At Caesarea-Philippi

157:6.1Je­sus and the apos­tles re­mained an­other day at the home of Cel­sus, wait­ing for mes­sen­gers to ar­rive from David Zeb­e­dee with funds. Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the pop­u­lar­ity of Je­sus with the masses there oc­curred a great falling off in rev­enue. When they reached Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the trea­sury was empty. Mat­thew was loath to leave Je­sus and his breth­ren at such a time, and he had no ready funds of his own to hand over to Ju­das as he had so many times done in the past. How­ever, David Zeb­e­dee had fore­seen this prob­a­ble diminu­tion of rev­enue and had ac­cord­ingly in­structed his mes­sen­gers that, as they made their way through Judea, Samaria, and Gal­i­lee, they should act as col­lec­tors of money to be for­warded to the ex­iled apos­tles and their Mas­ter. And so, by evening of this day, these mes­sen­gers ar­rived from Beth­saida bring­ing funds suf­fi­cient to sus­tain the apos­tles un­til their re­turn to em­bark upon the De­capo­lis tour. Mat­thew ex­pected to have money from the sale of his last piece of prop­erty in Ca­per­naum by that time, hav­ing ar­ranged that these funds should be anony­mously turned over to Ju­das.

157:6.2Nei­ther Pe­ter nor the other apos­tles had a very ad­e­quate con­cep­tion of Je­sus’ di­vin­ity. They lit­tle re­al­ized that this was the be­gin­ning of a new epoch in their Mas­ter’s ca­reer on earth, the time when the teacher-healer was be­com­ing the newly con­ceived Mes­siah—the Son of God. From this time on a new note ap­peared in the Mas­ter’s mes­sage. Hence­forth his one ideal of liv­ing was the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther, while his one idea in teach­ing was to pre­sent to his uni­verse the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of that su­preme wis­dom which can only be com­pre­hended by liv­ing it. He came that we all might have life and have it more abun­dantly.

157:6.3Je­sus now en­tered upon the fourth and last stage of his hu­man life in the flesh. The first stage was that of his child­hood, the years when he was only dimly con­scious of his ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny as a hu­man be­ing. The sec­ond stage was the in­creas­ingly self-con­scious years of youth and ad­vanc­ing man­hood, dur­ing which he came more clearly to com­pre­hend his di­vine na­ture and hu­man mis­sion. This sec­ond stage ended with the ex­pe­ri­ences and rev­e­la­tions as­so­ci­ated with his bap­tism. The third stage of the Mas­ter’s earth ex­pe­ri­ence ex­tended from the bap­tism through the years of his min­istry as teacher and healer and up to this mo­men­tous hour of Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion at Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. This third pe­riod of his earth life em­braced the times when his apos­tles and his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers knew him as the Son of Man and re­garded him as the Mes­siah. The fourth and last pe­riod of his earth ca­reer be­gan here at Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi and ex­tended on to the cru­ci­fix­ion. This stage of his min­istry was char­ac­ter­ized by his ac­knowl­edg­ment of di­vin­ity and em­braced the labors of his last year in the flesh. Dur­ing the fourth pe­riod, while the ma­jor­ity of his fol­low­ers still re­garded him as the Mes­siah, he be­came known to the apos­tles as the Son of God. Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion marked the be­gin­ning of the new pe­riod of the more com­plete re­al­iza­tion of the truth of his su­preme min­istry as a be­stowal Son on Uran­tia and for an en­tire uni­verse, and the rec­og­ni­tion of that fact, at least hazily, by his cho­sen am­bas­sadors.

157:6.4Thus did Je­sus ex­em­plify in his life what he taught in his re­li­gion: the growth of the spir­i­tual na­ture by the tech­nique of liv­ing prog­ress. He did not place em­pha­sis, as did his later fol­low­ers, upon the in­ces­sant strug­gle be­tween the soul and the body. He rather taught that the spirit was easy vic­tor over both and ef­fec­tive in the prof­itable rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of much of this in­tel­lec­tual and in­stinc­tual war­fare.

157:6.5A new sig­nif­i­cance at­taches to all of Je­sus’ teach­ings from this point on. Be­fore Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi he pre­sented the gospel of the king­dom as its mas­ter teacher. Af­ter Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi he ap­peared not merely as a teacher but as the di­vine rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the eter­nal Fa­ther, who is the cen­ter and cir­cum­fer­ence of this spir­i­tual king­dom, and it was re­quired that he do all this as a hu­man be­ing, the Son of Man.

157:6.6Je­sus had sin­cerely en­deav­ored to lead his fol­low­ers into the spir­i­tual king­dom as a teacher, then as a teacher-healer, but they would not have it so. He well knew that his earth mis­sion could not pos­si­bly ful­fill the Mes­sianic ex­pec­ta­tions of the Jew­ish peo­ple; the olden proph­ets had por­trayed a Mes­siah which he could never be. He sought to es­tab­lish the Fa­ther’s king­dom as the Son of Man, but his fol­low­ers would not go for­ward in the ad­ven­ture. Je­sus, see­ing this, then elected to meet his be­liev­ers part way and in so do­ing pre­pared openly to as­sume the role of the be­stowal Son of God.

157:6.7Ac­cord­ingly, the apos­tles heard much that was new as Je­sus talked to them this day in the gar­den. And some of these pro­nounce­ments sounded strange even to them. Among other startling an­nounce­ments they lis­tened to such as the fol­low­ing:

157:6.8“From this time on, if any man would have fel­low­ship with us, let him as­sume the obli­ga­tions of son­ship and fol­low me. And when I am no more with you, think not that the world will treat you bet­ter than it did your Mas­ter. If you love me, pre­pare to prove this af­fec­tion by your will­ing­ness to make the su­preme sac­ri­fice.”

157:6.9“And mark well my words: I have not come to call the righ­teous, but sin­ners. The Son of Man came not to be min­is­tered to, but to min­is­ter and to be­stow his life as the gift for all. I de­clare to you that I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.”

157:6.10“No man in this world now sees the Fa­ther ex­cept the Son who came forth from the Fa­ther. But if the Son be lifted up, he will draw all men to him­self, and whoso­ever be­lieves this truth of the com­bined na­ture of the Son shall be en­dowed with life that is more than age-abid­ing.”

157:6.11“We may not yet pro­claim openly that the Son of Man is the Son of God, but it has been re­vealed to you; where­fore do I speak boldly to you con­cern­ing these mys­ter­ies. Though I stand be­fore you in this phys­i­cal pres­ence, I came forth from God the Fa­ther. Be­fore Abra­ham was, I am. I did come forth from the Fa­ther into this world as you have known me, and I de­clare to you that I must pres­ently leave this world and re­turn to the work of my Fa­ther.”

157:6.12“And now can your faith com­pre­hend the truth of these dec­la­ra­tions in the face of my warn­ing you that the Son of Man will not meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of your fa­thers as they con­ceived the Mes­siah? My king­dom is not of this world. Can you be­lieve the truth about me in the face of the fact that, though the foxes have holes and the birds of heaven have nests, I have not where to lay my head?”

157:6.13“Nev­er­the­less, I tell you that the Fa­ther and I are one. He who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther. My Fa­ther is work­ing with me in all these things, and he will never leave me alone in my mis­sion, even as I will never for­sake you when you pres­ently go forth to pro­claim this gospel through­out the world.

157:6.14“And now have I brought you apart with me and by your­selves for a lit­tle while that you may com­pre­hend the glory, and grasp the grandeur, of the life to which I have called you: the faith-ad­ven­ture of the es­tab­lish­ment of my Fa­ther’s king­dom in the hearts of man­kind, the build­ing of my fel­low­ship of liv­ing as­so­ci­a­tion with the souls of all who be­lieve this gospel.”

157:6.15The apos­tles lis­tened to these bold and startling state­ments in si­lence; they were stunned. And they dis­persed in small groups to dis­cuss and pon­der the Mas­ter’s words. They had con­fessed that he was the Son of God, but they could not grasp the full mean­ing of what they had been led to do.