking straight into the eyes of the two honor-seeking
  apostles, he said: "Because I have long known and loved you; because I have
  even lived in your mother's house; because Andrew has assigned you to be with
  me at all times; therefore do you permit your mother to come to me secretly,
  making this unseemly request. But let me ask you: Are you able to drink the
  cup I am about to drink?" And without a moment for thought, James and John
  answered, "Yes, Master, we are able." Said Jesus: "I am saddened that you know
  not why we go up to Jerusalem; I am grieved that you understand not the nature
  of my kingdom; I am disappointed that you bring your mother to make this
  request of me; but I know you love me in your hearts; therefore I declare that
  you shall indeed drink of my cup of bitterness and share in my humiliation,
  but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give. Such
  honors are reserved for those who have been designated by my Father."

  171:0.6 By this time someone had carried word of this conference to Peter and
  the other apostles, and they were highly indignant that James and John would
  seek to be preferred before them, and that they would secretly go with their
  mother to make such a request. When they fell to arguing among themselves,
  Jesus called them all together and said: "You well understand how the rulers
  of the gentiles lord it over their subjects, and how those who are great
  exercise authority. But it shall not be so in the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever
  would be great among you, let him first become your servant. He who would be
  first in the kingdom, let him become your minister. I declare to you that the
  Son of Man came not to be ministered to but to minister; and I now go up to
  Jerusalem to lay down my life in the doing of the Father's will and in the
  service of my brethren." When the apostles heard these words, they withdrew by
  themselves to pray. That evening, in response to the labors of Peter, James
  and John made suitable apologies to the ten and were restored to the good
  graces of their brethren.

  171:0.7 In asking for places on the right hand and on the left hand of Jesus
  at Jerusalem, the sons of Zebedee little realized that in less than one month
  their beloved teacher would be hanging on a Roman cross with a dying thief on
  one side and another transgressor on the other side. And their mother, who was
  present at the crucifixion, well remembered the foolish request she had made
  of Jesus at Pella regarding the honors she so unwisely sought for her apostle
  sons.





1. THE DEPARTURE FROM PELLA



  171:1.1 On the forenoon of Monday, March 13, Jesus and his twelve apostles
  took final leave of the Pella encampment, starting south on their tour of the
  cities of southern Perea, where Abner's associates were at work. They spent
  more than two weeks visiting among the seventy and then went directly to
  Jerusalem for the Passover.

  171:1.2 When the Master left Pella, the disciples encamped with the apostles,
  about one thousand in number, followed after him. About one half of this group
  left him at the Jordan ford on the road to Jericho when they learned he was
  going over to Heshbon, and after he had preached the sermon on "Counting the
  Cost." They went on up to Jerusalem, while the other half followed him for two
  weeks, visiting the towns in southern Perea.

  171:1.3 In a general way, most of Jesus' immediate followers understood that
  the camp at Pella had been abandoned, but they really thought this indicated
  that their Master at last intended to go to Jerusalem and lay claim to David's
  throne. A large majority of his followers never were able to grasp any other
  concept of the kingdom of heaven; no matter what he taught them, they would
  not give up this Jewish idea of the kingdom.

  171:1.4 Acting on the instructions of the Apostle Andrew, David Zebedee closed
  the visitors' camp at Pella on Wednesday, March 15. At this time almost four
  thousand visitors were in residence, and this does not include the one
  thousand and more persons who sojourned with the apostles at what was known as
  the teachers' camp, and who went south with Jesus and the twelve. Much as
  David disliked to do it, he sold the entire equipment to numerous buyers and
  proceeded with the funds to Jerusalem, subsequently turning the money over to
  Judas Iscariot.



  171:1.5 David was present in Jerusalem during the tragic last week, taking his
  mother back with him to Bethsaida after the crucifixion. While awaiting Jesus
  and the apostles, David stopped with Lazarus at Bethany and became
  tremendously agitated by the manner in which the Pharisees had begun to
  persecute and harass him since his resurrection. Andrew had directed David to
  discontinue the messenger service; and this was construed by all as an
  indication of the early establishment of the kingdom at Jerusalem. David found
  himself without a job, and he had about decided to become the self-appointed
  defender of Lazarus when presently the object of his indignant solicitude fled
  in haste to Philadelphia. Accordingly, sometime after the resurrection and
  also after the death of his mother, David betook himself to Philadelphia,
  having first assisted Martha and Mary in disposing of their real estate; and
  there, in association with Abner and Lazarus, he spent the remainder of his
  life, becoming the financial overseer of all those large interests of the
  kingdom which had their center at Philadelphia during the lifetime of Abner.

  171:1.6 Within a short time after the destruction of Jerusalem, Antioch became
  the headquarters of Pauline Christianity, while Philadelphia remained the
  center of the Abnerian kingdom of heaven. From Antioch the Pauline version of
  the teachings of Jesus and about Jesus spread to all the Western world; from
  Philadelphia the missionaries of the Abnerian version of the kingdom of heaven
  spread throughout Mesopotamia and Arabia until the later times when these
  uncompromising emissaries of the teachings of Jesus were overwhelmed by the
  sudden rise of Islam.





2. ON COUNTING THE COST



  171:2.1 When Jesus and the company of almost one thousand followers arrived at
  the Bethany ford of the Jordan sometimes called Bethabara, his disciples began
  to realize that he was not going directly to Jerusalem. While they hesitated
  and debated among themselves, Jesus climbed upon a huge stone and delivered
  that discourse which has become known as "Counting the Cost." The Master said:



  171:2.2 "You who would follow after me from this time on, must be willing to
  pay the price of wholehearted dedication to the doing of my Father's will. If
  you would be my disciples, you must be willing to forsake father, mother,
  wife, children, brothers, and sisters. If any one of you would now be my
  disciple, you must be willing to give up even your life just as the Son of Man
  is about to offer up his life for the completion of the mission of doing the
  Father's will on earth and in the flesh.

  171:2.3 "If you are not willing to pay the full price, you can hardly be my
  disciple. Before you go further, you should each sit down and count the cost
  of being my disciple. Which one of you would undertake to build a watchtower
  on your lands without first sitting down to count up the cost to see whether
  you had money enough to complete it? If you fail thus to reckon the cost,
  after you have laid the foundation, you may discover that you are unable to
  finish that which you have begun, and therefore will all your neighbors mock
  you, saying, `Behold, this man began to build but was unable to finish his
  work.' Again, what king, when he prepares to make war upon another king, does
  not first sit down and take counsel as to whether he will be able, with ten
  thousand men, to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? If the
  king cannot afford to meet his enemy because he is unprepared, he sends an
  embassy to this other king, even when he is yet a great way off, asking for
  terms of peace.

  171:2.4 "Now, then, must each of you sit down and count the cost of being my
  disciple. From now on you will not be able to follow after us, listening to
  the teaching and beholding the works; you will be required to face bitter
  persecutions and to bear witness for this gospel in the face of crushing
  disappointment. If you are unwilling to renounce all that you are and to
  dedicate all that you have, then are you unworthy to be my disciple. If you
  have already conquered yourself within your own heart, you need have no fear
  of that outward victory which you must presently gain when the Son of Man is
  rejected by the chief priests and the Sadducees and is given into the hands of
  mocking unbelievers.

  171:2.5 "Now should you examine yourself to find out your motive for being my
  disciple. If you seek honor and glory, if you are worldly minded, you are like
  the salt when it has lost its savor. And when that which is valued for its
  saltiness has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? Such a condiment
  is useless; it is fit only to be cast out among the refuse. Now have I warned
  you to turn back to your homes in peace if you are not willing to drink with
  me the cup which is being prepared. Again and again have I told you that my
  kingdom is not of this world, but you will not believe me. He who has ears to
  hear let him hear what I say."



  171:2.6 Immediately after speaking these words, Jesus, leading the twelve,
  started off on the way to Heshbon, followed by about five hundred. After a
  brief delay the other half of the multitude went on up to Jerusalem. His
  apostles, together with the leading disciples, thought much about these words,
  but still they clung to the belief that, after this brief period of adversity
  and trial, the kingdom would certainly be set up somewhat in accordance with
  their long-cherished hopes.





3. THE PEREAN TOUR



  171:3.1 For more than two weeks Jesus and the twelve, followed by a crowd of
  several hundred disciples, journeyed about in southern Perea, visiting all of
  the towns wherein the seventy labored. Many gentiles lived in this region, and
  since few were going up to the Passover feast at Jerusalem, the messengers of
  the kingdom went right on with their work of teaching and preaching.

  171:3.2 Jesus met Abner at Heshbon, and Andrew directed that the labors of the
  seventy should not be interrupted by the Passover feast; Jesus advised that
  the messengers should go forward with their work in complete disregard of what
  was about to happen at Jerusalem. He also counseled Abner to permit the
  women's corps, at least such as desired, to go to Jerusalem for the Passover.
  And this was the last time Abner ever saw Jesus in the flesh. His farewell to
  Abner was: "My son, I know you will be true to the kingdom, and I pray the
  Father to grant you wisdom that you may love and understand your brethren."

  171:3.3 As they traveled from city to city, large numbers of their followers
  deserted to go on to Jerusalem so that, by the time Jesus started for the
  Passover, the number of those who followed along with him day by day had
  dwindled to less than two hundred.

  171:3.4 The apostles understood that Jesus was going to Jerusalem for the
  Passover. They knew that the Sanhedrin had broadcast a message to all Israel
  that he had been condemned to die and directing that anyone knowing his
  whereabouts should inform the Sanhedrin; and yet, despite all this, they were
  not so alarmed as they had been when he had announced to them in Philadelphia
  that he was going to Bethany to see Lazarus. This change of attitude from that
  of intense fear to a state of hushed expectancy was mostly because of
  Lazarus's resurrection. They had reached the conclusion that Jesus might, in
  an emergency, assert his divine power and put to shame his enemies. This hope,
  coupled with their more profound and mature faith in the spiritual supremacy
  of their Master, accounted for the outward courage displayed by his immediate
  followers, who now made ready to follow him into Jerusalem in the very face of
  the open declaration of the Sanhedrin that he must die.

  171:3.5 The majority of the apostles and many of his inner disciples did not
  believe it possible for Jesus to die; they, believing that he was "the
  resurrection and the life," regarded him as immortal and already triumphant
  over death.





4. TEACHING AT LIVIAS



  171:4.1 On Wednesday evening, March 29, Jesus and his followers encamped at
  Livias on their way to Jerusalem, after having completed their tour of the
  cities of southern Perea. It was during this night at Livias that Simon
  Zelotes and Simon Peter, having conspired to have delivered into their hands
  at this place more than one hundred swords, received and distributed these
  arms to all who would accept them and wear them concealed beneath their
  cloaks. Simon Peter was still wearing his sword on the night of the Master's
  betrayal in the garden.

  171:4.2 Early on Thursday morning before the others were awake, Jesus called
  Andrew and said: "Awaken your brethren! I have something to say to them."
  Jesus knew about the swords and which of his apostles had received and were
  wearing these weapons, but he never disclosed to them that he knew such
  things. When Andrew had aroused his associates, and they had assembled off by
  themselves, Jesus said: "My children, you have been with me a long while, and
  I have taught you much that is needful for this time, but I would now warn you
  not to put your trust in the uncertainties of the flesh nor in the frailties
  of man's defense against the trials and testing which lie ahead of us. I have
  called you apart here by yourselves that I may once more plainly tell you that
  we are going up to Jerusalem, where you know the Son of Man has already been
  condemned to death. Again am I telling you that the Son of Man will be
  delivered into the hands of the chief priests and the religious rulers; that
  they will condemn him and then deliver him into the hands of the gentiles. And
  so will they mock the Son of Man, even spit upon him and scourge him, and they
  will deliver him up to death. And when they kill the Son of Man, be not
  dismayed, for I declare that on the third day he shall rise. Take heed to
  yourselves and remember that I have forewarned you."

  171:4.3 Again were the apostles amazed, stunned; but they could not bring
  themselves to regard his words as literal; they could not comprehend that the
  Master meant just what he said. They were so blinded by their persistent
  belief in the temporal kingdom on earth, with headquarters at Jerusalem, that
  they simply could not -- would not -- permit themselves to accept Jesus' words
  as literal. They pondered all that day as to what the Master could mean by
  such strange pronouncements. But none of them dared to ask him a question
  concerning these statements. Not until after his death did these bewildered
  apostles wake up to the realization that the Master had spoken to them plainly
  and directly in anticipation of his crucifixion.



  171:4.4 It was here at Livias, just after breakfast, that certain friendly
  Pharisees came to Jesus and said: "Flee in haste from these parts, for Herod,
  just as he sought John, now seeks to kill you. He fears an uprising of the
  people and has decided to kill you. We bring you this warning that you may
  escape."

  171:4.5 And this was partly true. The resurrection of Lazarus frightened and
  alarmed Herod, and knowing that the Sanhedrin had dared to condemn Jesus, even
  in advance of a trial, Herod made up his mind either to kill Jesus or to drive
  him out of his domains. He really desired to do the latter since he so feared
  him that he hoped he would not be compelled to execute him.

  171:4.6 When Jesus heard what the Pharisees had to say, he replied: "I well
  know about Herod and his fear of this gospel of the kingdom. But, mistake not,
  he would much prefer that the Son of Man go up to Jerusalem to suffer and die
  at the hands of the chief priests; he is not anxious, having stained his hands
  with the blood of John, to become responsible for the death of the Son of Man.
  Go you and tell that fox that the Son of Man preaches in Perea today, tomorrow
  goes into Judea, and after a few days, will be perfected in his mission on
  earth and prepared to ascend to the Father."

  171:4.7 Then turning to his apostles, Jesus said: "From olden times the
  prophets have perished in Jerusalem, and it is only befitting that the Son of
  Man should go up to the city of the Father's house to be offered up as the
  price of human bigotry and as the result of religious prejudice and spiritual
  blindness. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones the
  teachers of truth! How often would I have gathered your children together even
  as a hen gathers her own brood under her wings, but you would not let me do
  it! Behold, your house is about to be left to you desolate! You will many
  times desire to see me, but you shall not. You will then seek but not find
  me." And when he had spoken, he turned to those around him and said:
  "Nevertheless, let us go up to Jerusalem to attend the Passover and do that
  which becomes us in fulfilling the will of the Father in heaven."



  171:4.8 It was a confused and bewildered group of believers who this day
  followed Jesus into Jericho. The apostles could discern only the certain note
  of final triumph in Jesus' declarations regarding the kingdom; they just could
  not bring themselves to that place where they were willing to grasp the
  warnings of the impending setback. When Jesus spoke of "rising on the third
  day," they seized upon this statement as signifying a sure triumph of the
  kingdom immediately following an unpleasant preliminary skirmish with the
  Jewish religious leaders. The "third day" was a common Jewish expression
  signifying "presently" or "soon thereafter." When Jesus spoke of "rising,"
  they thought he referred to the "rising of the kingdom."

  171:4.9 Jesus had been accepted by these believers as the Messiah, and the
  Jews knew little or nothing about a suffering Messiah. They did not understand
  that Jesus was to accomplish many things by his death which could never have
  been achieved by his life. While it was the resurrection of Lazarus that
  nerved the apostles to enter Jerusalem, it was the memory of the
  transfiguration that sustained the Master at this trying period of his
  bestowal.





5. THE BLIND MAN AT JERICHO



  171:5.1 Late on the afternoon of Thursday, March 30, Jesus and his apostles,
  at the head of a band of about two hundred followers, approached the walls of
  Jericho. As they came near the gate of the city, they encountered a throng of
  beggars, among them one Bartimeus, an elderly man who had been blind from his
  youth. This blind beggar had heard much about Jesus and knew all about his
  healing of the blind Josiah at Jerusalem. He had not known of Jesus' last
  visit to Jericho until he had gone on to Bethany. Bartimeus had resolved that
  he would never again allow Jesus to visit Jericho without appealing to him for
  the restoration of his sight.

  171:5.2 News of Jesus' approach had been heralded throughout Jericho, and
  hundreds of the inhabitants flocked forth to meet him. When this great crowd
  came back escorting the Master into the city, Bartimeus, hearing the heavy
  tramping of the multitude, knew that something unusual was happening, and so
  he asked those standing near him what was going on. And one of the beggars
  replied, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by." When Bartimeus heard that Jesus
  was near, he lifted up his voice and began to cry aloud, "Jesus, Jesus, have
  mercy upon me!" And as he continued to cry louder and louder, some of those
  near to Jesus went over and rebuked him, requesting him to hold his peace; but
  it was of no avail; he cried only the more and the louder.

  171:5.3 When Jesus heard the blind man crying out, he stood still. And when he
  saw him, he said to his friends, "Bring the man to me." And then they went
  over to Bartimeus, saying: "Be of good cheer; come with us, for the Master
  calls for you." When Bartimeus heard these words, he threw aside his cloak,
  springing forward toward the center of the road, while those near by guided
  him to Jesus. Addressing Bartimeus, Jesus said: "What do you want me to do for
  you?" Then answered the blind man, "I would have my sight restored." And when
  Jesus heard this request and saw his faith, he said: "You shall receive your
  sight; go your way; your faith has made you whole." Immediately he received
  his sight, and he remained near Jesus, glorifying God, until the Master
  started on the next day for Jerusalem, and then he went before the multitude
  declaring to all how his sight had been restored in Jericho.





6. THE VISIT TO ZACCHEUS



  171:6.1 When the Master's procession entered Jericho, it was nearing sundown,
  and he was minded to abide there for the night. As Jesus passed by the customs
  house, Zaccheus the chief publican, or tax collector, happened to be present,
  and he much desired to see Jesus. This chief publican was very rich and had
  heard much about this prophet of Galilee. He had resolved that he would see
  what sort of a man Jesus was the next time he chanced to visit Jericho;
  accordingly, Zaccheus sought to press through the crowd, but it was too great,
  and being short of stature, he could not see over their heads. And so the
  chief publican followed on with the crowd until they came near the center of
  the city and not far from where he lived. When he saw that he would be unable
  to penetrate the crowd, and thinking that Jesus might be going right on
  through the city without stopping, he ran on ahead and climbed up into a
  sycamore tree whose spreading branches overhung the roadway. He knew that in
  this way he could obtain a good view of the Master as he passed by. And he was
  not disappointed, for, as Jesus passed by, he stopped and, looking up at
  Zaccheus, said: "Make haste, Zaccheus, and come down, for tonight I must abide
  at your house." And when Zaccheus heard these astonishing words, he almost
  fell out of the tree in his haste to get down, and going up to Jesus, he
  expressed great joy that the Master should be willing to stop at his house.

  171:6.2 They went at once to the home of Zaccheus, and those who lived in
  Jericho were much surprised that Jesus would consent to abide with the chief
  publican. Even while the Master and his apostles lingered with Zaccheus before
  the door of his house, one of the Jericho Pharisees, standing near by, said:
  "You see how this man has gone to lodge with a sinner, an apostate son of
  Abraham who is an extortioner and a robber of his own people." And when Jesus
  heard this, he looked down at Zaccheus and smiled. Then Zaccheus stood upon a
  stool and said: "Men of Jericho, hear me! I may be a publican and a sinner,
  but the great Teacher has come to abide in my house; and before he goes in, I
  tell you that I am going to bestow one half of all my goods upon the poor, and
  beginning tomorrow, if I have wrongfully exacted aught from any man, I will
  restore fourfold. I am going to seek salvation with all my heart and learn to
  do righteousness in the sight of God."

  171:6.3 When Zaccheus had ceased speaking, Jesus said: "Today has salvation
  come to this home, and you have become indeed a son of Abraham." And turning
  to the crowd assembled about them, Jesus said: "And marvel not at what I say
  nor take offense at what we do, for I have all along declared that the Son of
  Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost."

  171:6.4 They lodged with Zaccheus for the night. On the morrow they arose and
  made their way up the "road of robbers" to Bethany on their way to the
  Passover at Jerusalem.





7. "AS JESUS PASSED BY"



  171:7.1 Jesus spread good cheer everywhere he went. He was full of grace and
  truth. His associates never ceased to wonder at the gracious words that
  proceeded out of his mouth. You can cultivate gracefulness, but graciousness
  is the aroma of friendliness which emanates from a love-saturated soul.

  171:7.2 Goodness always compels respect, but when it is devoid of grace, it
  often repels affection. Goodness is universally attractive only when it is
  gracious. Goodness is effective only when it is attractive.

  171:7.3 Jesus really understood men; therefore could he manifest genuine
  sympathy and show sincere compassion. But he seldom indulged in pity. While
  his compassion was boundless, his sympathy was practical, personal, and
  constructive. Never did his familiarity with suffering breed indifference, and
  he was able to minister to distressed souls without increasing their self-
  pity.

  171:7.4 Jesus could help men so much because he loved them so sincerely. He
  truly loved each man, each woman, and each child. He could be such a true
  friend because of his remarkable insight -- he knew so fully what was in the
  heart and in the mind of man. He was an interested and keen observer. He was
  an expert in the comprehension of human need, clever in detecting human
  longings.

  171:7.5 Jesus was never in a hurry. He had time to comfort his fellow men "as
  he passed by." And he always made his friends feel at ease. He was a charming
  listener. He never engaged in the meddlesome probing of the souls of his
  associates. As he comforted hungry minds and ministered to thirsty souls, the
  recipients of his mercy did not so much feel that they were confessing to him
  as that they were conferring with him. They had unbounded confidence in him
  because they saw he had so much faith in them.

  171:7.6 He never seemed to be curious about people, and he never manifested a
  desire to direct, manage, or follow them up. He inspired profound self-
  confidence and robust courage in all who enjoyed his association. When he
  smiled on a man, that mortal experienced increased capacity for solving his
  manifold problems.

  171:7.7 Jesus loved men so much and so wisely that he never hesitated to be
  severe with them when the occasion demanded such discipline. He frequently set
  out to help a person by asking for help. In this way he elicited interest,
  appealed to the better things in human nature.

  171:7.8 The Master could discern saving faith in the gross superstition of the
  woman who sought healing by touching the hem of his garment. He was always
  ready and willing to stop a sermon or detain a multitude while he ministered
  to the needs of a single person, even to a little child. Great things happened
  not only because people had faith in Jesus, but also because Jesus had so much
  faith in them.

  171:7.9 Most of the really important things which Jesus said or did seemed to
  happen casually, "as he passed by." There was so little of the professional,
  the well-planned, or the premeditated in the Master's earthly ministry. He
  dispensed health and scattered happiness naturally and gracefully as he
  journeyed through life. It was literally true, "He went about doing good."

  171:7.10 And it behooves the Master's followers in all ages to learn to
  minister as "they pass by" -- to do unselfish good as they go about their
  daily duties.





8. PARABLE OF THE POUNDS



  171:8.1 They did not start from Jericho until near noon since they sat up late
  the night before while Jesus taught Zaccheus and his family the gospel of the
  kingdom. About halfway up the ascending road to Bethany the party paused for
  lunch while the multitude passed on to Jerusalem, not knowing that Jesus and
  the apostles were going to abide that night on the Mount of Olives.

  171:8.2 The parable of the pounds, unlike the parable of the talents, which
  was intended for all the disciples, was spoken more exclusively to the
  apostles and was largely based on the experience of Archelaus and his futile
  attempt to gain the rule of the kingdom of Judea. This is one of the few
  parables of the Master to be founded on an actual historic character. It was
  not strange that they should have had Archelaus in mind inasmuch as the house
  of Zaccheus in Jericho was very near the ornate palace of Archelaus, and his
  aqueduct ran along the road by which they had departed from Jericho.



  171:8.3 Said Jesus: "You think that the Son of Man goes up to Jerusalem to
  receive a kingdom, but I declare that you are doomed to disappointment. Do you
  not remember about a certain prince who went into a far country to receive for
  himself a kingdom, but even before he could return, the citizens of his
  province, who in their hearts had already rejected him, sent an embassy after
  him, saying, `We will not have this man to reign over us'? As this king was
  rejected in the temporal rule, so is the Son of Man to be rejected in the
  spiritual rule. Again I declare that my kingdom is not of this world; but if
  the Son of Man had been accorded the spiritual rule of his people, he would
  have accepted such a kingdom of men's souls and would have reigned over such a
  dominion of human hearts. Notwithstanding that they reject my spiritual rule
  over them, I will return again to receive from others such a kingdom of spirit
  as is now denied me. You will see the Son of Man rejected now, but in another
  age that which the children of Abraham now reject will be received and
  exalted.

  171:8.4 "And now, as the rejected nobleman of this parable, I would call
  before me my twelve servants, special stewards, and giving into each of your
  hands the sum of one pound, I would admonish each to heed well my instructions
  that you trade diligently with your trust fund while I am away that you may
  have wherewith to justify your stewardship when I return, when a reckoning
  shall be required of you.

  171:8.5 "And even if this rejected Son should not return, another Son will be
  sent to receive this kingdom, and this Son will then send for all of you to
  receive your report of stewardship and to be made glad by your gains.

  171:8.6 "And when these stewards were subsequently called together for an
  accounting, the first came forward, saying, `Lord, with your pound I have made
  ten pounds more.' And his master said to him: `Well done; you are a good
  servant; because you have proved faithful in this matter, I will give you
  authority over ten cities.' And the second came, saying, `Your pound left with
  me, Lord, has made five pounds.' And the master said, `I will accordingly make
  you ruler over five cities.' And so on down through the others until the last
  of the servants, on being called to account, reported: `Lord, behold, here is
  your pound, which I have kept safely done up in this napkin. And this I did
  because I feared you; I believed that you were unreasonable, seeing that you
  take up where you have not laid down, and that you seek to reap where you have
  not sown.' Then said his lord: `You negligent and unfaithful servant, I will
  judge you out of your own mouth. You knew that I reap where I have apparently
  not sown; therefore you knew this reckoning would be required of you. Knowing
  this, you should have at least given my money to the banker that at my coming
  I might have had it with proper interest.'

  171:8.7 "And then said this ruler to those who stood by: `Take the money from
  this slothful servant and give it to him who has ten pounds.' And when they
  reminded the master that such a one already had ten pounds, he said: `To every
  one who has shall be given more, but from him who has not, even that which he
  has shall be taken away from him.'"



  171:8.8 And then the apostles sought to know the difference between the
  meaning of this parable and that of the former parable of the talents, but
  Jesus would only say, in answer to their many questions: "Ponder well these
  words in your hearts while each of you finds out their true meaning."

  171:8.9 It was Nathaniel who so well taught the meaning of these two parables
  in the after years, summing up his teachings in these conclusions:



  171:8.10 1. Ability is the practical measure of life's opportunities. You will
  never be held responsible for the accomplishment of that which is beyond your
  abilities.



  171:8.11 2. Faithfulness is the unerring measure of human trustworthiness. He
  who is faithful in little things is also likely to exhibit faithfulness in
  everything consistent with his endowments.



  171:8.12 3. The Master grants the lesser reward for lesser faithfulness when
  there is like opportunity.



  171:8.13 4. He grants a like reward for like faithfulness when there is lesser
  opportunity.



  171:8.14 When they had finished their lunch, and after the multitude of
  followers had gone on toward Jerusalem, Jesus, standing there before the
  apostles in the shade of an overhanging rock by the roadside, with cheerful
  dignity and a gracious majesty pointed his finger westward, saying: "Come, my
  brethren, let us go on into Jerusalem, there to receive that which awaits us;
  thus shall we fulfill the will of the heavenly Father in all things."

  171:8.15 And so Jesus and his apostles resumed this, the Master's last journey
  to Jerusalem in the likeness of the flesh of mortal man.


 PAPER 172


 GOING INTO JERUSALEM



  172:0.1 JESUS and the apostles arrived at Bethany shortly after four o'clock
  on Friday afternoon, March 31, A.D. 30. Lazarus, his sisters, and their
  friends were expecting them; and since so many people came every day to talk
  with Lazarus about his resurrection, Jesus was informed that arrangements had
  been made for him to stay with a neighboring believer, one Simon, the leading
  citizen of the little village since the death of Lazarus's father.



  172:0.2 That evening, Jesus received many visitors, and the common folks of
  Bethany and Bethpage did their best to make him feel welcome. Although many
  thought Jesus was now going into Jerusalem, in utter defiance of the
  Sanhedrin's decree of death, to proclaim himself king of the Jews, the Bethany
  family -- Lazarus, Martha, and Mary -- more fully realized that the Master was
  not that kind of a king; they dimly felt that this might be his last visit to
  Jerusalem and Bethany.

  172:0.3 The chief priests were informed that Jesus lodged at Bethany, but they
  thought best not to attempt to seize him among his friends; they decided to
  await his coming on into Jerusalem. Jesus knew about all this, but he was
  majestically calm; his friends had never seen him more composed and congenial;
  even the apostles were astounded that he should be so unconcerned when the
  Sanhedrin had called upon all Jewry to deliver him into their hands. While the
  Master slept that night, the apostles watched over him by twos, and many of
  them were girded with swords. Early the next morning they were awakened by
  hundreds of pilgrims who came out from Jerusalem, even on the Sabbath day, to
  see Jesus and Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.





1. SABBATH AT BETHANY



  172:1.1 Pilgrims from outside of Judea, as well as the Jewish authorities, had
  all been asking: "What do you think? will Jesus come up to the feast?"
  Therefore, when the people heard that Jesus was at Bethany, they were glad,
  but the chief priests and Pharisees were somewhat perplexed. They were pleased
  to have him under their jurisdiction, but they were a trifle disconcerted by
  his boldness; they remembered that on his previous visit to Bethany, Lazarus
  had been raised from the dead, and Lazarus was becoming a big problem to the
  enemies of Jesus.

  172:1.2 Six days before the Passover, on the evening after the Sabbath, all
  Bethany and Bethpage joined in celebrating the arrival of Jesus by a public
  banquet at the home of Simon. This supper was in honor of both Jesus and
  Lazarus; it was tendered in defiance of the Sanhedrin. Martha directed the
  serving of the food; her sister Mary was among the women onlookers as it was
  against the custom of the Jews for a woman to sit at a public banquet. The
  agents of the Sanhedrin were present, but they feared to apprehend Jesus in
  the midst of his friends.

  172:1.3 Jesus talked with Simon about Joshua of old, whose namesake he was,
  and recited how Joshua and the Israelites had come up to Jerusalem through
  Jericho. In commenting on the legend of the walls of Jericho falling down,
  Jesus said: "I am not concerned with such walls of brick and stone; but I
  would cause the walls of prejudice, self-righteousness, and hate to crumble
  before this preaching of the Father's love for all men."

  172:1.4 The banquet went along in a very cheerful and normal manner except
  that all the apostles were unusually sober. Jesus was exceptionally cheerful
  and had been playing with the children up to the time of coming to the table.



  172:1.5 Nothing out of the ordinary happened until near the close of the
  feasting when Mary the sister of Lazarus stepped forward from among the group
  of women onlookers and, going up to where Jesus reclined as the guest of
  honor, proceeded to open a large alabaster cruse of very rare and costly
  ointment; and after anointing the Master's head, she began to pour it upon his
  feet as she took down her hair and wiped them with it. The whole house became
  filled with the odor of the ointment, and everybody present was amazed at what
  Mary had done. Lazarus said nothing, but when some of the people murmured,
  showing indignation that so costly an ointment should be thus used, Judas
  Iscariot stepped over to where Andrew reclined and said: "Why was this
  ointment not sold and the money bestowed to feed the poor? You should speak to
  the Master that he rebuke such waste."

  172:1.6 Jesus, knowing what they thought and hearing what they said, put his
  hand upon Mary's head as she knelt by his side and, with a kindly expression
  upon his face, said: "Let her alone, every one of you. Why do you trouble her
  about this, seeing that she has done a good thing in her heart? To you who
  murmur and say that this ointment should have been sold and the money given to
  the poor, let me say that you have the poor always with you so that you may
  minister to them at any time it seems good to you; but I shall not always be
  with you; I go soon to my Father. This woman has long saved this ointment for
  my body at its burial, and now that it has seemed good to her to make this
  anointing in anticipation of my death, she shall not be denied such
  satisfaction. In the doing of this, Mary has reproved all of you in that by
  this act she evinces faith in what I have said about my death and ascension to
  my Father in heaven. This woman shall not be reproved for that which she has
  this night done; rather do I say to you that in the ages to come, wherever
  this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, what she has done
  will be spoken of in memory of her."

  172:1.7 It was because of this rebuke, which he took as a personal reproof,
  that Judas Iscariot finally made up his mind to seek revenge for his hurt
  feelings. Many times had he entertained such ideas subconsciously, but now he
  dared to think such wicked thoughts in his open and conscious mind. And many
  others encouraged him in this attitude since the cost of this ointment was a
  sum equal to the earnings of one man for one year -- enough to provide bread
  for five thousand persons. But Mary loved Jesus; she had provided this
  precious ointment with which to embalm his body in death, for she believed his
  words when he forewarned them that he must die, and it was not to be denied
  her if she changed her mind and chose to bestow this offering upon the Master
  while he yet lived.

  172:1.8 Both Lazarus and Martha knew that Mary had long saved the money
  wherewith to buy this cruse of spikenard, and they heartily approved of her
  doing as her heart desired in such a matter, for they were well-to-do and
  could easily afford to make such an offering.

  172:1.9 When the chief priests heard of this dinner in Bethany for Jesus and
  Lazarus, they began to take counsel among themselves as to what should be done
  with Lazarus. And presently they decided that Lazarus must also die. They
  rightly concluded that it would be useless to put Jesus to death if they
  permitted Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead, to live.





2. SUNDAY MORNING WITH THE APOSTLES



  172:2.1 On this Sunday morning, in Simon's beautiful garden, the Master called
  his twelve apostles around him and gave them their final instructions
  preparatory to entering Jerusalem. He told them that he would probably deliver
  many addresses and teach many lessons before returning to the Father but
  advised the apostles to refrain from doing any public work during this
  Passover sojourn in Jerusalem. He instructed them to remain near him and to
  "watch and pray." Jesus knew that many of his apostles and immediate followers
  even then carried swords concealed on their persons, but he made no reference
  to this fact.

  172:2.2 This morning's instructions embraced a brief review of their ministry
  from the day of their ordination near Capernaum down to this day when they
  were preparing to enter Jerusalem. The apostles listened in silence; they
  asked no questions.

  172:2.3 Early that morning David Zebedee had turned over to Judas the funds
  realized from the sale of the equipment of the Pella encampment, and Judas, in
  turn, had placed the greater part of this money in the hands of Simon, their
  host, for safekeeping in anticipation of the exigencies of their entry into
  Jerusalem.

  172:2.4 After the conference with the apostles Jesus held converse with
  Lazarus and instructed him to avoid the sacrifice of his life to the
  vengefulness of the Sanhedrin. It was in obedience to this admonition that
  Lazarus, a few days later, fled to Philadelphia when the officers of the
  Sanhedrin sent men to arrest him.

  172:2.5 In a way, all of Jesus' followers sensed the impending crisis, but
  they were prevented from fully realizing its seriousness by the unusual
  cheerfulness and exceptional good humor of the Master.





3. THE START FOR JERUSALEM



  172:3.1 Bethany was about two miles from the temple, and it was half past one
  that Sunday afternoon when Jesus made ready to start for Jerusalem. He had
  feelings of profound affection for Bethany and its simple people. Nazareth,
  Capernaum, and Jerusalem had rejected him, but Bethany had accepted him, had
  believed in him. And it was in this small village, where almost every man,
  woman, and child were believers, that he chose to perform the mightiest work
  of his earth bestowal, the resurrection of Lazarus. He did not raise Lazarus
  that the villagers might believe, but rather because they already believed.

  172:3.2 All morning Jesus had thought about his entry into Jerusalem.
  Heretofore he had always endeavored to suppress all public acclaim of him as
  the Messiah, but it was different now; he was nearing the end of his career in
  the flesh, his death had been decreed by the Sanhedrin, and no harm could come
  from allowing his disciples to give free expression to their feelings, just as
  might occur if he elected to make a formal and public entry into the city.

  172:3.3 Jesus did not decide to make this public entrance into Jerusalem as a
  last bid for popular favor nor as a final grasp for power. Neither did he do
  it altogether to satisfy the human longings of his disciples and apostles.
  Jesus entertained none of the illusions of a fantastic dreamer; he well knew
  what was to be the outcome of this visit.

  172:3.4 Having decided upon making a public entrance into Jerusalem, the
  Master was confronted with the necessity of choosing a proper method of
  executing such a resolve. Jesus thought over all of the many more or less
  contradictory so-called Messianic prophesies, but there seemed to be only one
  which was at all appropriate for him to follow. Most of these prophetic
  utterances depicted a king, the son and successor of David, a bold and
  aggressive temporal deliverer of all Israel from the yoke of foreign
  domination. But there was one Scripture that had sometimes been associated
  with the Messiah by those who held more to the spiritual concept of his
  mission, which Jesus thought might consistently be taken as a guide for his
  projected entry into Jerusalem. This Scripture was found in Zechariah, and it
  said: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem.
  Behold, your king comes to you. He is just and he brings salvation. He comes
  as the lowly one, riding upon an ass, upon a colt, the foal of an ass."



  172:3.5 A warrior king always entered a city riding upon a horse; a king on a
  mission of peace and friendship always entered riding upon an ass. Jesus would
  not enter Jerusalem as a man on horseback, but he was willing to enter
  peacefully and with good will as the Son of Man on a donkey.



  172:3.6 Jesus had long tried by direct teaching to impress upon his apostles
  and his disciples that his kingdom was not of this world, that it was a purely
  spiritual matter; but he had not succeeded in this effort. Now, what he had
  failed to do by plain and personal teaching, he would attempt to accomplish by
  a symbolic appeal. Accordingly, right after the noon lunch, Jesus called Peter
  and John, and after directing them to go over to Bethpage, a neighboring
  village a little off the main road and a short distance northwest of Bethany,
  he further said: "Go to Bethpage, and when you come to the junction of the
  roads, you will find the colt of an ass tied there. Loose the colt and bring
  it back with you. If any one asks you why you do this, merely say, `The Master
  has need of him.'" And when the two apostles had gone into Bethpage as the
  Master had directed, they found the colt tied near his mother in the open
  street and close to a house on the corner. As Peter began to untie the colt,
  the owner came over and asked why they did this, and when Peter answered him
  as Jesus had directed, the man said: "If your Master is Jesus from Galilee,
  let him have the colt." And so they returned bringing the colt with them.

  172:3.7 By this time several hundred pilgrims had gathered around Jesus and
  his apostles. Since midforenoon the visitors passing by on their way to the
  Passover had tarried. Meanwhile, David Zebedee and some of his former
  messenger associates took it upon themselves to hasten on down to Jerusalem,
  where they effectively spread the report among the throngs of visiting
  pilgrims about the temple that Jesus of Nazareth was making a triumphal entry
  into the city. Accordingly, several thousand of these visitors flocked forth
  to greet this much-talked-of prophet and wonder-worker, whom some believed to
  be the Messiah. This multitude, coming out from Jerusalem, met Jesus and the
  crowd going into the city just after they had passed over the brow of Olivet
  and had begun the descent into the city.

  172:3.8 As the procession started out from Bethany, there was great enthusiasm
  among the festive crowd of disciples, believers, and visiting pilgrims, many
  hailing from Galilee and Perea. Just before they started, the twelve women of
  the original women's corps, accompanied by some of their associates, arrived
  on the scene and joined this unique procession as it moved on joyously toward
  the city.

  172:3.9 Before they started, the Alpheus twins put their cloaks on the donkey
  and held him while the Master got on. As the procession moved toward the
  summit of Olivet, the festive crowd threw their garments on the ground and
  brought branches from the near-by trees in order to make a carpet of honor for
  the donkey bearing the royal Son, the promised Messiah. As the merry crowd
  moved on toward Jerusalem, they began to sing, or rather to shout in unison,
  the Psalm, "Hosanna to the son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name
  of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed be the kingdom that comes down
  from heaven."

  172:3.10 Jesus was lighthearted and cheerful as they moved along until he came
  to the brow of Olivet, where the city and the temple towers came into full
  view; there the Master stopped the procession, and a great silence came upon
  all as they beheld him weeping. Looking down upon the vast multitude coming
  forth from the city to greet him, the Master, with much emotion and with
  tearful voice, said: "O Jerusalem, if you had only known, even you, at least
  in this your day, the things which belong to your peace, and which you could
  so freely have had! But now are these glories about to be hid from your eyes.
  You are about to reject the Son of Peace and turn your backs upon the gospel
  of salvation. The days will soon come upon you wherein your enemies will cast
  a trench around about you and lay siege to you on every side; they shall
  utterly destroy you, insomuch that not one stone shall be left upon another.
  And all this shall befall you because you knew not the time of your divine
  visitation. You are about to reject the gift of God, and all men will reject
  you."

  172:3.11 When he had finished speaking, they began the descent of Olivet and
  presently were joined by the multitude of visitors who had come from Jerusalem
  waving palm branches, shouting hosannas, and otherwise expressing gleefulness
  and good fellowship. The Master had not planned that these crowds should come
  out from Jerusalem to meet them; that was the work of others. He never
  premeditated anything which was dramatic.

  172:3.12 Along with the multitude which poured out to welcome the Master,
  there came also many of the Pharisees and his other enemies. They were so much
  perturbed by this sudden and unexpected outburst of popular acclaim that they
  feared to arrest him lest such action precipitate an open revolt of the
  populace. They greatly feared the attitude of the large numbers of visitors,
  who had heard much of Jesus, and who, many of them, believed in him.

  172:3.13 As they neared Jerusalem, the crowd became more demonstrative, so
  much so that some of the Pharisees made their way up alongside Jesus and said:
  "Teacher, you should rebuke your disciples and exhort them to behave more
  seemly." Jesus answered: "It is only fitting that these children should
  welcome the Son of Peace, whom the chief priests have rejected. It would be
  useless to stop them lest in their stead these stones by the roadside cry
  out."

  172:3.14 The Pharisees hastened on ahead of the procession to rejoin the
  Sanhedrin, which was then in session at the temple, and they reported to their
  associates: "Behold, all that we do is of no avail; we are confounded by this
  Galilean. The people have gone mad over him; if we do not stop these ignorant
  ones, all the world will go after him."

  172:3.15 There really was no deep significance to be attached to this
  superficial and spontaneous outburst of popular enthusiasm. This welcome,
  although it was joyous and sincere, did not betoken any real or deep-seated
  conviction in the hearts of this festive multitude. These same crowds were
  equally as willing quickly to reject Jesus later on this week when the
  Sanhedrin once took a firm and decided stand against him, and when they became
  disillusioned -- when they realized that Jesus was not going to establish the
  kingdom in accordance with their long-cherished expectations.

  172:3.16 But the whole city was mightily stirred up, insomuch that everyone
  asked, "Who is this man?" And the multitude answered, "This is the prophet of
  Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth."





4. VISITING ABOUT THE TEMPLE



  172:4.1 While the Alpheus twins returned the donkey to its owner, Jesus and
  the ten apostles detached themselves from their immediate associates and
  strolled about the temple, viewing the preparations for the Passover. No
  attempt was made to molest Jesus as the Sanhedrin greatly feared the people,
  and that was, after all, one of the reasons Jesus had for allowing the
  multitude thus to acclaim him. The apostles little understood that this was
  the only human procedure which could have been effective in preventing Jesus'
  immediate arrest upon entering the city. The Master desired to give the
  inhabitants of Jerusalem, high and low, as well as the tens of thousands of
  Passover visitors, this one more and last chance to hear the gospel and
  receive, if they would, the Son of Peace.

  172:4.2 And now, as the evening drew on and the crowds went in quest of
  nourishment, Jesus and his immediate followers were left alone. What a strange
  day it had been! The apostles were thoughtful, but speechless. Never, in their
  years of association with Jesus, had they seen such a day. For a moment they
  sat down by the treasury, watching the people drop in their contributions: the
  rich putting much in the receiving box and all giving something in accordance
  with the extent of their possessions. At last there came along a poor widow,
  scantily attired, and they observed as she cast two mites (small coppers) into
  the trumpet. And then said Jesus, calling the attention of the apostles to the
  widow: "Heed well what you have just seen. This poor widow cast in more than
  all the others, for all these others, from their superfluity, cast in some
  trifle as a gift, but this poor woman, even though she is in want, gave all
  that she had, even her living."

  172:4.3 As the evening drew on, they walked about the temple courts in
  silence, and after Jesus had surveyed these familiar scenes once more,
  recalling his emotions in connection with previous visits, not excepting the
  earlier ones, he said, "Let us go up to Bethany for our rest." Jesus, with
  Peter and John, went to the home of Simon, while the other apostles lodged
  among their friends in Bethany and Bethpage.





5. THE APOSTLES' ATTITUDE



  172:5.1 This Sunday evening as they returned to Bethany, Jesus walked in front
  of the apostles. Not a word was spoken until they separated after arriving at
  Simon's house. No twelve human beings ever experienced such diverse and
  inexplicable emotions as now surged through the minds and souls of these
  ambassadors of the kingdom. These sturdy Galileans were confused and
  disconcerted; they did not know what to expect next; they were too surprised
  to be much afraid. They knew nothing of the Master's plans for the next day,
  and they asked no questions. They went to their lodgings, though they did not
  sleep much, save the twins. But they did not keep armed watch over Jesus at
  Simon's house.

  172:5.2 Andrew was thoroughly bewildered, well-nigh confused. He was the one
  apostle who did not seriously undertake to evaluate the popular outburst of
  acclaim. He was too preoccupied with the thought of his responsibility as
  chief of the apostolic corps to give serious consideration to the meaning or
  significance of the loud hosannas of the multitude. Andrew was busy watching
  some of his associates whom he feared might be led away by their emotions
  during the excitement, particularly Peter, James, John, and Simon Zelotes.
  Throughout this day and those which immediately followed, Andrew was troubled
  with serious doubts, but he never expressed any of these misgivings to his
  apostolic associates. He was concerned about the attitude of some of the
  twelve who he knew were armed with swords; but he did not know that his own
  brother, Peter, was carrying such a weapon. And so the procession into
  Jerusalem made a comparatively superficial impression upon Andrew; he was too
  busy with the responsibilities of his office to be otherwise affected.

  172:5.3 Simon Peter was at first almost swept off his feet by this popular
  manifestation of enthusiasm; but he was considerably sobered by the time they
  returned to Bethany that night. Peter simply could not figure out what the
  Master was about. He was terribly disappointed that Jesus did not follow up
  this wave of popular favor with some kind of a pronouncement. Peter could not
  understand why Jesus did not speak to the multitude when they arrived at the
  temple, or at least permit one of the apostles to address the crowd. Peter was
  a great preacher, and he disliked to see such a large, receptive, and
  enthusiastic audience go to waste. He would so much have liked to preach the
  gospel of the kingdom to that throng right there in the temple; but the Master
  had specifically charged them that they were to do no teaching or preaching
  while in Jerusalem this Passover week. The reaction from the spectacular
  procession into the city was disastrous to Simon Peter; by night he was
  sobered and inexpressibly saddened.

  172:5.4 To James Zebedee, this Sunday was a day of perplexity and profound
  confusion; he could not grasp the purport of what was going on; he could not
  comprehend the Master's purpose in permitting this wild acclaim and then in
  refusing to say a word to the people when they arrived at the temple. As the
  procession moved down Olivet toward Jerusalem, more especially when they were
  met by the thousands of pilgrims who poured forth to welcome the Master, James
  was cruelly torn by his conflicting emotions of elation and gratification at
  what he saw and by his profound feeling of fear as to what would happen when
  they reached the temple. And then was he downcast and overcome by
  disappointment when Jesus climbed off the donkey and proceeded to walk
  leisurely about the temple courts. James could not understand the reason for
  throwing away such a magnificent opportunity to proclaim the kingdom. By
  night, his mind was held firmly in the grip of a distressing and dreadful
  uncertainty.

  172:5.5 John Zebedee came somewhere near understanding why Jesus did this; at
  least he grasped in part the spiritual significance of this so-called
  triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As the multitude moved on toward the temple,
  and as John beheld his Master sitting there astride the colt, he recalled
  hearing Jesus onetime quote the passage of Scripture, the utterance of
  Zechariah, which described the coming of the Messiah as a man of peace and
  riding into Jerusalem on an ass. As John turned this Scripture over in his
  mind, he began to comprehend the symbolic significance of this Sunday-
  afternoon pageant. At least, he grasped enough of the meaning of this
  Scripture to enable him somewhat to enjoy the episode and to prevent his
  becoming overmuch depressed by the apparent purposeless ending of the
  triumphal procession. John had a type of mind which naturally tended to think
  and feel in symbols.

  172:5.6 Philip was entirely unsettled by the suddenness and spontaneity of the
  outburst. He could not collect his thoughts sufficiently while on the way down
  Olivet to arrive at any settled notion as to what all the demonstration was
  about. In a way, he enjoyed the performance because his Master was being
  honored. By the time they reached the temple, he was perturbed by the thought
  that Jesus might possibly ask him to feed the multitude, so that the conduct
  of Jesus in turning leisurely away from the crowds, which so sorely
  disappointed the majority of the apostles, was a great relief to Philip.
  Multitudes had sometimes been a great trial to the steward of the twelve.
  After he was relieved of these personal fears regarding the material needs of
  the crowds, Philip joined with Peter in the expression of disappointment that
  nothing was done to teach the multitude. That night Philip got to thinking
  over these experiences and was tempted to doubt the whole idea of the kingdom;
  he honestly wondered what all these things could mean, but he expressed his
  doubts to no one; he loved Jesus too much. He had great personal faith in the
  Master.

  172:5.7 Nathaniel, aside from the symbolic and prophetic aspects, came the
  nearest to understanding the Master's reason for enlisting the popular support
  of the Passover pilgrims. He reasoned it out, before they reached the temple,
  that without such a demonstrative entry into Jerusalem Jesus would have been
  arrested by the Sanhedrin officials and cast into prison the moment he
  presumed to enter the city. He was not, therefore, in the least surprised that
  the Master made no further use of the cheering crowds when he had once got
  inside the walls of the city and had thus so forcibly impressed the Jewish
  leaders that they would refrain from placing him under immediate arrest.
  Understanding the real reason for the Master's entering the city in this
  manner, Nathaniel naturally followed along with more poise and was less
  perturbed and disappointed by Jesus' subsequent conduct than were the other
  apostles. Nathaniel had great confidence in Jesus' understanding of men as
  well as in his sagacity and cleverness in handling difficult situations.

  172:5.8 Matthew was at first nonplused by this pageant performance. He did not
  grasp the meaning of what his eyes were seeing until he also recalled the
  Scripture in Zechariah where the prophet had alluded to the rejoicing of
  Jerusalem because her king had come bringing salvation and riding upon the
  colt of an ass. As the procession moved in the direction of the city and then
  drew on toward the temple, Matthew became ecstatic; he was certain that
  something extraordinary would happen when the Master arrived at the temple at
  the head of this shouting multitude. When one of the Pharisees mocked Jesus,
  saying, "Look, everybody, see who comes here, the king of the Jews riding on
  an ass!" Matthew kept his hands off of him only by exercising great restraint.
  None of the twelve was more depressed on the way back to Bethany that evening.
  Next to Simon Peter and Simon Zelotes, he experienced the highest nervous
  tension and was in a state of exhaustion by night. But by morning Matthew was
  much cheered; he was, after all, a cheerful loser.

  172:5.9 Thomas was the most bewildered and puzzled man of all the twelve. Most
  of the time he just followed along, gazing at the spectacle and honestly
  wondering what could be the Master's motive for participating in such a
  peculiar demonstration. Down deep in his heart he regarded the whole
  performance as a little childish, if not downright foolish. He had never seen
  Jesus do anything like this and was at a loss to account for his strange
  conduct on this Sunday afternoon. By the time they reached the temple, Thomas
  had deduced that the purpose of this popular demonstration was so to frighten
  the Sanhedrin that they would not dare immediately to arrest the Master. On
  the way back to Bethany Thomas thought much but said nothing. By bedtime the
  Master's cleverness in staging the tumultuous entry into Jerusalem had begun
  to make a somewhat humorous appeal, and he was much cheered up by this
  reaction.

  172:5.10 This Sunday started off as a great day for Simon Zelotes. He saw
  visions of wonderful doings in Jerusalem the next few days, and in that he was
  right, but Simon dreamed of the establishment of the new national rule of the
  Jews, with Jesus on the throne of David. Simon saw the nationalists springing
  into action as soon as the kingdom was announced, and himself in supreme
  command of the assembling military forces of the new kingdom. On the way down
  Olivet he even envisaged the Sanhedrin and all of their sympathizers dead
  before sunset of that day. He really believed something great was going to
  happen. He was the noisiest man in the whole multitude. By five o'clock that
  afternoon he was a silent, crushed, and disillusioned apostle. He never fully
  recovered from the depression which settled down on him as a result of this
  day's shock; at least not until long after the Master's resurrection.

  172:5.11 To the Alpheus twins this was a perfect day. They really enjoyed it
  all the way through, and not being present during the time of quiet visitation
  about the temple, they escaped much of the anticlimax of the popular upheaval.
  They could not possibly understand the downcast behavior of the apostles when
  they came back to Bethany that evening. In the memory of the twins this was
  always their day of being nearest heaven on earth. This day was the satisfying
  climax of their whole career as apostles. And the memory of the elation of
  this Sunday afternoon carried them on through all of the tragedy of this
  eventful week, right up to the hour of the crucifixion. It was the most
  befitting entry of the king the twins could conceive; they enjoyed every
  moment of the whole pageant. They fully approved of all they saw and long
  cherished the memory.

  172:5.12 Of all the apostles, Judas Iscariot was the most adversely affected
  by this processional entry into Jerusalem. His mind was in a disagreeable
  ferment because of the Master's rebuke the preceding day in connection with
  Mary's anointing at the feast in Simon's house. Judas was disgusted with the
  whole spectacle. To him it seemed childish, if not indeed ridiculous. As this
  vengeful apostle looked upon the proceedings of this Sunday afternoon, Jesus
  seemed to him more to resemble a clown than a king. He heartily resented the
  whole performance. He shared the views of the Greeks and Romans, who looked
  down upon anyone who would consent to ride upon an ass or the colt of an ass.
  By the time the triumphal procession had entered the city, Judas had about
  made up his mind to abandon the whole idea of such a kingdom; he was almost
  resolved to forsake all such farcical attempts to establish the kingdom of
  heaven. And then he thought of the resurrection of Lazarus, and many other
  things, and decided to stay on with the twelve, at least for another day.
  Besides, he carried the bag, and he would not desert with the apostolic funds
  in his possession. On the way back to Bethany that night his conduct did not
  seem strange since all of the apostles were equally downcast and silent.

  172:5.13 Judas was tremendously influenced by the ridicule of his Sadducean
  friends. No other single factor exerted such a powerful influence on him, in
  his final determination to forsake Jesus and his fellow apostles, as a certain
  episode which occurred just as Jesus reached the gate of the city: A prominent
  Sadducee (a friend of Judas's family) rushed up to him in a spirit of gleeful
  ridicule and, slapping him on the back, said: "Why so troubled of countenance,
  my good friend; cheer up and join us all while we acclaim this Jesus of
  Nazareth the king of the Jews as he rides through the gates of Jerusalem
  seated on an ass." Judas had never shrunk from persecution, but he could not
  stand this sort of ridicule. With the long-nourished emotion of revenge there
  was now blended this fatal fear of ridicule, that terrible and fearful feeling
  of being ashamed of his Master and his fellow apostles. At heart, this
  ordained ambassador of the kingdom was already a deserter; it only remained
  for him to find some plausible excuse for an open break with the Master.




PAPER 173


 MONDAY IN JERUSALEM



  173:0.1 EARLY on this Monday morning, by prearrangement, Jesus and the
  apostles assembled at the home of Simon in Bethany, and after a brief
  conference they set out for Jerusalem. The twelve were strangely silent as
  they journeyed on toward the temple; they had not recovered from the
  experience of the preceding day. They were expectant, fearful, and profoundly
  affected by a certain feeling of detachment growing out of the Master's sudden
  change of tactics, coupled with his instruction that they were to engage in no
  public teaching throughout this Passover week.

  173:0.2 As this group journeyed down Mount Olivet, Jesus led the way, the
  apostles following closely behind in meditative silence. There was just one
  thought uppermost in the minds of all save Judas Iscariot, and that was: What
  will the Master do today? The one absorbing thought of Judas was: What shall I
  do? Shall I go on with Jesus and my associates, or shall I withdraw? And if I
  am going to quit, how shall I break off?

  173:0.3 It was about nine o'clock on this beautiful morning when these men
  arrived at the temple. They went at once to the large court where Jesus so
  often taught, and after greeting the believers who were awaiting him, Jesus
  mounted one of the teaching platforms and began to address the gathering
  crowd. The apostles withdrew for a short distance and awaited developments.



   1. CLEANSING THE TEMPLE

  173:1.1 A huge commercial traffic had grown up in association with the
  services and ceremonies of the temple worship. There was the business of
  providing suitable animals for the various sacrifices. Though it was
  permissible for a worshiper to provide his own sacrifice, the fact remained
  that this animal must be free from all "blemish" in the meaning of the
  Levitical law and as interpreted by official inspectors of the temple. Many a
  worshiper had experienced the humiliation of having his supposedly perfect
  animal rejected by the temple examiners. It therefore became the more general
  practice to purchase sacrificial animals at the temple, and although there
  were several stations on near-by Olivet where they could be bought, it had
  become the vogue to buy these animals directly from the temple pens. Gradually
  there had grown up this custom of selling all kinds of sacrificial animals in
  the temple courts. An extensive business, in which enormous profits were made,
  had thus been brought into existence. Part of these gains was reserved for the
  temple treasury, but the larger part went indirectly into the hands of the
  ruling high-priestly families.

  173:1.2 This sale of animals in the temple prospered because, when the
  worshiper purchased such an animal, although the price might be somewhat high,
  no more fees had to be paid, and he could be sure the intended sacrifice would
  not be rejected on the ground of possessing real or technical blemishes. At
  one time or another systems of exorbitant overcharge were practiced upon the
  common people, especially during the great national feasts. At one time the
  greedy priests went so far as to demand the equivalent of the value of a
  week's labor for a pair of doves which should have been sold to the poor for a
  few pennies. The "sons of Annas" had already begun to establish their bazaars
  in the temple precincts, those very merchandise marts which persisted to the
  time of their final overthrow by a mob three years before the destruction of
  the temple itself.



  173:1.3 But traffic in sacrificial animals and sundry merchandise was not the
  only way in which the courts of the temple were profaned. At this time there
  was fostered an extensive system of banking and commercial exchange which was
  carried on right within the temple precincts. And this all came about in the
  following manner: During the Asmonean dynasty the Jews coined their own silver
  money, and it had become the practice to require the temple dues of one-half
  shekel and all other temple fees to be paid with this Jewish coin. This
  regulation necessitated that money-changers be licensed to exchange the many
  sorts of currency in circulation throughout Palestine and other provinces of
  the Roman Empire for this orthodox shekel of Jewish coining. The temple head
  tax, payable by all except women, slaves, and minors, was one-half shekel, a
  coin about the size of a ten cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of
  Jesus the priests had also been exempted from the payment of temple dues.
  Accordingly, from the 15th to the 25th of the month preceding the Passover,
  accredited money-changers erected their booths in the principal cities of
  Palestine for the purpose of providing the Jewish people with proper money to
  meet the temple dues after they had reached Jerusalem. After this ten-day
  period these money-changers moved on to Jerusalem and proceeded to set up
  their exchange tables in the courts of the temple. They were permitted to
  charge the equivalent of from three to four cents commission for the exchange
  of a coin valued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was
  offered for exchange, they were allowed to collect double. Likewise did these
  temple bankers profit from the exchange of all money intended for the purchase
  of sacrificial animals and for the payment of vows and the making of
  offerings.

  173:1.4 These temple money-changers not only conducted a regular banking
  business for profit in the exchange of more than twenty sorts of money which
  the visiting pilgrims would periodically bring to Jerusalem, but they also
  engaged in all other kinds of transactions pertaining to the banking business.
  Both the temple treasury and the temple rulers profited tremendously from
  these commercial activities. It was not uncommon for the temple treasury to
  hold upwards of ten million dollars while the common people languished in
  poverty and continued to pay these unjust levies.



  173:1.5 In the midst of this noisy aggregation of money-changers,
  merchandisers, and cattle sellers, Jesus, on this Monday morning, attempted to
  teach the gospel of the heavenly kingdom. He was not alone in resenting this
  profanation of the temple; the common people, especially the Jewish visitors
  from foreign provinces, also heartily resented this profiteering desecration
  of their national house of worship. At this time the Sanhedrin itself held its
  regular meetings in a chamber surrounded by all this babble and confusion of
  trade and barter.

  173:1.6 As Jesus was about to begin his address, two things happened to arrest
  his attention. At the money table of a near-by exchanger a violent and heated
  argument had arisen over the alleged overcharging of a Jew from Alexandria,
  while at the same moment the air was rent by the bellowing of a drove of some
  one hundred bullocks which was being driven from one section of the animal
  pens to another. As Jesus paused, silently but thoughtfully contemplating this
  scene of commerce and confusion, close by he beheld a simple-minded Galilean,
  a man he had once talked with in Iron, being ridiculed and jostled about by
  supercilious and would-be superior Judeans; and all of this combined to
  produce one of those strange and periodic uprisings of indignant emotion in
  the soul of Jesus.

  173:1.7 To the amazement of his apostles, standing near at hand, who refrained
  from participation in what so soon followed, Jesus stepped down from the
  teaching platform and, going over to the lad who was driving the cattle
  through the court, took from him his whip of cords and swiftly drove the
  animals from the temple. But that was not all; he strode majestically before
  the wondering gaze of the thousands assembled in the temple court to the
  farthest cattle pen and proceeded to open the gates of every stall and to
  drive out the imprisoned animals. By this time the assembled pilgrims were
  electrified, and with uproarious shouting they moved toward the bazaars and
  began to overturn the tables of the money-changers. In less than five minutes
  all commerce had been swept from the temple. By the time the near-by Roman
  guards had appeared on the scene, all was quiet, and the crowds had become
  orderly; Jesus, returning to the speaker's stand, spoke to the multitude: "You
  have this day witnessed that which is written in the Scriptures: `My house
  shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den
  of robbers.'"

  173:1.8 But before he could utter other words, the great assembly broke out in
  hosannas of praise, and presently a throng of youths stepped out from the
  crowd to sing grateful hymns of appreciation that the profane and profiteering
  merchandisers had been ejected from the sacred temple. By this time certain of
  the priests had arrived on the scene, and one of them said to Jesus, "Do you
  not hear what the children of the Levites say?" And the Master replied, "Have
  you never read, `Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings has praise been
  perfected'?" And all the rest of that day while Jesus taught, guards set by
  the people stood watch at every archway, and they would not permit anyone to
  carry even an empty vessel across the temple courts.



  173:1.9 When the chief priests and the scribes heard about these happenings,
  they were dumfounded. All the more they feared the Master, and all the more
  they determined to destroy him. But they were nonplused. They did not know how
  to accomplish his death, for they greatly feared the multitudes, who were now
  so outspoken in their approval of his overthrow of the profane profiteers. And
  all this day, a day of quiet and peace in the temple courts, the people heard
  Jesus' teaching and literally hung on his words.

  173:1.10 This surprising act of Jesus was beyond the comprehension of his
  apostles. They were so taken aback by this sudden and unexpected move of their
  Master that they remained throughout the whole episode huddled together near
  the speaker's stand; they never lifted a hand to further this cleansing of the
  temple. If this spectacular event had occurred the day before, at the time of
  Jesus' triumphal arrival at the temple at the termination of his tumultuous
  procession through the gates of the city, all the while loudly acclaimed by
  the multitude, they would have been ready for it, but coming as it did, they
  were wholly unprepared to participate.

  173:1.11 This cleansing of the temple discloses the Master's attitude toward
  commercializing the practices of religion as well as his detestation of all
  forms of unfairness and profiteering at the expense of the poor and the
  unlearned. This episode also demonstrates that Jesus did not look with
  approval upon the refusal to employ force to protect the majority of any given
  human group against the unfair and enslaving practices of unjust minorities
  who may be able to entrench themselves behind political, financial, or
  ecclesiastical power. Shrewd, wicked, and designing men are not to be
  permitted to organize themselves for the exploitation and oppression of those
  who, because of their idealism, are not disposed to resort to force for self-
  protection or for the furtherance of their laudable life projects.





2. CHALLENGING THE MASTER'S AUTHORITY

  173:2.1 On Sunday the triumphal entry into Jerusalem so overawed the Jewish
  leaders that they refrained from placing Jesus under arrest. Today, this
  spectacular cleansing of the temple likewise effectively postponed the
  Master's apprehension. Day by day the rulers of the Jews were becoming more
  and more determined to destroy him, but they were distraught by two fears,
  which conspired to delay the hour of striking. The chief priests and the
  scribes were unwilling to arrest Jesus in public for fear the multitude might
  turn upon them in a fury of resentment; they also dreaded the possibility of
  the Roman guards being called upon to quell a popular uprising.

  173:2.2 At the noon session of the Sanhedrin it was unanimously agreed that
  Jesus must be speedily destroyed, inasmuch as no friend of the Master attended
  this meeting. But they could not agree as to when and how he should be taken
  into custody. Finally they agreed upon appointing five groups to go out among
  the people and seek to entangle him in his teaching or otherwise to discredit
  him in the sight of those who listened to his instruction. Accordingly, about
  two o'clock, when Jesus had just begun his discourse on "The Liberty of
  Sonship," a group of these elders of Israel made their way up near Jesus and,
  interrupting him in the customary manner, asked this question: "By what
  authority do you do these things? Who gave you this authority?"

  173:2.3 It was altogether proper that the temple rulers and the officers of
  the Jewish Sanhedrin should ask this question of anyone who presumed to teach
  and perform in the extraordinary manner which had been characteristic of
  Jesus, especially as concerned his recent conduct in clearing the temple of
  all commerce. These traders and money-changers all operated by direct license
  from the highest rulers, and a percentage of their gains was supposed to go
  directly into the temple treasury. Do not forget that authority was the
  watchword of all Jewry. The prophets were always stirring up trouble because
  they so boldly presumed to teach without authority, without having been duly
  instructed in the rabbinic academies and subsequently regularly ordained by
  the Sanhedrin. Lack of this authority in pretentious public teaching was
  looked upon as indicating either ignorant presumption or open rebellion. At
  this time only the Sanhedrin could ordain an elder or teacher, and such a
  ceremony had to take place in the presence of at least three persons who had
  previously been so ordained. Such an ordination conferred the title of "rabbi"
  upon the teacher and also qualified him to act as a judge, "binding and
  loosing such matters as might be brought to him for adjudication."

  173:2.4 The rulers of the temple came before Jesus at this afternoon hour
  challenging not only his teaching but his acts. Jesus well knew that these
  very men had long publicly taught that his authority for teaching was Satanic,
  and that all his mighty works had been wrought by the power of the prince of
  devils. Therefore did the Master begin his answer to their question by asking
  them a counter-question. Said Jesus: "I would also like to ask you one
  question which, if you will answer me, I likewise will tell you by what
  authority I do these works. The baptism of John, whence was it? Did John get
  his authority from heaven or from men?"

  173:2.5 And when his questioners heard this, they withdrew to one side to take
  counsel among themselves as to what answer they might give. They had thought
  to embarrass Jesus before the multitude, but now they found themselves much
  confused before all who were assembled at that time in the temple court. And
  their discomfiture was all the more apparent when they returned to Jesus,
  saying: "Concerning the baptism of John, we cannot answer; we do not know."
  And they so answered the Master because they had reasoned among themselves: If
  we shall say from heaven, then will he say, Why did you not believe him, and
  perchance will add that he received his authority from John; and if we shall
  say from men, then might the multitude turn upon us, for most of them hold
  that John was a prophet; and so they were compelled to come before Jesus and
  the people confessing that they, the religious teachers and leaders of Israel,
  could not (or would not) express an opinion about John's mission. And when
  they had spoken, Jesus, looking down upon them, said, "Neither will I tell you
  by what authority I do these things."



  173:2.6 Jesus never intended to appeal to John for his authority; John had
  never been ordained by the Sanhedrin. Jesus' authority was in himself and in
  his Father's eternal supremacy.

  173:2.7 In employing this method of dealing with his adversaries, Jesus did
  not mean to dodge the question. At first it may seem that he was guilty of a
  masterly evasion, but it was not so. Jesus was never disposed to take unfair
  advantage of even his enemies. In this apparent evasion he really supplied all
  his hearers with the answer to the Pharisees' question as to the authority
  behind his mission. They had asserted that he performed by authority of the
  prince of devils. Jesus had repeatedly asserted that all his teaching and
  works were by the power and authority of his Father in heaven. This the Jewish
  leaders refused to accept and were seeking to corner him into admitting that
  he was an irregular teacher since he had never been sanctioned by the
  Sanhedrin. In answering them as he did, while not claiming authority from
  John, he so satisfied the people with the inference that the effort of his
  enemies to ensnare him was effectively turned upon themselves and was much to
  their discredit in the eyes of all present.

  173:2.8 And it was this genius of the Master for dealing with his adversaries
  that made them so afraid of him. They attempted no more questions that day;
  they retired to take further counsel among themselves. But the people were not
  slow to discern the dishonesty and insincerity in these questions asked by the
  Jewish rulers. Even the common folk could not fail to distinguish between the
  moral majesty of the Master and the designing hypocrisy of his enemies. But
  the cleansing of the temple had brought the Sadducees over to the side of the
  Pharisees in perfecting the plan to destroy Jesus. And the Sadducees now
  represented a majority of the Sanhedrin.





3. PARABLE OF THE TWO SONS

  173:3.1 As the caviling Pharisees stood there in silence before Jesus, he
  looked down on them and said: "Since you are in doubt about John's mission and
  arrayed in enmity against the teaching and the works of the Son of Man, give
  ear while I tell you a parable: A certain great and respected landholder had
  two sons, and desiring the help of his sons in the management of his large
  estates, he came to one of them, saying, `Son, go work today in my vineyard.'
  And this unthinking son answered his father, saying, `I will not go'; but
  afterward he repented and went. When he had found his older son, likewise he
  said to him, `Son, go work in my vineyard.' And this hypocritical and
  unfaithful son answered, `Yes, my father, I will go.' But when his father had
  departed, he went not. Let me ask you, which of these sons really did his
  father's will?"

  173:3.2 And the people spoke with one accord, saying, "The first son." And
  then said Jesus: "Even so; and now do I declare that the publicans and
  harlots, even though they appear to refuse the call to repentance, shall see
  the error of their way and go on into the kingdom of God before you, who make
  great pretensions of serving the Father in heaven while you refuse to do the
  works of the Father. It was not you, the Pharisees and scribes, who believed
  John, but rather the publicans and sinners; neither do you believe my
  teaching, but the common people hear my words gladly."

  173:3.3 Jesus did not despise the Pharisees and Sadducees personally. It was
  their systems of teaching and practice which he sought to discredit. He was
  hostile to no man, but here was occurring the inevitable clash between a new
  and living religion of the spirit and the older religion of ceremony,
  tradition, and authority.

  173:3.4 All this time the twelve apostles stood near the Master, but they did
  not in any manner participate in these transactions. Each one of the twelve
  was reacting in his own peculiar way to the events of these closing days of
  Jesus' ministry in the flesh, and each one likewise remained obedient to the
  Master's injunction to refrain from all public teaching and preaching during
  this Passover week.





4. PARABLE OF THE ABSENT LANDLORD

  173:4.1 When the chief Pharisees and the scribes who had sought to entangle
  Jesus with their questions had finished listening to the story of the two
  sons, they withdrew to take further counsel, and the Master, turning his
  attention to the listening multitude, told another parable:



  173:4.2 "There was a good man who was a householder, and he planted a
  vineyard. He set a hedge about it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a
  watchtower for the guards. Then he let this vineyard out to tenants while he
  went on a long journey into another country. And when the season of the fruits
  drew near, he sent servants to the tenants to receive his rental. But they
  took counsel among themselves and refused to give these servants the fruits
  due their master; instead, they fell upon his servants, beating one, stoning
  another, and sending the others away empty-handed. And when the householder
  heard about all this, he sent other and more trusted servants to deal with
  these wicked tenants, and these they wounded and also treated shamefully. And
  then the householder sent his favorite servant, his steward, and him they
  killed. And still, in patience and with forbearance, he dispatched many other
  servants, but none would they receive. Some they beat, others they killed, and
  when the householder had been so dealt with, he decided to send his son to
  deal with these ungrateful tenants, saying to himself, `They may mistreat my
  servants, but they will surely show respect for my beloved son.' But when
  these unrepentant and wicked tenants saw the son, they reasoned among
  themselves: `This is the heir; come, let us kill him and then the inheritance
  will be ours.' So they laid hold on him, and after casting him out of the
  vineyard, they killed him. When the lord of that vineyard shall hear how they
  have rejected and killed his son, what will he do to those ungrateful and
  wicked tenants?"



  173:4.3 And when the people heard this parable and the question Jesus asked,
  they answered, "He will destroy those miserable men and let out his vineyard
  to other and honest farmers who will render to him the fruits in their
  season." And when some of them who heard perceived that this parable referred
  to the Jewish nation and its treatment of the prophets and to the impending
  rejection of Jesus and the gospel of the kingdom, they said in sorrow, "God
  forbid that we should go on doing these things."

  173:4.4 Jesus saw a group of the Sadducees and Pharisees making their way
  through the crowd, and he paused for a moment until they drew near him, when
  he said: "You know how your fathers rejected the prophets, and you well know
  that you are set in your hearts to reject the Son of Man." And then, looking
  with searching gaze upon those priests and elders who were standing near him,
  Jesus said: "Did you never read in the Scripture about the stone which the
  builders rejected, and which, when the people had discovered it, was made into
  the cornerstone? And so once more do I warn you that, if you continue to
  reject this gospel, presently will the kingdom of God be taken away from you
  and be given to a people willing to receive the good news and to bring forth
  the fruits of the spirit. And there is a mystery about this stone, seeing that
  whoso falls upon it, while he is thereby broken in pieces, shall be saved; but
  on whomsoever this stone falls, he will be ground to dust and his ashes
  scattered to the four winds."

  173:4.5 When the Pharisees heard these words, they understood that Jesus
  referred to themselves and the other Jewish leaders. They greatly desired to
  lay hold on him then and there, but they feared the multitude. However, they
  were so angered by the Master's words that they withdrew and held further
  counsel among themselves as to how they might bring about his death. And that
  night both the Sadducees and the Pharisees joined hands in the plan to entrap
  him the next day.





5. PARABLE OF THE MARRIAGE FEAST

  173:5.1 After the scribes and rulers had withdrawn, Jesus addressed himself
  again to the assembled crowd and spoke the parable of the wedding feast. He
  said:



  173:5.2 "The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a certain king who made a
  marriage feast for his son and dispatched messengers to call those who had
  previously been invited to the feast to come, saying, `Everything is ready for
  the marriage supper at the king's palace.' Now, many of those who had once
  promised to attend, at this time refused to come. When the king heard of these
  rejections of his invitation, he sent other servants and messengers, saying:
  `Tell all those who were bidden, to come, for, behold, my dinner is ready. My
  oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all is in readiness for the celebration
  of the forthcoming marriage of my son.' But again did the thoughtless make
  light of this call of their king, and they went their ways, one to the farm,
  another to the pottery, and others to their merchandise. Still others were not
  content thus to slight the king's call, but in open rebellion they laid hands
  on the king's messengers and shamefully mistreated them, even killing some of
  them. And when the king perceived that his chosen guests, even those who had
  accepted his preliminary invitation and had promised to attend the wedding
  feast, had finally rejected his call and in rebellion had assaulted and slain
  his chosen messengers, he was exceedingly wroth. And then this insulted king
  ordered out his armies and the armies of his allies and instructed them to
  destroy these rebellious murderers and to burn down their city.

  173:5.3 "And when he had punished those who spurned his invitation, he
  appointed yet another day for the wedding feast and said to his messengers:
  `They who were first bidden to the wedding were not worthy; so go now into the
  parting of the ways and into the highways and even beyond the borders of the
  city, and as many as you shall find, bid even these strangers to come in and
  attend this wedding feast.' And then these servants went out into the highways
  and the out-of-the-way places, and they gathered together as many as they
  found, good and bad, rich and poor, so that at last the wedding chamber was
  filled with willing guests. When all was ready, the king came in to view his
  guests, and much to his surprise he saw there a man without a wedding garment.
  The king , since he had freely provided wedding garments for all his guests,
  addressing this man, said: `Friend, how is it that you come into my guest
  chamber on this occasion without a wedding garment?' And this unprepared man
  was speechless. Then said the king to his servants: `Cast out this thoughtless
  guest from my house to share the lot of all the others who have spurned my
  hospitality and rejected my call. I will have none here except those who
  delight to accept my invitation, and who do me the honor to wear those guest
  garments so freely provided for all.'"



  173:5.4 After speaking this parable, Jesus was about to dismiss the multitude
  when a sympathetic believer, making his way through the crowds toward him,
  asked: "But, Master, how shall we know about these things? how shall we be
  ready for the king's invitation? what sign will you give us whereby we shall
  know that you are the Son of God?" And when the Master heard this, he said,
  "Only one sign shall be given you." And then, pointing to his own body, he
  continued, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." But
  they did not understand him, and as they dispersed, they talked among
  themselves, saying, "Almost fifty years has this temple been in building, and
  yet he says he will destroy it and raise it up in three days." Even his own
  apostles did not comprehend the significance of this utterance, but
  subsequently, after his resurrection, they recalled what he had said.

  173:5.5 About four o'clock this afternoon Jesus beckoned to his apostles and
  indicated that he desired to leave the temple and to go to Bethany for their
  evening meal and a night of rest. On the way up Olivet Jesus instructed
  Andrew, Philip, and Thomas that, on the morrow, they should establish a camp
  nearer the city which they could occupy during the remainder of the Passover
  week. In compliance with this instruction the following morning they pitched
  their tents in the hillside ravine overlooking the public camping park of
  Gethsemane, on a plot of ground belonging to Simon of Bethany.

  173:5.6 Again it was a silent group of Jews who made their way up the western
  slope of Olivet on this Monday night. These twelve men, as never before, were
  beginning to sense that something tragic was about to happen. While the
  dramatic cleansing of the temple during the early morning had aroused their
  hopes of seeing the Master assert himself and manifest his mighty powers, the
  events of the entire afternoon only operated as an anticlimax in that they all
  pointed to the certain rejection of Jesus' teaching by the Jewish authorities.
  The apostles were gripped by suspense and were held in the firm grasp of a
  terrible uncertainty. They realized that only a few short days could intervene
  between the events of the day just passed and the crash of an impending doom.
  They all felt that something tremendous was about to happen, but they knew not
  what to expect. They went to their various places for rest, but they slept
  very little. Even the Alpheus twins were at last aroused to the realization
  that the events of the Master's life were moving swiftly toward their final
  culmination.


PAPER 174


 TUESDAY MORNING IN THE TEMPLE

  174:0.1 ABOUT seven o'clock on this Tuesday morning Jesus met the apostles,
  the women's corps, and some two dozen other prominent disciples at the home of
  Simon. At this meeting he said farewell to Lazarus, giving him that
  instruction which led him so soon to flee to Philadelphia in Perea, where he
  later became connected with the missionary movement having its headquarters in
  that city. Jesus also said good-bye to the aged Simon, and gave his parting
  advice to the women's corps, as he never again formally addressed them.

  174:0.2 This morning he greeted each of the twelve with a personal salutation.
  To Andrew he said: "Be not dismayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold
  on your brethren and see that they do not find you downcast." To Peter he
  said: "Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel.
  Establish yourself on the spiritual foundations of the eternal rocks." To
  James he said: "Falter not because of outward appearances. Remain firm in your
  faith, and you shall soon know of the reality of that which you believe." To
  John he said: "Be gentle; love even your enemies; be tolerant. And remember
  that I have trusted you with many things." To Nathaniel he said: "Judge not by
  appearances; remain firm in your faith when all appears to vanish; be true to
  your commission as an ambassador of the kingdom." To Philip he said: "Be
  unmoved by the events now impending. Remain unshaken, even when you cannot see
  the way. Be loyal to your oath of consecration." To Matthew he said: "Forget
  not the mercy that received you into the kingdom. Let no man cheat you of your
  eternal reward. As you have withstood the inclinations of the mortal nature,
  be willing to be steadfast." To Thomas he said: "No matter how difficult it
  may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am
  able to finish the work I have begun, and that I shall eventually see all of
  my faithful ambassadors in the kingdom beyond." To the Alpheus twins he said:
  "Do not allow the things which you cannot understand to crush you. Be true to
  the affections of your hearts and put not your trust in either great men or
  the changing attitude of the people. Stand by your brethren." And to Simon
  Zelotes he said: "Simon, you may be crushed by disappointment, but your spirit
  shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn
  from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true realities of the spirit and
  cease to be attracted by unreal and material shadows."

And to Judas Iscariot he said: "Judas, I have loved you and have prayed that you
would love your brethren. Be not weary in well doing; and I would warn you to
beware the slippery paths of flattery and the poison darts of ridicule."

  174:0.3 And when he had concluded these greetings, he departed for Jerusalem
  with Andrew, Peter, James, and John as the other apostles set about the
  establishment of the Gethsemane camp, where they were to go that night, and
  where they made their headquarters for the remainder of the Master's life in
  the flesh. About halfway down the slope of Olivet Jesus paused and visited
  more than an hour with the four apostles.





1. DIVINE FORGIVENESS

  174:1.1 For several days Peter and James had been engaged in discussing their
  differences of opinion about the Master's teaching regarding the forgiveness
  of sin. They had both agreed to lay the matter before Jesus, and Peter
  embraced this occasion as a fitting opportunity for securing the Master's
  counsel. Accordingly, Simon Peter broke in on the conversation dealing with
  the differences between praise and worship, by asking: "Master, James and I
  are not in accord regarding your teachings having to do with the forgiveness
  of sin. James claims you teach that the Father forgives us even before we ask
  him, and I maintain that repentance and confession must precede the
  forgiveness. Which of us is right? what do you say?"

  174:1.2 After a short silence Jesus looked significantly at all four and
  answered: "My brethren, you err in your opinions because you do not comprehend
  the nature of those intimate and loving relations between the creature and the
  Creator, between man and God. You fail to grasp that understanding sympathy
  which the wise parent entertains for his immature and sometimes erring child.
  It is indeed doubtful whether intelligent and affectionate parents are ever
  called upon to forgive an average and normal child. Understanding
  relationships associated with attitudes of love effectively prevent all those
  estrangements which later necessitate the readjustment of repentance by the
  child with forgiveness by the parent.

  174:1.3 "A part of every father lives in the child. The father enjoys priority
  and superiority of understanding in all matters connected with the child-
  parent relationship. The parent is able to view the immaturity of the child in
  the light of the more advanced parental maturity, the riper experience of the
  older partner. With the earthly child and the heavenly Father, the divine
  parent possesses infinity and divinity of sympathy and capacity for loving
  understanding. Divine forgiveness is inevitable; it is inherent and
  inalienable in God's infinite understanding, in his perfect knowledge of all
  that concerns the mistaken judgment and erroneous choosing of the child.
  Divine justice is so eternally fair that it unfailingly embodies understanding
  mercy.

  174:1.4 "When a wise man understands the inner impulses of his fellows, he
  will love them. And when you love your brother, you have already forgiven him.
  This capacity to understand man's nature and forgive his apparent wrongdoing
  is Godlike. If you are wise parents, this is the way you will love and
  understand your children, even forgive them when transient misunderstanding
  has apparently separated you. The child, being immature and lacking in the
  fuller understanding of the depth of the child-father relationship, must
  frequently feel a sense of guilty separation from a father's full approval,
  but the true father is never conscious of any such separation. Sin is an
  experience of creature consciousness; it is not a part of God's consciousness.

  174:1.5 "Your inability or unwillingness to forgive your fellows is the
  measure of your immaturity, your failure to attain adult sympathy,
  understanding, and love. You hold grudges and nurse vengefulness in direct
  proportion to your ignorance of the inner nature and true longings of your
  children and your fellow beings. Love is the outworking of the divine and
  inner urge of life. It is founded on understanding, nurtured by unselfish
  service, and perfected in wisdom."





2. QUESTIONS BY THE JEWISH RULERS

  174:2.1 On Monday evening there had been held a council between the Sanhedrin
  and some fifty additional leaders selected from among the scribes, Pharisees,
  and the Sadducees. It was the consensus of this meeting that it would be
  dangerous to arrest Jesus in public because of his hold upon the affections of
  the common people. It was also the opinion of the majority that a determined
  effort should be made to discredit him in the eyes of the multitude before he
  should be arrested and brought to trial. Accordingly, several groups of
  learned men were designated to be on hand the next morning in the temple to
  undertake to entrap him with difficult questions and otherwise to seek to
  embarrass him before the people. At last, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and even
  the Herodians were all united in this effort to discredit Jesus in the eyes of
  the Passover multitudes.

  174:2.2 Tuesday morning, when Jesus arrived in the temple court and began to
  teach, he had uttered but few words when a group of the younger students from
  the academies, who had been rehearsed for this purpose, came forward and by
  their spokesman addressed Jesus: "Master, we know you are a righteous teacher,
  and we know that you proclaim the ways of truth, and that you serve only God,
  for you fear no man, and that you are no respecter of persons. We are only
  students, and we would know the truth about a matter which troubles us; our
  difficulty is this: Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar? Shall we
  give or shall we not give?" Jesus, perceiving their hypocrisy and craftiness,
  said to them: "Why do you thus come to tempt me? Show me the tribute money,
  and I will answer you." And when they handed him a denarius, he looked at it
  and said, "Whose image and superscription does this coin bear?" And when they
  answered him, "Caesar's," Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are
  Caesar's and render to God the things that are God's."

  174:2.3 When he had thus answered these young scribes and their Herodian
  accomplices, they withdrew from his presence, and the people, even the
  Sadducees, enjoyed their discomfiture. Even the youths who had endeavored to
  entrap him marveled greatly at the unexpected sagacity of the Master's answer.

  174:2.4 The previous day the rulers had sought to trip him before the
  multitude on matters of ecclesiastical authority, and having failed, they now
  sought to involve him in a damaging discussion of civil authority. Both Pilate
  and Herod were in Jerusalem at this time, and Jesus' enemies conjectured that,
  if he would dare to advise against the payment of tribute to Caesar, they
  could go at once before the Roman authorities and charge him with sedition. On
  the other hand, if he should advise the payment of tribute in so many words,
  they rightly calculated that such a pronouncement would greatly wound the
  national pride of his Jewish hearers, thereby alienating the good will and
  affection of the multitude.

  174:2.5 In all this the enemies of Jesus were defeated since it was a well-
  known ruling of the Sanhedrin, made for the guidance of the Jews dispersed
  among the gentile nations, that the "right of coinage carried with it the
  right to levy taxes." In this manner Jesus avoided their trap. To have
  answered "No" to their question would have been equivalent to inciting
  rebellion; to have answered "Yes" would have shocked the deep-rooted
  nationalist sentiments of that day. The Master did not evade the question; he
  merely employed the wisdom of making a double reply. Jesus was never evasive,
  but he was always wise in his dealings with those who sought to harass and
  destroy him.





3. THE SADDUCEES AND THE RESURRECTION

  174:3.1 Before Jesus could get started with his teaching, another group came
  forward to question him, this time a company of the learned and crafty
  Sadducees. Their spokesman, drawing near to him, said: "Master, Moses said
  that if a married man should die, leaving no children, his brother should take
  the wife and raise up seed for the deceased brother. Now there occurred a case
  where a certain man who had six brothers died childless; his next brother took
  his wife but also soon died, leaving no children. Likewise did the second
  brother take the wife, but he also died leaving no offspring. And so on until
  all six of the brothers had had her, and all six of them passed on without
  leaving children. And then, after them all, the woman herself died. Now, what
  we would like to ask you is this: In the resurrection whose wife will she be
  since all seven of these brothers had her?"

  174:3.2 Jesus knew, and so did the people, that these Sadducees were not
  sincere in asking this question because it was not likely that such a case
  would really occur; and besides, this practice of the brothers of a dead man
  seeking to beget children for him was practically a dead letter at this time
  among the Jews. Nevertheless, Jesus condescended to reply to their mischievous
  question. He said: "You all do err in asking such questions because you know
  neither the Scriptures nor the living power of God. You know that the sons of
  this world can marry and are given in marriage, but you do not seem to
  understand that they who are accounted worthy to attain the worlds to come,
  through the resurrection of the righteous, neither marry nor are given in
  marriage. Those who experience the resurrection from the dead are more like
  the angels of heaven, and they never die. These resurrected ones are eternally
  the sons of God; they are the children of light resurrected into the progress
  of eternal life. And even your Father Moses understood this, for, in
  connection with his experiences at the burning bush, he heard the Father say,
  `I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' And so,
  along with Moses, do I declare that my Father is not the God of the dead but
  of the living. In him you all do live, reproduce, and possess your mortal
  existence."

  174:3.3 When Jesus had finished answering these questions, the Sadducees
  withdrew, and some of the Pharisees so far forgot themselves as to exclaim,
  "True, true, Master, you have well answered these unbelieving Sadducees." The
  Sadducees dared not ask him any more questions, and the common people marveled
  at the wisdom of his teaching.

  174:3.4 Jesus appealed only to Moses in his encounter with the Sadducees
  because this religio-political sect acknowledged the validity of only the five
  so-called Books of Moses; they did not allow that the teachings of the
  prophets were admissible as a basis of doctrinal dogmas. The Master in his
  answer, though positively affirming the fact of the survival of mortal
  creatures by the technique of the resurrection, did not in any sense speak
  approvingly of the Pharisaic beliefs in the resurrection of the literal human
  body. The point Jesus wished to emphasize was: That the Father had said, "I am
  the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," not I was their God.

  174:3.5 The Sadducees had thought to subject Jesus to the withering influence
  of ridicule, knowing full well that persecution in public would most certainly
  create further sympathy for him in the minds of the multitude.





4. THE GREAT COMMANDMENT



  174:4.1 Another group of Sadducees had been instructed to ask Jesus entangling
  questions about angels, but when they beheld the fate of their comrades who
  had sought to entrap him with questions concerning the resurrection, they very
  wisely decided to hold their peace; they retired without asking a question. It
  was the prearranged plan of the confederated Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees,
  and Herodians to fill up the entire day with these entangling questions,
  hoping thereby to discredit Jesus before the people and at the same time
  effectively to prevent his having any time for the proclamation of his
  disturbing teachings.

  174:4.2 Then came forward one of the groups of the Pharisees to ask harassing
  questions, and the spokesman, signaling to Jesus, said: "Master, I am a
  lawyer, and I would like to ask you which, in your opinion, is the greatest
  commandment?" Jesus answered: "There is but one commandment, and that one is
  the greatest of all, and that commandment is: `Hear O Israel, the Lord our
  God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
  and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.' This
  is the first and great commandment. And the second commandment is like this
  first; indeed, it springs directly therefrom, and it is: `You shall love your
  neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these; on
  these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

  174:4.3 When the lawyer perceived that Jesus had answered not only in
  accordance with the highest concept of Jewish religion, but that he had also
  answered wisely in the sight of the assembled multitude, he thought it the
  better part of valor openly to commend the Master's reply. Accordingly, he
  said: "Of a truth, Master, you have well said that God is one and there is
  none beside him; and that to love him with all the heart, understanding, and
  strength, and also to love one's neighbor as one's self, is the first and
  great commandment; and we are agreed that this great commandment is much more
  to be regarded than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices." When the lawyer
  answered thus discreetly, Jesus looked down upon him and said, "My friend, I
  perceive that you are not far from the kingdom of God."

  174:4.4 Jesus spoke the truth when he referred to this lawyer as being "not
  far from the kingdom," for that very night he went out to the Master's camp
  near Gethsemane, professed faith in the gospel of the kingdom, and was
  baptized by Josiah, one of the disciples of Abner.

  174:4.5 Two or three other groups of the scribes and Pharisees were present
  and had intended to ask questions, but they were either disarmed by Jesus'
  answer to the lawyer, or they were deterred by the discomfiture of all who had
  undertaken to ensnare him. After this no man dared to ask him another question
  in public.

  174:4.6 When no more questions were forthcoming, and as the noon hour was
  near, Jesus did not resume his teaching but was content merely to ask the
  Pharisees and their associates a question. Said Jesus: "Since you ask no more
  questions, I would like to ask you one. What do you think of the Deliverer?
  That is, whose son is he?" After a brief pause one of the scribes answered,
  "The Messiah is the son of David." And since Jesus knew that there had been
  much debate, even among his own disciples, as to whether or not he was the son
  of David, he asked this further question: "If the Deliverer is indeed the son
  of David, how is it that, in the Psalm which you accredit to David, he
  himself, speaking in the spirit, says, `The Lord said to my lord, sit on my
  right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.' If David
  calls him Lord, how then can he be his son?" Although the rulers, the scribes,
  and the chief priests made no reply to this question, they likewise refrained
  from asking him any more questions in an effort to entangle him. They never
  answered this question which Jesus put to them, but after the Master's death
  they attempted to escape the difficulty by changing the interpretation of this
  Psalm so as to make it refer to Abraham instead of the Messiah. Others sought
  to escape the dilemma by disallowing that David was the author of this so-
  called Messianic Psalm.

  174:4.7 A short time back the Pharisees had enjoyed the manner in which the
  Sadducees had been silenced by the Master; now the Sadducees were delighted by
  the failure of the Pharisees; but such rivalry was only momentary; they
  speedily forgot their time-honored differences in the united effort to stop
  Jesus' teachings and doings. But throughout all of these experiences the
  common people heard him gladly.





5. THE INQUIRING GREEKS

  174:5.1 About noontime, as Philip was purchasing supplies for the new camp
  which was that day being established near Gethsemane, he was accosted by a
  delegation of strangers, a group of believing Greeks from Alexandria, Athens,
  and Rome, whose spokesman said to the apostle: "You have been pointed out to
  us by those who know you; so we come to you, Sir, with the request to see
  Jesus, your Master." Philip was taken by surprise thus to meet these prominent
  and inquiring Greek gentiles in the market place, and, since Jesus had so
  explicitly charged all of the twelve not to engage in any public teaching
  during the Passover week, he was a bit perplexed as to the right way to handle
  this matter. He was also disconcerted because these men were foreign gentiles.
  If they had been Jews or near-by and familiar gentiles, he would not have
  hesitated so markedly. What he did was this: He asked these Greeks to remain
  right where they were. As he hastened away, they supposed that he went in
  search of Jesus, but in reality he hurried off to the home of Joseph, where he
  knew Andrew and the other apostles were at lunch; and calling Andrew out, he
  explained the purpose of his coming, and then, accompanied by Andrew, he
  returned to the waiting Greeks.

  174:5.2 Since Philip had about finished the purchasing of supplies, he and
  Andrew returned with the Greeks to the home of Joseph, where Jesus received
  them; and they sat near while he spoke to his apostles and a number of leading
  disciples assembled at this luncheon. Said Jesus:

  174:5.3 "My Father sent me to this world to reveal his loving-kindness to the
  children of men, but those to whom I first came have refused to receive me.
  True, indeed, many of you have believed my gospel for yourselves, but the
  children of Abraham and their leaders are about to reject me, and in so doing
  they will reject Him who sent me. I have freely proclaimed the gospel of
  salvation to this people; I have told them of sonship with joy, liberty, and
  life more abundant in the spirit. My Father has done many wonderful works
  among these fear-ridden sons of men. But truly did the Prophet Isaiah refer to
  this people when he wrote: `Lord, who has believed our teachings? And to whom
  has the Lord been revealed?' Truly have the leaders of my people deliberately
  blinded their eyes that they see not, and hardened their hearts lest they
  believe and be saved. All these years have I sought to heal them of their
  unbelief that they might be recipients of the Father's eternal salvation. I
  know that not all have failed me; some of you have indeed believed my message.
  In this room now are a full score of men who were once members of the
  Sanhedrin, or who were high in the councils of the nation, albeit even some of
  you still shrink from open confession of the truth lest they cast you out of
  the synagogue. Some of you are tempted to love the glory of men more than the
  glory of God. But I am constrained to show forbearance since I fear for the
  safety and loyalty of even some of those who have been so long near me, and
  who have lived so close by my side.

  174:5.4 "In this banquet chamber I perceive there are assembled Jews and
  gentiles in about equal numbers, and I would address you as the first and last
  of such a group that I may instruct in the affairs of the kingdom before I go
  to my Father."

  174:5.5 These Greeks had been in faithful attendance upon Jesus' teaching in
  the temple. On Monday evening they had held a conference at the home of
  Nicodemus, which lasted until the dawn of day, and thirty of them had elected
  to enter the kingdom.

  174:5.6 As Jesus stood before them at this time, he perceived the end of one
  dispensation and the beginning of another. Turning his attention to the
  Greeks, the Master said:

  174:5.7 "He who believes this gospel, believes not merely in me but in Him who
  sent me. When you look upon me, you see not only the Son of Man but also Him
  who sent me. I am the light of the world, and whosoever will believe my
  teaching shall no longer abide in darkness. If you gentiles will hear me, you
  shall receive the words of life and shall enter forthwith into the joyous
  liberty of the truth of sonship with God. If my fellow countrymen, the Jews,
  choose to reject me and to refuse my teachings, I will not sit in judgment on
  them, for I came not to judge the world but to offer it salvation.
  Nevertheless, they who reject me and refuse to receive my teaching shall be
  brought to judgment in due season by my Father and those whom he has appointed
  to sit in judgment on such as reject the gift of mercy and the truths of
  salvation. Remember, all of you, that I speak not of myself, but that I have
  faithfully declared to you that which the Father commanded I should reveal to
  the children of men. And these words which the Father directed me to speak to
  the world are words of divine truth, everlasting mercy, and eternal life.

  174:5.8 "But to both Jew and gentile I declare the hour has about come when
  the Son of Man will be glorified. You well know that, except a grain of wheat
  falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies in good soil,
  it springs up again to life and bears much fruit. He who selfishly loves his
  life stands in danger of losing it; but he who is willing to lay down his life
  for my sake and the gospel's shall enjoy a more abundant existence on earth
  and in heaven, life eternal. If you will truly follow me, even after I have
  gone to my Father, then shall you become my disciples and the sincere servants
  of your fellow mortals.

  174:5.9 "I know my hour is approaching, and I am troubled. I perceive that my
  people are determined to spurn the kingdom, but I am rejoiced to receive these
  truth-seeking gentiles who come here today inquiring for the way of light.
  Nevertheless, my heart aches for my people, and my soul is distraught by that
  which lies just before me. What shall I say as I look ahead and discern what
  is about to befall me? Shall I say, Father save me from this awful hour? For
  this very purpose have I come into the world and even to this hour. Rather
  will I say, and pray that you will join me: Father, glorify your name; your
  will be done."

  174:5.10 When Jesus had thus spoken, the Personalized Adjuster of his
  indwelling during prebaptismal times appeared before him, and as he paused
  noticeably, this now mighty spirit of the Father's representation spoke to
  Jesus of Nazareth, saying: "I have glorified my name in your bestowals many
  times, and I will glorify it once more."

  174:5.11 While the Jews and gentiles here assembled heard no voice, they could
  not fail to discern that the Master had paused in his speaking while a message
  came to him from some superhuman source. They all said, every man to the one
  who was by him, "An angel has spoken to him."

  174:5.12 Then Jesus continued to speak: "All this has not happened for my sake
  but for yours. I know of a certainty that the Father will receive me and
  accept my mission in your behalf, but it is needful that you be encouraged and
  be made ready for the fiery trial which is just ahead. Let me assure you that
  victory shall eventually crown our united efforts to enlighten the world and
  liberate mankind. The old order is bringing itself to judgment; the Prince of
  this world I have cast down; and all men shall become free by the light of the
  spirit which I will pour out upon all flesh after I have ascended to my Father
  in heaven.

  174:5.13 "And now I declare to you that I, if I be lifted up on earth and in
  your lives, will draw all men to myself and into the fellowship of my Father.
  You have believed that the Deliverer would abide on earth forever, but I
  declare that the Son of Man will be rejected by men, and that he will go back
  to the Father. Only a little while will I be with you; only a little time will
  the living light be among this darkened generation. Walk while you have this
  light so that the oncoming darkness and confusion may not overtake you. He who
  walks in the darkness knows not where he goes; but if you will choose to walk
  in the light, you shall all indeed become liberated sons of God. And now, all
  of you, come with me while we go back to the temple and I speak farewell words
  to the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the
  Herodians, and the benighted rulers of Israel."

  174:5.14 Having thus spoken, Jesus led the way over the narrow streets of
  Jerusalem back to the temple. They had just heard the Master say that this was
  to be his farewell discourse in the temple, and they followed him in silence
  and in deep meditation.






PAPER 175


 THE LAST TEMPLE DISCOURSE



  175:0.1 SHORTLY after two o'clock on this Tuesday afternoon, Jesus,
  accompanied by eleven apostles, Joseph of Arimathea, the thirty Greeks, and
  certain other disciples, arrived at the temple and began the delivery of his
  last address in the courts of the sacred edifice. This discourse was intended
  to be his last appeal to the Jewish people and the final indictment of his
  vehement enemies and would-be destroyers -- the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees,
  and the chief rulers of Israel. Throughout the forenoon the various groups had
  had an opportunity to question Jesus; this afternoon no one asked him a
  question.

  175:0.2 As the Master began to speak, the temple court was quiet and orderly.
  The money-changers and the merchandisers had not dared again to enter the
  temple since Jesus and the aroused multitude had driven them out the previous
  day. Before beginning the discourse, Jesus tenderly looked down upon this
  audience which was so soon to hear his farewell public address of mercy to
  mankind coupled with his last denunciation of the false teachers and the
  bigoted rulers of the Jews.





1. THE DISCOURSE



  175:1.1 "This long time have I been with you, going up and down in the land
  proclaiming the Father's love for the children of men, and many have seen the
  light and, by faith, have entered into the kingdom of heaven. In connection
  with this teaching and preaching the Father has done many wonderful works,
  even to the resurrection of the dead. Many sick and afflicted have been made
  whole because they believed; but all of this proclamation of truth and healing
  of disease has not opened the eyes of those who refuse to see light, those who
  are determined to reject this gospel of the kingdom.

  175:1.2 "In every manner consistent with doing my Father's will, I and my
  apostles have done our utmost to live in peace with our brethren, to conform
  with the reasonable requirements of the laws of Moses and the traditions of
  Israel. We have persistently sought peace, but the leaders of Israel will not
  have it. By rejecting the truth of God and the light of heaven, they are
  aligning themselves on the side of error and darkness. There cannot be peace
  between light and darkness, between life and death, between truth and error.

  175:1.3 "Many of you have dared to believe my teachings and have already
  entered into the joy and liberty of the consciousness of sonship with God. And
  you will bear me witness that I have offered this same sonship with God to all
  the Jewish nation, even to these very men who now seek my destruction. And
  even now would my Father receive these blinded teachers and these hypocritical
  leaders if they would only turn to him and accept his mercy. Even now it is
  not too late for this people to receive the word of heaven and to welcome the
  Son of Man.

  175:1.4 "My Father has long dealt in mercy with this people. Generation after
  generation have we sent our prophets to teach and warn them, and generation
  after generation have they killed these heaven-sent teachers. And now do your
  willful high priests and stubborn rulers go right on doing this same thing. As
  Herod brought about the death of John, you likewise now make ready to destroy
  the Son of Man.

  175:1.5 "As long as there is a chance that the Jews will turn to my Father and
  seek salvation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will keep his hands of
  mercy outstretched toward you; but when you have once filled up your cup of
  impenitence, and when once you have finally rejected my Father's mercy, this
  nation will be left to its own counsels, and it shall speedily come to an
  inglorious end. This people was called to become the light of the world, to
  show forth the spiritual glory of a God-knowing race, but you have so far
  departed from the fulfillment of your divine privileges that your leaders are
  about to commit the supreme folly of all the ages in that they are on the
  verge of finally rejecting the gift of God to all men and for all ages -- the
  revelation of the love of the Father in heaven for all his creatures on earth.

  175:1.6 "And when you do once reject this revelation of God to man, the
  kingdom of heaven shall be given to other peoples, to those who will receive
  it with joy and gladness. In the name of the Father who sent me, I solemnly
  warn you that you are about to lose your position in the world as the
  standard-bearers of eternal truth and the custodians of the divine law. I am
  just now offering you your last chance to come forward and repent, to signify
  your intention to seek God with all your hearts and to enter, like little
  children and by sincere faith, into the security and salvation of the kingdom
  of heaven.

  175:1.7 "My Father has long worked for your salvation, and I came down to live
  among you and personally show you the way. Many of both the Jews and the
  Samaritans, and even the gentiles, have believed the gospel of the kingdom,
  but those who should be first to come forward and accept the light of heaven
  have steadfastly refused to believe the revelation of the truth of God -- God
  revealed in man and man uplifted to God.

  175:1.8 "This afternoon my apostles stand here before you in silence, but you
  shall soon hear their voices ringing out with the call to salvation and with
  the urge to unite with the heavenly kingdom as the sons of the living God. And
  now I call to witness these, my disciples and believers in the gospel of the
  kingdom, as well as the unseen messengers by their sides, that I have once
  more offered Israel and her rulers deliverance and salvation. But you all
  behold how the Father's mercy is slighted and how the messengers of truth are
  rejected. Nevertheless, I admonish you that these scribes and Pharisees still
  sit in Moses' seat, and therefore, until the Most Highs who rule in the
  kingdoms of men shall finally overthrow this nation and destroy the place of
  these rulers, I bid you co-operate with these elders in Israel. You are not
  required to unite with them in their plans to destroy the Son of Man, but in
  everything related to the peace of Israel you are to be subject to them. In
  all these matters do whatsoever they bid you and observe the essentials of the
  law but do not pattern after their evil works. Remember, this is the sin of
  these rulers: They say that which is good, but they do it not. You well know
  how these leaders bind heavy burdens on your shoulders, burdens grievous to
  bear, and that they will not lift as much as one finger to help you bear these
  weighty burdens. They have oppressed you with ceremonies and enslaved you by
  traditions.

  175:1.9 "Furthermore, these self-centered rulers delight in doing their good
  works so that they will be seen by men. They make broad their phylacteries and
  enlarge the borders of their official robes. They crave the chief places at
  the feasts and demand the chief seats in the synagogues. They covet laudatory
  salutations in the market places and desire to be called rabbi by all men. And
  even while they seek all this honor from men, they secretly lay hold of
  widows' houses and take profit from the services of the sacred temple. For a
  pretense these hypocrites make long prayers in public and give alms to attract
  the notice of their fellows.

  175:1.10 "While you should honor your rulers and reverence your teachers, you
  should call no man Father in the spiritual sense, for there is one who is your
  Father, even God. Neither should you seek to lord it over your brethren in the
  kingdom. Remember, I have taught you that he who would be greatest among you
  should become the server of all. If you presume to exalt yourselves before
  God, you will certainly be humbled; but whoso truly humbles himself will
  surely be exalted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glorification, but the
  glory of God. Intelligently subordinate your own wills to the will of the
  Father in heaven.

  175:1.11 "Mistake not my words. I bear no malice toward these chief priests
  and rulers who even now seek my destruction; I have no ill will for these
  scribes and Pharisees who reject my teachings. I know that many of you believe
  in secret, and I know you will openly profess your allegiance to the kingdom
  when my hour comes. But how will your rabbis justify themselves since they
  profess to talk with God and then presume to reject and destroy him who comes
  to reveal the Father to the worlds?

  175:1.12 "Woe upon you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You would shut the
  doors of the kingdom of heaven against sincere men because they happen to be
  unlearned in the ways of your teaching. You refuse to enter the kingdom and at
  the same time do everything within your power to prevent all others from
  entering. You stand with your backs to the doors of salvation and fight with
  all who would enter therein.

  175:1.13 "Woe upon you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are! for
  you do indeed encompass land and sea to make one proselyte, and when you have
  succeeded, you are not content until you have made him twofold worse than he
  was as a child of the heathen.

  175:1.14 "Woe upon you, chief priests and rulers who lay hold of the property
  of the poor and demand heavy dues of those who would serve God as they think
  Moses ordained! You who refuse to show mercy, can you hope for mercy in the
  worlds to come?

  175:1.15 "Woe upon you, false teachers, blind guides! What can be expected of
  a nation when the blind lead the blind? They both shall stumble into the pit
  of destruction.

  175:1.16 "Woe upon you who dissimulate when you take an oath! You are
  tricksters since you teach that a man may swear by the temple and break his
  oath, but that whoso swears by the gold in the temple must remain bound. You
  are all fools and blind. You are not even consistent in your dishonesty, for
  which is the greater, the gold or the temple which has supposedly sanctified
  the gold? You also teach that, if a man swears by the altar, it is nothing;
  but that, if one swears by the gift that is upon the altar, then shall he be
  held as a debtor. Again are you blind to the truth, for which is the greater,
  the gift or the altar which sanctifies the gift? How can you justify such
  hypocrisy and dishonesty in the sight of the God of heaven?

  175:1.17 "Woe upon you, scribes and Pharisees and all other hypocrites who
  make sure that they tithe mint, anise, and cumin and at the same time
  disregard the weightier matters of the law -- faith, mercy, and judgment!
  Within reason, the one you ought to have done but not to have left the other
  undone. You are truly blind guides and dumb teachers; you strain out the gnat
  and swallow the camel.

  175:1.18 "Woe upon you, scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites! for you are
  scrupulous to cleanse the outside of the cup and the platter, but within there
  remains the filth of extortion, excesses, and deception. You are spiritually
  blind. Do you not recognize how much better it would be first to cleanse the
  inside of the cup, and then that which spills over would of itself cleanse the
  outside? You wicked reprobates! you make the outward performances of your
  religion to conform with the letter of your interpretation of Moses' law while
  your souls are steeped in iniquity and filled with murder.

  175:1.19 "Woe upon all of you who reject truth and spurn mercy! Many of you
  are like whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful but within are
  full of dead men's bones and all sorts of uncleanness. Even so do you who
  knowingly reject the counsel of God appear outwardly to men as holy and
  righteous, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and iniquity.

  175:1.20 "Woe upon you, false guides of a nation! Over yonder have you built a
  monument to the martyred prophets of old, while you plot to destroy Him of
  whom they spoke. You garnish the tombs of the righteous and flatter yourselves
  that, had you lived in the days of your fathers, you would not have killed the
  prophets; and then in the face of such self-righteous thinking you make ready
  to slay him of whom the prophets spoke, the Son of Man. Inasmuch as you do
  these things, are you witness to yourselves that you are the wicked sons of
  them who slew the prophets. Go on, then, and fill up the cup of your
  condemnation to the full!

  175:1.21 "Woe upon you, children of evil! John did truly call you the
  offspring of vipers, and I ask how can you escape the judgment that John
  pronounced upon you?

  175:1.22 "But even now I offer you in my Father's name mercy and forgiveness;
  even now I proffer the loving hand of eternal fellowship. My Father has sent
  you the wise men and the prophets; some you have persecuted and others you
  have killed. Then appeared John proclaiming the coming of the Son of Man, and
  him you destroyed after many had believed his teaching. And now you make ready
  to shed more innocent blood. Do you not comprehend that a terrible day of
  reckoning will come when the Judge of all the earth shall require of this
  people an accounting for the way they have rejected, persecuted, and destroyed
  these messengers of heaven? Do you not understand that you must account for
  all of this righteous blood, from the first prophet killed down to the times
  of Zechariah, who was slain between the sanctuary and the altar? And if you go
  on in your evil ways, this accounting may be required of this very generation.

  175:1.23 "O Jerusalem and the children of Abraham, you who have stoned the
  prophets and killed the teachers that were sent to you, even now would I
  gather your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings,
  but you will not!

  175:1.24 "And now I take leave of you. You have heard my message and have made
  your decision. Those who have believed my gospel are even now safe within the
  kingdom of God. To you who have chosen to reject the gift of God, I say that
  you will no more see me teaching in the temple. My work for you is done.
  Behold, I now go forth with my children, and your house is left to you
  desolate!"

  175:1.25 And then the Master beckoned his followers to depart from the temple.





2. STATUS OF INDIVIDUAL JEWS



  175:2.1 The fact that the spiritual leaders and the religious teachers of the
  Jewish nation onetime rejected the teachings of Jesus and conspired to bring
  about his cruel death, does not in any manner affect the status of any
  individual Jew in his standing before God. And it should not cause those who
  profess to be followers of the Christ to be prejudiced against the Jew as a
  fellow mortal. The Jews, as a nation, as a sociopolitical group, paid in full
  the terrible price of rejecting the Prince of Peace. Long since they ceased to
  be the spiritual torchbearers of divine truth to the races of mankind, but
  this constitutes no valid reason why the individual descendants of these long-
  ago Jews should be made to suffer the persecutions which have been visited
  upon them by intolerant, unworthy, and bigoted professed followers of Jesus of
  Nazareth, who was, himself, a Jew by natural birth.

  175:2.2 Many times has this unreasoning and un-Christlike hatred and
  persecution of modern Jews terminated in the suffering and death of some
  innocent and unoffending Jewish individual whose very ancestors, in the times
  of Jesus, heartily accepted his gospel and presently died unflinchingly for
  that truth which they so wholeheartedly believed. What a shudder of horror
  passes over the onlooking celestial beings as they behold the professed
  followers of Jesus indulge themselves in persecuting, harassing, and even
  murdering the later-day descendants of Peter, Philip, Matthew, and others of
  the Palestinian Jews who so gloriously yielded up their lives as the first
  martyrs of the gospel of the heavenly kingdom!

  175:2.3 How cruel and unreasoning to compel innocent children to suffer for
  the sins of their progenitors, misdeeds of which they are wholly ignorant, and
  for which they could in no way be responsible! And to do such wicked deeds in
  the name of one who taught his disciples to love even their enemies! It has
  become necessary, in this recital of the life of Jesus, to portray the manner
  in which certain of his fellow Jews rejected him and conspired to bring about
  his ignominious death; but we would warn all who read this narrative that the
  presentation of such a historical recital in no way justifies the unjust
  hatred, nor condones the unfair attitude of mind, which so many professed
  Christians have maintained toward individual Jews for many centuries. Kingdom
  believers, those who follow the teachings of Jesus, must cease to mistreat the
  individual Jew as one who is guilty of the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus.
  The Father and his Creator Son have never ceased to love the Jews. God is no
  respecter of persons, and salvation is for the Jew as well as for the gentile.





3. THE FATEFUL SANHEDRIN MEETING



  175:3.1 At eight o'clock on this Tuesday evening the fateful meeting of the
  Sanhedrin was called to order. On many previous occasions had this supreme
  court of the Jewish nation informally decreed the death of Jesus. Many times
  had this august ruling body determined to put a stop to his work, but never
  before had they resolved to place him under arrest and to bring about his
  death at any and all costs. It was just before midnight on this Tuesday, April
  4, A.D. 30, that the Sanhedrin, as then constituted, officially and
  unanimously voted to impose the death sentence upon both Jesus and Lazarus.
  This was the answer to the Master's last appeal to the rulers of the Jews
  which he had made in the temple only a few hours before, and it represented
  their reaction of bitter resentment toward Jesus' last and vigorous indictment
  of these same chief priests and impenitent Sadducees and Pharisees. The
  passing of death sentence (even before his trial) upon the Son of God was the
  Sanhedrin's reply to the last offer of heavenly mercy ever to be extended to
  the Jewish nation, as such.

  175:3.2 From this time on the Jews were left to finish their brief and short
  lease of national life wholly in accordance with their purely human status
  among the nations of Urantia. Israel had repudiated the Son of the God who
  made a covenant with Abraham, and the plan to make the children of Abraham the
  light-bearers of truth to the world had been shattered. The divine covenant
  had been abrogated, and the end of the Hebrew nation drew on apace.

  175:3.3 The officers of the Sanhedrin were given the orders for Jesus' arrest
  early the next morning, but with instructions that he must not be apprehended
  in public. They were told to plan to take him in secret, preferably suddenly
  and at night. Understanding that he might not return that day (Wednesday) to
  teach in the temple, they instructed these officers of the Sanhedrin to "bring
  him before the high Jewish court sometime before midnight on Thursday."





4. THE SITUATION IN JERUSALEM



  175:4.1 At the conclusion of Jesus' last discourse in the temple, the apostles
  once more were left in confusion and consternation. Before the Master began
  his terrible denunciation of the Jewish rulers, Judas had returned to the
  temple, so that all twelve heard this latter half of Jesus' last discourse in
  the temple. It is unfortunate that Judas Iscariot could not have heard the
  first and mercy-proffering half of this farewell address. He did not hear this
  last offer of mercy to the Jewish rulers because he was still in conference
  with a certain group of Sadducean relatives and friends with whom he had
  lunched, and with whom he was conferring as to the most fitting manner of
  dissociating himself from Jesus and his fellow apostles. It was while
  listening to the Master's final indictment of the Jewish leaders and rulers
  that Judas finally and fully made up his mind to forsake the gospel movement
  and wash his hands of the whole enterprise. Nevertheless, he left the temple
  in company with the twelve, went with them to Mount Olivet, where, with his
  fellow apostles, he listened to that fateful discourse on the destruction of
  Jerusalem and the end of the Jewish nation, and remained with them that
  Tuesday night at the new camp near Gethsemane.



  175:4.2 The multitude who heard Jesus swing from his merciful appeal to the
  Jewish leaders into that sudden and scathing rebuke which bordered on ruthless
  denunciation, were stunned and bewildered. That night, while the Sanhedrin sat
  in death judgment upon Jesus, and while the Master sat with his apostles and
  certain of his disciples out on the Mount of Olives foretelling the death of
  the Jewish nation, all Jerusalem was given over to the serious and suppressed
  discussion of just one question: "What will they do with Jesus?"



  175:4.3 At the home of Nicodemus more than thirty prominent Jews who were
  secret believers in the kingdom met and debated what course they would pursue
  in case an open break with the Sanhedrin should come. All present agreed that
  they would make open acknowledgment of their allegiance to the Master in the
  very hour they should hear of his arrest. And that is just what they did.

  175:4.4 The Sadducees, who now controlled and dominated the Sanhedrin, were
  desirous of making away with Jesus for the following reasons:



  175:4.5 1. They feared that the increased popular favor with which the
  multitude regarded him threatened to endanger the existence of the Jewish
  nation by possible involvement with the Roman authorities.



  175:4.6 2. His zeal for temple reform struck directly at their revenues; the
  cleansing of the temple affected their pocketbooks.



  175:4.7 3. They felt themselves responsible for the preservation of social
  order, and they feared the consequences of the further spread of Jesus'
  strange and new doctrine of the brotherhood of man.



  175:4.8 The Pharisees had different motives for wanting to see Jesus put to
  death. They feared him because:



  175:4.9 1. He was arrayed in telling opposition to their traditional hold upon
  the people. The Pharisees were ultraconservative, and they bitterly resented
  these supposedly radical attacks upon their vested prestige as religious
  teachers.



  175:4.10 2. They held that Jesus was a lawbreaker; that he had shown utter
  disregard for the Sabbath and numerous other legal and ceremonial
  requirements.



  175:4.11 3. They charged him with blasphemy because he alluded to God as his
  Father.



  175:4.12 4. And now were they thoroughly angry with him because of his last
  discourse of bitter denunciation which he had this day delivered in the temple
  as the concluding portion of his farewell address.



  175:4.13 The Sanhedrin, having formally decreed the death of Jesus and having
  issued orders for his arrest, adjourned on this Tuesday near midnight, after
  appointing to meet at ten o'clock the next morning at the home of Caiaphas the
  high priest for the purpose of formulating the charges on which Jesus should
  be brought to trial.

  175:4.14 A small group of the Sadducees had actually proposed to dispose of
  Jesus by assassination, but the Pharisees utterly refused to countenance such
  a procedure.



  175:4.15 And this was the situation in Jerusalem and among men on this
  eventful day while a vast concourse of celestial beings hovered over this
  momentous scene on earth, anxious to do something to assist their beloved
  Sovereign but powerless to act because they were effectively restrained by
  their commanding superiors.


PAPER 176


 TUESDAY EVENING ON MOUNT OLIVET

  176:0.1 THIS Tuesday afternoon, as Jesus and the apostles passed out of the
  temple on their way to the Gethsemane camp, Matthew, calling attention to the
  temple construction, said: "Master, observe what manner of buildings these
  are. See the massive stones and the beautiful adornment; can it be that these
  buildings are to be destroyed?" As they went on toward Olivet, Jesus said:
  "You see these stones and this massive temple; verily, verily, I say to you:
  In the days soon to come there shall not be left one stone upon another. They
  shall all be thrown down." These remarks depicting the destruction of the
  sacred temple aroused the curiosity of the apostles as they walked along
  behind the Master; they could conceive of no event short of the end of the
  world which would occasion the destruction of the temple.

  176:0.2 In order to avoid the crowds passing along the Kidron valley toward
  Gethsemane, Jesus and his associates were minded to climb up the western slope
  of Olivet for a short distance and then follow a trail over to their private
  camp near Gethsemane located a short distance above the public camping ground.
  As they turned to leave the road leading on to Bethany, they observed the
  temple, glorified by the rays of the setting sun; and while they tarried on
  the mount, they saw the lights of the city appear and beheld the beauty of the
  illuminated temple; and there, under the mellow light of the full moon, Jesus
  and the twelve sat down. The Master talked with them, and presently Nathaniel
  asked this question: "Tell us, Master, how shall we know when these events are
  about to come to pass?"



1. THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM



  176:1.1 In answering Nathaniel's question, Jesus said: "Yes, I will tell you
  about the times when this people shall have filled up the cup of their
  iniquity; when justice shall swiftly descend upon this city of our fathers. I
  am about to leave you; I go to the Father. After I leave you, take heed that
  no man deceive you, for many will come as deliverers and will lead many
  astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, be not troubled, for though
  all these things will happen, the end of Jerusalem is not yet at hand. You
  should not be perturbed by famines or earthquakes; neither should you be
  concerned when you are delivered up to the civil authorities and are
  persecuted for the sake of the gospel. You will be thrown out of the synagogue
  and put in prison for my sake, and some of you will be killed. When you are
  brought up before governors and rulers, it shall be for a testimony of your
  faith and to show your steadfastness in the gospel of the kingdom. And when
  you stand before judges, be not anxious beforehand as to what you should say,
  for the spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should answer your
  adversaries. In these days of travail, even your own kinsfolk, under the
  leadership of those who have rejected the Son of Man, will deliver you up to
  prison and death. For a time you may be hated by all men for my sake, but even
  in these persecutions I will not forsake you; my spirit will not desert you.
  Be patient! doubt not that this gospel of the kingdom will triumph over all
  enemies and, eventually, be proclaimed to all nations."

  176:1.2 Jesus paused while he looked down upon the city. The Master realized
  that the rejection of the spiritual concept of the Messiah, the determination
  to cling persistently and blindly to the material mission of the expected
  deliverer, would presently bring the Jews in direct conflict with the powerful
  Roman armies, and that such a contest could only result in the final and
  complete overthrow of the Jewish nation. When his people rejected his
  spiritual bestowal and refused to receive the light of heaven as it so
  mercifully shone upon them, they thereby sealed their doom as an independent
  people with a special spiritual mission on earth. Even the Jewish leaders
  subsequently recognized that it was this secular idea of the Messiah which
  directly led to the turbulence which eventually brought about their
  destruction.

  176:1.3 Since Jerusalem was to become the cradle of the early gospel movement,
  Jesus did not want its teachers and preachers to perish in the terrible
  overthrow of the Jewish people in connection with the destruction of
  Jerusalem; wherefore did he give these instructions to his followers. Jesus
  was much concerned lest some of his disciples become involved in these soon-
  coming revolts and so perish in the downfall of Jerusalem.

  176:1.4 Then Andrew inquired: "But, Master, if the Holy City and the temple
  are to be destroyed, and if you are not here to direct us, when should we
  forsake Jerusalem?" Said Jesus: "You may remain in the city after I have gone,
  even through these times of travail and bitter persecution, but when you
  finally see Jerusalem being encompassed by the Roman armies after the revolt
  of the false prophets, then will you know that her desolation is at hand; then
  must you flee to the mountains. Let none who are in the city and around about
  tarry to save aught, neither let those who are outside dare to enter therein.
  There will be great tribulation, for these will be the days of gentile
  vengeance. And after you have deserted the city, this disobedient people will
  fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all nations; and so
  shall Jerusalem be trodden down by the gentiles. In the meantime, I warn you,
  be not deceived. If any man comes to you, saying, `Behold, here is the
  Deliverer,' or `Behold, there is he,' believe it not, for many false teachers
  will arise and many will be led astray; but you should not be deceived, for I
  have told you all this beforehand."

  176:1.5 The apostles sat in silence in the moonlight for a considerable time
  while these astounding predictions of the Master sank into their bewildered
  minds. And it was in conformity with this very warning that practically the
  entire group of believers and disciples fled from Jerusalem upon the first
  appearance of the Roman troops, finding a safe shelter in Pella to the north.

  176:1.6 Even after this explicit warning, many of Jesus' followers interpreted
  these predictions as referring to the changes which would obviously occur in
  Jerusalem when the reappearing of the Messiah would result in the
  establishment of the New Jerusalem and in the enlargement of the city to
  become the world's capital. In their minds these Jews were determined to
  connect the destruction of the temple with the "end of the world." They
  believed this New Jerusalem would fill all Palestine; that the end of the
  world would be followed by the immediate appearance of the "new heavens and
  the new earth." And so it was not strange that Peter should say: "Master, we
  know that all things will pass away when the new heavens and the new earth
  appear, but how shall we know when you will return to bring all this about?"

  176:1.7 When Jesus heard this, he was thoughtful for some time and then said:
  "You ever err since you always try to attach the new teaching to the old; you
  are determined to misunderstand all my teaching; you insist on interpreting
  the gospel in accordance with your established beliefs. Nevertheless, I will
  try to enlighten you."



2. THE MASTER'S SECOND COMING



  176:2.1 On several occasions Jesus had made statements which led his hearers
  to infer that, while he intended presently to leave this world, he would most
  certainly return to consummate the work of the heavenly kingdom. As the
  conviction grew on his followers that he was going to leave them, and after he
  had departed from this world, it was only natural for all believers to lay
  fast hold upon these promises to return. The doctrine of the second coming of
  Christ thus became early incorporated into the teachings of the Christians,
  and almost every subsequent generation of disciples has devoutly believed this
  truth and has confidently looked forward to his sometime coming.

  176:2.2 If they were to part with their Master and Teacher, how much more did
  these first disciples and the apostles grasp at this promise to return, and
  they lost no time in associating the predicted destruction of Jerusalem with
  this promised second coming. And they continued thus to interpret his words
  notwithstanding that, throughout this evening of instruction on Mount Olivet,
  the Master took particular pains to prevent just such a mistake.

  176:2.3 In further answer to Peter's question, Jesus said: "Why do you still
  look for the Son of Man to sit upon the throne of David and expect that the
  material dreams of the Jews will be fulfilled? Have I not told you all these
  years that my kingdom is not of this world? The things which you now look down
  upon are coming to an end, but this will be a new beginning out of which the
  gospel of the kingdom will go to all the world and this salvation will spread
  to all peoples. And when the kingdom shall have come to its full fruition, be
  assured that the Father in heaven will not fail to visit you with an enlarged
  revelation of truth and an enhanced demonstration of righteousness, even as he
  has already bestowed upon this world him who became the prince of darkness ,
  and then Adam, who was followed by Melchizedek, and in these days, the Son of
  Man. And so will my Father continue to manifest his mercy and show forth his
  love, even to this dark and evil world. So also will I, after my Father has
  invested me with all power and authority, continue to follow your fortunes and
  to guide in the affairs of the kingdom by the presence of my spirit, who shall
  shortly be poured out upon all flesh. Even though I shall thus be present with
  you in spirit, I also promise that I will sometime return to this world, where
  I have lived this life in the flesh and achieved the experience of
  simultaneously revealing God to man and leading man to God. Very soon must I
  leave you and take up the work the Father has intrusted to my hands, but be of
  good courage, for I will sometime return. In the meantime, my Spirit of the
  Truth of a universe shall comfort and guide you.

  176:2.4 "You behold me now in weakness and in the flesh, but when I return, it
  shall be with power and in the spirit. The eye of flesh beholds the Son of Man
  in the flesh, but only the eye of the spirit will behold the Son of Man
  glorified by the Father and appearing on earth in his own name.

  176:2.5 "But the times of the reappearing of the Son of Man are known only in
  the councils of Paradise; not even the angels of heaven know when this will
  occur. However, you should understand that, when this gospel of the kingdom
  shall have been proclaimed to all the world for the salvation of all peoples,
  and when the fullness of the age has come to pass, the Father will send you
  another dispensational bestowal, or else the Son of Man will return to adjudge
  the age.

  176:2.6 "And now concerning the travail of Jerusalem, about which I have
  spoken to you, even this generation will not pass away until my words are
  fulfilled; but concerning the times of the coming again of the Son of Man, no
  one in heaven or on earth may presume to speak. But you should be wise
  regarding the ripening of an age; you should be alert to discern the signs of
  the times. You know when the fig tree shows its tender branches and puts forth
  its leaves that summer is near. Likewise, when the world has passed through
  the long winter of material-mindedness and you discern the coming of the
  spiritual springtime of a new dispensation, should you know that the
  summertime of a new visitation draws near.

  176:2.7 "But what is the significance of this teaching having to do with the
  coming of the Sons of God? Do you not perceive that, when each of you is
  called to lay down his life struggle and pass through the portal of death, you
  stand in the immediate presence of judgment, and that you are face to face
  with the facts of a new dispensation of service in the eternal plan of the
  infinite Father? What the whole world must face as a literal fact at the end
  of an age, you, as individuals, must each most certainly face as a personal
  experience when you reach the end of your natural life and thereby pass on to
  be confronted with the conditions and demands inherent in the next revelation
  of the eternal progression of the Father's kingdom."

  176:2.8 Of all the discourses which the Master gave his apostles, none ever
  became so confused in their minds as this one, given this Tuesday evening on
  the Mount of Olives, regarding the twofold subject of the destruction of
  Jerusalem and his own second coming. There was, therefore, little agreement
  between the subsequent written accounts based on the memories of what the
  Master said on this extraordinary occasion. Consequently, when the records
  were left blank concerning much that was said that Tuesday evening, there grew
  up many traditions; and very early in the second century a Jewish apocalyptic
  about the Messiah written by one Selta, who was attached to the court of the
  Emperor Caligula, was bodily copied into the Matthew Gospel and subsequently
  added (in part) to the Mark and Luke records. It was in these writings of
  Selta that the parable of the ten virgins appeared. No part of the gospel
  record ever suffered such confusing misconstruction as this evening's
  teaching. But the Apostle John never became thus confused.

  176:2.9 As these thirteen men resumed their journey toward the camp, they were
  speechless and under great emotional tension. Judas had finally confirmed his
  decision to abandon his associates. It was a late hour when David Zebedee,
  John Mark, and a number of the leading disciples welcomed Jesus and the twelve
  to the new camp, but the apostles did not want to sleep; they wanted to know
  more about the destruction of Jerusalem, the Master's departure, and the end
  of the world.





3. LATER DISCUSSION AT THE CAMP

  176:3.1 As they gathered about the campfire, some twenty of them, Thomas
  asked: "Since you are to return to finish the work of the kingdom, what should
  be our attitude while you are away on the Father's business?" As Jesus looked
  them over by the firelight, he answered:



  176:3.2 "And even you, Thomas, fail to comprehend what I have been saying.
  Have I not all this time taught you that your connection with the kingdom is
  spiritual and individual, wholly a matter of personal experience in the spirit
  by the faith-realization that you are a son of God? What more shall I say? The
  downfall of nations, the crash of empires, the destruction of the unbelieving
  Jews, the end of an age, even the end of the world, what have these things to
  do with one who believes this gospel, and who has hid his life in the surety
  of the eternal kingdom? You who are God-knowing and gospel-believing have
  already received the assurances of eternal life. Since your lives have been
  lived in the spirit and for the Father, nothing can be of serious concern to
  you . Kingdom builders, the accredited citizens of the heavenly worlds, are
  not to be disturbed by temporal upheavals or perturbed by terrestrial
  cataclysms. What does it matter to you who believe this gospel of the kingdom
  if nations overturn, the age ends, or all things visible crash, since you know
  that your life is the gift of the Son, and that it is eternally secure in the
  Father? Having lived the temporal life by faith and having yielded the fruits
  of the spirit as the righteousness of loving service for your fellows, you can
  confidently look forward to the next step in the eternal career with the same
  survival faith that has carried you through your first and earthly adventure
  in sonship with God.

  176:3.3 "Each generation of believers should carry on their work, in view of
  the possible return of the Son of Man, exactly as each individual believer
  carries forward his lifework in view of inevitable and ever-impending natural
  death. When you have by faith once established yourself as a son of God,
  nothing else matters as regards the surety of survival. But make no mistake!
  this survival faith is a living faith, and it increasingly manifests the
  fruits of that divine spirit which first inspired it in the human heart. That
  you have once accepted sonship in the heavenly kingdom will not save you in
  the face of the knowing and persistent rejection of those truths which have to
  do with the progressive spiritual fruit-bearing of the sons of God in the
  flesh. You who have been with me in the Father's business on earth can even
  now desert the kingdom if you find that you love not the way of the Father's
  service for mankind.

  176:3.4 "As individuals, and as a generation of believers, hear me while I
  speak a parable: There was a certain great man who, before starting out on a
  long journey to another country, called all his trusted servants before him
  and delivered into their hands all his goods. To one he gave five talents, to
  another two, and to another one. And so on down through the entire group of
  honored stewards, to each he intrusted his goods according to their several
  abilities; and then he set out on his journey. When their lord had departed,
  his servants set themselves at work to gain profits from the wealth intrusted
  to them. Immediately he who had received five talents began to trade with them
  and very soon had made a profit of another five talents. In like manner he who
  had received two talents soon had gained two more. And so did all of these
  servants make gains for their master except he who received but one talent. He
  went away by himself and dug a hole in the earth where he hid his lord's
  money. Presently the lord of those servants unexpectedly returned and called
  upon his stewards for a reckoning. And when they had all been called before
  their master, he who had received the five talents came forward with the money
  which had been intrusted to him and brought five additional talents, saying,
  `Lord, you gave me five talents to invest, and I am glad to present five other
  talents as my gain.' And then his lord said to him: `Well done, good and
  faithful servant, you have been faithful over a few things; I will now set you
  as steward over many; enter forthwith into the joy of your lord.' And then he
  who had received the two talents came forward, saying: `Lord, you delivered
  into my hands two talents; behold, I have gained these other two talents.' And
  his lord then said to him: `Well done, good and faithful steward; you also
  have been faithful over a few things, and I will now set you over many; enter
  you into the joy of your lord.'

And then there came to the accounting he who had received the one talent. This
servant came forward, saying, `Lord, I knew you and realized that you were a
shrewd man in that you expected gains where you had not personally labored;
therefore was I afraid to risk aught of that which was intrusted to me. I safely
hid your talent in the earth; here it is; you now have what belongs to you.' But
his lord answered: `You are an indolent and slothful steward. By your own words
you confess that you knew I would require of you an accounting with reasonable
profit, such as your diligent fellow servants have this day rendered. Knowing
this, you ought, therefore, to have at least put my money into the hands of the
bankers that on my return I might have received my own with interest.' And then
to the chief steward this lord said: `Take away this one talent from this
unprofitable servant and give it to him who has the ten talents.'

  176:3.5 "To every one who has, more shall be given, and he shall have
  abundance; but from him who has not, even that which he has shall be taken
  away. You cannot stand still in the affairs of the eternal kingdom. My Father
  requires all his children to grow in grace and in a knowledge of the truth.
  You who know these truths must yield the increase of the fruits of the spirit
  and manifest a growing devotion to the unselfish service of your fellow
  servants. And remember that, inasmuch as you minister to one of the least of
  my brethren, you have done this service to me.

  176:3.6 "And so should you go about the work of the Father's business, now and
  henceforth, even forevermore. Carry on until I come. In faithfulness do that
  which is intrusted to you, and thereby shall you be ready for the reckoning
  call of death. And having thus lived for the glory of the Father and the
  satisfaction of the Son, you shall enter with joy and exceedingly great
  pleasure into the eternal service of the everlasting kingdom."

  176:3.7 Truth is living; the Spirit of Truth is ever leading the children of
  light into new realms of spiritual reality and divine service. You are not
  given truth to crystallize into settled, safe, and honored forms. Your
  revelation of truth must be so enhanced by passing through your personal
  experience that new beauty and actual spiritual gains will be disclosed to all
  who behold your spiritual fruits and in consequence thereof are led to glorify
  the Father who is in heaven. Only those faithful servants who thus grow in the
  knowledge of the truth, and who thereby develop the capacity for divine
  appreciation of spiritual realities, can ever hope to "enter fully into the
  joy of their Lord." What a sorry sight for successive generations of the
  professed followers of Jesus to say, regarding their stewardship of divine
  truth: "Here, Master, is the truth you committed to us a hundred or a thousand
  years ago. We have lost nothing; we have faithfully preserved all you gave us;
  we have allowed no changes to be made in that which you taught us; here is the
  truth you gave us." But such a plea concerning spiritual indolence will not
  justify the barren steward of truth in the presence of the Master. In
  accordance with the truth committed to your hands will the Master of truth
  require a reckoning.

  176:3.8 In the next world you will be asked to give an account of the
  endowments and stewardships of this world. Whether inherent talents are few or
  many, a just and merciful reckoning must be faced. If endowments are used only
  in selfish pursuits and no thought is bestowed upon the higher duty of
  obtaining increased yield of the fruits of the spirit, as they are manifested
  in the ever-expanding service of men and the worship of God, such selfish
  stewards must accept the consequences of their deliberate choosing.

  176:3.9 And how much like all selfish mortals was this unfaithful servant with
  the one talent in that he blamed his slothfulness directly upon his lord. How
  prone is man, when he is confronted with the failures of his own making, to
  put the blame upon others, oftentimes upon those who least deserve it!

  176:3.10 Said Jesus that night as they went to their rest: "Freely have you
  received; therefore freely should you give of the truth of heaven, and in the
  giving will this truth multiply and show forth the increasing light of saving
  grace, even as you minister it."





4. THE RETURN OF MICHAEL

  176:4.1 Of all the Master's teachings no one phase has been so misunderstood
  as his promise sometime to come back in person to this world. It is not
  strange that Michael should be interested in sometime returning to the planet
  whereon he experienced his seventh and last bestowal, as a mortal of the
  realm. It is only natural to believe that Jesus of Nazareth, now sovereign
  ruler of a vast universe, would be interested in coming back, not only once
  but even many times, to the world whereon he lived such a unique life and
  finally won for himself the Father's unlimited bestowal of universe power and
  authority. Urantia will eternally be one of the seven nativity spheres of
  Michael in the winning of universe sovereignty.

  176:4.2 Jesus did, on numerous occasions and to many individuals, declare his
  intention of returning to this world. As his followers awakened to the fact
  that their Master was not going to function as a temporal deliverer, and as
  they listened to his predictions of the overthrow of Jerusalem and the
  downfall of the Jewish nation, they most naturally began to associate his
  promised return with these catastrophic events. But when the Roman armies
  leveled the walls of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and dispersed the Judean
  Jews, and still the Master did not reveal himself in power and glory, his
  followers began the formulation of that belief which eventually associated the
  second coming of Christ with the end of the age, even with the end of the
  world.

  176:4.3 Jesus promised to do two things after he had ascended to the Father,
  and after all power in heaven and on earth had been placed in his hands. He
  promised, first, to send into the world, and in his stead, another teacher,
  the Spirit of Truth; and this he did on the day of Pentecost. Second, he most
  certainly promised his followers that he would sometime personally return to
  this world. But he did not say how, where, or when he would revisit this
  planet of his bestowal experience in the flesh. On one occasion he intimated
  that, whereas the eye of flesh had beheld him when he lived here in the flesh,
  on his return (at least on one of his possible visits) he would be discerned
  only by the eye of spiritual faith.

  176:4.4 Many of us are inclined to believe that Jesus will return to Urantia
  many times during the ages to come. We do not have his specific promise to
  make these plural visits, but it seems most probable that he who carries among
  his universe titles that of Planetary Prince of Urantia will many times visit
  the world whose conquest conferred such a unique title upon him.

  176:4.5 We most positively believe that Michael will again come in person to
  Urantia, but we have not the slightest idea as to when or in what manner he
  may choose to come. Will his second advent on earth be timed to occur in
  connection with the terminal judgment of this present age, either with or
  without the associated appearance of a Magisterial Son? Will he come in
  connection with the termination of some subsequent Urantian age? Will he come
  unannounced and as an isolated event? We do not know. Only one thing we are
  certain of, that is, when he does return, all the world will likely know about
  it, for he must come as the supreme ruler of a universe and not as the obscure
  babe of Bethlehem. But if every eye is to behold him, and if only spiritual
  eyes are to discern his presence, then must his advent be long deferred.

  176:4.6 You would do well, therefore, to disassociate the Master's personal
  return to earth from any and all set events or settled epochs. We are sure of
  only one thing: He has promised to come back. We have no idea as to when he
  will fulfill this promise or in what connection. As far as we know, he may
  appear on earth any day, and he may not come until age after age has passed
  and been duly adjudicated by his associated Sons of the Paradise corps.

  176:4.7 The second advent of Michael on earth is an event of tremendous
  sentimental value to both midwayers and humans; but otherwise it is of no
  immediate moment to midwayers and of no more practical importance to human
  beings than the common event of natural death, which so suddenly precipitates
  mortal man into the immediate grasp of that succession of universe events
  which leads directly to the presence of this same Jesus, the sovereign ruler
  of our universe. The children of light are all destined to see him, and it is
  of no serious concern whether we go to him or whether he should chance first
  to come to us. Be you therefore ever ready to welcome him on earth as he
  stands ready to welcome you in heaven. We confidently look for his glorious
  appearing, even for repeated comings, but we are wholly ignorant as to how,
  when, or in what connection he is destined to appear.


PAPER 177


 WEDNESDAY, THE REST DAY



  177:0.1 WHEN the work of teaching the people did not press them, it was the
  custom of Jesus and his apostles to rest from their labors each Wednesday. On
  this particular Wednesday they ate breakfast somewhat later than usual, and
  the camp was pervaded by an ominous silence; little was said during the first
  half of this morning meal. At last Jesus spoke: "I desire that you rest today.
  Take time to think over all that has happened since we came to Jerusalem and
  meditate on what is just ahead, of which I have plainly told you. Make sure
  that the truth abides in your lives, and that you daily grow in grace."

  177:0.2 After breakfast the Master informed Andrew that he intended to be
  absent for the day and suggested that the apostles be permitted to spend the
  time in accordance with their own choosing, except that under no circumstances
  should they go within the gates of Jerusalem.

  177:0.3 When Jesus made ready to go into the hills alone, David Zebedee
  accosted him, saying: "You well know, Master, that the Pharisees and rulers
  seek to destroy you, and yet you make ready to go alone into the hills. To do
  this is folly; I will therefore send three men with you well prepared to see
  that no harm befalls you." Jesus looked over the three well-armed and stalwart
  Galileans and said to David: "You mean well, but you err in that you fail to
  understand that the Son of Man needs no one to defend him. No man will lay
  hands on me until that hour when I am ready to lay down my life in conformity
  to my Father's will. These men may not accompany me. I desire to go alone,
  that I may commune with the Father."

  177:0.4 Upon hearing these words, David and his armed guards withdrew; but as
  Jesus started off alone, John Mark came forward with a small basket containing
  food and water and suggested that, if he intended to be away all day, he might
  find himself hungry. The Master smiled on John and reached down to take the
  basket.





1. ONE DAY ALONE WITH GOD

  177:1.1 As Jesus was about to take the lunch basket from John's hand, the
  young man ventured to say: "But, Master, you may set the basket down while you
  turn aside to pray and go on without it. Besides, if I should go along to
  carry the lunch, you would be more free to worship, and I will surely be
  silent. I will ask no questions and will stay by the basket when you go apart
  by yourself to pray."

  177:1.2 While making this speech, the temerity of which astonished some of the
  near-by listeners, John had made bold to hold on to the basket. There they
  stood, both John and Jesus holding the basket. Presently the Master let go
  and, looking down on the lad, said: "Since with all your heart you crave to go
  with me, it shall not be denied you. We will go off by ourselves and have a
  good visit. You may ask me any question that arises in your heart, and we will
  comfort and console each other. You may start out carrying the lunch, and when
  you grow weary, I will help you. Follow on with me."

  177:1.3 Jesus did not return to the camp that evening until after sunset. The
  Master spent this last day of quiet on earth visiting with this truth-hungry
  youth and talking with his Paradise Father. This event has become known on
  high as "the day which a young man spent with God in the hills." Forever this
  occasion exemplifies the willingness of the Creator to fellowship the
  creature. Even a youth, if the desire of the heart is really supreme, can
  command the attention and enjoy the loving companionship of the God of a
  universe, actually experience the unforgettable ecstasy of being alone with
  God in the hills, and for a whole day. And such was the unique experience of
  John Mark on this Wednesday in the hills of Judea.

  177:1.4 Jesus visited much with John, talking freely about the affairs of this
  world and the next. John told Jesus how much he regretted that he had not been
  old enough to be one of the apostles and expressed his great appreciation that
  he had been permitted to follow on with them since their first preaching at
  the Jordan ford near Jericho, except for the trip to Phoenicia. Jesus warned
  the lad not to become discouraged by impending events and assured him he would
  live to become a mighty messenger of the kingdom.

  177:1.5 John Mark was thrilled by the memory of this day with Jesus in the
  hills, but he never forgot the Master's final admonition, spoken just as they
  were about to return to the Gethsemane camp, when he said: "Well, John, we
  have had a good visit, a real day of rest, but see to it that you tell no man
  the things which I told you." And John Mark never did reveal anything that
  transpired on this day which he spent with Jesus in the hills.

  177:1.6 Throughout the few remaining hours of Jesus' earth life John Mark
  never permitted the Master for long to get out of his sight. Always was the
  lad in hiding near by; he slept only when Jesus slept.





2. EARLY HOME LIFE

  177:2.1 In the course of this day's visiting with John Mark, Jesus spent
  considerable time comparing their early childhood and later boyhood
  experiences. Although John's parents possessed more of this world's goods than
  had Jesus' parents, there was much experience in their boyhood which was very
  similar. Jesus said many things which helped John better to understand his
  parents and other members of his family. When the lad asked the Master how he
  could know that he would turn out to be a "mighty messenger of the kingdom,"
  Jesus said:

  177:2.2 "I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the kingdom because I
  can depend upon your present faith and love when these qualities are grounded
  upon such an early training as has been your portion at home. You are the
  product of a home where the parents bear each other a sincere affection, and
  therefore you have not been overloved so as injuriously to exalt your concept
  of self-importance. Neither has your personality suffered distortion in
  consequence of your parents' loveless maneuvering for your confidence and
  loyalty, the one against the other. You have enjoyed that parental love which
  insures laudable self-confidence and which fosters normal feelings of
  security. But you have also been fortunate in that your parents possessed
  wisdom as well as love ; and it was wisdom which led them to withhold most
  forms of indulgence and many luxuries which wealth can buy while they sent you
  to the synagogue school along with your neighborhood playfellows, and they
  also encouraged you to learn how to live in this world by permitting you to
  have original experience. You came over to the Jordan, where we preached and
  John's disciples baptized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you desired to
  go with us. When you returned to Jerusalem, your parents consented; Amos's
  parents refused; they loved their son so much that they denied him the blessed
  experience which you have had, even such as you this day enjoy. By running
  away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so doing he would have
  wounded love and sacrificed loyalty. Even if such a course had been wise, it
  would have been a terrible price to pay for experience, independence, and
  liberty. Wise parents, such as yours, see to it that their children do not
  have to wound love or stifle loyalty in order to develop independence and
  enjoy invigorating liberty when they have grown up to your age.

  177:2.3 "Love, John, is the supreme reality of the universe when bestowed by
  all-wise beings, but it is a dangerous and oftentimes semiselfish trait as it
  is manifested in the experience of mortal parents. When you get married and
  have children of your own to rear, make sure that your love is admonished by
  wisdom and guided by intelligence.

  177:2.4 "Your young friend Amos believes this gospel of the kingdom just as
  much as you, but I cannot fully depend upon him; I am not certain about what
  he will do in the years to come. His early home life was not such as would
  produce a wholly dependable person. Amos is too much like one of the apostles
  who failed to enjoy a normal, loving, and wise home training. Your whole
  afterlife will be more happy and dependable because you spent your first eight
  years in a normal and well-regulated home. You possess a strong and well-knit
  character because you grew up in a home where love prevailed and wisdom
  reigned. Such a childhood training produces a type of loyalty which assures me
  that you will go through with the course you have begun."

  177:2.5 For more than an hour Jesus and John continued this discussion of home
  life. The Master went on to explain to John how a child is wholly dependent on
  his parents and the associated home life for all his early concepts of
  everything intellectual, social, moral, and even spiritual since the family
  represents to the young child all that he can first know of either human or
  divine relationships. The child must derive his first impressions of the
  universe from the mother's care; he is wholly dependent on the earthly father
  for his first ideas of the heavenly Father. The child's subsequent life is
  made happy or unhappy, easy or difficult, in accordance with his early mental
  and emotional life, conditioned by these social and spiritual relationships of
  the home. A human being's entire afterlife is enormously influenced by what
  happens during the first few years of existence.



  177:2.6 It is our sincere belief that the gospel of Jesus' teaching, founded
  as it is on the father-child relationship, can hardly enjoy a world-wide
  acceptance until such a time as the home life of the modern civilized peoples
  embraces more of love and more of wisdom. Notwithstanding that parents of the
  twentieth century possess great knowledge and increased truth for improving
  the home and ennobling the home life, it remains a fact that very few modern
  homes are such good places in which to nurture boys and girls as Jesus' home
  in Galilee and John Mark's home in Judea, albeit the acceptance of Jesus'
  gospel will result in the immediate improvement of home life. The love life of
  a wise home and the loyal devotion of true religion exert a profound
  reciprocal influence upon each other. Such a home life enhances religion, and
  genuine religion always glorifies the home.

  177:2.7 It is true that many of the objectionable stunting influences and
  other cramping features of these olden Jewish homes have been virtually
  eliminated from many of the better-regulated modern homes. There is, indeed,
  more spontaneous freedom and far more personal liberty, but this liberty is
  not restrained by love, motivated by loyalty, nor directed by the intelligent
  discipline of wisdom. As long as we teach the child to pray, "Our Father who
  is in heaven," a tremendous responsibility rests upon all earthly fathers so
  to live and order their homes that the word father becomes worthily enshrined
  in the minds and hearts of all growing children.





3. THE DAY AT CAMP

  177:3.1 The apostles spent most of this day walking about on Mount Olivet and
  visiting with the disciples who were encamped with them, but early in the
  afternoon they became very desirous of seeing Jesus return. As the day wore
  on, they grew increasingly anxious about his safety; they felt inexpressibly
  lonely without him. There was much debating throughout the day as to whether
  the Master should have been allowed to go off by himself in the hills,
  accompanied only by an errand boy. Though no man openly so expressed his
  thoughts, there was not one of them, save Judas Iscariot, who did not wish
  himself in John Mark's place.



  177:3.2 It was about midafternoon when Nathaniel made his speech on "Supreme
  Desire" to about half a dozen of the apostles and as many disciples, the
  ending of which was: "What is wrong with most of us is that we are only
  halfhearted. We fail to love the Master as he loves us. If we had all wanted
  to go with him as much as John Mark did, he would surely have taken us all. We
  stood by while the lad approached the Master and offered him the basket, but
  when the Master took hold of it, the lad would not let go. And so the Master
  left us here while he went off to the hills with basket, boy, and all."



  177:3.3 About four o'clock, runners came to David Zebedee bringing him word
  from his mother at Bethsaida and from Jesus' mother. Several days previously
  David had made up his mind that the chief priests and rulers were going to
  kill Jesus. David knew they were determined to destroy the Master, and he was
  about convinced that Jesus would neither exert his divine power to save
  himself nor permit his followers to employ force in his defense. Having
  reached these conclusions, he lost no time in dispatching a messenger to his
  mother, urging her to come at once to Jerusalem and to bring Mary the mother
  of Jesus and every member of his family.

  177:3.4 David's mother did as her son requested, and now the runners came back
  to David bringing the word that his mother and Jesus' entire family were on
  the way to Jerusalem and should arrive sometime late on the following day or
  very early the next morning. Since David did this on his own initiative, he
  thought it wise to keep the matter to himself. He told no one, therefore, that
  Jesus' family was on the way to Jerusalem.



  177:3.5 Shortly after noon, more than twenty of the Greeks who had met with
  Jesus and the twelve at the home of Joseph of Arimathea arrived at the camp,
  and Peter and John spent several hours in conference with them. These Greeks,
  at least some of them, were well advanced in the knowledge of the kingdom,
  having been instructed by Rodan at Alexandria.

  177:3.6 That evening, after returning to the camp, Jesus visited with the
  Greeks, and had it not been that such a course would have greatly disturbed
  his apostles and many of his leading disciples, he would have ordained these
  twenty Greeks, even as he had the seventy.



  177:3.7 While all of this was going on at the camp, in Jerusalem the chief
  priests and elders were amazed that Jesus did not return to address the
  multitudes. True, the day before, when he left the temple, he had said, "I
  leave your house to you desolate." But they could not understand why he would
  be willing to forego the great advantage which he had built up in the friendly
  attitude of the crowds. While they feared he would stir up a tumult among the
  people, the Master's last words to the multitude had been an exhortation to
  conform in every reasonable manner with the authority of those "who sit in
  Moses' seat." But it was a busy day in the city as they simultaneously
  prepared for the Passover and perfected their plans for destroying Jesus.



  177:3.8 Not many people came to the camp, for its establishment had been kept
  a well-guarded secret by all who knew that Jesus was expecting to stay there
  in place of going out to Bethany every night.





4. JUDAS AND THE CHIEF PRIESTS

  177:4.1 Shortly after Jesus and John Mark left the camp, Judas Iscariot
  disappeared from among his brethren, not returning until late in the
  afternoon. This confused and discontented apostle, notwithstanding his
  Master's specific request to refrain from entering Jerusalem, went in haste to
  keep his appointment with Jesus' enemies at the home of Caiaphas the high
  priest. This was an informal meeting of the Sanhedrin and had been appointed
  for shortly after 10 o'clock that morning. This meeting was called to discuss
  the nature of the charges which should be lodged against Jesus and to decide
  upon the procedure to be employed in bringing him before the Roman authorities
  for the purpose of securing the necessary civil confirmation of the death
  sentence which they had already passed upon him.

  177:4.2 On the preceding day Judas had disclosed to some of his relatives and
  to certain Sadducean friends of his father's family that he had reached the
  conclusion that, while Jesus was a well-meaning dreamer and idealist, he was
  not the expected deliverer of Israel. Judas stated that he would very much
  like to find some way of withdrawing gracefully from the whole movement. His
  friends flatteringly assured him that his withdrawal would be hailed by the
  Jewish rulers as a great event, and that nothing would be too good for him.
  They led him to believe that he would forthwith receive high honors from the
  Sanhedrin, and that he would at last be in a position to erase the stigma of
  his well-meant but "unfortunate association with untaught Galileans."

  177:4.3 Judas could not quite believe that the mighty works of the Master had
  been wrought by the power of the prince of devils, but he was now fully
  convinced that Jesus would not exert his power in self-aggrandizement; he was
  at last convinced that Jesus would allow himself to be destroyed by the Jewish
  rulers, and he could not endure the humiliating thought of being identified
  with a movement of defeat. He refused to entertain the idea of apparent
  failure. He thoroughly understood the sturdy character of his Master and the
  keenness of that majestic and merciful mind, yet he derived pleasure from even
  the partial entertainment of the suggestion of one of his relatives that
  Jesus, while he was a well-meaning fanatic, was probably not really sound of
  mind; that he had always appeared to be a strange and misunderstood person.

  177:4.4 And now, as never before, Judas found himself becoming strangely
  resentful that Jesus had never assigned him a position of greater honor. All
  along he had appreciated the honor of being the apostolic treasurer, but now
  he began to feel that he was not appreciated; that his abilities were
  unrecognized. He was suddenly overcome with indignation that Peter, James, and
  John should have been honored with close association with Jesus, and at this
  time, when he was on the way to the high priest's home, he was bent on getting
  even with Peter, James, and John more than he was concerned with any thought
  of betraying Jesus. But over and above all, just then, a new and dominating
  thought began to occupy the forefront of his conscious mind: He had set out to
  get honor for himself, and if this could be secured simultaneously with
  getting even with those who had contributed to the greatest disappointment of
  his life, all the better. He was seized with a terrible conspiracy of
  confusion, pride, desperation, and determination. And so it must be plain that
  it was not for money that Judas was then on his way to the home of Caiaphas to
  arrange for the betrayal of Jesus.

  177:4.5 As Judas approached the home of Caiaphas, he arrived at the final
  decision to abandon Jesus and his fellow apostles; and having thus made up his
  mind to desert the cause of the kingdom of heaven, he was determined to secure
  for himself as much as possible of that honor and glory which he had thought
  would sometime be his when he first identified himself with Jesus and the new
  gospel of the kingdom. All of the apostles once shared this ambition with
  Judas, but as time passed they learned to admire truth and to love Jesus, at
  least more than did Judas.

  177:4.6 The traitor was presented to Caiaphas and the Jewish rulers by his
  cousin, who explained that Judas, having discovered his mistake in allowing
  himself to be misled by the subtle teaching of Jesus, had arrived at the place
  where he wished to make public and formal renunciation of his association with
  the Galilean and at the same time to ask for reinstatement in the confidence
  and fellowship of his Judean brethren. This spokesman for Judas went on to
  explain that Judas recognized it would be best for the peace of Israel if
  Jesus should be taken into custody, and that, as evidence of his sorrow in
  having participated in such a movement of error and as proof of his sincerity
  in now returning to the teachings of Moses, he had come to offer himself to
  the Sanhedrin as one who could so arrange with the captain holding the orders
  for Jesus' arrest that he could be taken into custody quietly, thus avoiding
  any danger of stirring up the multitudes or the necessity of postponing his
  arrest until after the Passover.

  177:4.7 When his cousin had finished speaking, he presented Judas, who,
  stepping forward near the high priest, said: "All that my cousin has promised,
  I will do, but what are you willing to give me for this service?" Judas did
  not seem to discern the look of disdain and even disgust that came over the
  face of the hardhearted and vainglorious Caiaphas; his heart was too much set
  on self-glory and the craving for the satisfaction of self-exaltation.

  177:4.8 And then Caiaphas looked down upon the betrayer while he said: "Judas,
  you go to the captain of the guard and arrange with that officer to bring your
  Master to us either tonight or tomorrow night, and when he has been delivered
  by you into our hands, you shall receive your reward for this service." When
  Judas heard this, he went forth from the presence of the chief priests and
  rulers and took counsel with the captain of the temple guards as to the manner
  in which Jesus was to be apprehended. Judas knew that Jesus was then absent
  from the camp and had no idea when he would return that evening, and so they
  agreed among themselves to arrest Jesus the next evening (Thursday) after the
  people of Jerusalem and all of the visiting pilgrims had retired for the
  night.

  177:4.9 Judas returned to his associates at the camp intoxicated with thoughts
  of grandeur and glory such as he had not had for many a day. He had enlisted
  with Jesus hoping some day to become a great man in the new kingdom. He at
  last realized that there was to be no new kingdom such as he had anticipated.
  But he rejoiced in being so sagacious as to trade off his disappointment in
  failing to achieve glory in an anticipated new kingdom for the immediate
  realization of honor and reward in the old order, which he now believed would
  survive, and which he was certain would destroy Jesus and all that he stood
  for. In its last motive of conscious intention, Judas's betrayal of Jesus was
  the cowardly act of a selfish deserter whose only thought was his own safety
  and glorification, no matter what might be the results of his conduct upon his
  Master and upon his former associates.

  177:4.10 But it was ever just that way. Judas had long been engaged in this
  deliberate, persistent, selfish, and vengeful consciousness of progressively
  building up in his mind, and entertaining in his heart, these hateful and evil
  desires of revenge and disloyalty. Jesus loved and trusted Judas even as he
  loved and trusted the other apostles, but Judas failed to develop loyal trust
  and to experience wholehearted love in return. And how dangerous ambition can
  become when it is once wholly wedded to self-seeking and supremely motivated
  by sullen and long-suppressed vengeance! What a crushing thing is
  disappointment in the lives of those foolish persons who, in fastening their
  gaze on the shadowy and evanescent allurements of time, become blinded to the
  higher and more real achievements of the everlasting attainments of the
  eternal worlds of divine values and true spiritual realities. Judas craved
  worldly honor in his mind and grew to love this desire with his whole heart;
  the other apostles likewise craved this same worldly honor in their minds, but
  with their hearts they loved Jesus and were doing their best to learn to love
  the truths which he taught them.

  177:4.11 Judas did not realize it at this time, but he had been a subconscious
  critic of Jesus ever since John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod. Deep down
  in his heart Judas always resented the fact that Jesus did not save John. You
  should not forget that Judas had been a disciple of John before he became a
  follower of Jesus. And all these accumulations of human resentment and bitter
  disappointment which Judas had laid by in his soul in habiliments of hate were
  now well organized in his subconscious mind and ready to spring up to engulf
  him when he once dared to separate himself from the supporting influence of
  his brethren while at the same time exposing himself to the clever
  insinuations and subtle ridicule of the enemies of Jesus. Every time Judas
  allowed his hopes to soar high and Jesus would do or say something to dash
  them to pieces, there was always left in Judas's heart a scar of bitter
  resentment; and as these scars multiplied, presently that heart, so often
  wounded, lost all real affection for the one who had inflicted this
  distasteful experience upon a well-intentioned but cowardly and self-centered
  personality. Judas did not realize it, but he was a coward. Accordingly was he
  always inclined to assign to Jesus cowardice as the motive which led him so
  often to refuse to grasp for power or glory when they were apparently within
  his easy reach. And every mortal man knows full well how love, even when once
  genuine, can, through disappointment, jealousy, and long-continued resentment,
  be eventually turned into actual hate.

  177:4.12 At last the chief priests and elders could breathe easily for a few
  hours. They would not have to arrest Jesus in public, and the securing of
  Judas as a traitorous ally insured that Jesus would not escape from their
  jurisdiction as he had so many times in the past.





5. THE LAST SOCIAL HOUR

  177:5.1 Since it was Wednesday, this evening at the camp was a social hour.
  The Master endeavored to cheer his downcast apostles, but that was well-nigh
  impossible. They were all beginning to realize that disconcerting and crushing
  events were impending. They could not be cheerful, even when the Master
  recounted their years of eventful and loving association. Jesus made careful
  inquiry about the families of all of the apostles and, looking over toward
  David Zebedee, asked if anyone had heard recently from his mother, his
  youngest sister, or other members of his family. David looked down at his
  feet; he was afraid to answer.

  177:5.2 This was the occasion of Jesus' warning his followers to beware of the
  support of the multitude. He recounted their experiences in Galilee when time
  and again great throngs of people enthusiastically followed them around and
  then just as ardently turned against them and returned to their former ways of
  believing and living. And then he said: "And so you must not allow yourselves
  to be deceived by the great crowds who heard us in the temple, and who seemed
  to believe our teachings. These multitudes listen to the truth and believe it
  superficially with their minds, but few of them permit the word of truth to
  strike down into the heart with living roots. Those who know the gospel only
  in the mind, and who have not experienced it in the heart, cannot be depended
  upon for support when real trouble comes. When the rulers of the Jews reach an
  agreement to destroy the Son of Man, and when they strike with one accord, you
  will see the multitude either flee in dismay or else stand by in silent
  amazement while these maddened and blinded rulers lead the teachers of the
  gospel truth to their death. And then, when adversity and persecution descend
  upon you, still others whom you think love the truth will be scattered, and
  some will renounce the gospel and desert you. Some who have been very close to
  us have already made up their minds to desert. You have rested today in
  preparation for those times which are now upon us. Watch, therefore, and pray
  that on the morrow you may be strengthened for the days that are just ahead."

  177:5.3 The atmosphere of the camp was charged with an inexplicable tension.
  Silent messengers came and went, communicating with only David Zebedee. Before
  the evening had passed, certain ones knew that Lazarus had taken hasty flight
  from Bethany. John Mark was ominously silent after returning to camp,
  notwithstanding he had spent the whole day in the Master's company. Every
  effort to persuade him to talk only indicated clearly that Jesus had told him
  not to talk.

  177:5.4 Even the Master's good cheer and his unusual sociability frightened
  them. They all felt the certain drawing upon them of the terrible isolation
  which they realized was about to descend with crashing suddenness and
  inescapable terror. They vaguely sensed what was coming, and none felt
  prepared to face the test. The Master had been away all day; they had missed
  him tremendously.

  177:5.5 This Wednesday evening was the low-tide mark of their spiritual status
  up to the actual hour of the Master's death. Although the next day was one
  more day nearer the tragic Friday, still, he was with them, and they passed
  through its anxious hours more gracefully.

  177:5.6 It was just before midnight when Jesus, knowing this would be the last
  night he would ever sleep through with his chosen family on earth, said, as he
  dispersed them for the night: "Go to your sleep, my brethren, and peace be
  upon you till we rise on the morrow, one more day to do the Father's will and
  experience the joy of knowing that we are his sons."


PAPER 178


 LAST DAY AT THE CAMP



  178:0.1 JESUS planned to spend this Thursday, his last free day on earth as a
  divine Son incarnated in the flesh, with his apostles and a few loyal and
  devoted disciples. Soon after the breakfast hour on this beautiful morning,
  the Master led them to a secluded spot a short distance above their camp and
  there taught them many new truths. Although Jesus delivered other discourses
  to the apostles during the early evening hours of the day, this talk of
  Thursday forenoon was his farewell address to the combined camp group of
  apostles and chosen disciples, both Jews and gentiles. The twelve were all
  present save Judas. Peter and several of the apostles remarked about his
  absence, and some of them thought Jesus had sent him into the city to attend
  to some matter, probably to arrange the details of their forthcoming
  celebration of the Passover. Judas did not return to the camp until
  midafternoon, a short time before Jesus led the twelve into Jerusalem to
  partake of the Last Supper.





1. DISCOURSE ON SONSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP



  178:1.1 Jesus talked to about fifty of his trusted followers for almost two
  hours and answered a score of questions regarding the relation of the kingdom
  of heaven to the kingdoms of this world, concerning the relation of sonship
  with God to citizenship in earthly governments. This discourse, together with
  his answers to questions, may be summarized and restated in modern language as
  follows:



  178:1.2 The kingdoms of this world, being material, may often find it
  necessary to employ physical force in the execution of their laws and for the
  maintenance of order. In the kingdom of heaven true believers will not resort
  to the employment of physical force. The kingdom of heaven, being a spiritual
  brotherhood of the spirit-born sons of God, may be promulgated only by the
  power of the spirit. This distinction of procedure refers to the relations of
  the kingdom of believers to the kingdoms of secular government and does not
  nullify the right of social groups of believers to maintain order in their
  ranks and administer discipline upon unruly and unworthy members.

  178:1.3 There is nothing incompatible between sonship in the spiritual kingdom
  and citizenship in the secular or civil government. It is the believer's duty
  to render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's and to God the things which
  are God's. There cannot be any disagreement between these two requirements,
  the one being material and the other spiritual, unless it should develop that
  a Caesar presumes to usurp the prerogatives of God and demand that spiritual
  homage and supreme worship be rendered to him. In such a case you shall
  worship only God while you seek to enlighten such misguided earthly rulers and
  in this way lead them also to the recognition of the Father in heaven. You
  shall not render spiritual worship to earthly rulers; neither should you
  employ the physical forces of earthly governments, whose rulers may sometime
  become believers, in the work of furthering the mission of the spiritual
  kingdom.

  178:1.4 Sonship in the kingdom, from the standpoint of advancing civilization,
  should assist you in becoming the ideal citizens of the kingdoms of this world
  since brotherhood and service are the cornerstones of the gospel of the
  kingdom. The love call of the spiritual kingdom should prove to be the
  effective destroyer of the hate urge of the unbelieving and war-minded
  citizens of the earthly kingdoms. But these material-minded sons in darkness
  will never know of your spiritual light of truth unless you draw very near
  them with that unselfish social service which is the natural outgrowth of the
  bearing of the fruits of the spirit in the life experience of each individual
  believer.

  178:1.5 As mortal and material men, you are indeed citizens of the earthly
  kingdoms, and you should be good citizens, all the better for having become
  reborn spirit sons of the heavenly kingdom. As faith-enlightened and spirit-
  liberated sons of the kingdom of heaven, you face a double responsibility of
  duty to man and duty to God while you voluntarily assume a third and sacred
  obligation: service to the brotherhood of God-knowing believers.

  178:1.6 You may not worship your temporal rulers, and you should not employ
  temporal power in the furtherance of the spiritual kingdom; but you should
  manifest the righteous ministry of loving service to believers and unbelievers
  alike. In the gospel of the kingdom there resides the mighty Spirit of Truth,
  and presently I will pour out this same spirit upon all flesh. The fruits of
  the spirit, your sincere and loving service, are the mighty social lever to
  uplift the races of darkness, and this Spirit of Truth will become your power-
  multiplying fulcrum.

  178:1.7 Display wisdom and exhibit sagacity in your dealings with unbelieving
  civil rulers. By discretion show yourselves to be expert in ironing out minor
  disagreements and in adjusting trifling misunderstandings. In every possible
  way -- in everything short of your spiritual allegiance to the rulers of the
  universe -- seek to live peaceably with all men. Be you always as wise as
  serpents but as harmless as doves.

  178:1.8 You should be made all the better citizens of the secular government
  as a result of becoming enlightened sons of the kingdom; so should the rulers
  of earthly governments become all the better rulers in civil affairs as a
  result of believing this gospel of the heavenly kingdom. The attitude of
  unselfish service of man and intelligent worship of God should make all
  kingdom believers better world citizens, while the attitude of honest
  citizenship and sincere devotion to one's temporal duty should help to make
  such a citizen the more easily reached by the spirit call to sonship in the
  heavenly kingdom.

  178:1.9 So long as the rulers of earthly governments seek to exercise the
  authority of religious dictators, you who believe this gospel can expect only
  trouble, persecution, and even death. But the very light which you bear to the
  world, and even the very manner in which you will suffer and die for this
  gospel of the kingdom, will, in themselves, eventually enlighten the whole
  world and result in the gradual divorcement of politics and religion. The
  persistent preaching of this gospel of the kingdom will some day bring to all
  nations a new and unbelievable liberation, intellectual freedom, and religious
  liberty.

  178:1.10 Under the soon-coming persecutions by those who hate this gospel of
  joy and liberty, you will thrive and the kingdom will prosper. But you will
  stand in grave danger in subsequent times when most men will speak well of
  kingdom believers and many in high places nominally accept the gospel of the
  heavenly kingdom. Learn to be faithful to the kingdom even in times of peace
  and prosperity. Tempt not the angels of your supervision to lead you in
  troublous ways as a loving discipline designed to save your ease-drifting
  souls.

  178:1.11 Remember that you are commissioned to preach this gospel of the
  kingdom -- the supreme desire to do the Father's will coupled with the supreme
  joy of the faith realization of sonship with God -- and you must not allow
  anything to divert your devotion to this one duty. Let all mankind benefit
  from the overflow of your loving spiritual ministry, enlightening intellectual
  communion, and uplifting social service; but none of these humanitarian
  labors, nor all of them, should be permitted to take the place of proclaiming
  the gospel. These mighty ministrations are the social by-products of the still
  more mighty and sublime ministrations and transformations wrought in the heart
  of the kingdom believer by the living Spirit of Truth and by the personal
  realization that the faith of a spirit-born man confers the assurance of
  living fellowship with the eternal God.

  178:1.12 You must not seek to promulgate truth nor to establish righteousness
  by the power of civil governments or by the enaction of secular laws. You may
  always labor to persuade men's minds, but you must never dare to compel them.
  You must not forget the great law of human fairness which I have taught you in
  positive form: Whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do even so to
  them.

  178:1.13 When a kingdom believer is called upon to serve the civil government,
  let him render such service as a temporal citizen of such a government, albeit
  such a believer should display in his civil service all of the ordinary traits
  of citizenship as these have been enhanced by the spiritual enlightenment of
  the ennobling association of the mind of mortal man with the indwelling spirit
  of the eternal God. If the unbeliever can qualify as a superior civil servant,
  you should seriously question whether the roots of truth in your heart have
  not died from the lack of the living waters of combined spiritual communion
  and social service. The consciousness of sonship with God should quicken the
  entire life service of every man, woman, and child who has become the
  possessor of such a mighty stimulus to all the inherent powers of a human
  personality.

  178:1.14 You are not to be passive mystics or colorless ascetics; you should
  not become dreamers and drifters, supinely trusting in a fictitious Providence
  to provide even the necessities of life. You are indeed to be gentle in your
  dealings with erring mortals, patient in your intercourse with ignorant men,
  and forbearing under provocation; but you are also to be valiant in defense of
  righteousness, mighty in the promulgation of truth, and aggressive in the
  preaching of this gospel of the kingdom, even to the ends of the earth.

  178:1.15 This gospel of the kingdom is a living truth. I have told you it is
  like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mustard seed; and now I
  declare that it is like the seed of the living being, which, from generation
  to generation, while it remains the same living seed, unfailingly unfolds
  itself in new manifestations and grows acceptably in channels of new
  adaptation to the peculiar needs and conditions of each successive generation.
  The revelation I have made to you is a living revelation, and I desire that it
  shall bear appropriate fruits in each individual and in each generation in
  accordance with the laws of spiritual growth, increase, and adaptative
  development. From generation to generation this gospel must show increasing
  vitality and exhibit greater depth of spiritual power. It must not be
  permitted to become merely a sacred memory, a mere tradition about me and the
  times in which we now live.

  178:1.16 And forget not: We have made no direct attack upon the persons or
  upon the authority of those who sit in Moses' seat; we only offered them the
  new light, which they have so vigorously rejected. We have assailed them only
  by the denunciation of their spiritual disloyalty to the very truths which
  they profess to teach and safeguard. We clashed with these established leaders
  and recognized rulers only when they threw themselves directly in the way of
  the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom to the sons of men. And even now,
  it is not we who assail them, but they who seek our destruction. Do not forget
  that you are commissioned to go forth preaching only the good news. You are
  not to attack the old ways; you are skillfully to put the leaven of new truth
  in the midst of the old beliefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work. Let
  controversy come only when they who despise the truth force it upon you. But
  when the willful unbeliever attacks you, do not hesitate to stand in vigorous
  defense of the truth which has saved and sanctified you.

  178:1.17 Throughout the vicissitudes of life, remember always to love one
  another. Do not strive with men, even with unbelievers. Show mercy even to
  those who despitefully abuse you. Show yourselves to be loyal citizens,
  upright artisans, praiseworthy neighbors, devoted kinsmen, understanding
  parents, and sincere believers in the brotherhood of the Father's kingdom. And
  my spirit shall be upon you, now and even to the end of the world.



  178:1.18 When Jesus had concluded his teaching, it was almost one o'clock, and
  they immediately went back to the camp, where David and his associates had
  lunch ready for them.





2. AFTER THE NOONTIME MEAL



  178:2.1 Not many of the Master's hearers were able to take in even a part of
  his forenoon address. Of all who heard him, the Greeks comprehended most. Even
  the eleven apostles were bewildered by his allusions to future political
  kingdoms and to successive generations of kingdom believers. Jesus' most
  devoted followers could not reconcile the impending end of his earthly
  ministry with these references to an extended future of gospel activities.
  Some of these Jewish believers were beginning to sense that earth's greatest
  tragedy was about to take place, but they could not reconcile such an
  impending disaster with either the Master's cheerfully indifferent personal
  attitude or his forenoon discourse, wherein he repeatedly alluded to the
  future transactions of the heavenly kingdom, extending over vast stretches of
  time and embracing relations with many and successive temporal kingdoms on
  earth.

  178:2.2 By noon of this day all the apostles and disciples had learned about
  the hasty flight of Lazarus from Bethany. They began to sense the grim
  determination of the Jewish rulers to exterminate Jesus and his teachings.

  178:2.3 David Zebedee, through the work of his secret agents in Jerusalem, was
  fully advised concerning the progress of the plan to arrest and kill Jesus. He
  knew all about the part of Judas in this plot, but he never disclosed this
  knowledge to the other apostles nor to any of the disciples. Shortly after
  lunch he did lead Jesus aside and, making bold, asked him whether he knew --
  but he never got further with his question. The Master, holding up his hand,
  stopped him, saying: "Yes, David, I know all about it, and I know that you
  know, but see to it that you tell no man. Only doubt not in your own heart
  that the will of God will prevail in the end."

  178:2.4 This conversation with David was interrupted by the arrival of a
  messenger from Philadelphia bringing word that Abner had heard of the plot to
  kill Jesus and asking if he should depart for Jerusalem. This runner hastened
  off for Philadelphia with this word for Abner: "Go on with your work. If I
  depart from you in the flesh, it is only that I may return in the spirit. I
  will not forsake you. I will be with you to the end."

  178:2.5 About this time Philip came to the Master and asked: "Master, seeing
  that the time of the Passover draws near, where would you have us prepare to
  eat it?" And when Jesus heard Philip's question, he answered: "Go and bring
  Peter and John, and I will give you directions concerning the supper we will
  eat together this night. As for the Passover, that you will have to consider
  after we have first done this."

  178:2.6 When Judas heard the Master speaking with Philip about these matters,
  he drew closer that he might overhear their conversation. But David Zebedee,
  who was standing near, stepped up and engaged Judas in conversation while
  Philip, Peter, and John went to one side to talk with the Master.

  178:2.7 Said Jesus to the three: "Go immediately into Jerusalem, and as you
  enter the gate, you will meet a man bearing a water pitcher. He will speak to
  you, and then shall you follow him. When he leads you to a certain house, go
  in after him and ask of the good man of that house, `Where is the guest
  chamber wherein the Master is to eat supper with his apostles?' And when you
  have thus inquired, this householder will show you a large upper room all
  furnished and ready for us."

  178:2.8 When the apostles reached the city, they met the man with the water
  pitcher near the gate and followed on after him to the home of John Mark,
  where the lad's father met them and showed them the upper room in readiness
  for the evening meal.

  178:2.9 And all of this came to pass as the result of an understanding arrived
  at between the Master and John Mark during the afternoon of the preceding day
  when they were alone in the hills. Jesus wanted to be sure he would have this
  one last meal undisturbed with his apostles, and believing if Judas knew
  beforehand of their place of meeting he might arrange with his enemies to take
  him, he made this secret arrangement with John Mark. In this way Judas did not
  learn of their place of meeting until later on when he arrived there in
  company with Jesus and the other apostles.



  178:2.10 David Zebedee had much business to transact with Judas so that he was
  easily prevented from following Peter, John, and Philip, as he so much desired
  to do. When Judas gave David a certain sum of money for provisions, David said
  to him: "Judas, might it not be well, under the circumstances, to provide me
  with a little money in advance of my actual needs?" And after Judas had
  reflected for a moment, he answered: "Yes, David, I think it would be wise. In
  fact, in view of the disturbed conditions in Jerusalem, I think it would be
  best for me to turn over all the money to you. They plot against the Master,
  and in case anything should happen to me, you would not be hampered."

  178:2.11 And so David received all the apostolic cash funds and receipts for
  all money on deposit. Not until the evening of the next day did the apostles
  learn of this transaction.



  178:2.12 It was about half past four o'clock when the three apostles returned
  and informed Jesus that everything was in readiness for the supper. The Master
  immediately prepared to lead his twelve apostles over the trail to the Bethany
  road and on into Jerusalem. And this was the last journey he ever made with
  all twelve of them.





3. ON THE WAY TO THE SUPPER



  178:3.1 Seeking again to avoid the crowds passing through the Kidron valley
  back and forth between Gethsemane Park and Jerusalem, Jesus and the twelve
  walked over the western brow of Mount Olivet to meet the road leading from
  Bethany down to the city. As they drew near the place where Jesus had tarried
  the previous evening to discourse on the destruction of Jerusalem, they
  unconsciously paused while they stood and looked down in silence upon the
  city. As they were a little early, and since Jesus did not wish to pass
  through the city until after sunset, he said to his associates:



  178:3.2 "Sit down and rest yourselves while I talk with you about what must
  shortly come to pass. All these years have I lived with you as brethren, and I
  have taught you the truth concerning the kingdom of heaven and have revealed
  to you the mysteries thereof. And my Father has indeed done many wonderful
  works in connection with my mission on earth. You have been witnesses of all
  this and partakers in the experience of being laborers together with God. And
  you will bear me witness that I have for some time warned you that I must
  presently return to the work the Father has given me to do; I have plainly
  told you that I must leave you in the world to carry on the work of the
  kingdom. It was for this purpose that I set you apart, in the hills of
  Capernaum. The experience you have had with me, you must now make ready to
  share with others. As the Father sent me into this world, so am I about to
  send you forth to represent me and finish the work I have begun.

  178:3.3 "You look down on yonder city in sorrow, for you have heard my words
  telling of the end of Jerusalem. I have forewarned you lest you should perish
  in her destruction and so delay the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom.
  Likewise do I warn you to take heed lest you needlessly expose yourselves to
  peril when they come to take the Son of Man. I must go, but you are to remain
  to witness to this gospel when I have gone, even as I directed that Lazarus
  flee from the wrath of man that he might live to make known the glory of God.
  If it is the Father's will that I depart, nothing you may do can frustrate the
  divine plan. Take heed to yourselves lest they kill you also. Let your souls
  be valiant in defense of the gospel by spirit power but be not misled into any
  foolish attempt to defend the Son of Man. I need no defense by the hand of
  man; the armies of heaven are even now near at hand; but I am determined to do
  the will of my Father in heaven, and therefore must we submit to that which is
  so soon to come upon us.

  178:3.4 "When you see this city destroyed, forget not that you have entered
  already upon the eternal life of endless service in the ever-advancing kingdom
  of heaven, even of the heaven of heavens. You should know that in my Father's
  universe and in mine are many abodes, and that there awaits the children of
  light the revelation of cities whose builder is God and worlds whose habit of
  life is righteousness and joy in the truth. I have brought the kingdom of
  heaven to you here on earth, but I declare that all of you who by faith enter
  therein and remain therein by the living service of truth, shall surely ascend
  to the worlds on high and sit with me in the spirit kingdom of our Father. But
  first must you gird yourselves and complete the work which you have begun with
  me. You must first pass through much tribulation and endure many sorrows --
  and these trials are even now upon us -- and when you have finished your work
  on earth, you shall come to my joy, even as I have finished my Father's work
  on earth and am about to return to his embrace."



  178:3.5 When the Master had spoken, he arose, and they all followed him down
  Olivet and into the city. None of the apostles, save three, knew where they
  were going as they made their way along the narrow streets in the approaching
  darkness. The crowds jostled them, but no one recognized them nor knew that
  the Son of God was passing by on his way to the last mortal rendezvous with
  his chosen ambassadors of the kingdom. And neither did the apostles know that
  one of their own number had already entered into a conspiracy to betray the
  Master into the hands of his enemies.

  178:3.6 John Mark had followed them all the way into the city, and after they
  had entered the gate, he hurried on by another street so that he was waiting
  to welcome them to his father's home when they arrived.


PAPER 179



THE LAST SUPPER



  179:0.1 DURING the afternoon of this Thursday, when Philip reminded the Master
  about the approaching Passover and inquired concerning his plans for its
  celebration, he had in mind the Passover supper which was due to be eaten on
  the evening of the next day, Friday. It was the custom to begin the
  preparations for the celebration of the Passover not later than noon of the
  preceding day. And since the Jews reckoned the day as beginning at sunset,
  this meant that Saturday's Passover supper would be eaten on Friday night,
  sometime before the midnight hour.

  179:0.2 The apostles were, therefore, entirely at a loss to understand the
  Master's announcement that they would celebrate the Passover one day early.
  They thought, at least some of them did, that he knew he would be placed under
  arrest before the time of the Passover supper on Friday night and was
  therefore calling them together for a special supper on this Thursday evening.
  Others thought that this was merely a special occasion which was to precede
  the regular Passover celebration.

  179:0.3 The apostles knew that Jesus had celebrated other Passovers without
  the lamb; they knew that he did not personally participate in any sacrificial
  service of the Jewish system. He had many times partaken of the paschal lamb
  as a guest, but always, when he was the host, no lamb was served. It would not
  have been a great surprise to the apostles to have seen the lamb omitted even
  on Passover night, and since this supper was given one day earlier, they
  thought nothing of its absence.

  179:0.4 After receiving the greetings of welcome extended by the father and
  mother of John Mark, the apostles went immediately to the upper chamber while
  Jesus lingered behind to talk with the Mark family.

  179:0.5 It had been understood beforehand that the Master was to celebrate
  this occasion alone with his twelve apostles; therefore no servants were
  provided to wait upon them.





1. THE DESIRE FOR PREFERENCE



  179:1.1 When the apostles had been shown upstairs by John Mark, they beheld a
  large and commodious chamber, which was completely furnished for the supper,
  and observed that the bread, wine, water, and herbs were all in readiness on
  one end of the table. Except for the end on which rested the bread and wine,
  this long table was surrounded by thirteen reclining couches, just such as
  would be provided for the celebration of the Passover in a well-to-do Jewish
  household.

  179:1.2 As the twelve entered this upper chamber, they noticed, just inside
  the door, the pitchers of water, the basins, and towels for laving their dusty
  feet; and since no servant had been provided to render this service, the
  apostles began to look at one another as soon as John Mark had left them, and
  each began to think within himself, Who shall wash our feet? And each likewise
  thought that it would not be he who would thus seem to act as the servant of
  the others.

  179:1.3 As they stood there, debating in their hearts, they surveyed the
  seating arrangement of the table, taking note of the higher divan of the host
  with one couch on the right and eleven arranged around the table on up to
  opposite this second seat of honor on the host's right.

  179:1.4 They expected the Master to arrive any moment, but they were in a
  quandary as to whether they should seat themselves or await his coming and
  depend on him to assign them their places. While they hesitated, Judas stepped
  over to the seat of honor, at the left of the host, and signified that he
  intended there to recline as the preferred guest. This act of Judas
  immediately stirred up a heated dispute among the other apostles. Judas had no
  sooner seized the seat of honor than John Zebedee laid claim to the next
  preferred seat, the one on the right of the host. Simon Peter was so enraged
  at this assumption of choice positions by Judas and John that, as the other
  angry apostles looked on, he marched clear around the table and took his place
  on the lowest couch, the end of the seating order and just opposite to that
  chosen by John Zebedee. Since others had seized the high seats, Peter thought
  to choose the lowest, and he did this, not merely in protest against the
  unseemly pride of his brethren, but with the hope that Jesus, when he should
  come and see him in the place of least honor, would call him up to a higher
  one, thus displacing one who had presumed to honor himself.

  179:1.5 With the highest and the lowest positions thus occupied, the rest of
  the apostles chose places, some near Judas and some near Peter, until all were
  located. They were seated about the U-shaped table on these reclining divans
  in the following order: on the right of the Master, John; on the left, Judas,
  Simon Zelotes, Matthew, James Zebedee, Andrew, the Alpheus twins, Philip,
  Nathaniel, Thomas, and Simon Peter.



  179:1.6 They are gathered together to celebrate, at least in spirit, an
  institution which antedated even Moses and referred to the times when their
  fathers were slaves in Egypt. This supper is their last rendezvous with Jesus,
  and even in such a solemn setting, under the leadership of Judas the apostles
  are led once more to give way to their old predilection for honor, preference,
  and personal exaltation.



  179:1.7 They were still engaged in voicing angry recriminations when the
  Master appeared in the doorway, where he hesitated a moment as a look of
  disappointment slowly crept over his face. Without comment he went to his
  place, and he did not disturb their seating arrangement.

  179:1.8 They were now ready to begin the supper, except that their feet were
  still unwashed, and they were in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. When
  the Master arrived, they were still engaged in making uncomplimentary remarks
  about one another, to say nothing of the thoughts of some who had sufficient
  emotional control to refrain from publicly expressing their feelings.





2. BEGINNING THE SUPPER



  179:2.1 For a few moments after the Master had gone to his place, not a word
  was spoken. Jesus looked them all over and, relieving the tension with a
  smile, said: "I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you. I wanted
  to eat with you once more before I suffered, and realizing that my hour has
  come, I arranged to have this supper with you tonight, for, as concerns the
  morrow, we are all in the hands of the Father, whose will I have come to
  execute. I shall not again eat with you until you sit down with me in the
  kingdom which my Father will give me when I have finished that for which he
  sent me into this world."

  179:2.2 After the wine and the water had been mixed, they brought the cup to
  Jesus, who, when he had received it from the hand of Thaddeus, held it while
  he offered thanks. And when he had finished offering thanks, he said: "Take
  this cup and divide it among yourselves and, when you partake of it, realize
  that I shall not again drink with you the fruit of the vine since this is our
  last supper. When we sit down again in this manner, it will be in the kingdom
  to come."

  179:2.3 Jesus began thus to talk to his apostles because he knew that his hour
  had come. He understood that the time had come when he was to return to the
  Father, and that his work on earth was almost finished. The Master knew he had
  revealed the Father's love on earth and had shown forth his mercy to mankind,
  and that he had completed that for which he came into the world, even to the
  receiving of all power and authority in heaven and on earth. Likewise, he knew
  Judas Iscariot had fully made up his mind to deliver him that night into the
  hands of his enemies. He fully realized that this traitorous betrayal was the
  work of Judas, but that it also pleased Lucifer, Satan, and Caligastia the
  prince of darkness. But he feared none of those who sought his spiritual
  overthrow any more than he feared those who sought to accomplish his physical
  death. The Master had but one anxiety, and that was for the safety and
  salvation of his chosen followers. And so, with the full knowledge that the
  Father had put all things under his authority, the Master now prepared to
  enact the parable of brotherly love.





3. WASHING THE APOSTLES' FEET



  179:3.1 After drinking the first cup of the Passover, it was the Jewish custom
  for the host to arise from the table and wash his hands. Later on in the meal
  and after the second cup, all of the guests likewise rose up and washed their
  hands. Since the apostles knew that their Master never observed these rites of
  ceremonial hand washing, they were very curious to know what he intended to do
  when, after they had partaken of this first cup, he arose from the table and
  silently made his way over to near the door, where the water pitchers, basins,
  and towels had been placed. And their curiosity grew into astonishment as they
  saw the Master remove his outer garment, gird himself with a towel, and begin
  to pour water into one of the foot basins. Imagine the amazement of these
  twelve men, who had so recently refused to wash one another's feet, and who
  had engaged in such unseemly disputes about positions of honor at the table,
  when they saw him make his way around the unoccupied end of the table to the
  lowest seat of the feast, where Simon Peter reclined, and, kneeling down in
  the attitude of a servant, make ready to wash Simon's feet. As the Master
  knelt, all twelve arose as one man to their feet; even the traitorous Judas so
  far forgot his infamy for a moment as to arise with his fellow apostles in
  this expression of surprise, respect, and utter amazement.

  179:3.2 There stood Simon Peter, looking down into the upturned face of his
  Master. Jesus said nothing; it was not necessary that he should speak. His
  attitude plainly revealed that he was minded to wash Simon Peter's feet.
  Notwithstanding his frailties of the flesh, Peter loved the Master. This
  Galilean fisherman was the first human being wholeheartedly to believe in the
  divinity of Jesus and to make full and public confession of that belief. And
  Peter had never since really doubted the divine nature of the Master. Since
  Peter so revered and honored Jesus in his heart, it was not strange that his
  soul resented the thought of Jesus' kneeling there before him in the attitude
  of a menial servant and proposing to wash his feet as would a slave. When
  Peter presently collected his wits sufficiently to address the Master, he
  spoke the heart feelings of all his fellow apostles.

  179:3.3 After a few moments of this great embarrassment, Peter said, "Master,
  do you really mean to wash my feet?" And then, looking up into Peter's face,
  Jesus said: "You may not fully understand what I am about to do, but hereafter
  you will know the meaning of all these things." Then Simon Peter, drawing a
  long breath, said, "Master, you shall never wash my feet!" And each of the
  apostles nodded their approval of Peter's firm declaration of refusal to allow
  Jesus thus to humble himself before them.

  179:3.4 The dramatic appeal of this unusual scene at first touched the heart
  of even Judas Iscariot; but when his vainglorious intellect passed judgment
  upon the spectacle, he concluded that this gesture of humility was just one
  more episode which conclusively proved that Jesus would never qualify as
  Israel's deliverer, and that he had made no mistake in the decision to desert
  the Master's cause.

  179:3.5 As they all stood there in breathless amazement, Jesus said: "Peter, I
  declare that, if I do not wash your feet, you will have no part with me in
  that which I am about to perform." When Peter heard this declaration, coupled
  with the fact that Jesus continued kneeling there at his feet, he made one of
  those decisions of blind acquiescence in compliance with the wish of one whom
  he respected and loved. As it began to dawn on Simon Peter that there was
  attached to this proposed enactment of service some signification that
  determined one's future connection with the Master's work, he not only became
  reconciled to the thought of allowing Jesus to wash his feet but, in his
  characteristic and impetuous manner, said: "Then, Master, wash not my feet
  only but also my hands and my head."

  179:3.6 As the Master made ready to begin washing Peter's feet, he said: "He
  who is already clean needs only to have his feet washed. You who sit with me
  tonight are clean -- but not all. But the dust of your feet should have been
  washed away before you sat down at meat with me. And besides, I would perform
  this service for you as a parable to illustrate the meaning of a new
  commandment which I will presently give you."

  179:3.7 In like manner the Master went around the table, in silence, washing
  the feet of his twelve apostles, not even passing by Judas. When Jesus had
  finished washing the feet of the twelve, he donned his cloak, returned to his
  place as host, and after looking over his bewildered apostles, said:



  179:3.8 "Do you really understand what I have done to you? You call me Master,
  and you say well, for so I am. If, then, the Master has washed your feet, why
  was it that you were unwilling to wash one another's feet? What lesson should
  you learn from this parable in which the Master so willingly does that service
  which his brethren were unwilling to do for one another? Verily, verily, I say
  to you: A servant is not greater than his master; neither is one who is sent
  greater than he who sends him. You have seen the way of service in my life
  among you, and blessed are you who will have the gracious courage so to serve.
  But why are you so slow to learn that the secret of greatness in the spiritual
  kingdom is not like the methods of power in the material world?

  179:3.9 "When I came into this chamber tonight, you were not content proudly
  to refuse to wash one another's feet, but you must also fall to disputing
  among yourselves as to who should have the places of honor at my table. Such
  honors the Pharisees and the children of this world seek, but it should not be
  so among the ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom. Do you not know that there
  can be no place of preferment at my table? Do you not understand that I love
  each of you as I do the others? Do you not know that the place nearest me, as
  men regard such honors, can mean nothing concerning your standing in the
  kingdom of heaven? You know that the kings of the gentiles have lordship over
  their subjects, while those who exercise this authority are sometimes called
  benefactors. But it shall not be so in the kingdom of heaven. He who would be
  great among you, let him become as the younger; while he who would be chief,
  let him become as one who serves. Who is the greater, he who sits at meat, or
  he who serves? Is it not commonly regarded that he who sits at meat is the
  greater? But you will observe that I am among you as one who serves. If you
  are willing to become fellow servants with me in doing the Father's will, in
  the kingdom to come you shall sit with me in power, still doing the Father's
  will in future glory."

  179:3.10 When Jesus had finished speaking, the Alpheus twins brought on the
  bread and wine, with the bitter herbs and the paste of dried fruits, for the
  next course of the Last Supper.





4. LAST WORDS TO THE BETRAYER



  179:4.1 For some minutes the apostles ate in silence, but under the influence
  of the Master's cheerful demeanor they were soon drawn into conversation, and
  ere long the meal was proceeding as if nothing out of the ordinary had
  occurred to interfere with the good cheer and social accord of this
  extraordinary occasion. After some time had elapsed, in about the middle of
  this second course of the meal, Jesus, looking them over, said: "I have told
  you how much I desired to have this supper with you, and knowing how the evil
  forces of darkness have conspired to bring about the death of the Son of Man,
  I determined to eat this supper with you in this secret chamber and a day in
  advance of the Passover since I will not be with you by this time tomorrow
  night. I have repeatedly told you that I must return to the Father. Now has my
  hour come, but it was not required that one of you should betray me into the
  hands of my enemies."

  179:4.2 When the twelve heard this, having already been robbed of much of
  their self-assertiveness and self-confidence by the parable of the feet
  washing and the Master's subsequent discourse, they began to look at one
  another while in disconcerted tones they hesitatingly inquired, "Is it I?" And
  when they had all so inquired, Jesus said: "While it is necessary that I go to
  the Father, it was not required that one of you should become a traitor to
  fulfill the Father's will. This is the coming to fruit of the concealed evil
  in the heart of one who failed to love the truth with his whole soul. How
  deceitful is the intellectual pride that precedes the spiritual downfall! My
  friend of many years, who even now eats my bread, will be willing to betray
  me, even as he now dips his hand with me in the dish."

  179:4.3 And when Jesus had thus spoken, they all began again to ask, "Is it
  I?" And as Judas, sitting on the left of his Master, again asked, "Is it I?"
  Jesus, dipping the bread in the dish of herbs, handed it to Judas, saying,
  "You have said." But the others did not hear Jesus speak to Judas. John, who
  reclined on Jesus' right hand, leaned over and asked the Master: "Who is it?
  We should know who it is that has proved untrue to his trust." Jesus answered:
  "Already have I told you, even he to whom I gave the sop." But it was so
  natural for the host to give a sop to the one who sat next to him on the left
  that none of them took notice of this, even though the Master had so plainly
  spoken. But Judas was painfully conscious of the meaning of the Master's words
  associated with his act, and he became fearful lest his brethren were likewise
  now aware that he was the betrayer.

  179:4.4 Peter was highly excited by what had been said, and leaning forward
  over the table, he addressed John, "Ask him who it is, or if he has told you,
  tell me who is the betrayer."

  179:4.5 Jesus brought their whisperings to an end by saying: "I sorrow that
  this evil should have come to pass and hoped even up to this hour that the
  power of truth might triumph over the deceptions of evil, but such victories
  are not won without the faith of the sincere love of truth. I would not have
  told you these things at this, our last supper, but I desire to warn you of
  these sorrows and so prepare you for what is now upon us. I have told you of
  this because I desire that you should recall, after I have gone, that I knew
  about all these evil plottings, and that I forewarned you of my betrayal. And
  I do all this only that you may be strengthened for the temptations and trials
  which are just ahead."

  179:4.6 When Jesus had thus spoken, leaning over toward Judas, he said: "What
  you have decided to do, do quickly." And when Judas heard these words, he
  arose from the table and hastily left the room, going out into the night to do
  what he had set his mind to accomplish. When the other apostles saw Judas
  hasten off after Jesus had spoken to him, they thought he had gone to procure
  something additional for the supper or to do some other errand for the Master
  since they supposed he still carried the bag.



  179:4.7 Jesus now knew that nothing could be done to keep Judas from turning
  traitor. He started with twelve -- now he had eleven. He chose six of these
  apostles, and though Judas was among those nominated by his first-chosen
  apostles, still the Master accepted him and had, up to this very hour, done
  everything possible to sanctify and save him, even as he had wrought for the
  peace and salvation of the others.

  179:4.8 This supper, with its tender episodes and softening touches, was
  Jesus' last appeal to the deserting Judas, but it was of no avail. Warning,
  even when administered in the most tactful manner and conveyed in the most
  kindly spirit, as a rule, only intensifies hatred and fires the evil
  determination to carry out to the full one's own selfish projects, when love
  is once really dead.





5. ESTABLISHING THE REMEMBRANCE SUPPER



  179:5.1 As they brought Jesus the third cup of wine, the "cup of blessing," he
  arose from the couch and, taking the cup in his hands, blessed it, saying:
  "Take this cup, all of you, and drink of it. This shall be the cup of my
  remembrance. This is the cup of the blessing of a new dispensation of grace
  and truth. This shall be to you the emblem of the bestowal and ministry of the
  divine Spirit of Truth. And I will not again drink this cup with you until I
  drink in new form with you in the Father's eternal kingdom."

  179:5.2 The apostles all sensed that something out of the ordinary was
  transpiring as they drank of this cup of blessing in profound reverence and
  perfect silence. The old Passover commemorated the emergence of their fathers
  from a state of racial slavery into individual freedom; now the Master was
  instituting a new remembrance supper as a symbol of the new dispensation
  wherein the enslaved individual emerges from the bondage of ceremonialism and
  selfishness into the spiritual joy of the brotherhood and fellowship of the
  liberated faith sons of the living God.

  179:5.3 When they had finished drinking this new cup of remembrance, the
  Master took up the bread and, after giving thanks, broke it in pieces and,
  directing them to pass it around, said: "Take this bread of remembrance and
  eat it. I have told you that I am the bread of life. And this bread of life is
  the united life of the Father and the Son in one gift. The word of the Father,
  as revealed in the Son, is indeed the bread of life." When they had partaken
  of the bread of remembrance, the symbol of the living word of truth incarnated
  in the likeness of mortal flesh, they all sat down.



  179:5.4 In instituting this remembrance supper, the Master, as was always his
  habit, resorted to parables and symbols. He employed symbols because he wanted
  to teach certain great spiritual truths in such a manner as to make it
  difficult for his successors to attach precise interpretations and definite
  meanings to his words. In this way he sought to prevent successive generations
  from crystallizing his teaching and binding down his spiritual meanings by the
  dead chains of tradition and dogma. In the establishment of the only ceremony
  or sacrament associated with his whole life mission, Jesus took great pains to
  suggest his meanings rather than to commit himself to precise definitions. He
  did not wish to destroy the individual's concept of divine communion by
  establishing a precise form; neither did he desire to limit the believer's
  spiritual imagination by formally cramping it. He rather sought to set man's
  reborn soul free upon the joyous wings of a new and living spiritual liberty.

  179:5.5 Notwithstanding the Master's effort thus to establish this new
  sacrament of the remembrance, those who followed after him in the intervening
  centuries saw to it that his express desire was effectively thwarted in that
  his simple spiritual symbolism of that last night in the flesh has been
  reduced to precise interpretations and subjected to the almost mathematical
  precision of a set formula. Of all Jesus' teachings none have become more
  tradition-standardized.

  179:5.6 This supper of remembrance, when it is partaken of by those who are
  Son-believing and God-knowing, does not need to have associated with its
  symbolism any of man's puerile misinterpretations regarding the meaning of the
  divine presence, for upon all such occasions the Master is really present. The
  remembrance supper is the believer's symbolic rendezvous with Michael. When
  you become thus spirit-conscious, the Son is actually present, and his spirit
  fraternizes with the indwelling fragment of his Father.



  179:5.7 After they had engaged in meditation for a few moments, Jesus
  continued speaking: "When you do these things, recall the life I have lived on
  earth among you and rejoice that I am to continue to live on earth with you
  and to serve through you. As individuals, contend not among yourselves as to
  who shall be greatest. Be you all as brethren. And when the kingdom grows to
  embrace large groups of believers, likewise should you refrain from contending
  for greatness or seeking preferment between such groups."

  179:5.8 And this mighty occasion took place in the upper chamber of a friend.
  There was nothing of sacred form or of ceremonial consecration about either
  the supper or the building. The remembrance supper was established without
  ecclesiastical sanction.

  179:5.9 When Jesus had thus established the supper of the remembrance, he said
  to the twelve: "And as often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me. And
  when you do remember me, first look back upon my life in the flesh, recall
  that I was once with you, and then, by faith, discern that you shall all some
  time sup with me in the Father's eternal kingdom. This is the new Passover
  which I leave with you, even the memory of my bestowal life, the word of
  eternal truth; and of my love for you, the outpouring of my Spirit of Truth
  upon all flesh."

  179:5.10 And they ended this celebration of the old but bloodless Passover in
  connection with the inauguration of the new supper of the remembrance, by
  singing, all together, the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm.


PAPER 180


 THE FAREWELL DISCOURSE



  180:0.1 AFTER singing the Psalm at the conclusion of the Last Supper, the
  apostles thought that Jesus intended to return immediately to the camp, but he
  indicated that they should sit down. Said the Master:

  180:0.2 "You well remember when I sent you forth without purse or wallet and
  even advised that you take with you no extra clothes. And you will all recall
  that you lacked nothing. But now have you come upon troublous times. No longer
  can you depend upon the good will of the multitudes. Henceforth, he who has a
  purse, let him take it with him. When you go out into the world to proclaim
  this gospel, make such provision for your support as seems best. I have come
  to bring peace, but it will not appear for a time.

  180:0.3 "The time has now come for the Son of Man to be glorified, and the
  Father shall be glorified in me. My friends, I am to be with you only a little
  longer. Soon you will seek for me, but you will not find me, for I am going to
  a place to which you cannot, at this time, come. But when you have finished
  your work on earth as I have now finished mine, you shall then come to me even
  as I now prepare to go to my Father. In just a short time I am going to leave
  you, you will see me no more on earth, but you shall all see me in the age to
  come when you ascend to the kingdom which my Father has given to me."





1. THE NEW COMMANDMENT



  180:1.1 After a few moments of informal conversation, Jesus stood up and said:
  "When I enacted for you a parable indicating how you should be willing to
  serve one another, I said that I desired to give you a new commandment; and I
  would do this now as I am about to leave you. You well know the commandment
  which directs that you love one another; that you love your neighbor even as
  yourself. But I am not wholly satisfied with even that sincere devotion on the
  part of my children. I would have you perform still greater acts of love in
  the kingdom of the believing brotherhood. And so I give you this new
  commandment: That you love one another even as I have loved you. And by this
  will all men know that you are my disciples if you thus love one another.

  180:1.2 "When I give you this new commandment, I do not place any new burden
  upon your souls; rather do I bring you new joy and make it possible for you to
  experience new pleasure in knowing the delights of the bestowal of your
  heart's affection upon your fellow men. I am about to experience the supreme
  joy, even though enduring outward sorrow, in the bestowal of my affection upon
  you and your fellow mortals.

  180:1.3 "When I invite you to love one another, even as I have loved you, I
  hold up before you the supreme measure of true affection, for greater love can
  no man have than this: that he will lay down his life for his friends. And you
  are my friends; you will continue to be my friends if you are but willing to
  do what I have taught you. You have called me Master, but I do not call you
  servants. If you will only love one another as I am loving you, you shall be
  my friends, and I will ever speak to you of that which the Father reveals to
  me.

  180:1.4 "You have not merely chosen me, but I have also chosen you, and I have
  ordained you to go forth into the world to yield the fruit of loving service
  to your fellows even as I have lived among you and revealed the Father to you.
  The Father and I will both work with you, and you shall experience the divine
  fullness of joy if you will only obey my command to love one another, even as
  I have loved you."



  180:1.5 If you would share the Master's joy, you must share his love. And to
  share his love means that you have shared his service. Such an experience of
  love does not deliver you from the difficulties of this world; it does not
  create a new world, but it most certainly does make the old world new.

  180:1.6 Keep in mind: It is loyalty, not sacrifice, that Jesus demands. The
  consciousness of sacrifice implies the absence of that wholehearted affection
  which would have made such a loving service a supreme joy. The idea of duty
  signifies that you are servant-minded and hence are missing the mighty thrill
  of doing your service as a friend and for a friend. The impulse of friendship
  transcends all convictions of duty, and the service of a friend for a friend
  can never be called a sacrifice. The Master has taught the apostles that they
  are the sons of God. He has called them brethren, and now, before he leaves,
  he calls them his friends.





2. THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES



  180:2.1 Then Jesus stood up again and continued teaching his apostles: "I am
  the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. I am the vine, and you are the
  branches. And the Father requires of me only that you shall bear much fruit.
  The vine is pruned only to increase the fruitfulness of its branches. Every
  branch coming out of me which bears no fruit, the Father will take away. Every
  branch which bears fruit, the Father will cleanse that it may bear more fruit.
  Already are you clean through the word I have spoken, but you must continue to
  be clean. You must abide in me, and I in you; the branch will die if it is
  separated from the vine. As the branch cannot bear fruit except it abides in
  the vine, so neither can you yield the fruits of loving service except you
  abide in me. Remember: I am the real vine, and you are the living branches. He
  who lives in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit of the spirit and
  experience the supreme joy of yielding this spiritual harvest. If you will
  maintain this living spiritual connection with me, you will bear abundant
  fruit. If you abide in me and my words live in you, you will be able to
  commune freely with me, and then can my living spirit so infuse you that you
  may ask whatsoever my spirit wills and do all this with the assurance that the
  Father will grant us our petition. Herein is the Father glorified: that the
  vine has many living branches, and that every branch bears much fruit. And
  when the world sees these fruit-bearing branches -- my friends who love one
  another, even as I have loved them -- all men will know that you are truly my
  disciples.

  180:2.2 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Live in my love even
  as I live in the Father's love. If you do as I have taught you, you shall
  abide in my love even as I have kept the Father's word and evermore abide in
  his love."

  180:2.3 The Jews had long taught that the Messiah would be "a stem arising out
  of the vine" of David's ancestors, and in commemoration of this olden teaching
  a large emblem of the grape and its attached vine decorated the entrance to
  Herod's temple. The apostles all recalled these things while the Master talked
  to them this night in the upper chamber.

  180:2.4 But great sorrow later attended the misinterpretation of the Master's
  inferences regarding prayer. There would have been little difficulty about
  these teachings if his exact words had been remembered and subsequently
  truthfully recorded. But as the record was made, believers eventually regarded
  prayer in Jesus' name as a sort of supreme magic, thinking that they would
  receive from the Father anything they asked for. For centuries honest souls
  have continued to wreck their faith against this stumbling block. How long
  will it take the world of believers to understand that prayer is not a process
  of getting your way but rather a program of taking God's way, an experience of
  learning how to recognize and execute the Father's will? It is entirely true
  that, when your will has been truly aligned with his, you can ask anything
  conceived by that will-union, and it will be granted. And such a will-union is
  effected by and through Jesus even as the life of the vine flows into and
  through the living branches.

  180:2.5 When there exists this living connection between divinity and
  humanity, if humanity should thoughtlessly and ignorantly pray for selfish
  ease and vainglorious accomplishments, there could be only one divine answer:
  more and increased bearing of the fruits of the spirit on the stems of the
  living branches. When the branch of the vine is alive, there can be only one
  answer to all its petitions: increased grape bearing. In fact, the branch
  exists only for, and can do nothing except, fruit bearing, yielding grapes. So
  does the true believer exist only for the purpose of bearing the fruits of the
  spirit: to love man as he himself has been loved by God -- that we should love
  one another, even as Jesus has loved us.

  180:2.6 And when the Father's hand of discipline is laid upon the vine, it is
  done in love, in order that the branches may bear much fruit. And a wise
  husbandman cuts away only the dead and fruitless branches.

  180:2.7 Jesus had great difficulty in leading even his apostles to recognize
  that prayer is a function of spirit-born believers in the spirit-dominated
  kingdom.





3. ENMITY OF THE WORLD



  180:3.1 The eleven had scarcely ceased their discussions of the discourse on
  the vine and the branches when the Master, indicating that he was desirous of
  speaking to them further and knowing that his time was short, said: "When I
  have left you, be not discouraged by the enmity of the world. Be not downcast
  even when faint-hearted believers turn against you and join hands with the
  enemies of the kingdom. If the world shall hate you, you should recall that it
  hated me even before it hated you. If you were of this world, then would the
  world love its own, but because you are not, the world refuses to love you.
  You are in this world, but your lives are not to be worldlike. I have chosen
  you out of the world to represent the spirit of another world even to this
  world from which you have been chosen. But always remember the words I have
  spoken to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they dare to
  persecute me, they will also persecute you. If my words offend the
  unbelievers, so also will your words offend the ungodly. And all of this will
  they do to you because they believe not in me nor in Him who sent me; so will
  you suffer many things for the sake of my gospel. But when you endure these
  tribulations, you should recall that I also suffered before you for the sake
  of this gospel of the heavenly kingdom.

  180:3.2 "Many of those who will assail you are ignorant of the light of
  heaven, but this is not true of some who now persecute us. If we had not
  taught them the truth, they might do many strange things without falling under
  condemnation, but now, since they have known the light and presumed to reject
  it, they have no excuse for their attitude. He who hates me hates my Father.
  It cannot be otherwise; the light which would save you if accepted can only
  condemn you if it is knowingly rejected. And what have I done to these men
  that they should hate me with such a terrible hatred? Nothing, save to offer
  them fellowship on earth and salvation in heaven. But have you not read in the
  Scripture the saying: `And they hated me without a cause'?

  180:3.3 "But I will not leave you alone in the world. Very soon, after I have
  gone, I will send you a spirit helper. You shall have with you one who will
  take my place among you, one who will continue to teach you the way of truth,
  who will even comfort you.

  180:3.4 "Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; continue to
  believe also in me. Even though I must leave you, I will not be far from you.
  I have already told you that in my Father's universe there are many tarrying-
  places. If this were not true, I would not have repeatedly told you about
  them. I am going to return to these worlds of light, stations in the Father's
  heaven to which you shall some time ascend. From these places I came into this
  world, and the hour is now at hand when I must return to my Father's work in
  the spheres on high.

  180:3.5 "If I thus go before you into the Father's heavenly kingdom, so will I
  surely send for you that you may be with me in the places that were prepared
  for the mortal sons of God before this world was. Even though I must leave
  you, I will be present with you in spirit, and eventually you shall be with me
  in person when you have ascended to me in my universe even as I am about to
  ascend to my Father in his greater universe. And what I have told you is true
  and everlasting, even though you may not fully comprehend it. I go to the
  Father, and though you cannot now follow me, you shall certainly follow me in
  the ages to come."

  180:3.6 When Jesus sat down, Thomas arose and said: "Master, we do not know
  where you are going; so of course we do not know the way. But we will follow
  you this very night if you will show us the way."

  180:3.7 When Jesus heard Thomas, he answered: "Thomas, I am the way, the
  truth, and the life. No man goes to the Father except through me. All who find
  the Father, first find me. If you know me, you know the way to the Father. And
  you do know me, for you have lived with me and you now see me."

  180:3.8 But this teaching was too deep for many of the apostles, especially
  for Philip, who, after speaking a few words with Nathaniel, arose and said:
  "Master, show us the Father, and everything you have said will be made plain."

  180:3.9 And when Philip had spoken, Jesus said: "Philip, have I been so long
  with you and yet you do not even now know me? Again do I declare: He who has
  seen me has seen the Father. How can you then say, Show us the Father? Do you
  not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? Have I not taught
  you that the words which I speak are not my words but the words of the Father?
  I speak for the Father and not of myself. I am in this world to do the
  Father's will, and that I have done. My Father abides in me and works through
  me. Believe me when I say that the Father is in me, and that I am in the
  Father, or else believe me for the sake of the very life I have lived -- for
  the work's sake."

  180:3.10 As the Master went aside to refresh himself with water, the eleven
  engaged in a spirited discussion of these teachings, and Peter was beginning
  to deliver himself of an extended speech when Jesus returned and beckoned them
  to be seated.





4. THE PROMISED HELPER



  180:4.1 Jesus continued to teach, saying: "When I have gone to the Father, and
  after he has fully accepted the work I have done for you on earth, and after I
  have received the final sovereignty of my own domain, I shall say to my
  Father: Having left my children alone on earth, it is in accordance with my
  promise to send them another teacher. And when the Father shall approve, I
  will pour out the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh. Already is my Father's
  spirit in your hearts, and when this day shall come, you will also have me
  with you even as you now have the Father. This new gift is the spirit of
  living truth. The unbelievers will not at first listen to the teachings of
  this spirit, but the sons of light will all receive him gladly and with a
  whole heart. And you shall know this spirit when he comes even as you have
  known me, and you will receive this gift in your hearts, and he will abide
  with you. You thus perceive that I am not going to leave you without help and
  guidance. I will not leave you desolate. Today I can be with you only in
  person. In the times to come I will be with you and all other men who desire
  my presence, wherever you may be, and with each of you at the same time. Do
  you not discern that it is better for me to go away; that I leave you in the
  flesh so that I may the better and the more fully be with you in the spirit?

  180:4.2 "In just a few hours the world will see me no more; but you will
  continue to know me in your hearts even until I send you this new teacher, the
  Spirit of Truth. As I have lived with you in person, then shall I live in you;
  I shall be one with your personal experience in the spirit kingdom. And when
  this has come to pass, you shall surely know that I am in the Father, and
  that, while your life is hid with the Father in me, I am also in you. I have
  loved the Father and have kept his word; you have loved me, and you will keep
  my word. As my Father has given me of his spirit, so will I give you of my
  spirit. And this Spirit of Truth which I will bestow upon you shall guide and
  comfort you and shall eventually lead you into all truth.

  180:4.3 "I am telling you these things while I am still with you that you may
  be the better prepared to endure those trials which are even now right upon
  us. And when this new day comes, you will be indwelt by the Son as well as by
  the Father. And these gifts of heaven will ever work the one with the other
  even as the Father and I have wrought on earth and before your very eyes as
  one person, the Son of Man. And this spirit friend will bring to your
  remembrance everything I have taught you."

  180:4.4 As the Master paused for a moment, Judas Alpheus made bold to ask one
  of the few questions which either he or his brother ever addressed to Jesus in
  public. Said Judas: "Master, you have always lived among us as a friend; how
  shall we know you when you no longer manifest yourself to us save by this
  spirit? If the world sees you not, how shall we be certain about you? How will
  you show yourself to us?"

  180:4.5 Jesus looked down upon them all, smiled, and said: "My little
  children, I am going away, going back to my Father. In a little while you will
  not see me as you do here, as flesh and blood. In a very short time I am going
  to send you my spirit, just like me except for this material body. This new
  teacher is the Spirit of Truth who will live with each one of you, in your
  hearts, and so will all the children of light be made one and be drawn toward
  one another. And in this very manner will my Father and I be able to live in
  the souls of each one of you and also in the hearts of all other men who love
  us and make that love real in their experiences by loving one another, even as
  I am now loving you."

  180:4.6 Judas Alpheus did not fully understand what the Master said, but he
  grasped the promise of the new teacher, and from the expression on Andrew's
  face, he perceived that his question had been satisfactorily answered.





5. THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH



  180:5.1 The new helper which Jesus promised to send into the hearts of
  believers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This divine
  endowment is not the letter or law of truth, neither is it to function as the
  form or expression of truth. The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the
  consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels. And this
  new teacher is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding,
  and adaptative truth.

  180:5.2 Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists
  only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the
  consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live
  the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the
  liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in
  formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you
  undertake the human formulation of divine truth, it speedily dies. The post-
  mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the
  realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static
  truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth
  is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind.

  180:5.3 Intelligence grows out of a material existence which is illuminated by
  the presence of the cosmic mind. Wisdom comprises the consciousness of
  knowledge elevated to new levels of meaning and activated by the presence of
  the universe endowment of the adjutant of wisdom. Truth is a spiritual reality
  value experienced only by spirit-endowed beings who function upon
  supermaterial levels of universe consciousness, and who, after the realization
  of truth, permit its spirit of activation to live and reign within their
  souls.

  180:5.4 The true child of universe insight looks for the living Spirit of
  Truth in every wise saying. The God-knowing individual is constantly elevating
  wisdom to the living-truth levels of divine attainment; the spiritually
  unprogressive soul is all the while dragging the living truth down to the dead
  levels of wisdom and to the domain of mere exalted knowledge.

  180:5.5 The golden rule, when divested of the superhuman insight of the Spirit
  of Truth, becomes nothing more than a rule of high ethical conduct. The golden
  rule, when literally interpreted, may become the instrument of great offense
  to one's fellows. Without a spiritual discernment of the golden rule of wisdom
  you might reason that, since you are desirous that all men speak the full and
  frank truth of their minds to you, you should therefore fully and frankly
  speak the full thought of your mind to your fellow beings. Such an unspiritual
  interpretation of the golden rule might result in untold unhappiness and no
  end of sorrow.

  180:5.6 Some persons discern and interpret the golden rule as a purely
  intellectual affirmation of human fraternity. Others experience this
  expression of human relationship as an emotional gratification of the tender
  feelings of the human personality. Another mortal recognizes this same golden
  rule as the yardstick for measuring all social relations, the standard of
  social conduct. Still others look upon it as being the positive injunction of
  a great moral teacher who embodied in this statement the highest concept of
  moral obligation as regards all fraternal relationships. In the lives of such
  moral beings the golden rule becomes the wise center and circumference of all
  their philosophy.

  180:5.7 In the kingdom of the believing brotherhood of God-knowing truth
  lovers, this golden rule takes on living qualities of spiritual realization on
  those higher levels of interpretation which cause the mortal sons of God to
  view this injunction of the Master as requiring them so to relate themselves
  to their fellows that they will receive the highest possible good as a result
  of the believer's contact with them. This is the essence of true religion:
  that you love your neighbor as yourself.

  180:5.8 But the highest realization and the truest interpretation of the
  golden rule consists in the consciousness of the spirit of the truth of the
  enduring and living reality of such a divine declaration. The true cosmic
  meaning of this rule of universal relationship is revealed only in its
  spiritual realization, in the interpretation of the law of conduct by the
  spirit of the Son to the spirit of the Father that indwells the soul of mortal
  man. And when such spirit-led mortals realize the true meaning of this golden
  rule, they are filled to overflowing with the assurance of citizenship in a
  friendly universe, and their ideals of spirit reality are satisfied only when
  they love their fellows as Jesus loved us all, and that is the reality of the
  realization of the love of God.

  180:5.9 This same philosophy of the living flexibility and cosmic adaptability
  of divine truth to the individual requirements and capacity of every son of
  God, must be perceived before you can hope adequately to understand the
  Master's teaching and practice of nonresistance to evil. The Master's teaching
  is basically a spiritual pronouncement. Even the material implications of his
  philosophy cannot be helpfully considered apart from their spiritual
  correlations. The spirit of the Master's injunction consists in the
  nonresistance of all selfish reaction to the universe, coupled with the
  aggressive and progressive attainment of righteous levels of true spirit
  values: divine beauty, infinite goodness, and eternal truth -- to know God and
  to become increasingly like him.

  180:5.10 Love, unselfishness, must undergo a constant and living readaptative
  interpretation of relationships in accordance with the leading of the Spirit
  of Truth. Love must thereby grasp the ever-changing and enlarging concepts of
  the highest cosmic good of the individual who is loved. And then love goes on
  to strike this same attitude concerning all other individuals who could
  possibly be influenced by the growing and living relationship of one spirit-
  led mortal's love for other citizens of the universe. And this entire living
  adaptation of love must be effected in the light of both the environment of
  present evil and the eternal goal of the perfection of divine destiny.

  180:5.11 And so must we clearly recognize that neither the golden rule nor the
  teaching of nonresistance can ever be properly understood as dogmas or
  precepts. They can only be comprehended by living them, by realizing their
  meanings in the living interpretation of the Spirit of Truth, who directs the
  loving contact of one human being with another.

  180:5.12 And all this clearly indicates the difference between the old
  religion and the new. The old religion taught self-sacrifice; the new religion
  teaches only self-forgetfulness, enhanced self-realization in conjoined social
  service and universe comprehension. The old religion was motivated by fear-
  consciousness; the new gospel of the kingdom is dominated by truth-conviction,
  the spirit of eternal and universal truth. And no amount of piety or creedal
  loyalty can compensate for the absence in the life experience of kingdom
  believers of that spontaneous, generous, and sincere friendliness which
  characterizes the spirit-born sons of the living God. Neither tradition nor a
  ceremonial system of formal worship can atone for the lack of genuine
  compassion for one's fellows.





6. THE NECESSITY FOR LEAVING



  180:6.1 After Peter, James, John, and Matthew had asked the Master numerous
  questions, he continued his farewell discourse by saying: "And I am telling
  you about all this before I leave you in order that you may be so prepared for
  what is coming upon you that you will not stumble into serious error. The
  authorities will not be content with merely putting you out of the synagogues;
  I warn you the hour draws near when they who kill you will think they are
  doing a service to God. And all of these things they will do to you and to
  those whom you lead into the kingdom of heaven because they do not know the
  Father. They have refused to know the Father by refusing to receive me; and
  they refuse to receive me when they reject you, provided you have kept my new
  commandment that you love one another even as I have loved you. I am telling
  you in advance about these things so that, when your hour comes, as mine now
  has, you may be strengthened in the knowledge that all was known to me, and
  that my spirit shall be with you in all your sufferings for my sake and the
  gospel's. It was for this purpose that I have been talking so plainly to you
  from the very beginning. I have even warned you that a man's foes may be those
  of his own household. Although this gospel of the kingdom never fails to bring
  great peace to the soul of the individual believer, it will not bring peace on
  earth until man is willing to believe my teaching wholeheartedly and to
  establish the practice of doing the Father's will as the chief purpose in
  living the mortal life.

  180:6.2 "Now that I am leaving you, seeing that the hour has come when I am
  about to go to the Father, I am surprised that none of you have asked me, Why
  do you leave us? Nevertheless, I know that you ask such questions in your
  hearts. I will speak to you plainly, as one friend to another. It is really
  profitable for you that I go away. If I go not away, the new teacher cannot
  come into your hearts. I must be divested of this mortal body and be restored
  to my place on high before I can send this spirit teacher to live in your
  souls and lead your spirits into the truth. And when my spirit comes to
  indwell you, he will illuminate the difference between sin and righteousness
  and will enable you to judge wisely in your hearts concerning them.

  180:6.3 "I have yet much to say to you, but you cannot stand any more just
  now. Albeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he shall eventually guide
  you into all truth as you pass through the many abodes in my Father's
  universe.

  180:6.4 "This spirit will not speak of himself, but he will declare to you
  that which the Father has revealed to the Son, and he will even show you
  things to come; he will glorify me even as I have glorified my Father. This
  spirit comes forth from me, and he will reveal my truth to you. Everything
  which the Father has in this domain is now mine; wherefore did I say that this
  new teacher would take of that which is mine and reveal it to you.

  180:6.5 "In just a little while I will leave you for a short time. Afterward,
  when you again see me, I shall already be on my way to the Father so that even
  then you will not see me for long."

  180:6.6 While he paused for a moment, the apostles began to talk with each
  other: "What is this that he tells us? `In just a little while I will leave
  you,' and `When you see me again it will not be for long, for I will be on my
  way to the Father.' What can he mean by this `little while' and `not for
  long'? We cannot understand what he is telling us."

  180:6.7 And since Jesus knew they asked these questions, he said: "Do you
  inquire among yourselves about what I meant when I said that in a little while
  I would not be with you, and that, when you would see me again, I would be on
  my way to the Father? I have plainly told you that the Son of Man must die,
  but that he will rise again. Can you not then discern the meaning of my words?
  You will first be made sorrowful, but later on will you rejoice with many who
  will understand these things after they have come to pass. A woman is indeed
  sorrowful in the hour of her travail, but when she is once delivered of her
  child, she immediately forgets her anguish in the joy of the knowledge that a
  man has been born into the world. And so are you about to sorrow over my
  departure, but I will soon see you again, and then will your sorrow be turned
  into rejoicing, and there shall come to you a new revelation of the salvation
  of God which no man can ever take away from you. And all the worlds will be
  blessed in this same revelation of life in effecting the overthrow of death.
  Hitherto have you made all your requests in my Father's name. After you see me
  again, you may also ask in my name, and I will hear you.

  180:6.8 "Down here I have taught you in proverbs and spoken to you in
  parables. I did so because you were only children in the spirit; but the time
  is coming when I will talk to you plainly concerning the Father and his
  kingdom. And I shall do this because the Father himself loves you and desires
  to be more fully revealed to you. Mortal man cannot see the spirit Father;
  therefore have I come into the world to show the Father to your creature eyes.
  But when you have become perfected in spirit growth, you shall then see the
  Father himself."

  180:6.9 When the eleven had heard him speak, they said to each other: "Behold,
  he does speak plainly to us. Surely the Master did come forth from God. But
  why does he say he must return to the Father?" And Jesus saw that they did not
  even yet comprehend him. These eleven men could not get away from their long-
  nourished ideas of the Jewish concept of the Messiah. The more fully they
  believed in Jesus as the Messiah, the more troublesome became these deep-
  rooted notions regarding the glorious material triumph of the kingdom on
  earth.


PAPER 181


 FINAL ADMONITIONS AND WARNINGS

  181:0.1 AFTER the conclusion of the farewell discourse to the eleven, Jesus
  visited informally with them and recounted many experiences which concerned
  them as a group and as individuals. At last it was beginning to dawn upon
  these Galileans that their friend and teacher was going to leave them, and
  their hope grasped at the promise that, after a little while, he would again
  be with them, but they were prone to forget that this return visit was also
  for a little while. Many of the apostles and the leading disciples really
  thought that this promise to return for a short season (the short interval
  between the resurrection and the ascension) indicated that Jesus was just
  going away for a brief visit with his Father, after which he would return to
  establish the kingdom. And such an interpretation of his teaching conformed
  both with their preconceived beliefs and with their ardent hopes. Since their
  lifelong beliefs and hopes of wish fulfillment were thus agreed, it was not
  difficult for them to find an interpretation of the Master's words which would
  justify their intense longings.

  181:0.2 After the farewell discourse had been discussed and had begun to
  settle down in their minds, Jesus again called the apostles to order and began
  the impartation of his final admonitions and warnings.





1. LAST WORDS OF COMFORT

  181:1.1 When the eleven had taken their seats, Jesus stood and addressed them:
  "As long as I am with you in the flesh, I can be but one individual in your
  midst or in the entire world. But when I have been delivered from this
  investment of mortal nature, I will be able to return as a spirit indweller of
  each of you and of all other believers in this gospel of the kingdom. In this
  way the Son of Man will become a spiritual incarnation in the souls of all
  true believers.

  181:1.2 "When I have returned to live in you and work through you, I can the
  better lead you on through this life and guide you through the many abodes in
  the future life in the heaven of heavens. Life in the Father's eternal
  creation is not an endless rest of idleness and selfish ease but rather a
  ceaseless progression in grace, truth, and glory. Each of the many, many
  stations in my Father's house is a stopping place, a life designed to prepare
  you for the next one ahead. And so will the children of light go on from glory
  to glory until they attain the divine estate wherein they are spiritually
  perfected even as the Father is perfect in all things.

  181:1.3 "If you would follow after me when I leave you, put forth your earnest
  efforts to live in accordance with the spirit of my teachings and with the
  ideal of my life -- the doing of my Father's will. This do instead of trying
  to imitate my natural life in the flesh as I have, perforce, been required to
  live it on this world.

  181:1.4 "The Father sent me into this world, but only a few of you have chosen
  fully to receive me. I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, but all men
  will not choose to receive this new teacher as the guide and counselor of the
  soul. But as many as do receive him shall be enlightened, cleansed, and
  comforted. And this Spirit of Truth will become in them a well of living water
  springing up into eternal life.

  181:1.5 "And now, as I am about to leave you, I would speak words of comfort.
  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I make these gifts not as the
  world gives -- by measure -- I give each of you all you will receive. Let not
  your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful. I have overcome the world,
  and in me you shall all triumph through faith. I have warned you that the Son
  of Man will be killed, but I assure you I will come back before I go to the
  Father, even though it be for only a little while. And after I have ascended
  to the Father, I will surely send the new teacher to be with you and to abide
  in your very hearts. And when you see all this come to pass, be not dismayed,
  but rather believe, inasmuch as you knew it all beforehand. I have loved you
  with a great affection, and I would not leave you, but it is the Father's
  will. My hour has come.

  181:1.6 "Doubt not any of these truths even after you are scattered abroad by
  persecution and are downcast by many sorrows. When you feel that you are alone
  in the world, I will know of your isolation even as, when you are scattered
  every man to his own place, leaving the Son of Man in the hands of his
  enemies, you will know of mine. But I am never alone; always is the Father
  with me. Even at such a time I will pray for you. And all of these things have
  I told you that you might have peace and have it more abundantly. In this
  world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have triumphed in the
  world and shown you the way to eternal joy and everlasting service."



  181:1.7 Jesus gives peace to his fellow doers of the will of God but not on
  the order of the joys and satisfactions of this material world. Unbelieving
  materialists and fatalists can hope to enjoy only two kinds of peace and soul
  comfort: Either they must be stoics, with steadfast resolution determined to
  face the inevitable and to endure the worst; or they must be optimists, ever
  indulging that hope which springs eternal in the human breast, vainly longing
  for a peace which never really comes.

  181:1.8 A certain amount of both stoicism and optimism are serviceable in
  living a life on earth, but neither has aught to do with that superb peace
  which the Son of God bestows upon his brethren in the flesh. The peace which
  Michael gives his children on earth is that very peace which filled his own
  soul when he himself lived the mortal life in the flesh and on this very
  world. The peace of Jesus is the joy and satisfaction of a God-knowing
  individual who has achieved the triumph of learning fully how to do the will
  of God while living the mortal life in the flesh. The peace of Jesus' mind was
  founded on an absolute human faith in the actuality of the divine Father's
  wise and sympathetic overcare. Jesus had trouble on earth, he has even been
  falsely called the "man of sorrows," but in and through all of these
  experiences he enjoyed the comfort of that confidence which ever empowered him
  to proceed with his life purpose in the full assurance that he was achieving
  the Father's will.

  181:1.9 Jesus was determined, persistent, and thoroughly devoted to the
  accomplishment of his mission, but he was not an unfeeling and calloused
  stoic; he ever sought for the cheerful aspects of his life experiences, but he
  was not a blind and self-deceived optimist. The Master knew all that was to
  befall him, and he was unafraid. After he had bestowed this peace upon each of
  his followers, he could consistently say, "Let not your heart be troubled,
  neither let it be afraid."

  181:1.10 The peace of Jesus is, then, the peace and assurance of a son who
  fully believes that his career for time and eternity is safely and wholly in
  the care and keeping of an all-wise, all-loving, and all-powerful spirit
  Father. And this is, indeed, a peace which passes the understanding of mortal
  mind, but which can be enjoyed to the full by the believing human heart.





2. FAREWELL PERSONAL ADMONITIONS

  181:2.1 The Master had finished giving his farewell instructions and imparting
  his final admonitions to the apostles as a group. He then addressed himself to
  saying good-bye individually and to giving each a word of personal advice,
  together with his parting blessing. The apostles were still seated about the
  table as when they first sat down to partake of the Last Supper, and as the
  Master went around the table talking to them, each man rose to his feet when
  Jesus addressed him.

  181:2.2 To John, Jesus said: "You, John, are the youngest of my brethren. You
  have been very near me, and while I love you all with the same love which a
  father bestows upon his sons, you were designated by Andrew as one of the
  three who should always be near me. Besides this, you have acted for me and
  must continue so to act in many matters concerning my earthly family. And I go
  to the Father, John, having full confidence that you will continue to watch
  over those who are mine in the flesh. See to it that their present confusion
  regarding my mission does not in any way prevent your extending to them all
  sympathy, counsel, and help even as you know I would if I were to remain in
  the flesh. And when they all come to see the light and enter fully into the
  kingdom, while you all will welcome them joyously, I depend upon you, John, to
  welcome them for me.

  181:2.3 "And now, as I enter upon the closing hours of my earthly career,
  remain near at hand that I may leave any message with you regarding my family.
  As concerns the work put in my hands by the Father, it is now finished except
  for my death in the flesh, and I am ready to drink this last cup. But as for
  the responsibilities left to me by my earthly father, Joseph, while I have
  attended to these during my life, I must now depend upon you to act in my
  stead in all these matters. And I have chosen you to do this for me, John,
  because you are the youngest and will therefore very likely outlive these
  other apostles.

  181:2.4 "Once we called you and your brother sons of thunder. You started out
  with us strong-minded and intolerant, but you have changed much since you
  wanted me to call fire down upon the heads of ignorant and thoughtless
  unbelievers. And you must change yet more. You should become the apostle of
  the new commandment which I have this night given you. Dedicate your life to
  teaching your brethren how to love one another, even as I have loved you."

  181:2.5 As John Zebedee stood there in the upper chamber, the tears rolling
  down his cheeks, he looked into the Master's face and said: "And so I will, my
  Master, but how can I learn to love my brethren more?" And then answered
  Jesus: "You will learn to love your brethren more when you first learn to love
  their Father in heaven more, and after you have become truly more interested
  in their welfare in time and in eternity. And all such human interest is
  fostered by understanding sympathy, unselfish service, and unstinted
  forgiveness. No man should despise your youth, but I exhort you always to give
  due consideration to the fact that age oftentimes represents experience, and
  that nothing in human affairs can take the place of actual experience. Strive
  to live peaceably with all men, especially your friends in the brotherhood of
  the heavenly kingdom. And, John, always remember, strive not with the souls
  you would win for the kingdom."

  181:2.6 And then the Master, passing around his own seat, paused a moment by
  the side of the place of Judas Iscariot. The apostles were rather surprised
  that Judas had not returned before this, and they were very curious to know
  the significance of Jesus' sad countenance as he stood by the betrayer's
  vacant seat. But none of them, except possibly Andrew, entertained even the
  slightest thought that their treasurer had gone out to betray his Master, as
  Jesus had intimated to them earlier in the evening and during the supper. So
  much had been going on that, for the time being, they had quite forgotten
  about the Master's announcement that one of them would betray him.

  181:2.7 Jesus now went over to Simon Zelotes, who stood up and listened to
  this admonition: "You are a true son of Abraham, but what a time I have had
  trying to make you a son of this heavenly kingdom. I love you and so do all of
  your brethren. I know that you love me, Simon, and that you also love the
  kingdom, but you are still set on making this kingdom come according to your
  liking. I know full well that you will eventually grasp the spiritual nature
  and meaning of my gospel, and that you will do valiant work in its
  proclamation, but I am distressed about what may happen to you when I depart.
  I would rejoice to know that you would not falter; I would be made happy if I
  could know that, after I go to the Father, you would not cease to be my
  apostle, and that you would acceptably deport yourself as an ambassador of the
  heavenly kingdom."

  181:2.8 Jesus had hardly ceased speaking to Simon Zelotes when the fiery
  patriot, drying his eyes, replied: "Master, have no fears for my loyalty. I
  have turned my back upon everything that I might dedicate my life to the
  establishment of your kingdom on earth, and I will not falter. I have survived
  every disappointment so far, and I will not forsake you."

  181:2.9 And then, laying his hand on Simon's shoulder, Jesus said: "It is
  indeed refreshing to hear you talk like that, especially at such a time as
  this, but, my good friend, you still do not know what you are talking about.
  Not for one moment would I doubt your loyalty, your devotion; I know you would
  not hesitate to go forth in battle and die for me, as all these others would"
  (and they all nodded a vigorous approval), "but that will not be required of
  you. I have repeatedly told you that my kingdom is not of this world, and that
  my disciples will not fight to effect its establishment. I have told you this
  many times, Simon, but you refuse to face the truth. I am not concerned with
  your loyalty to me and to the kingdom, but what will you do when I go away and
  you at last wake up to the realization that you have failed to grasp the
  meaning of my teaching, and that you must adjust your misconceptions to the
  reality of another and spiritual order of affairs in the kingdom?"

  181:2.10 Simon wanted to speak further, but Jesus raised his hand and,
  stopping him, went on to say: "None of my apostles are more sincere and honest
  at heart than you, but not one of them will be so upset and disheartened as
  you, after my departure. In all of your discouragement my spirit shall abide
  with you, and these, your brethren, will not forsake you. Do not forget what I
  have taught you regarding the relation of citizenship on earth to sonship in
  the Father's spiritual kingdom. Ponder well all that I have said to you about
  rendering to Caesar the things which are Caesar's and to God that which is
  God's. Dedicate your life, Simon, to showing how acceptably mortal man may
  fulfill my injunction concerning the simultaneous recognition of temporal duty
  to civil powers and spiritual service in the brotherhood of the kingdom. If
  you will be taught by the Spirit of Truth, never will there be conflict
  between the requirements of citizenship on earth and sonship in heaven unless
  the temporal rulers presume to require of you the homage and worship which
  belong only to God.

  181:2.11 "And now, Simon, when you do finally see all of this, and after you
  have shaken off your depression and have gone forth proclaiming this gospel in
  great power, never forget that I was with you even through all of your season
  of discouragement, and that I will go on with you to the very end. You shall
  always be my apostle, and after you become willing to see by the eye of the
  spirit and more fully to yield your will to the will of the Father in heaven,
  then will you return to labor as my ambassador, and no one shall take away
  from you the authority which I have conferred upon you, because of your
  slowness of comprehending the truths I have taught you. And so, Simon, once
  more I warn you that they who fight with the sword perish with the sword,
  while they who labor in the spirit achieve life everlasting in the kingdom to
  come with joy and peace in the kingdom which now is. And when the work given
  into your hands is finished on earth, you, Simon, shall sit down with me in my
  kingdom over there. You shall really see the kingdom you have longed for, but
  not in this life. Continue to believe in me and in that which I have revealed
  to you, and you shall receive the gift of eternal life."

  181:2.12 When Jesus had finished speaking to Simon Zelotes, he stepped over to
  Matthew Levi and said: "No longer will it devolve upon you to provide for the
  treasury of the apostolic group. Soon, very soon, you will all be scattered;
  you will not be permitted to enjoy the comforting and sustaining association
  of even one of your brethren. As you go onward preaching this gospel of the
  kingdom, you will have to find for yourselves new associates. I have sent you
  forth two and two during the times of your training, but now that I am leaving
  you, after you have recovered from the shock, you will go out alone, and to
  the ends of the earth, proclaiming this good news: That faith-quickened
  mortals are the sons of God."

  181:2.13 Then spoke Matthew: "But, Master, who will send us, and how shall we
  know where to go? Will Andrew show us the way?" And Jesus answered: "No, Levi,
  Andrew will no longer direct you in the proclamation of the gospel. He will,
  indeed, continue as your friend and counselor until that day whereon the new
  teacher comes, and then shall the Spirit of Truth lead each of you abroad to
  labor for the extension of the kingdom. Many changes have come over you since
  that day at the customhouse when you first set out to follow me; but many more
  must come before you will be able to see the vision of a brotherhood in which
  gentile sits alongside Jew in fraternal association. But go on with your urge
  to win your Jewish brethren until you are fully satisfied and then turn with
  power to the gentiles. One thing you may be certain of, Levi: You have won the
  confidence and affection of your brethren; they all love you." (And all ten of
  them signified their acquiescence in the Master's words.)

  181:2.14 "Levi, I know much about your anxieties, sacrifices, and labors to
  keep the treasury replenished which your brethren do not know, and I am
  rejoiced that, though he who carried the bag is absent, the publican
  ambassador is here at my farewell gathering with the messengers of the
  kingdom. I pray that you may discern the meaning of my teaching with the eyes
  of the spirit. And when the new teacher comes into your heart, follow on as he
  will lead you and let your brethren see -- even all the world -- what the
  Father can do for a hated tax-gatherer who dared to follow the Son of Man and
  to believe the gospel of the kingdom. Even from the first, Levi, I loved you
  as I did these other Galileans. Knowing then so well that neither the Father
  nor the Son has respect of persons, see to it that you make no such
  distinctions among those who become believers in the gospel through your
  ministry. And so, Matthew, dedicate your whole future life service to showing
  all men that God is no respecter of persons; that, in the sight of God and in
  the fellowship of the kingdom, all men are equal, all believers are the sons
  of God."

  181:2.15 Jesus then stepped over to James Zebedee, who stood in silence as the
  Master addressed him, saying: "James, when you and your younger brother once
  came to me seeking preferment in the honors of the kingdom, and I told you
  such honors were for the Father to bestow, I asked if you were able to drink
  my cup, and both of you answered that you were. Even if you were not then
  able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be prepared for such a
  service by the experience you are about to pass through. By such behavior you
  angered your brethren at that time. If they have not already fully forgiven
  you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your ministry be long
  or short, possess your soul in patience. When the new teacher comes, let him
  teach you the poise of compassion and that sympathetic tolerance which is born
  of sublime confidence in me and of perfect submission to the Father's will.
  Dedicate your life to the demonstration of that combined human affection and
  divine dignity of the God-knowing and Son-believing disciple. And all who thus
  live will reveal the gospel even in the manner of their death. You and your
  brother John will go different ways, and one of you may sit down with me in
  the eternal kingdom long before the other. It would help you much if you would
  learn that true wisdom embraces discretion as well as courage. You should
  learn sagacity to go along with your aggressiveness. There will come those
  supreme moments wherein my disciples will not hesitate to lay down their lives
  for this gospel, but in all ordinary circumstances it would be far better to
  placate the wrath of unbelievers that you might live and continue to preach
  the glad tidings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that
  your life of many years may be fruitful in souls won for the heavenly
  kingdom."

  181:2.16 When the Master had finished speaking to James Zebedee, he stepped
  around to the end of the table where Andrew sat and, looking his faithful
  helper in the eyes, said: "Andrew, you have faithfully represented me as
  acting head of the ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom. Although you have
  sometimes doubted and at other times manifested dangerous timidity, still, you
  have always been sincerely just and eminently fair in dealing with your
  associates. Ever since the ordination of you and your brethren as messengers
  of the kingdom, you have been self-governing in all group administrative
  affairs except that I designated you as the acting head of these chosen ones.
  In no other temporal matter have I acted to direct or to influence your
  decisions. And this I did in order to provide for leadership in the direction
  of all your subsequent group deliberations. In my universe and in my Father's
  universe of universes, our brethren-sons are dealt with as individuals in all
  their spiritual relations, but in all group relationships we unfailingly
  provide for definite leadership. Our kingdom is a realm of order, and where
  two or more will creatures act in co-operation, there is always provided the
  authority of leadership.

  181:2.17 "And now, Andrew, since you are the chief of your brethren by
  authority of my appointment, and since you have thus served as my personal
  representative, and as I am about to leave you and go to my Father, I release
  you from all responsibility as regards these temporal and administrative
  affairs. From now on you may exercise no jurisdiction over your brethren
  except that which you have earned in your capacity as spiritual leader, and
  which your brethren therefore freely recognize. From this hour you may
  exercise no authority over your brethren unless they restore such jurisdiction
  to you by their definite legislative action after I shall have gone to the
  Father. But this release from responsibility as the administrative head of
  this group does not in any manner lessen your moral responsibility to do
  everything in your power to hold your brethren together with a firm and loving
  hand during the trying time just ahead, those days which must intervene
  between my departure in the flesh and the sending of the new teacher who will
  live in your hearts, and who ultimately will lead you into all truth. As I
  prepare to leave you, I would liberate you from all administrative
  responsibility which had its inception and authority in my presence as one
  among you. Henceforth I shall exercise only spiritual authority over you and
  among you.

  181:2.18 "If your brethren desire to retain you as their counselor, I direct
  that you should, in all matters temporal and spiritual, do your utmost to
  promote peace and harmony among the various groups of sincere gospel
  believers. Dedicate the remainder of your life to promoting the practical
  aspects of brotherly love among your brethren. Be kind to my brothers in the
  flesh when they come fully to believe this gospel; manifest loving and
  impartial devotion to the Greeks in the West and to Abner in the East.
  Although these, my apostles, are soon going to be scattered to the four
  corners of the earth, there to proclaim the good news of the salvation of
  sonship with God, you are to hold them together during the trying time just
  ahead, that season of intense testing during which you must learn to believe
  this gospel without my personal presence while you patiently await the arrival
  of the new teacher, the Spirit of Truth. And so, Andrew, though it may not
  fall to you to do the great works as seen by men, be content to be the teacher
  and counselor of those who do such things. Go on with your work on earth to
  the end, and then shall you continue this ministry in the eternal kingdom, for
  have I not many times told you that I have other sheep not of this flock?"

  181:2.19 Jesus then went over to the Alpheus twins and, standing between them,
  said: "My little children, you are one of the three groups of brothers who
  chose to follow after me. All six of you have done well to work in peace with
  your own flesh and blood, but none have done better than you. Hard times are
  just ahead of us. You may not understand all that will befall you and your
  brethren, but never doubt that you were once called to the work of the
  kingdom. For some time there will be no multitudes to manage, but do not
  become discouraged; when your lifework is finished, I will receive you on
  high, where in glory you shall tell of your salvation to seraphic hosts and to
  multitudes of the high Sons of God. Dedicate your lives to the enhancement of
  commonplace toil. Show all men on earth and the angels of heaven how
  cheerfully and courageously mortal man can, after having been called to work
  for a season in the special service of God, return to the labors of former
  days. If, for the time being, your work in the outward affairs of the kingdom
  should be completed, you should go back to your former labors with the new
  enlightenment of the experience of sonship with God and with the exalted
  realization that, to him who is God-knowing, there is no such thing as common
  labor or secular toil. To you who have worked with me, all things have become
  sacred, and all earthly labor has become a service even to God the Father. And
  when you hear the news of the doings of your former apostolic associates,
  rejoice with them and continue your daily work as those who wait upon God and
  serve while they wait. You have been my apostles, and you always shall be, and
  I will remember you in the kingdom to come."

  181:2.20 And then Jesus went over to Philip, who, standing up, heard this
  message from his Master: "Philip, you have asked me many foolish questions,
  but I have done my utmost to answer every one, and now would I answer the last
  of such questionings which have arisen in your most honest but unspiritual
  mind. All the time I have been coming around toward you, have you been saying
  to yourself, `What shall I ever do if the Master goes away and leaves us alone
  in the world?' O, you of little faith! And yet you have almost as much as many
  of your brethren. You have been a good steward, Philip. You failed us only a
  few times, and one of those failures we utilized to manifest the Father's
  glory. Your office of stewardship is about over. You must soon more fully do
  the work you were called to do -- the preaching of this gospel of the kingdom.
  Philip, you have always wanted to be shown, and very soon shall you see great
  things. Far better that you should have seen all this by faith, but since you
  were sincere even in your material sightedness, you will live to see my words
  fulfilled. And then, when you are blessed with spiritual vision, go forth to
  your work, dedicating your life to the cause of leading mankind to search for
  God and to seek eternal realities with the eye of spiritual faith and not with
  the eyes of the material mind. Remember, Philip, you have a great mission on
  earth, for the world is filled with those who look at life just as you have
  tended to. You have a great work to do, and when it is finished in faith, you
  shall come to me in my kingdom, and I will take great pleasure in showing you
  that which eye has not seen, ear heard, nor the mortal mind conceived. In the
  meantime, become as a little child in the kingdom of the spirit and permit me,
  as the spirit of the new teacher, to lead you forward in the spiritual
  kingdom. And in this way will I be able to do much for you which I was not
  able to accomplish when I sojourned with you as a mortal of the realm.

And always remember, Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father."

  181:2.21 Then went the Master over to Nathaniel. As Nathaniel stood up, Jesus
  bade him be seated and, sitting down by his side, said: "Nathaniel, you have
  learned to live above prejudice and to practice increased tolerance since you
  became my apostle. But there is much more for you to learn. You have been a
  blessing to your fellows in that they have always been admonished by your
  consistent sincerity. When I have gone, it may be that your frankness will
  interfere with your getting along well with your brethren, both old and new.
  You should learn that the expression of even a good thought must be modulated
  in accordance with the intellectual status and spiritual development of the
  hearer. Sincerity is most serviceable in the work of the kingdom when it is
  wedded to discretion.

  181:2.22 "If you would learn to work with your brethren, you might accomplish
  more permanent things, but if you find yourself going off in quest of those
  who think as you do, in that event dedicate your life to proving that the God-
  knowing disciple can become a kingdom builder even when alone in the world and
  wholly isolated from his fellow believers. I know you will be faithful to the
  end, and I will some day welcome you to the enlarged service of my kingdom on
  high."

  181:2.23 Then Nathaniel spoke, asking Jesus this question: "I have listened to
  your teaching ever since you first called me to the service of this kingdom,
  but I honestly cannot understand the full meaning of all you tell us. I do not
  know what to expect next, and I think most of my brethren are likewise
  perplexed, but they hesitate to confess their confusion. Can you help me?"
  Jesus, putting his hand on Nathaniel's shoulder, said: "My friend, it is not
  strange that you should encounter perplexity in your attempt to grasp the
  meaning of my spiritual teachings since you are so handicapped by your
  preconceptions of Jewish tradition and so confused by your persistent tendency
  to interpret my gospel in accordance with the teachings of the scribes and
  Pharisees.

  181:2.24 "I have taught you much by word of mouth, and I have lived my life
  among you. I have done all that can be done to enlighten your minds and
  liberate your souls, and what you have not been able to get from my teachings
  and my life, you must now prepare to acquire at the hand of that master of all
  teachers -- actual experience. And in all of this new experience which now
  awaits you, I will go before you and the Spirit of Truth shall be with you.
  Fear not; that which you now fail to comprehend, the new teacher, when he has
  come, will reveal to you throughout the remainder of your life on earth and on
  through your training in the eternal ages."

  181:2.25 And then the Master, turning to all of them, said: "Be not dismayed
  that you fail to grasp the full meaning of the gospel. You are but finite,
  mortal men, and that which I have taught you is infinite, divine, and eternal.
  Be patient and of good courage since you have the eternal ages before you in
  which to continue your progressive attainment of the experience of becoming
  perfect, even as your Father in Paradise is perfect."

  181:2.26 And then Jesus went over to Thomas, who, standing up, heard him say:
  "Thomas, you have often lacked faith; however, when you have had your seasons
  with doubt, you have never lacked courage. I know well that the false prophets
  and spurious teachers will not deceive you. After I have gone, your brethren
  will the more appreciate your critical way of viewing new teachings. And when
  you all are scattered to the ends of the earth in the times to come, remember
  that you are still my ambassador. Dedicate your life to the great work of
  showing how the critical material mind of man can triumph over the inertia of
  intellectual doubting when faced by the demonstration of the manifestation of
  living truth as it operates in the experience of spirit-born men and women who
  yield the fruits of the spirit in their lives, and who love one another, even
  as I have loved you. Thomas, I am glad you joined us, and I know, after a
  short period of perplexity, you will go on in the service of the kingdom. Your
  doubts have perplexed your brethren, but they have never troubled me. I have
  confidence in you, and I will go before you even to the uttermost parts of the
  earth."

  181:2.27 Then the Master went over to Simon Peter, who stood up as Jesus
  addressed him: "Peter, I know you love me, and that you will dedicate your
  life to the public proclamation of this gospel of the kingdom to Jew and
  gentile, but I am distressed that your years of such close association with me
  have not done more to help you think before you speak. What experience must
  you pass through before you will learn to set a guard upon your lips? How much
  trouble have you made for us by your thoughtless speaking, by your
  presumptuous self-confidence! And you are destined to make much more trouble
  for yourself if you do not master this frailty. You know that your brethren
  love you in spite of this weakness, and you should also understand that this
  shortcoming in no way impairs my affection for you, but it lessens your
  usefulness and never ceases to make trouble for you. But you will undoubtedly
  receive great help from the experience you will pass through this very night.
  And what I now say to you, Simon Peter, I likewise say to all your brethren
  here assembled: This night you will all be in great danger of stumbling over
  me. You know it is written, `The shepherd will be smitten and the sheep will
  be scattered abroad.' When I am absent, there is great danger that some of you
  will succumb to doubts and stumble because of what befalls me. But I promise
  you now that I will come back to you for a little while, and that I will then
  go before you into Galilee."

  181:2.28 Then said Peter, placing his hand on Jesus' shoulder: "No matter if
  all my brethren should succumb to doubts because of you, I promise that I will
  not stumble over anything you may do. I will go with you and, if need be, die
  for you."

  181:2.29 As Peter stood there before his Master, all atremble with intense
  emotion and overflowing with genuine love for him, Jesus looked straight into
  his moistened eyes as he said: "Peter, verily, verily, I say to you, this
  night the cock will not crow until you have denied me three or four times. And
  thus what you have failed to learn from peaceful association with me, you will
  learn through much trouble and many sorrows. And after you have really learned
  this needful lesson, you should strengthen your brethren and go on living a
  life dedicated to preaching this gospel, though you may fall into prison and,
  perhaps, follow me in paying the supreme price of loving service in the
  building of the Father's kingdom.

  181:2.30 "But remember my promise: When I am raised up, I will tarry with you
  for a season before I go to the Father. And even this night will I make
  supplication to the Father that he strengthen each of you for that which you
  must now so soon pass through. I love you all with the love wherewith the
  Father loves me, and therefore should you henceforth love one another, even as
  I have loved you."

  181:2.31 And then, when they had sung a hymn, they departed for the camp on
  the Mount of Olives.




PAPER 182


 IN GETHSEMANE



  182:0.1 IT WAS about ten o'clock this Thursday night when Jesus led the eleven
  apostles from the home of Elijah and Mary Mark on their way back to the
  Gethsemane camp. Ever since that day in the hills, John Mark had made it his
  business to keep a watchful eye on Jesus. John, being in need of sleep, had
  obtained several hours of rest while the Master had been with his apostles in
  the upper room, but on hearing them coming downstairs, he arose and, quickly
  throwing a linen coat about himself, followed them through the city, over the
  brook Kidron, and on to their private encampment adjacent to Gethsemane Park.
  And John Mark remained so near the Master throughout this night and the next
  day that he witnessed everything and overheard much of what the Master said
  from this time on to the hour of the crucifixion.

  182:0.2 As Jesus and the eleven made their way back to camp, the apostles
  began to wonder about the meaning of Judas's prolonged absence, and they spoke
  to one another concerning the Master's prediction that one of them would
  betray him, and for the first time they suspected that all was not well with
  Judas Iscariot. But they did not engage in open comment about Judas until they
  reached the camp and observed that he was not there, waiting to receive them.
  When they all besieged Andrew to know what had become of Judas, their chief
  remarked only, "I do not know where Judas is, but I fear he has deserted us."





1. THE LAST GROUP PRAYER



  182:1.1 A few moments after arriving at camp, Jesus said to them: "My friends
  and brethren, my time with you is now very short, and I desire that we draw
  apart by ourselves while we pray to our Father in heaven for strength to
  sustain us in this hour and henceforth in all the work we must do in his
  name."

  182:1.2 When Jesus had thus spoken, he led the way a short distance up on
  Olivet, and in full view of Jerusalem he bade them kneel on a large flat rock
  in a circle about him as they had done on the day of their ordination; and
  then, as he stood there in the midst of them glorified in the mellow
  moonlight, he lifted up his eyes toward heaven and prayed:

  182:1.3 "Father, my hour has come; now glorify your Son that the Son may
  glorify you. I know that you have given me full authority over all living
  creatures in my realm, and I will give eternal life to all who will become
  faith sons of God. And this is eternal life, that my creatures should know you
  as the only true God and Father of all, and that they should believe in him
  whom you sent into the world. Father, I have exalted you on earth and have
  accomplished the work which you gave me to do. I have almost finished my
  bestowal upon the children of our own creation; there remains only for me to
  lay down my life in the flesh. And now, O my Father, glorify me with the glory
  which I had with you before this world was and receive me once more at your
  right hand.

  182:1.4 "I have manifested you to the men whom you chose from the world and
  gave to me. They are yours -- as all life is in your hands -- you gave them to
  me, and I have lived among them, teaching them the way of life, and they have
  believed. These men are learning that all I have comes from you, and that the
  life I live in the flesh is to make known my Father to the worlds. The truth
  which you have given to me I have revealed to them. These, my friends and
  ambassadors, have sincerely willed to receive your word. I have told them that
  I came forth from you, that you sent me into this world, and that I am about
  to return to you. Father, I do pray for these chosen men. And I pray for them
  not as I would pray for the world, but as for those whom I have chosen out of
  the world to represent me to the world after I have returned to your work,
  even as I have represented you in this world during my sojourn in the flesh.
  These men are mine; you gave them to me; but all things which are mine are
  ever yours, and all that which was yours you have now caused to be mine. You
  have been exalted in me, and I now pray that I may be honored in these men. I
  can no longer be in this world; I am about to return to the work you have
  given me to do. I must leave these men behind to represent us and our kingdom
  among men. Father, keep these men faithful as I prepare to yield up my life in
  the flesh. Help these, my friends, to be one in spirit, even as we are one. As
  long as I could be with them, I could watch over them and guide them, but now
  am I about to go away. Be near them, Father, until we can send the new teacher
  to comfort and strengthen them.

  182:1.5 "You gave me twelve men, and I have kept them all save one, the son of
  revenge, who would not have further fellowship with us. These men are weak and
  frail, but I know we can trust them; I have proved them; they love me, even as
  they reverence you. While they must suffer much for my sake, I desire that
  they should also be filled with the joy of the assurance of sonship in the
  heavenly kingdom. I have given these men your word and have taught them the
  truth. The world may hate them, even as it has hated me, but I do not ask that
  you take them out of the world, only that you keep them from the evil in the
  world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. And as you sent me into
  this world, even so am I about to send these men into the world. For their
  sakes I have lived among men and have consecrated my life to your service that
  I might inspire them to be purified through the truth I have taught them and
  the love I have revealed to them. I well know, my Father, that there is no
  need for me to ask you to watch over these brethren after I have gone; I know
  you love them even as I, but I do this that they may the better realize the
  Father loves mortal men even as does the Son.

  182:1.6 "And now, my Father, I would pray not only for these eleven men but
  also for all others who now believe, or who may hereafter believe the gospel
  of the kingdom through the word of their future ministry. I want them all to
  be one, even as you and I are one. You are in me and I am in you, and I desire
  that these believers likewise be in us; that both of our spirits indwell them.
  If my children are one as we are one, and if they love one another as I have
  loved them, all men will then believe that I came forth from you and be
  willing to receive the revelation of truth and glory which I have made. The
  glory which you gave me I have revealed to these believers. As you have lived
  with me in spirit, so have I lived with them in the flesh. As you have been
  one with me, so have I been one with them, and so will the new teacher ever be
  one with them and in them. And all this have I done that my brethren in the
  flesh may know that the Father loves them even as does the Son, and that you
  love them even as you love me. Father, work with me to save these believers
  that they may presently come to be with me in glory and then go on to join you
  in the Paradise embrace. Those who serve with me in humiliation, I would have
  with me in glory so that they may see all you have given into my hands as the
  eternal harvest of the seed sowing of time in the likeness of mortal flesh. I
  long to show my earthly brethren the glory I had with you before the founding
  of this world. This world knows very little of you, righteous Father, but I
  know you, and I have made you known to these believers, and they will make
  known your name to other generations. And now I promise them that you will be
  with them in the world even as you have been with me -- even so."

  182:1.7 The eleven remained kneeling in this circle about Jesus for several
  minutes before they arose and in silence made their way back to the near-by
  camp.



  182:1.8 Jesus prayed for unity among his followers, but he did not desire
  uniformity. Sin creates a dead level of evil inertia, but righteousness
  nourishes the creative spirit of individual experience in the living realities
  of eternal truth and in the progressive communion of the divine spirits of the
  Father and the Son. In the spiritual fellowship of the believer-son with the
  divine Father there can never be doctrinal finality and sectarian superiority
  of group consciousness.

  182:1.9 The Master, during the course of this final prayer with his apostles,
  alluded to the fact that he had manifested the Father's name to the world. And
  that is truly what he did by the revelation of God through his perfected life
  in the flesh. The Father in heaven had sought to reveal himself to Moses, but
  he could proceed no further than to cause it to be said, "I AM." And when
  pressed for further revelation of himself, it was only disclosed, "I AM that I
  AM." But when Jesus had finished his earth life, this name of the Father had
  been so revealed that the Master, who was the Father incarnate, could truly
  say:

  182:1.10 I am the bread of life.

I am the living water.

I am the light of the world.

I am the desire of all ages.

I am the open door to eternal salvation.

I am the reality of endless life.

I am the good shepherd.

I am the pathway of infinite perfection.

I am the resurrection and the life.

I am the secret of eternal survival.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

I am the infinite Father of my finite children.

I am the true vine; you are the branches.

I am the hope of all who know the living truth.

I am the living bridge from one world to another.

I am the living link between time and eternity.



  182:1.11 Thus did Jesus enlarge the living revelation of the name of God to
  all generations. As divine love reveals the nature of God, eternal truth
  discloses his name in ever-enlarging proportions.





2. LAST HOUR BEFORE THE BETRAYAL



  182:2.1 The apostles were greatly shocked when they returned to their camp and
  found Judas absent. While the eleven were engaged in a heated discussion of
  their traitorous fellow apostle, David Zebedee and John Mark took Jesus to one
  side and revealed that they had kept Judas under observation for several days,
  and that they knew he intended to betray him into the hands of his enemies.
  Jesus listened to them but only said: "My friends, nothing can happen to the
  Son of Man unless the Father in heaven so wills. Let not your hearts be
  troubled; all things will work together for the glory of God and the salvation
  of men."

  182:2.2 The cheerful attitude of Jesus was waning. As the hour passed, he grew
  more and more serious, even sorrowful. The apostles, being much agitated, were
  loath to return to their tents even when requested to do so by the Master
  himself. Returning from his talk with David and John, he addressed his last
  words to all eleven, saying: "My friends, go to your rest. Prepare yourselves
  for the work of tomorrow. Remember, we should all submit ourselves to the will
  of the Father in heaven. My peace I leave with you." And having thus spoken,
  he motioned them to their tents, but as they went, he called to Peter, James,
  and John, saying, "I desire that you remain with me for a little while."

  182:2.3 The apostles fell asleep only because they were literally exhausted;
  they had been running short on sleep ever since their arrival in Jerusalem.
  Before they went to their separate sleeping quarters, Simon Zelotes led them
  all over to his tent, where were stored the swords and other arms, and
  supplied each of them with this fighting equipment. All of them received these
  arms and girded themselves therewith except Nathaniel. Nathaniel, in refusing
  to arm himself, said: "My brethren, the Master has repeatedly told us that his
  kingdom is not of this world, and that his disciples should not fight with the
  sword to bring about its establishment. I believe this; I do not think the
  Master needs to have us employ the sword in his defense. We have all seen his
  mighty power and know that he could defend himself against his enemies if he
  so desired. If he will not resist his enemies, it must be that such a course
  represents his attempt to fulfill his Father's will. I will pray, but I will
  not wield the sword." When Andrew heard Nathaniel's speech, he handed his
  sword back to Simon Zelotes. And so nine of them were armed as they separated
  for the night.

  182:2.4 Resentment of Judas's being a traitor for the moment eclipsed
  everything else in the apostles' minds. The Master's comment in reference to
  Judas, spoken in the course of the last prayer, opened their eyes to the fact
  that he had forsaken them.



  182:2.5 After the eight apostles had finally gone to their tents, and while
  Peter, James, and John were standing by to receive the Master's orders, Jesus
  called to David Zebedee, "Send to me your most fleet and trustworthy
  messenger." When David brought to the Master one Jacob, once a runner on the
  overnight messenger service between Jerusalem and Bethsaida, Jesus, addressing
  him, said: "In all haste, go to Abner at Philadelphia and say: `The Master
  sends greetings of peace to you and says that the hour has come when he will
  be delivered into the hands of his enemies, who will put him to death, but
  that he will rise from the dead and appear to you shortly, before he goes to
  the Father, and that he will then give you guidance to the time when the new
  teacher shall come to live in your hearts.'" And when Jacob had rehearsed this
  message to the Master's satisfaction, Jesus sent him on his way, saying: "Fear
  not what any man may do to you, Jacob, for this night an unseen messenger will
  run by your side."

  182:2.6 Then Jesus turned to the chief of the visiting Greeks who were
  encamped with them, and said: "My brother, be not disturbed by what is about
  to take place since I have already forewarned you. The Son of Man will be put
  to death at the instigation of his enemies, the chief priests and the rulers
  of the Jews, but I will rise to be with you a short time before I go to the
  Father. And when you have seen all this come to pass, glorify God and
  strengthen your brethren."



  182:2.7 In ordinary circumstances the apostles would have bidden the Master a
  personal good night, but this evening they were so preoccupied with the sudden
  realization of Judas's desertion and so overcome by the unusual nature of the
  Master's farewell prayer that they listened to his good-bye salutation and
  went away in silence.

  182:2.8 Jesus did say this to Andrew as he left his side that night: "Andrew,
  do what you can to keep your brethren together until I come again to you after
  I have drunk this cup. Strengthen your brethren, seeing that I have already
  told you all. Peace be with you."

  182:2.9 None of the apostles expected anything out of the ordinary to happen
  that night since it was already so late. They sought sleep that they might
  rise up early in the morning and be prepared for the worst. They thought that
  the chief priests would seek to apprehend their Master early in the morning as
  no secular work was ever done after noon on the preparation day for the
  Passover. Only David Zebedee and John Mark understood that the enemies of
  Jesus were coming with Judas that very night.



  182:2.10 David had arranged to stand guard that night on the upper trail which
  led to the Bethany-Jerusalem road, while John Mark was to watch along the road
  coming up by the Kidron to Gethsemane. Before David went to his self-imposed
  task of outpost duty, he bade farewell to Jesus, saying: "Master, I have had
  great joy in my service with you. My brothers are your apostles, but I have
  delighted to do the lesser things as they should be done, and I shall miss you
  with all my heart when you are gone." And then said Jesus to David: "David, my
  son, others have done that which they were directed to do, but this service
  have you done of your own heart, and I have not been unmindful of your
  devotion. You, too, shall some day serve with me in the eternal kingdom."

  182:2.11 And then, as he prepared to go on watch by the upper trail, David
  said to Jesus: "You know, Master, I sent for your family, and I have word by a
  messenger that they are tonight in Jericho. They will be here early tomorrow
  forenoon since it would be dangerous for them to come up the bloody way by
  night." And Jesus, looking down upon David, only said: "Let it be so, David."



  182:2.12 When David had gone up Olivet, John Mark took up his vigil near the
  road which ran by the brook down to Jerusalem. And John would have remained at
  this post but for his great desire to be near Jesus and to know what was going
  on. Shortly after David left him, and when John Mark observed Jesus withdraw,
  with Peter, James, and John, into a near-by ravine, he was so overcome with
  combined devotion and curiosity that he forsook his sentinel post and followed
  after them, hiding himself in the bushes, from which place he saw and
  overheard all that transpired during those last moments in the garden and just
  before Judas and the armed guards appeared to arrest Jesus.



  182:2.13 While all this was in progress at the Master's camp, Judas Iscariot
  was in conference with the captain of the temple guards, who had assembled his
  men preparatory to setting out, under the leadership of the betrayer, to
  arrest Jesus.





3. ALONE IN GETHSEMANE



  182:3.1 After all was still and quiet about the camp, Jesus, taking Peter,
  James, and John, went a short way up a near-by ravine where he had often
  before gone to pray and commune. The three apostles could not help recognizing
  that he was grievously oppressed; never before had they observed their Master
  to be so heavy-laden and sorrowful. When they arrived at the place of his
  devotions, he bade the three sit down and watch with him while he went off
  about a stone's throw to pray. And when he had fallen down on his face, he
  prayed: "My Father, I came into this world to do your will, and so have I. I
  know that the hour has come to lay down this life in the flesh, and I do not
  shrink therefrom, but I would know that it is your will that I drink this cup.
  Send me the assurance that I will please you in my death even as I have in my
  life."

  182:3.2 The Master remained in a prayerful attitude for a few moments, and
  then, going over to the three apostles, he found them sound asleep, for their
  eyes were heavy and they could not remain awake. As Jesus awoke them, he said:
  "What! can you not watch with me even for one hour? Cannot you see that my
  soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death, and that I crave your
  companionship?" After the three had aroused from their slumber, the Master
  again went apart by himself and, falling down on the ground, again prayed:
  "Father, I know it is possible to avoid this cup -- all things are possible
  with you -- but I have come to do your will, and while this is a bitter cup, I
  would drink it if it is your will." And when he had thus prayed, a mighty
  angel came down by his side and, speaking to him, touched him and strengthened
  him.

  182:3.3 When Jesus returned to speak with the three apostles, he again found
  them fast asleep. He awakened them, saying: "In such an hour I need that you
  should watch and pray with me -- all the more do you need to pray that you
  enter not into temptation -- wherefore do you fall asleep when I leave you?"

  182:3.4 And then, for a third time, the Master withdrew and prayed: "Father,
  you see my sleeping apostles; have mercy upon them. The spirit is indeed
  willing, but the flesh is weak. And now, O Father, if this cup may not pass,
  then would I drink it. Not my will, but yours, be done." And when he had
  finished praying, he lay for a moment prostrate on the ground. When he arose
  and went back to his apostles, once more he found them asleep. He surveyed
  them and, with a pitying gesture, tenderly said: "Sleep on now and take your
  rest; the time of decision is past. The hour is now upon us wherein the Son of
  Man will be betrayed into the hands of his enemies." As he reached down to
  shake them that he might awaken them, he said: "Arise, let us be going back to
  the camp, for, behold, he who betrays me is at hand, and the hour has come
  when my flock shall be scattered. But I have already told you about these
  things."



  182:3.5 During the years that Jesus lived among his followers, they did,
  indeed, have much proof of his divine nature, but just now are they about to
  witness new evidences of his humanity. Just before the greatest of all the
  revelations of his divinity, his resurrection, must now come the greatest
  proofs of his mortal nature, his humiliation and crucifixion.

  182:3.6 Each time he prayed in the garden, his humanity laid a firmer faith-
  hold upon his divinity; his human will more completely became one with the
  divine will of his Father. Among other words spoken to him by the mighty angel
  was the message that the Father desired his Son to finish his earth bestowal
  by passing through the creature experience of death just as all mortal
  creatures must experience material dissolution in passing from the existence
  of time into the progression of eternity.

  182:3.7 Earlier in the evening it had not seemed so difficult to drink the
  cup, but as the human Jesus bade farewell to his apostles and sent them to
  their rest, the trial grew more appalling. Jesus experienced that natural ebb
  and flow of feeling which is common to all human experience, and just now he
  was weary from work, exhausted from the long hours of strenuous labor and
  painful anxiety concerning the safety of his apostles. While no mortal can
  presume to understand the thoughts and feelings of the incarnate Son of God at
  such a time as this, we know that he endured great anguish and suffered untold
  sorrow, for the perspiration rolled off his face in great drops. He was at
  last convinced that the Father intended to allow natural events to take their
  course; he was fully determined to employ none of his sovereign power as the
  supreme head of a universe to save himself.

  182:3.8 The assembled hosts of a vast creation are now hovered over this scene
  under the transient joint command of Gabriel and the Personalized Adjuster of
  Jesus. The division commanders of these armies of heaven have repeatedly been
  warned not to interfere with these transactions on earth unless Jesus himself
  should order them to intervene.



  182:3.9 The experience of parting with the apostles was a great strain on the
  human heart of Jesus; this sorrow of love bore down on him and made it more
  difficult to face such a death as he well knew awaited him. He realized how
  weak and how ignorant his apostles were, and he dreaded to leave them. He well
  knew that the time of his departure had come, but his human heart longed to
  find out whether there might not possibly be some legitimate avenue of escape
  from this terrible plight of suffering and sorrow. And when it had thus sought
  escape, and failed, it was willing to drink the cup. The divine mind of
  Michael knew he had done his best for the twelve apostles; but the human heart
  of Jesus wished that more might have been done for them before they should be
  left alone in the world. Jesus' heart was being crushed; he truly loved his
  brethren. He was isolated from his family in the flesh; one of his chosen
  associates was betraying him. His father Joseph's people had rejected him and
  thereby sealed their doom as a people with a special mission on earth. His
  soul was tortured by baffled love and rejected mercy. It was just one of those
  awful human moments when everything seems to bear down with crushing cruelty
  and terrible agony.

  182:3.10 Jesus' humanity was not insensible to this situation of private
  loneliness, public shame, and the appearance of the failure of his cause. All
  these sentiments bore down on him with indescribable heaviness. In this great
  sorrow his mind went back to the days of his childhood in Nazareth and to his
  early work in Galilee. At the time of this great trial there came up in his
  mind many of those pleasant scenes of his earthly ministry. And it was from
  these old memories of Nazareth, Capernaum, Mount Hermon, and of the sunrise
  and sunset on the shimmering Sea of Galilee, that he soothed himself as he
  made his human heart strong and ready to encounter the traitor who should so
  soon betray him.

  182:3.11 Before Judas and the soldiers arrived, the Master had fully regained
  his customary poise; the spirit had triumphed over the flesh; faith had
  asserted itself over all human tendencies to fear or entertain doubt. The
  supreme test of the full realization of the human nature had been met and
  acceptably passed. Once more the Son of Man was prepared to face his enemies
  with equanimity and in the full assurance of his invincibility as a mortal man
  unreservedly dedicated to the doing of his Father's will.


PAPER 183


 THE BETRAYAL AND ARREST OF JESUS

  183:0.1 AFTER Jesus had finally awakened Peter, James, and John, he suggested
  that they go to their tents and seek sleep in preparation for the duties of
  the morrow. But by this time the three apostles were wide awake; they had been
  refreshed by their short naps, and besides, they were stimulated and aroused
  by the arrival on the scene of two excited messengers who inquired for David
  Zebedee and quickly went in quest of him when Peter informed them where he
  kept watch.

  183:0.2 Although eight of the apostles were sound asleep, the Greeks who were
  encamped alongside them were more fearful of trouble, so much so that they had
  posted a sentinel to give the alarm in case danger should arise. When these
  two messengers hurried into camp, the Greek sentinel proceeded to arouse all
  of his fellow countrymen, who streamed forth from their tents, fully dressed
  and fully armed. All the camp was now aroused except the eight apostles. Peter
  desired to call his associates, but Jesus definitely forbade him. The Master
  mildly admonished them all to return to their tents, but they were reluctant
  to comply with his suggestion.

  183:0.3 Failing to disperse his followers, the Master left them and walked
  down toward the olive press near the entrance to Gethsemane Park. Although the
  three apostles, the Greeks, and the other members of the camp hesitated
  immediately to follow him, John Mark hastened around through the olive trees
  and secreted himself in a small shed near the olive press. Jesus withdrew from
  the camp and from his friends in order that his apprehenders, when they
  arrived, might arrest him without disturbing his apostles. The Master feared
  to have his apostles awake and present at the time of his arrest lest the
  spectacle of Judas's betraying him should so arouse their animosity that they
  would offer resistance to the soldiers and would be taken into custody with
  him. He feared that, if they should be arrested with him, they might also
  perish with him.

  183:0.4 Though Jesus knew that the plan for his death had its origin in the
  councils of the rulers of the Jews, he was also aware that all such nefarious
  schemes had the full approval of Lucifer, Satan, and Caligastia. And he well
  knew that these rebels of the realms would also be pleased to see all of the
  apostles destroyed with him.

  183:0.5 Jesus sat down, alone, on the olive press, where he awaited the coming
  of the betrayer, and he was seen at this time only by John Mark and an
  innumerable host of celestial observers.





1. THE FATHER'S WILL

  183:1.1 There is great danger of misunderstanding the meaning of numerous
  sayings and many events associated with the termination of the Master's career
  in the flesh. The cruel treatment of Jesus by the ignorant servants and the
  calloused soldiers, the unfair conduct of his trials, and the unfeeling
  attitude of the professed religious leaders, must not be confused with the
  fact that Jesus, in patiently submitting to all this suffering and
  humiliation, was truly doing the will of the Father in Paradise. It was,
  indeed and in truth, the will of the Father that his Son should drink to the
  full the cup of mortal experience, from birth to death, but the Father in
  heaven had nothing whatever to do with instigating the barbarous behavior of
  those supposedly civilized human beings who so brutally tortured the Master
  and so horribly heaped successive indignities upon his nonresisting person.
  These inhuman and shocking experiences which Jesus was called upon to endure
  in the final hours of his mortal life were not in any sense a part of the
  divine will of the Father, which his human nature had so triumphantly pledged
  to carry out at the time of the final surrender of man to God as signified in
  the threefold prayer which he indited in the garden while his weary apostles
  slept the sleep of physical exhaustion.

  183:1.2 The Father in heaven desired the bestowal Son to finish his earth
  career naturally, just as all mortals must finish up their lives on earth and
  in the flesh. Ordinary men and women cannot expect to have their last hours on
  earth and the supervening episode of death made easy by a special
  dispensation. Accordingly, Jesus elected to lay down his life in the flesh in
  the manner which was in keeping with the outworking of natural events, and he
  steadfastly refused to extricate himself from the cruel clutches of a wicked
  conspiracy of inhuman events which swept on with horrible certainty toward his
  unbelievable humiliation and ignominious death. And every bit of all this
  astounding manifestation of hatred and this unprecedented demonstration of
  cruelty was the work of evil men and wicked mortals. God in heaven did not
  will it, neither did the archenemies of Jesus dictate it, though they did much
  to insure that unthinking and evil mortals would thus reject the bestowal Son.
  Even the father of sin turned his face away from the excruciating horror of
  the scene of the crucifixion.





2. JUDAS IN THE CITY

  183:2.1 After Judas so abruptly left the table while eating the Last Supper,
  he went directly to the home of his cousin, and then did the two go straight
  to the captain of the temple guards. Judas requested the captain to assemble
  the guards and informed him that he was ready to lead them to Jesus. Judas
  having appeared on the scene a little before he was expected, there was some
  delay in getting started for the Mark home, where Judas expected to find Jesus
  still visiting with the apostles. The Master and the eleven left the home of
  Elijah Mark fully fifteen minutes before the betrayer and the guards arrived.
  By the time the apprehenders reached the Mark home, Jesus and the eleven were
  well outside the walls of the city and on their way to the Olivet camp.

  183:2.2 Judas was much perturbed by this failure to find Jesus at the Mark
  residence and in the company of eleven men, only two of whom were armed for
  resistance. He happened to know that, in the afternoon when they had left
  camp, only Simon Peter and Simon Zelotes were girded with swords; Judas had
  hoped to take Jesus when the city was quiet, and when there was little chance
  of resistance. The betrayer feared that, if he waited for them to return to
  their camp, more than threescore of devoted disciples would be encountered,
  and he also knew that Simon Zelotes had an ample store of arms in his
  possession. Judas was becoming increasingly nervous as he meditated how the
  eleven loyal apostles would detest him, and he feared they would all seek to
  destroy him. He was not only disloyal, but he was a real coward at heart.

  183:2.3 When they failed to find Jesus in the upper chamber, Judas asked the
  captain of the guard to return to the temple. By this time the rulers had
  begun to assemble at the high priest's home preparatory to receiving Jesus,
  seeing that their bargain with the traitor called for Jesus' arrest by
  midnight of that day. Judas explained to his associates that they had missed
  Jesus at the Mark home, and that it would be necessary to go to Gethsemane to
  arrest him. The betrayer then went on to state that more than threescore
  devoted followers were encamped with him, and that they were all well armed.
  The rulers of the Jews reminded Judas that Jesus had always preached
  nonresistance, but Judas replied that they could not depend upon all Jesus'
  followers obeying such teaching. He really feared for himself and therefore
  made bold to ask for a company of forty armed soldiers. Since the Jewish
  authorities had no such force of armed men under their jurisdiction, they went
  at once to the fortress of Antonia and requested the Roman commander to give
  them this guard; but when he learned that they intended to arrest Jesus, he
  promptly refused to accede to their request and referred them to his superior
  officer. In this way more than an hour was consumed in going from one
  authority to another until they finally were compelled to go to Pilate himself
  in order to obtain permission to employ the armed Roman guards. It was late
  when they arrived at Pilate's house, and he had retired to his private
  chambers with his wife. He hesitated to have anything to do with the
  enterprise, all the more so since his wife had asked him not to grant the
  request. But inasmuch as the presiding officer of the Jewish Sanhedrin was
  present and making personal request for this assistance, the governor thought
  it wise to grant the petition, thinking he could later on right any wrong they
  might be disposed to commit.

  183:2.4 Accordingly, when Judas Iscariot started out from the temple, about
  half after eleven o'clock, he was accompanied by more than sixty persons --
  temple guards, Roman soldiers, and curious servants of the chief priests and
  rulers.





3. THE MASTER'S ARREST

  183:3.1 As this company of armed soldiers and guards, carrying torches and
  lanterns, approached the garden, Judas stepped well out in front of the band
  that he might be ready quickly to identify Jesus so that the apprehenders
  could easily lay hands on him before his associates could rally to his
  defense. And there was yet another reason why Judas chose to be ahead of the
  Master's enemies: He thought it would appear that he had arrived on the scene
  ahead of the soldiers so that the apostles and others gathered about Jesus
  might not directly connect him with the armed guards following so closely upon
  his heels. Judas had even thought to pose as having hastened out to warn them
  of the coming of the apprehenders, but this plan was thwarted by Jesus'
  blighting greeting of the betrayer. Though the Master spoke to Judas kindly,
  he greeted him as a traitor.

  183:3.2 As soon as Peter, James, and John, with some thirty of their fellow
  campers, saw the armed band with torches swing around the brow of the hill,
  they knew that these soldiers were coming to arrest Jesus, and they all rushed
  down to near the olive press where the Master was sitting in moonlit solitude.
  As the company of soldiers approached on one side, the three apostles and
  their associates approached on the other. As Judas strode forward to accost
  the Master, there the two groups stood, motionless, with the Master between
  them and Judas making ready to impress the traitorous kiss upon his brow.

  183:3.3 It had been the hope of the betrayer that he could, after leading the
  guards to Gethsemane, simply point Jesus out to the soldiers, or at most carry
  out the promise to greet him with a kiss, and then quickly retire from the
  scene. Judas greatly feared that the apostles would all be present, and that
  they would concentrate their attack upon him in retribution for his daring to
  betray their beloved teacher. But when the Master greeted him as a betrayer,
  he was so confused that he made no attempt to flee.

  183:3.4 Jesus made one last effort to save Judas from actually betraying him
  in that, before the traitor could reach him, he stepped to one side and,
  addressing the foremost soldier on the left, the captain of the Romans, said,
  "Whom do you seek?" The captain answered, "Jesus of Nazareth." Then Jesus
  stepped up immediately in front of the officer and, standing there in the calm
  majesty of the God of all this creation, said, "I am he." Many of this armed
  band had heard Jesus teach in the temple, others had learned about his mighty
  works, and when they heard him thus boldly announce his identity, those in the
  front ranks fell suddenly backward. They were overcome with surprise at his
  calm and majestic announcement of identity. There was, therefore, no need for
  Judas to go on with his plan of betrayal. The Master had boldly revealed
  himself to his enemies, and they could have taken him without Judas's
  assistance. But the traitor had to do something to account for his presence
  with this armed band, and besides, he wanted to make a show of carrying out
  his part of the betrayal bargain with the rulers of the Jews in order to be
  eligible for the great reward and honors which he believed would be heaped
  upon him in compensation for his promise to deliver Jesus into their hands.

  183:3.5 As the guards rallied from their first faltering at the sight of Jesus
  and at the sound of his unusual voice, and as the apostles and disciples drew
  nearer, Judas stepped up to Jesus and, placing a kiss upon his brow, said,
  "Hail, Master and Teacher." And as Judas thus embraced his Master, Jesus said,
  "Friend, is it not enough to do this! Would you even betray the Son of Man
  with a kiss?"

  183:3.6 The apostles and disciples were literally stunned by what they saw.
  For a moment no one moved. Then Jesus, disengaging himself from the traitorous
  embrace of Judas, stepped up to the guards and soldiers and again asked, "Whom
  do you seek?" And again the captain said, "Jesus of Nazareth." And again
  answered Jesus: "I have told you that I am he. If, therefore, you seek me, let
  these others go their way. I am ready to go with you."

  183:3.7 Jesus was ready to go back to Jerusalem with the guards, and the
  captain of the soldiers was altogether willing to allow the three apostles and
  their associates to go their way in peace. But before they were able to get
  started, as Jesus stood there awaiting the captain's orders, one Malchus, the
  Syrian bodyguard of the high priest, stepped up to Jesus and made ready to
  bind his hands behind his back, although the Roman captain had not directed
  that Jesus should be thus bound. When Peter and his associates saw their
  Master being subjected to this indignity, they were no longer able to restrain
  themselves. Peter drew his sword and with the others rushed forward to smite
  Malchus. But before the soldiers could come to the defense of the high
  priest's servant, Jesus raised a forbidding hand to Peter and, speaking
  sternly, said: "Peter, put up your sword. They who take the sword shall perish
  by the sword. Do you not understand that it is the Father's will that I drink
  this cup? And do you not further know that I could even now command more than
  twelve legions of angels and their associates, who would deliver me from the
  hands of these few men?"

  183:3.8 While Jesus thus effectively put a stop to this show of physical
  resistance by his followers, it was enough to arouse the fear of the captain
  of the guards, who now, with the help of his soldiers, laid heavy hands on
  Jesus and quickly bound him. And as they tied his hands with heavy cords,
  Jesus said to them: "Why do you come out against me with swords and with
  staves as if to seize a robber? I was daily with you in the temple, publicly
  teaching the people, and you made no effort to take me."

  183:3.9 When Jesus had been bound, the captain, fearing that the followers of
  the Master might attempt to rescue him, gave orders that they be seized; but
  the soldiers were not quick enough since, having overheard the captain's
  orders to arrest them, Jesus' followers fled in haste back into the ravine.
  All this time John Mark had remained secluded in the near-by shed. When the
  guards started back to Jerusalem with Jesus, John Mark attempted to steal out
  of the shed in order to catch up with the fleeing apostles and disciples; but
  just as he emerged, one of the last of the returning soldiers who had pursued
  the fleeing disciples was passing near and, seeing this young man in his linen
  coat, gave chase, almost overtaking him. In fact, the soldier got near enough
  to John to lay hold upon his coat, but the young man freed himself from the
  garment, escaping naked while the soldier held the empty coat. John Mark made
  his way in all haste to David Zebedee on the upper trail. When he had told
  David what had happened, they both hastened back to the tents of the sleeping
  apostles and informed all eight of the Master's betrayal and arrest.

  183:3.10 At about the time the eight apostles were being awakened, those who
  had fled up the ravine were returning, and they all gathered together near the
  olive press to debate what should be done. In the meantime, Simon Peter and
  John Zebedee, who had hidden among the olive trees, had already gone on after
  the mob of soldiers, guards, and servants, who were now leading Jesus back to
  Jerusalem as they would have led a desperate criminal. John followed close
  behind the mob, but Peter followed afar off. After John Mark's escape from the
  clutch of the soldier, he provided himself with a cloak which he found in the
  tent of Simon Peter and John Zebedee. He suspected the guards were going to
  take Jesus to the home of Annas, the high priest emeritus; so he skirted
  around through the olive orchards and was there ahead of the mob, hiding near
  the entrance to the gate of the high priest's palace.





4. DISCUSSION AT THE OLIVE PRESS

  183:4.1 James Zebedee found himself separated from Simon Peter and his brother
  John, and so he now joined the other apostles and their fellow campers at the
  olive press to deliberate on what should be done in view of the Master's
  arrest.

  183:4.2 Andrew had been released from all responsibility in the group
  management of his fellow apostles; accordingly, in this greatest of all crises
  in their lives, he was silent. After a short informal discussion, Simon
  Zelotes stood up on the stone wall of the olive press and, making an
  impassioned plea for loyalty to the Master and the cause of the kingdom,
  exhorted his fellow apostles and the other disciples to hasten on after the
  mob and effect the rescue of Jesus. The majority of the company would have
  been disposed to follow his aggressive leadership had it not been for the
  advice of Nathaniel, who stood up the moment Simon had finished speaking and
  called their attention to Jesus' oft-repeated teachings regarding
  nonresistance. He further reminded them that Jesus had that very night
  instructed them that they should preserve their lives for the time when they
  should go forth into the world proclaiming the good news of the gospel of the
  heavenly kingdom. And Nathaniel was encouraged in this stand by James Zebedee,
  who now told how Peter and others drew their swords to defend the Master
  against arrest, and that Jesus bade Simon Peter and his fellow swordsmen
  sheathe their blades. Matthew and Philip also made speeches, but nothing
  definite came of this discussion until Thomas, calling their attention to the
  fact that Jesus had counseled Lazarus against exposing himself to death,
  pointed out that they could do nothing to save their Master inasmuch as he
  refused to allow his friends to defend him, and since he persisted in
  refraining from the use of his divine powers to frustrate his human enemies.
  Thomas persuaded them to scatter, every man for himself, with the
  understanding that David Zebedee would remain at the camp to maintain a
  clearinghouse and messenger headquarters for the group. By half past two
  o'clock that morning the camp was deserted; only David remained on hand with
  three or four messengers, the others having been dispatched to secure
  information as to where Jesus had been taken, and what was going to be done
  with him.

  183:4.3 Five of the apostles, Nathaniel, Matthew, Philip, and the twins, went
  into hiding at Bethpage and Bethany. Thomas, Andrew, James, and Simon Zelotes
  were hiding in the city. Simon Peter and John Zebedee followed along to the
  home of Annas.

  183:4.4 Shortly after daybreak, Simon Peter wandered back to the Gethsemane
  camp, a dejected picture of deep despair. David sent him in charge of a
  messenger to join his brother, Andrew, who was at the home of Nicodemus in
  Jerusalem.

  183:4.5 Until the very end of the crucifixion, John Zebedee remained, as Jesus
  had directed him, always near at hand, and it was he who supplied David's
  messengers with information from hour to hour which they carried to David at
  the garden camp, and which was then relayed to the hiding apostles and to
  Jesus' family.

  183:4.6 Surely, the shepherd is smitten and the sheep are scattered! While
  they all vaguely realize that Jesus has forewarned them of this very
  situation, they are too severely shocked by the Master's sudden disappearance
  to be able to use their minds normally.

  183:4.7 It was shortly after daylight and just after Peter had been sent to
  join his brother, that Jude, Jesus' brother in the flesh, arrived in the camp,
  almost breathless and in advance of the rest of Jesus' family, only to learn
  that the Master had already been placed under arrest; and he hastened back
  down the Jericho road to carry this information to his mother and to his
  brothers and sisters. David Zebedee sent word to Jesus' family, by Jude, to
  forgather at the house of Martha and Mary in Bethany and there await news
  which his messengers would regularly bring them.

  183:4.8 This was the situation during the last half of Thursday night and the
  early morning hours of Friday as regards the apostles, the chief disciples,
  and the earthly family of Jesus. And all these groups and individuals were
  kept in touch with each other by the messenger service which David Zebedee
  continued to operate from his headquarters at the Gethsemane camp.





5. ON THE WAY TO THE HIGH PRIEST'S PALACE

  183:5.1 Before they started away from the garden with Jesus, a dispute arose
  between the Jewish captain of the temple guards and the Roman captain of the
  company of soldiers as to where they were to take Jesus. The captain of the
  temple guards gave orders that he should be taken to Caiaphas, the acting high
  priest. The captain of the Roman soldiers directed that Jesus be taken to the
  palace of Annas, the former high priest and father-in-law of Caiaphas. And
  this he did because the Romans were in the habit of dealing directly with
  Annas in all matters having to do with the enforcement of the Jewish
  ecclesiastical laws. And the orders of the Roman captain were obeyed; they
  took Jesus to the home of Annas for his preliminary examination.

  183:5.2 Judas marched along near the captains, overhearing all that was said,
  but took no part in the dispute, for neither the Jewish captain nor the Roman
  officer would so much as speak to the betrayer -- they held him in such
  contempt.

  183:5.3 About this time John Zebedee, remembering his Master's instructions to
  remain always near at hand, hurried up near Jesus as he marched along between
  the two captains. The commander of the temple guards, seeing John come up
  alongside, said to his assistant: "Take this man and bind him. He is one of
  this fellow's followers." But when the Roman captain heard this and, looking
  around, saw John, he gave orders that the apostle should come over by him, and
  that no man should molest him. Then the Roman captain said to the Jewish
  captain: "This man is neither a traitor nor a coward. I saw him in the garden,
  and he did not draw a sword to resist us. He has the courage to come forward
  to be with his Master, and no man shall lay hands on him. The Roman law allows
  that any prisoner may have at least one friend to stand with him before the
  judgment bar, and this man shall not be prevented from standing by the side of
  his Master, the prisoner." And when Judas heard this, he was so ashamed and
  humiliated that he dropped back behind the marchers, coming up to the palace
  of Annas alone.

  183:5.4 And this explains why John Zebedee was permitted to remain near Jesus
  all the way through his trying experiences this night and the next day. The
  Jews feared to say aught to John or to molest him in any way because he had
  something of the status of a Roman counselor designated to act as observer of
  the transactions of the Jewish ecclesiastical court. John's position of
  privilege was made all the more secure when, in turning Jesus over to the
  captain of the temple guards at the gate of Annas's palace, the Roman,
  addressing his assistant, said: "Go along with this prisoner and see that
  these Jews do not kill him without Pilate's consent. Watch that they do not
  assassinate him, and see that his friend, the Galilean, is permitted to stand
  by and observe all that goes on." And thus was John able to be near Jesus
  right on up to the time of his death on the cross, though the other ten
  apostles were compelled to remain in hiding. John was acting under Roman
  protection, and the Jews dared not molest him until after the Master's death.

  183:5.5 And all the way to the palace of Annas, Jesus opened not his mouth.
  From the time of his arrest to the time of his appearance before Annas, the
  Son of Man spoke no word.




PAPER 184


 BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN COURT



  184:0.1 REPRESENTATIVES of Annas had secretly instructed the captain of the
  Roman soldiers to bring Jesus immediately to the palace of Annas after he had
  been arrested. The former high priest desired to maintain his prestige as the
  chief ecclesiastical authority of the Jews. He also had another purpose in
  detaining Jesus at his house for several hours, and that was to allow time for
  legally calling together the court of the Sanhedrin. It was not lawful to
  convene the Sanhedrin court before the time of the offering of the morning
  sacrifice in the temple, and this sacrifice was offered about three o'clock in
  the morning.

  184:0.2 Annas knew that a court of Sanhedrists was in waiting at the palace of
  his son-in-law, Caiaphas. Some thirty members of the Sanhedrin had gathered at
  the home of the high priest by midnight so that they would be ready to sit in
  judgment on Jesus when he might be brought before them. Only those members
  were assembled who were strongly and openly opposed to Jesus and his teaching
  since it required only twenty-three to constitute a trial court.

  184:0.3 Jesus spent about three hours at the palace of Annas on Mount Olivet,
  not far from the garden of Gethsemane, where they arrested him. John Zebedee
  was free and safe in the palace of Annas not only because of the word of the
  Roman captain, but also because he and his brother James were well known to
  the older servants, having many times been guests at the palace as the former
  high priest was a distant relative of their mother, Salome.





1. EXAMINATION BY ANNAS



  184:1.1 Annas, enriched by the temple revenues, his son-in-law the acting high
  priest, and with his relations to the Roman authorities, was indeed the most
  powerful single individual in all Jewry. He was a suave and politic planner
  and plotter. He desired to direct the matter of disposing of Jesus; he feared
  to trust such an important undertaking wholly to his brusque and aggressive
  son-in-law. Annas wanted to make sure that the Master's trial was kept in the
  hands of the Sadducees; he feared the possible sympathy of some of the
  Pharisees, seeing that practically all of those members of the Sanhedrin who
  had espoused the cause of Jesus were Pharisees.

  184:1.2 Annas had not seen Jesus for several years, not since the time when
  the Master called at his house and immediately left upon observing his
  coldness and reserve in receiving him. Annas had thought to presume on this
  early acquaintance and thereby attempt to persuade Jesus to abandon his claims
  and leave Palestine. He was reluctant to participate in the murder of a good
  man and had reasoned that Jesus might choose to leave the country rather than
  to suffer death. But when Annas stood before the stalwart and determined
  Galilean, he knew at once that it would be useless to make such proposals.
  Jesus was even more majestic and well poised than Annas remembered him.

  184:1.3 When Jesus was young, Annas had taken a great interest in him, but now
  his revenues were threatened by what Jesus had so recently done in driving the
  money-changers and other commercial traders out of the temple. This act had
  aroused the enmity of the former high priest far more than had Jesus'
  teachings.

  184:1.4 Annas entered his spacious audience chamber, seated himself in a large
  chair, and commanded that Jesus be brought before him. After a few moments
  spent in silently surveying the Master, he said: "You realize that something
  must be done about your teaching since you are disturbing the peace and order
  of our country." As Annas looked inquiringly at Jesus, the Master looked full
  into his eyes but made no reply. Again Annas spoke, "What are the names of
  your disciples, besides Simon Zelotes, the agitator?" Again Jesus looked down
  upon him, but he did not answer.

  184:1.5 Annas was considerably disturbed by Jesus' refusal to answer his
  questions, so much so that he said to him: "Do you have no care as to whether
  I am friendly to you or not? Do you have no regard for the power I have in
  determining the issues of your coming trial?" When Jesus heard this, he said:
  "Annas, you know that you could have no power over me unless it were permitted
  by my Father. Some would destroy the Son of Man because they are ignorant;
  they know no better, but you, friend, know what you are doing. How can you,
  therefore, reject the light of God?"

  184:1.6 The kindly manner in which Jesus spoke to Annas almost bewildered him.
  But he had already determined in his mind that Jesus must either leave
  Palestine or die; so he summoned up his courage and asked: "Just what is it
  you are trying to teach the people? What do you claim to be?" Jesus answered:
  "You know full well that I have spoken openly to the world. I have taught in
  the synagogues and many times in the temple, where all the Jews and many of
  the gentiles have heard me. In secret I have spoken nothing; why, then, do you
  ask me about my teaching? Why do you not summon those who have heard me and
  inquire of them? Behold, all Jerusalem has heard that which I have spoken even
  if you have not yourself heard these teachings." But before Annas could make
  reply, the chief steward of the palace, who was standing near, struck Jesus in
  the face with his hand, saying, "How dare you answer the high priest with such
  words?" Annas spoke no words of rebuke to his steward, but Jesus addressed
  him, saying, "My friend, if I have spoken evil, bear witness against the evil;
  but if I have spoken the truth, why, then, should you smite me?"

  184:1.7 Although Annas regretted that his steward had struck Jesus, he was too
  proud to take notice of the matter. In his confusion he went into another
  room, leaving Jesus alone with the household attendants and the temple guards
  for almost an hour.

  184:1.8 When he returned, going up to the Master's side, he said, "Do you
  claim to be the Messiah, the deliverer of Israel?" Said Jesus: "Annas, you
  have known me from the times of my youth. You know that I claim to be nothing
  except that which my Father has appointed, and that I have been sent to all
  men, gentile as well as Jew." Then said Annas: "I have been told that you have
  claimed to be the Messiah; is that true?" Jesus looked upon Annas but only
  replied, "So you have said."

  184:1.9 About this time messengers arrived from the palace of Caiaphas to
  inquire what time Jesus would be brought before the court of the Sanhedrin,
  and since it was nearing the break of day, Annas thought best to send Jesus
  bound and in the custody of the temple guards to Caiaphas. He himself followed
  after them shortly.





2. PETER IN THE COURTYARD



  184:2.1 As the band of guards and soldiers approached the entrance to the
  palace of Annas, John Zebedee was marching by the side of the captain of the
  Roman soldiers. Judas had dropped some distance behind, and Simon Peter
  followed afar off. After John had entered the palace courtyard with Jesus and
  the guards, Judas came up to the gate but, seeing Jesus and John, went on over
  to the home of Caiaphas, where he knew the real trial of the Master would
  later take place. Soon after Judas had left, Simon Peter arrived, and as he
  stood before the gate, John saw him just as they were about to take Jesus into
  the palace. The portress who kept the gate knew John, and when he spoke to
  her, requesting that she let Peter in, she gladly assented.

  184:2.2 Peter, upon entering the courtyard, went over to the charcoal fire and
  sought to warm himself, for the night was chilly. He felt very much out of
  place here among the enemies of Jesus, and indeed he was out of place. The
  Master had not instructed him to keep near at hand as he had admonished John.
  Peter belonged with the other apostles, who had been specifically warned not
  to endanger their lives during these times of the trial and crucifixion of
  their Master.

  184:2.3 Peter threw away his sword shortly before he came up to the palace
  gate so that he entered the courtyard of Annas unarmed. His mind was in a
  whirl of confusion; he could scarcely realize that Jesus had been arrested. He
  could not grasp the reality of the situation -- that he was here in the
  courtyard of Annas, warming himself beside the servants of the high priest. He
  wondered what the other apostles were doing and, in turning over in his mind
  as to how John came to be admitted to the palace, concluded that it was
  because he was known to the servants, since he had bidden the gate-keeper
  admit him.

  184:2.4 Shortly after the portress let Peter in, and while he was warming
  himself by the fire, she went over to him and mischievously said, "Are you not
  also one of this man's disciples?" Now Peter should not have been surprised at
  this recognition, for it was John who had requested that the girl let him pass
  through the palace gates; but he was in such a tense nervous state that this
  identification as a disciple threw him off his balance, and with only one
  thought uppermost in his mind -- the thought of escaping with his life -- he
  promptly answered the maid's question by saying, "I am not."

  184:2.5 Very soon another servant came up to Peter and asked: "Did I not see
  you in the garden when they arrested this fellow? Are you not also one of his
  followers?" Peter was now thoroughly alarmed; he saw no way of safely escaping
  from these accusers; so he vehemently denied all connection with Jesus,
  saying, "I know not this man, neither am I one of his followers."

  184:2.6 About this time the portress of the gate drew Peter to one side and
  said: "I am sure you are a disciple of this Jesus, not only because one of his
  followers bade me let you in the courtyard, but my sister here has seen you in
  the temple with this man. Why do you deny this?" When Peter heard the maid
  accuse him, he denied all knowledge of Jesus with much cursing and swearing,
  again saying, "I am not this man's follower; I do not even know him; I never
  heard of him before."

  184:2.7 Peter left the fireside for a time while he walked about the
  courtyard. He would have liked to have escaped, but he feared to attract
  attention to himself. Getting cold, he returned to the fireside, and one of
  the men standing near him said: "Surely you are one of this man's disciples.
  This Jesus is a Galilean, and your speech betrays you, for you also speak as a
  Galilean." And again Peter denied all connection with his Master.

  184:2.8 Peter was so perturbed that he sought to escape contact with his
  accusers by going away from the fire and remaining by himself on the porch.
  After more than an hour of this isolation, the gate-keeper and her sister
  chanced to meet him, and both of them again teasingly charged him with being a
  follower of Jesus. And again he denied the accusation. Just as he had once
  more denied all connection with Jesus, the cock crowed, and Peter remembered
  the words of warning spoken to him by his Master earlier that same night. As
  he stood there, heavy of heart and crushed with the sense of guilt, the palace
  doors opened, and the guards led Jesus past on the way to Caiaphas. As the
  Master passed Peter, he saw, by the light of the torches, the look of despair
  on the face of his former self-confident and superficially brave apostle, and
  he turned and looked upon Peter. Peter never forgot that look as long as he
  lived. It was such a glance of commingled pity and love as mortal man had
  never beheld in the face of the Master.

  184:2.9 After Jesus and the guards passed out of the palace gates, Peter
  followed them, but only for a short distance. He could not go farther. He sat
  down by the side of the road and wept bitterly. And when he had shed these
  tears of agony, he turned his steps back toward the camp, hoping to find his
  brother, Andrew. On arriving at the camp, he found only David Zebedee, who
  sent a messenger to direct him to where his brother had gone to hide in
  Jerusalem.



  184:2.10 Peter's entire experience occurred in the courtyard of the palace of
  Annas on Mount Olivet. He did not follow Jesus to the palace of the high
  priest, Caiaphas. That Peter was brought to the realization that he had
  repeatedly denied his Master by the crowing of a cock indicates that this all
  occurred outside of Jerusalem since it was against the law to keep poultry
  within the city proper.



  184:2.11 Until the crowing of the cock brought Peter to his better senses, he
  had only thought, as he walked up and down the porch to keep warm, how
  cleverly he had eluded the accusations of the servants, and how he had
  frustrated their purpose to identify him with Jesus. For the time being, he
  had only considered that these servants had no moral or legal right thus to
  question him, and he really congratulated himself over the manner in which he
  thought he had avoided being identified and possibly subjected to arrest and
  imprisonment. Not until the cock crowed did it occur to Peter that he had
  denied his Master. Not until Jesus looked upon him, did he realize that he had
  failed to live up to his privileges as an ambassador of the kingdom.

  184:2.12 Having taken the first step along the path of compromise and least
  resistance, there was nothing apparent to Peter but to go on with the course
  of conduct decided upon. It requires a great and noble character, having
  started out wrong, to turn about and go right. All too often one's own mind
  tends to justify continuance in the path of error when once it is entered
  upon.

  184:2.13 Peter never fully believed that he could be forgiven until he met his
  Master after the resurrection and saw that he was received just as before the
  experiences of this tragic night of the denials.





3. BEFORE THE COURT OF SANHEDRISTS



  184:3.1 It was about half past three o'clock this Friday morning when the
  chief priest, Caiaphas, called the Sanhedrist court of inquiry to order and
  asked that Jesus be brought before them for his formal trial. On three
  previous occasions the Sanhedrin, by a large majority vote, had decreed the
  death of Jesus, had decided that he was worthy of death on informal charges of
  law-breaking, blasphemy, and flouting the traditions of the fathers of Israel.

  184:3.2 This was not a regularly called meeting of the Sanhedrin and was not
  held in the usual place, the chamber of hewn stone in the temple. This was a
  special trial court of some thirty Sanhedrists and was convened in the palace
  of the high priest. John Zebedee was present with Jesus throughout this so-
  called trial.

  184:3.3 How these chief priests, scribes, Sadducees, and some of the Pharisees
  flattered themselves that Jesus, the disturber of their position and the
  challenger of their authority, was now securely in their hands! And they were
  resolved that he should never live to escape their vengeful clutches.

  184:3.4 Ordinarily, the Jews, when trying a man on a capital charge, proceeded
  with great caution and provided every safeguard of fairness in the selection
  of witnesses and the entire conduct of the trial. But on this occasion,
  Caiaphas was more of a prosecutor than an unbiased judge.



  184:3.5 Jesus appeared before this court clothed in his usual garments and
  with his hands bound together behind his back. The entire court was startled
  and somewhat confused by his majestic appearance. Never had they gazed upon
  such a prisoner nor witnessed such composure in a man on trial for his life.



  184:3.6 The Jewish law required that at least two witnesses must agree upon
  any point before a charge could be laid against the prisoner. Judas could not
  be used as a witness against Jesus because the Jewish law specifically forbade
  the testimony of a traitor. More than a score of false witnesses were on hand
  to testify against Jesus, but their testimony was so contradictory and so
  evidently trumped up that the Sanhedrists themselves were very much ashamed of
  the performance. Jesus stood there, looking down benignly upon these
  perjurers, and his very countenance disconcerted the lying witnesses.
  Throughout all this false testimony the Master never said a word; he made no
  reply to their many false accusations.

  184:3.7 The first time any two of their witnesses approached even the
  semblance of an agreement was when two men testified that they had heard Jesus
  say in the course of one of his temple discourses that he would "destroy this
  temple made with hands and in three days make another temple without hands."
  That was not exactly what Jesus said, regardless of the fact that he pointed
  to his own body when he made the remark referred to.

  184:3.8 Although the high priest shouted at Jesus, "Do you not answer any of
  these charges?" Jesus opened not his mouth. He stood there in silence while
  all of these false witnesses gave their testimony. Hatred, fanaticism, and
  unscrupulous exaggeration so characterized the words of these perjurers that
  their testimony fell in its own entanglements. The very best refutation of
  their false accusations was the Master's calm and majestic silence.

  184:3.9 Shortly after the beginning of the testimony of the false witnesses,
  Annas arrived and took his seat beside Caiaphas. Annas now arose and argued
  that this threat of Jesus to destroy the temple was sufficient to warrant
  three charges against him:

1. That he was a dangerous traducer of the people. That he taught them
impossible things and otherwise deceived them.

2. That he was a fanatical revolutionist in that he advocated laying violent
hands on the sacred temple, else how could he destroy it?

3. That he taught magic inasmuch as he promised to build a new temple, and that
without hands.

  184:3.10 Already had the full Sanhedrin agreed that Jesus was guilty of death-
  deserving transgressions of the Jewish laws, but they were now more concerned
  with developing charges regarding his conduct and teachings which would
  justify Pilate in pronouncing the death sentence upon their prisoner. They
  knew that they must secure the consent of the Roman governor before Jesus
  could legally be put to death. And Annas was minded to proceed along the line
  of making it appear that Jesus was a dangerous teacher to be abroad among the
  people.

  184:3.11 But Caiaphas could not longer endure the sight of the Master standing
  there in perfect composure and unbroken silence. He thought he knew at least
  one way in which the prisoner might be induced to speak. Accordingly, he
  rushed over to the side of Jesus and, shaking his accusing finger in the
  Master's face, said: "I adjure you, in the name of the living God, that you
  tell us whether you are the Deliverer, the Son of God." Jesus answered
  Caiaphas: "I am. Soon I go to the Father, and presently shall the Son of Man
  be clothed with power and once more reign over the hosts of heaven."

  184:3.12 When the high priest heard Jesus utter these words, he was
  exceedingly angry, and rending his outer garments, he exclaimed: "What further
  need have we of witnesses? Behold, now have you all heard this man's
  blasphemy. What do you now think should be done with this law-breaker and
  blasphemer?" And they all answered in unison, "He is worthy of death; let him
  be crucified."

  184:3.13 Jesus manifested no interest in any question asked him when before
  Annas or the Sanhedrists except the one question relative to his bestowal
  mission. When asked if he were the Son of God, he instantly and unequivocally
  answered in the affirmative.

  184:3.14 Annas desired that the trial proceed further, and that charges of a
  definite nature regarding Jesus' relation to the Roman law and Roman
  institutions be formulated for subsequent presentation to Pilate. The
  councilors were anxious to carry these matters to a speedy termination, not
  only because it was the preparation day for the Passover and no secular work
  should be done after noon, but also because they feared Pilate might any time
  return to the Roman capital of Judea, Caesarea, since he was in Jerusalem only
  for the Passover celebration.

  184:3.15 But Annas did not succeed in keeping control of the court. After
  Jesus had so unexpectedly answered Caiaphas, the high priest stepped forward
  and smote him in the face with his hand. Annas was truly shocked as the other
  members of the court, in passing out of the room, spit in Jesus' face, and
  many of them mockingly slapped him with the palms of their hands. And thus in
  disorder and with such unheard-of confusion this first session of the
  Sanhedrist trial of Jesus ended at half past four o'clock.



  184:3.16 Thirty prejudiced and tradition-blinded false judges, with their
  false witnesses, are presuming to sit in judgment on the righteous Creator of
  a universe. And these impassioned accusers are exasperated by the majestic
  silence and superb bearing of this God-man. His silence is terrible to endure;
  his speech is fearlessly defiant. He is unmoved by their threats and undaunted
  by their assaults. Man sits in judgment on God, but even then he loves them
  and would save them if he could.





4. THE HOUR OF HUMILIATION



  184:4.1 The Jewish law required that, in the matter of passing the death
  sentence, there should be two sessions of the court. This second session was
  to be held on the day following the first, and the intervening time was to be
  spent in fasting and mourning by the members of the court. But these men could
  not await the next day for the confirmation of their decision that Jesus must
  die. They waited only one hour. In the meantime Jesus was left in the audience
  chamber in the custody of the temple guards, who, with the servants of the
  high priest, amused themselves by heaping every sort of indignity upon the Son
  of Man. They mocked him, spit upon him, and cruelly buffeted him. They would
  strike him in the face with a rod and then say, "Prophesy to us, you the
  Deliverer, who it was that struck you." And thus they went on for one full
  hour, reviling and mistreating this unresisting man of Galilee.

  184:4.2 During this tragic hour of suffering and mock trials before the
  ignorant and unfeeling guards and servants, John Zebedee waited in lonely
  terror in an adjoining room. When these abuses first started, Jesus indicated
  to John, by a nod of his head, that he should retire. The Master well knew
  that, if he permitted his apostle to remain in the room to witness these
  indignities, John's resentment would be so aroused as to produce such an
  outbreak of protesting indignation as would probably result in his death.

  184:4.3 Throughout this awful hour Jesus uttered no word. To this gentle and
  sensitive soul of humankind, joined in personality relationship with the God
  of all this universe, there was no more bitter portion of his cup of
  humiliation than this terrible hour at the mercy of these ignorant and cruel
  guards and servants, who had been stimulated to abuse him by the example of
  the members of this so-called Sanhedrist court.



  184:4.4 The human heart cannot possibly conceive of the shudder of indignation
  that swept out over a vast universe as the celestial intelligences witnessed
  this sight of their beloved Sovereign submitting himself to the will of his
  ignorant and misguided creatures on the sin-darkened sphere of unfortunate
  Urantia.

  184:4.5 What is this trait of the animal in man which leads him to want to
  insult and physically assault that which he cannot spiritually attain or
  intellectually achieve? In the half-civilized man there still lurks an evil
  brutality which seeks to vent itself upon those who are superior in wisdom and
  spiritual attainment. Witness the evil coarseness and the brutal ferocity of
  these supposedly civilized men as they derived a certain form of animal
  pleasure from this physical attack upon the unresisting Son of Man. As these
  insults, taunts, and blows fell upon Jesus, he was undefending but not
  defenseless. Jesus was not vanquished, merely uncontending in the material
  sense.

  184:4.6 These are the moments of the Master's greatest victories in all his
  long and eventful career as maker, upholder, and savior of a vast and far-
  flung universe. Having lived to the full a life of revealing God to man, Jesus
  is now engaged in making a new and unprecedented revelation of man to God.
  Jesus is now revealing to the worlds the final triumph over all fears of
  creature personality isolation. The Son of Man has finally achieved the
  realization of identity as the Son of God. Jesus does not hesitate to assert
  that he and the Father are one; and on the basis of the fact and truth of that
  supreme and supernal experience, he admonishes every kingdom believer to
  become one with him even as he and his Father are one. The living experience
  in the religion of Jesus thus becomes the sure and certain technique whereby
  the spiritually isolated and cosmically lonely mortals of earth are enabled to
  escape personality isolation, with all its consequences of fear and associated
  feelings of helplessness. In the fraternal realities of the kingdom of heaven
  the faith sons of God find final deliverance from the isolation of the self,
  both personal and planetary. The God-knowing believer increasingly experiences
  the ecstasy and grandeur of spiritual socialization on a universe scale --
  citizenship on high in association with the eternal realization of the divine
  destiny of perfection attainment.





5. THE SECOND MEETING OF THE COURT



  184:5.1 At five-thirty o'clock the court reassembled, and Jesus was led into
  the adjoining room, where John was waiting. Here the Roman soldier and the
  temple guards watched over Jesus while the court began the formulation of the
  charges which were to be presented to Pilate. Annas made it clear to his
  associates that the charge of blasphemy would carry no weight with Pilate.
  Judas was present during this second meeting of the court, but he gave no
  testimony.

  184:5.2 This session of the court lasted only a half hour, and when they
  adjourned to go before Pilate, they had drawn up the indictment of Jesus, as
  being worthy of death, under three heads:

1. That he was a perverter of the Jewish nation; he deceived the people and
incited them to rebellion.

2. That he taught the people to refuse to pay tribute to Caesar.

3. That, by claiming to be a king and the founder of a new sort of kingdom, he
incited treason against the emperor.

  184:5.3 This entire procedure was irregular and wholly contrary to the Jewish
  laws. No two witnesses had agreed on any matter except those who testified
  regarding Jesus' statement about destroying the temple and raising it again in
  three days. And even concerning that point, no witnesses spoke for the
  defense, and neither was Jesus asked to explain his intended meaning.

  184:5.4 The only point the court could have consistently judged him on was
  that of blasphemy, and that would have rested entirely on his own testimony.
  Even concerning blasphemy, they failed to cast a formal ballot for the death
  sentence.

  184:5.5 And now they presumed to formulate three charges, with which to go
  before Pilate, on which no witnesses had been heard, and which were agreed
  upon while the accused prisoner was absent. When this was done, three of the
  Pharisees took their leave; they wanted to see Jesus destroyed, but they would
  not formulate charges against him without witnesses and in his absence.



  184:5.6 Jesus did not again appear before the Sanhedrist court. They did not
  want again to look upon his face as they sat in judgment upon his innocent
  life. Jesus did not know (as a man) of their formal charges until he heard
  them recited by Pilate.

  184:5.7 While Jesus was in the room with John and the guards, and while the
  court was in its second session, some of the women about the high priest's
  palace, together with their friends, came to look upon the strange prisoner,
  and one of them asked him, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?" And Jesus
  answered: "If I tell you, you will not believe me; and if I ask you, you will
  not answer."

  184:5.8 At six o'clock that morning Jesus was led forth from the home of
  Caiaphas to appear before Pilate for confirmation of the sentence of death
  which this Sanhedrist court had so unjustly and irregularly decreed.


PAPER 185


 THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE



  185:0.1 SHORTLY after six o'clock on this Friday morning, April 7, A.D. 30,
  Jesus was brought before Pilate, the Roman procurator who governed Judea,
  Samaria, and Idumea under the immediate supervision of the legatus of Syria.
  The Master was taken into the presence of the Roman governor by the temple
  guards, bound, and was accompanied by about fifty of his accusers, including
  the Sanhedrist court (principally Sadduceans), Judas Iscariot, and the high
  priest, Caiaphas, and by the Apostle John. Annas did not appear before Pilate.

  185:0.2 Pilate was up and ready to receive this group of early morning
  callers, having been informed by those who had secured his consent, the
  previous evening, to employ the Roman soldiers in arresting the Son of Man,
  that Jesus would be early brought before him. This trial was arranged to take
  place in front of the praetorium, an addition to the fortress of Antonia,
  where Pilate and his wife made their headquarters when stopping in Jerusalem.

  185:0.3 Though Pilate conducted much of Jesus' examination within the
  praetorium halls, the public trial was held outside on the steps leading up to
  the main entrance. This was a concession to the Jews, who refused to enter any
  gentile building where leaven might be used on this day of preparation for the
  Passover. Such conduct would not only render them ceremonially unclean and
  thereby debar them from partaking of the afternoon feast of thanksgiving but
  would also necessitate their subjection to purification ceremonies after
  sundown, before they would be eligible to partake of the Passover supper.

  185:0.4 Although these Jews were not at all bothered in conscience as they
  intrigued to effect the judicial murder of Jesus, they were nonetheless
  scrupulous regarding all these matters of ceremonial cleanness and traditional
  regularity. And these Jews have not been the only ones to fail in the
  recognition of high and holy obligations of a divine nature while giving
  meticulous attention to things of trifling importance to human welfare in both
  time and eternity.





1. PONTIUS PILATE

  185:1.1 If Pontius Pilate had not been a reasonably good governor of the minor
  provinces, Tiberius would hardly have suffered him to remain as procurator of
  Judea for ten years. Although he was a fairly good administrator, he was a
  moral coward. He was not a big enough man to comprehend the nature of his task
  as governor of the Jews. He failed to grasp the fact that these Hebrews had a
  real religion, a faith for which they were willing to die, and that millions
  upon millions of them, scattered here and there throughout the empire, looked
  to Jerusalem as the shrine of their faith and held the Sanhedrin in respect as
  the highest tribunal on earth.

  185:1.2 Pilate did not love the Jews, and this deep-seated hatred early began
  to manifest itself. Of all the Roman provinces, none was more difficult to
  govern than Judea. Pilate never really understood the problems involved in the
  management of the Jews and, therefore, very early in his experience as
  governor, made a series of almost fatal and well-nigh suicidal blunders. And
  it was these blunders that gave the Jews such power over him. When they wanted
  to influence his decisions, all they had to do was to threaten an uprising,
  and Pilate would speedily capitulate. And this apparent vacillation, or lack
  of moral courage, of the procurator was chiefly due to the memory of a number
  of controversies he had had with the Jews and because in each instance they
  had worsted him. The Jews knew that Pilate was afraid of them, that he feared
  for his position before Tiberius, and they employed this knowledge to the
  great disadvantage of the governor on numerous occasions.

  185:1.3 Pilate's disfavor with the Jews came about as a result of a number of
  unfortunate encounters. First, he failed to take seriously their deep-seated
  prejudice against all images as symbols of idol worship. Therefore he
  permitted his soldiers to enter Jerusalem without removing the images of
  Caesar from their banners, as had been the practice of the Roman soldiers
  under his predecessor. A large deputation of Jews waited upon Pilate for five
  days, imploring him to have these images removed from the military standards.
  He flatly refused to grant their petition and threatened them with instant
  death. Pilate, himself being a skeptic, did not understand that men of strong
  religious feelings will not hesitate to die for their religious convictions;
  and therefore was he dismayed when these Jews drew themselves up defiantly
  before his palace, bowed their faces to the ground, and sent word that they
  were ready to die. Pilate then realized that he had made a threat which he was
  unwilling to carry out. He surrendered, ordered the images removed from the
  standards of his soldiers in Jerusalem, and found himself from that day on to
  a large extent subject to the whims of the Jewish leaders, who had in this way
  discovered his weakness in making threats which he feared to execute.

  185:1.4 Pilate subsequently determined to regain this lost prestige and
  accordingly had the shields of the emperor, such as were commonly used in
  Caesar worship, put up on the walls of Herod's palace in Jerusalem. When the
  Jews protested, he was adamant. When he refused to listen to their protests,
  they promptly appealed to Rome, and the emperor as promptly ordered the
  offending shields removed. And then was Pilate held in even lower esteem than
  before.



  185:1.5 Another thing which brought him into great disfavor with the Jews was
  that he dared to take money from the temple treasury to pay for the
  construction of a new aqueduct to provide increased water supply for the
  millions of visitors to Jerusalem at the times of the great religious feasts.
  The Jews held that only the Sanhedrin could disburse the temple funds, and
  they never ceased to inveigh against Pilate for this presumptuous ruling. No
  less than a score of riots and much bloodshed resulted from this decision. The
  last of these serious outbreaks had to do with the slaughter of a large
  company of Galileans even as they worshiped at the altar.



  185:1.6 It is significant that, while this vacillating Roman ruler sacrificed
  Jesus to his fear of the Jews and to safeguard his personal position, he
  finally was deposed as a result of the needless slaughter of Samaritans in
  connection with the pretensions of a false Messiah who led troops to Mount
  Gerizim, where he claimed the temple vessels were buried; and fierce riots
  broke out when he failed to reveal the hiding place of the sacred vessels, as
  he had promised. As a result of this episode, the legatus of Syria ordered
  Pilate to Rome. Tiberius died while Pilate was on the way to Rome, and he was
  not reappointed as procurator of Judea. He never fully recovered from the
  regretful condemnation of having consented to the crucifixion of Jesus.
  Finding no favor in the eyes of the new emperor, he retired to the province of
  Lausanne, where he subsequently committed suicide.



  185:1.7 Claudia Procula, Pilate's wife, had heard much of Jesus through the
  word of her maid-in-waiting, who was a Phoenician believer in the gospel of
  the kingdom. After the death of Pilate, Claudia became prominently identified
  with the spread of the good news.



  185:1.8 And all this explains much that transpired on this tragic Friday
  forenoon. It is easy to understand why the Jews presumed to dictate to Pilate
  -- to get him up at six o'clock to try Jesus -- and also why they did not
  hesitate to threaten to charge him with treason before the emperor if he dared
  to refuse their demands for Jesus' death.

  185:1.9 A worthy Roman governor who had not become disadvantageously involved
  with the rulers of the Jews would never have permitted these bloodthirsty
  religious fanatics to bring about the death of a man whom he himself had
  declared to be innocent of their false charges and without fault. Rome made a
  great blunder, a far-reaching error in earthly affairs, when she sent the
  second-rate Pilate to govern Palestine. Tiberius had better have sent to the
  Jews the best provincial administrator in the empire.





2. JESUS APPEARS BEFORE PILATE

  185:2.1 When Jesus and his accusers had gathered in front of Pilate's judgment
  hall, the Roman governor came out and, addressing the company assembled,
  asked, "What accusation do you bring against this fellow?" The Sadducees and
  councilors who had taken it upon themselves to put Jesus out of the way had
  determined to go before Pilate and ask for confirmation of the death sentence
  pronounced upon Jesus, without volunteering any definite charge. Therefore did
  the spokesman for the Sanhedrist court answer Pilate: "If this man were not an
  evildoer, we should not have delivered him up to you."

  185:2.2 When Pilate observed that they were reluctant to state their charges
  against Jesus, although he knew they had been all night engaged in
  deliberations regarding his guilt, he answered them: "Since you have not
  agreed on any definite charges, why do you not take this man and pass judgment
  on him in accordance with your own laws?"

  185:2.3 Then spoke the clerk of the Sanhedrin court to Pilate: "It is not
  lawful for us to put any man to death, and this disturber of our nation is
  worthy to die for the things which he has said and done. Therefore have we
  come before you for confirmation of this decree."

  185:2.4 To come before the Roman governor with this attempt at evasion
  discloses both the ill-will and the ill-humor of the Sanhedrists toward Jesus
  as well as their lack of respect for the fairness, honor, and dignity of
  Pilate. What effrontery for these subject citizens to appear before their
  provincial governor asking for a decree of execution against a man before
  affording him a fair trial and without even preferring definite criminal
  charges against him!

  185:2.5 Pilate knew something of Jesus' work among the Jews, and he surmised
  that the charges which might be brought against him had to do with
  infringements of the Jewish ecclesiastical laws; therefore he sought to refer
  the case back to their own tribunal. Again, Pilate took delight in making them
  publicly confess that they were powerless to pronounce and execute the death
  sentence upon even one of their own race whom they had come to despise with a
  bitter and envious hatred.



  185:2.6 It was a few hours previously, shortly before midnight and after he
  had granted permission to use Roman soldiers in effecting the secret arrest of
  Jesus, that Pilate had heard further concerning Jesus and his teaching from
  his wife, Claudia, who was a partial convert to Judaism, and who later on
  became a full-fledged believer in Jesus' gospel.



  185:2.7 Pilate would have liked to postpone this hearing, but he saw the
  Jewish leaders were determined to proceed with the case. He knew that this was
  not only the forenoon of preparation for the Passover, but that this day,
  being Friday, was also the preparation day for the Jewish Sabbath of rest and
  worship.

  185:2.8 Pilate, being keenly sensitive to the disrespectful manner of the
  approach of these Jews, was not willing to comply with their demands that
  Jesus be sentenced to death without a trial. When, therefore, he had waited a
  few moments for them to present their charges against the prisoner, he turned
  to them and said: "I will not sentence this man to death without a trial;
  neither will I consent to examine him until you have presented your charges
  against him in writing."

  185:2.9 When the high priest and the others heard Pilate say this, they
  signaled to the clerk of the court, who then handed to Pilate the written
  charges against Jesus. And these charges were:



  185:2.10 "We find in the Sanhedrist tribunal that this man is an evildoer and
  a disturber of our nation in that he is guilty of:

"1. Perverting our nation and stirring up our people to rebellion.

"2. Forbidding the people to pay tribute to Caesar.

"3. Calling himself the king of the Jews and teaching the founding of a new
kingdom."



  185:2.11 Jesus had not been regularly tried nor legally convicted on any of
  these charges. He did not even hear these charges when first stated, but
  Pilate had him brought from the praetorium, where he was in the keeping of the
  guards, and he insisted that these charges be repeated in Jesus' hearing.

  185:2.12 When Jesus heard these accusations, he well knew that he had not been
  heard on these matters before the Jewish court, and so did John Zebedee and
  his accusers, but he made no reply to their false charges. Even when Pilate
  bade him answer his accusers, he opened not his mouth. Pilate was so
  astonished at the unfairness of the whole proceeding and so impressed by
  Jesus' silent and masterly bearing that he decided to take the prisoner inside
  the hall and examine him privately.

  185:2.13 Pilate was confused in mind, fearful of the Jews in his heart, and
  mightily stirred in his spirit by the spectacle of Jesus' standing there in
  majesty before his bloodthirsty accusers and gazing down on them, not in
  silent contempt, but with an expression of genuine pity and sorrowful
  affection.





3. THE PRIVATE EXAMINATION BY PILATE

  185:3.1 Pilate took Jesus and John Zebedee into a private chamber, leaving the
  guards outside in the hall, and requesting the prisoner to sit down, he sat
  down by his side and asked several questions. Pilate began his talk with Jesus
  by assuring him that he did not believe the first count against him: that he
  was a perverter of the nation and an inciter to rebellion. Then he asked, "Did
  you ever teach that tribute should be refused Caesar?" Jesus, pointing to
  John, said, "Ask him or any other man who has heard my teaching." Then Pilate
  questioned John about this matter of tribute, and John testified concerning
  his Master's teaching and explained that Jesus and his apostles paid taxes
  both to Caesar and to the temple. When Pilate had questioned John, he said,
  "See that you tell no man that I talked with you." And John never did reveal
  this matter.

  185:3.2 Pilate then turned around to question Jesus further, saying: "And now
  about the third accusation against you, are you the king of the Jews?" Since
  there was a tone of possibly sincere inquiry in Pilate's voice, Jesus smiled
  on the procurator and said: "Pilate, do you ask this for yourself, or do you
  take this question from these others, my accusers?" Whereupon, in a tone of
  partial indignation, the governor answered: "Am I a Jew? Your own people and
  the chief priests delivered you up and asked me to sentence you to death. I
  question the validity of their charges and am only trying to find out for
  myself what you have done. Tell me, have you said that you are the king of the
  Jews, and have you sought to found a new kingdom?"

  185:3.3 Then said Jesus to Pilate: "Do you not perceive that my kingdom is not
  of this world? If my kingdom were of this world, surely would my disciples
  fight that I should not be delivered into the hands of the Jews. My presence
  here before you in these bonds is sufficient to show all men that my kingdom
  is a spiritual dominion, even the brotherhood of men who, through faith and by
  love, have become the sons of God. And this salvation is for the gentile as
  well as for the Jew."

  185:3.4 "Then you are a king after all?" said Pilate. And Jesus answered:
  "Yes, I am such a king, and my kingdom is the family of the faith sons of my
  Father who is in heaven. For this purpose was I born into this world, even
  that I should show my Father to all men and bear witness to the truth of God.
  And even now do I declare to you that every one who loves the truth hears my
  voice."

  185:3.5 Then said Pilate, half in ridicule and half in sincerity, "Truth, what
  is truth -- who knows?"

  185:3.6 Pilate was not able to fathom Jesus' words, nor was he able to
  understand the nature of his spiritual kingdom, but he was now certain that
  the prisoner had done nothing worthy of death. One look at Jesus, face to
  face, was enough to convince even Pilate that this gentle and weary, but
  majestic and upright, man was no wild and dangerous revolutionary who aspired
  to establish himself on the temporal throne of Israel. Pilate thought he
  understood something of what Jesus meant when he called himself a king, for he
  was familiar with the teachings of the Stoics, who declared that "the wise man
  is king." Pilate was thoroughly convinced that, instead of being a dangerous
  seditionmonger, Jesus was nothing more or less than a harmless visionary, an
  innocent fanatic.

  185:3.7 After questioning the Master, Pilate went back to the chief priests
  and the accusers of Jesus and said: "I have examined this man, and I find no
  fault in him. I do not think he is guilty of the charges you have made against
  him; I think he ought to be set free." And when the Jews heard this, they were
  moved with great anger, so much so that they wildly shouted that Jesus should
  die; and one of the Sanhedrists boldly stepped up by the side of Pilate,
  saying: "This man stirs up the people, beginning in Galilee and continuing
  throughout all Judea. He is a mischief-maker and an evildoer. You will long
  regret it if you let this wicked man go free."

  185:3.8 Pilate was hard pressed to know what to do with Jesus; therefore, when
  he heard them say that he began his work in Galilee, he thought to avoid the
  responsibility of deciding the case, at least to gain time for thought, by
  sending Jesus to appear before Herod, who was then in the city attending the
  Passover. Pilate also thought that this gesture would help to antidote some of
  the bitter feeling which had existed for some time between himself and Herod,
  due to numerous misunderstandings over matters of jurisdiction.

  185:3.9 Pilate, calling the guards, said: "This man is a Galilean. Take him
  forthwith to Herod, and when he has examined him, report his findings to me."
  And they took Jesus to Herod.





4. JESUS BEFORE HEROD

  185:4.1 When Herod Antipas stopped in Jerusalem, he dwelt in the old Maccabean
  palace of Herod the Great, and it was to this home of the former king that
  Jesus was now taken by the temple guards, and he was followed by his accusers
  and an increasing multitude. Herod had long heard of Jesus, and he was very
  curious about him. When the Son of Man stood before him, on this Friday
  morning, the wicked Idumean never for one moment recalled the lad of former
  years who had appeared before him in Sepphoris pleading for a just decision
  regarding the money due his father, who had been accidentally killed while at
  work on one of the public buildings. As far as Herod knew, he had never seen
  Jesus, although he had worried a great deal about him when his work had been
  centered in Galilee. Now that he was in custody of Pilate and the Judeans,
  Herod was desirous of seeing him, feeling secure against any trouble from him
  in the future. Herod had heard much about the miracles wrought by Jesus, and
  he really hoped to see him do some wonder.

  185:4.2 When they brought Jesus before Herod, the tetrarch was startled by his
  stately appearance and the calm composure of his countenance. For some fifteen
  minutes Herod asked Jesus questions, but the Master would not answer. Herod
  taunted and dared him to perform a miracle, but Jesus would not reply to his
  many inquiries or respond to his taunts.

  185:4.3 Then Herod turned to the chief priests and the Sadducees and, giving
  ear to their accusations, heard all and more than Pilate had listened to
  regarding the alleged evil doings of the Son of Man. Finally, being convinced
  that Jesus would neither talk nor perform a wonder for him, Herod, after
  making fun of him for a time, arrayed him in an old purple royal robe and sent
  him back to Pilate. Herod knew he had no jurisdiction over Jesus in Judea.
  Though he was glad to believe that he was finally to be rid of Jesus in
  Galilee, he was thankful that it was Pilate who had the responsibility of
  putting him to death. Herod never had fully recovered from the fear that
  cursed him as a result of killing John the Baptist. Herod had at certain times
  even feared that Jesus was John risen from the dead. Now he was relieved of
  that fear since he observed that Jesus was a very different sort of person
  from the outspoken and fiery prophet who dared to expose and denounce his
  private life.





5. JESUS RETURNS TO PILATE

  185:5.1 When the guards had brought Jesus back to Pilate, he went out on the
  front steps of the praetorium, where his judgment seat had been placed, and
  calling together the chief priests and Sanhedrists, said to them: "You brought
  this man before me with charges that he perverts the people, forbids the
  payment of taxes, and claims to be king of the Jews. I have examined him and
  fail to find him guilty of these charges. In fact, I find no fault in him.
  Then I sent him to Herod, and the tetrarch must have reached the same
  conclusion since he has sent him back to us. Certainly, nothing worthy of
  death has been done by this man. If you still think he needs to be
  disciplined, I am willing to chastise him before I release him."

  185:5.2 Just as the Jews were about to engage in shouting their protests
  against the release of Jesus, a vast crowd came marching up to the praetorium
  for the purpose of asking Pilate for the release of a prisoner in honor of the
  Passover feast. For some time it had been the custom of the Roman governors to
  allow the populace to choose some imprisoned or condemned man for pardon at
  the time of the Passover. And now that this crowd had come before him to ask
  for the release of a prisoner, and since Jesus had so recently been in great
  favor with the multitudes, it occurred to Pilate that he might possibly
  extricate himself from his predicament by proposing to this group that, since
  Jesus was now a prisoner before his judgment seat, he release to them this man
  of Galilee as the token of Passover good will.

  185:5.3 As the crowd surged up on the steps of the building, Pilate heard them
  calling out the name of one Barabbas. Barabbas was a noted political agitator
  and murderous robber, the son of a priest, who had recently been apprehended
  in the act of robbery and murder on the Jericho road. This man was under
  sentence to die as soon as the Passover festivities were over.

  185:5.4 Pilate stood up and explained to the crowd that Jesus had been brought
  to him by the chief priests, who sought to have him put to death on certain
  charges, and that he did not think the man was worthy of death. Said Pilate:
  "Which, therefore, would you prefer that I release to you, this Barabbas, the
  murderer, or this Jesus of Galilee?" And when Pilate had thus spoken, the
  chief priests and the Sanhedrin councilors all shouted at the top of their
  voices, "Barabbas, Barabbas!" And when the people saw that the chief priests
  were minded to have Jesus put to death, they quickly joined in the clamor for
  his life while they loudly shouted for the release of Barabbas.

  185:5.5 A few days before this the multitude had stood in awe of Jesus, but
  the mob did not look up to one who, having claimed to be the Son of God, now
  found himself in the custody of the chief priests and the rulers and on trial
  before Pilate for his life. Jesus could be a hero in the eyes of the populace
  when he was driving the money-changers and the traders out of the temple, but
  not when he was a nonresisting prisoner in the hands of his enemies and on
  trial for his life.

  185:5.6 Pilate was angered at the sight of the chief priests clamoring for the
  pardon of a notorious murderer while they shouted for the blood of Jesus. He
  saw their malice and hatred and perceived their prejudice and envy. Therefore
  he said to them: "How could you choose the life of a murderer in preference to
  this man's whose worst crime is that he figuratively calls himself the king of
  the Jews?" But this was not a wise statement for Pilate to make. The Jews were
  a proud people, now subject to the Roman political yoke but hoping for the
  coming of a Messiah who would deliver them from gentile bondage with a great
  show of power and glory. They resented, more than Pilate could know, the
  intimation that this meek-mannered teacher of strange doctrines, now under
  arrest and charged with crimes worthy of death, should be referred to as "the
  king of the Jews." They looked upon such a remark as an insult to everything
  which they held sacred and honorable in their national existence, and
  therefore did they all let loose their mighty shouts for Barabbas's release
  and Jesus' death.

  185:5.7 Pilate knew Jesus was innocent of the charges brought against him, and
  had he been a just and courageous judge, he would have acquitted him and
  turned him loose. But he was afraid to defy these angry Jews, and while he
  hesitated to do his duty, a messenger came up and presented him with a sealed
  message from his wife, Claudia.

  185:5.8 Pilate indicated to those assembled before him that he wished to read
  the communication which he had just received before he proceeded further with
  the matter before him. When Pilate opened this letter from his wife, he read:
  "I pray you have nothing to do with this innocent and just man whom they call
  Jesus. I have suffered many things in a dream this night because of him." This
  note from Claudia not only greatly upset Pilate and thereby delayed the
  adjudication of this matter, but it unfortunately also provided considerable
  time in which the Jewish rulers freely circulated among the crowd and urged
  the people to call for the release of Barabbas and to clamor for the
  crucifixion of Jesus.

  185:5.9 Finally, Pilate addressed himself once more to the solution of the
  problem which confronted him, by asking the mixed assembly of Jewish rulers
  and the pardon-seeking crowd, "What shall I do with him who is called the king
  of the Jews?" And they all shouted with one accord, "Crucify him! Crucify
  him!" The unanimity of this demand from the mixed multitude startled and
  alarmed Pilate, the unjust and fear-ridden judge.

  185:5.10 Then once more Pilate said: "Why would you crucify this man? What
  evil has he done? Who will come forward to testify against him?" But when they
  heard Pilate speak in defense of Jesus, they only cried out all the more,
  "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

  185:5.11 Then again Pilate appealed to them regarding the release of the
  Passover prisoner, saying: "Once more I ask you, which of these prisoners
  shall I release to you at this, your Passover time?" And again the crowd
  shouted, "Give us Barabbas!"

  185:5.12 Then said Pilate: "If I release the murderer, Barabbas, what shall I
  do with Jesus?" And once more the multitude shouted in unison, "Crucify him!
  Crucify him!"

  185:5.13 Pilate was terrorized by the insistent clamor of the mob, acting
  under the direct leadership of the chief priests and the councilors of the
  Sanhedrin; nevertheless, he decided upon at least one more attempt to appease
  the crowd and save Jesus.





6. PILATE'S LAST APPEAL

  185:6.1 In all that is transpiring early this Friday morning before Pilate,
  only the enemies of Jesus are participating. His many friends either do not
  yet know of his night arrest and early morning trial or are in hiding lest
  they also be apprehended and adjudged worthy of death because they believe
  Jesus' teachings. In the multitude which now clamors for the Master's death
  are to be found only his sworn enemies and the easily led and unthinking
  populace.

  185:6.2 Pilate would make one last appeal to their pity. Being afraid to defy
  the clamor of this misled mob who cried for the blood of Jesus, he ordered the
  Jewish guards and the Roman soldiers to take Jesus and scourge him. This was
  in itself an unjust and illegal procedure since the Roman law provided that
  only those condemned to die by crucifixion should be thus subjected to
  scourging. The guards took Jesus into the open courtyard of the praetorium for
  this ordeal. Though his enemies did not witness this scourging, Pilate did,
  and before they had finished this wicked abuse, he directed the scourgers to
  desist and indicated that Jesus should be brought to him. Before the scourgers
  laid their knotted whips upon Jesus as he was bound to the whipping post, they
  again put upon him the purple robe, and plaiting a crown of thorns, they
  placed it upon his brow. And when they had put a reed in his hand as a mock
  scepter, they knelt before him and mocked him, saying, "Hail, king of the
  Jews!" And they spit upon him and struck him in the face with their hands. And
  one of them, before they returned him to Pilate, took the reed from his hand
  and struck him upon the head.

  185:6.3 Then Pilate led forth this bleeding and lacerated prisoner and,
  presenting him before the mixed multitude, said: "Behold the man! Again I
  declare to you that I find no crime in him, and having scourged him, I would
  release him."

  185:6.4 There stood Jesus of Nazareth, clothed in an old purple royal robe
  with a crown of thorns piercing his kindly brow. His face was bloodstained and
  his form bowed down with suffering and grief. But nothing can appeal to the
  unfeeling hearts of those who are victims of intense emotional hatred and
  slaves to religious prejudice. This sight sent a mighty shudder through the
  realms of a vast universe, but it did not touch the hearts of those who had
  set their minds to effect the destruction of Jesus.

  185:6.5 When they had recovered from the first shock of seeing the Master's
  plight, they only shouted the louder and the longer, "Crucify him! Crucify
  him! Crucify him!"

  185:6.6 And now did Pilate comprehend that it was futile to appeal to their
  supposed feelings of pity. He stepped forward and said: "I perceive that you
  are determined this man shall die, but what has he done to deserve death? Who
  will declare his crime?"

  185:6.7 Then the high priest himself stepped forward and, going up to Pilate,
  angrily declared: "We have a sacred law, and by that law this man ought to die
  because he made himself out to be the Son of God." When Pilate heard this, he
  was all the more afraid, not only of the Jews, but recalling his wife's note
  and the Greek mythology of the gods coming down on earth, he now trembled at
  the thought of Jesus possibly being a divine personage. He waved to the crowd
  to hold its peace while he took Jesus by the arm and again led him inside the
  building that he might further examine him. Pilate was now confused by fear,
  bewildered by superstition, and harassed by the stubborn attitude of the mob.





7. PILATE'S LAST INTERVIEW

  185:7.1 As Pilate, trembling with fearful emotion, sat down by the side of
  Jesus, he inquired: "Where do you come from? Really, who are you? What is this
  they say, that you are the Son of God?"

  185:7.2 But Jesus could hardly answer such questions when asked by a man-
  fearing, weak, and vacillating judge who was so unjust as to subject him to
  flogging even when he had declared him innocent of all crime, and before he
  had been duly sentenced to die. Jesus looked Pilate straight in the face, but
  he did not answer him. Then said Pilate: "Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you
  not realize that I still have power to release you or to crucify you?" Then
  said Jesus: "You could have no power over me except it were permitted from
  above. You could exercise no authority over the Son of Man unless the Father
  in heaven allowed it. But you are not so guilty since you are ignorant of the
  gospel. He who betrayed me and he who delivered me to you, they have the
  greater sin.

  185:7.3 This last talk with Jesus thoroughly frightened Pilate. This moral
  coward and judicial weakling now labored under the double weight of the
  superstitious fear of Jesus and mortal dread of the Jewish leaders.

  185:7.4 Again Pilate appeared before the crowd, saying: "I am certain this man
  is only a religious offender. You should take him and judge him by your law.
  Why should you expect that I would consent to his death because he has clashed
  with your traditions?"

  185:7.5 Pilate was just about ready to release Jesus when Caiaphas, the high
  priest, approached the cowardly Roman judge and, shaking an avenging finger in
  Pilate's face, said with angry words which the entire multitude could hear:
  "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend, and I will see that the
  emperor knows all." This public threat was too much for Pilate. Fear for his
  personal fortunes now eclipsed all other considerations, and the cowardly
  governor ordered Jesus brought out before the judgment seat. As the Master
  stood there before them, he pointed to him and tauntingly said, "Behold your
  king." And the Jews answered, "Away with him. Crucify him!" And then Pilate
  said, with much irony and sarcasm, "Shall I crucify your king?" And the Jews
  answered, "Yes, crucify him! We have no king but Caesar." And then did Pilate
  realize that there was no hope of saving Jesus since he was unwilling to defy
  the Jews.





8. PILATE'S TRAGIC SURRENDER

  185:8.1 Here stood the Son of God incarnate as the Son of Man. He was arrested
  without indictment; accused without evidence; adjudged without witnesses;
  punished without a verdict; and now was soon to be condemned to die by an
  unjust judge who confessed that he could find no fault in him. If Pilate had
  thought to appeal to their patriotism by referring to Jesus as the "king of
  the Jews," he utterly failed. The Jews were not expecting any such a king. The
  declaration of the chief priests and the Sadducees, "We have no king but
  Caesar," was a shock even to the unthinking populace, but it was too late now
  to save Jesus even had the mob dared to espouse the Master's cause.

  185:8.2 Pilate was afraid of a tumult or a riot. He dared not risk having such
  a disturbance during Passover time in Jerusalem. He had recently received a
  reprimand from Caesar, and he would not risk another. The mob cheered when he
  ordered the release of Barabbas. Then he ordered a basin and some water, and
  there before the multitude he washed his hands, saying: "I am innocent of the
  blood of this man. You are determined that he shall die, but I have found no
  guilt in him. See you to it. The soldiers will lead him forth." And then the
  mob cheered and replied, "His blood be on us and on our children."


 PAPER 186


 JUST BEFORE THE CRUCIFIXION



  186:0.1 AS JESUS and his accusers started off to see Herod, the Master turned
  to the Apostle John and said: "John, you can do no more for me. Go to my
  mother and bring her to see me ere I die." When John heard his Master's
  request, although reluctant to leave him alone among his enemies, he hastened
  off to Bethany, where the entire family of Jesus was assembled in waiting at
  the home of Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the
  dead.

  186:0.2 Several times during the morning, messengers had brought news to
  Martha and Mary concerning the progress of Jesus' trial. But the family of
  Jesus did not reach Bethany until just a few minutes before John arrived
  bearing the request of Jesus to see his mother before he was put to death.
  After John Zebedee had told them all that had happened since the midnight
  arrest of Jesus, Mary his mother went at once in the company of John to see
  her eldest son. By the time Mary and John reached the city, Jesus, accompanied
  by the Roman soldiers who were to crucify him, had already arrived at
  Golgotha.

  186:0.3 When Mary the mother of Jesus started out with John to go to her son,
  his sister Ruth refused to remain behind with the rest of the family. Since
  she was determined to accompany her mother, her brother Jude went with her.
  The rest of the Master's family remained in Bethany under the direction of
  James, and almost every hour the messengers of David Zebedee brought them
  reports concerning the progress of that terrible business of putting to death
  their eldest brother, Jesus of Nazareth.





1. THE END OF JUDAS ISCARIOT



  186:1.1 It was about half past eight o'clock this Friday morning when the
  hearing of Jesus before Pilate was ended and the Master was placed in the
  custody of the Roman soldiers who were to crucify him. As soon as the Romans
  took possession of Jesus, the captain of the Jewish guards marched with his
  men back to their temple headquarters. The chief priest and his Sanhedrist
  associates followed close behind the guards, going directly to their usual
  meeting place in the hall of hewn stone in the temple. Here they found many
  other members of the Sanhedrin waiting to learn what had been done with Jesus.
  As Caiaphas was engaged in making his report to the Sanhedrin regarding the
  trial and condemnation of Jesus, Judas appeared before them to claim his
  reward for the part he had played in his Master's arrest and sentence of
  death.

  186:1.2 All of these Jews loathed Judas; they looked upon the betrayer with
  only feelings of utter contempt. Throughout the trial of Jesus before Caiaphas
  and during his appearance before Pilate, Judas was pricked in his conscience
  about his traitorous conduct. And he was also beginning to become somewhat
  disillusioned regarding the reward he was to receive as payment for his
  services as Jesus' betrayer. He did not like the coolness and aloofness of the
  Jewish authorities; nevertheless, he expected to be liberally rewarded for his
  cowardly conduct. He anticipated being called before the full meeting of the
  Sanhedrin and there hearing himself eulogized while they conferred upon him
  suitable honors in token of the great service which he flattered himself he
  had rendered his nation. Imagine, therefore, the great surprise of this
  egotistic traitor when a servant of the high priest, tapping him on the
  shoulder, called him just outside the hall and said: "Judas, I have been
  appointed to pay you for the betrayal of Jesus. Here is your reward." And thus
  speaking, the servant of Caiaphas handed Judas a bag containing thirty pieces
  of silver -- the current price of a good, healthy slave.

  186:1.3 Judas was stunned, dumfounded. He rushed back to enter the hall but
  was debarred by the doorkeeper. He wanted to appeal to the Sanhedrin, but they
  would not admit him. Judas could not believe that these rulers of the Jews
  would allow him to betray his friends and his Master and then offer him as a
  reward thirty pieces of silver. He was humiliated, disillusioned, and utterly
  crushed. He walked away from the temple, as it were, in a trance. He
  automatically dropped the money bag in his deep pocket, that same pocket
  wherein he had so long carried the bag containing the apostolic funds. And he
  wandered out through the city after the crowds who were on their way to
  witness the crucifixions.

  186:1.4 From a distance Judas saw them raise the cross piece with Jesus nailed
  thereon, and upon sight of this he rushed back to the temple and, forcing his
  way past the doorkeeper, found himself standing in the presence of the
  Sanhedrin, which was still in session. The betrayer was well-nigh breathless
  and highly distraught, but he managed to stammer out these words: "I have
  sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood. You have insulted me. You have
  offered me as a reward for my service, money -- the price of a slave. I repent
  that I have done this; here is your money. I want to escape the guilt of this
  deed."

  186:1.5 When the rulers of the Jews heard Judas, they scoffed at him. One of
  them sitting near where Judas stood, motioned that he should leave the hall
  and said: "Your Master has already been put to death by the Romans, and as for
  your guilt, what is that to us? See you to that -- and begone!"

  186:1.6 As Judas left the Sanhedrin chamber, he removed the thirty pieces of
  silver from the bag and threw them broadcast over the temple floor. When the
  betrayer left the temple, he was almost beside himself. Judas was now passing
  through the experience of the realization of the true nature of sin. All the
  glamor, fascination, and intoxication of wrongdoing had vanished. Now the
  evildoer stood alone and face to face with the judgment verdict of his
  disillusioned and disappointed soul. Sin was bewitching and adventurous in the
  committing, but now must the harvest of the naked and unromantic facts be
  faced.

  186:1.7 This onetime ambassador of the kingdom of heaven on earth now walked
  through the streets of Jerusalem, forsaken and alone. His despair was
  desperate and well-nigh absolute. On he journeyed through the city and outside
  the walls, on down into the terrible solitude of the valley of Hinnom, where
  he climbed up the steep rocks and, taking the girdle of his cloak, fastened
  one end to a small tree, tied the other about his neck, and cast himself over
  the precipice. Ere he was dead, the knot which his nervous hands had tied gave
  way, and the betrayer's body was dashed to pieces as it fell on the jagged
  rocks below.





2. THE MASTER'S ATTITUDE



  186:2.1 When Jesus was arrested, he knew that his work on earth, in the
  likeness of mortal flesh, was finished. He fully understood the sort of death
  he would die, and he was little concerned with the details of his so-called
  trials.

  186:2.2 Before the Sanhedrist court Jesus declined to make replies to the
  testimony of perjured witnesses. There was but one question which would always
  elicit an answer, whether asked by friend or foe, and that was the one
  concerning the nature and divinity of his mission on earth. When asked if he
  were the Son of God, he unfailingly made reply. He steadfastly refused to
  speak when in the presence of the curious and wicked Herod. Before Pilate he
  spoke only when he thought that Pilate or some other sincere person might be
  helped to a better knowledge of the truth by what he said. Jesus had taught
  his apostles the uselessness of casting their pearls before swine, and he now
  dared to practice what he had taught. His conduct at this time exemplified the
  patient submission of the human nature coupled with the majestic silence and
  solemn dignity of the divine nature. He was altogether willing to discuss with
  Pilate any question related to the political charges brought against him --
  any question which he recognized as belonging to the governor's jurisdiction.

  186:2.3 Jesus was convinced that it was the will of the Father that he submit
  himself to the natural and ordinary course of human events just as every other
  mortal creature must, and therefore he refused to employ even his purely human
  powers of persuasive eloquence to influence the outcome of the machinations of
  his socially nearsighted and spiritually blinded fellow mortals. Although
  Jesus lived and died on Urantia, his whole human career, from first to last,
  was a spectacle designed to influence and instruct the entire universe of his
  creation and unceasing upholding.



  186:2.4 These shortsighted Jews clamored unseemlily for the Master's death
  while he stood there in awful silence looking upon the death scene of a nation
  -- his earthly father's own people.



  186:2.5 Jesus had acquired that type of human character which could preserve
  its composure and assert its dignity in the face of continued and gratuitous
  insult. He could not be intimidated. When first assaulted by the servant of
  Annas, he had only suggested the propriety of calling witnesses who might duly
  testify against him.

  186:2.6 From first to last, in his so-called trial before Pilate, the
  onlooking celestial hosts could not refrain from broadcasting to the universe
  the depiction of the scene of "Pilate on trial before Jesus."

  186:2.7 When before Caiaphas, and when all the perjured testimony had broken
  down, Jesus did not hesitate to answer the question of the chief priest,
  thereby providing in his own testimony that which they desired as a basis for
  convicting him of blasphemy.

  186:2.8 The Master never displayed the least interest in Pilate's well-meant
  but halfhearted efforts to effect his release. He really pitied Pilate and
  sincerely endeavored to enlighten his darkened mind. He was wholly passive to
  all the Roman governor's appeals to the Jews to withdraw their criminal
  charges against him. Throughout the whole sorrowful ordeal he bore himself
  with simple dignity and unostentatious majesty. He would not so much as cast
  reflections of insincerity upon his would-be murderers when they asked if he
  were "king of the Jews." With but little qualifying explanation he accepted
  the designation, knowing that, while they had chosen to reject him, he would
  be the last to afford them real national leadership, even in a spiritual
  sense.

  186:2.9 Jesus said little during these trials, but he said enough to show all
  mortals the kind of human character man can perfect in partnership with God
  and to reveal to all the universe the manner in which God can become manifest
  in the life of the creature when such a creature truly chooses to do the will
  of the Father, thus becoming an active son of the living God.

  186:2.10 His love for ignorant mortals is fully disclosed by his patience and
  great self-possession in the face of the jeers, blows, and buffetings of the
  coarse soldiers and the unthinking servants. He was not even angry when they
  blindfolded him and, derisively striking him in the face, exclaimed: "Prophesy
  to us who it was that struck you."

  186:2.11 Pilate spoke more truly than he knew when, after Jesus had been
  scourged, he presented him before the multitude, exclaiming, "Behold the man!"
  Indeed, the fear-ridden Roman governor little dreamed that at just that moment
  the universe stood at attention, gazing upon this unique scene of its beloved
  Sovereign thus subjected in humiliation to the taunts and blows of his
  darkened and degraded mortal subjects. And as Pilate spoke, there echoed
  throughout all Nebadon, "Behold God and man!" Throughout a universe, untold
  millions have ever since that day continued to behold that man, while the God
  of Havona, the supreme ruler of the universe of universes, accepts the man of
  Nazareth as the satisfaction of the ideal of the mortal creatures of this
  local universe of time and space. In his matchless life he never failed to
  reveal God to man. Now, in these final episodes of his mortal career and in
  his subsequent death, he made a new and touching revelation of man to God.





3. THE DEPENDABLE DAVID ZEBEDEE



  186:3.1 Shortly after Jesus was turned over to the Roman soldiers at the
  conclusion of the hearing before Pilate, a detachment of the temple guards
  hastened out to Gethsemane to disperse or arrest the followers of the Master.
  But long before their arrival these followers had scattered. The apostles had
  retired to designated hiding places; the Greeks had separated and gone to
  various homes in Jerusalem; the other disciples had likewise disappeared.
  David Zebedee believed that Jesus' enemies would return; so he early removed
  some five or six tents up the ravine near where the Master so often retired to
  pray and worship. Here he proposed to hide and at the same time maintain a
  center, or co-ordinating station, for his messenger service. David had hardly
  left the camp when the temple guards arrived. Finding no one there, they
  contented themselves with burning the camp and then hastened back to the
  temple. On hearing their report, the Sanhedrin was satisfied that the
  followers of Jesus were so thoroughly frightened and subdued that there would
  be no danger of an uprising or any attempt to rescue Jesus from the hands of
  his executioners. They were at last able to breathe easily, and so they
  adjourned, every man going his way to prepare for the Passover.

  186:3.2 As soon as Jesus was turned over to the Roman soldiers by Pilate for
  crucifixion, a messenger hastened away to Gethsemane to inform David, and
  within five minutes runners were on their way to Bethsaida, Pella,
  Philadelphia, Sidon, Shechem, Hebron, Damascus, and Alexandria. And these
  messengers carried the news that Jesus was about to be crucified by the Romans
  at the insistent behest of the rulers of the Jews.

  186:3.3 Throughout this tragic day, until the message finally went forth that
  the Master had been laid in the tomb, David sent messengers about every half
  hour with reports to the apostles, the Greeks, and Jesus' earthly family,
  assembled at the home of Lazarus in Bethany. When the messengers departed with
  the word that Jesus had been buried, David dismissed his corps of local
  runners for the Passover celebration and for the coming Sabbath of rest,
  instructing them to report to him quietly on Sunday morning at the home of
  Nicodemus, where he proposed to go in hiding for a few days with Andrew and
  Simon Peter.

  186:3.4 This peculiar-minded David Zebedee was the only one of the leading
  disciples of Jesus who was inclined to take a literal and plain matter-of-fact
  view of the Master's assertion that he would die and "rise again on the third
  day." David had once heard him make this prediction and, being of a literal
  turn of mind, now proposed to assemble his messengers early Sunday morning at
  the home of Nicodemus so that they would be on hand to spread the news in case
  Jesus rose from the dead. David soon discovered that none of Jesus' followers
  were looking for him to return so soon from the grave; therefore did he say
  little about his belief and nothing about the mobilization of all his
  messenger force on early Sunday morning except to the runners who had been
  dispatched on Friday forenoon to distant cities and believer centers.

  186:3.5 And so these followers of Jesus, scattered throughout Jerusalem and
  its environs, that night partook of the Passover and the following day
  remained in seclusion.





4. PREPARATION FOR THE CRUCIFIXION



  186:4.1 After Pilate had washed his hands before the multitude, thus seeking
  to escape the guilt of delivering up an innocent man to be crucified just
  because he feared to resist the clamor of the rulers of the Jews, he ordered
  the Master turned over to the Roman soldiers and gave the word to their
  captain that he was to be crucified immediately. Upon taking charge of Jesus,
  the soldiers led him back into the courtyard of the praetorium, and after
  removing the robe which Herod had put on him, they dressed him in his own
  garments. These soldiers mocked and derided him, but they did not inflict
  further physical punishment. Jesus was now alone with these Roman soldiers.
  His friends were in hiding; his enemies had gone their way; even John Zebedee
  was no longer by his side.

  186:4.2 It was a little after eight o'clock when Pilate turned Jesus over to
  the soldiers and a little before nine o'clock when they started for the scene
  of the crucifixion. During this period of more than half an hour Jesus never
  spoke a word. The executive business of a great universe was practically at a
  standstill. Gabriel and the chief rulers of Nebadon were either assembled here
  on Urantia, or else they were closely attending upon the space reports of the
  archangels in an effort to keep advised as to what was happening to the Son of
  Man on Urantia.

  186:4.3 By the time the soldiers were ready to depart with Jesus for Golgotha,
  they had begun to be impressed by his unusual composure and extraordinary
  dignity, by his uncomplaining silence.

  186:4.4 Much of the delay in starting off with Jesus for the site of the
  crucifixion was due to the last-minute decision of the captain to take along
  two thieves who had been condemned to die; since Jesus was to be crucified
  that morning, the Roman captain thought these two might just as well die with
  him as wait for the end of the Passover festivities.

  186:4.5 As soon as the thieves could be made ready, they were led into the
  courtyard, where they gazed upon Jesus, one of them for the first time, but
  the other had often heard him speak, both in the temple and many months before
  at the Pella camp.





5. JESUS' DEATH IN RELATION TO THE PASSOVER



  186:5.1 There is no direct relation between the death of Jesus and the Jewish
  Passover. True, the Master did lay down his life in the flesh on this day, the
  day of the preparation for the Jewish Passover, and at about the time of the
  sacrificing of the Passover lambs in the temple. But this coincidental
  occurrence does not in any manner indicate that the death of the Son of Man on
  earth has any connection with the Jewish sacrificial system. Jesus was a Jew,
  but as the Son of Man he was a mortal of the realms. The events already
  narrated and leading up to this hour of the Master's impending crucifixion are
  sufficient to indicate that his death at about this time was a purely natural
  and man-managed affair.

  186:5.2 It was man and not God who planned and executed the death of Jesus on
  the cross. True, the Father refused to interfere with the march of human
  events on Urantia, but the Father in Paradise did not decree, demand, or
  require the death of his Son as it was carried out on earth. It is a fact that
  in some manner, sooner or later, Jesus would have had to divest himself of his
  mortal body, his incarnation in the flesh, but he could have executed such a
  task in countless ways without dying on a cross between two thieves. All of
  this was man's doing, not God's.

  186:5.3 At the time of the Master's baptism he had already completed the
  technique of the required experience on earth and in the flesh which was
  necessary for the completion of his seventh and last universe bestowal. At
  this very time Jesus' duty on earth was done. All the life he lived
  thereafter, and even the manner of his death, was a purely personal ministry
  on his part for the welfare and uplifting of his mortal creatures on this
  world and on other worlds.

  186:5.4 The gospel of the good news that mortal man may, by faith, become
  spirit-conscious that he is a son of God, is not dependent on the death of
  Jesus. True, indeed, all this gospel of the kingdom has been tremendously
  illuminated by the Master's death, but even more so by his life.

  186:5.5 All that the Son of Man said or did on earth greatly embellished the
  doctrines of sonship with God and of the brotherhood of men, but these
  essential relationships of God and men are inherent in the universe facts of
  God's love for his creatures and the innate mercy of the divine Sons. These
  touching and divinely beautiful relations between man and his Maker on this
  world and on all others throughout the universe of universes have existed from
  eternity; and they are not in any sense dependent on these periodic bestowal
  enactments of the Creator Sons of God, who thus assume the nature and likeness
  of their created intelligences as a part of the price which they must pay for
  the final acquirement of unlimited sovereignty over their respective local
  universes.

  186:5.6 The Father in heaven loved mortal man on earth just as much before the
  life and death of Jesus on Urantia as he did after this transcendent
  exhibition of the copartnership of man and God. This mighty transaction of the
  incarnation of the God of Nebadon as a man on Urantia could not augment the
  attributes of the eternal, infinite, and universal Father, but it did enrich
  and enlighten all other administrators and creatures of the universe of
  Nebadon. While the Father in heaven loves us no more because of this bestowal
  of Michael, all other celestial intelligences do. And this is because Jesus
  not only made a revelation of God to man, but he also likewise made a new
  revelation of man to the Gods and to the celestial intelligences of the
  universe of universes.

  186:5.7 Jesus is not about to die as a sacrifice for sin. He is not going to
  atone for the inborn moral guilt of the human race. Mankind has no such racial
  guilt before God. Guilt is purely a matter of personal sin and knowing,
  deliberate rebellion against the will of the Father and the administration of
  his Sons.

  186:5.8 Sin and rebellion have nothing to do with the fundamental bestowal
  plan of the Paradise Sons of God, albeit it does appear to us that the salvage
  plan is a provisional feature of the bestowal plan.

  186:5.9 The salvation of God for the mortals of Urantia would have been just
  as effective and unerringly certain if Jesus had not been put to death by the
  cruel hands of ignorant mortals. If the Master had been favorably received by
  the mortals of earth and had departed from Urantia by the voluntary
  relinquishment of his life in the flesh, the fact of the love of God and the
  mercy of the Son -- the fact of sonship with God -- would have in no wise been
  affected. You mortals are the sons of God, and only one thing is required to
  make such a truth factual in your personal experience, and that is your
  spirit-born faith.


PAPER 187


 THE CRUCIFIXION



  187:0.1 AFTER the two brigands had been made ready, the soldiers, under the
  direction of a centurion, started for the scene of the crucifixion. The
  centurion in charge of these twelve soldiers was the same captain who had led
  forth the Roman soldiers the previous night to arrest Jesus in Gethsemane. It
  was the Roman custom to assign four soldiers for each person to be crucified.
  The two brigands were properly scourged before they were taken out to be
  crucified, but Jesus was given no further physical punishment; the captain
  undoubtedly thought he had already been sufficiently scourged, even before his
  condemnation.

  187:0.2 The two thieves crucified with Jesus were associates of Barabbas and
  would later have been put to death with their leader if he had not been
  released as the Passover pardon of Pilate. Jesus was thus crucified in the
  place of Barabbas.

  187:0.3 What Jesus is now about to do, submit to death on the cross, he does
  of his own free will. In foretelling this experience, he said: "The Father
  loves and sustains me because I am willing to lay down my life. But I will
  take it up again. No one takes my life away from me -- I lay it down of
  myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up. I
  have received such a commandment from my Father."

  187:0.4 It was just before nine o'clock this morning when the soldiers led
  Jesus from the praetorium on the way to Golgotha. They were followed by many
  who secretly sympathized with Jesus, but most of this group of two hundred or
  more were either his enemies or curious idlers who merely desired to enjoy the
  shock of witnessing the crucifixions. Only a few of the Jewish leaders went
  out to see Jesus die on the cross. Knowing that he had been turned over to the
  Roman soldiers by Pilate, and that he was condemned to die, they busied
  themselves with their meeting in the temple, whereat they discussed what
  should be done with his followers.





1. ON THE WAY TO GOLGOTHA

  187:1.1 Before leaving the courtyard of the praetorium, the soldiers placed
  the crossbeam on Jesus' shoulders. It was the custom to compel the condemned
  man to carry the crossbeam to the site of the crucifixion. Such a condemned
  man did not carry the whole cross, only this shorter timber. The longer and
  upright pieces of timber for the three crosses had already been transported to
  Golgotha and, by the time of the arrival of the soldiers and their prisoners,
  had been firmly implanted in the ground.

  187:1.2 According to custom the captain led the procession, carrying small
  white boards on which had been written with charcoal the names of the
  criminals and the nature of the crimes for which they had been condemned. For
  the two thieves the centurion had notices which gave their names, underneath
  which was written the one word, "Brigand." It was the custom, after the victim
  had been nailed to the crossbeam and hoisted to his place on the upright
  timber, to nail this notice to the top of the cross, just above the head of
  the criminal, that all witnesses might know for what crime the condemned man
  was being crucified. The legend which the centurion carried to put on the
  cross of Jesus had been written by Pilate himself in Latin, Greek, and
  Aramaic, and it read: "Jesus of Nazareth -- the King of the Jews."

  187:1.3 Some of the Jewish authorities who were yet present when Pilate wrote
  this legend made vigorous protest against calling Jesus the "king of the
  Jews." But Pilate reminded them that such an accusation was part of the charge
  which led to his condemnation. When the Jews saw they could not prevail upon
  Pilate to change his mind, they pleaded that at least it be modified to read,
  "He said, `I am the king of the Jews.'" But Pilate was adamant; he would not
  alter the writing. To all further supplication he only replied, "What I have
  written, I have written."

  187:1.4 Ordinarily, it was the custom to journey to Golgotha by the longest
  road in order that a large number of persons might view the condemned
  criminal, but on this day they went by the most direct route to the Damascus
  gate, which led out of the city to the north, and following this road, they
  soon arrived at Golgotha, the official crucifixion site of Jerusalem. Beyond
  Golgotha were the villas of the wealthy, and on the other side of the road
  were the tombs of many well-to-do Jews.



  187:1.5 Crucifixion was not a Jewish mode of punishment. Both the Greeks and
  the Romans learned this method of execution from the Phoenicians. Even Herod,
  with all his cruelty, did not resort to crucifixion. The Romans never
  crucified a Roman citizen; only slaves and subject peoples were subjected to
  this dishonorable mode of death. During the siege of Jerusalem, just forty
  years after the crucifixion of Jesus, all of Golgotha was covered by thousands
  upon thousands of crosses upon which, from day to day, there perished the
  flower of the Jewish race. A terrible harvest, indeed, of the seed-sowing of
  this day.



  187:1.6 As the death procession passed along the narrow streets of Jerusalem,
  many of the tenderhearted Jewish women who had heard Jesus' words of good
  cheer and compassion, and who knew of his life of loving ministry, could not
  refrain from weeping when they saw him being led forth to such an ignoble
  death. As he passed by, many of these women bewailed and lamented. And when
  some of them even dared to follow along by his side, the Master turned his
  head toward them and said: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but
  rather weep for yourselves and for your children. My work is about done --
  soon I go to my Father -- but the times of terrible trouble for Jerusalem are
  just beginning. Behold, the days are coming in which you shall say: Blessed
  are the barren and those whose breasts have never suckled their young. In
  those days will you pray the rocks of the hills to fall on you in order that
  you may be delivered from the terrors of your troubles."

  187:1.7 These women of Jerusalem were indeed courageous to manifest sympathy
  for Jesus, for it was strictly against the law to show friendly feelings for
  one who was being led forth to crucifixion. It was permitted the rabble to
  jeer, mock, and ridicule the condemned, but it was not allowed that any
  sympathy should be expressed. Though Jesus appreciated the manifestation of
  sympathy in this dark hour when his friends were in hiding, he did not want
  these kindhearted women to incur the displeasure of the authorities by daring
  to show compassion in his behalf. Even at such a time as this Jesus thought
  little about himself, only of the terrible days of tragedy ahead for Jerusalem
  and the whole Jewish nation.

  187:1.8 As the Master trudged along on the way to the crucifixion, he was very
  weary; he was nearly exhausted. He had had neither food nor water since the
  Last Supper at the home of Elijah Mark; neither had he been permitted to enjoy
  one moment of sleep. In addition, there had been one hearing right after
  another up to the hour of his condemnation, not to mention the abusive
  scourgings with their accompanying physical suffering and loss of blood.
  Superimposed upon all this was his extreme mental anguish, his acute spiritual
  tension, and a terrible feeling of human loneliness.

  187:1.9 Shortly after passing through the gate on the way out of the city, as
  Jesus staggered on bearing the crossbeam, his physical strength momentarily
  gave way, and he fell beneath the weight of his heavy burden. The soldiers
  shouted at him and kicked him, but he could not arise. When the captain saw
  this, knowing what Jesus had already endured, he commanded the soldiers to
  desist. Then he ordered a passerby, one Simon from Cyrene, to take the
  crossbeam from Jesus' shoulders and compelled him to carry it the rest of the
  way to Golgotha.



  187:1.10 This man Simon had come all the way from Cyrene, in northern Africa,
  to attend the Passover. He was stopping with other Cyrenians just outside the
  city walls and was on his way to the temple services in the city when the
  Roman captain commanded him to carry Jesus' crossbeam. Simon lingered all
  through the hours of the Master's death on the cross, talking with many of his
  friends and with his enemies. After the resurrection and before leaving
  Jerusalem, he became a valiant believer in the gospel of the kingdom, and when
  he returned home, he led his family into the heavenly kingdom. His two sons,
  Alexander and Rufus, became very effective teachers of the new gospel in
  Africa. But Simon never knew that Jesus, whose burden he bore, and the Jewish
  tutor who once befriended his injured son, were the same person.



  187:1.11 It was shortly after nine o'clock when this procession of death
  arrived at Golgotha, and the Roman soldiers set themselves about the task of
  nailing the two brigands and the Son of Man to their respective crosses.





2. THE CRUCIFIXION

  187:2.1 The soldiers first bound the Master's arms with cords to the
  crossbeam, and then they nailed his hands to the wood. When they had hoisted
  this crossbeam up on the post, and after they had nailed it securely to the
  upright timber of the cross, they bound and nailed his feet to the wood, using
  one long nail to penetrate both feet. The upright timber had a large peg,
  inserted at the proper height, which served as a sort of saddle for supporting
  the body weight. The cross was not high, the Master's feet being only about
  three feet from the ground. He was therefore able to hear all that was said of
  him in derision and could plainly see the expression on the faces of all those
  who so thoughtlessly mocked him. And also could those present easily hear all
  that Jesus said during these hours of lingering torture and slow death.

  187:2.2 It was the custom to remove all clothes from those who were to be
  crucified, but since the Jews greatly objected to the public exposure of the
  naked human form, the Romans always provided a suitable loin cloth for all
  persons crucified at Jerusalem. Accordingly, after Jesus' clothes had been
  removed, he was thus garbed before he was put upon the cross.

  187:2.3 Crucifixion was resorted to in order to provide a cruel and lingering
  punishment, the victim sometimes not dying for several days. There was
  considerable sentiment against crucifixion in Jerusalem, and there existed a
  society of Jewish women who always sent a representative to crucifixions for
  the purpose of offering drugged wine to the victim in order to lessen his
  suffering. But when Jesus tasted this narcotized wine, as thirsty as he was,
  he refused to drink it. The Master chose to retain his human consciousness
  until the very end. He desired to meet death, even in this cruel and inhuman
  form, and conquer it by voluntary submission to the full human experience.

  187:2.4 Before Jesus was put on his cross, the two brigands had already been
  placed on their crosses, all the while cursing and spitting upon their
  executioners. Jesus' only words, as they nailed him to the crossbeam, were,
  "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He could not have so
  mercifully and lovingly interceded for his executioners if such thoughts of
  affectionate devotion had not been the mainspring of all his life of unselfish
  service. The ideas, motives, and longings of a lifetime are openly revealed in
  a crisis.

  187:2.5 After the Master was hoisted on the cross, the captain nailed the
  title up above his head, and it read in three languages, "Jesus of Nazareth --
  the King of the Jews." The Jews were infuriated by this believed insult. But
  Pilate was chafed by their disrespectful manner; he felt he had been
  intimidated and humiliated, and he took this method of obtaining petty
  revenge. He could have written "Jesus, a rebel." But he well knew how these
  Jerusalem Jews detested the very name of Nazareth, and he was determined thus
  to humiliate them. He knew that they would also be cut to the very quick by
  seeing this executed Galilean called "The King of the Jews."

  187:2.6 Many of the Jewish leaders, when they learned how Pilate had sought to
  deride them by placing this inscription on the cross of Jesus, hastened out to
  Golgotha, but they dared not attempt to remove it since the Roman soldiers
  were standing on guard. Not being able to remove the title, these leaders
  mingled with the crowd and did their utmost to incite derision and ridicule,
  lest any give serious regard to the inscription.

  187:2.7 The Apostle John, with Mary the mother of Jesus, Ruth, and Jude,
  arrived on the scene just after Jesus had been hoisted to his position on the
  cross, and just as the captain was nailing the title above the Master's head.
  John was the only one of the eleven apostles to witness the crucifixion, and
  even he was not present all of the time since he ran into Jerusalem to bring
  back his mother and her friends soon after he had brought Jesus' mother to the
  scene.

  187:2.8 As Jesus saw his mother, with John and his brother and sister, he
  smiled but said nothing. Meanwhile the four soldiers assigned to the Master's
  crucifixion, as was the custom, had divided his clothes among them, one taking
  the sandals, one the turban, one the girdle, and the fourth the cloak. This
  left the tunic, or seamless vestment reaching down to near the knees, to be
  cut up into four pieces, but when the soldiers saw what an unusual garment it
  was, they decided to cast lots for it. Jesus looked down on them while they
  divided his garments, and the thoughtless crowd jeered at him.



  187:2.9 It was well that the Roman soldiers took possession of the Master's
  clothing. Otherwise, if his followers had gained possession of these garments,
  they would have been tempted to resort to superstitious relic worship. The
  Master desired that his followers should have nothing material to associate
  with his life on earth. He wanted to leave mankind only the memory of a human
  life dedicated to the high spiritual ideal of being consecrated to doing the
  Father's will.





3. THOSE WHO SAW THE CRUCIFIXION

  187:3.1 At about half past nine o'clock this Friday morning, Jesus was hung
  upon the cross. Before eleven o'clock, upward of one thousand persons had
  assembled to witness this spectacle of the crucifixion of the Son of Man.
  Throughout these dreadful hours the unseen hosts of a universe stood in
  silence while they gazed upon this extraordinary phenomenon of the Creator as
  he was dying the death of the creature, even the most ignoble death of a
  condemned criminal.

  187:3.2 Standing near the cross at one time or another during the crucifixion
  were Mary, Ruth, Jude, John, Salome (John's mother), and a group of earnest
  women believers including Mary the wife of Clopas and sister of Jesus' mother,
  Mary Magdalene, and Rebecca, onetime of Sepphoris. These and other friends of
  Jesus held their peace while they witnessed his great patience and fortitude
  and gazed upon his intense sufferings.

  187:3.3 Many who passed by wagged their heads and, railing at him, said: "You
  who would destroy the temple and build it again in three days, save yourself.
  If you are the Son of God, why do you not come down from your cross?" In like
  manner some of the rulers of the Jews mocked him, saying, "He saved others,
  but himself he cannot save." Others said, "If you are the king of the Jews,
  come down from the cross, and we will believe in you." And later on they
  mocked him the more, saying: "He trusted in God to deliver him. He even
  claimed to be the Son of God -- look at him now -- crucified between two
  thieves." Even the two thieves also railed at him and cast reproach upon him.

  187:3.4 Inasmuch as Jesus would make no reply to their taunts, and since it
  was nearing noontime of this special preparation day, by half past eleven
  o'clock most of the jesting and jeering crowd had gone its way; less than
  fifty persons remained on the scene. The soldiers now prepared to eat lunch
  and drink their cheap, sour wine as they settled down for the long deathwatch.
  As they partook of their wine, they derisively offered a toast to Jesus,
  saying, "Hail and good fortune! to the king of the Jews." And they were
  astonished at the Master's tolerant regard of their ridicule and mocking.

  187:3.5 When Jesus saw them eat and drink, he looked down upon them and said,
  "I thirst." When the captain of the guard heard Jesus say, "I thirst," he took
  some of the wine from his bottle and, putting the saturated sponge stopper
  upon the end of a javelin, raised it to Jesus so that he could moisten his
  parched lips.

  187:3.6 Jesus had purposed to live without resort to his supernatural power,
  and he likewise elected to die as an ordinary mortal upon the cross. He had
  lived as a man, and he would die as a man -- doing the Father's will.





4. THE THIEF ON THE CROSS

  187:4.1 One of the brigands railed at Jesus, saying, "If you are the Son of
  God, why do you not save yourself and us?" But when he had reproached Jesus,
  the other thief, who had many times heard the Master teach, said: "Do you have
  no fear even of God? Do you not see that we are suffering justly for our
  deeds, but that this man suffers unjustly? Better that we should seek
  forgiveness for our sins and salvation for our souls." When Jesus heard the
  thief say this, he turned his face toward him and smiled approvingly. When the
  malefactor saw the face of Jesus turned toward him, he mustered up his
  courage, fanned the flickering flame of his faith, and said, "Lord, remember
  me when you come into your kingdom." And then Jesus said, "Verily, verily, I
  say to you today, you shall sometime be with me in Paradise."

  187:4.2 The Master had time amidst the pangs of mortal death to listen to the
  faith confession of the believing brigand. When this thief reached out for
  salvation, he found deliverance. Many times before this he had been
  constrained to believe in Jesus, but only in these last hours of consciousness
  did he turn with a whole heart toward the Master's teaching. When he saw the
  manner in which Jesus faced death upon the cross, this thief could no longer
  resist the conviction that this Son of Man was indeed the Son of God.



  187:4.3 During this episode of the conversion and reception of the thief into
  the kingdom by Jesus, the Apostle John was absent, having gone into the city
  to bring his mother and her friends to the scene of the crucifixion. Luke
  subsequently heard this story from the converted Roman captain of the guard.

  187:4.4 The Apostle John told about the crucifixion as he remembered the event
  two thirds of a century after its occurrence. The other records were based
  upon the recital of the Roman centurion on duty who, because of what he saw
  and heard, subsequently believed in Jesus and entered into the full fellowship
  of the kingdom of heaven on earth.



  187:4.5 This young man, the penitent brigand, had been led into a life of
  violence and wrongdoing by those who extolled such a career of robbery as an
  effective patriotic protest against political oppression and social injustice.
  And this sort of teaching, plus the urge for adventure, led many otherwise
  well-meaning youths to enlist in these daring expeditions of robbery. This
  young man had looked upon Barabbas as a hero. Now he saw that he had been
  mistaken. Here on the cross beside him he saw a really great man, a true hero.
  Here was a hero who fired his zeal and inspired his highest ideas of moral
  self-respect and quickened all his ideals of courage, manhood, and bravery. In
  beholding Jesus, there sprang up in his heart an overwhelming sense of love,
  loyalty, and genuine greatness.

  187:4.6 And if any other person among the jeering crowd had experienced the
  birth of faith within his soul and had appealed to the mercy of Jesus, he
  would have been received with the same loving consideration that was displayed
  toward the believing brigand.



  187:4.7 Just after the repentant thief heard the Master's promise that they
  should sometime meet in Paradise, John returned from the city, bringing with
  him his mother and a company of almost a dozen women believers. John took up
  his position near Mary the mother of Jesus, supporting her. Her son Jude stood
  on the other side. As Jesus looked down upon this scene, it was noontide, and
  he said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son!" And speaking to John, he
  said, "My son, behold your mother!" And then he addressed them both, saying,
  "I desire that you depart from this place." And so John and Jude led Mary away
  from Golgotha. John took the mother of Jesus to the place where he tarried in
  Jerusalem and then hastened back to the scene of the crucifixion. After the
  Passover Mary returned to Bethsaida, where she lived at John's home for the
  rest of her natural life. Mary did not live quite one year after the death of
  Jesus.

  187:4.8 After Mary left, the other women withdrew for a short distance and
  remained in attendance upon Jesus until he expired on the cross, and they were
  yet standing by when the body of the Master was taken down for burial.





5. LAST HOUR ON THE CROSS

  187:5.1 Although it was early in the season for such a phenomenon, shortly
  after twelve o'clock the sky darkened by reason of the fine sand in the air.
  The people of Jerusalem knew that this meant the coming of one of those hot-
  wind sandstorms from the Arabian desert. Before one o'clock the sky was so
  dark the sun was hid, and the remainder of the crowd hastened back to the
  city. When the Master gave up his life shortly after this hour, less than
  thirty people were present, only the thirteen Roman soldiers and a group of
  about fifteen believers. These believers were all women except two, Jude,
  Jesus' brother, and John Zebedee, who returned to the scene just before the
  Master expired.

  187:5.2 Shortly after one o'clock, amidst the increasing darkness of the
  fierce sandstorm, Jesus began to fail in human consciousness. His last words
  of mercy, forgiveness, and admonition had been spoken. His last wish --
  concerning the care of his mother -- had been expressed. During this hour of
  approaching death the human mind of Jesus resorted to the repetition of many
  passages in the Hebrew scriptures, particularly the Psalms. The last conscious
  thought of the human Jesus was concerned with the repetition in his mind of a
  portion of the Book of Psalms now known as the twentieth, twenty-first, and
  twenty-second Psalms. While his lips would often move, he was too weak to
  utter the words as these passages, which he so well knew by heart, would pass
  through his mind. Only a few times did those standing by catch some utterance,
  such as, "I know the Lord will save his anointed," "Your hand shall find out
  all my enemies," and "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus did not
  for one moment entertain the slightest doubt that he had lived in accordance
  with the Father's will; and he never doubted that he was now laying down his
  life in the flesh in accordance with his Father's will. He did not feel that
  the Father had forsaken him; he was merely reciting in his vanishing
  consciousness many Scriptures, among them this twenty-second Psalm, which
  begins with "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And this happened to
  be one of the three passages which were spoken with sufficient clearness to be
  heard by those standing by.



  187:5.3 The last request which the mortal Jesus made of his fellows was about
  half past one o'clock when, a second time, he said, "I thirst," and the same
  captain of the guard again moistened his lips with the same sponge wet in the
  sour wine, in those days commonly called vinegar.



  187:5.4 The sandstorm grew in intensity and the heavens increasingly darkened.
  Still the soldiers and the small group of believers stood by. The soldiers
  crouched near the cross, huddled together to protect themselves from the
  cutting sand. The mother of John and others watched from a distance where they
  were somewhat sheltered by an overhanging rock. When the Master finally
  breathed his last, there were present at the foot of his cross John Zebedee,
  his brother Jude, his sister Ruth, Mary Magdalene, and Rebecca, onetime of
  Sepphoris.

  187:5.5 It was just before three o'clock when Jesus, with a loud voice, cried
  out, "It is finished! Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." And when
  he had thus spoken, he bowed his head and gave up the life struggle. When the
  Roman centurion saw how Jesus died, he smote his breast and said: "This was
  indeed a righteous man; truly he must have been a Son of God." And from that
  hour he began to believe in Jesus.



  187:5.6 Jesus died royally -- as he had lived. He freely admitted his kingship
  and remained master of the situation throughout the tragic day. He went
  willingly to his ignominious death, after he had provided for the safety of
  his chosen apostles. He wisely restrained Peter's trouble-making violence and
  provided that John might be near him right up to the end of his mortal
  existence. He revealed his true nature to the murderous Sanhedrin and reminded
  Pilate of the source of his sovereign authority as a Son of God. He started
  out to Golgotha bearing his own crossbeam and finished up his loving bestowal
  by handing over his spirit of mortal acquirement to the Paradise Father. After
  such a life -- and at such a death -- the Master could truly say, "It is
  finished."



  187:5.7 Because this was the preparation day for both the Passover and the
  Sabbath, the Jews did not want these bodies to be exposed on Golgotha.
  Therefore they went before Pilate asking that the legs of these three men be
  broken, that they be dispatched, so that they could be taken down from their
  crosses and cast into the criminal burial pits before sundown. When Pilate
  heard this request, he forthwith sent three soldiers to break the legs and
  dispatch Jesus and the two brigands.

  187:5.8 When these soldiers arrived at Golgotha, they did accordingly to the
  two thieves, but they found Jesus already dead, much to their surprise.
  However, in order to make sure of his death, one of the soldiers pierced his
  left side with his spear. Though it was common for the victims of crucifixion
  to linger alive upon the cross for even two or three days, the overwhelming
  emotional agony and the acute spiritual anguish of Jesus brought an end to his
  mortal life in the flesh in a little less than five and one-half hours.





6. AFTER THE CRUCIFIXION

  187:6.1 In the midst of the darkness of the sandstorm, about half past three
  o'clock, David Zebedee sent out the last of the messengers carrying the news
  of the Master's death. The last of his runners he dispatched to the home of
  Martha and Mary in Bethany, where he supposed the mother of Jesus stopped with
  the rest of her family.

  187:6.2 After the death of the Master, John sent the women, in charge of Jude,
  to the home of Elijah Mark, where they tarried over the Sabbath day. John
  himself, being well known by this time to the Roman centurion, remained at
  Golgotha until Joseph and Nicodemus arrived on the scene with an order from
  Pilate authorizing them to take possession of the body of Jesus.

  187:6.3 Thus ended a day of tragedy and sorrow for a vast universe whose
  myriads of intelligences had shuddered at the shocking spectacle of the
  crucifixion of the human incarnation of their beloved Sovereign; they were
  stunned by this exhibition of mortal callousness and human perversity.




PAPER 188


 THE TIME OF THE TOMB



  188:0.1 THE day and a half that Jesus' mortal body lay in the tomb of Joseph,
  the period between his death on the cross and his resurrection, is a chapter
  in the earth career of Michael which is little known to us. We can narrate the
  burial of the Son of Man and put in this record the events associated with his
  resurrection, but we cannot supply much information of an authentic nature
  about what really transpired during this epoch of about thirty-six hours, from
  three o'clock Friday afternoon to three o'clock Sunday morning. This period in
  the Master's career began shortly before he was taken down from the cross by
  the Roman soldiers. He hung upon the cross about one hour after his death. He
  would have been taken down sooner but for the delay in dispatching the two
  brigands.

  188:0.2 The rulers of the Jews had planned to have Jesus' body thrown in the
  open burial pits of Gehenna, south of the city; it was the custom thus to
  dispose of the victims of crucifixion. If this plan had been followed, the
  body of the Master would have been exposed to the wild beasts.

  188:0.3 In the meantime, Joseph of Arimathea, accompanied by Nicodemus, had
  gone to Pilate and asked that the body of Jesus be turned over to them for
  proper burial. It was not uncommon for friends of crucified persons to offer
  bribes to the Roman authorities for the privilege of gaining possession of
  such bodies. Joseph went before Pilate with a large sum of money, in case it
  became necessary to pay for permission to remove Jesus' body to a private
  burial tomb. But Pilate would not take money for this. When he heard the
  request, he quickly signed the order which authorized Joseph to proceed to
  Golgotha and take immediate and full possession of the Master's body. In the
  meantime, the sandstorm having considerably abated, a group of Jews
  representing the Sanhedrin had gone out to Golgotha for the purpose of making
  sure that Jesus' body accompanied those of the brigands to the open public
  burial pits.





1. THE BURIAL OF JESUS



  188:1.1 When Joseph and Nicodemus arrived at Golgotha, they found the soldiers
  taking Jesus down from the cross and the representatives of the Sanhedrin
  standing by to see that none of Jesus' followers prevented his body from going
  to the criminal burial pits. When Joseph presented Pilate's order for the
  Master's body to the centurion, the Jews raised a tumult and clamored for its
  possession. In their raving they sought violently to take possession of the
  body, and when they did this, the centurion ordered four of his soldiers to
  his side, and with drawn swords they stood astride the Master's body as it lay
  there on the ground. The centurion ordered the other soldiers to leave the two
  thieves while they drove back this angry mob of infuriated Jews. When order
  had been restored, the centurion read the permit from Pilate to the Jews and,
  stepping aside, said to Joseph: "This body is yours to do with as you see fit.
  I and my soldiers will stand by to see that no man interferes."

  188:1.2 A crucified person could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery; there was
  a strict law against such a procedure. Joseph and Nicodemus knew this law, and
  on the way out to Golgotha they had decided to bury Jesus in Joseph's new
  family tomb, hewn out of solid rock, located a short distance north of
  Golgotha and across the road leading to Samaria. No one had ever lain in this
  tomb, and they thought it appropriate that the Master should rest there.
  Joseph really believed that Jesus would rise from the dead, but Nicodemus was
  very doubtful. These former members of the Sanhedrin had kept their faith in
  Jesus more or less of a secret, although their fellow Sanhedrists had long
  suspected them, even before they withdrew from the council. From now on they
  were the most outspoken disciples of Jesus in all Jerusalem.

  188:1.3 At about half past four o'clock the burial procession of Jesus of
  Nazareth started from Golgotha for Joseph's tomb across the way. The body was
  wrapped in a linen sheet as the four men carried it, followed by the faithful
  women watchers from Galilee. The mortals who bore the material body of Jesus
  to the tomb were: Joseph, Nicodemus, John, and the Roman centurion.

  188:1.4 They carried the body into the tomb, a chamber about ten feet square,
  where they hurriedly prepared it for burial. The Jews did not really bury
  their dead; they actually embalmed them. Joseph and Nicodemus had brought with
  them large quantities of myrrh and aloes, and they now wrapped the body with
  bandages saturated with these solutions. When the embalming was completed,
  they tied a napkin about the face, wrapped the body in a linen sheet, and
  reverently placed it on a shelf in the tomb.

  188:1.5 After placing the body in the tomb, the centurion signaled for his
  soldiers to help roll the doorstone up before the entrance to the tomb. The
  soldiers then departed for Gehenna with the bodies of the thieves while the
  others returned to Jerusalem, in sorrow, to observe the Passover feast
  according to the laws of Moses.

  188:1.6 There was considerable hurry and haste about the burial of Jesus
  because this was preparation day and the Sabbath was drawing on apace. The men
  hurried back to the city, but the women lingered near the tomb until it was
  very dark.

  188:1.7 While all this was going on, the women were hiding near at hand so
  that they saw it all and observed where the Master had been laid. They thus
  secreted themselves because it was not permissible for women to associate with
  men at such a time. These women did not think Jesus had been properly prepared
  for burial, and they agreed among themselves to go back to the home of Joseph,
  rest over the Sabbath, make ready spices and ointments, and return on Sunday
  morning properly to prepare the Master's body for the death rest. The women
  who thus tarried by the tomb on this Friday evening were: Mary Magdalene, Mary
  the wife of Clopas, Martha another sister of Jesus' mother, and Rebecca of
  Sepphoris.

  188:1.8 Aside from David Zebedee and Joseph of Arimathea, very few of Jesus'
  disciples really believed or understood that he was due to arise from the tomb
  on the third day.





2. SAFEGUARDING THE TOMB



  188:2.1 If Jesus' followers were unmindful of his promise to rise from the
  grave on the third day, his enemies were not. The chief priests, Pharisees,
  and Sadducees recalled that they had received reports of his saying he would
  rise from the dead.

  188:2.2 This Friday night, after the Passover supper, about midnight a group
  of the Jewish leaders gathered at the home of Caiaphas, where they discussed
  their fears concerning the Master's assertions that he would rise from the
  dead on the third day. This meeting ended with the appointment of a committee
  of Sanhedrists who were to visit Pilate early the next day, bearing the
  official request of the Sanhedrin that a Roman guard be stationed before
  Jesus' tomb to prevent his friends from tampering with it. Said the spokesman
  of this committee to Pilate: "Sir, we remember that this deceiver, Jesus of
  Nazareth, said, while he was yet alive, `After three days I will rise again.'
  We have, therefore, come before you to request that you issue such orders as
  will make the sepulchre secure against his followers, at least until after the
  third day. We greatly fear lest his disciples come and steal him away by night
  and then proclaim to the people that he has risen from the dead. If we should
  permit this to happen, this mistake would be far worse than to have allowed
  him to live."

  188:2.3 When Pilate heard this request of the Sanhedrists, he said: "I will
  give you a guard of ten soldiers. Go your way and make the tomb secure." They
  went back to the temple, secured ten of their own guards, and then marched out
  to Joseph's tomb with these ten Jewish guards and ten Roman soldiers, even on
  this Sabbath morning, to set them as watchmen before the tomb. These men
  rolled yet another stone before the tomb and set the seal of Pilate on and
  around these stones, lest they be disturbed without their knowledge. And these
  twenty men remained on watch up to the hour of the resurrection, the Jews
  carrying them their food and drink.





3. DURING THE SABBATH DAY



  188:3.1 Throughout this Sabbath day the disciples and the apostles remained in
  hiding, while all Jerusalem discussed the death of Jesus on the cross. There
  were almost one and one-half million Jews present in Jerusalem at this time,
  hailing from all parts of the Roman Empire and from Mesopotamia. This was the
  beginning of the Passover week, and all these pilgrims would be in the city to
  learn of the resurrection of Jesus and to carry the report back to their
  homes.

  188:3.2 Late Saturday night, John Mark summoned the eleven apostles secretly
  to come to the home of his father, where, just before midnight, they all
  assembled in the same upper chamber where they had partaken of the Last Supper
  with their Master two nights previously.

  188:3.3 Mary the mother of Jesus, with Ruth and Jude, returned to Bethany to
  join their family this Saturday evening just before sunset. David Zebedee
  remained at the home of Nicodemus, where he had arranged for his messengers to
  assemble early Sunday morning. The women of Galilee, who prepared spices for
  the further embalming of Jesus' body, tarried at the home of Joseph of
  Arimathea.



  188:3.4 We are not able fully to explain just what happened to Jesus of
  Nazareth during this period of a day and a half when he was supposed to be
  resting in Joseph's new tomb. Apparently he died the same natural death on the
  cross as would any other mortal in the same circumstances. We heard him say,
  "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." We do not fully understand the
  meaning of such a statement inasmuch as his Thought Adjuster had long since
  been personalized and so maintained an existence apart from Jesus' mortal
  being. The Master's Personalized Adjuster could in no sense be affected by his
  physical death on the cross. That which Jesus put in the Father's hands for
  the time being must have been the spirit counterpart of the Adjuster's early
  work in spiritizing the mortal mind so as to provide for the transfer of the
  transcript of the human experience to the mansion worlds. There must have been
  some spiritual reality in the experience of Jesus which was analogous to the
  spirit nature, or soul, of the faith-growing mortals of the spheres. But this
  is merely our opinion -- we do not really know what Jesus commended to his
  Father.

  188:3.5 We know that the physical form of the Master rested there in Joseph's
  tomb until about three o'clock Sunday morning, but we are wholly uncertain
  regarding the status of the personality of Jesus during that period of thirty-
  six hours. We have sometimes dared to explain these things to ourselves
  somewhat as follows:



  188:3.6 1. The Creator consciousness of Michael must have been at large and
  wholly free from its associated mortal mind of the physical incarnation.



  188:3.7 2. The former Thought Adjuster of Jesus we know to have been present
  on earth during this period and in personal command of the assembled celestial
  hosts.



  188:3.8 3. The acquired spirit identity of the man of Nazareth which was built
  up during his lifetime in the flesh, first, by the direct efforts of his
  Thought Adjuster, and later, by his own perfect adjustment between the
  physical necessities and the spiritual requirements of the ideal mortal
  existence, as it was effected by his never-ceasing choice of the Father's
  will, must have been consigned to the custody of the Paradise Father. Whether
  or not this spirit reality returned to become a part of the resurrected
  personality, we do not know, but we believe it did. But there are those in the
  universe who hold that this soul-identity of Jesus now reposes in the "bosom
  of the Father," to be subsequently released for leadership of the Nebadon
  Corps of the Finality in their undisclosed destiny in connection with the
  uncreated universes of the unorganized realms of outer space.



  188:3.9 4. We think the human or mortal consciousness of Jesus slept during
  these thirty-six hours. We have reason to believe that the human Jesus knew
  nothing of what transpired in the universe during this period. To the mortal
  consciousness there appeared no lapse of time; the resurrection of life
  followed the sleep of death as of the same instant.



  188:3.10 And this is about all we can place on record regarding the status of
  Jesus during this period of the tomb. There are a number of correlated facts
  to which we can allude, although we are hardly competent to undertake their
  interpretation.

  188:3.11 In the vast court of the resurrection halls of the first mansion
  world of Satania, there may now be observed a magnificent material-morontia
  structure known as the "Michael Memorial," now bearing the seal of Gabriel.
  This memorial was created shortly after Michael departed from this world, and
  it bears this inscription: "In commemoration of the mortal transit of Jesus of
  Nazareth on Urantia."

  188:3.12 There are records extant which show that during this period the
  supreme council of Salvington, numbering one hundred, held an executive
  meeting on Urantia under the presidency of Gabriel. There are also records
  showing that the Ancients of Days of Uversa communicated with Michael
  regarding the status of the universe of Nebadon during this time.

  188:3.13 We know that at least one message passed between Michael and Immanuel
  on Salvington while the Master's body lay in the tomb.

  188:3.14 There is good reason for believing that some personality sat in the
  seat of Caligastia in the system council of the Planetary Princes on Jerusem
  which convened while the body of Jesus rested in the tomb.

  188:3.15 The records of Edentia indicate that the Constellation Father of
  Norlatiadek was on Urantia, and that he received instructions from Michael
  during this time of the tomb.

  188:3.16 And there is much other evidence which suggests that not all of the
  personality of Jesus was asleep and unconscious during this time of apparent
  physical death.





4. MEANING OF THE DEATH ON THE CROSS



  188:4.1 Although Jesus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the
  racial guilt of mortal man nor to provide some sort of effective approach to
  an otherwise offended and unforgiving God; even though the Son of Man did not
  offer himself as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of God and to open the way
  for sinful man to obtain salvation; notwithstanding that these ideas of
  atonement and propitiation are erroneous, nonetheless, there are significances
  attached to this death of Jesus on the cross which should not be overlooked.
  It is a fact that Urantia has become known among other neighboring inhabited
  planets as the "World of the Cross."

  188:4.2 Jesus desired to live a full mortal life in the flesh on Urantia.
  Death is, ordinarily, a part of life. Death is the last act in the mortal
  drama. In your well-meant efforts to escape the superstitious errors of the
  false interpretation of the meaning of the death on the cross, you should be
  careful not to make the great mistake of failing to perceive the true
  significance and the genuine import of the Master's death.



  188:4.3 Mortal man was never the property of the archdeceivers. Jesus did not
  die to ransom man from the clutch of the apostate rulers and fallen princes of
  the spheres. The Father in heaven never conceived of such crass injustice as
  damning a mortal soul because of the evildoing of his ancestors. Neither was
  the Master's death on the cross a sacrifice which consisted in an effort to
  pay God a debt which the race of mankind had come to owe him.

  188:4.4 Before Jesus lived on earth, you might possibly have been justified in
  believing in such a God, but not since the Master lived and died among your
  fellow mortals. Moses taught the dignity and justice of a Creator God; but
  Jesus portrayed the love and mercy of a heavenly Father.

  188:4.5 The animal nature -- the tendency toward evil-doing -- may be
  hereditary, but sin is not transmitted from parent to child. Sin is the act of
  conscious and deliberate rebellion against the Father's will and the Sons'
  laws by an individual will creature.

  188:4.6 Jesus lived and died for a whole universe, not just for the races of
  this one world. While the mortals of the realms had salvation even before
  Jesus lived and died on Urantia, it is nevertheless a fact that his bestowal
  on this world greatly illuminated the way of salvation; his death did much to
  make forever plain the certainty of mortal survival after death in the flesh.

  188:4.7 Though it is hardly proper to speak of Jesus as a sacrificer, a
  ransomer, or a redeemer, it is wholly correct to refer to him as a savior. He
  forever made the way of salvation (survival) more clear and certain; he did
  better and more surely show the way of salvation for all the mortals of all
  the worlds of the universe of Nebadon.

  188:4.8 When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father, the
  only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forthwith, in all consistency,
  utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God as an offended monarch,
  a stern and all-powerful ruler whose chief delight is to detect his subjects
  in wrongdoing and to see that they are adequately punished, unless some being
  almost equal to himself should volunteer to suffer for them, to die as a
  substitute and in their stead. The whole idea of ransom and atonement is
  incompatible with the concept of God as it was taught and exemplified by Jesus
  of Nazareth. The infinite love of God is not secondary to anything in the
  divine nature.

  188:4.9 All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and
  grounded in selfishness. Jesus taught that service to one's fellows is the
  highest concept of the brotherhood of spirit believers. Salvation should be
  taken for granted by those who believe in the fatherhood of God. The
  believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal
  salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's
  fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.

  188:4.10 Neither do genuine believers trouble themselves so much about the
  future punishment of sin. The real believer is only concerned about present
  separation from God. True, wise fathers may chasten their sons, but they do
  all this in love and for corrective purposes. They do not punish in anger,
  neither do they chastise in retribution.

  188:4.11 Even if God were the stern and legal monarch of a universe in which
  justice ruled supreme, he certainly would not be satisfied with the childish
  scheme of substituting an innocent sufferer for a guilty offender.

  188:4.12 The great thing about the death of Jesus, as it is related to the
  enrichment of human experience and the enlargement of the way of salvation, is
  not the fact of his death but rather the superb manner and the matchless
  spirit in which he met death.

  188:4.13 This entire idea of the ransom of the atonement places salvation upon
  a plane of unreality; such a concept is purely philosophic. Human salvation is
  real; it is based on two realities which may be grasped by the creature's
  faith and thereby become incorporated into individual human experience: the
  fact of the fatherhood of God and its correlated truth, the brotherhood of
  man. It is true, after all, that you are to be "forgiven your debts, even as
  you forgive your debtors."





5. LESSONS FROM THE CROSS



  188:5.1 The cross of Jesus portrays the full measure of the supreme devotion
  of the true shepherd for even the unworthy members of his flock. It forever
  places all relations between God and man upon the family basis. God is the
  Father; man is his son. Love, the love of a father for his son, becomes the
  central truth in the universe relations of Creator and creature -- not the
  justice of a king which seeks satisfaction in the sufferings and punishment of
  the evil-doing subject.

  188:5.2 The cross forever shows that the attitude of Jesus toward sinners was
  neither condemnation nor condonation, but rather eternal and loving salvation.
  Jesus is truly a savior in the sense that his life and death do win men over
  to goodness and righteous survival. Jesus loves men so much that his love
  awakens the response of love in the human heart. Love is truly contagious and
  eternally creative. Jesus' death on the cross exemplifies a love which is
  sufficiently strong and divine to forgive sin and swallow up all evil-doing.
  Jesus disclosed to this world a higher quality of righteousness than justice
  -- mere technical right and wrong. Divine love does not merely forgive wrongs;
  it absorbs and actually destroys them. The forgiveness of love utterly
  transcends the forgiveness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-doing to one
  side; but love destroys forever the sin and all weakness resulting therefrom.
  Jesus brought a new method of living to Urantia. He taught us not to resist
  evil but to find through him a goodness which effectually destroys evil. The
  forgiveness of Jesus is not condonation; it is salvation from condemnation.
  Salvation does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not
  compromise nor condone hate; it destroys it. The love of Jesus is never
  satisfied with mere forgiveness. The Master's love implies rehabilitation,
  eternal survival. It is altogether proper to speak of salvation as redemption
  if you mean this eternal rehabilitation.

  188:5.3 Jesus, by the power of his personal love for men, could break the hold
  of sin and evil. He thereby set men free to choose better ways of living.
  Jesus portrayed a deliverance from the past which in itself promised a triumph
  for the future. Forgiveness thus provided salvation. The beauty of divine
  love, once fully admitted to the human heart, forever destroys the charm of
  sin and the power of evil.



  188:5.4 The sufferings of Jesus were not confined to the crucifixion. In
  reality, Jesus of Nazareth spent upward of twenty-five years on the cross of a
  real and intense mortal existence. The real value of the cross consists in the
  fact that it was the supreme and final expression of his love, the completed
  revelation of his mercy.



  188:5.5 On millions of inhabited worlds, tens of trillions of evolving
  creatures who may have been tempted to give up the moral struggle and abandon
  the good fight of faith, have taken one more look at Jesus on the cross and
  then have forged on ahead, inspired by the sight of God's laying down his
  incarnate life in devotion to the unselfish service of man.

  188:5.6 The triumph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit
  of Jesus' attitude toward those who assailed him. He made the cross an eternal
  symbol of the triumph of love over hate and the victory of truth over evil
  when he prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That
  devotion of love was contagious throughout a vast universe; the disciples
  caught it from their Master. The very first teacher of his gospel who was
  called upon to lay down his life in this service, said, as they stoned him to
  death, "Lay not this sin to their charge."

  188:5.7 The cross makes a supreme appeal to the best in man because it
  discloses one who was willing to lay down his life in the service of his
  fellow men. Greater love no man can have than this: that he would be willing
  to lay down his life for his friends -- and Jesus had such a love that he was
  willing to lay down his life for his enemies, a love greater than any which
  had hitherto been known on earth.

  188:5.8 On other worlds, as well as on Urantia, this sublime spectacle of the
  death of the human Jesus on the cross of Golgotha has stirred the emotions of
  mortals, while it has aroused the highest devotion of the angels.



  188:5.9 The cross is that high symbol of sacred service, the devotion of one's
  life to the welfare and salvation of one's fellows. The cross is not the
  symbol of the sacrifice of the innocent Son of God in the place of guilty
  sinners and in order to appease the wrath of an offended God, but it does
  stand forever, on earth and throughout a vast universe, as a sacred symbol of
  the good bestowing themselves upon the evil and thereby saving them by this
  very devotion of love. The cross does stand as the token of the highest form
  of unselfish service, the supreme devotion of the full bestowal of a righteous
  life in the service of wholehearted ministry, even in death, the death of the
  cross. And the very sight of this great symbol of the bestowal life of Jesus
  truly inspires all of us to want to go and do likewise.

  188:5.10 When thinking men and women look upon Jesus as he offers up his life
  on the cross, they will hardly again permit themselves to complain at even the
  severest hardships of life, much less at petty harassments and their many
  purely fictitious grievances. His life was so glorious and his death so
  triumphant that we are all enticed to a willingness to share both. There is
  true drawing power in the whole bestowal of Michael, from the days of his
  youth to this overwhelming spectacle of his death on the cross.

  188:5.11 Make sure, then, that when you view the cross as a revelation of God,
  you do not look with the eyes of the primitive man nor with the viewpoint of
  the later barbarian, both of whom regarded God as a relentless Sovereign of
  stern justice and rigid law-enforcement. Rather, make sure that you see in the
  cross the final manifestation of the love and devotion of Jesus to his life
  mission of bestowal upon the mortal races of his vast universe. See in the
  death of the Son of Man the climax of the unfolding of the Father's divine
  love for his sons of the mortal spheres. The cross thus portrays the devotion
  of willing affection and the bestowal of voluntary salvation upon those who
  are willing to receive such gifts and devotion. There was nothing in the cross
  which the Father required -- only that which Jesus so willingly gave, and
  which he refused to avoid.



  188:5.12 If man cannot otherwise appreciate Jesus and understand the meaning
  of his bestowal on earth, he can at least comprehend the fellowship of his
  mortal sufferings. No man can ever fear that the Creator does not know the
  nature or extent of his temporal afflictions.

  188:5.13 We know that the death on the cross was not to effect man's
  reconciliation to God but to stimulate man's realization of the Father's
  eternal love and his Son's unending mercy, and to broadcast these universal
  truths to a whole universe.


PAPER 189


 THE RESURRECTION



  189:0.1 SOON after the burial of Jesus on Friday afternoon, the chief of the
  archangels of Nebadon, then present on Urantia, summoned his council of the
  resurrection of sleeping will creatures and entered upon the consideration of
  a possible technique for the restoration of Jesus. These assembled sons of the
  local universe, the creatures of Michael, did this on their own
  responsibility; Gabriel had not assembled them. By midnight they had arrived
  at the conclusion that the creature could do nothing to facilitate the
  resurrection of the Creator. They were disposed to accept the advice of
  Gabriel, who instructed them that, since Michael had "laid down his life of
  his own free will, he also had power to take it up again in accordance with
  his own determination." Shortly after the adjournment of this council of the
  archangels, the Life Carriers, and their various associates in the work of
  creature rehabilitation and morontia creation, the Personalized Adjuster of
  Jesus, being in personal command of the assembled celestial hosts then on
  Urantia, spoke these words to the anxious waiting watchers:

  189:0.2 "Not one of you can do aught to assist your Creator-father in the
  return to life. As a mortal of the realm he has experienced mortal death; as
  the Sovereign of a universe he still lives. That which you observe is the
  mortal transit of Jesus of Nazareth from life in the flesh to life in the
  morontia. The spirit transit of this Jesus was completed at the time I
  separated myself from his personality and became your temporary director. Your
  Creator-father has elected to pass through the whole of the experience of his
  mortal creatures, from birth on the material worlds, on through natural death
  and the resurrection of the morontia, into the status of true spirit
  existence. A certain phase of this experience you are about to observe, but
  you may not participate in it. Those things which you ordinarily do for the
  creature, you may not do for the Creator. A Creator Son has within himself the
  power to bestow himself in the likeness of any of his created sons; he has
  within himself the power to lay down his observable life and to take it up
  again; and he has this power because of the direct command of the Paradise
  Father, and I know whereof I speak."

  189:0.3 When they heard the Personalized Adjuster so speak, they all assumed
  the attitude of anxious expectancy, from Gabriel down to the most humble
  cherubim. They saw the mortal body of Jesus in the tomb; they detected
  evidences of the universe activity of their beloved Sovereign; and not
  understanding such phenomena, they waited patiently for developments.





1. THE MORONTIA TRANSIT



  189:1.1 At two forty-five Sunday morning, the Paradise incarnation commission,
  consisting of seven unidentified Paradise personalities, arrived on the scene
  and immediately deployed themselves about the tomb. At ten minutes before
  three, intense vibrations of commingled material and morontia activities began
  to issue from Joseph's new tomb, and at two minutes past three o'clock, this
  Sunday morning, April 9, A.D. 30, the resurrected morontia form and
  personality of Jesus of Nazareth came forth from the tomb.

  189:1.2 After the resurrected Jesus emerged from his burial tomb, the body of
  flesh in which he had lived and wrought on earth for almost thirty-six years
  was still lying there in the sepulchre niche, undisturbed and wrapped in the
  linen sheet, just as it had been laid to rest by Joseph and his associates on
  Friday afternoon. Neither was the stone before the entrance of the tomb in any
  way disturbed; the seal of Pilate was still unbroken; the soldiers were still
  on guard. The temple guards had been on continuous duty; the Roman guard had
  been changed at midnight. None of these watchers suspected that the object of
  their vigil had risen to a new and higher form of existence, and that the body
  which they were guarding was now a discarded outer covering which had no
  further connection with the delivered and resurrected morontia personality of
  Jesus.



  189:1.3 Mankind is slow to perceive that, in all that is personal, matter is
  the skeleton of morontia, and that both are the reflected shadow of enduring
  spirit reality. How long before you will regard time as the moving image of
  eternity and space as the fleeting shadow of Paradise realities?

  189:1.4 As far as we can judge, no creature of this universe nor any
  personality from another universe had anything to do with this morontia
  resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. On Friday he laid down his life as a mortal
  of the realm; on Sunday morning he took it up again as a morontia being of the
  system of Satania in Norlatiadek. There is much about the resurrection of
  Jesus which we do not understand. But we know that it occurred as we have
  stated and at about the time indicated. We can also record that all known
  phenomena associated with this mortal transit, or morontia resurrection,
  occurred right there in Joseph's new tomb, where the mortal material remains
  of Jesus lay wrapped in burial cloths.

  189:1.5 We know that no creature of the local universe participated in this
  morontia awakening. We perceived the seven personalities of Paradise surround
  the tomb, but we did not see them do anything in connection with the Master's
  awakening. Just as soon as Jesus appeared beside Gabriel, just above the tomb,
  the seven personalities from Paradise signalized their intention of immediate
  departure for Uversa.

  189:1.6 Let us forever clarify the concept of the resurrection of Jesus by
  making the following statements:



  189:1.7 1. His material or physical body was not a part of the resurrected
  personality. When Jesus came forth from the tomb, his body of flesh remained
  undisturbed in the sepulchre. He emerged from the burial tomb without moving
  the stones before the entrance and without disturbing the seals of Pilate.



  189:1.8 2. He did not emerge from the tomb as a spirit nor as Michael of
  Nebadon; he did not appear in the form of the Creator Sovereign, such as he
  had had before his incarnation in the likeness of mortal flesh on Urantia.



  189:1.9 3. He did come forth from this tomb of Joseph in the very likeness of
  the morontia personalities of those who, as resurrected morontia ascendant
  beings, emerge from the resurrection halls of the first mansion world of this
  local system of Satania. And the presence of the Michael memorial in the
  center of the vast court of the resurrection halls of mansonia number one
  leads us to conjecture that the Master's resurrection on Urantia was in some
  way fostered on this, the first of the system mansion worlds.



  189:1.10 The first act of Jesus on arising from the tomb was to greet Gabriel
  and instruct him to continue in executive charge of universe affairs under
  Immanuel, and then he directed the chief of the Melchizedeks to convey his
  brotherly greetings to Immanuel. He thereupon asked the Most High of Edentia
  for the certification of the Ancients of Days as to his mortal transit; and
  turning to the assembled morontia groups of the seven mansion worlds, here
  gathered together to greet and welcome their Creator as a creature of their
  order, Jesus spoke the first words of the postmortal career. Said the morontia
  Jesus: "Having finished my life in the flesh, I would tarry here for a short
  time in transition form that I may more fully know the life of my ascendant
  creatures and further reveal the will of my Father in Paradise."

  189:1.11 After Jesus had spoken, he signaled to the Personalized Adjuster, and
  all universe intelligences who had been assembled on Urantia to witness the
  resurrection were immediately dispatched to their respective universe
  assignments.

  189:1.12 Jesus now began the contacts of the morontia level, being introduced,
  as a creature, to the requirements of the life he had chosen to live for a
  short time on Urantia. This initiation into the morontia world required more
  than an hour of earth time and was twice interrupted by his desire to
  communicate with his former associates in the flesh as they came out from
  Jerusalem wonderingly to peer into the empty tomb to discover what they
  considered evidence of his resurrection.

  189:1.13 Now is the mortal transit of Jesus -- the morontia resurrection of
  the Son of Man -- completed. The transitory experience of the Master as a
  personality midway between the material and the spiritual has begun. And he
  has done all this through power inherent within himself; no personality has
  rendered him any assistance. He now lives as Jesus of morontia, and as he
  begins this morontia life, the material body of his flesh lies there
  undisturbed in the tomb. The soldiers are still on guard, and the seal of the
  governor about the rocks has not yet been broken.





2. THE MATERIAL BODY OF JESUS



  189:2.1 At ten minutes past three o'clock, as the resurrected Jesus
  fraternized with the assembled morontia personalities from the seven mansion
  worlds of Satania, the chief of archangels -- the angels of the resurrection
  -- approached Gabriel and asked for the mortal body of Jesus. Said the chief
  of the archangels: "We may not participate in the morontia resurrection of the
  bestowal experience of Michael our sovereign, but we would have his mortal
  remains put in our custody for immediate dissolution. We do not propose to
  employ our technique of dematerialization; we merely wish to invoke the
  process of accelerated time. It is enough that we have seen the Sovereign live
  and die on Urantia; the hosts of heaven would be spared the memory of enduring
  the sight of the slow decay of the human form of the Creator and Upholder of a
  universe. In the name of the celestial intelligences of all Nebadon, I ask for
  a mandate giving me the custody of the mortal body of Jesus of Nazareth and
  empowering us to proceed with its immediate dissolution."

  189:2.2 And when Gabriel had conferred with the senior Most High of Edentia,
  the archangel spokesman for the celestial hosts was given permission to make
  such disposition of the physical remains of Jesus as he might determine.

  189:2.3 After the chief of archangels had been granted this request, he
  summoned to his assistance many of his fellows, together with a numerous host
  of the representatives of all orders of celestial personalities, and then,
  with the aid of the Urantia midwayers, proceeded to take possession of Jesus'
  physical body. This body of death was a purely material creation; it was
  physical and literal; it could not be removed from the tomb as the morontia
  form of the resurrection had been able to escape the sealed sepulchre. By the
  aid of certain morontia auxiliary personalities, the morontia form can be made
  at one time as of the spirit so that it can become indifferent to ordinary
  matter, while at another time it can become discernible and contactable to
  material beings, such as the mortals of the realm.

  189:2.4 As they made ready to remove the body of Jesus from the tomb
  preparatory to according it the dignified and reverent disposal of near-
  instantaneous dissolution, it was assigned the secondary Urantia midwayers to
  roll away the stones from the entrance of the tomb. The larger of these two
  stones was a huge circular affair, much like a millstone, and it moved in a
  groove chiseled out of the rock, so that it could be rolled back and forth to
  open or close the tomb. When the watching Jewish guards and the Roman
  soldiers, in the dim light of the morning, saw this huge stone begin to roll
  away from the entrance of the tomb, apparently of its own accord -- without
  any visible means to account for such motion -- they were seized with fear and
  panic, and they fled in haste from the scene. The Jews fled to their homes,
  afterward going back to report these doings to their captain at the temple.
  The Romans fled to the fortress of Antonia and reported what they had seen to
  the centurion as soon as he arrived on duty.

  189:2.5 The Jewish leaders began the sordid business of supposedly getting rid
  of Jesus by offering bribes to the traitorous Judas, and now, when confronted
  with this embarrassing situation, instead of thinking of punishing the guards
  who deserted their post, they resorted to bribing these guards and the Roman
  soldiers. They paid each of these twenty men a sum of money and instructed
  them to say to all: "While we slept during the nighttime, his disciples came
  upon us and took away the body." And the Jewish leaders made solemn promises
  to the soldiers to defend them before Pilate in case it should ever come to
  the governor's knowledge that they had accepted a bribe.



  189:2.6 The Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus has been based on
  the fact of the "empty tomb." It was indeed a fact that the tomb was empty,
  but this is not the truth of the resurrection. The tomb was truly empty when
  the first believers arrived, and this fact, associated with that of the
  undoubted resurrection of the Master, led to the formulation of a belief which
  was not true: the teaching that the material and mortal body of Jesus was
  raised from the grave. Truth having to do with spiritual realities and eternal
  values cannot always be built up by a combination of apparent facts. Although
  individual facts may be materially true, it does not follow that the
  association of a group of facts must necessarily lead to truthful spiritual
  conclusions.

  189:2.7 The tomb of Joseph was empty, not because the body of Jesus had been
  rehabilitated or resurrected, but because the celestial hosts had been granted
  their request to afford it a special and unique dissolution, a return of the
  "dust to dust," without the intervention of the delays of time and without the
  operation of the ordinary and visible processes of mortal decay and material
  corruption.

  189:2.8 The mortal remains of Jesus underwent the same natural process of
  elemental disintegration as characterizes all human bodies on earth except
  that, in point of time, this natural mode of dissolution was greatly
  accelerated, hastened to that point where it became well-nigh instantaneous.

  189:2.9 The true evidences of the resurrection of Michael are spiritual in
  nature, albeit this teaching is corroborated by the testimony of many mortals
  of the realm who met, recognized, and communed with the resurrected morontia
  Master. He became a part of the personal experience of almost one thousand
  human beings before he finally took leave of Urantia.





3. THE DISPENSATIONAL RESURRECTION



  189:3.1 A little after half past four o'clock this Sunday morning, Gabriel
  summoned the archangels to his side and made ready to inaugurate the general
  resurrection of the termination of the Adamic dispensation on Urantia. When
  the vast host of the seraphim and the cherubim concerned in this great event
  had been marshaled in proper formation, the morontia Michael appeared before
  Gabriel, saying: "As my Father has life in himself, so has he given it to the
  Son to have life in himself. Although I have not yet fully resumed the
  exercise of universe jurisdiction, this self-imposed limitation does not in
  any manner restrict the bestowal of life upon my sleeping sons; let the roll
  call of the planetary resurrection begin."

  189:3.2 The circuit of the archangels then operated for the first time from
  Urantia. Gabriel and the archangel hosts moved to the place of the spiritual
  polarity of the planet; and when Gabriel gave the signal, there flashed to the
  first of the system mansion worlds the voice of Gabriel, saying: "By the
  mandate of Michael, let the dead of a Urantia dispensation rise!" Then all the
  survivors of the human races of Urantia who had fallen asleep since the days
  of Adam, and who had not already gone on to judgment, appeared in the
  resurrection halls of mansonia in readiness for morontia investiture. And in
  an instant of time the seraphim and their associates made ready to depart for
  the mansion worlds. Ordinarily these seraphic guardians, onetime assigned to
  the group custody of these surviving mortals, would have been present at the
  moment of their awaking in the resurrection halls of mansonia, but they were
  on this world itself at this time because of the necessity of Gabriel's
  presence here in connection with the morontia resurrection of Jesus.

  189:3.3 Notwithstanding that countless individuals having personal seraphic
  guardians and those achieving the requisite attainment of spiritual
  personality progress had gone on to mansonia during the ages subsequent to the
  times of Adam and Eve, and though there had been many special and millennial
  resurrections of Urantia sons, this was the third of the planetary roll calls,
  or complete dispensational resurrections. The first occurred at the time of
  the arrival of the Planetary Prince, the second during the time of Adam, and
  this, the third, signalized the morontia resurrection, the mortal transit, of
  Jesus of Nazareth.



  189:3.4 When the signal of the planetary resurrection had been received by the
  chief of archangels, the Personalized Adjuster of the Son of Man relinquished
  his authority over the celestial hosts assembled on Urantia, turning all these
  sons of the local universe back to the jurisdiction of their respective
  commanders. And when he had done this, he departed for Salvington to register
  with Immanuel the completion of the mortal transit of Michael. And he was
  immediately followed by all the celestial host not required for duty on
  Urantia. But Gabriel remained on Urantia with the morontia Jesus.



  189:3.5 And this is the recital of the events of the resurrection of Jesus as
  viewed by those who saw them as they really occurred, free from the
  limitations of partial and restricted human vision.





4. DISCOVERY OF THE EMPTY TOMB



  189:4.1 As we approach the time of the resurrection of Jesus on this early
  Sunday morning, it should be recalled that the ten apostles were sojourning at
  the home of Elijah and Mary Mark, where they were asleep in the upper chamber,
  resting on the very couches whereon they reclined during the last supper with
  their Master. This Sunday morning they were all there assembled except Thomas.
  Thomas was with them for a few minutes late Saturday night when they first got
  together, but the sight of the apostles, coupled with the thought of what had
  happened to Jesus, was too much for him. He looked his associates over and
  immediately left the room, going to the home of Simon in Bethpage, where he
  thought to grieve over his troubles in solitude. The apostles all suffered,
  not so much from doubt and despair as from fear, grief, and shame.



  189:4.2 At the home of Nicodemus there were gathered together, with David
  Zebedee and Joseph of Arimathea, some twelve or fifteen of the more prominent
  of the Jerusalem disciples of Jesus. At the home of Joseph of Arimathea there
  were some fifteen or twenty of the leading women believers. Only these women
  abode in Joseph's house, and they had kept close within during the hours of
  the Sabbath day and the evening after the Sabbath, so that they were ignorant
  of the military guard on watch at the tomb; neither did they know that a
  second stone had been rolled in front of the tomb, and that both of these
  stones had been placed under the seal of Pilate.

  189:4.3 A little before three o'clock this Sunday morning, when the first
  signs of day began to appear in the east, five of the women started out for
  the tomb of Jesus. They had prepared an abundance of special embalming
  lotions, and they carried many linen bandages with them. It was their purpose
  more thoroughly to give the body of Jesus its death anointing and more
  carefully to wrap it up with the new bandages.

  189:4.4 The women who went on this mission of anointing Jesus' body were: Mary
  Magdalene, Mary the mother of the Alpheus twins, Salome the mother of the
  Zebedee brothers, Joanna the wife of Chuza, and Susanna the daughter of Ezra
  of Alexandria.

  189:4.5 It was about half past three o'clock when the five women, laden with
  their ointments, arrived before the empty tomb. As they passed out of the
  Damascus gate, they encountered a number of soldiers fleeing into the city
  more or less panic-stricken, and this caused them to pause for a few minutes;
  but when nothing more developed, they resumed their journey.

  189:4.6 They were greatly surprised to see the stone rolled away from the
  entrance to the tomb, inasmuch as they had said among themselves on the way
  out, "Who will help us roll away the stone?" They set down their burdens and
  began to look upon one another in fear and with great amazement. While they
  stood there, atremble with fear, Mary Magdalene ventured around the smaller
  stone and dared to enter the open sepulchre. This tomb of Joseph was in his
  garden on the hillside on the eastern side of the road, and it also faced
  toward the east. By this hour there was just enough of the dawn of a new day
  to enable Mary to look back to the place where the Master's body had lain and
  to discern that it was gone. In the recess of stone where they had laid Jesus,
  Mary saw only the folded napkin where his head had rested and the bandages
  wherewith he had been wrapped lying intact and as they had rested on the stone
  before the celestial hosts removed the body. The covering sheet lay at the
  foot of the burial niche.

  189:4.7 After Mary had tarried in the doorway of the tomb for a few moments
  (she did not see distinctly when she first entered the tomb), she saw that
  Jesus' body was gone and in its place only these grave cloths, and she uttered
  a cry of alarm and anguish. All the women were exceedingly nervous; they had
  been on edge ever since meeting the panicky soldiers at the city gate, and
  when Mary uttered this scream of anguish, they were terror-stricken and fled
  in great haste. And they did not stop until they had run all the way to the
  Damascus gate. By this time Joanna was conscience-stricken that they had
  deserted Mary; she rallied her companions, and they started back for the tomb.

  189:4.8 As they drew near the sepulchre, the frightened Magdalene, who was
  even more terrorized when she failed to find her sisters waiting when she came
  out of the tomb, now rushed up to them, excitedly exclaiming: "He is not there
  -- they have taken him away!" And she led them back to the tomb, and they all
  entered and saw that it was empty.

  189:4.9 All five of the women then sat down on the stone near the entrance and
  talked over the situation. It had not yet occurred to them that Jesus had been
  resurrected. They had been by themselves over the Sabbath, and they
  conjectured that the body had been moved to another resting place. But when
  they pondered such a solution of their dilemma, they were at a loss to account
  for the orderly arrangement of the grave cloths; how could the body have been
  removed since the very bandages in which it was wrapped were left in position
  and apparently intact on the burial shelf?



  189:4.10 As these women sat there in the early hours of the dawn of this new
  day, they looked to one side and observed a silent and motionless stranger.
  For a moment they were again frightened, but Mary Magdalene, rushing toward
  him and addressing him as if she thought he might be the caretaker of the
  garden, said, "Where have you taken the Master? Where have they laid him? Tell
  us that we may go and get him." When the stranger did not answer Mary, she
  began to weep. Then spoke Jesus to them, saying, "Whom do you seek?" Mary
  said: "We seek for Jesus who was laid to rest in Joseph's tomb, but he is
  gone. Do you know where they have taken him?" Then said Jesus: "Did not this
  Jesus tell you, even in Galilee, that he would die, but that he would rise
  again?" These words startled the women, but the Master was so changed that
  they did not yet recognize him with his back turned to the dim light. And as
  they pondered his words, he addressed the Magdalene with a familiar voice,
  saying, "Mary." And when she heard that word of well-known sympathy and
  affectionate greeting, she knew it was the voice of the Master, and she rushed
  to kneel at his feet while she exclaimed, "My Lord, and my Master!" And all of
  the other women recognized that it was the Master who stood before them in
  glorified form, and they quickly knelt before him.

  189:4.11 These human eyes were enabled to see the morontia form of Jesus
  because of the special ministry of the transformers and the midwayers in
  association with certain of the morontia personalities then accompanying
  Jesus.



  189:4.12 As Mary sought to embrace his feet, Jesus said: "Touch me not, Mary,
  for I am not as you knew me in the flesh. In this form will I tarry with you
  for a season before I ascend to the Father. But go, all of you, now and tell
  my apostles -- and Peter -- that I have risen, and that you have talked with
  me."

  189:4.13 After these women had recovered from the shock of their amazement,
  they hastened back to the city and to the home of Elijah Mark, where they
  related to the ten apostles all that had happened to them; but the apostles
  were not inclined to believe them. They thought at first that the women had
  seen a vision, but when Mary Magdalene repeated the words which Jesus had
  spoken to them, and when Peter heard his name, he rushed out of the upper
  chamber, followed closely by John, in great haste to reach the tomb and see
  these things for himself.

  189:4.14 The women repeated the story of talking with Jesus to the other
  apostles, but they would not believe; and they would not go to find out for
  themselves as had Peter and John.





5. PETER AND JOHN AT THE TOMB



  189:5.1 As the two apostles raced for Golgotha and the tomb of Joseph, Peter's
  thoughts alternated between fear and hope; he feared to meet the Master, but
  his hope was aroused by the story that Jesus had sent special word to him. He
  was half persuaded that Jesus was really alive; he recalled the promise to
  rise on the third day. Strange to relate, this promise had not occurred to him
  since the crucifixion until this moment as he hurried north through Jerusalem.
  As John hastened out of the city, a strange ecstasy of joy and hope welled up
  in his soul. He was half convinced that the women really had seen the risen
  Master.

  189:5.2 John, being younger than Peter, outran him and arrived first at the
  tomb. John tarried at the door, viewing the tomb, and it was just as Mary had
  described it. Very soon Simon Peter rushed up and, entering, saw the same
  empty tomb with the grave cloths so peculiarly arranged. And when Peter had
  come out, John also went in and saw it all for himself, and then they sat down
  on the stone to ponder the meaning of what they had seen and heard. And while
  they sat there, they turned over in their minds all that had been told them
  about Jesus, but they could not clearly perceive what had happened.

  189:5.3 Peter at first suggested that the grave had been rifled, that enemies
  had stolen the body, perhaps bribed the guards. But John reasoned that the
  grave would hardly have been left so orderly if the body had been stolen, and
  he also raised the question as to how the bandages happened to be left behind,
  and so apparently intact. And again they both went back into the tomb more
  closely to examine the grave cloths. As they came out of the tomb the second
  time, they found Mary Magdalene returned and weeping before the entrance. Mary
  had gone to the apostles believing that Jesus had risen from the grave, but
  when they all refused to believe her report, she became downcast and
  despairing. She longed to go back near the tomb, where she thought she had
  heard the familiar voice of Jesus.

  189:5.4 As Mary lingered after Peter and John had gone, the Master again
  appeared to her, saying: "Be not doubting; have the courage to believe what
  you have seen and heard. Go back to my apostles and again tell them that I
  have risen, that I will appear to them, and that presently I will go before
  them into Galilee as I promised."

  189:5.5 Mary hurried back to the Mark home and told the apostles she had again
  talked with Jesus, but they would not believe her. But when Peter and John
  returned, they ceased to ridicule and became filled with fear and
  apprehension.


PAPER 190


 MORONTIA APPEARANCES OF JESUS

  190:0.1 THE resurrected Jesus now prepares to spend a short period on Urantia
  for the purpose of experiencing the ascending morontia career of a mortal of
  the realms. Although this time of the morontia life is to be spent on the
  world of his mortal incarnation, it will, however, be in all respects the
  counterpart of the experience of Satania mortals who pass through the
  progressive morontia life of the seven mansion worlds of Jerusem.

  190:0.2 All this power which is inherent in Jesus -- the endowment of life --
  and which enabled him to rise from the dead, is the very gift of eternal life
  which he bestows upon kingdom believers, and which even now makes certain
  their resurrection from the bonds of natural death.

  190:0.3 The mortals of the realms will arise in the morning of the
  resurrection with the same type of transition or morontia body that Jesus had
  when he arose from the tomb on this Sunday morning. These bodies do not have
  circulating blood, and such beings do not partake of ordinary material food;
  nevertheless, these morontia forms are real. When the various believers saw
  Jesus after his resurrection, they really saw him; they were not the self-
  deceived victims of visions or hallucinations.

  190:0.4 Abiding faith in the resurrection of Jesus was the cardinal feature of
  the faith of all branches of the early gospel teaching. In Jerusalem,
  Alexandria, Antioch, and Philadelphia all the gospel teachers united in this
  implicit faith in the Master's resurrection.

  190:0.5 In viewing the prominent part which Mary Magdalene took in proclaiming
  the Master's resurrection, it should be recorded that Mary was the chief
  spokesman for the women's corps, as was Peter for the apostles. Mary was not
  chief of the women workers, but she was their chief teacher and public
  spokesman. Mary had become a woman of great circumspection, so that her
  boldness in speaking to a man whom she considered to be the caretaker of
  Joseph's garden only indicates how horrified she was to find the tomb empty.
  It was the depth and agony of her love, the fullness of her devotion, that
  caused her to forget, for a moment, the conventional restraints of a Jewish
  woman's approach to a strange man.





1. HERALDS OF THE RESURRECTION



  190:1.1 The apostles did not want Jesus to leave them; therefore had they
  slighted all his statements about dying, along with his promises to rise
  again. They were not expecting the resurrection as it came, and they refused
  to believe until they were confronted with the compulsion of unimpeachable
  evidence and the absolute proof of their own experiences.

  190:1.2 When the apostles refused to believe the report of the five women who
  represented that they had seen Jesus and talked with him, Mary Magdalene
  returned to the tomb, and the others went back to Joseph's house, where they
  related their experiences to his daughter and the other women. And the women
  believed their report. Shortly after six o'clock the daughter of Joseph of
  Arimathea and the four women who had seen Jesus went over to the home of
  Nicodemus, where they related all these happenings to Joseph, Nicodemus, David
  Zebedee, and the other men there assembled. Nicodemus and the others doubted
  their story, doubted that Jesus had risen from the dead; they conjectured that
  the Jews had removed the body. Joseph and David were disposed to believe the
  report, so much so that they hurried out to inspect the tomb, and they found
  everything just as the women had described. And they were the last to so view
  the sepulchre, for the high priest sent the captain of the temple guards to
  the tomb at half past seven o'clock to remove the grave cloths. The captain
  wrapped them all up in the linen sheet and threw them over a near-by cliff.

  190:1.3 From the tomb David and Joseph went immediately to the home of Elijah
  Mark, where they held a conference with the ten apostles in the upper chamber.
  Only John Zebedee was disposed to believe, even faintly, that Jesus had risen
  from the dead. Peter had believed at first but, when he failed to find the
  Master, fell into grave doubting. They were all disposed to believe that the
  Jews had removed the body. David would not argue with them, but when he left,
  he said: "You are the apostles, and you ought to understand these things. I
  will not contend with you; nevertheless, I now go back to the home of
  Nicodemus, where I have appointed with the messengers to assemble this
  morning, and when they have gathered together, I will send them forth on their
  last mission, as heralds of the Master's resurrection. I heard the Master say
  that, after he should die, he would rise on the third day, and I believe him."
  And thus speaking to the dejected and forlorn ambassadors of the kingdom, this
  self-appointed chief of communication and intelligence took leave of the
  apostles. On his way from the upper chamber he dropped the bag of Judas,
  containing all the apostolic funds, in the lap of Matthew Levi.

  190:1.4 It was about half past nine o'clock when the last of David's twenty-
  six messengers arrived at the home of Nicodemus. David promptly assembled them
  in the spacious courtyard and addressed them:

  190:1.5 "Men and brethren, all this time you have served me in accordance with
  your oath to me and to one another, and I call you to witness that I have
  never yet sent out false information at your hands. I am about to send you on
  your last mission as volunteer messengers of the kingdom, and in so doing I
  release you from your oaths and thereby disband the messenger corps. Men, I
  declare to you that we have finished our work. No more does the Master have
  need of mortal messengers; he has risen from the dead. He told us before they
  arrested him that he would die and rise again on the third day. I have seen
  the tomb -- it is empty. I have talked with Mary Magdalene and four other
  women, who have talked with Jesus. I now disband you, bid you farewell, and
  send you on your respective assignments, and the message which you shall bear
  to the believers is: `Jesus has risen from the dead; the tomb is empty.'"

  190:1.6 The majority of those present endeavored to persuade David not to do
  this. But they could not influence him. They then sought to dissuade the
  messengers, but they would not heed the words of doubt. And so, shortly before
  ten o'clock this Sunday morning, these twenty-six runners went forth as the
  first heralds of the mighty truth-fact of the resurrected Jesus. And they
  started out on this mission as they had on so many others, in fulfillment of
  their oath to David Zebedee and to one another. These men had great confidence
  in David. They departed on this assignment without even tarrying to talk with
  those who had seen Jesus; they took David at his word. The majority of them
  believed what David had told them, and even those who somewhat doubted,
  carried the message just as certainly and just as swiftly.

  190:1.7 The apostles, the spiritual corps of the kingdom, are this day
  assembled in the upper chamber, where they manifest fear and express doubts,
  while these laymen, representing the first attempt at the socialization of the
  Master's gospel of the brotherhood of man, under the orders of their fearless
  and efficient leader, go forth to proclaim the risen Savior of a world and a
  universe. And they engage in this eventful service ere his chosen
  representatives are willing to believe his word or to accept the evidence of
  eyewitnesses.

  190:1.8 These twenty-six were dispatched to the home of Lazarus in Bethany and
  to all of the believer centers, from Beersheba in the south to Damascus and
  Sidon in the north; and from Philadelphia in the east to Alexandria in the
  west.

  190:1.9 When David had taken leave of his brethren, he went over to the home
  of Joseph for his mother, and they then went out to Bethany to join the
  waiting family of Jesus. David abode there in Bethany with Martha and Mary
  until after they had disposed of their earthly possessions, and he accompanied
  them on their journey to join their brother, Lazarus, at Philadelphia.

  190:1.10 In about one week from this time John Zebedee took Mary the mother of
  Jesus to his home in Bethsaida. James, Jesus' eldest brother, remained with
  his family in Jerusalem. Ruth remained at Bethany with Lazarus's sisters. The
  rest of Jesus' family returned to Galilee. David Zebedee left Bethany with
  Martha and Mary, for Philadelphia, early in June, the day after his marriage
  to Ruth, Jesus' youngest sister.





2. JESUS' APPEARANCE AT BETHANY

  190:2.1 From the time of the morontia resurrection until the hour of his
  spirit ascension on high, Jesus made nineteen separate appearances in visible
  form to his believers on earth. He did not appear to his enemies nor to those
  who could not make spiritual use of his manifestation in visible form. His
  first appearance was to the five women at the tomb; his second, to Mary
  Magdalene, also at the tomb.

  190:2.2 The third appearance occurred about noon of this Sunday at Bethany.
  Shortly after noontide, Jesus' oldest brother, James, was standing in the
  garden of Lazarus before the empty tomb of the resurrected brother of Martha
  and Mary, turning over in his mind the news brought to them about one hour
  previously by the messenger of David. James had always inclined to believe in
  his eldest brother's mission on earth, but he had long since lost contact with
  Jesus' work and had drifted into grave doubting regarding the later claims of
  the apostles that Jesus was the Messiah. The whole family was startled and
  well-nigh confounded by the news brought by the messenger. Even as James stood
  before Lazarus's empty tomb, Mary Magdalene arrived on the scene and was
  excitedly relating to the family her experiences of the early morning hours at
  the tomb of Joseph. Before she had finished, David Zebedee and his mother
  arrived. Ruth, of course, believed the report, and so did Jude after he had
  talked with David and Salome.

  190:2.3 In the meantime, as they looked for James and before they found him,
  while he stood there in the garden near the tomb, he became aware of a near-by
  presence, as if someone had touched him on the shoulder; and when he turned to
  look, he beheld the gradual appearance of a strange form by his side. He was
  too much amazed to speak and too frightened to flee. And then the strange form
  spoke, saying: "James, I come to call you to the service of the kingdom. Join
  earnest hands with your brethren and follow after me." When James heard his
  name spoken, he knew that it was his eldest brother, Jesus, who had addressed
  him. They all had more or less difficulty in recognizing the morontia form of
  the Master, but few of them had any trouble recognizing his voice or otherwise
  identifying his charming personality when he once began to communicate with
  them.

  190:2.4 When James perceived that Jesus was addressing him, he started to fall
  to his knees, exclaiming, "My father and my brother," but Jesus bade him stand
  while he spoke with him. And they walked through the garden and talked for
  almost three minutes; talked over experiences of former days and forecast the
  events of the near future. As they neared the house, Jesus said, "Farewell,
  James, until I greet you all together."

  190:2.5 James rushed into the house, even while they looked for him at
  Bethpage, exclaiming: "I have just seen Jesus and talked with him, visited
  with him. He is not dead; he has risen! He vanished before me, saying,
  `Farewell until I greet you all together.'" He had scarcely finished speaking
  when Jude returned, and he retold the experience of meeting Jesus in the
  garden for the benefit of Jude. And they all began to believe in the
  resurrection of Jesus. James now announced that he would not return to
  Galilee, and David exclaimed: "He is seen not only by excited women; even
  stronghearted men have begun to see him. I expect to see him myself."

  190:2.6 And David did not long wait, for the fourth appearance of Jesus to
  mortal recognition occurred shortly before two o'clock in this very home of
  Martha and Mary, when he appeared visibly before his earthly family and their
  friends, twenty in all. The Master appeared in the open back door, saying:
  "Peace be upon you. Greetings to those once near me in the flesh and
  fellowship for my brothers and sisters in the kingdom of heaven. How could you
  doubt? Why have you lingered so long before choosing to follow the light of
  truth with a whole heart? Come, therefore, all of you into the fellowship of
  the Spirit of Truth in the Father's kingdom." As they began to recover from
  the first shock of their amazement and to move toward him as if to embrace
  him, he vanished from their sight.

  190:2.7 They all wanted to rush off to the city to tell the doubting apostles
  about what had happened, but James restrained them. Mary Magdalene, only, was
  permitted to return to Joseph's house. James forbade their publishing abroad
  the fact of this morontia visit because of certain things which Jesus had said
  to him as they conversed in the garden. But James never revealed more of his
  visit with the risen Master on this day at the Lazarus home in Bethany.





3. AT THE HOME OF JOSEPH

  190:3.1 The fifth morontia manifestation of Jesus to the recognition of mortal
  eyes occurred in the presence of some twenty-five women believers assembled at
  the home of Joseph of Arimathea, at about fifteen minutes past four o'clock on
  this same Sunday afternoon. Mary Magdalene had returned to Joseph's house just
  a few minutes before this appearance. James, Jesus' brother, had requested
  that nothing be said to the apostles concerning the Master's appearance at
  Bethany. He had not asked Mary to refrain from reporting the occurrence to her
  sister believers. Accordingly, after Mary had pledged all the women to
  secrecy, she proceeded to relate what had so recently happened while she was
  with Jesus' family at Bethany. And she was in the very midst of this thrilling
  recital when a sudden and solemn hush fell over them; they beheld in their
  very midst the fully visible form of the risen Jesus. He greeted them, saying:
  "Peace be upon you. In the fellowship of the kingdom there shall be neither
  Jew nor gentile, rich nor poor, free nor bond, man nor woman. You also are
  called to publish the good news of the liberty of mankind through the gospel
  of sonship with God in the kingdom of heaven. Go to all the world proclaiming
  this gospel and confirming believers in the faith thereof. And while you do
  this, forget not to minister to the sick and strengthen those who are
  fainthearted and fear-ridden. And I will be with you always, even to the ends
  of the earth." And when he had thus spoken, he vanished from their sight,
  while the women fell on their faces and worshiped in silence.

  190:3.2 Of the five morontia appearances of Jesus occurring up to this time,
  Mary Magdalene had witnessed four.

  190:3.3 As a result of sending out the messengers during the midforenoon and
  from the unconscious leakage of intimations concerning this appearance of
  Jesus at Joseph's house, word began to come to the rulers of the Jews during
  the early evening that it was being reported about the city that Jesus had
  risen, and that many persons were claiming to have seen him. The Sanhedrists
  were thoroughly aroused by these rumors. After a hasty consultation with
  Annas, Caiaphas called a meeting of the Sanhedrin to convene at eight o'clock
  that evening. It was at this meeting that action was taken to throw out of the
  synagogues any person who made mention of Jesus' resurrection. It was even
  suggested that any one claiming to have seen him should be put to death; this
  proposal, however, did not come to a vote since the meeting broke up in
  confusion bordering on actual panic. They had dared to think they were through
  with Jesus. They were about to discover that their real trouble with the man
  of Nazareth had just begun.





4. APPEARANCE TO THE GREEKS

  190:4.1 About half past four o'clock, at the home of one Flavius, the Master
  made his sixth morontia appearance to some forty Greek believers there
  assembled. While they were engaged in discussing the reports of the Master's
  resurrection, he manifested himself in their midst, notwithstanding that the
  doors were securely fastened, and speaking to them, said: "Peace be upon you.
  While the Son of Man appeared on earth among the Jews, he came to minister to
  all men. In the kingdom of my Father there shall be neither Jew nor gentile;
  you will all be brethren -- the sons of God. Go you, therefore, to all the
  world, proclaiming this gospel of salvation as you have received it from the
  ambassadors of the kingdom, and I will fellowship you in the brotherhood of
  the Father's sons of faith and truth." And when he had thus charged them, he
  took leave, and they saw him no more. They remained within the house all
  evening; they were too much overcome with awe and fear to venture forth.
  Neither did any of these Greeks sleep that night; they stayed awake discussing
  these things and hoping that the Master might again visit them. Among this
  group were many of the Greeks who were at Gethsemane when the soldiers
  arrested Jesus and Judas betrayed him with a kiss.

  190:4.2 Rumors of Jesus' resurrection and reports concerning the many
  appearances to his followers are spreading rapidly, and the whole city is
  being wrought up to a high pitch of excitement. Already the Master has
  appeared to his family, to the women, and to the Greeks, and presently he
  manifests himself in the midst of the apostles. The Sanhedrin is soon to begin
  the consideration of these new problems which have been so suddenly thrust
  upon the Jewish rulers. Jesus thinks much about his apostles but desires that
  they be left alone for a few more hours of solemn reflection and thoughtful
  consideration before he visits them.





5. THE WALK WITH TWO BROTHERS

  190:5.1 At Emmaus, about seven miles west of Jerusalem, there lived two
  brothers, shepherds, who had spent the Passover week in Jerusalem attending
  upon the sacrifices, ceremonials, and feasts. Cleopas, the elder, was a
  partial believer in Jesus; at least he had been cast out of the synagogue. His
  brother, Jacob, was not a believer, although he was much intrigued by what he
  had heard about the Master's teachings and works.

  190:5.2 On this Sunday afternoon, about three miles out of Jerusalem and a few
  minutes before five o'clock, as these two brothers trudged along the road to
  Emmaus, they talked in great earnestness about Jesus, his teachings, work, and
  more especially concerning the rumors that his tomb was empty, and that
  certain of the women had talked with him. Cleopas was half a mind to believe
  these reports, but Jacob was insistent that the whole affair was probably a
  fraud. While they thus argued and debated as they made their way toward home,
  the morontia manifestation of Jesus, his seventh appearance, came alongside
  them as they journeyed on. Cleopas had often heard Jesus teach and had eaten
  with him at the homes of Jerusalem believers on several occasions. But he did
  not recognize the Master even when he spoke freely with them.

  190:5.3 After walking a short way with them, Jesus said: "What were the words
  you exchanged so earnestly as I came upon you?" And when Jesus had spoken,
  they stood still and viewed him with sad surprise. Said Cleopas: "Can it be
  that you sojourn in Jerusalem and know not the things which have recently
  happened?" Then asked the Master, "What things?" Cleopas replied: "If you do
  not know about these matters, you are the only one in Jerusalem who has not
  heard these rumors concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in
  word and in deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our
  rulers delivered him up to the Romans and demanded that they crucify him. Now
  many of us had hoped that it was he who would deliver Israel from the yoke of
  the gentiles. But that is not all. It is now the third day since he was
  crucified, and certain women have this day amazed us by declaring that very
  early this morning they went to his tomb and found it empty. And these same
  women insist that they talked with this man; they maintain that he has risen
  from the dead. And when the women reported this to the men, two of his
  apostles ran to the tomb and likewise found it empty" -- and here Jacob
  interrupted his brother to say, "but they did not see Jesus."

  190:5.4 As they walked along, Jesus said to them: "How slow you are to
  comprehend the truth! When you tell me that it is about the teachings and work
  of this man that you have your discussions, then may I enlighten you since I
  am more than familiar with these teachings. Do you not remember that this
  Jesus always taught that his kingdom was not of this world, and that all men,
  being the sons of God, should find liberty and freedom in the spiritual joy of
  the fellowship of the brotherhood of loving service in this new kingdom of the
  truth of the heavenly Father's love? Do you not recall how this Son of Man
  proclaimed the salvation of God for all men, ministering to the sick and
  afflicted and setting free those who were bound by fear and enslaved by evil?
  Do you not know that this man of Nazareth told his disciples that he must go
  to Jerusalem, be delivered up to his enemies, who would put him to death, and
  that he would arise on the third day? Have you not been told all this? And
  have you never read in the Scriptures concerning this day of salvation for Jew
  and gentile, where it says that in him shall all the families of the earth be
  blessed; that he will hear the cry of the needy and save the souls of the poor
  who seek him; that all nations shall call him blessed? That such a Deliverer
  shall be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. That he will feed the
  flock like a true shepherd, gathering the lambs in his arms and tenderly
  carrying them in his bosom. That he will open the eyes of the spiritually
  blind and bring the prisoners of despair out into full liberty and light; that
  all who sit in darkness shall see the great light of eternal salvation. That
  he will bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives of sin,
  and open up the prison to those who are enslaved by fear and bound by evil.
  That he will comfort those who mourn and bestow upon them the joy of salvation
  in the place of sorrow and heaviness.

That he shall be the desire of all nations and the everlasting joy of those who
seek righteousness. That this Son of truth and righteousness shall rise upon the
world with healing light and saving power; even that he will save his people
from their sins; that he will really seek and save those who are lost. That he
will not destroy the weak but minister salvation to all who hunger and thirst
for righteousness. That those who believe in him shall have eternal life. That
he will pour out his spirit upon all flesh, and that this Spirit of Truth shall
be in each believer a well of water, springing up into everlasting life. Did you
not understand how great was the gospel of the kingdom which this man delivered
to you? Do you not perceive how great a salvation has come upon you?"

  190:5.5 By this time they had come near to the village where these brothers
  dwelt. Not a word had these two men spoken since Jesus began to teach them as
  they walked along the way. Soon they drew up in front of their humble dwelling
  place, and Jesus was about to take leave of them, going on down the road, but
  they constrained him to come in and abide with them. They insisted that it was
  near nightfall, and that he tarry with them. Finally Jesus consented, and very
  soon after they went into the house, they sat down to eat. They gave him the
  bread to bless, and as he began to break and hand to them, their eyes were
  opened, and Cleopas recognized that their guest was the Master himself. And
  when he said, "It is the Master -- ," the morontia Jesus vanished from their
  sight.

  190:5.6 And then they said, the one to the other, "No wonder our hearts burned
  within us as he spoke to us while we walked along the road! and while he
  opened up to our understanding the teachings of the Scriptures!"

  190:5.7 They would not stop to eat. They had seen the morontia Master, and
  they rushed from the house, hastening back to Jerusalem to spread the good
  news of the risen Savior.

  190:5.8 About nine o'clock that evening and just before the Master appeared to
  the ten, these two excited brothers broke in upon the apostles in the upper
  chamber, declaring that they had seen Jesus and talked with him. And they told
  all that Jesus had said to them and how they had not discerned who he was
  until the time of the breaking of the bread.




PAPER 191


 APPEARANCES TO THE APOSTLES AND OTHER LEADERS

  191:0.1 RESURRECTION Sunday was a terrible day in the lives of the apostles;
  ten of them spent the larger part of the day in the upper chamber behind
  barred doors. They might have fled from Jerusalem, but they were afraid of
  being arrested by the agents of the Sanhedrin if they were found abroad.
  Thomas was brooding over his troubles alone at Bethpage. He would have fared
  better had he remained with his fellow apostles, and he would have aided them
  to direct their discussions along more helpful lines.

  191:0.2 All day long John upheld the idea that Jesus had risen from the dead.
  He recounted no less than five different times when the Master had affirmed he
  would rise again and at least three times when he alluded to the third day.
  John's attitude had considerable influence on them, especially on his brother
  James and on Nathaniel. John would have influenced them more if he had not
  been the youngest member of the group.

  191:0.3 Their isolation had much to do with their troubles. John Mark kept
  them in touch with developments about the temple and informed them as to the
  many rumors gaining headway in the city, but it did not occur to him to gather
  up news from the different groups of believers to whom Jesus had already
  appeared. That was the kind of service which had heretofore been rendered by
  the messengers of David, but they were all absent on their last assignment as
  heralds of the resurrection to those groups of believers who dwelt remote from
  Jerusalem. For the first time in all these years the apostles realized how
  much they had been dependent on David's messengers for their daily information
  regarding the affairs of the kingdom.

  191:0.4 All this day Peter characteristically vacillated emotionally between
  faith and doubt concerning the Master's resurrection. Peter could not get away
  from the sight of the grave cloths resting there in the tomb as if the body of
  Jesus had just evaporated from within. "But," reasoned Peter, "if he has risen
  and can show himself to the women, why does he not show himself to us, his
  apostles?" Peter would grow sorrowful when he thought that maybe Jesus did not
  come to them on account of his presence among the apostles, because he had
  denied him that night in Annas's courtyard. And then would he cheer himself
  with the word brought by the women, "Go tell my apostles -- and Peter." But to
  derive encouragement from this message implied that he must believe that the
  women had really seen and heard the risen Master. Thus Peter alternated
  between faith and doubt throughout the whole day, until a little after eight
  o'clock, when he ventured out into the courtyard. Peter thought to remove
  himself from among the apostles so that he might not prevent Jesus' coming to
  them because of his denial of the Master.

  191:0.5 James Zebedee at first advocated that they all go to the tomb; he was
  strongly in favor of doing something to get to the bottom of the mystery. It
  was Nathaniel who prevented them from going out in public in response to
  James's urging, and he did this by reminding them of Jesus' warning against
  unduly jeopardizing their lives at this time. By noontime James had settled
  down with the others to watchful waiting. He said little; he was tremendously
  disappointed because Jesus did not appear to them, and he did not know of the
  Master's many appearances to other groups and individuals.

  191:0.6 Andrew did much listening this day. He was exceedingly perplexed by
  the situation and had more than his share of doubts, but he at least enjoyed a
  certain sense of freedom from responsibility for the guidance of his fellow
  apostles. He was indeed grateful that the Master had released him from the
  burdens of leadership before they fell upon these distracting times.

  191:0.7 More than once during the long and weary hours of this tragic day, the
  only sustaining influence of the group was the frequent contribution of
  Nathaniel's characteristic philosophic counsel. He was really the controlling
  influence among the ten throughout the entire day. Never once did he express
  himself concerning either belief or disbelief in the Master's resurrection.
  But as the day wore on, he became increasingly inclined toward believing that
  Jesus had fulfilled his promise to rise again.

  191:0.8 Simon Zelotes was too much crushed to participate in the discussions.
  Most of the time he reclined on a couch in a corner of the room with his face
  to the wall; he did not speak half a dozen times throughout the whole day. His
  concept of the kingdom had crashed, and he could not discern that the Master's
  resurrection could materially change the situation. His disappointment was
  very personal and altogether too keen to be recovered from on short notice,
  even in the face of such a stupendous fact as the resurrection.

  191:0.9 Strange to record, the usually inexpressive Philip did much talking
  throughout the afternoon of this day. During the forenoon he had little to
  say, but all afternoon he asked questions of the other apostles. Peter was
  often annoyed by Philip's questions, but the others took his inquiries good-
  naturedly. Philip was particularly desirous of knowing, provided Jesus had
  really risen from the grave, whether his body would bear the physical marks of
  the crucifixion.

  191:0.10 Matthew was highly confused; he listened to the discussions of his
  fellows but spent most of the time turning over in his mind the problem of
  their future finances. Regardless of Jesus' supposed resurrection, Judas was
  gone, David had unceremoniously turned the funds over to him, and they were
  without an authoritative leader. Before Matthew got around to giving serious
  consideration to their arguments about the resurrection, he had already seen
  the Master face to face.

  191:0.11 The Alpheus twins took little part in these serious discussions; they
  were fairly busy with their customary ministrations. One of them expressed the
  attitude of both when he said, in reply to a question asked by Philip: "We do
  not understand about the resurrection, but our mother says she talked with the
  Master, and we believe her."

  191:0.12 Thomas was in the midst of one of his typical spells of despairing
  depression. He slept a portion of the day and walked over the hills the rest
  of the time. He felt the urge to rejoin his fellow apostles, but the desire to
  be by himself was the stronger.

  191:0.13 The Master put off the first morontia appearance to the apostles for
  a number of reasons. First, he wanted them to have time, after they heard of
  his resurrection, to think well over what he had told them about his death and
  resurrection when he was still with them in the flesh. The Master wanted Peter
  to wrestle through with some of his peculiar difficulties before he manifested
  himself to them all. In the second place, he desired that Thomas should be
  with them at the time of his first appearance. John Mark located Thomas at the
  home of Simon in Bethpage early this Sunday morning, bringing word to that
  effect to the apostles about eleven o'clock. Any time during this day Thomas
  would have gone back to them if Nathaniel or any two of the other apostles had
  gone for him. He really wanted to return, but having left as he did the
  evening before, he was too proud to go back of his own accord so soon. By the
  next day he was so depressed that it required almost a week for him to make up
  his mind to return. The apostles waited for him, and he waited for his
  brethren to seek him out and ask him to come back to them. Thomas thus
  remained away from his associates until the next Saturday evening, when, after
  darkness had come on, Peter and John went over to Bethpage and brought him
  back with them. And this is also the reason why they did not go at once to
  Galilee after Jesus first appeared to them; they would not go without Thomas.



1. THE APPEARANCE TO PETER



  191:1.1 It was near half past eight o'clock this Sunday evening when Jesus
  appeared to Simon Peter in the garden of the Mark home. This was his eighth
  morontia manifestation. Peter had lived under a heavy burden of doubt and
  guilt ever since his denial of the Master. All day Saturday and this Sunday he
  had fought the fear that, perhaps, he was no longer an apostle. He had
  shuddered at the fate of Judas and even thought that he, too, had betrayed his
  Master. All this afternoon he thought that it might be his presence with the
  apostles that prevented Jesus' appearing to them, provided, of course, he had
  really risen from the dead. And it was to Peter, in such a frame of mind and
  in such a state of soul, that Jesus appeared as the dejected apostle strolled
  among the flowers and shrubs.

  191:1.2 When Peter thought of the loving look of the Master as he passed by on
  Annas's porch, and as he turned over in his mind that wonderful message
  brought him early that morning by the women who came from the empty tomb, "Go
  tell my apostles -- and Peter" -- as he contemplated these tokens of mercy,
  his faith began to surmount his doubts, and he stood still, clenching his
  fists, while he spoke aloud: "I believe he has risen from the dead; I will go
  and tell my brethren." And as he said this, there suddenly appeared in front
  of him the form of a man, who spoke to him in familiar tones, saying: "Peter,
  the enemy desired to have you, but I would not give you up. I knew it was not
  from the heart that you disowned me; therefore I forgave you even before you
  asked; but now must you cease to think about yourself and the troubles of the
  hour while you prepare to carry the good news of the gospel to those who sit
  in darkness. No longer should you be concerned with what you may obtain from
  the kingdom but rather be exercised about what you can give to those who live
  in dire spiritual poverty. Gird yourself, Simon, for the battle of a new day,
  the struggle with spiritual darkness and the evil doubtings of the natural
  minds of men."

  191:1.3 Peter and the morontia Jesus walked through the garden and talked of
  things past, present, and future for almost five minutes. Then the Master
  vanished from his gaze, saying, "Farewell, Peter, until I see you with your
  brethren."

  191:1.4 For a moment, Peter was overcome by the realization that he had talked
  with the risen Master, and that he could be sure he was still an ambassador of
  the kingdom. He had just heard the glorified Master exhort him to go on
  preaching the gospel. And with all this welling up within his heart, he rushed
  to the upper chamber and into the presence of his fellow apostles, exclaiming
  in breathless excitement: "I have seen the Master; he was in the garden. I
  talked with him, and he has forgiven me."

  191:1.5 Peter's declaration that he had seen Jesus in the garden made a
  profound impression upon his fellow apostles, and they were about ready to
  surrender their doubts when Andrew got up and warned them not to be too much
  influenced by his brother's report. Andrew intimated that Peter had seen
  things which were not real before. Although Andrew did not directly allude to
  the vision of the night on the Sea of Galilee wherein Peter claimed to have
  seen the Master coming to them walking on the water, he said enough to betray
  to all present that he had this incident in mind. Simon Peter was very much
  hurt by his brother's insinuations and immediately lapsed into crestfallen
  silence. The twins felt very sorry for Peter, and they both went over to
  express their sympathy and to say that they believed him and to reassert that
  their own mother had also seen the Master.





2. FIRST APPEARANCE TO THE APOSTLES

  191:2.1 Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, after the departure of
  Cleopas and Jacob, while the Alpheus twins comforted Peter, and while
  Nathaniel remonstrated with Andrew, and as the ten apostles were there
  assembled in the upper chamber with all the doors bolted for fear of arrest,
  the Master, in morontia form, suddenly appeared in the midst of them, saying:
  "Peace be upon you. Why are you so frightened when I appear, as though you had
  seen a spirit? Did I not tell you about these things when I was present with
  you in the flesh? Did I not say to you that the chief priests and the rulers
  would deliver me up to be killed, that one of your own number would betray me,
  and that on the third day I would rise? Wherefore all your doubtings and all
  this discussion about the reports of the women, Cleopas and Jacob, and even
  Peter? How long will you doubt my words and refuse to believe my promises? And
  now that you actually see me, will you believe? Even now one of you is absent.
  When you are gathered together once more, and after all of you know of a
  certainty that the Son of Man has risen from the grave, go hence into Galilee.
  Have faith in God; have faith in one another; and so shall you enter into the
  new service of the kingdom of heaven. I will tarry in Jerusalem with you until
  you are ready to go into Galilee. My peace I leave with you."

  191:2.2 When the morontia Jesus had spoken to them, he vanished in an instant
  from their sight. And they all fell on their faces, praising God and
  venerating their vanished Master. This was the Master's ninth morontia
  appearance.





3. WITH THE MORONTIA CREATURES

  191:3.1 The next day, Monday, was spent wholly with the morontia creatures
  then present on Urantia. As participants in the Master's morontia-transition
  experience, there had come to Urantia more than one million morontia directors
  and associates, together with transition mortals of various orders from the
  seven mansion worlds of Satania. The morontia Jesus sojourned with these
  splendid intelligences for forty days. He instructed them and learned from
  their directors the life of morontia transition as it is traversed by the
  mortals of the inhabited worlds of Satania as they pass through the system
  morontia spheres.

  191:3.2 About midnight of this Monday the Master's morontia form was adjusted
  for transition to the second stage of morontia progression. When he next
  appeared to his mortal children on earth, it was as a second-stage morontia
  being. As the Master progressed in the morontia career, it became,
  technically, more and more difficult for the morontia intelligences and their
  transforming associates to visualize the Master to mortal and material eyes.

  191:3.3 Jesus made the transit to the third stage of morontia on Friday, April
  14; to the fourth stage on Monday, the 17th; to the fifth stage on Saturday,
  the 22nd; to the sixth stage on Thursday, the 27th; to the seventh stage on
  Tuesday, May 2; to Jerusem citizenship on Sunday, the 7th; and he entered the
  embrace of the Most Highs of Edentia on Sunday, the 14th.

  191:3.4 In this manner did Michael of Nebadon complete his service of universe
  experience since he had already, in connection with his previous bestowals,
  experienced to the full the life of the ascendant mortals of time and space
  from the sojourn on the headquarters of the constellation even on to, and
  through, the service of the headquarters of the superuniverse. And it was by
  these very morontia experiences that the Creator Son of Nebadon really
  finished and acceptably terminated his seventh and final universe bestowal.





4. THE TENTH APPEARANCE (AT PHILADELPHIA)

  191:4.1 The tenth morontia manifestation of Jesus to mortal recognition
  occurred a short time after eight o'clock on Tuesday, April 11, at
  Philadelphia, where he showed himself to Abner and Lazarus and some one
  hundred and fifty of their associates, including more than fifty of the
  evangelistic corps of the seventy. This appearance occurred just after the
  opening of a special meeting in the synagogue which had been called by Abner
  to discuss the crucifixion of Jesus and the more recent report of the
  resurrection which had been brought by David's messenger. Inasmuch as the
  resurrected Lazarus was now a member of this group of believers, it was not
  difficult for them to believe the report that Jesus had risen from the dead.

  191:4.2 The meeting in the synagogue was just being opened by Abner and
  Lazarus, who were standing together in the pulpit, when the entire audience of
  believers saw the form of the Master appear suddenly. He stepped forward from
  where he had appeared between Abner and Lazarus, neither of whom had observed
  him, and saluting the company, said:

  191:4.3 "Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Father in heaven,
  and that there is but one gospel of the kingdom -- the good news of the gift
  of eternal life which men receive by faith. As you rejoice in your loyalty to
  the gospel, pray the Father of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and
  greater love for your brethren. You are to love all men as I have loved you;
  you are to serve all men as I have served you. With understanding sympathy and
  brotherly affection, fellowship all your brethren who are dedicated to the
  proclamation of the good news, whether they be Jew or gentile, Greek or Roman,
  Persian or Ethiopian. John proclaimed the kingdom in advance; you have
  preached the gospel in power; the Greeks already teach the good news; and I am
  soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my
  brethren, who have so unselfishly dedicated their lives to the enlightenment
  of their fellows who sit in spiritual darkness. You are all the children of
  light; therefore stumble not into the misunderstanding entanglements of mortal
  suspicion and human intolerance. If you are ennobled, by the grace of faith,
  to love unbelievers, should you not also equally love those who are your
  fellow believers in the far-spreading household of faith? Remember, as you
  love one another, all men will know that you are my disciples.

  191:4.4 "Go, then, into all the world proclaiming this gospel of the
  fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men to all nations and races and ever
  be wise in your choice of methods for presenting the good news to the
  different races and tribes of mankind. Freely you have received this gospel of
  the kingdom, and you will freely give the good news to all nations. Fear not
  the resistance of evil, for I am with you always, even to the end of the ages.
  And my peace I leave with you."

  191:4.5 When he had said, "My peace I leave with you," he vanished from their
  sight. With the exception of one of his appearances in Galilee, where upward
  of five hundred believers saw him at one time, this group in Philadelphia
  embraced the largest number of mortals who saw him on any single occasion.

  191:4.6 Early the next morning, even while the apostles tarried in Jerusalem
  awaiting the emotional recovery of Thomas, these believers at Philadelphia
  went forth proclaiming that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead.

  191:4.7 The next day, Wednesday, Jesus spent without interruption in the
  society of his morontia associates, and during the midafternoon hours he
  received visiting morontia delegates from the mansion worlds of every local
  system of inhabited spheres throughout the constellation of Norlatiadek. And
  they all rejoiced to know their Creator as one of their own order of universe
  intelligence.





5. SECOND APPEARANCE TO THE APOSTLES



  191:5.1 Thomas spent a lonesome week alone with himself in the hills around
  about Olivet. During this time he saw only those at Simon's house and John
  Mark. It was about nine o'clock on Saturday, April 15, when the two apostles
  found him and took him back with them to their rendezvous at the Mark home.
  The next day Thomas listened to the telling of the stories of the Master's
  various appearances, but he steadfastly refused to believe. He maintained that
  Peter had enthused them into thinking they had seen the Master. Nathaniel
  reasoned with him, but it did no good. There was an emotional stubbornness
  associated with his customary doubtfulness, and this state of mind, coupled
  with his chagrin at having run away from them, conspired to create a situation
  of isolation which even Thomas himself did not fully understand. He had
  withdrawn from his fellows, he had gone his own way, and now, even when he was
  back among them, he unconsciously tended to assume an attitude of
  disagreement. He was slow to surrender; he disliked to give in. Without
  intending it, he really enjoyed the attention paid him; he derived unconscious
  satisfaction from the efforts of all his fellows to convince and convert him.
  He had missed them for a full week, and he obtained considerable pleasure from
  their persistent attentions.

  191:5.2 They were having their evening meal a little after six o'clock, with
  Peter sitting on one side of Thomas and Nathaniel on the other, when the
  doubting apostle said: "I will not believe unless I see the Master with my own
  eyes and put my finger in the mark of the nails." As they thus sat at supper,
  and while the doors were securely shut and barred, the morontia Master
  suddenly appeared inside the curvature of the table and, standing directly in
  front of Thomas, said:

  191:5.3 "Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tarried that I might appear
  again when you were all present to hear once more the commission to go into
  all the world and preach this gospel of the kingdom. Again I tell you: As the
  Father sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have revealed the Father,
  so shall you reveal the divine love, not merely with words, but in your daily
  living. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love
  men. You are not merely to proclaim the joys of heaven but also to exhibit in
  your daily experience these spirit realities of the divine life since you
  already have eternal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have
  faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you
  will not hide your light here behind closed doors; you will make known the
  love and the mercy of God to all mankind. Through fear you now flee from the
  facts of a disagreeable experience, but when you shall have been baptized with
  the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joyously go forth to meet the new
  experiences of proclaiming the good news of eternal life in the kingdom of
  God. You may tarry here and in Galilee for a short season while you recover
  from the shock of the transition from the false security of the authority of
  traditionalism to the new order of the authority of facts, truth, and faith in
  the supreme realities of living experience. Your mission to the world is
  founded on the fact that I lived a God-revealing life among you; on the truth
  that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall consist in the
  life which you will live among men -- the actual and living experience of
  loving men and serving them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith
  reveal your light to the world; let the revelation of truth open the eyes
  blinded by tradition; let your loving service effectually destroy the
  prejudice engendered by ignorance. By so drawing close to your fellow men in
  understanding sympathy and with unselfish devotion, you will lead them into a
  saving knowledge of the Father's love. The Jews have extolled goodness; the
  Greeks have exalted beauty; the Hindus preach devotion; the far-away ascetics
  teach reverence; the Romans demand loyalty; but I require of my disciples
  life, even a life of loving service for your brothers in the flesh."

  191:5.4 When the Master had so spoken, he looked down into the face of Thomas
  and said: "And you, Thomas, who said you would not believe unless you could
  see me and put your finger in the nail marks of my hands, have now beheld me
  and heard my words; and though you see no nail marks on my hands, since I am
  raised in the form that you also shall have when you depart from this world,
  what will you say to your brethren? You will acknowledge the truth, for
  already in your heart you had begun to believe even when you so stoutly
  asserted your unbelief. Your doubts, Thomas, always most stubbornly assert
  themselves just as they are about to crumble. Thomas, I bid you be not
  faithless but believing -- and I know you will believe, even with a whole
  heart."

  191:5.5 When Thomas heard these words, he fell on his knees before the
  morontia Master and exclaimed, "I believe! My Lord and my Master!" Then said
  Jesus to Thomas: "You have believed, Thomas, because you have really seen and
  heard me. Blessed are those in the ages to come who will believe even though
  they have not seen with the eye of flesh nor heard with the mortal ear."

  191:5.6 And then, as the Master's form moved over near the head of the table,
  he addressed them all, saying: "And now go all of you to Galilee, where I will
  presently appear to you." After he said this, he vanished from their sight.

  191:5.7 The eleven apostles were now fully convinced that Jesus had risen from
  the dead, and very early the next morning, before the break of day, they
  started out for Galilee.



6. THE ALEXANDRIAN APPEARANCE



  191:6.1 While the eleven apostles were on the way to Galilee, drawing near
  their journey's end, on Tuesday evening, April 18, at about half past eight
  o'clock, Jesus appeared to Rodan and some eighty other believers, in
  Alexandria. This was the Master's twelfth appearance in morontia form. Jesus
  appeared before these Greeks and Jews at the conclusion of the report of
  David's messenger regarding the crucifixion. This messenger, being the fifth
  in the Jerusalem-Alexandria relay of runners, had arrived in Alexandria late
  that afternoon, and when he had delivered his message to Rodan, it was decided
  to call the believers together to receive this tragic word from the messenger
  himself. At about eight o'clock, the messenger, Nathan of Busiris, came before
  this group and told them in detail all that had been told him by the preceding
  runner. Nathan ended his touching recital with these words: "But David, who
  sends us this word, reports that the Master, in foretelling his death,
  declared that he would rise again." Even as Nathan spoke, the morontia Master
  appeared there in full view of all. And when Nathan sat down, Jesus said:

  191:6.2 "Peace be upon you. That which my Father sent me into the world to
  establish belongs not to a race, a nation, nor to a special group of teachers
  or preachers. This gospel of the kingdom belongs to both Jew and gentile, to
  rich and poor, to free and bond, to male and female, even to the little
  children. And you are all to proclaim this gospel of love and truth by the
  lives which you live in the flesh. You shall love one another with a new and
  startling affection, even as I have loved you. You will serve mankind with a
  new and amazing devotion, even as I have served you. And when men see you so
  love them, and when they behold how fervently you serve them, they will
  perceive that you have become faith-fellows of the kingdom of heaven, and they
  will follow after the Spirit of Truth which they see in your lives, to the
  finding of eternal salvation.

  191:6.3 "As the Father sent me into this world, even so now send I you. You
  are all called to carry the good news to those who sit in darkness. This
  gospel of the kingdom belongs to all who believe it; it shall not be committed
  to the custody of mere priests. Soon will the Spirit of Truth come upon you,
  and he shall lead you into all truth. Go you, therefore, into all the world
  preaching this gospel, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the
  ages."

  191:6.4 When the Master had so spoken, he vanished from their sight. All that
  night these believers remained there together recounting their experiences as
  kingdom believers and listening to the many words of Rodan and his associates.
  And they all believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. Imagine the surprise
  of David's herald of the resurrection, who arrived the second day after this,
  when they replied to his announcement, saying: "Yes, we know, for we have seen
  him. He appeared to us day before yesterday."




 PAPER 192


 APPEARANCES IN GALILEE



  192:0.1 BY THE time the apostles left Jerusalem for Galilee, the Jewish
  leaders had quieted down considerably. Since Jesus appeared only to his family
  of kingdom believers, and since the apostles were in hiding and did no public
  preaching, the rulers of the Jews concluded that the gospel movement was,
  after all, effectually crushed. They were, of course, disconcerted by the
  increasing spread of rumors that Jesus had risen from the dead, but they
  depended upon the bribed guards effectively to counteract all such reports by
  their reiteration of the story that a band of his followers had removed the
  body.

  192:0.2 From this time on, until the apostles were dispersed by the rising
  tide of persecution, Peter was the generally recognized head of the apostolic
  corps. Jesus never gave him any such authority, and his fellow apostles never
  formally elected him to such a position of responsibility; he naturally
  assumed it and held it by common consent and also because he was their chief
  preacher. From now on public preaching became the main business of the
  apostles. After their return from Galilee, Matthias, whom they chose to take
  the place of Judas, became their treasurer.

  192:0.3 During the week they tarried in Jerusalem, Mary the mother of Jesus
  spent much of the time with the women believers who were stopping at the home
  of Joseph of Arimathea.

  192:0.4 Early this Monday morning when the apostles departed for Galilee, John
  Mark went along. He followed them out of the city, and when they had passed
  well beyond Bethany, he boldly came up among them, feeling confident they
  would not send him back.

  192:0.5 The apostles paused several times on the way to Galilee to tell the
  story of their risen Master and therefore did not arrive at Bethsaida until
  very late on Wednesday night. It was noontime on Thursday before they were all
  awake and ready to partake of breakfast.





1. APPEARANCE BY THE LAKE

  192:1.1 About six o'clock Friday morning, April 21, the morontia Master made
  his thirteenth appearance, the first in Galilee, to the ten apostles as their
  boat drew near the shore close to the usual landing place at Bethsaida.

  192:1.2 After the apostles had spent the afternoon and early evening of
  Thursday in waiting at the Zebedee home, Simon Peter suggested that they go
  fishing. When Peter proposed the fishing trip, all of the apostles decided to
  go along. All night they toiled with the nets but caught no fish. They did not
  much mind the failure to make a catch, for they had many interesting
  experiences to talk over, things which had so recently happened to them at
  Jerusalem. But when daylight came, they decided to return to Bethsaida. As
  they neared the shore, they saw someone on the beach, near the boat landing,
  standing by a fire. At first they thought it was John Mark, who had come down
  to welcome them back with their catch, but as they drew nearer the shore, they
  saw they were mistaken -- the man was too tall for John. It had occurred to
  none of them that the person on the shore was the Master. They did not
  altogether understand why Jesus wanted to meet with them amidst the scenes of
  their earlier associations and out in the open in contact with nature, far
  away from the shut-in environment of Jerusalem with its tragic associations of
  fear, betrayal, and death. He had told them that, if they would go into
  Galilee, he would meet them there, and he was about to fulfill that promise.

  192:1.3 As they dropped anchor and prepared to enter the small boat for going
  ashore, the man on the beach called to them, "Lads, have you caught anything?"
  And when they answered, "No," he spoke again. "Cast the net on the right side
  of the boat, and you will find fish." While they did not know it was Jesus who
  had directed them, with one accord they cast in the net as they had been
  instructed, and immediately it was filled, so much so that they were hardly
  able to draw it up. Now, John Zebedee was quick of perception, and when he saw
  the heavy-laden net, he perceived that it was the Master who had spoken to
  them. When this thought came into his mind, he leaned over and whispered to
  Peter, "It is the Master." Peter was ever a man of thoughtless action and
  impetuous devotion; so when John whispered this in his ear, he quickly arose
  and cast himself into the water that he might the sooner reach the Master's
  side. His brethren came up close behind him, having come ashore in the small
  boat, hauling the net of fishes after them.

  192:1.4 By this time John Mark was up and, seeing the apostles coming ashore
  with the heavy-laden net, ran down the beach to greet them; and when he saw
  eleven men instead of ten, he surmised that the unrecognized one was the risen
  Jesus, and as the astonished ten stood by in silence, the youth rushed up to
  the Master and, kneeling at his feet, said, "My Lord and my Master." And then
  Jesus spoke, not as he had in Jerusalem, when he greeted them with "Peace be
  upon you," but in commonplace tones he addressed John Mark: "Well, John, I am
  glad to see you again and in carefree Galilee, where we can have a good visit.
  Stay with us, John, and have breakfast."

  192:1.5 As Jesus talked with the young man, the ten were so astonished and
  surprised that they neglected to haul the net of fish in upon the beach. Now
  spoke Jesus: "Bring in your fish and prepare some for breakfast. Already we
  have the fire and much bread."

  192:1.6 While John Mark had paid homage to the Master, Peter had for a moment
  been shocked at the sight of the coals of fire glowing there on the beach; the
  scene reminded him so vividly of the midnight fire of charcoal in the
  courtyard of Annas, where he had disowned the Master, but he shook himself
  and, kneeling at the Master's feet, exclaimed, "My Lord and my Master!"

  192:1.7 Peter then joined his comrades as they hauled in the net. When they
  had landed their catch, they counted the fish, and there were 153 large ones.
  And again was the mistake made of calling this another miraculous catch of
  fish. There was no miracle connected with this episode. It was merely an
  exercise of the Master's preknowledge. He knew the fish were there and
  accordingly directed the apostles where to cast the net.

  192:1.8 Jesus spoke to them, saying: "Come now, all of you, to breakfast. Even
  the twins should sit down while I visit with you; John Mark will dress the
  fish." John Mark brought seven good-sized fish, which the Master put on the
  fire, and when they were cooked, the lad served them to the ten. Then Jesus
  broke the bread and handed it to John, who in turn served it to the hungry
  apostles. When they had all been served, Jesus bade John Mark sit down while
  he himself served the fish and the bread to the lad. And as they ate, Jesus
  visited with them and recounted their many experiences in Galilee and by this
  very lake.



  192:1.9 This was the third time Jesus had manifested himself to the apostles
  as a group. When Jesus first addressed them, asking if they had any fish, they
  did not suspect who he was because it was a common experience for these
  fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, when they came ashore, to be thus accosted by
  the fish merchants of Tarichea, who were usually on hand to buy the fresh
  catches for the drying establishments.



  192:1.10 Jesus visited with the ten apostles and John Mark for more than an
  hour, and then he walked up and down the beach, talking with them two and two
  -- but not the same couples he had at first sent out together to teach. All
  eleven of the apostles had come down from Jerusalem together, but Simon
  Zelotes grew more and more despondent as they drew near Galilee, so that, when
  they reached Bethsaida, he forsook his brethren and returned to his home.

  192:1.11 Before taking leave of them this morning, Jesus directed that two of
  the apostles should volunteer to go to Simon Zelotes and bring him back that
  very day. And Peter and Andrew did so.





2. VISITING WITH THE APOSTLES TWO AND TWO

  192:2.1 When they had finished breakfast, and while the others sat by the
  fire, Jesus beckoned to Peter and to John that they should come with him for a
  stroll on the beach. As they walked along, Jesus said to John, "John, do you
  love me?" And when John answered, "Yes, Master, with all my heart," the Master
  said: "Then, John, give up your intolerance and learn to love men as I have
  loved you. Devote your life to proving that love is the greatest thing in the
  world. It is the love of God that impels men to seek salvation. Love is the
  ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the
  beautiful."

  192:2.2 Jesus then turned toward Peter and asked, "Peter, do you love me?"
  Peter answered, "Lord, you know I love you with all my soul." Then said Jesus:
  "If you love me, Peter, feed my lambs. Do not neglect to minister to the weak,
  the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel without fear or favor; remember
  always that God is no respecter of persons. Serve your fellow men even as I
  have served you; forgive your fellow mortals even as I have forgiven you. Let
  experience teach you the value of meditation and the power of intelligent
  reflection."

  192:2.3 After they had walked along a little farther, the Master turned to
  Peter and asked, "Peter, do you really love me?" And then said Simon, "Yes,
  Lord, you know that I love you." And again said Jesus: "Then take good care of
  my sheep. Be a good and a true shepherd to the flock. Betray not their
  confidence in you. Be not taken by surprise at the enemy's hand. Be on guard
  at all times -- watch and pray."

  192:2.4 When they had gone a few steps farther, Jesus turned to Peter and, for
  the third time, asked, "Peter, do you truly love me?" And then Peter, being
  slightly grieved at the Master's seeming distrust of him, said with
  considerable feeling, "Lord, you know all things, and therefore do you know
  that I really and truly love you." Then said Jesus: "Feed my sheep. Do not
  forsake the flock. Be an example and an inspiration to all your fellow
  shepherds. Love the flock as I have loved you and devote yourself to their
  welfare even as I have devoted my life to your welfare. And follow after me
  even to the end."

  192:2.5 Peter took this last statement literally -- that he should continue to
  follow after him -- and turning to Jesus, he pointed to John, asking, "If I
  follow on after you, what shall this man do?" And then, perceiving that Peter
  had misunderstood his words, Jesus said: "Peter, be not concerned about what
  your brethren shall do. If I will that John should tarry after you are gone,
  even until I come back, what is that to you? Only make sure that you follow
  me."



  192:2.6 This remark spread among the brethren and was received as a statement
  by Jesus to the effect that John would not die before the Master returned, as
  many thought and hoped, to establish the kingdom in power and glory. It was
  this interpretation of what Jesus said that had much to do with getting Simon
  Zelotes back into service, and keeping him at work.



  192:2.7 When they returned to the others, Jesus went for a walk and talk with
  Andrew and James. When they had gone a short distance, Jesus said to Andrew,
  "Andrew, do you trust me?" And when the former chief of the apostles heard
  Jesus ask such a question, he stood still and answered, "Yes, Master, of a
  certainty I trust you, and you know that I do." Then said Jesus: "Andrew, if
  you trust me, trust your brethren more -- even Peter. I once trusted you with
  the leadership of your brethren. Now must you trust others as I leave you to
  go to the Father. When your brethren begin to scatter abroad because of bitter
  persecutions, be a considerate and wise counselor to James my brother in the
  flesh when they put heavy burdens upon him which he is not qualified by
  experience to bear. And then go on trusting, for I will not fail you. When you
  are through on earth, you shall come to me."

  192:2.8 Then Jesus turned to James, asking, "James, do you trust me?" And of
  course James replied, "Yes, Master, I trust you with all my heart." Then said
  Jesus: "James, if you trust me more, you will be less impatient with your
  brethren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the brotherhood
  of believers. Learn to weigh the consequences of your sayings and your doings.
  Remember that the reaping is in accordance with the sowing. Pray for
  tranquillity of spirit and cultivate patience. These graces, with living
  faith, shall sustain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sacrifice.
  But never be dismayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to
  be with me."



  192:2.9 Jesus next talked with Thomas and Nathaniel. Said he to Thomas,
  "Thomas, do you serve me?" Thomas replied, "Yes, Lord, I serve you now and
  always." Then said Jesus: "If you would serve me, serve my brethren in the
  flesh even as I have served you. And be not weary in this well-doing but
  persevere as one who has been ordained by God for this service of love. When
  you have finished your service with me on earth, you shall serve with me in
  glory. Thomas, you must cease doubting; you must grow in faith and the
  knowledge of truth. Believe in God like a child but cease to act so
  childishly. Have courage; be strong in faith and mighty in the kingdom of
  God."

  192:2.10 Then said the Master to Nathaniel, "Nathaniel, do you serve me?" And
  the apostle answered, "Yes, Master, and with an undivided affection." Then
  said Jesus: "If, therefore, you serve me with a whole heart, make sure that
  you are devoted to the welfare of my brethren on earth with tireless
  affection. Admix friendship with your counsel and add love to your philosophy.
  Serve your fellow men even as I have served you. Be faithful to men as I have
  watched over you. Be less critical; expect less of some men and thereby lessen
  the extent of your disappointment. And when the work down here is over, you
  shall serve with me on high."



  192:2.11 After this the Master talked with Matthew and Philip. To Philip he
  said, "Philip, do you obey me?" Philip answered, "Yes, Lord, I will obey you
  even with my life." Then said Jesus: "If you would obey me, go then into the
  lands of the gentiles and proclaim this gospel. The prophets have told you
  that to obey is better than to sacrifice. By faith have you become a God-
  knowing kingdom son. There is but one law to obey -- that is the command to go
  forth proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. Cease to fear men; be unafraid to
  preach the good news of eternal life to your fellows who languish in darkness
  and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy yourself
  with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tidings just as are
  your brethren. And I will go before you and be with you even to the end."

  192:2.12 And then, speaking to Matthew, the Master asked, "Matthew, do you
  have it in your heart to obey me?" Matthew answered, "Yes, Lord, I am fully
  dedicated to doing your will." Then said the Master: "Matthew, if you would
  obey me, go forth to teach all peoples this gospel of the kingdom. No longer
  will you serve your brethren the material things of life; henceforth you are
  also to proclaim the good news of spiritual salvation. From now on have an eye
  single only to obeying your commission to preach this gospel of the Father's
  kingdom. As I have done the Father's will on earth, so shall you fulfill the
  divine commission. Remember, both Jew and gentile are your brethren. Fear no
  man when you proclaim the saving truths of the gospel of the kingdom of
  heaven. And where I go, you shall presently come."



  192:2.13 Then he walked and talked with the Alpheus twins, James and Judas,
  and speaking to both of them, he asked, "James and Judas, do you believe in
  me?" And when they both answered, "Yes, Master, we do believe," he said: "I
  will soon leave you. You see that I have already left you in the flesh. I
  tarry only a short time in this form before I go to my Father. You believe in
  me -- you are my apostles, and you always will be. Go on believing and
  remembering your association with me, when I am gone, and after you have,
  perchance, returned to the work you used to do before you came to live with
  me. Never allow a change in your outward work to influence your allegiance.
  Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never forget that, when
  you are a faith son of God, all upright work of the realm is sacred. Nothing
  which a son of God does can be common. Do your work, therefore, from this time
  on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and
  better worlds where you shall likewise work for me. And in all of this work,
  on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall
  dwell within you."



  192:2.14 It was almost ten o'clock when Jesus returned from his visit with the
  Alpheus twins, and as he left the apostles, he said: "Farewell, until I meet
  you all on the mount of your ordination tomorrow at noontime." When he had
  thus spoken, he vanished from their sight.





3. ON THE MOUNT OF ORDINATION

  192:3.1 At noon on Saturday, April 22, the eleven apostles assembled by
  appointment on the hill near Capernaum, and Jesus appeared among them. This
  meeting occurred on the very mount where the Master had set them apart as his
  apostles and as ambassadors of the Father's kingdom on earth. And this was the
  Master's fourteenth morontia manifestation.

  192:3.2 At this time the eleven apostles knelt in a circle about the Master
  and heard him repeat the charges and saw him re-enact the ordination scene
  even as when they were first set apart for the special work of the kingdom.
  And all of this was to them as a memory of their former consecration to the
  Father's service, except the Master's prayer. When the Master -- the morontia
  Jesus -- now prayed, it was in tones of majesty and with words of power such
  as the apostles had never before heard. Their Master now spoke with the rulers
  of the universes as one who, in his own universe, had had all power and
  authority committed to his hand. And these eleven men never forgot this
  experience of the morontia rededication to the former pledges of
  ambassadorship. The Master spent just one hour on this mount with his
  ambassadors, and when he had taken an affectionate farewell of them, he
  vanished from their sight.



  192:3.3 And no one saw Jesus for a full week. The apostles really had no idea
  what to do, not knowing whether the Master had gone to the Father. In this
  state of uncertainty they tarried at Bethsaida. They were afraid to go fishing
  lest he come to visit them and they miss seeing him. During this entire week
  Jesus was occupied with the morontia creatures on earth and with the affairs
  of the morontia transition which he was experiencing on this world.





4. THE LAKESIDE GATHERING

  192:4.1 Word of the appearances of Jesus was spreading throughout Galilee, and
  every day increasing numbers of believers arrived at the Zebedee home to
  inquire about the Master's resurrection and to find out the truth about these
  reputed appearances. Peter, early in the week, sent out word that a public
  meeting would be held by the seaside the next Sabbath at three o'clock in the
  afternoon.

  192:4.2 Accordingly, on Saturday, April 29, at three o'clock, more than five
  hundred believers from the environs of Capernaum assembled at Bethsaida to
  hear Peter preach his first public sermon since the resurrection. The apostle
  was at his best, and after he had finished his appealing discourse, few of his
  hearers doubted that the Master had risen from the dead.

  192:4.3 Peter ended his sermon, saying: "We affirm that Jesus of Nazareth is
  not dead; we declare that he has risen from the tomb; we proclaim that we have
  seen him and talked with him." Just as he finished making this declaration of
  faith, there by his side, in full view of all these people, the Master
  appeared in morontia form and, speaking to them in familiar accents, said,
  "Peace be upon you, and my peace I leave with you." When he had thus appeared
  and had so spoken to them, he vanished from their sight. This was the
  fifteenth morontia manifestation of the risen Jesus.



  192:4.4 Because of certain things said to the eleven while they were in
  conference with the Master on the mount of ordination, the apostles received
  the impression that their Master would presently make a public appearance
  before a group of the Galilean believers, and that, after he had done so, they
  were to return to Jerusalem. Accordingly, early the next day, Sunday, April
  30, the eleven left Bethsaida for Jerusalem. They did considerable teaching
  and preaching on the way down the Jordan, so that they did not arrive at the
  home of the Marks in Jerusalem until late on Wednesday, May 3.



  192:4.5 This was a sad homecoming for John Mark. Just a few hours before he
  reached home, his father, Elijah Mark, suddenly died from a hemorrhage in the
  brain. Although the thought of the certainty of the resurrection of the dead
  did much to comfort the apostles in their grief, at the same time they truly
  mourned the loss of their good friend, who had been their stanch supporter
  even in the times of great trouble and disappointment. John Mark did all he
  could to comfort his mother and, speaking for her, invited the apostles to
  continue to make their home at her house. And the eleven made this upper
  chamber their headquarters until after the day of Pentecost.



  192:4.6 The apostles had purposely entered Jerusalem after nightfall that they
  might not be seen by the Jewish authorities. Neither did they publicly appear
  in connection with the funeral of Elijah Mark. All the next day they remained
  in quiet seclusion in this eventful upper chamber.

  192:4.7 On Thursday night the apostles had a wonderful meeting in this upper
  chamber and all pledged themselves to go forth in the public preaching of the
  new gospel of the risen Lord except Thomas, Simon Zelotes, and the Alpheus
  twins. Already had begun the first steps of changing the gospel of the kingdom
  -- sonship with God and brotherhood with man -- into the proclamation of the
  resurrection of Jesus. Nathaniel opposed this shift in the burden of their
  public message, but he could not withstand Peter's eloquence, neither could he
  overcome the enthusiasm of the disciples, especially the women believers.

  192:4.8 And so, under the vigorous leadership of Peter and ere the Master
  ascended to the Father, his well-meaning representatives began that subtle
  process of gradually and certainly changing the religion of Jesus into a new
  and modified form of religion about Jesus.




PAPER 193


 FINAL APPEARANCES AND ASCENSION

  193:0.1 THE sixteenth morontia manifestation of Jesus occurred on Friday, May
  5, in the courtyard of Nicodemus, about nine o'clock at night. On this evening
  the Jerusalem believers had made their first attempt to get together since the
  resurrection. Assembled here at this time were the eleven apostles, the
  women's corps and their associates, and about fifty other leading disciples of
  the Master, including a number of the Greeks. This company of believers had
  been visiting informally for more than half an hour when, suddenly, the
  morontia Master appeared in full view and immediately began to instruct them.
  Said Jesus:

  193:0.2 "Peace be upon you. This is the most representative group of believers
  -- apostles and disciples, both men and women -- to which I have appeared
  since the time of my deliverance from the flesh. I now call you to witness
  that I told you beforehand that my sojourn among you must come to an end; I
  told you that presently I must return to the Father. And then I plainly told
  you how the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews would deliver me up to be
  put to death, and that I would rise from the grave. Why, then, did you allow
  yourselves to become so disconcerted by all this when it came to pass? and why
  were you so surprised when I rose from the tomb on the third day? You failed
  to believe me because you heard my words without comprehending the meaning
  thereof.

  193:0.3 "And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the
  mistake of hearing my teaching with the mind while in your hearts you fail to
  comprehend the meaning. From the beginning of my sojourn as one of you, I
  taught you that my one purpose was to reveal my Father in heaven to his
  children on earth. I have lived the God-revealing bestowal that you might
  experience the God-knowing career. I have revealed God as your Father in
  heaven; I have revealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God
  loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact becomes an eternal and
  living truth in your hearts. When, by living faith, you become divinely God-
  conscious, you are then born of the spirit as children of light and life, even
  the eternal life wherewith you shall ascend the universe of universes and
  attain the experience of finding God the Father on Paradise.

  193:0.4 "I admonish you ever to remember that your mission among men is to
  proclaim the gospel of the kingdom -- the reality of the fatherhood of God and
  the truth of the sonship of man. Proclaim the whole truth of the good news,
  not just a part of the saving gospel. Your message is not changed by my
  resurrection experience. Sonship with God, by faith, is still the saving truth
  of the gospel of the kingdom. You are to go forth preaching the love of God
  and the service of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are
  the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize, and daily
  experience, this ennobling truth. My bestowal should help all men to know that
  they are the children of God, but such knowledge will not suffice if they fail
  personally to faith-grasp the saving truth that they are the living spirit
  sons of the eternal Father. The gospel of the kingdom is concerned with the
  love of the Father and the service of his children on earth.

  193:0.5 "Among yourselves, here, you share the knowledge that I have risen
  from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life
  and to take it up again; the Father gives such power to his Paradise Sons. You
  should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowledge that the dead of
  an age entered upon the eternal ascent soon after I left Joseph's new tomb. I
  lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through loving service, become
  God-revealing to your fellow men even as, by loving you and serving you, I
  have become God-revealing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man
  that you, and all other men, might know that you are all indeed the sons of
  God. Therefore, go you now into all the world preaching this gospel of the
  kingdom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your
  fellow mortals as I have served you. Freely you have received, freely give.
  Only tarry here in Jerusalem while I go to the Father, and until I send you
  the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the enlarged truth, and I will go
  with you into all the world. I am with you always, and my peace I leave with
  you."

  193:0.6 When the Master had spoken to them, he vanished from their sight. It
  was near daybreak before these believers dispersed; all night they remained
  together, earnestly discussing the Master's admonitions and contemplating all
  that had befallen them. James Zebedee and others of the apostles also told
  them of their experiences with the morontia Master in Galilee and recited how
  he had three times appeared to them.





1. THE APPEARANCE AT SYCHAR

  193:1.1 About four o'clock on Sabbath afternoon, May 13, the Master appeared
  to Nalda and about seventy-five Samaritan believers near Jacob's well, at
  Sychar. The believers were in the habit of meeting at this place, near where
  Jesus had spoken to Nalda concerning the water of life. On this day, just as
  they had finished their discussions of the reported resurrection, Jesus
  suddenly appeared before them, saying:

  193:1.2 "Peace be upon you. You rejoice to know that I am the resurrection and
  the life, but this will avail you nothing unless you are first born of the
  eternal spirit, thereby coming to possess, by faith, the gift of eternal life.
  If you are the faith sons of my Father, you shall never die; you shall not
  perish. The gospel of the kingdom has taught you that all men are the sons of
  God. And this good news concerning the love of the heavenly Father for his
  children on earth must be carried to all the world. The time has come when you
  worship God neither on Gerizim nor at Jerusalem, but where you are, as you
  are, in spirit and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Salvation
  is the gift of God to all who believe they are his sons. But be not deceived;
  while salvation is the free gift of God and is bestowed upon all who accept it
  by faith, there follows the experience of bearing the fruits of this spirit
  life as it is lived in the flesh. The acceptance of the doctrine of the
  fatherhood of God implies that you also freely accept the associated truth of
  the brotherhood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more than your
  neighbor, whom the Father requires you to love as yourself. Your brother,
  being of your own family, you will not only love with a family affection, but
  you will also serve as you would serve yourself. And you will thus love and
  serve your brother because you, being my brethren, have been thus loved and
  served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news to all
  creatures of every race, tribe, and nation. My spirit shall go before you, and
  I will be with you always."

  193:1.3 These Samaritans were greatly astonished at this appearance of the
  Master, and they hastened off to the near-by towns and villages, where they
  published abroad the news that they had seen Jesus, and that he had talked to
  them. And this was the seventeenth morontia appearance of the Master.





2. THE PHOENICIAN APPEARANCE

  193:2.1 The Master's eighteenth morontia appearance was at Tyre, on Tuesday,
  May 16, at a little before nine o'clock in the evening. Again he appeared at
  the close of a meeting of believers, as they were about to disperse, saying:

  193:2.2 "Peace be upon you. You rejoice to know that the Son of Man has risen
  from the dead because you thereby know that you and your brethren shall also
  survive mortal death. But such survival is dependent on your having been
  previously born of the spirit of truth-seeking and God-finding. The bread of
  life and the water thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and
  thirst for righteousness -- for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the
  gospel of the kingdom. These great truths and these universe facts are all
  related to this gospel in that they are a part of the result of believing the
  good news and are embraced in the subsequent experience of those who, by
  faith, become, in deed and in truth, the everlasting sons of the eternal God.
  My Father sent me into the world to proclaim this salvation of sonship to all
  men. And so send I you abroad to preach this salvation of sonship. Salvation
  is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will immediately
  begin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in loving service to their fellow
  creatures. And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives
  of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish
  devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying
  hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving
  tolerance, and enduring peace. If professed believers bear not these fruits of
  the divine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in
  them; they are useless branches on the living vine, and they soon will be
  taken away. My Father requires of the children of faith that they bear much
  spirit fruit. If, therefore, you are not fruitful, he will dig about your
  roots and cut away your unfruitful branches. Increasingly, must you yield the
  fruits of the spirit as you progress heavenward in the kingdom of God.

You may enter the kingdom as a child, but the Father requires that you grow up,
by grace, to the full stature of spiritual adulthood. And when you go abroad to
tell all nations the good news of this gospel, I will go before you, and my
Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you."

  193:2.3 And then the Master disappeared from their sight. The next day there
  went out from Tyre those who carried this story to Sidon and even to Antioch
  and Damascus. Jesus had been with these believers when he was in the flesh,
  and they were quick to recognize him when he began to teach them. While his
  friends could not readily recognize his morontia form when made visible, they
  were never slow to identify his personality when he spoke to them.





3. LAST APPEARANCE IN JERUSALEM

  193:3.1 Early Thursday morning, May 18, Jesus made his last appearance on
  earth as a morontia personality. As the eleven apostles were about to sit down
  to breakfast in the upper chamber of Mary Mark's home, Jesus appeared to them
  and said:

  193:3.2 "Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Jerusalem until
  I ascend to the Father, even until I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall
  soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall endow you with power from on
  high." Simon Zelotes interrupted Jesus, asking, "Then, Master, will you
  restore the kingdom, and will we see the glory of God manifested on earth?"
  When Jesus had listened to Simon's question, he answered: "Simon, you still
  cling to your old ideas about the Jewish Messiah and the material kingdom. But
  you will receive spiritual power after the spirit has descended upon you, and
  you will presently go into all the world preaching this gospel of the kingdom.
  As the Father sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you
  would love and trust one another. Judas is no more with you because his love
  grew cold, and because he refused to trust you, his loyal brethren. Have you
  not read in the Scripture where it is written: `It is not good for man to be
  alone. No man lives to himself'? And also where it says: `He who would have
  friends must show himself friendly'? And did I not even send you out to teach,
  two and two, that you might not become lonely and fall into the mischief and
  miseries of isolation? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did
  not permit myself to be alone for long periods. From the very beginning of our
  associations I always had two or three of you constantly by my side or else
  very near at hand even when I communed with the Father. Trust, therefore, and
  confide in one another. And this is all the more needful since I am this day
  going to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to
  the Father."

  193:3.3 When he had spoken, he beckoned for them to come with him, and he led
  them out on the Mount of Olives, where he bade them farewell preparatory to
  departing from Urantia. This was a solemn journey to Olivet. Not a word was
  spoken by any of them from the time they left the upper chamber until Jesus
  paused with them on the Mount of Olives.





4. CAUSES OF JUDAS'S DOWNFALL

  193:4.1 It was in the first part of the Master's farewell message to his
  apostles that he alluded to the loss of Judas and held up the tragic fate of
  their traitorous fellow worker as a solemn warning against the dangers of
  social and fraternal isolation. It may be helpful to believers, in this and in
  future ages, briefly to review the causes of Judas's downfall in the light of
  the Master's remarks and in view of the accumulated enlightenment of
  succeeding centuries.

  193:4.2 As we look back upon this tragedy, we conceive that Judas went wrong,
  primarily, because he was very markedly an isolated personality, a personality
  shut in and away from ordinary social contacts. He persistently refused to
  confide in, or freely fraternize with, his fellow apostles. But his being an
  isolated type of personality would not, in and of itself, have wrought such
  mischief for Judas had it not been that he also failed to increase in love and
  grow in spiritual grace. And then, as if to make a bad matter worse, he
  persistently harbored grudges and fostered such psychologic enemies as revenge
  and the generalized craving to "get even" with somebody for all his
  disappointments.

  193:4.3 This unfortunate combination of individual peculiarities and mental
  tendencies conspired to destroy a well-intentioned man who failed to subdue
  these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Judas need not have gone wrong is
  well proved by the cases of Thomas and Nathaniel, both of whom were cursed
  with this same sort of suspicion and overdevelopment of the individualistic
  tendency. Even Andrew and Matthew had many leanings in this direction; but all
  these men grew to love Jesus and their fellow apostles more, and not less, as
  time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowledge of the truth. They became
  increasingly more trustful of their brethren and slowly developed the ability
  to confide in their fellows. Judas persistently refused to confide in his
  brethren. When he was impelled, by the accumulation of his emotional
  conflicts, to seek relief in self-expression, he invariably sought the advice
  and received the unwise consolation of his unspiritual relatives or those
  chance acquaintances who were either indifferent, or actually hostile, to the
  welfare and progress of the spiritual realities of the heavenly kingdom, of
  which he was one of the twelve consecrated ambassadors on earth.

  193:4.4 Judas met defeat in his battles of the earth struggle because of the
  following factors of personal tendencies and character weakness:

  193:4.5 1. He was an isolated type of human being. He was highly
  individualistic and chose to grow into a confirmed "shut-in" and unsociable
  sort of person.

  193:4.6 2. As a child, life had been made too easy for him. He bitterly
  resented thwarting. He always expected to win; he was a very poor loser.

  193:4.7 3. He never acquired a philosophic technique for meeting
  disappointment. Instead of accepting disappointments as a regular and
  commonplace feature of human existence, he unfailingly resorted to the
  practice of blaming someone in particular, or his associates as a group, for
  all his personal difficulties and disappointments.

  193:4.8 4. He was given to holding grudges; he was always entertaining the
  idea of revenge.

  193:4.9 5. He did not like to face facts frankly; he was dishonest in his
  attitude toward life situations.

  193:4.10 6. He disliked to discuss his personal problems with his immediate
  associates; he refused to talk over his difficulties with his real friends and
  those who truly loved him. In all the years of their association he never once
  went to the Master with a purely personal problem.

  193:4.11 7. He never learned that the real rewards for noble living are, after
  all, spiritual prizes, which are not always distributed during this one short
  life in the flesh.

  193:4.12 As a result of his persistent isolation of personality, his griefs
  multiplied, his sorrows increased, his anxieties augmented, and his despair
  deepened almost beyond endurance.

  193:4.13 While this self-centered and ultraindividualistic apostle had many
  psychic, emotional, and spiritual troubles, his main difficulties were: In
  personality, he was isolated. In mind, he was suspicious and vengeful. In
  temperament, he was surly and vindictive. Emotionally, he was loveless and
  unforgiving. Socially, he was unconfiding and almost wholly self-contained. In
  spirit, he became arrogant and selfishly ambitious. In life, he ignored those
  who loved him, and in death, he was friendless.

  193:4.14 These, then, are the factors of mind and influences of evil which,
  taken altogether, explain why a well-meaning and otherwise onetime sincere
  believer in Jesus, even after several years of intimate association with his
  transforming personality, forsook his fellows, repudiated a sacred cause,
  renounced his holy calling, and betrayed his divine Master.





5. THE MASTER'S ASCENSION

  193:5.1 It was almost half past seven o'clock this Thursday morning, May 18,
  when Jesus arrived on the western slope of Mount Olivet with his eleven silent
  and somewhat bewildered apostles. From this location, about two thirds the way
  up the mountain, they could look out over Jerusalem and down upon Gethsemane.
  Jesus now prepared to say his last farewell to the apostles before he took
  leave of Urantia. As he stood there before them, without being directed they
  knelt about him in a circle, and the Master said:

  193:5.2 "I bade you tarry in Jerusalem until you were endowed with power from
  on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to ascend to my
  Father, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my sojourn the
  Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall begin the new proclamation of
  the gospel of the kingdom, first in Jerusalem and then to the uttermost parts
  of the world. Love men with the love wherewith I have loved you and serve your
  fellow mortals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives
  impel souls to believe the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men
  are brethren. Remember all I have taught you and the life I have lived among
  you. My love overshadows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace
  shall abide upon you. Farewell."

  193:5.3 When the morontia Master had thus spoken, he vanished from their
  sight. This so-called ascension of Jesus was in no way different from his
  other disappearances from mortal vision during the forty days of his morontia
  career on Urantia.

  193:5.4 The Master went to Edentia by way of Jerusem, where the Most Highs,
  under the observation of the Paradise Son, released Jesus of Nazareth from the
  morontia state and, through the spirit channels of ascension, returned him to
  the status of Paradise sonship and supreme sovereignty on Salvington.

  193:5.5 It was about seven forty-five this morning when the morontia Jesus
  disappeared from the observation of his eleven apostles to begin the ascent to
  the right hand of his Father, there to receive formal confirmation of his
  completed sovereignty of the universe of Nebadon.





6. PETER CALLS A MEETING



  193:6.1 Acting upon the instruction of Peter, John Mark and others went forth
  to call the leading disciples together at the home of Mary Mark. By ten
  thirty, one hundred and twenty of the foremost disciples of Jesus living in
  Jerusalem had forgathered to hear the report of the farewell message of the
  Master and to learn of his ascension. Among this company was Mary the mother
  of Jesus. She had returned to Jerusalem with John Zebedee when the apostles
  came back from their recent sojourn in Galilee. Soon after Pentecost she
  returned to the home of Salome at Bethsaida. James the brother of Jesus was
  also present at this meeting, the first conference of the Master's disciples
  to be called after the termination of his planetary career.

  193:6.2 Simon Peter took it upon himself to speak for his fellow apostles and
  made a thrilling report of the last meeting of the eleven with their Master
  and most touchingly portrayed the Master's final farewell and his ascension
  disappearance. It was a meeting the like of which had never before occurred on
  this world. This part of the meeting lasted not quite one hour. Peter then
  explained that they had decided to choose a successor to Judas Iscariot, and
  that a recess would be granted to enable the apostles to decide between the
  two men who had been suggested for this position, Matthias and Justus.

  193:6.3 The eleven apostles then went downstairs, where they agreed to cast
  lots in order to determine which of these men should become an apostle to
  serve in Judas's place. The lot fell on Matthias, and he was declared to be
  the new apostle. He was duly inducted into his office and then appointed
  treasurer. But Matthias had little part in the subsequent activities of the
  apostles.

  193:6.4 Soon after Pentecost the twins returned to their homes in Galilee.
  Simon Zelotes was in retirement for some time before he went forth preaching
  the gospel. Thomas worried for a shorter period and then resumed his teaching.
  Nathaniel differed increasingly with Peter regarding preaching about Jesus in
  the place of proclaiming the former gospel of the kingdom. This disagreement
  became so acute by the middle of the following month that Nathaniel withdrew,
  going to Philadelphia to visit Abner and Lazarus; and after tarrying there for
  more than a year, he went on into the lands beyond Mesopotamia preaching the
  gospel as he understood it.

  193:6.5 This left but six of the original twelve apostles to become actors on
  the stage of the early proclamation of the gospel in Jerusalem: Peter, Andrew,
  James, John, Philip, and Matthew.

  193:6.6 Just about noon the apostles returned to their brethren in the upper
  chamber and announced that Matthias had been chosen as the new apostle. And
  then Peter called all of the believers to engage in prayer, prayer that they
  might be prepared to receive the gift of the spirit which the Master had
  promised to send.




PAPER 194


 BESTOWAL OF THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH



  194:0.1 ABOUT one o'clock, as the one hundred and twenty believers were
  engaged in prayer, they all became aware of a strange presence in the room. At
  the same time these disciples all became conscious of a new and profound sense
  of spiritual joy, security, and confidence. This new consciousness of
  spiritual strength was immediately followed by a strong urge to go out and
  publicly proclaim the gospel of the kingdom and the good news that Jesus had
  risen from the dead.

  194:0.2 Peter stood up and declared that this must be the coming of the Spirit
  of Truth which the Master had promised them and proposed that they go to the
  temple and begin the proclamation of the good news committed to their hands.
  And they did just what Peter suggested.



  194:0.3 These men had been trained and instructed that the gospel which they
  should preach was the fatherhood of God and the sonship of man, but at just
  this moment of spiritual ecstasy and personal triumph, the best tidings, the
  greatest news, these men could think of was the fact of the risen Master. And
  so they went forth, endowed with power from on high, preaching glad tidings to
  the people -- even salvation through Jesus -- but they unintentionally
  stumbled into the error of substituting some of the facts associated with the
  gospel for the gospel message itself. Peter unwittingly led off in this
  mistake, and others followed after him on down to Paul, who created a new
  religion out of the new version of the good news.

  194:0.4 The gospel of the kingdom is: the fact of the fatherhood of God,
  coupled with the resultant truth of the sonship-brotherhood of men.
  Christianity, as it developed from that day, is: the fact of God as the Father
  of the Lord Jesus Christ, in association with the experience of believer-
  fellowship with the risen and glorified Christ.

  194:0.5 It is not strange that these spirit-infused men should have seized
  upon this opportunity to express their feelings of triumph over the forces
  which had sought to destroy their Master and end the influence of his
  teachings. At such a time as this it was easier to remember their personal
  association with Jesus and to be thrilled with the assurance that the Master
  still lived, that their friendship had not ended, and that the spirit had
  indeed come upon them even as he had promised.

  194:0.6 These believers felt themselves suddenly translated into another
  world, a new existence of joy, power, and glory. The Master had told them the
  kingdom would come with power, and some of them thought they were beginning to
  discern what he meant.

  194:0.7 And when all of this is taken into consideration, it is not difficult
  to understand how these men came to preach a new gospel about Jesus in the
  place of their former message of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
  men.





1. THE PENTECOST SERMON



  194:1.1 The apostles had been in hiding for forty days. This day happened to
  be the Jewish festival of Pentecost, and thousands of visitors from all parts
  of the world were in Jerusalem. Many arrived for this feast, but a majority
  had tarried in the city since the Passover. Now these frightened apostles
  emerged from their weeks of seclusion to appear boldly in the temple, where
  they began to preach the new message of a risen Messiah. And all the disciples
  were likewise conscious of having received some new spiritual endowment of
  insight and power.

  194:1.2 It was about two o'clock when Peter stood up in that very place where
  his Master had last taught in this temple, and delivered that impassioned
  appeal which resulted in the winning of more than two thousand souls. The
  Master had gone, but they suddenly discovered that this story about him had
  great power with the people. No wonder they were led on into the further
  proclamation of that which vindicated their former devotion to Jesus and at
  the same time so constrained men to believe in him. Six of the apostles
  participated in this meeting: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, and Matthew.
  They talked for more than an hour and a half and delivered messages in Greek,
  Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as a few words in even other tongues with which
  they had a speaking acquaintance.

  194:1.3 The leaders of the Jews were astounded at the boldness of the
  apostles, but they feared to molest them because of the large numbers who
  believed their story.

  194:1.4 By half past four o'clock more than two thousand new believers
  followed the apostles down to the pool of Siloam, where Peter, Andrew, James,
  and John baptized them in the Master's name. And it was dark when they had
  finished with baptizing this multitude.

  194:1.5 Pentecost was the great festival of baptism, the time for
  fellowshipping the proselytes of the gate, those gentiles who desired to serve
  Yahweh. It was, therefore, the more easy for large numbers of both the Jews
  and believing gentiles to submit to baptism on this day. In doing this, they
  were in no way disconnecting themselves from the Jewish faith. Even for some
  time after this the believers in Jesus were a sect within Judaism. All of
  them, including the apostles, were still loyal to the essential requirements
  of the Jewish ceremonial system.





2. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PENTECOST



  194:2.1 Jesus lived on earth and taught a gospel which redeemed man from the
  superstition that he was a child of the devil and elevated him to the dignity
  of a faith son of God. Jesus' message, as he preached it and lived it in his
  day, was an effective solvent for man's spiritual difficulties in that day of
  its statement. And now that he has personally left the world, he sends in his
  place his Spirit of Truth, who is designed to live in man and, for each new
  generation, to restate the Jesus message so that every new group of mortals to
  appear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date version of
  the gospel, just such personal enlightenment and group guidance as will prove
  to be an effective solvent for man's ever-new and varied spiritual
  difficulties.



  194:2.2 The first mission of this spirit is, of course, to foster and
  personalize truth, for it is the comprehension of truth that constitutes the
  highest form of human liberty. Next, it is the purpose of this spirit to
  destroy the believer's feeling of orphanhood. Jesus having been among men, all
  believers would experience a sense of loneliness had not the Spirit of Truth
  come to dwell in men's hearts.

  194:2.3 This bestowal of the Son's spirit effectively prepared all normal
  men's minds for the subsequent universal bestowal of the Father's spirit (the
  Adjuster) upon all mankind. In a certain sense, this Spirit of Truth is the
  spirit of both the Universal Father and the Creator Son.

  194:2.4 Do not make the mistake of expecting to become strongly intellectually
  conscious of the outpoured Spirit of Truth. The spirit never creates a
  consciousness of himself, only a consciousness of Michael, the Son. From the
  beginning Jesus taught that the spirit would not speak of himself. The proof,
  therefore, of your fellowship with the Spirit of Truth is not to be found in
  your consciousness of this spirit but rather in your experience of enhanced
  fellowship with Michael.

  194:2.5 The spirit also came to help men recall and understand the words of
  the Master as well as to illuminate and reinterpret his life on earth.

  194:2.6 Next, the Spirit of Truth came to help the believer to witness to the
  realities of Jesus' teachings and his life as he lived it in the flesh, and as
  he now again lives it anew and afresh in the individual believer of each
  passing generation of the spirit-filled sons of God.

  194:2.7 Thus it appears that the Spirit of Truth comes really to lead all
  believers into all truth, into the expanding knowledge of the experience of
  the living and growing spiritual consciousness of the reality of eternal and
  ascending sonship with God.



  194:2.8 Jesus lived a life which is a revelation of man submitted to the
  Father's will, not an example for any man literally to attempt to follow. This
  life in the flesh, together with his death on the cross and subsequent
  resurrection, presently became a new gospel of the ransom which had thus been
  paid in order to purchase man back from the clutch of the evil one -- from the
  condemnation of an offended God. Nevertheless, even though the gospel did
  become greatly distorted, it remains a fact that this new message about Jesus
  carried along with it many of the fundamental truths and teachings of his
  earlier gospel of the kingdom. And, sooner or later, these concealed truths of
  the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men will emerge to effectually
  transform the civilization of all mankind.

  194:2.9 But these mistakes of the intellect in no way interfered with the
  believer's great progress in growth in spirit. In less than a month after the
  bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, the apostles made more individual spiritual
  progress than during their almost four years of personal and loving
  association with the Master. Neither did this substitution of the fact of the
  resurrection of Jesus for the saving gospel truth of sonship with God in any
  way interfere with the rapid spread of their teachings; on the contrary, this
  overshadowing of Jesus' message by the new teachings about his person and
  resurrection seemed greatly to facilitate the preaching of the good news.



  194:2.10 The term "baptism of the spirit," which came into such general use
  about this time, merely signified the conscious reception of this gift of the
  Spirit of Truth and the personal acknowledgment of this new spiritual power as
  an augmentation of all spiritual influences previously experienced by God-
  knowing souls.



  194:2.11 Since the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, man is subject to the
  teaching and guidance of a threefold spirit endowment: the spirit of the
  Father, the Thought Adjuster; the spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Truth; the
  spirit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

  194:2.12 In a way, mankind is subject to the double influence of the sevenfold
  appeal of the universe spirit influences. The early evolutionary races of
  mortals are subject to the progressive contact of the seven adjutant mind-
  spirits of the local universe Mother Spirit. As man progresses upward in the
  scale of intelligence and spiritual perception, there eventually come to hover
  over him and dwell within him the seven higher spirit influences. And these
  seven spirits of the advancing worlds are:



  194:2.13 1. The bestowed spirit of the Universal Father -- the Thought
  Adjusters.



  194:2.14 2. The spirit presence of the Eternal Son -- the spirit gravity of
  the universe of universes and the certain channel of all spirit communion.



  194:2.15 3. The spirit presence of the Infinite Spirit -- the universal
  spirit-mind of all creation, the spiritual source of the intellectual kinship
  of all progressive intelligences.



  194:2.16 4. The spirit of the Universal Father and the Creator Son -- the
  Spirit of Truth, generally regarded as the spirit of the Universe Son.



  194:2.17 5. The spirit of the Infinite Spirit and the Universe Mother Spirit
  -- the Holy Spirit, generally regarded as the spirit of the Universe Spirit.



  194:2.18 6. The mind-spirit of the Universe Mother Spirit -- the seven
  adjutant mind-spirits of the local universe.



  194:2.19 7. The spirit of the Father, Sons, and Spirits -- the new-name spirit
  of the ascending mortals of the realms after the fusion of the mortal spirit-
  born soul with the Paradise Thought Adjuster and after the subsequent
  attainment of the divinity and glorification of the status of the Paradise
  Corps of the Finality.

  194:2.20 And so did the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth bring to the world and
  its peoples the last of the spirit endowment designed to aid in the ascending
  search for God.





3. WHAT HAPPENED AT PENTECOST



  194:3.1 Many queer and strange teachings became associated with the early
  narratives of the day of Pentecost. In subsequent times the events of this
  day, on which the Spirit of Truth, the new teacher, came to dwell with
  mankind, have become confused with the foolish outbreaks of rampant
  emotionalism. The chief mission of this outpoured spirit of the Father and the
  Son is to teach men about the truths of the Father's love and the Son's mercy.
  These are the truths of divinity which men can comprehend more fully than all
  the other divine traits of character. The Spirit of Truth is concerned
  primarily with the revelation of the Father's spirit nature and the Son's
  moral character. The Creator Son, in the flesh, revealed God to men; the
  Spirit of Truth, in the heart, reveals the Creator Son to men. When man yields
  the "fruits of the spirit" in his life, he is simply showing forth the traits
  which the Master manifested in his own earthly life. When Jesus was on earth,
  he lived his life as one personality -- Jesus of Nazareth. As the indwelling
  spirit of the "new teacher," the Master has, since Pentecost, been able to
  live his life anew in the experience of every truth-taught believer.

  194:3.2 Many things which happen in the course of a human life are hard to
  understand, difficult to reconcile with the idea that this is a universe in
  which truth prevails and in which righteousness triumphs. It so often appears
  that slander, lies, dishonesty, and unrighteousness -- sin -- prevail. Does
  faith, after all, triumph over evil, sin, and iniquity? It does. And the life
  and death of Jesus are the eternal proof that the truth of goodness and the
  faith of the spirit-led creature will always be vindicated. They taunted Jesus
  on the cross, saying, "Let us see if God will come and deliver him." It looked
  dark on that day of the crucifixion, but it was gloriously bright on the
  resurrection morning; it was still brighter and more joyous on the day of
  Pentecost. The religions of pessimistic despair seek to obtain release from
  the burdens of life; they crave extinction in endless slumber and rest. These
  are the religions of primitive fear and dread. The religion of Jesus is a new
  gospel of faith to be proclaimed to struggling humanity. This new religion is
  founded on faith, hope, and love.

  194:3.3 To Jesus, mortal life had dealt its hardest, cruelest, and bitterest
  blows; and this man met these ministrations of despair with faith, courage,
  and the unswerving determination to do his Father's will. Jesus met life in
  all its terrible reality and mastered it -- even in death. He did not use
  religion as a release from life. The religion of Jesus does not seek to escape
  this life in order to enjoy the waiting bliss of another existence. The
  religion of Jesus provides the joy and peace of another and spiritual
  existence to enhance and ennoble the life which men now live in the flesh.

  194:3.4 If religion is an opiate to the people, it is not the religion of
  Jesus. On the cross he refused to drink the deadening drug, and his spirit,
  poured out upon all flesh, is a mighty world influence which leads man upward
  and urges him onward. The spiritual forward urge is the most powerful driving
  force present in this world; the truth-learning believer is the one
  progressive and aggressive soul on earth.

  194:3.5 On the day of Pentecost the religion of Jesus broke all national
  restrictions and racial fetters. It is forever true, "Where the spirit of the
  Lord is, there is liberty." On this day the Spirit of Truth became the
  personal gift from the Master to every mortal. This spirit was bestowed for
  the purpose of qualifying believers more effectively to preach the gospel of
  the kingdom, but they mistook the experience of receiving the outpoured spirit
  for a part of the new gospel which they were unconsciously formulating.



  194:3.6 Do not overlook the fact that the Spirit of Truth was bestowed upon
  all sincere believers; this gift of the spirit did not come only to the
  apostles. The one hundred and twenty men and women assembled in the upper
  chamber all received the new teacher, as did all the honest of heart
  throughout the whole world. This new teacher was bestowed upon mankind, and
  every soul received him in accordance with the love for truth and the capacity
  to grasp and comprehend spiritual realities. At last, true religion is
  delivered from the custody of priests and all sacred classes and finds its
  real manifestation in the individual souls of men.



  194:3.7 The religion of Jesus fosters the highest type of human civilization
  in that it creates the highest type of spiritual personality and proclaims the
  sacredness of that person.

  194:3.8 The coming of the Spirit of Truth on Pentecost made possible a
  religion which is neither radical nor conservative; it is neither the old nor
  the new; it is to be dominated neither by the old nor the young. The fact of
  Jesus' earthly life provides a fixed point for the anchor of time, while the
  bestowal of the Spirit of Truth provides for the everlasting expansion and
  endless growth of the religion which he lived and the gospel which he
  proclaimed. The spirit guides into all truth; he is the teacher of an
  expanding and always-growing religion of endless progress and divine
  unfolding. This new teacher will be forever unfolding to the truth-seeking
  believer that which was so divinely folded up in the person and nature of the
  Son of Man.

  194:3.9 The manifestations associated with the bestowal of the "new teacher,"
  and the reception of the apostles' preaching by the men of various races and
  nations gathered together at Jerusalem, indicate the universality of the
  religion of Jesus. The gospel of the kingdom was to be identified with no
  particular race, culture, or language. This day of Pentecost witnessed the
  great effort of the spirit to liberate the religion of Jesus from its
  inherited Jewish fetters. Even after this demonstration of pouring out the
  spirit upon all flesh, the apostles at first endeavored to impose the
  requirements of Judaism upon their converts. Even Paul had trouble with his
  Jerusalem brethren because he refused to subject the gentiles to these Jewish
  practices. No revealed religion can spread to all the world when it makes the
  serious mistake of becoming permeated with some national culture or associated
  with established racial, social, or economic practices.

  194:3.10 The bestowal of the Spirit of Truth was independent of all forms,
  ceremonies, sacred places, and special behavior by those who received the
  fullness of its manifestation. When the spirit came upon those assembled in
  the upper chamber, they were simply sitting there, having just been engaged in
  silent prayer. The spirit was bestowed in the country as well as in the city.
  It was not necessary for the apostles to go apart to a lonely place for years
  of solitary meditation in order to receive the spirit. For all time, Pentecost
  disassociates the idea of spiritual experience from the notion of especially
  favorable environments.



  194:3.11 Pentecost, with its spiritual endowment, was designed forever to
  loose the religion of the Master from all dependence upon physical force; the
  teachers of this new religion are now equipped with spiritual weapons. They
  are to go out to conquer the world with unfailing forgiveness, matchless good
  will, and abounding love. They are equipped to overcome evil with good, to
  vanquish hate by love, to destroy fear with a courageous and living faith in
  truth. Jesus had already taught his followers that his religion was never
  passive; always were his disciples to be active and positive in their ministry
  of mercy and in their manifestations of love. No longer did these believers
  look upon Yahweh as "the Lord of Hosts." They now regarded the eternal Deity
  as the "God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ." They made that progress, at
  least, even if they did in some measure fail fully to grasp the truth that God
  is also the spiritual Father of every individual.

  194:3.12 Pentecost endowed mortal man with the power to forgive personal
  injuries, to keep sweet in the midst of the gravest injustice, to remain
  unmoved in the face of appalling danger, and to challenge the evils of hate
  and anger by the fearless acts of love and forbearance. Urantia has passed
  through the ravages of great and destructive wars in its history. All
  participants in these terrible struggles met with defeat. There was but one
  victor; there was only one who came out of these embittered struggles with an
  enhanced reputation -- that was Jesus of Nazareth and his gospel of overcoming
  evil with good. The secret of a better civilization is bound up in the
  Master's teachings of the brotherhood of man, the good will of love and mutual
  trust.

  194:3.13 Up to Pentecost, religion had revealed only man seeking for God;
  since Pentecost, man is still searching for God, but there shines out over the
  world the spectacle of God also seeking for man and sending his spirit to
  dwell within him when he has found him.



  194:3.14 Before the teachings of Jesus which culminated in Pentecost, women
  had little or no spiritual standing in the tenets of the older religions.
  After Pentecost, in the brotherhood of the kingdom woman stood before God on
  an equality with man. Among the one hundred and twenty who received this
  special visitation of the spirit were many of the women disciples, and they
  shared these blessings equally with the men believers. No longer can man
  presume to monopolize the ministry of religious service. The Pharisee might go
  on thanking God that he was "not born a woman, a leper, or a gentile," but
  among the followers of Jesus woman has been forever set free from all
  religious discriminations based on sex. Pentecost obliterated all religious
  discrimination founded on racial distinction, cultural differences, social
  caste, or sex prejudice. No wonder these believers in the new religion would
  cry out, "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."



  194:3.15 Both the mother and brother of Jesus were present among the one
  hundred and twenty believers, and as members of this common group of
  disciples, they also received the outpoured spirit. They received no more of
  the good gift than did their fellows. No special gift was bestowed upon the
  members of Jesus' earthly family. Pentecost marked the end of special
  priesthoods and all belief in sacred families.



  194:3.16 Before Pentecost the apostles had given up much for Jesus. They had
  sacrificed their homes, families, friends, worldly goods, and positions. At
  Pentecost they gave themselves to God, and the Father and the Son responded by
  giving themselves to man -- sending their spirits to live within men. This
  experience of losing self and finding the spirit was not one of emotion; it
  was an act of intelligent self-surrender and unreserved consecration.

  194:3.17 Pentecost was the call to spiritual unity among gospel believers.
  When the spirit descended on the disciples at Jerusalem, the same thing
  happened in Philadelphia, Alexandria, and at all other places where true
  believers dwelt. It was literally true that "there was but one heart and soul
  among the multitude of the believers." The religion of Jesus is the most
  powerful unifying influence the world has ever known.



  194:3.18 Pentecost was designed to lessen the self-assertiveness of
  individuals, groups, nations, and races. It is this spirit of self-
  assertiveness which so increases in tension that it periodically breaks loose
  in destructive wars. Mankind can be unified only by the spiritual approach,
  and the Spirit of Truth is a world influence which is universal.

  194:3.19 The coming of the Spirit of Truth purifies the human heart and leads
  the recipient to formulate a life purpose single to the will of God and the
  welfare of men. The material spirit of selfishness has been swallowed up in
  this new spiritual bestowal of selflessness. Pentecost, then and now,
  signifies that the Jesus of history has become the divine Son of living
  experience. The joy of this outpoured spirit, when it is consciously
  experienced in human life, is a tonic for health, a stimulus for mind, and an
  unfailing energy for the soul.



  194:3.20 Prayer did not bring the spirit on the day of Pentecost, but it did
  have much to do with determining the capacity of receptivity which
  characterized the individual believers. Prayer does not move the divine heart
  to liberality of bestowal, but it does so often dig out larger and deeper
  channels wherein the divine bestowals may flow to the hearts and souls of
  those who thus remember to maintain unbroken communion with their Maker
  through sincere prayer and true worship.





4. BEGINNINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH



  194:4.1 When Jesus was so suddenly seized by his enemies and so quickly
  crucified between two thieves, his apostles and disciples were completely
  demoralized. The thought of the Master, arrested, bound, scourged, and
  crucified, was too much for even the apostles. They forgot his teachings and
  his warnings. He might, indeed, have been "a prophet mighty in deed and word
  before God and all the people," but he could hardly be the Messiah they had
  hoped would restore the kingdom of Israel.

  194:4.2 Then comes the resurrection, with its deliverance from despair and the
  return of their faith in the Master's divinity. Again and again they see him
  and talk with him, and he takes them out on Olivet, where he bids them
  farewell and tells them he is going back to the Father. He has told them to
  tarry in Jerusalem until they are endowed with power -- until the Spirit of
  Truth shall come. And on the day of Pentecost this new teacher comes, and they
  go out at once to preach their gospel with new power. They are the bold and
  courageous followers of a living Lord, not a dead and defeated leader. The
  Master lives in the hearts of these evangelists; God is not a doctrine in
  their minds; he has become a living presence in their souls.

  194:4.3 "Day by day they continued steadfastly and with one accord in the
  temple and breaking bread at home. They took their food with gladness and
  singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. They
  were all filled with the spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.
  And the multitudes of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not
  one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own, and
  they had all things in common."



  194:4.4 What has happened to these men whom Jesus had ordained to go forth
  preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
  of man? They have a new gospel; they are on fire with a new experience; they
  are filled with a new spiritual energy. Their message has suddenly shifted to
  the proclamation of the risen Christ: "Jesus of Nazareth, a man God approved
  by mighty works and wonders; him, being delivered up by the determinate
  counsel and foreknowledge of God, you did crucify and slay. The things which
  God foreshadowed by the mouth of all the prophets, he thus fulfilled. This
  Jesus did God raise up. God has made him both Lord and Christ. Being, by the
  right hand of God, exalted and having received from the Father the promise of
  the spirit, he has poured forth this which you see and hear. Repent, that your
  sins may be blotted out; that the Father may send the Christ, who has been
  appointed for you, even Jesus, whom the heaven must receive until the times of
  the restoration of all things."

  194:4.5 The gospel of the kingdom, the message of Jesus, had been suddenly
  changed into the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They now proclaimed the
  facts of his life, death, and resurrection and preached the hope of his speedy
  return to this world to finish the work he began. Thus the message of the
  early believers had to do with preaching about the facts of his first coming
  and with teaching the hope of his second coming, an event which they deemed to
  be very near at hand.

  194:4.6 Christ was about to become the creed of the rapidly forming church.
  Jesus lives; he died for men; he gave the spirit; he is coming again. Jesus
  filled all their thoughts and determined all their new concept of God and
  everything else. They were too much enthused over the new doctrine that "God
  is the Father of the Lord Jesus" to be concerned with the old message that
  "God is the loving Father of all men," even of every single individual. True,
  a marvelous manifestation of brotherly love and unexampled good will did
  spring up in these early communities of believers. But it was a fellowship of
  believers in Jesus, not a fellowship of brothers in the family kingdom of the
  Father in heaven. Their good will arose from the love born of the concept of
  Jesus' bestowal and not from the recognition of the brotherhood of mortal man.
  Nevertheless, they were filled with joy, and they lived such new and unique
  lives that all men were attracted to their teachings about Jesus. They made
  the great mistake of using the living and illustrative commentary on the
  gospel of the kingdom for that gospel, but even that represented the greatest
  religion mankind had ever known.

  194:4.7 Unmistakably, a new fellowship was arising in the world. "The
  multitude who believed continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and
  fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers." They called each other
  brother and sister; they greeted one another with a holy kiss; they ministered
  to the poor. It was a fellowship of living as well as of worship. They were
  not communal by decree but by the desire to share their goods with their
  fellow believers. They confidently expected that Jesus would return to
  complete the establishment of the Father's kingdom during their generation.
  This spontaneous sharing of earthly possessions was not a direct feature of
  Jesus' teaching; it came about because these men and women so sincerely and so
  confidently believed that he was to return any day to finish his work and to
  consummate the kingdom. But the final results of this well-meant experiment in
  thoughtless brotherly love were disastrous and sorrow-breeding. Thousands of
  earnest believers sold their property and disposed of all their capital goods
  and other productive assets. With the passing of time, the dwindling resources
  of Christian "equal-sharing" came to an end -- but the world did not. Very
  soon the believers at Antioch were taking up a collection to keep their fellow
  believers at Jerusalem from starving.



  194:4.8 In these days they celebrated the Lord's Supper after the manner of
  its establishment; that is, they assembled for a social meal of good
  fellowship and partook of the sacrament at the end of the meal.



  194:4.9 At first they baptized in the name of Jesus; it was almost twenty
  years before they began to baptize in "the name of the Father, the Son, and
  the Holy Spirit." Baptism was all that was required for admission into the
  fellowship of believers. They had no organization as yet; it was simply the
  Jesus brotherhood.



  194:4.10 This Jesus sect was growing rapidly, and once more the Sadducees took
  notice of them. The Pharisees were little bothered about the situation, seeing
  that none of the teachings in any way interfered with the observance of the
  Jewish laws. But the Sadducees began to put the leaders of the Jesus sect in
  jail until they were prevailed upon to accept the counsel of one of the
  leading rabbis, Gamaliel, who advised them: "Refrain from these men and let
  them alone, for if this counsel or this work is of men, it will be overthrown;
  but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them, lest haply you be
  found even to be fighting against God." They decided to follow Gamaliel's
  counsel, and there ensued a time of peace and quiet in Jerusalem, during which
  the new gospel about Jesus spread rapidly.

  194:4.11 And so all went well in Jerusalem until the time of the coming of the
  Greeks in large numbers from Alexandria. Two of the pupils of Rodan arrived in
  Jerusalem and made many converts from among the Hellenists. Among their early
  converts were Stephen and Barnabas. These able Greeks did not so much have the
  Jewish viewpoint, and they did not so well conform to the Jewish mode of
  worship and other ceremonial practices. And it was the doings of these Greek
  believers that terminated the peaceful relations between the Jesus brotherhood
  and the Pharisees and Sadducees. Stephen and his Greek associate began to
  preach more as Jesus taught, and this brought them into immediate conflict
  with the Jewish rulers. In one of Stephen's public sermons, when he reached
  the objectionable part of the discourse, they dispensed with all formalities
  of trial and proceeded to stone him to death on the spot.

  194:4.12 Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Jesus' believers in
  Jerusalem, thus became the first martyr to the new faith and the specific
  cause for the formal organization of the early Christian church. This new
  crisis was met by the recognition that believers could not longer go on as a
  sect within the Jewish faith. They all agreed that they must separate
  themselves from unbelievers; and within one month from the death of Stephen
  the church at Jerusalem had been organized under the leadership of Peter, and
  James the brother of Jesus had been installed as its titular head.

  194:4.13 And then broke out the new and relentless persecutions by the Jews,
  so that the active teachers of the new religion about Jesus, which
  subsequently at Antioch was called Christianity, went forth to the ends of the
  empire proclaiming Jesus. In carrying this message, before the time of Paul
  the leadership was in Greek hands; and these first missionaries, as also the
  later ones, followed the path of Alexander's march of former days, going by
  way of Gaza and Tyre to Antioch and then over Asia Minor to Macedonia, then on
  to Rome and to the uttermost parts of the empire.




 PAPER 195


 AFTER PENTECOST



  195:0.1 THE results of Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost were such as
  to decide the future policies, and to determine the plans, of the majority of
  the apostles in their efforts to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. Peter was
  the real founder of the Christian church; Paul carried the Christian message
  to the gentiles, and the Greek believers carried it to the whole Roman Empire.

  195:0.2 Although the tradition-bound and priest-ridden Hebrews, as a people,
  refused to accept either Jesus' gospel of the fatherhood of God and the
  brotherhood of man or Peter's and Paul's proclamation of the resurrection and
  ascension of Christ (subsequent Christianity), the rest of the Roman Empire
  was found to be receptive to the evolving Christian teachings. Western
  civilization was at this time intellectual, war weary, and thoroughly
  skeptical of all existing religions and universe philosophies. The peoples of
  the Western world, the beneficiaries of Greek culture, had a revered tradition
  of a great past. They could contemplate the inheritance of great
  accomplishments in philosophy, art, literature, and political progress. But
  with all these achievements they had no soul-satisfying religion. Their
  spiritual longings remained unsatisfied.

  195:0.3 Upon such a stage of human society the teachings of Jesus, embraced in
  the Christian message, were suddenly thrust. A new order of living was thus
  presented to the hungry hearts of these Western peoples. This situation meant
  immediate conflict between the older religious practices and the new
  Christianized version of Jesus' message to the world. Such a conflict must
  result in either decided victory for the new or for the old or in some degree
  of compromise. History shows that the struggle ended in compromise.
  Christianity presumed to embrace too much for any one people to assimilate in
  one or two generations. It was not a simple spiritual appeal, such as Jesus
  had presented to the souls of men; it early struck a decided attitude on
  religious rituals, education, magic, medicine, art, literature, law,
  government, morals, sex regulation, polygamy, and, in limited degree, even
  slavery. Christianity came not merely as a new religion -- something all the
  Roman Empire and all the Orient were waiting for -- but as a new order of
  human society. And as such a pretension it quickly precipitated the social-
  moral clash of the ages. The ideals of Jesus, as they were reinterpreted by
  Greek philosophy and socialized in Christianity, now boldly challenged the
  traditions of the human race embodied in the ethics, morality, and religions
  of Western civilization.

  195:0.4 At first, Christianity won as converts only the lower social and
  economic strata. But by the beginning of the second century the very best of
  Greco-Roman culture was increasingly turning to this new order of Christian
  belief, this new concept of the purpose of living and the goal of existence.

  195:0.5 How did this new message of Jewish origin, which had almost failed in
  the land of its birth, so quickly and effectively capture the very best minds
  of the Roman Empire? The triumph of Christianity over the philosophic
  religions and the mystery cults was due to:



  195:0.6 1. Organization. Paul was a great organizer and his successors kept up
  the pace he set.



  195:0.7 2. Christianity was thoroughly Hellenized. It embraced the best in
  Greek philosophy as well as the cream of Hebrew theology.



  195:0.8 3. But best of all, it contained a new and great ideal, the echo of
  the life bestowal of Jesus and the reflection of his message of salvation for
  all mankind.



  195:0.9 4. The Christian leaders were willing to make such compromises with
  Mithraism that the better half of its adherents were won over to the Antioch
  cult.



  195:0.10 5. Likewise did the next and later generations of Christian leaders
  make such further compromises with paganism that even the Roman emperor
  Constantine was won to the new religion.



  195:0.11 But the Christians made a shrewd bargain with the pagans in that they
  adopted the ritualistic pageantry of the pagan while compelling the pagan to
  accept the Hellenized version of Pauline Christianity. They made a better
  bargain with the pagans than they did with the Mithraic cult, but even in that
  earlier compromise they came off more than conquerors in that they succeeded
  in eliminating the gross immoralities and also numerous other reprehensible
  practices of the Persian mystery.

  195:0.12 Wisely or unwisely, these early leaders of Christianity deliberately
  compromised the ideals of Jesus in an effort to save and further many of his
  ideas. And they were eminently successful. But mistake not! these compromised
  ideals of the Master are still latent in his gospel, and they will eventually
  assert their full power upon the world.

  195:0.13 By this paganization of Christianity the old order won many minor
  victories of a ritualistic nature, but the Christians gained the ascendancy in
  that:



  195:0.14 1. A new and enormously higher note in human morals was struck.



  195:0.15 2. A new and greatly enlarged concept of God was given to the world.



  195:0.16 3. The hope of immortality became a part of the assurance of a
  recognized religion.



  195:0.17 4. Jesus of Nazareth was given to man's hungry soul.



  195:0.18 Many of the great truths taught by Jesus were almost lost in these
  early compromises, but they yet slumber in this religion of paganized
  Christianity, which was in turn the Pauline version of the life and teachings
  of the Son of Man. And Christianity, even before it was paganized, was first
  thoroughly Hellenized. Christianity owes much, very much, to the Greeks. It
  was a Greek, from Egypt, who so bravely stood up at Nicaea and so fearlessly
  challenged this assembly that it dared not so obscure the concept of the
  nature of Jesus that the real truth of his bestowal might have been in danger
  of being lost to the world. This Greek's name was Athanasius, and but for the
  eloquence and the logic of this believer, the persuasions of Arius would have
  triumphed.





1. INFLUENCE OF THE GREEKS



  195:1.1 The Hellenization of Christianity started in earnest on that eventful
  day when the Apostle Paul stood before the council of the Areopagus in Athens
  and told the Athenians about "the Unknown God." There, under the shadow of the
  Acropolis, this Roman citizen proclaimed to these Greeks his version of the
  new religion which had taken origin in the Jewish land of Galilee. And there
  was something strangely alike in Greek philosophy and many of the teachings of
  Jesus. They had a common goal -- both aimed at the emergence of the
  individual. The Greek, at social and political emergence; Jesus, at moral and
  spiritual emergence. The Greek taught intellectual liberalism leading to
  political freedom; Jesus taught spiritual liberalism leading to religious
  liberty. These two ideas put together constituted a new and mighty charter for
  human freedom; they presaged man's social, political, and spiritual liberty.

  195:1.2 Christianity came into existence and triumphed over all contending
  religions primarily because of two things:



  195:1.3 1. The Greek mind was willing to borrow new and good ideas even from
  the Jews.



  195:1.4 2. Paul and his successors were willing but shrewd and sagacious
  compromisers; they were keen theologic traders.



  195:1.5 At the time Paul stood up in Athens preaching "Christ and Him
  Crucified," the Greeks were spiritually hungry; they were inquiring,
  interested, and actually looking for spiritual truth. Never forget that at
  first the Romans fought Christianity, while the Greeks embraced it, and that
  it was the Greeks who literally forced the Romans subsequently to accept this
  new religion, as then modified, as a part of Greek culture.

  195:1.6 The Greek revered beauty, the Jew holiness, but both peoples loved
  truth. For centuries the Greek had seriously thought and earnestly debated
  about all human problems -- social, economic, political, and philosophic --
  except religion. Few Greeks had paid much attention to religion; they did not
  take even their own religion very seriously. For centuries the Jews had
  neglected these other fields of thought while they devoted their minds to
  religion. They took their religion very seriously, too seriously. As
  illuminated by the content of Jesus' message, the united product of the
  centuries of the thought of these two peoples now became the driving power of
  a new order of human society and, to a certain extent, of a new order of human
  religious belief and practice.



  195:1.7 The influence of Greek culture had already penetrated the lands of the
  western Mediterranean when Alexander spread Hellenistic civilization over the
  near-Eastern world. The Greeks did very well with their religion and their
  politics as long as they lived in small city-states, but when the Macedonian
  king dared to expand Greece into an empire, stretching from the Adriatic to
  the Indus, trouble began. The art and philosophy of Greece were fully equal to
  the task of imperial expansion, but not so with Greek political administration
  or religion. After the city-states of Greece had expanded into empire, their
  rather parochial gods seemed a little queer. The Greeks were really searching
  for one God, a greater and better God, when the Christianized version of the
  older Jewish religion came to them.

  195:1.8 The Hellenistic Empire, as such, could not endure. Its cultural sway
  continued on, but it endured only after securing from the West the Roman
  political genius for empire administration and after obtaining from the East a
  religion whose one God possessed empire dignity.

  195:1.9 In the first century after Christ, Hellenistic culture had already
  attained its highest levels; its retrogression had begun; learning was
  advancing but genius was declining. It was at this very time that the ideas
  and ideals of Jesus, which were partially embodied in Christianity, became a
  part of the salvage of Greek culture and learning.

  195:1.10 Alexander had charged on the East with the cultural gift of the
  civilization of Greece; Paul assaulted the West with the Christian version of
  the gospel of Jesus. And wherever the Greek culture prevailed throughout the
  West, there Hellenized Christianity took root.



  195:1.11 The Eastern version of the message of Jesus, notwithstanding that it
  remained more true to his teachings, continued to follow the uncompromising
  attitude of Abner. It never progressed as did the Hellenized version and was
  eventually lost in the Islamic movement.





2. THE ROMAN INFLUENCE



  195:2.1 The Romans bodily took over Greek culture, putting representative
  government in the place of government by lot. And presently this change
  favored Christianity in that Rome brought into the whole Western world a new
  tolerance for strange languages, peoples, and even religions.

  195:2.2 Much of the early persecution of Christians in Rome was due solely to
  their unfortunate use of the term "kingdom" in their preaching. The Romans
  were tolerant of any and all religions but very resentful of anything that
  savored of political rivalry. And so, when these early persecutions, due so
  largely to misunderstanding, died out, the field for religious propaganda was
  wide open. The Roman was interested in political administration; he cared
  little for either art or religion, but he was unusually tolerant of both.

  195:2.3 Oriental law was stern and arbitrary; Greek law was fluid and
  artistic; Roman law was dignified and respect-breeding. Roman education bred
  an unheard-of and stolid loyalty. The early Romans were politically devoted
  and sublimely consecrated individuals. They were honest, zealous, and
  dedicated to their ideals, but without a religion worthy of the name. Small
  wonder that their Greek teachers were able to persuade them to accept Paul's
  Christianity.

  195:2.4 And these Romans were a great people. They could govern the Occident
  because they did govern themselves. Such unparalleled honesty, devotion, and
  stalwart self-control was ideal soil for the reception and growth of
  Christianity.

  195:2.5 It was easy for these Greco-Romans to become just as spiritually
  devoted to an institutional church as they were politically devoted to the
  state. The Romans fought the church only when they feared it as a competitor
  of the state. Rome, having little national philosophy or native culture, took
  over Greek culture for its own and boldly adopted Christ as its moral
  philosophy. Christianity became the moral culture of Rome but hardly its
  religion in the sense of being the individual experience in spiritual growth
  of those who embraced the new religion in such a wholesale manner. True,
  indeed, many individuals did penetrate beneath the surface of all this state
  religion and found for the nourishment of their souls the real values of the
  hidden meanings held within the latent truths of Hellenized and paganized
  Christianity.



  195:2.6 The Stoic and his sturdy appeal to "nature and conscience" had only
  the better prepared all Rome to receive Christ, at least in an intellectual
  sense. The Roman was by nature and training a lawyer; he revered even the laws
  of nature. And now, in Christianity, he discerned in the laws of nature the
  laws of God. A people that could produce Cicero and Vergil were ripe for
  Paul's Hellenized Christianity.

  195:2.7 And so did these Romanized Greeks force both Jews and Christians to
  philosophize their religion, to co-ordinate its ideas and systematize its
  ideals, to adapt religious practices to the existing current of life. And all
  this was enormously helped by translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek
  and by the later recording of the New Testament in the Greek tongue.

  195:2.8 The Greeks, in contrast with the Jews and many other peoples, had long
  provisionally believed in immortality, some sort of survival after death, and
  since this was the very heart of Jesus' teaching, it was certain that
  Christianity would make a strong appeal to them.

  195:2.9 A succession of Greek-cultural and Roman-political victories had
  consolidated the Mediterranean lands into one empire, with one language and
  one culture, and had made the Western world ready for one God. Judaism
  provided this God, but Judaism was not acceptable as a religion to these
  Romanized Greeks. Philo helped some to mitigate their objections, but
  Christianity revealed to them an even better concept of one God, and they
  embraced it readily.





3. UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE



  195:3.1 After the consolidation of Roman political rule and after the
  dissemination of Christianity, the Christians found themselves with one God, a
  great religious concept, but without empire. The Greco-Romans found themselves
  with a great empire but without a God to serve as the suitable religious
  concept for empire worship and spiritual unification. The Christians accepted
  the empire; the empire adopted Christianity. The Roman provided a unity of
  political rule; the Greek, a unity of culture and learning; Christianity, a
  unity of religious thought and practice.

  195:3.2 Rome overcame the tradition of nationalism by imperial universalism
  and for the first time in history made it possible for different races and
  nations at least nominally to accept one religion.

  195:3.3 Christianity came into favor in Rome at a time when there was great
  contention between the vigorous teachings of the Stoics and the salvation
  promises of the mystery cults. Christianity came with refreshing comfort and
  liberating power to a spiritually hungry people whose language had no word for
  "unselfishness."



  195:3.4 That which gave greatest power to Christianity was the way its
  believers lived lives of service and even the way they died for their faith
  during the earlier times of drastic persecution.



  195:3.5 The teaching regarding Christ's love for children soon put an end to
  the widespread practice of exposing children to death when they were not
  wanted, particularly girl babies.



  195:3.6 The early plan of Christian worship was largely taken over from the
  Jewish synagogue, modified by the Mithraic ritual; later on, much pagan
  pageantry was added. The backbone of the early Christian church consisted of
  Christianized Greek proselytes to Judaism.



  195:3.7 The second century after Christ was the best time in all the world's
  history for a good religion to make progress in the Western world. During the
  first century Christianity had prepared itself, by struggle and compromise, to
  take root and rapidly spread. Christianity adopted the emperor; later, he
  adopted Christianity. This was a great age for the spread of a new religion.
  There was religious liberty; travel was universal and thought was untrammeled.

  195:3.8 The spiritual impetus of nominally accepting Hellenized Christianity
  came to Rome too late to prevent the well-started moral decline or to
  compensate for the already well-established and increasing racial
  deterioration. This new religion was a cultural necessity for imperial Rome,
  and it is exceedingly unfortunate that it did not become a means of spiritual
  salvation in a larger sense.

  195:3.9 Even a good religion could not save a great empire from the sure
  results of lack of individual participation in the affairs of government, from
  overmuch paternalism, overtaxation and gross collection abuses, unbalanced
  trade with the Levant which drained away the gold, amusement madness, Roman
  standardization, the degradation of woman, slavery and race decadence,
  physical plagues, and a state church which became institutionalized nearly to
  the point of spiritual barrenness.

  195:3.10 Conditions, however, were not so bad at Alexandria. The early schools
  continued to hold much of Jesus' teachings free from compromise. Poutaenus
  taught Clement and then went on to follow Nathaniel in proclaiming Christ in
  India. While some of the ideals of Jesus were sacrificed in the building of
  Christianity, it should in all fairness be recorded that, by the end of the
  second century, practically all the great minds of the Greco-Roman world had
  become Christian. The triumph was approaching completion.

  195:3.11 And this Roman Empire lasted sufficiently long to insure the survival
  of Christianity even after the empire collapsed. But we have often conjectured
  what would have happened in Rome and in the world if it had been the gospel of
  the kingdom which had been accepted in the place of Greek Christianity.





4. THE EUROPEAN DARK AGES



  195:4.1 The church, being an adjunct to society and the ally of politics, was
  doomed to share in the intellectual and spiritual decline of the so-called
  European "dark ages." During this time, religion became more and more
  monasticized, asceticized, and legalized. In a spiritual sense, Christianity
  was hibernating. Throughout this period there existed, alongside this
  slumbering and secularized religion, a continuous stream of mysticism, a
  fantastic spiritual experience bordering on unreality and philosophically akin
  to pantheism.

  195:4.2 During these dark and despairing centuries, religion became virtually
  secondhanded again. The individual was almost lost before the overshadowing
  authority, tradition, and dictation of the church. A new spiritual menace
  arose in the creation of a galaxy of "saints" who were assumed to have special
  influence at the divine courts, and who, therefore, if effectively appealed
  to, would be able to intercede in man's behalf before the Gods.

  195:4.3 But Christianity was sufficiently socialized and paganized that, while
  it was impotent to stay the oncoming dark ages, it was the better prepared to
  survive this long period of moral darkness and spiritual stagnation. And it
  did persist on through the long night of Western civilization and was still
  functioning as a moral influence in the world when the renaissance dawned. The
  rehabilitation of Christianity, following the passing of the dark ages,
  resulted in bringing into existence numerous sects of the Christian teachings,
  beliefs suited to special intellectual, emotional, and spiritual types of
  human personality. And many of these special Christian groups, or religious
  families, still persist at the time of the making of this presentation.



  195:4.4 Christianity exhibits a history of having originated out of the
  unintended transformation of the religion of Jesus into a religion about
  Jesus. It further presents the history of having experienced Hellenization,
  paganization, secularization, institutionalization, intellectual
  deterioration, spiritual decadence, moral hibernation, threatened extinction,
  later rejuvenation, fragmentation, and more recent relative rehabilitation.
  Such a pedigree is indicative of inherent vitality and the possession of vast
  recuperative resources. And this same Christianity is now present in the
  civilized world of Occidental peoples and stands face to face with a struggle
  for existence which is even more ominous than those eventful crises which have
  characterized its past battles for dominance.



  195:4.5 Religion is now confronted by the challenge of a new age of scientific
  minds and materialistic tendencies. In this gigantic struggle between the
  secular and the spiritual, the religion of Jesus will eventually triumph.





5. THE MODERN PROBLEM



  195:5.1 The twentieth century has brought new problems for Christianity and
  all other religions to solve. The higher a civilization climbs, the more
  necessitous becomes the duty to "seek first the realities of heaven" in all of
  man's efforts to stabilize society and facilitate the solution of its material
  problems.

  195:5.2 Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it is
  dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches
  the truth seeker aright only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living
  spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of
  intervening art.

  195:5.3 Religion is the revelation to man of his divine and eternal destiny.
  Religion is a purely personal and spiritual experience and must forever be
  distinguished from man's other high forms of thought, such as:



  195:5.4 1. Man's logical attitude toward the things of material reality.



  195:5.5 2. Man's aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness.



  195:5.6 3. Man's ethical recognition of social obligations and political duty.



  195:5.7 4. Even man's sense of human morality is not, in and of itself,
  religious.



  195:5.8 Religion is designed to find those values in the universe which call
  forth faith, trust, and assurance; religion culminates in worship. Religion
  discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the
  relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had
  only through genuine religious experience.

  195:5.9 A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual
  realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without
  gravity.

  195:5.10 Do not try to satisfy the curiosity or gratify all the latent
  adventure surging within the soul in one short life in the flesh. Be patient!
  be not tempted to indulge in a lawless plunge into cheap and sordid adventure.
  Harness your energies and bridle your passions; be calm while you await the
  majestic unfolding of an endless career of progressive adventure and thrilling
  discovery.



  195:5.11 In confusion over man's origin, do not lose sight of his eternal
  destiny. Forget not that Jesus loved even little children, and that he forever
  made clear the great worth of human personality.



  195:5.12 As you view the world, remember that the black patches of evil which
  you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view
  merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black
  background of evil.

  195:5.13 When there is so much good truth to publish and proclaim, why should
  men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just because it appears to be a
  fact? The beauties of the spiritual values of truth are more pleasurable and
  uplifting than is the phenomenon of evil.



  195:5.14 In religion, Jesus advocated and followed the method of experience,
  even as modern science pursues the technique of experiment. We find God
  through the leadings of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the
  soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty,
  and the worship of divine goodness. But of all these values, love is the true
  guide to real insight.





6. MATERIALISM



  195:6.1 Scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a
  materialistic panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of
  the ages, but this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it
  can stand the demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky
  about the spiritual assets of the human race. When the materialistic-secular
  panic is over, the religion of Jesus will not be found bankrupt. The spiritual
  bank of the kingdom of heaven will be paying out faith, hope, and moral
  security to all who draw upon it "in His name."

  195:6.2 No matter what the apparent conflict between materialism and the
  teachings of Jesus may be, you can rest assured that, in the ages to come, the
  teachings of the Master will fully triumph. In reality, true religion cannot
  become involved in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned
  with material things. Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with,
  science, while it supremely concerns itself with the scientist.

  195:6.3 The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of
  wisdom and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to
  pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting.

  195:6.4 At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is
  over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The
  higher minds of the scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in
  their philosophy, but the rank and file of the people still lean in that
  direction as a result of former teachings. But this age of physical realism is
  only a passing episode in man's life on earth. Modern science has left true
  religion -- the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers
  -- untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of
  the misinterpretations of life.

  195:6.5 Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative
  experience, as regards man's life on earth. Science deals with phenomena;
  religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation
  of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only
  leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause -- the Universal
  Father of Paradise.

  195:6.6 The violent swing from an age of miracles to an age of machines has
  proved altogether upsetting to man. The cleverness and dexterity of the false
  philosophies of mechanism belie their very mechanistic contentions. The
  fatalistic agility of the mind of a materialist forever disproves his
  assertions that the universe is a blind and purposeless energy phenomenon.

  195:6.7 The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the
  thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned
  with things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions
  of a spiritual nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal
  assurances. One of the great troubles with modern life is that man thinks he
  is too busy to find time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.

  195:6.8 Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him
  merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical
  formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence comes all this
  vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may
  expatiate on the conservation of matter, but religion validates the
  conservation of men's souls -- it concerns their experience with spiritual
  realities and eternal values.

  195:6.9 The materialistic sociologist of today surveys a community, makes a
  report thereon, and leaves the people as he found them. Nineteen hundred years
  ago, unlearned Galileans surveyed Jesus giving his life as a spiritual
  contribution to man's inner experience and then went out and turned the whole
  Roman Empire upside down.

  195:6.10 But religious leaders are making a great mistake when they try to
  call modern man to spiritual battle with the trumpet blasts of the Middle
  Ages. Religion must provide itself with new and up-to-date slogans. Neither
  democracy nor any other political panacea will take the place of spiritual
  progress. False religions may represent an evasion of reality, but Jesus in
  his gospel introduced mortal man to the very entrance upon an eternal reality
  of spiritual progression.

  195:6.11 To say that mind "emerged" from matter explains nothing. If the
  universe were merely a mechanism and mind were unapart from matter, we would
  never have two differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon. The
  concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or
  chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for
  righteousness, and cherish goodness.

  195:6.12 Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning
  scientist is at once supermaterial. Matter knows not truth, neither can it
  love mercy nor delight in spiritual realities. Moral convictions based on
  spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and
  certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on
  another and higher level.

  195:6.13 If men were only machines, they would react more or less uniformly to
  a material universe. Individuality, much less personality, would be
  nonexistent.



  195:6.14 The fact of the absolute mechanism of Paradise at the center of the
  universe of universes, in the presence of the unqualified volition of the
  Second Source and Center, makes forever certain that determiners are not the
  exclusive law of the cosmos. Materialism is there, but it is not exclusive;
  mechanism is there, but it is not unqualified; determinism is there, but it is
  not alone.

  195:6.15 The finite universe of matter would eventually become uniform and
  deterministic but for the combined presence of mind and spirit. The influence
  of the cosmic mind constantly injects spontaneity into even the material
  worlds.

  195:6.16 Freedom or initiative in any realm of existence is directly
  proportional to the degree of spiritual influence and cosmic-mind control;
  that is, in human experience, the degree of the actuality of doing "the
  Father's will." And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the
  conclusive proof that God has already found you.

  195:6.17 The sincere pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And
  every scientific discovery demonstrates the existence of both freedom and
  uniformity in the universe. The discoverer was free to make the discovery. The
  thing discovered is real and apparently uniform, or else it could not have
  become known as a thing.





7. THE VULNERABILITY OF MATERIALISM



  195:7.1 How foolish it is for material-minded man to allow such vulnerable
  theories as those of a mechanistic universe to deprive him of the vast
  spiritual resources of the personal experience of true religion. Facts never
  quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may. Better that science should be
  devoted to the destruction of superstition rather than attempting the
  overthrow of religious faith -- human belief in spiritual realities and divine
  values.

  195:7.2 Science should do for man materially what religion does for him
  spiritually: extend the horizon of life and enlarge his personality. True
  science can have no lasting quarrel with true religion. The "scientific
  method" is merely an intellectual yardstick wherewith to measure material
  adventures and physical achievements. But being material and wholly
  intellectual, it is utterly useless in the evaluation of spiritual realities
  and religious experiences.

  195:7.3 The inconsistency of the modern mechanist is: If this were merely a
  material universe and man only a machine, such a man would be wholly unable to
  recognize himself as such a machine, and likewise would such a machine-man be
  wholly unconscious of the fact of the existence of such a material universe.
  The materialistic dismay and despair of a mechanistic science has failed to
  recognize the fact of the spirit-indwelt mind of the scientist whose very
  supermaterial insight formulates these mistaken and self-contradictory
  concepts of a materialistic universe.

  195:7.4 Paradise values of eternity and infinity, of truth, beauty, and
  goodness, are concealed within the facts of the phenomena of the universes of
  time and space. But it requires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mortal to
  detect and discern these spiritual values.

  195:7.5 The realities and values of spiritual progress are not a "psychologic
  projection" -- a mere glorified daydream of the material mind. Such things are
  the spiritual forecasts of the indwelling Adjuster, the spirit of God living
  in the mind of man. And let not your dabblings with the faintly glimpsed
  findings of "relativity" disturb your concepts of the eternity and infinity of
  God. And in all your solicitation concerning the necessity for self-expression
  do not make the mistake of failing to provide for Adjuster-expression, the
  manifestation of your real and better self.

  195:7.6 If this were only a material universe, material man would never be
  able to arrive at the concept of the mechanistic character of such an
  exclusively material existence. This very mechanistic concept of the universe
  is in itself a nonmaterial phenomenon of mind, and all mind is of nonmaterial
  origin, no matter how thoroughly it may appear to be materially conditioned
  and mechanistically controlled.

  195:7.7 The partially evolved mental mechanism of mortal man is not
  overendowed with consistency and wisdom. Man's conceit often outruns his
  reason and eludes his logic.

  195:7.8 The very pessimism of the most pessimistic materialist is, in and of
  itself, sufficient proof that the universe of the pessimist is not wholly
  material. Both optimism and pessimism are concept reactions in a mind
  conscious of values as well as of facts. If the universe were truly what the
  materialist regards it to be, man as a human machine would then be devoid of
  all conscious recognition of that very fact. Without the consciousness of the
  concept of values within the spirit-born mind, the fact of universe
  materialism and the mechanistic phenomena of universe operation would be
  wholly unrecognized by man. One machine cannot be conscious of the nature or
  value of another machine.

  195:7.9 A mechanistic philosophy of life and the universe cannot be scientific
  because science recognizes and deals only with materials and facts. Philosophy
  is inevitably superscientific. Man is a material fact of nature, but his life
  is a phenomenon which transcends the material levels of nature in that it
  exhibits the control attributes of mind and the creative qualities of spirit.

  195:7.10 The sincere effort of man to become a mechanist represents the tragic
  phenomenon of that man's futile effort to commit intellectual and moral
  suicide. But he cannot do it.

  195:7.11 If the universe were only material and man only a machine, there
  would be no science to embolden the scientist to postulate this mechanization
  of the universe. Machines cannot measure, classify, nor evaluate themselves.
  Such a scientific piece of work could be executed only by some entity of
  supermachine status.

  195:7.12 If universe reality is only one vast machine, then man must be
  outside of the universe and apart from it in order to recognize such a fact
  and become conscious of the insight of such an evaluation.



  195:7.13 If man is only a machine, by what technique does this man come to
  believe or claim to know that he is only a machine? The experience of self-
  conscious evaluation of one's self is never an attribute of a mere machine. A
  self-conscious and avowed mechanist is the best possible answer to mechanism.
  If materialism were a fact, there could be no self-conscious mechanist. It is
  also true that one must first be a moral person before one can perform immoral
  acts.



  195:7.14 The very claim of materialism implies a supermaterial consciousness
  of the mindwhich presumes to assert such dogmas. A mechanism might
  deteriorate, but it could never progress. Machines do not think, create,
  dream, aspire, idealize, hunger for truth, or thirst for righteousness. They
  do not motivate their lives with the passion to serve other machines and to
  choose as their goal of eternal progression the sublime task of finding God
  and striving to be like him. Machines are never intellectual, emotional,
  aesthetic, ethical, moral, or spiritual.

  195:7.15 Art proves that man is not mechanistic, but it does not prove that he
  is spiritually immortal. Art is mortal morontia, the intervening field between
  man, the material, and man, the spiritual. Poetry is an effort to escape from
  material realities to spiritual values.

  195:7.16 In a high civilization, art humanizes science, while in turn it is
  spiritualized by true religion -- insight into spiritual and eternal values.
  Art represents the human and time-space evaluation of reality. Religion is the
  divine embrace of cosmic values and connotes eternal progression in spiritual
  ascension and expansion. The art of time is dangerous only when it becomes
  blind to the spirit standards of the divine patterns which eternity reflects
  as the reality shadows of time. True art is the effective manipulation of the
  material things of life; religion is the ennobling transformation of the
  material facts of life, and it never ceases in its spiritual evaluation of
  art.



  195:7.17 How foolish to presume that an automaton could conceive a philosophy
  of automatism, and how ridiculous that it should presume to form such a
  concept of other and fellow automatons!



  195:7.18 Any scientific interpretation of the material universe is valueless
  unless it provides due recognition for the scientist. No appreciation of art
  is genuine unless it accords recognition to the artist. No evaluation of
  morals is worth while unless it includes the moralist. No recognition of
  philosophy is edifying if it ignores the philosopher, and religion cannot
  exist without the real experience of the religionist who, in and through this
  very experience, is seeking to find God and to know him. Likewise is the
  universe of universes without significance apart from the I AM, the infinite
  God who made it and unceasingly manages it.



  195:7.19 Mechanists -- humanists -- tend to drift with the material currents.
  Idealists and spiritists dare to use their oars with intelligence and vigor in
  order to modify the apparently purely material course of the energy streams.



  195:7.20 Science lives by the mathematics of the mind; music expresses the
  tempo of the emotions. Religion is the spiritual rhythm of the soul in time-
  space harmony with the higher and eternal melody measurements of Infinity.
  Religious experience is something in human life which is truly
  supermathematical.

  195:7.21 In language, an alphabet represents the mechanism of materialism,
  while the words expressive of the meaning of a thousand thoughts, grand ideas,
  and noble ideals -- of love and hate, of cowardice and courage -- represent
  the performances of mind within the scope defined by both material and
  spiritual law, directed by the assertion of the will of personality, and
  limited by the inherent situational endowment.

  195:7.22 The universe is not like the laws, mechanisms, and the uniformities
  which the scientist discovers, and which he comes to regard as science, but
  rather like the curious, thinking, choosing, creative, combining, and
  discriminating scientist who thus observes universe phenomena and classifies
  the mathematical facts inherent in the mechanistic phases of the material side
  of creation. Neither is the universe like the art of the artist, but rather
  like the striving, dreaming, aspiring, and advancing artist who seeks to
  transcend the world of material things in an effort to achieve a spiritual
  goal.

  195:7.23 The scientist, not science, perceives the reality of an evolving and
  advancing universe of energy and matter. The artist, not art, demonstrates the
  existence of the transient morontia world intervening between material
  existence and spiritual liberty. The religionist, not religion, proves the
  existence of the spirit realities and divine values which are to be
  encountered in the progress of eternity.





8. SECULAR TOTALITARIANISM



  195:8.1 But even after materialism and mechanism have been more or less
  vanquished, the devastating influence of twentieth-century secularism will
  still blight the spiritual experience of millions of unsuspecting souls.

  195:8.2 Modern secularism has been fostered by two world-wide influences. The
  father of secularism was the narrow-minded and godless attitude of nineteenth-
  and twentieth-century so-called science -- atheistic science. The mother of
  modern secularism was the totalitarian medieval Christian church. Secularism
  had its inception as a rising protest against the almost complete domination
  of Western civilization by the institutionalized Christian church.

  195:8.3 At the time of this revelation, the prevailing intellectual and
  philosophical climate of both European and American life is decidedly secular
  -- humanistic. For three hundred years Western thinking has been progressively
  secularized. Religion has become more and more a nominal influence, largely a
  ritualistic exercise. The majority of professed Christians of Western
  civilization are unwittingly actual secularists.

  195:8.4 It required a great power, a mighty influence, to free the thinking
  and living of the Western peoples from the withering grasp of a totalitarian
  ecclesiastical domination. Secularism did break the bonds of church control,
  and now in turn it threatens to establish a new and godless type of mastery
  over the hearts and minds of modern man. The tyrannical and dictatorial
  political state is the direct offspring of scientific materialism and
  philosophic secularism. Secularism no sooner frees man from the domination of
  the institutionalized church than it sells him into slavish bondage to the
  totalitarian state. Secularism frees man from ecclesiastical slavery only to
  betray him into the tyranny of political and economic slavery.



  195:8.5 Materialism denies God, secularism simply ignores him; at least that
  was the earlier attitude. More recently, secularism has assumed a more
  militant attitude, assuming to take the place of the religion whose
  totalitarian bondage it onetime resisted. Twentieth-century secularism tends
  to affirm that man does not need God. But beware! this godless philosophy of
  human society will lead only to unrest, animosity, unhappiness, war, and
  world-wide disaster.



  195:8.6 Secularism can never bring peace to mankind. Nothing can take the
  place of God in human society. But mark you well! do not be quick to surrender
  the beneficent gains of the secular revolt from ecclesiastical
  totalitarianism. Western civilization today enjoys many liberties and
  satisfactions as a result of the secular revolt. The great mistake of
  secularism was this: In revolting against the almost total control of life by
  religious authority, and after attaining the liberation from such
  ecclesiastical tyranny, the secularists went on to institute a revolt against
  God himself, sometimes tacitly and sometimes openly.

  195:8.7 To the secularistic revolt you owe the amazing creativity of American
  industrialism and the unprecedented material progress of Western civilization.
  And because the secularistic revolt went too far and lost sight of God and
  true religion, there also followed the unlooked-for harvest of world wars and
  international unsettledness.

  195:8.8 It is not necessary to sacrifice faith in God in order to enjoy the
  blessings of the modern secularistic revolt: tolerance, social service,
  democratic government, and civil liberties. It was not necessary for the
  secularists to antagonize true religion in order to promote science and to
  advance education.

  195:8.9 But secularism is not the sole parent of all these recent gains in the
  enlargement of living. Behind the gains of the twentieth century are not only
  science and secularism but also the unrecognized and unacknowledged spiritual
  workings of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

  195:8.10 Without God, without religion, scientific secularism can never co-
  ordinate its forces, harmonize its divergent and rivalrous interests, races,
  and nationalisms. This secularistic human society, notwithstanding its
  unparalleled materialistic achievement, is slowly disintegrating. The chief
  cohesive force resisting this disintegration of antagonism is nationalism. And
  nationalism is the chief barrier to world peace.

  195:8.11 The inherent weakness of secularism is that it discards ethics and
  religion for politics and power. You simply cannot establish the brotherhood
  of men while ignoring or denying the fatherhood of God.

  195:8.12 Secular social and political optimism is an illusion. Without God,
  neither freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace.

  195:8.13 The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and
  society can lead only to disaster. During the first third of the twentieth
  century Urantians killed more human beings than were killed during the whole
  of the Christian dispensation up to that time. And this is only the beginning
  of the dire harvest of materialism and secularism; still more terrible
  destruction is yet to come.





9. CHRISTIANITY'S PROBLEM



  195:9.1 Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of
  truth running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a
  materialistic and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of
  the superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the
  eternal truth. But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over,
  the truths of Jesus' gospel will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and
  better way.

  195:9.2 But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new
  contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a
  new vision of the Master's life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the
  religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism
  and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now
  quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs
  of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.

  195:9.3 The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the
  mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark
  ages, and are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and
  secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and
  threatened defeat are always times of great revelation.



  195:9.4 Religion does need new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare
  to depend solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings. If Christianity
  persists in neglecting its spiritual mission while it continues to busy itself
  with social and material problems, the spiritual renaissance must await the
  coming of these new teachers of Jesus' religion who will be exclusively
  devoted to the spiritual regeneration of men. And then will these spirit-born
  souls quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social,
  moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world.

  195:9.5 The modern age will refuse to accept a religion which is inconsistent
  with facts and out of harmony with its highest conceptions of truth, beauty,
  and goodness. The hour is striking for a rediscovery of the true and original
  foundations of present-day distorted and compromised Christianity -- the real
  life and teachings of Jesus.



  195:9.6 Primitive man lived a life of superstitious bondage to religious fear.
  Modern, civilized men dread the thought of falling under the dominance of
  strong religious convictions. Thinking man has always feared to be held by a
  religion. When a strong and moving religion threatens to dominate him, he
  invariably tries to rationalize, traditionalize, and institutionalize it,
  thereby hoping to gain control of it. By such procedure, even a revealed
  religion becomes man-made and man-dominated. Modern men and women of
  intelligence evade the religion of Jesus because of their fears of what it
  will do to them -- and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The
  religion of Jesus does, indeed, dominate and transform its believers,
  demanding that men dedicate their lives to seeking for a knowledge of the will
  of the Father in heaven and requiring that the energies of living be
  consecrated to the unselfish service of the brotherhood of man.

  195:9.7 Selfish men and women simply will not pay such a price for even the
  greatest spiritual treasure ever offered mortal man. Only when man has become
  sufficiently disillusioned by the sorrowful disappointments attendant upon the
  foolish and deceptive pursuits of selfishness, and subsequent to the discovery
  of the barrenness of formalized religion, will he be disposed to turn
  wholeheartedly to the gospel of the kingdom, the religion of Jesus of
  Nazareth.

  195:9.8 The world needs more firsthand religion. Even Christianity -- the best
  of the religions of the twentieth century -- is not only a religion about
  Jesus, but it is so largely one which men experience secondhand. They take
  their religion wholly as handed down by their accepted religious teachers.
  What an awakening the world would experience if it could only see Jesus as he
  really lived on earth and know, firsthand, his life-giving teachings!
  Descriptive words of things beautiful cannot thrill like the sight thereof,
  neither can creedal words inspire men's souls like the experience of knowing
  the presence of God. But expectant faith will ever keep the hope-door of man's
  soul open for the entrance of the eternal spiritual realities of the divine
  values of the worlds beyond.



  195:9.9 Christianity has dared to lower its ideals before the challenge of
  human greed, war-madness, and the lust for power; but the religion of Jesus
  stands as the unsullied and transcendent spiritual summons, calling to the
  best there is in man to rise above all these legacies of animal evolution and,
  by grace, attain the moral heights of true human destiny.

  195:9.10 Christianity is threatened by slow death from formalism,
  overorganization, intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends. The modern
  Christian church is not such a brotherhood of dynamic believers as Jesus
  commissioned continuously to effect the spiritual transformation of successive
  generations of mankind.

  195:9.11 So-called Christianity has become a social and cultural movement as
  well as a religious belief and practice. The stream of modern Christianity
  drains many an ancient pagan swamp and many a barbarian morass; many olden
  cultural watersheds drain into this present-day cultural stream as well as the
  high Galilean tablelands which are supposed to be its exclusive source.





10. THE FUTURE



  195:10.1 Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what
  is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on
  earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the
  Master to all men. It is futile to talk about a revival of primitive
  Christianity; you must go forward from where you find yourselves. Modern
  culture must become spiritually baptized with a new revelation of Jesus' life
  and illuminated with a new understanding of his gospel of eternal salvation.
  And when Jesus becomes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to himself. Jesus'
  disciples should be more than conquerors, even overflowing sources of
  inspiration and enhanced living to all men. Religion is only an exalted
  humanism until it is made divine by the discovery of the reality of the
  presence of God in personal experience.

  195:10.2 The beauty and sublimity, the humanity and divinity, the simplicity
  and uniqueness, of Jesus' life on earth present such a striking and appealing
  picture of man-saving and God-revealing that the theologians and philosophers
  of all time should be effectively restrained from daring to form creeds or
  create theological systems of spiritual bondage out of such a transcendental
  bestowal of God in the form of man. In Jesus the universe produced a mortal
  man in whom the spirit of love triumphed over the material handicaps of time
  and overcame the fact of physical origin.



  195:10.3 Ever bear in mind -- God and men need each other. They are mutually
  necessary to the full and final attainment of eternal personality experience
  in the divine destiny of universe finality.

  195:10.4 "The kingdom of God is within you" was probably the greatest
  pronouncement Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a
  living and loving spirit.



  195:10.5 In winning souls for the Master, it is not the first mile of
  compulsion, duty, or convention that will transform man and his world, but
  rather the second mile of free service and liberty-loving devotion that
  betokens the Jesusonian reaching forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep
  him on under spiritual guidance toward the higher and divine goal of mortal
  existence. Christianity even now willingly goes the first mile, but mankind
  languishes and stumbles along in moral darkness because there are so few
  genuine second-milers -- so few professed followers of Jesus who really live
  and love as he taught his disciples to live and love and serve.

  195:10.6 The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human
  society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus' brotherhood of the kingdom
  should thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the
  days when they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh.

  195:10.7 No social system or political regime which denies the reality of God
  can contribute in any constructive and lasting manner to the advancement of
  human civilization. But Christianity, as it is subdivided and secularized
  today, presents the greatest single obstacle to its further advancement;
  especially is this true concerning the Orient.



  195:10.8 Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living
  faith, growing spirit, and firsthand experience of the faith-comrades of Jesus
  in the brotherhood of man in the spiritual association of the kingdom of
  heaven. The praiseworthy desire to preserve traditions of past achievement
  often leads to the defense of outgrown systems of worship. The well-meant
  desire to foster ancient thought systems effectually prevents the sponsoring
  of new and adequate means and methods designed to satisfy the spiritual
  longings of the expanding and advancing minds of modern men. Likewise, the
  Christian churches of the twentieth century stand as great, but wholly
  unconscious, obstacles to the immediate advance of the real gospel -- the
  teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

  195:10.9 Many earnest persons who would gladly yield loyalty to the Christ of
  the gospel find it very difficult enthusiastically to support a church which
  exhibits so little of the spirit of his life and teachings, and which they
  have been erroneously taught he founded. Jesus did not found the so-called
  Christian church, but he has, in every manner consistent with his nature,
  fostered it as the best existent exponent of his lifework on earth.

  195:10.10 If the Christian church would only dare to espouse the Master's
  program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to
  enlist in such a spiritual undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all
  the way through with this great adventure.

  195:10.11 Christianity is seriously confronted with the doom embodied in one
  of its own slogans: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The non-
  Christian world will hardly capitulate to a sect-divided Christendom. The
  living Jesus is the only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The
  true church -- the Jesus brotherhood -- is invisible, spiritual, and is
  characterized by unity, not necessarily by uniformity. Uniformity is the
  earmark of the physical world of mechanistic nature. Spiritual unity is the
  fruit of faith union with the living Jesus. The visible church should refuse
  longer to handicap the progress of the invisible and spiritual brotherhood of
  the kingdom of God. And this brotherhood is destined to become a living
  organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well
  utilize such social organizations, but it must not be supplanted by them.

  195:10.12 But the Christianity of even the twentieth century must not be
  despised. It is the product of the combined moral genius of the God-knowing
  men of many races during many ages, and it has truly been one of the greatest
  powers for good on earth, and therefore no man should lightly regard it,
  notwithstanding its inherent and acquired defects. Christianity still
  contrives to move the minds of reflective men with mighty moral emotions.

  195:10.13 But there is no excuse for the involvement of the church in commerce
  and politics; such unholy alliances are a flagrant betrayal of the Master. And
  the genuine lovers of truth will be slow to forget that this powerful
  institutionalized church has often dared to smother newborn faith and
  persecute truth bearers who chanced to appear in unorthodox raiment.

  195:10.14 It is all too true that such a church would not have survived unless
  there had been men in the world who preferred such a style of worship. Many
  spiritually indolent souls crave an ancient and authoritative religion of
  ritual and sacred traditions. Human evolution and spiritual progress are
  hardly sufficient to enable all men to dispense with religious authority. And
  the invisible brotherhood of the kingdom may well include these family groups
  of various social and temperamental classes if they are only willing to become
  truly spirit-led sons of God. But in this brotherhood of Jesus there is no
  place for sectarian rivalry, group bitterness, nor assertions of moral
  superiority and spiritual infallibility.

  195:10.15 These various groupings of Christians may serve to accommodate
  numerous different types of would-be believers among the various peoples of
  Western civilization, but such division of Christendom presents a grave
  weakness when it attempts to carry the gospel of Jesus to Oriental peoples.
  These races do not yet understand that there is a religion of Jesus separate,
  and somewhat apart, from Christianity, which has more and more become a
  religion about Jesus.

  195:10.16 The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new
  revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message
  which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his
  present-day professed followers.

  195:10.17 Even secular education could help in this great spiritual
  renaissance if it would pay more attention to the work of teaching youth how
  to engage in life planning and character progression. The purpose of all
  education should be to foster and further the supreme purpose of life, the
  development of a majestic and well-balanced personality. There is great need
  for the teaching of moral discipline in the place of so much self-
  gratification. Upon such a foundation religion may contribute its spiritual
  incentive to the enlargement and enrichment of mortal life, even to the
  security and enhancement of life eternal.

  195:10.18 Christianity is an extemporized religion, and therefore must it
  operate in low gear. High-gear spiritual performances must await the new
  revelation and the more general acceptance of the real religion of Jesus. But
  Christianity is a mighty religion, seeing that the commonplace disciples of a
  crucified carpenter set in motion those teachings which conquered the Roman
  world in three hundred years and then went on to triumph over the barbarians
  who overthrew Rome. This same Christianity conquered -- absorbed and exalted
  -- the whole stream of Hebrew theology and Greek philosophy. And then, when
  this Christian religion became comatose for more than a thousand years as a
  result of an overdose of mysteries and paganism, it resurrected itself and
  virtually reconquered the whole Western world. Christianity contains enough of
  Jesus' teachings to immortalize it.

  195:10.19 If Christianity could only grasp more of Jesus' teachings, it could
  do so much more in helping modern man to solve his new and increasingly
  complex problems.

  195:10.20 Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become
  identified in the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the
  industrial life, and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has
  Christianity unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the
  guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles,
  wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character,
  power without conscience, and industry without morality.

  195:10.21 The hope of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor
  the social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it
  humbly bows itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn
  anew from Jesus of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear --
  the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.




PAPER 196


 THE FAITH OF JESUS



  196:0.1 JESUS enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He experienced
  the ordinary ups and downs of mortal existence, but he never religiously
  doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and guidance. His faith was the
  outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine presence, his
  indwelling Adjuster. His faith was neither traditional nor merely
  intellectual; it was wholly personal and purely spiritual.

  196:0.2 The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as
  being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused
  in his mind as the "will of the Father in heaven." Jesus' God was at one and
  the same time "The Holy One of Israel" and "The living and loving Father in
  heaven." The concept of God as a Father was not original with Jesus, but he
  exalted and elevated the idea into a sublime experience by achieving a new
  revelation of God and by proclaiming that every mortal creature is a child of
  this Father of love, a son of God.

  196:0.3 Jesus did not cling to faith in God as would a struggling soul at war
  with the universe and at death grips with a hostile and sinful world; he did
  not resort to faith merely as a consolation in the midst of difficulties or as
  a comfort in threatened despair; faith was not just an illusory compensation
  for the unpleasant realities and the sorrows of living. In the very face of
  all the natural difficulties and the temporal contradictions of mortal
  existence, he experienced the tranquillity of supreme and unquestioned trust
  in God and felt the tremendous thrill of living, by faith, in the very
  presence of the heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith was a living
  experience of actual spirit attainment. Jesus' great contribution to the
  values of human experience was not that he revealed so many new ideas about
  the Father in heaven, but rather that he so magnificently and humanly
  demonstrated a new and higher type of living faith in God. Never on all the
  worlds of this universe, in the life of any one mortal, did God ever become
  such a living reality as in the human experience of Jesus of Nazareth.

  196:0.4 In the Master's life on Urantia, this and all other worlds of the
  local creation discover a new and higher type of religion, religion based on
  personal spiritual relations with the Universal Father and wholly validated by
  the supreme authority of genuine personal experience. This living faith of
  Jesus was more than an intellectual reflection, and it was not a mystic
  meditation.

  196:0.5 Theology may fix, formulate, define, and dogmatize faith, but in the
  human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and
  purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for tradition nor a mere
  intellectual belief which he held as a sacred creed, but rather a sublime
  experience and a profound conviction which securely held him. His faith was so
  real and all-encompassing that it absolutely swept away any spiritual doubts
  and effectively destroyed every conflicting desire. Nothing was able to tear
  him away from the spiritual anchorage of this fervent, sublime, and undaunted
  faith. Even in the face of apparent defeat or in the throes of disappointment
  and threatening despair, he calmly stood in the divine presence free from fear
  and fully conscious of spiritual invincibility. Jesus enjoyed the invigorating
  assurance of the possession of unflinching faith, and in each of life's trying
  situations he unfailingly exhibited an unquestioning loyalty to the Father's
  will. And this superb faith was undaunted even by the cruel and crushing
  threat of an ignominious death.

  196:0.6 In a religious genius, strong spiritual faith so many times leads
  directly to disastrous fanaticism, to exaggeration of the religious ego, but
  it was not so with Jesus. He was not unfavorably affected in his practical
  life by his extraordinary faith and spirit attainment because this spiritual
  exaltation was a wholly unconscious and spontaneous soul expression of his
  personal experience with God.

  196:0.7 The all-consuming and indomitable spiritual faith of Jesus never
  became fanatical, for it never attempted to run away with his well-balanced
  intellectual judgments concerning the proportional values of practical and
  commonplace social, economic, and moral life situations. The Son of Man was a
  splendidly unified human personality; he was a perfectly endowed divine being;
  he was also magnificently co-ordinated as a combined human and divine being
  functioning on earth as a single personality. Always did the Master co-
  ordinate the faith of the soul with the wisdom-appraisals of seasoned
  experience. Personal faith, spiritual hope, and moral devotion were always
  correlated in a matchless religious unity of harmonious association with the
  keen realization of the reality and sacredness of all human loyalties --
  personal honor, family love, religious obligation, social duty, and economic
  necessity.

  196:0.8 The faith of Jesus visualized all spirit values as being found in the
  kingdom of God; therefore he said, "Seek first the kingdom of heaven." Jesus
  saw in the advanced and ideal fellowship of the kingdom the achievement and
  fulfillment of the "will of God." The very heart of the prayer which he taught
  his disciples was, "Your kingdom come; your will be done." Having thus
  conceived of the kingdom as comprising the will of God, he devoted himself to
  the cause of its realization with amazing self-forgetfulness and unbounded
  enthusiasm. But in all his intense mission and throughout his extraordinary
  life there never appeared the fury of the fanatic nor the superficial
  frothiness of the religious egotist.

  196:0.9 The Master's entire life was consistently conditioned by this living
  faith, this sublime religious experience. This spiritual attitude wholly
  dominated his thinking and feeling, his believing and praying, his teaching
  and preaching. This personal faith of a son in the certainty and security of
  the guidance and protection of the heavenly Father imparted to his unique life
  a profound endowment of spiritual reality. And yet, despite this very deep
  consciousness of close relationship with divinity, this Galilean, God's
  Galilean, when addressed as Good Teacher, instantly replied, "Why do you call
  me good?" When we stand confronted by such splendid self-forgetfulness, we
  begin to understand how the Universal Father found it possible so fully to
  manifest himself to him and reveal himself through him to the mortals of the
  realms.

  196:0.10 Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the greatest of all
  offerings: the consecration and dedication of his own will to the majestic
  service of doing the divine will. Jesus always and consistently interpreted
  religion wholly in terms of the Father's will. When you study the career of
  the Master, as concerns prayer or any other feature of the religious life,
  look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Jesus never prayed as
  a religious duty. To him prayer was a sincere expression of spiritual
  attitude, a declaration of soul loyalty, a recital of personal devotion, an
  expression of thanksgiving, an avoidance of emotional tension, a prevention of
  conflict, an exaltation of intellection, an ennoblement of desire, a
  vindication of moral decision, an enrichment of thought, an invigoration of
  higher inclinations, a consecration of impulse, a clarification of viewpoint,
  a declaration of faith, a transcendental surrender of will, a sublime
  assertion of confidence, a revelation of courage, the proclamation of
  discovery, a confession of supreme devotion, the validation of consecration, a
  technique for the adjustment of difficulties, and the mighty mobilization of
  the combined soul powers to withstand all human tendencies toward selfishness,
  evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayerful consecration to the
  doing of his Father's will and ended his life triumphantly with just such a
  prayer. The secret of his unparalleled religious life was this consciousness
  of the presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere
  worship -- unbroken communion with God -- and not by leadings, voices,
  visions, or extraordinary religious practices.

  196:0.11 In the earthly life of Jesus, religion was a living experience, a
  direct and personal movement from spiritual reverence to practical
  righteousness. The faith of Jesus bore the transcendent fruits of the divine
  spirit. His faith was not immature and credulous like that of a child, but in
  many ways it did resemble the unsuspecting trust of the child mind. Jesus
  trusted God much as the child trusts a parent. He had a profound confidence in
  the universe -- just such a trust as the child has in its parental
  environment. Jesus' wholehearted faith in the fundamental goodness of the
  universe very much resembled the child's trust in the security of its earthly
  surroundings. He depended on the heavenly Father as a child leans upon its
  earthly parent, and his fervent faith never for one moment doubted the
  certainty of the heavenly Father's overcare. He was not disturbed seriously by
  fears, doubts, and skepticism. Unbelief did not inhibit the free and original
  expression of his life. He combined the stalwart and intelligent courage of a
  full-grown man with the sincere and trusting optimism of a believing child.
  His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was devoid of fear.

  196:0.12 The faith of Jesus attained the purity of a child's trust. His faith
  was so absolute and undoubting that it responded to the charm of the contact
  of fellow beings and to the wonders of the universe. His sense of dependence
  on the divine was so complete and so confident that it yielded the joy and the
  assurance of absolute personal security. There was no hesitating pretense in
  his religious experience. In this giant intellect of the full-grown man the
  faith of the child reigned supreme in all matters relating to the religious
  consciousness. It is not strange that he once said, "Except you become as a
  little child, you shall not enter the kingdom." Notwithstanding that Jesus'
  faith was childlike, it was in no sense childish.

  196:0.13 Jesus does not require his disciples to believe in him but rather to
  believe with him, believe in the reality of the love of God and in full
  confidence accept the security of the assurance of sonship with the heavenly
  Father. The Master desires that all his followers should fully share his
  transcendent faith. Jesus most touchingly challenged his followers, not only
  to believe what he believed, but also to believe as he believed. This is the
  full significance of his one supreme requirement, "Follow me."

  196:0.14 Jesus' earthly life was devoted to one great purpose -- doing the
  Father's will, living the human life religiously and by faith. The faith of
  Jesus was trusting, like that of a child, but it was wholly free from
  presumption. He made robust and manly decisions, courageously faced manifold
  disappointments, resolutely surmounted extraordinary difficulties, and
  unflinchingly confronted the stern requirements of duty. It required a strong
  will and an unfailing confidence to believe what Jesus believed and as he
  believed.





1. JESUS -- THE MAN



  196:1.1 Jesus' devotion to the Father's will and the service of man was even
  more than mortal decision and human determination; it was a wholehearted
  consecration of himself to such an unreserved bestowal of love. No matter how
  great the fact of the sovereignty of Michael, you must not take the human
  Jesus away from men. The Master has ascended on high as a man, as well as God;
  he belongs to men; men belong to him. How unfortunate that religion itself
  should be so misinterpreted as to take the human Jesus away from struggling
  mortals! Let not the discussions of the humanity or the divinity of the Christ
  obscure the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious man who, by
  faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God; he was the most
  truly religious man who has ever lived on Urantia.

  196:1.2 The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of the human
  Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions and the religious
  dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth must not be longer sacrificed
  to even the splendid concept of the glorified Christ. What a transcendent
  service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from
  the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the
  church that bears his name, and to all other religions! Surely the Christian
  fellowship of believers will not hesitate to make such adjustments of faith
  and of practices of living as will enable it to "follow after" the Master in
  the demonstration of his real life of religious devotion to the doing of his
  Father's will and of consecration to the unselfish service of man. Do
  professed Christians fear the exposure of a self-sufficient and unconsecrated
  fellowship of social respectability and selfish economic maladjustment? Does
  institutional Christianity fear the possible jeopardy, or even the overthrow,
  of traditional ecclesiastical authority if the Jesus of Galilee is reinstated
  in the minds and souls of mortal men as the ideal of personal religious
  living? Indeed, the social readjustments, the economic transformations, the
  moral rejuvenations, and the religious revisions of Christian civilization
  would be drastic and revolutionary if the living religion of Jesus should
  suddenly supplant the theologic religion about Jesus.



  196:1.3 To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to
  enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One
  of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus
  believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his
  exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value
  is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it.

  196:1.4 The common people heard Jesus gladly, and they will again respond to
  the presentation of his sincere human life of consecrated religious motivation
  if such truths shall again be proclaimed to the world. The people heard him
  gladly because he was one of them, an unpretentious layman; the world's
  greatest religious teacher was indeed a layman.

  196:1.5 It should not be the aim of kingdom believers literally to imitate the
  outward life of Jesus in the flesh but rather to share his faith; to trust God
  as he trusted God and to believe in men as he believed in men. Jesus never
  argued about either the fatherhood of God or the brotherhood of men; he was a
  living illustration of the one and a profound demonstration of the other.

  196:1.6 Just as men must progress from the consciousness of the human to the
  realization of the divine, so did Jesus ascend from the nature of man to the
  consciousness of the nature of God. And the Master made this great ascent from
  the human to the divine by the conjoint achievement of the faith of his mortal
  intellect and the acts of his indwelling Adjuster. The fact-realization of the
  attainment of totality of divinity (all the while fully conscious of the
  reality of humanity) was attended by seven stages of faith consciousness of
  progressive divinization. These stages of progressive self-realization were
  marked off by the following extraordinary events in the Master's bestowal
  experience:

1. The arrival of the Thought Adjuster.

2. The messenger of Immanuel who appeared to him at Jerusalem when he was about
twelve years old.

3. The manifestations attendant upon his baptism.

4. The experiences on the Mount of Transfiguration.

5. The morontia resurrection.

6. The spirit ascension.

7. The final embrace of the Paradise Father, conferring unlimited sovereignty of
his universe.





2. THE RELIGION OF JESUS



  196:2.1 Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough
  to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the author and
  finisher of our faith. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce,
  you must live the religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of Pentecost, Peter
  unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and
  glorified Christ. The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into
  Christianity, a religion embodying his own theologic views and portraying his
  own personal experience with the Jesus of the Damascus road. The gospel of the
  kingdom is founded on the personal religious experience of the Jesus of
  Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal religious
  experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is
  devoted, not to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life
  of Jesus, but to a discussion of Paul's religious experience and to a
  portrayal of his personal religious convictions. The only notable exceptions
  to this statement, aside from certain parts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are
  the Book of Hebrews and the Epistle of James. Even Peter, in his writing, only
  once reverted to the personal religious life of his Master. The New Testament
  is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian.

  196:2.2 Jesus' life in the flesh portrays a transcendent religious growth from
  the early ideas of primitive awe and human reverence up through years of
  personal spiritual communion until he finally arrived at that advanced and
  exalted status of the consciousness of his oneness with the Father. And thus,
  in one short life, did Jesus traverse that experience of religious spiritual
  progression which man begins on earth and ordinarily achieves only at the
  conclusion of his long sojourn in the spirit training schools of the
  successive levels of the pre-Paradise career. Jesus progressed from a purely
  human consciousness of the faith certainties of personal religious experience
  to the sublime spiritual heights of the positive realization of his divine
  nature and to the consciousness of his close association with the Universal
  Father in the management of a universe. He progressed from the humble status
  of mortal dependence which prompted him spontaneously to say to the one who
  called him Good Teacher, "Why do you call me good? None is good but God," to
  that sublime consciousness of achieved divinity which led him to exclaim,
  "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" And this progressing ascent from the
  human to the divine was an exclusively mortal achievement. And when he had
  thus attained divinity, he was still the same human Jesus, the Son of Man as
  well as the Son of God.

  196:2.3 Mark, Matthew, and Luke retain something of the picture of the human
  Jesus as he engaged in the superb struggle to ascertain the divine will and to
  do that will. John presents a picture of the triumphant Jesus as he walked on
  earth in the full consciousness of divinity. The great mistake that has been
  made by those who have studied the Master's life is that some have conceived
  of him as entirely human, while others have thought of him as only divine.
  Throughout his entire experience he was truly both human and divine, even as
  he yet is.

  196:2.4 But the greatest mistake was made in that, while the human Jesus was
  recognized as having a religion, the divine Jesus (Christ) almost overnight
  became a religion. Paul's Christianity made sure of the adoration of the
  divine Christ, but it almost wholly lost sight of the struggling and valiant
  human Jesus of Galilee, who, by the valor of his personal religious faith and
  the heroism of his indwelling Adjuster, ascended from the lowly levels of
  humanity to become one with divinity, thus becoming the new and living way
  whereby all mortals may so ascend from humanity to divinity. Mortals in all
  stages of spirituality and on all worlds may find in the personal life of
  Jesus that which will strengthen and inspire them as they progress from the
  lowest spirit levels up to the highest divine values, from the beginning to
  the end of all personal religious experience.

  196:2.5 At the time of the writing of the New Testament, the authors not only
  most profoundly believed in the divinity of the risen Christ, but they also
  devotedly and sincerely believed in his immediate return to earth to
  consummate the heavenly kingdom. This strong faith in the Lord's immediate
  return had much to do with the tendency to omit from the record those
  references which portrayed the purely human experiences and attributes of the
  Master. The whole Christian movement tended away from the human picture of
  Jesus of Nazareth toward the exaltation of the risen Christ, the glorified and
  soon-returning Lord Jesus Christ.



  196:2.6 Jesus founded the religion of personal experience in doing the will of
  God and serving the human brotherhood; Paul founded a religion in which the
  glorified Jesus became the object of worship and the brotherhood consisted of
  fellow believers in the divine Christ. In the bestowal of Jesus these two
  concepts were potential in his divine-human life, and it is indeed a pity that
  his followers failed to create a unified religion which might have given
  proper recognition to both the human and the divine natures of the Master as
  they were inseparably bound up in his earth life and so gloriously set forth
  in the original gospel of the kingdom.

  196:2.7 You would be neither shocked nor disturbed by some of Jesus' strong
  pronouncements if you would only remember that he was the world's most
  wholehearted and devoted religionist. He was a wholly consecrated mortal,
  unreservedly dedicated to doing his Father's will. Many of his apparently hard
  sayings were more of a personal confession of faith and a pledge of devotion
  than commands to his followers. And it was this very singleness of purpose and
  unselfish devotion that enabled him to effect such extraordinary progress in
  the conquest of the human mind in one short life. Many of his declarations
  should be considered as a confession of what he demanded of himself rather
  than what he required of all his followers. In his devotion to the cause of
  the kingdom, Jesus burned all bridges behind him; he sacrificed all hindrances
  to the doing of his Father's will.

  196:2.8 Jesus blessed the poor because they were usually sincere and pious; he
  condemned the rich because they were usually wanton and irreligious. He would
  equally condemn the irreligious pauper and commend the consecrated and
  worshipful man of wealth.

  196:2.9 Jesus led men to feel at home in the world; he delivered them from the
  slavery of taboo and taught them that the world was not fundamentally evil. He
  did not long to escape from his earthly life; he mastered a technique of
  acceptably doing the Father's will while in the flesh. He attained an
  idealistic religious life in the very midst of a realistic world. Jesus did
  not share Paul's pessimistic view of humankind. The Master looked upon men as
  the sons of God and foresaw a magnificent and eternal future for those who
  chose survival. He was not a moral skeptic; he viewed man positively, not
  negatively. He saw most men as weak rather than wicked, more distraught than
  depraved. But no matter what their status, they were all God's children and
  his brethren.

  196:2.10 He taught men to place a high value upon themselves in time and in
  eternity. Because of this high estimate which Jesus placed upon men, he was
  willing to spend himself in the unremitting service of humankind. And it was
  this infinite worth of the finite that made the golden rule a vital factor in
  his religion. What mortal can fail to be uplifted by the extraordinary faith
  Jesus has in him?

  196:2.11 Jesus offered no rules for social advancement; his was a religious
  mission, and religion is an exclusively individual experience. The ultimate
  goal of society's most advanced achievement can never hope to transcend Jesus'
  brotherhood of men based on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The
  ideal of all social attainment can be realized only in the coming of this
  divine kingdom.





3. THE SUPREMACY OF RELIGION



  196:3.1 Personal, spiritual religious experience is an efficient solvent for
  most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter, evaluator, and adjuster
  of all human problems. Religion does not remove or destroy human troubles, but
  it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and transcend them. True religion
  unifies the personality for effective adjustment to all mortal requirements.
  Religious faith -- the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence --
  unfailingly enables the God-knowing man to bridge that gulf existing between
  the intellectual logic which recognizes the Universal First Cause as It and
  those positive affirmations of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the
  heavenly Father of Jesus' gospel, the personal God of human salvation.

  196:3.2 There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and
  relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science,
  philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities
  as reason, wisdom, and faith -- physical reality, intellectual reality, and
  spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as
  thing, meaning, and value.

  196:3.3 The progressive comprehension of reality is the equivalent of
  approaching God. The finding of God, the consciousness of identity with
  reality, is the equivalent of the experiencing of self-completion -- self-
  entirety, self-totality. The experiencing of total reality is the full
  realization of God, the finality of the God-knowing experience.

  196:3.4 The full summation of human life is the knowledge that man is educated
  by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved -- justified -- by religious faith.

  196:3.5 Physical certainty consists in the logic of science; moral certainty,
  in the wisdom of philosophy; spiritual certainty, in the truth of genuine
  religious experience.

  196:3.6 The mind of man can attain high levels of spiritual insight and
  corresponding spheres of divinity of values because it is not wholly material.
  There is a spirit nucleus in the mind of man -- the Adjuster of the divine
  presence. There are three separate evidences of this spirit indwelling of the
  human mind:



  196:3.7 1. Humanitarian fellowship -- love. The purely animal mind may be
  gregarious for self-protection, but only the spirit-indwelt intellect is
  unselfishly altruistic and unconditionally loving.



  196:3.8 2. Interpretation of the universe -- wisdom. Only the spirit-indwelt
  mind can comprehend that the universe is friendly to the individual.



  196:3.9 3. Spiritual evaluation of life -- worship. Only the spirit-indwelt
  man can realize the divine presence and seek to attain a fuller experience in
  and with this foretaste of divinity.



  196:3.10 The human mind does not create real values; human experience does not
  yield universe insight. Concerning insight, the recognition of moral values
  and the discernment of spiritual meanings, all that the human mind can do is
  to discover, recognize, interpret, and choose.

  196:3.11 The moral values of the universe become intellectual possessions by
  the exercise of the three basic judgments, or choices, of the mortal mind:

1. Self-judgment -- moral choice.

2. Social-judgment -- ethical choice.

3. God-judgment -- religious choice.

  196:3.12 Thus it appears that all human progress is effected by a technique of
  conjoint revelational evolution.

  196:3.13 Unless a divine lover lived in man, he could not unselfishly and
  spiritually love. Unless an interpreter lived in the mind, man could not truly
  realize the unity of the universe. Unless an evaluator dwelt with man, he
  could not possibly appraise moral values and recognize spiritual meanings. And
  this lover hails from the very source of infinite love; this interpreter is a
  part of Universal Unity; this evaluator is the child of the Center and Source
  of all absolute values of divine and eternal reality.

  196:3.14 Moral evaluation with a religious meaning -- spiritual insight --
  connotes the individual's choice between good and evil, truth and error,
  material and spiritual, human and divine, time and eternity. Human survival is
  in great measure dependent on consecrating the human will to the choosing of
  those values selected by this spirit-value sorter -- the indwelling
  interpreter and unifier. Personal religious experience consists in two phases:
  discovery in the human mind and revelation by the indwelling divine spirit.
  Through oversophistication or as a result of the irreligious conduct of
  professed religionists, a man, or even a generation of men, may elect to
  suspend their efforts to discover the God who indwells them; they may fail to
  progress in and attain the divine revelation. But such attitudes of spiritual
  nonprogression cannot long persist because of the presence and influence of
  the indwelling Thought Adjusters.

  196:3.15 This profound experience of the reality of the divine indwelling
  forever transcends the crude materialistic technique of the physical sciences.
  You cannot put spiritual joy under a microscope; you cannot weigh love in a
  balance; you cannot measure moral values; neither can you estimate the quality
  of spiritual worship.

  196:3.16 The Hebrews had a religion of moral sublimity; the Greeks evolved a
  religion of beauty; Paul and his conferees founded a religion of faith, hope,
  and charity. Jesus revealed and exemplified a religion of love: security in
  the Father's love, with joy and satisfaction consequent upon sharing this love
  in the service of the human brotherhood.

  196:3.17 Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately
  experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes
  religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real
  religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the
  subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent
  response to total objectivity -- the universe and its Maker.

  196:3.18 The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved
  is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one
  truly divine and objective reality that is associated with mortal beings, the
  Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively
  subjective phenomenon. Man's contact with the highest objective reality, God,
  is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping
  him, of realizing sonship with him.

  196:3.19 True religious worship is not a futile monologue of self-deception.
  Worship is a personal communion with that which is divinely real, with that
  which is the very source of reality. Man aspires by worship to be better and
  thereby eventually attains the best.

  196:3.20 The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness
  is not a substitute for genuine religious experience -- spiritual reality.
  Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious reality. The
  projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods -- gods in
  man's image -- but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin.
  The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling spirit. Many of the
  religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect,
  but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems
  of religious slavery.

  196:3.21 God is not the mere invention of man's idealism; he is the very
  source of all such superanimal insights and values. God is not a hypothesis
  formulated to unify the human concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness; he is
  the personality of love from whom all of these universe manifestations are
  derived. The truth, beauty, and goodness of man's world are unified by the
  increasing spirituality of the experience of mortals ascending toward Paradise
  realities. The unity of truth, beauty, and goodness can only be realized in
  the spiritual experience of the God-knowing personality.

  196:3.22 Morality is the essential pre-existent soil of personal God-
  consciousness, the personal realization of the Adjuster's inner presence, but
  such morality is not the source of religious experience and the resultant
  spiritual insight. The moral nature is superanimal but subspiritual. Morality
  is equivalent to the recognition of duty, the realization of the existence of
  right and wrong. The moral zone intervenes between the animal and the human
  types of mind as morontia functions between the material and the spiritual
  spheres of personality attainment.

  196:3.23 The evolutionary mind is able to discover law, morals, and ethics;
  but the bestowed spirit, the indwelling Adjuster, reveals to the evolving
  human mind the lawgiver, the Father-source of all that is true, beautiful, and
  good; and such an illuminated man has a religion and is spiritually equipped
  to begin the long and adventurous search for God.

  196:3.24 Morality is not necessarily spiritual; it may be wholly and purely
  human, albeit real religion enhances all moral values, makes them more
  meaningful. Morality without religion fails to reveal ultimate goodness, and
  it also fails to provide for the survival of even its own moral values.
  Religion provides for the enhancement, glorification, and assured survival of
  everything morality recognizes and approves.

  196:3.25 Religion stands above science, art, philosophy, ethics, and morals,
  but not independent of them. They are all indissolubly interrelated in human
  experience, personal and social. Religion is man's supreme experience in the
  mortal nature, but finite language makes it forever impossible for theology
  ever adequately to depict real religious experience.

  196:3.26 Religious insight possesses the power of turning defeat into higher
  desires and new determinations. Love is the highest motivation which man may
  utilize in his universe ascent. But love, divested of truth, beauty, and
  goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a psychic illusion, a
  spiritual deception. Love must always be redefined on successive levels of
  morontia and spirit progression.

  196:3.27 Art results from man's attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in
  his material environment; it is a gesture toward the morontia level. Science
  is man's effort to solve the apparent riddles of the material universe.
  Philosophy is man's attempt at the unification of human experience. Religion
  is man's supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final reality, his
  determination to find God and to be like him.

  196:3.28 In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is
  potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion. All
  of man's universe romancing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth.



  196:3.29 Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level
  of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment,
  but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the
  limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love.
  This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to
  find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified
  in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do
  righteousness.



  196:3.30 Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress, and the
  revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail.



  196:3.31 The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication
  with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest
  adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to
  advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of
  embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland
  of spirit-consciousness -- contact with the divine presence. Such an
  experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative
  of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such
  spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of
  sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of
  faith.

  196:3.32 And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self
  with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the
  spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that which is true,
  beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose
  to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of
  love and nurtured in service. And all these things are a part of the Universal
  Father. The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons.
  And the spirit of the Father is in his Son's sons -- mortal men. When all is
  said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God.


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