Training Evangelists at Bethsaida

148:4.1It was the habit of Je­sus two evenings each week to hold spe­cial con­verse with in­di­vid­u­als who de­sired to talk with him, in a cer­tain se­cluded and shel­tered cor­ner of the Zeb­e­dee gar­den. At one of these evening con­ver­sa­tions in pri­vate Thomas asked the Mas­ter this ques­tion: “Why is it nec­es­sary for men to be born of the spirit in or­der to en­ter the king­dom? Is re­birth nec­es­sary to es­cape the con­trol of the evil one? Mas­ter, what is evil?” When Je­sus heard these ques­tions, he said to Thomas:

148:4.2“Do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing evil with the evil one, more cor­rectly the in­iq­ui­tous one. He whom you call the evil one is the son of self-love, the high ad­min­is­tra­tor who know­ingly went into de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the rule of my Fa­ther and his loyal Sons. But I have al­ready van­quished these sin­ful rebels. Make clear in your mind these dif­fer­ent at­ti­tudes to­ward the Fa­ther and his uni­verse. Never for­get these laws of re­la­tion to the Fa­ther’s will:

148:4.3“Evil is the un­con­scious or un­in­tended trans­gres­sion of the di­vine law, the Fa­ther’s will. Evil is like­wise the mea­sure of the im­per­fect­ness of obe­di­ence to the Fa­ther’s will.

148:4.4“Sin is the con­scious, know­ing, and de­lib­er­ate trans­gres­sion of the di­vine law, the Fa­ther’s will. Sin is the mea­sure of un­will­ing­ness to be di­vinely led and spir­i­tu­ally di­rected.

148:4.5“In­iq­uity is the will­ful, de­ter­mined, and per­sis­tent trans­gres­sion of the di­vine law, the Fa­ther’s will. In­iq­uity is the mea­sure of the con­tin­ued re­jec­tion of the Fa­ther’s lov­ing plan of per­son­al­ity sur­vival and the Sons’ mer­ci­ful min­istry of sal­va­tion.

148:4.6“By na­ture, be­fore the re­birth of the spirit, mor­tal man is sub­ject to in­her­ent evil ten­den­cies, but such nat­u­ral im­per­fec­tions of be­hav­ior are nei­ther sin nor in­iq­uity. Mor­tal man is just be­gin­ning his long as­cent to the per­fec­tion of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. To be im­per­fect or par­tial in nat­u­ral en­dow­ment is not sin­ful. Man is in­deed sub­ject to evil, but he is in no sense the child of the evil one un­less he has know­ingly and de­lib­er­ately cho­sen the paths of sin and the life of in­iq­uity. Evil is in­her­ent in the nat­u­ral or­der of this world, but sin is an at­ti­tude of con­scious re­bel­lion which was brought to this world by those who fell from spir­i­tual light into gross dark­ness.

148:4.7“You are con­fused, Thomas, by the doc­trines of the Greeks and the er­rors of the Per­sians. You do not un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ships of evil and sin be­cause you view man­kind as be­gin­ning on earth with a per­fect Adam and rapidly de­gen­er­at­ing, through sin, to man’s pres­ent de­plorable es­tate. But why do you refuse to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of the rec­ord which dis­closes how Cain, the son of Adam, went over into the land of Nod and there got him­self a wife? And why do you refuse to in­ter­pret the mean­ing of the rec­ord which por­trays the sons of God find­ing wives for them­selves among the daugh­ters of men?

148:4.8“Men are, in­deed, by na­ture evil, but not nec­es­sar­ily sin­ful. The new birth—the bap­tism of the spirit—is es­sen­tial to de­liv­er­ance from evil and nec­es­sary for en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, but none of this de­tracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Nei­ther does this in­her­ent pres­ence of po­ten­tial evil mean that man is in some mys­te­ri­ous way es­tranged from the Fa­ther in heaven so that, as an alien, for­eigner, or stepchild, he must in some man­ner seek for le­gal adop­tion by the Fa­ther. All such no­tions are born, first, of your mis­un­der­stand­ing of the Fa­ther and, sec­ond, of your ig­no­rance of the ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny of man.

148:4.9“The Greeks and oth­ers have taught you that man is de­scend­ing from godly per­fec­tion steadily down to­ward obliv­ion or de­struc­tion; I have come to show that man, by en­trance into the king­dom, is as­cend­ing cer­tainly and surely up to God and di­vine per­fec­tion. Any be­ing who in any man­ner falls short of the di­vine and spir­i­tual ide­als of the eter­nal Fa­ther’s will is po­ten­tially evil, but such be­ings are in no sense sin­ful, much less in­iq­ui­tous.

148:4.10“Thomas, have you not read about this in the Scrip­tures, where it is writ­ten: ‘You are the chil­dren of the Lord your God.’ ‘I will be his Fa­ther and he shall be my son.’ ‘I have cho­sen him to be my son—I will be his Fa­ther.’ ‘Bring my sons from far and my daugh­ters from the ends of the earth; even ev­ery one who is called by my name, for I have cre­ated them for my glory.’ ‘You are the sons of the liv­ing God.’ ‘They who have the spirit of God are in­deed the sons of God.’ While there is a ma­te­rial part of the hu­man fa­ther in the nat­u­ral child, there is a spir­i­tual part of the heav­enly Fa­ther in ev­ery faith son of the king­dom.”

148:4.11All this and much more Je­sus said to Thomas, and much of it the apos­tle com­pre­hended, al­though Je­sus ad­mon­ished him to “speak not to the oth­ers con­cern­ing these mat­ters un­til af­ter I shall have re­turned to the Fa­ther.” And Thomas did not men­tion this in­ter­view un­til af­ter the Mas­ter had de­parted from this world.