The Passover at Jerusalem

142:7.1Af­ter the busy pe­riod of teach­ing and per­sonal work of Pass­over week in Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus spent the next Wednes­day at Beth­any with his apos­tles, rest­ing. That af­ter­noon, Thomas asked a ques­tion which elicited a long and in­struc­tive an­swer. Said Thomas: “Mas­ter, on the day we were set apart as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, you told us many things, in­structed us re­gard­ing our per­sonal mode of life, but what shall we teach the mul­ti­tude? How are these peo­ple to live af­ter the king­dom more fully comes? Shall your dis­ci­ples own slaves? Shall your be­liev­ers court pov­erty and shun prop­erty? Shall mercy alone pre­vail so that we shall have no more law and jus­tice?” Je­sus and the twelve spent all af­ter­noon and all that evening, af­ter sup­per, dis­cussing Thomas’s ques­tions. For the pur­poses of this rec­ord we pre­sent the fol­low­ing sum­mary of the Mas­ter’s in­struc­tion:

142:7.2Je­sus sought first to make plain to his apos­tles that he him­self was on earth liv­ing a unique life in the flesh, and that they, the twelve, had been called to par­tic­i­pate in this be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence of the Son of Man; and as such cowork­ers, they, too, must share in many of the spe­cial re­stric­tions and obli­ga­tions of the en­tire be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence. There was a veiled in­ti­ma­tion that the Son of Man was the only per­son who had ever lived on earth who could si­mul­ta­ne­ously see into the very heart of God and into the very depths of man’s soul.

142:7.3Very plainly Je­sus ex­plained that the king­dom of heaven was an evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence, be­gin­ning here on earth and pro­gress­ing up through suc­ces­sive life sta­tions to Par­a­dise. In the course of the evening he def­i­nitely stated that at some fu­ture stage of king­dom de­vel­op­ment he would re­visit this world in spir­i­tual power and di­vine glory.

142:7.4He next ex­plained that the “king­dom idea” was not the best way to il­lus­trate man’s re­la­tion to God; that he em­ployed such fig­ures of speech be­cause the Jew­ish peo­ple were ex­pect­ing the king­dom, and be­cause John had preached in terms of the com­ing king­dom. Je­sus said: “The peo­ple of an­other age will bet­ter un­der­stand the gospel of the king­dom when it is pre­sented in terms ex­pres­sive of the fam­ily re­la­tion­ship—when man un­der­stands re­li­gion as the teach­ing of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man, son­ship with God.” Then the Mas­ter dis­coursed at some length on the earthly fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of the heav­enly fam­ily, re­stat­ing the two fun­da­men­tal laws of liv­ing: the first com­mand­ment of love for the fa­ther, the head of the fam­ily, and the sec­ond com­mand­ment of mu­tual love among the chil­dren, to love your brother as your­self. And then he ex­plained that such a qual­ity of broth­erly af­fec­tion would in­vari­ably man­i­fest it­self in un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice.

142:7.5Fol­low­ing that, came the mem­o­rable dis­cus­sion of the fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics of fam­ily life and their ap­pli­ca­tion to the re­la­tion­ship ex­ist­ing be­tween God and man. Je­sus stated that a true fam­ily is founded on the fol­low­ing seven facts:

142:7.61. The fact of ex­is­tence. The re­la­tion­ships of na­ture and the phe­nom­ena of mor­tal like­nesses are bound up in the fam­ily: Chil­dren in­herit cer­tain pa­ren­tal traits. The chil­dren take ori­gin in the par­ents; per­son­al­ity ex­is­tence de­pends on the act of the par­ent. The re­la­tion­ship of fa­ther and child is in­her­ent in all na­ture and per­vades all liv­ing ex­is­tences.

142:7.72. Se­cu­rity and plea­sure. True fa­thers take great plea­sure in pro­vid­ing for the needs of their chil­dren. Many fa­thers are not con­tent with sup­ply­ing the mere wants of their chil­dren but en­joy mak­ing pro­vi­sion for their plea­sures also.

142:7.83. Ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing. Wise fa­thers care­fully plan for the ed­u­ca­tion and ad­e­quate train­ing of their sons and daugh­ters. When young they are pre­pared for the greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of later life.

142:7.94. Dis­ci­pline and re­straint. Farsee­ing fa­thers also make pro­vi­sion for the nec­es­sary dis­ci­pline, guid­ance, cor­rec­tion, and some­times re­straint of their young and im­ma­ture off­spring.

142:7.105. Com­pan­ion­ship and loy­alty. The af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther holds in­ti­mate and lov­ing in­ter­course with his chil­dren. Al­ways is his ear open to their pe­ti­tions; he is ever ready to share their hard­ships and as­sist them over their dif­fi­cul­ties. The fa­ther is su­premely in­ter­ested in the pro­gres­sive wel­fare of his progeny.

142:7.116. Love and mercy. A com­pas­sion­ate fa­ther is freely for­giv­ing; fa­thers do not hold venge­ful mem­o­ries against their chil­dren. Fa­thers are not like judges, en­e­mies, or cred­i­tors. Real fam­i­lies are built upon tol­er­ance, pa­tience, and for­give­ness.

142:7.127. Pro­vi­sion for the fu­ture. Tem­po­ral fa­thers like to leave an in­her­i­tance for their sons. The fam­ily con­tin­ues from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other. Death only ends one gen­er­a­tion to mark the be­gin­ning of an­other. Death ter­mi­nates an in­di­vid­ual life but not nec­es­sar­ily the fam­ily.

142:7.13For hours the Mas­ter dis­cussed the ap­pli­ca­tion of these fea­tures of fam­ily life to the re­la­tions of man, the earth child, to God, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And this was his con­clu­sion: “This en­tire re­la­tion­ship of a son to the Fa­ther, I know in per­fec­tion, for all that you must at­tain of son­ship in the eter­nal fu­ture I have now al­ready at­tained. The Son of Man is pre­pared to as­cend to the right hand of the Fa­ther, so that in me is the way now open still wider for all of you to see God and, ere you have fin­ished the glo­ri­ous pro­gres­sion, to be­come per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.”

142:7.14When the apos­tles heard these startling words, they re­called the pro­nounce­ments which John made at the time of Je­sus’ bap­tism, and they also vividly re­called this ex­pe­ri­ence in con­nec­tion with their preach­ing and teach­ing sub­se­quent to the Mas­ter’s death and res­ur­rec­tion.

142:7.15Je­sus is a di­vine Son, one in the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s full con­fi­dence. He had been with the Fa­ther and com­pre­hended him fully. He had now lived his earth life to the full sat­is­fac­tion of the Fa­ther, and this in­car­na­tion in the flesh had en­abled him fully to com­pre­hend man. Je­sus was the per­fec­tion of man; he had at­tained just such per­fec­tion as all true be­liev­ers are des­tined to at­tain in him and through him. Je­sus re­vealed a God of per­fec­tion to man and pre­sented in him­self the per­fected son of the realms to God.

142:7.16Al­though Je­sus dis­coursed for sev­eral hours, Thomas was not yet sat­is­fied, for he said: “But, Mas­ter, we do not find that the Fa­ther in heaven al­ways deals kindly and mer­ci­fully with us. Many times we griev­ously suf­fer on earth, and not al­ways are our prayers an­swered. Where do we fail to grasp the mean­ing of your teach­ing?”

142:7.17Je­sus replied: “Thomas, Thomas, how long be­fore you will ac­quire the abil­ity to lis­ten with the ear of the spirit? How long will it be be­fore you dis­cern that this king­dom is a spir­i­tual king­dom, and that my Fa­ther is also a spir­i­tual be­ing? Do you not un­der­stand that I am teach­ing you as spir­i­tual chil­dren in the spirit fam­ily of heaven, of which the fa­ther­head is an in­fi­nite and eter­nal spirit? Will you not al­low me to use the earth fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of di­vine re­la­tion­ships with­out so lit­er­ally ap­ply­ing my teach­ing to ma­te­rial af­fairs? In your minds can­not you sep­a­rate the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom from the ma­te­rial, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems of the age? When I speak the lan­guage of the spirit, why do you in­sist on trans­lat­ing my mean­ing into the lan­guage of the flesh just be­cause I pre­sume to em­ploy com­mon­place and lit­eral re­la­tion­ships for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion? My chil­dren, I im­plore that you cease to ap­ply the teach­ing of the king­dom of the spirit to the sor­did af­fairs of slav­ery, pov­erty, houses, and lands, and to the ma­te­rial prob­lems of hu­man eq­uity and jus­tice. These tem­po­ral mat­ters are the con­cern of the men of this world, and while in a way they af­fect all men, you have been called to rep­re­sent me in the world, even as I rep­re­sent my Fa­ther. You are spir­i­tual am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the spirit Fa­ther. By this time it should be pos­si­ble for me to in­struct you as full-grown men of the spirit king­dom. Must I ever ad­dress you only as chil­dren? Will you never grow up in spirit per­cep­tion? Nev­er­the­less, I love you and will bear with you, even to the very end of our as­so­ci­a­tion in the flesh. And even then shall my spirit go be­fore you into all the world.”