The Passover at Jerusalem

142:3.1The 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:

142:3.2Je­sus 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:

142:3.31. 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.

142:3.42. 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.

142:3.53. 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.

142:3.64. 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.

142:3.75. 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.

142:3.86. 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.

142:3.9Never 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.”

142:3.23And when he had fin­ished speak­ing, no man asked him a ques­tion. They went, each one to his sleep.