The Passover at Jerusalem

142:4.1Flav­ius, 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.

142:4.2The 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.”

142:4.4Flav­ius 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.