Going Through Samaria

143:1.1The first half of the month of Au­gust the apos­tolic party made its head­quar­ters at the Greek cities of Archelais and Phasaelis, where they had their first ex­pe­ri­ence preach­ing to well-nigh ex­clu­sive gath­er­ings of gen­tiles—Greeks, Ro­mans, and Syr­i­ans—for few Jews dwelt in these two Greek towns. In con­tact­ing with these Ro­man cit­i­zens, the apos­tles en­coun­tered new dif­fi­cul­ties in the procla­ma­tion of the mes­sage of the com­ing king­dom, and they met with new ob­jec­tions to the teach­ings of Je­sus. At one of the many evening con­fer­ences with his apos­tles, Je­sus lis­tened at­ten­tively to these ob­jec­tions to the gospel of the king­dom as the twelve re­peated their ex­pe­ri­ences with the sub­jects of their per­sonal labors.

143:1.2A ques­tion asked by Philip was typ­i­cal of their dif­fi­cul­ties. Said Philip: “Mas­ter, these Greeks and Ro­mans make light of our mes­sage, say­ing that such teach­ings are fit for only weak­lings and slaves. They as­sert that the re­li­gion of the hea­then is su­pe­rior to our teach­ing be­cause it in­spires to the ac­quire­ment of a strong, ro­bust, and ag­gres­sive char­ac­ter. They af­firm that we would con­vert all men into en­fee­bled spec­i­mens of pas­sive non­re­sisters who would soon per­ish from the face of the earth. They like you, Mas­ter, and freely ad­mit that your teach­ing is heav­enly and ideal, but they will not take us se­ri­ously. They as­sert that your re­li­gion is not for this world; that men can­not live as you teach. And now, Mas­ter, what shall we say to these gen­tiles?”

143:1.3Af­ter Je­sus had heard sim­i­lar ob­jec­tions to the gospel of the king­dom pre­sented by Thomas, Na­than­iel, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and Mat­thew, he said to the twelve:

143:1.4“I have come into this world to do the will of my Fa­ther and to re­veal his lov­ing char­ac­ter to all man­kind. That, my breth­ren, is my mis­sion. And this one thing I will do, re­gard­less of the mis­un­der­stand­ing of my teach­ings by Jews or gen­tiles of this day or of an­other gen­er­a­tion. But you should not over­look the fact that even di­vine love has its se­vere dis­ci­plines. A fa­ther’s love for his son of­ten­times im­pels the fa­ther to re­strain the un­wise acts of his thought­less off­spring. The child does not al­ways com­pre­hend the wise and lov­ing mo­tives of the fa­ther’s re­strain­ing dis­ci­pline. But I de­clare to you that my Fa­ther in Par­a­dise does rule a uni­verse of uni­verses by the com­pelling power of his love. Love is the great­est of all spirit re­al­i­ties. Truth is a lib­er­at­ing rev­e­la­tion, but love is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship. And no mat­ter what blun­ders your fel­low men make in their world man­age­ment of to­day, in an age to come the gospel which I de­clare to you will rule this very world. The ul­ti­mate goal of hu­man prog­ress is the rev­er­ent rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God and the lov­ing ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

143:1.5“But who told you that my gospel was in­tended only for slaves and weak­lings? Do you, my cho­sen apos­tles, re­sem­ble weak­lings? Did John look like a weak­ling? Do you ob­serve that I am en­slaved by fear? True, the poor and op­pressed of this gen­er­a­tion have the gospel preached to them. The re­li­gions of this world have ne­glected the poor, but my Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons. Be­sides, the poor of this day are the first to heed the call to re­pen­tance and ac­cep­tance of son­ship. The gospel of the king­dom is to be preached to all men—Jew and gen­tile, Greek and Ro­man, rich and poor, free and bond—and equally to young and old, male and fe­male.

143:1.6“Be­cause my Fa­ther is a God of love and de­lights in the prac­tice of mercy, do not im­bibe the idea that the ser­vice of the king­dom is to be one of monotonous ease. The Par­a­dise as­cent is the su­preme ad­ven­ture of all time, the rugged achieve­ment of eter­nity. The ser­vice of the king­dom on earth will call for all the coura­geous man­hood that you and your cowork­ers can muster. Many of you will be put to death for your loy­alty to the gospel of this king­dom. It is easy to die in the line of phys­i­cal bat­tle when your cour­age is strength­ened by the pres­ence of your fight­ing com­rades, but it re­quires a higher and more pro­found form of hu­man cour­age and de­vo­tion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth en­shrined in your mor­tal heart.

143:1.7“To­day, the un­be­liev­ers may taunt you with preach­ing a gospel of non­re­sis­tance and with liv­ing lives of non­vi­o­lence, but you are the first vol­un­teers of a long line of sin­cere be­liev­ers in the gospel of this king­dom who will as­ton­ish all man­kind by their heroic de­vo­tion to these teach­ings. No armies of the world have ever dis­played more cour­age and brav­ery than will be por­trayed by you and your loyal suc­ces­sors who shall go forth to all the world pro­claim­ing the good news—the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men. The cour­age of the flesh is the low­est form of brav­ery. Mind brav­ery is a higher type of hu­man cour­age, but the high­est and su­preme is un­com­pro­mis­ing loy­alty to the en­light­ened con­vic­tions of pro­found spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. And such cour­age con­sti­tutes the hero­ism of the God-know­ing man. And you are all God-know­ing men; you are in very truth the per­sonal as­so­ciates of the Son of Man.”

143:1.8This was not all that Je­sus said on that oc­ca­sion, but it is the in­tro­duc­tion of his ad­dress, and he went on at great length in am­pli­fi­ca­tion and in il­lus­tra­tion of this pro­nounce­ment. This was one of the most im­pas­sioned ad­dresses which Je­sus ever de­liv­ered to the twelve. Sel­dom did the Mas­ter speak to his apos­tles with ev­i­dent strong feel­ing, but this was one of those few oc­ca­sions when he spoke with man­i­fest earnest­ness, ac­com­pa­nied by marked emo­tion.

143:1.9The re­sult upon the pub­lic preach­ing and per­sonal min­istry of the apos­tles was im­me­di­ate; from that very day their mes­sage took on a new note of coura­geous dom­i­nance. The twelve con­tin­ued to ac­quire the spirit of pos­i­tive ag­gres­sion in the new gospel of the king­dom. From this day for­ward they did not oc­cupy them­selves so much with the preach­ing of the neg­a­tive virtues and the pas­sive in­junc­tions of their Mas­ter’s many-sided teach­ing.