The Times of Michael’s Bestowal

121:8.1As 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.

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

121:8.31. 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.

121:8.42. 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.

121:8.5The 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.

121:8.6Mat­thew’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.

121:8.7Isador 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.

121:8.83. 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.”

121:8.9As 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.

121:8.104. 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.

121:8.11All 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.

121:8.13The 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.

121:8.14While 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.]