First Preaching Tour of Galilee

146:3.1At Ramah Je­sus had the mem­o­rable dis­cus­sion with the aged Greek philoso­pher who taught that sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy were suf­fi­cient to sat­isfy the needs of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Je­sus lis­tened with pa­tience and sym­pa­thy to this Greek teacher, al­low­ing the truth of many things he said but point­ing out that, when he was through, he had failed in his dis­cus­sion of hu­man ex­is­tence to ex­plain “whence, why, and whither,” and added: “Where you leave off, we be­gin. Re­li­gion is a rev­e­la­tion to man’s soul deal­ing with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties which the mind alone could never dis­cover or fully fathom. In­tel­lec­tual striv­ings may re­veal the facts of life, but the gospel of the king­dom un­folds the truths of be­ing. You have dis­cussed the ma­te­rial shad­ows of truth; will you now lis­ten while I tell you about the eter­nal and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties which cast these tran­sient time shad­ows of the ma­te­rial facts of mor­tal ex­is­tence?” For more than an hour Je­sus taught this Greek the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom. The old philoso­pher was sus­cep­ti­ble to the Mas­ter’s mode of ap­proach, and be­ing sin­cerely hon­est of heart, he quickly be­lieved this gospel of sal­va­tion.

146:3.2The apos­tles were a bit dis­con­certed by the open man­ner of Je­sus’ as­sent to many of the Greek’s propo­si­tions, but Je­sus af­ter­ward pri­vately said to them: “My chil­dren, mar­vel not that I was tol­er­ant of the Greek’s phi­los­o­phy. True and gen­uine in­ward cer­tainty does not in the least fear out­ward anal­y­sis, nor does truth re­sent hon­est crit­i­cism. You should never for­get that in­tol­er­ance is the mask cov­er­ing up the en­ter­tain­ment of se­cret doubts as to the true­ness of one’s be­lief. No man is at any time dis­turbed by his neigh­bor’s at­ti­tude when he has per­fect con­fi­dence in the truth of that which he whole­heart­edly be­lieves. Cour­age is the con­fi­dence of thor­ough­go­ing hon­esty about those things which one pro­fesses to be­lieve. Sin­cere men are un­afraid of the crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of their true con­vic­tions and no­ble ide­als.”

146:3.3On the sec­ond evening at Ramah, Thomas asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “Mas­ter, how can a new be­liever in your teach­ing re­ally know, re­ally be cer­tain, about the truth of this gospel of the king­dom?”

146:3.4And Je­sus said to Thomas: “Your as­sur­ance that you have en­tered into the king­dom fam­ily of the Fa­ther, and that you will eter­nally sur­vive with the chil­dren of the king­dom, is wholly a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—faith in the word of truth. Spir­i­tual as­sur­ance is the equiv­a­lent of your per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of di­vine truth and is oth­er­wise equal to your in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of truth re­al­i­ties plus your spir­i­tual faith and mi­nus your hon­est doubts.

146:3.5“The Son is nat­u­rally en­dowed with the life of the Fa­ther. Hav­ing been en­dowed with the liv­ing spirit of the Fa­ther, you are there­fore sons of God. You sur­vive your life in the ma­te­rial world of the flesh be­cause you are iden­ti­fied with the Fa­ther’s liv­ing spirit, the gift of eter­nal life. Many, in­deed, had this life be­fore I came forth from the Fa­ther, and many more have re­ceived this spirit be­cause they be­lieved my word; but I de­clare that, when I re­turn to the Fa­ther, he will send his spirit into the hearts of all men.

146:3.6“While you can­not ob­serve the di­vine spirit at work in your minds, there is a prac­ti­cal method of dis­cov­er­ing the de­gree to which you have yielded the con­trol of your soul pow­ers to the teach­ing and guid­ance of this in­dwelling spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther, and that is the de­gree of your love for your fel­low men. This spirit of the Fa­ther par­takes of the love of the Fa­ther, and as it dom­i­nates man, it un­fail­ingly leads in the di­rec­tions of di­vine wor­ship and lov­ing re­gard for one’s fel­lows. At first you be­lieve that you are sons of God be­cause my teach­ing has made you more con­scious of the in­ner lead­ings of our Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence; but pres­ently the Spirit of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speak­ing for the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of your souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will un­fail­ingly bear wit­ness with the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence, your spirit, then dwell­ing in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in re­al­ity the sons of God.

146:3.7“Ev­ery earth child who fol­lows the lead­ing of this spirit shall even­tu­ally know the will of God, and he who sur­ren­ders to the will of my Fa­ther shall abide for­ever. The way from the earth life to the eter­nal es­tate has not been made plain to you, but there is a way, there al­ways has been, and I have come to make that way new and liv­ing. He who en­ters the king­dom has eter­nal life al­ready—he shall never per­ish. But much of this you will the bet­ter un­der­stand when I shall have re­turned to the Fa­ther and you are able to view your pres­ent ex­pe­ri­ences in ret­ro­spect.”

146:3.8And all who heard these blessed words were greatly cheered. The Jew­ish teach­ings had been con­fused and un­cer­tain re­gard­ing the sur­vival of the righ­teous, and it was re­fresh­ing and in­spir­ing for Je­sus’ fol­low­ers to hear these very def­i­nite and pos­i­tive words of as­sur­ance about the eter­nal sur­vival of all true be­liev­ers.

146:3.9The apos­tles con­tin­ued to preach and bap­tize be­liev­ers, while they kept up the prac­tice of vis­it­ing from house to house, com­fort­ing the down­cast and min­is­ter­ing to the sick and af­flicted. The apos­tolic or­ga­ni­za­tion was ex­panded in that each of Je­sus’ apos­tles now had one of John’s as an as­so­ciate; Ab­ner was the as­so­ciate of An­drew; and this plan pre­vailed un­til they went down to Je­ru­sa­lem for the next Pass­over.

146:3.10The spe­cial in­struc­tion given by Je­sus dur­ing their stay at Ze­bu­lun had chiefly to do with fur­ther dis­cus­sions of the mu­tual obli­ga­tions of the king­dom and em­braced teach­ing de­signed to make clear the dif­fer­ences be­tween per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and the ami­ties of so­cial re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. This was one of the few times the Mas­ter ever dis­cussed the so­cial as­pects of re­li­gion. Through­out his en­tire earth life Je­sus gave his fol­low­ers very lit­tle in­struc­tion re­gard­ing the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion.

146:3.11In Ze­bu­lun the peo­ple were of a mixed race, hardly Jew or gen­tile, and few of them re­ally be­lieved in Je­sus, not­with­stand­ing they had heard of the heal­ing of the sick at Ca­per­naum.