On the Way to Rome

130:1.1Dur­ing 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.

130:1.2One 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.”

130:1.3Ga­diah 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.)

130:1.5Je­sus’ 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.