The Times of Michael’s Bestowal

121:7.1By 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.

121:7.2The 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.

121:7.3The 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 hes­i­tate 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.

121:7.4By 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.

121:7.5These 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.

121:7.6And 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.

121:7.7Paul’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.

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

121:7.91. The philo­sophic rea­son­ing of the Greek pros­e­lytes to Ju­daism, in­clud­ing some of their con­cepts of the eter­nal life.

121:7.102. The ap­peal­ing teach­ings of the pre­vail­ing mys­tery cults, es­pe­cially the Mith­raic doc­trines of re­demp­tion, atone­ment, and sal­va­tion by the sac­ri­fice made by some god.

121:7.113. The sturdy moral­ity of the es­tab­lished Jew­ish re­li­gion.

121:7.12The 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.