The Second Preaching Tour

149:6.1It was at Gamala, dur­ing the evening con­fer­ence, that Philip said to Je­sus: “Mas­ter, why is it that the Scrip­tures in­struct us to ‘fear the Lord,’ while you would have us look to the Fa­ther in heaven with­out fear? How are we to har­mo­nize these teach­ings?” And Je­sus replied to Philip, say­ing:

149:6.2“My chil­dren, I am not sur­prised that you ask such ques­tions. In the be­gin­ning it was only through fear that man could learn rev­er­ence, but I have come to re­veal the Fa­ther’s love so that you will be at­tracted to the wor­ship of the Eter­nal by the draw­ing of a son’s af­fec­tion­ate rec­og­ni­tion and re­cip­ro­ca­tion of the Fa­ther’s pro­found and per­fect love. I would de­liver you from the bond­age of driv­ing your­selves through slav­ish fear to the irk­some ser­vice of a jeal­ous and wrath­ful King-God. I would in­struct you in the Fa­ther-son re­la­tion­ship of God and man so that you may be joy­fully led into that sub­lime and su­per­nal free wor­ship of a lov­ing, just, and mer­ci­ful Fa­ther-God.

149:6.3“The ‘fear of the Lord’ has had dif­fer­ent mean­ings in the suc­ces­sive ages, com­ing up from fear, through an­guish and dread, to awe and rev­er­ence. And now from rev­er­ence I would lead you up, through rec­og­ni­tion, re­al­iza­tion, and ap­pre­ci­a­tion, to love. When man rec­og­nizes only the works of God, he is led to fear the Su­preme; but when man be­gins to un­der­stand and ex­pe­ri­ence the per­son­al­ity and char­ac­ter of the liv­ing God, he is led in­creas­ingly to love such a good and per­fect, uni­ver­sal and eter­nal Fa­ther. And it is just this chang­ing of the re­la­tion of man to God that con­sti­tutes the mis­sion of the Son of Man on earth.

149:6.4“In­tel­li­gent chil­dren do not fear their fa­ther in or­der that they may re­ceive good gifts from his hand; but hav­ing al­ready re­ceived the abun­dance of good things be­stowed by the dic­tates of the fa­ther’s af­fec­tion for his sons and daugh­ters, these much loved chil­dren are led to love their fa­ther in re­spon­sive rec­og­ni­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of such mu­nif­i­cent benef­i­cence. The good­ness of God leads to re­pen­tance; the benef­i­cence of God leads to ser­vice; the mercy of God leads to sal­va­tion; while the love of God leads to in­tel­li­gent and free­hearted wor­ship.

149:6.5“Your fore­bears feared God be­cause he was mighty and mys­te­ri­ous. You shall adore him be­cause he is mag­nif­i­cent in love, plen­teous in mercy, and glo­ri­ous in truth. The power of God en­gen­ders fear in the heart of man, but the no­bil­ity and righ­teous­ness of his per­son­al­ity beget rev­er­ence, love, and will­ing wor­ship. A du­ti­ful and af­fec­tion­ate son does not fear or dread even a mighty and no­ble fa­ther. I have come into the world to put love in the place of fear, joy in the place of sor­row, con­fi­dence in the place of dread, lov­ing ser­vice and ap­pre­cia­tive wor­ship in the place of slav­ish bond­age and mean­ing­less cer­e­monies. But it is still true of those who sit in dark­ness that ‘the fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom.’ But when the light has more fully come, the sons of God are led to praise the In­fi­nite for what he is rather than to fear him for what he does.

149:6.6“When chil­dren are young and un­think­ing, they must nec­es­sar­ily be ad­mon­ished to honor their par­ents; but when they grow older and be­come some­what more ap­pre­cia­tive of the ben­e­fits of the pa­ren­tal min­istry and pro­tec­tion, they are led up, through un­der­stand­ing re­spect and in­creas­ing af­fec­tion, to that level of ex­pe­ri­ence where they ac­tu­ally love their par­ents for what they are more than for what they have done. The fa­ther nat­u­rally loves his child, but the child must de­velop his love for the fa­ther from the fear of what the fa­ther can do, through awe, dread, de­pen­dence, and rev­er­ence, to the ap­pre­cia­tive and af­fec­tion­ate re­gard of love.

149:6.7“You have been taught that you should ‘fear God and keep his com­mand­ments, for that is the whole duty of man.’ But I have come to give you a new and higher com­mand­ment. I would teach you to ‘love God and learn to do his will, for that is the high­est priv­i­lege of the lib­er­ated sons of God.’ Your fa­thers were taught to ‘fear God—the Al­mighty King.’ I teach you, ‘Love God—the all-mer­ci­ful Fa­ther.’

149:6.8“In the king­dom of heaven, which I have come to de­clare, there is no high and mighty king; this king­dom is a di­vine fam­ily. The uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized and un­re­servedly wor­shiped cen­ter and head of this far-flung broth­er­hood of in­tel­li­gent be­ings is my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther. I am his Son, and you are also his sons. There­fore it is eter­nally true that you and I are breth­ren in the heav­enly es­tate, and all the more so since we have be­come breth­ren in the flesh of the earthly life. Cease, then, to fear God as a king or serve him as a mas­ter; learn to rev­er­ence him as the Cre­ator; honor him as the Fa­ther of your spirit youth; love him as a mer­ci­ful de­fender; and ul­ti­mately wor­ship him as the lov­ing and all-wise Fa­ther of your more ma­ture spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

149:6.9“Out of your wrong con­cepts of the Fa­ther in heaven grow your false ideas of hu­mil­ity and springs much of your hypocrisy. Man may be a worm of the dust by na­ture and ori­gin, but when he be­comes in­dwelt by my Fa­ther’s spirit, that man be­comes di­vine in his des­tiny. The be­stowal spirit of my Fa­ther will surely re­turn to the di­vine source and uni­verse level of ori­gin, and the hu­man soul of mor­tal man which shall have be­come the re­born child of this in­dwelling spirit shall cer­tainly as­cend with the di­vine spirit to the very pres­ence of the eter­nal Fa­ther.

149:6.10“Hu­mil­ity, in­deed, be­comes mor­tal man who re­ceives all these gifts from the Fa­ther in heaven, al­beit there is a di­vine dig­nity at­tached to all such faith can­di­dates for the eter­nal as­cent of the heav­enly king­dom. The mean­ing­less and me­nial prac­tices of an os­ten­ta­tious and false hu­mil­ity are in­com­pat­i­ble with the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the source of your sal­va­tion and the rec­og­ni­tion of the des­tiny of your spirit-born souls. Hu­mil­ity be­fore God is al­to­gether ap­pro­pri­ate in the depths of your hearts; meek­ness be­fore men is com­mend­able; but the hypocrisy of self-con­scious and at­ten­tion-crav­ing hu­mil­ity is child­ish and un­wor­thy of the en­light­ened sons of the king­dom.

149:6.11“You do well to be meek be­fore God and self-con­trolled be­fore men, but let your meek­ness be of spir­i­tual ori­gin and not the self-de­cep­tive dis­play of a self-con­scious sense of self-righ­teous su­pe­ri­or­ity. The prophet spoke ad­vis­edly when he said, ‘Walk humbly with God,’ for, while the Fa­ther in heaven is the In­fi­nite and the Eter­nal, he also dwells ‘with him who is of a con­trite mind and a hum­ble spirit.’ My Fa­ther dis­dains pride, loathes hypocrisy, and ab­hors in­iq­uity. And it was to em­pha­size the value of sin­cer­ity and per­fect trust in the lov­ing sup­port and faith­ful guid­ance of the heav­enly Fa­ther that I have so of­ten re­ferred to the lit­tle child as il­lus­tra­tive of the at­ti­tude of mind and the re­sponse of spirit which are so es­sen­tial to the en­trance of mor­tal man into the spirit re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven.

149:6.12“Well did the Prophet Jeremiah de­scribe many mor­tals when he said: ‘You are near God in the mouth but far from him in the heart.’ And have you not also read that dire­ful warn­ing of the prophet who said: ‘The priests thereof teach for hire, and the proph­ets thereof di­vine for money. At the same time they pro­fess piety and pro­claim that the Lord is with them.’ Have you not been well warned against those who ‘speak peace to their neigh­bors when mis­chief is in their hearts,’ those who ‘flat­ter with the lips while the heart is given to dou­ble-deal­ing’? Of all the sor­rows of a trust­ing man, none are so ter­ri­ble as to be ‘wounded in the house of a trusted friend.’”