At Caesarea-Philippi

157:4.1Since the oc­ca­sions of Je­sus’ bap­tism by John and the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana, the apos­tles had, at var­i­ous times, vir­tu­ally ac­cepted him as the Mes­siah. For short pe­ri­ods some of them had truly be­lieved that he was the ex­pected De­liv­erer. But hardly would such hopes spring up in their hearts than the Mas­ter would dash them to pieces by some crush­ing word or dis­ap­point­ing deed. They had long been in a state of tur­moil due to con­flict be­tween the con­cepts of the ex­pected Mes­siah which they held in their minds and the ex­pe­ri­ence of their ex­traor­di­nary as­so­ci­a­tion with this ex­traor­di­nary man which they held in their hearts.

157:4.2It was late forenoon on this Wednes­day when the apos­tles as­sem­bled in Cel­sus’ gar­den for their noon­time meal. Dur­ing most of the night and since they had arisen that morn­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had been earnestly la­bor­ing with their breth­ren to bring them all to the point of the whole­hearted ac­cep­tance of the Mas­ter, not merely as the Mes­siah, but also as the di­vine Son of the liv­ing God. The two Si­mons were well-nigh agreed in their es­ti­mate of Je­sus, and they la­bored dili­gently to bring their breth­ren around to the full ac­cep­tance of their views. While An­drew con­tin­ued as the di­rec­tor-gen­eral of the apos­tolic corps, his brother, Si­mon Pe­ter, was be­com­ing, in­creas­ingly and by com­mon con­sent, the spokesman for the twelve.

157:4.3They were all seated in the gar­den at just about noon when the Mas­ter ap­peared. They wore ex­pres­sions of dig­ni­fied solem­nity, and all arose to their feet as he ap­proached them. Je­sus re­lieved the ten­sion by that friendly and fra­ter­nal smile which was so char­ac­ter­is­tic of him when his fol­low­ers took them­selves, or some hap­pen­ing re­lated to them­selves, too se­ri­ously. With a com­mand­ing ges­ture he in­di­cated that they should be seated. Never again did the twelve greet their Mas­ter by aris­ing when he came into their pres­ence. They saw that he did not ap­prove of such an out­ward show of re­spect.

157:4.4Af­ter they had par­taken of their meal and were en­gaged in dis­cussing plans for the forth­com­ing tour of the De­capo­lis, Je­sus sud­denly looked up into their faces and said: “Now that a full day has passed since you as­sented to Si­mon Pe­ter’s dec­la­ra­tion re­gard­ing the iden­tity of the Son of Man, I would ask if you still hold to your de­ci­sion?” On hear­ing this, the twelve stood upon their feet, and Si­mon Pe­ter, step­ping a few paces for­ward to­ward Je­sus, said: “Yes, Mas­ter, we do. We be­lieve that you are the Son of the liv­ing God.” And Pe­ter sat down with his breth­ren.

157:4.5Je­sus, still stand­ing, then said to the twelve: “You are my cho­sen am­bas­sadors, but I know that, in the cir­cum­stances, you could not en­ter­tain this be­lief as a re­sult of mere hu­man knowl­edge. This is a rev­e­la­tion of the spirit of my Fa­ther to your in­most souls. And when, there­fore, you make this con­fes­sion by the in­sight of the spirit of my Fa­ther which dwells within you, I am led to de­clare that upon this foun­da­tion will I build the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven. Upon this rock of spir­i­tual re­al­ity will I build the liv­ing tem­ple of spir­i­tual fel­low­ship in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not pre­vail against this hu­man fra­ter­nity of the di­vine spirit. And while my Fa­ther’s spirit shall ever be the di­vine guide and men­tor of all who en­ter the bonds of this spirit fel­low­ship, to you and your suc­ces­sors I now de­liver the keys of the out­ward king­dom—the au­thor­ity over things tem­po­ral—the so­cial and eco­nomic fea­tures of this as­so­ci­a­tion of men and women as fel­lows of the king­dom.” And again he charged them, for the time be­ing, that they should tell no man that he was the Son of God.

157:4.6Je­sus was be­gin­ning to have faith in the loy­alty and in­tegrity of his apos­tles. The Mas­ter con­ceived that a faith which could stand what his cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives had re­cently passed through would un­doubt­edly en­dure the fiery tri­als which were just ahead and emerge from the ap­par­ent wreck­age of all their hopes into the new light of a new dis­pen­sa­tion and thereby be able to go forth to en­lighten a world sit­ting in dark­ness. On this day the Mas­ter be­gan to be­lieve in the faith of his apos­tles, save one.

157:4.7And ever since that day this same Je­sus has been build­ing that liv­ing tem­ple upon that same eter­nal foun­da­tion of his di­vine son­ship, and those who thereby be­come self-con­scious sons of God are the hu­man stones which con­sti­tute this liv­ing tem­ple of son­ship erect­ing to the glory and honor of the wis­dom and love of the eter­nal Fa­ther of spir­its.

157:4.8And when Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he di­rected the twelve to go apart by them­selves in the hills to seek wis­dom, strength, and spir­i­tual guid­ance un­til the time of the evening meal. And they did as the Mas­ter ad­mon­ished them.