The Decapolis Tour

159:4.1And then went Je­sus over to Abila, where Na­than­iel and his as­so­ciates la­bored. Na­than­iel was much both­ered by some of Je­sus’ pro­nounce­ments which seemed to de­tract from the au­thor­ity of the rec­og­nized He­brew scrip­tures. Ac­cord­ingly, on this night, af­ter the usual pe­riod of ques­tions and an­swers, Na­than­iel took Je­sus away from the oth­ers and asked: “Mas­ter, could you trust me to know the truth about the Scrip­tures? I ob­serve that you teach us only a por­tion of the sa­cred writ­ings—the best as I view it—and I in­fer that you re­ject the teach­ings of the rab­bis to the ef­fect that the words of the law are the very words of God, hav­ing been with God in heaven even be­fore the times of Abra­ham and Moses. What is the truth about the Scrip­tures?” When Je­sus heard the ques­tion of his be­wil­dered apos­tle, he an­swered:

159:4.2“Na­than­iel, you have rightly judged; I do not re­gard the Scrip­tures as do the rab­bis. I will talk with you about this mat­ter on con­di­tion that you do not re­late these things to your breth­ren, who are not all pre­pared to re­ceive this teach­ing. The words of the law of Moses and the teach­ings of the Scrip­tures were not in ex­is­tence be­fore Abra­ham. Only in re­cent times have the Scrip­tures been gath­ered to­gether as we now have them. While they con­tain the best of the higher thoughts and long­ings of the Jew­ish peo­ple, they also con­tain much that is far from be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the char­ac­ter and teach­ings of the Fa­ther in heaven; where­fore must I choose from among the bet­ter teach­ings those truths which are to be gleaned for the gospel of the king­dom.

159:4.3“These writ­ings are the work of men, some of them holy men, oth­ers not so holy. The teach­ings of these books rep­re­sent the views and ex­tent of en­light­en­ment of the times in which they had their ori­gin. As a rev­e­la­tion of truth, the last are more de­pend­able than the first. The Scrip­tures are faulty and al­to­gether hu­man in ori­gin, but mis­take not, they do con­sti­tute the best col­lec­tion of re­li­gious wis­dom and spir­i­tual truth to be found in all the world at this time.

159:4.4“Many of these books were not writ­ten by the per­sons whose names they bear, but that in no way de­tracts from the value of the truths which they con­tain. If the story of Jonah should not be a fact, even if Jonah had never lived, still would the pro­found truth of this nar­ra­tive, the love of God for Nin­eveh and the so-called hea­then, be none the less pre­cious in the eyes of all those who love their fel­low men. The Scrip­tures are sa­cred be­cause they pre­sent the thoughts and acts of men who were search­ing for God, and who in these writ­ings left on rec­ord their high­est con­cepts of righ­teous­ness, truth, and ho­li­ness. The Scrip­tures con­tain much that is true, very much, but in the light of your pres­ent teach­ing, you know that these writ­ings also con­tain much that is mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther in heaven, the lov­ing God I have come to re­veal to all the worlds.

159:4.5“Na­than­iel, never per­mit your­self for one mo­ment to be­lieve the Scrip­ture rec­ords which tell you that the God of love di­rected your fore­fa­thers to go forth in bat­tle to slay all their en­e­mies—men, women, and chil­dren. Such rec­ords are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are not the word of God. The Scrip­tures al­ways have, and al­ways will, re­flect the in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and spir­i­tual sta­tus of those who cre­ate them. Have you not noted that the con­cepts of Yah­weh grow in beauty and glory as the proph­ets make their rec­ords from Samuel to Isa­iah? And you should re­mem­ber that the Scrip­tures are in­tended for re­li­gious in­struc­tion and spir­i­tual guid­ance. They are not the works of ei­ther his­to­ri­ans or philoso­phers.

159:4.6“The thing most de­plorable is not merely this er­ro­neous idea of the ab­so­lute per­fec­tion of the Scrip­ture rec­ord and the in­fal­li­bil­ity of its teach­ings, but rather the con­fus­ing mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of these sa­cred writ­ings by the tra­di­tion-en­slaved scribes and Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem. And now will they em­ploy both the doc­trine of the in­spi­ra­tion of the Scrip­tures and their mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions thereof in their de­ter­mined ef­fort to with­stand these newer teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom. Na­than­iel, never for­get, the Fa­ther does not limit the rev­e­la­tion of truth to any one gen­er­a­tion or to any one peo­ple. Many earnest seek­ers af­ter the truth have been, and will con­tinue to be, con­fused and dis­heart­ened by these doc­trines of the per­fec­tion of the Scrip­tures.

159:4.7“The au­thor­ity of truth is the very spirit that in­dwells its liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions, and not the dead words of the less il­lu­mi­nated and sup­pos­edly in­spired men of an­other gen­er­a­tion. And even if these holy men of old lived in­spired and spirit-filled lives, that does not mean that their words were sim­i­larly spir­i­tu­ally in­spired. To­day we make no rec­ord of the teach­ings of this gospel of the king­dom lest, when I have gone, you speed­ily be­come di­vided up into sundry groups of truth con­tenders as a re­sult of the di­ver­sity of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my teach­ings. For this gen­er­a­tion it is best that we live these truths while we shun the mak­ing of rec­ords.

159:4.8“Mark you well my words, Na­than­iel, noth­ing which hu­man na­ture has touched can be re­garded as in­fal­li­ble. Through the mind of man di­vine truth may in­deed shine forth, but al­ways of rel­a­tive pu­rity and par­tial di­vin­ity. The crea­ture may crave in­fal­li­bil­ity, but only the Cre­ators pos­sess it.

159:4.9“But the great­est er­ror of the teach­ing about the Scrip­tures is the doc­trine of their be­ing sealed books of mys­tery and wis­dom which only the wise minds of the na­tion dare to in­ter­pret. The rev­e­la­tions of di­vine truth are not sealed ex­cept by hu­man ig­no­rance, big­otry, and nar­row-minded in­tol­er­ance. The light of the Scrip­tures is only dimmed by prej­u­dice and dark­ened by su­per­sti­tion. A false fear of sa­cred­ness has pre­vented re­li­gion from be­ing safe­guarded by com­mon sense. The fear of the au­thor­ity of the sa­cred writ­ings of the past ef­fec­tively pre­vents the hon­est souls of to­day from ac­cept­ing the new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-know­ing men of an­other gen­er­a­tion so in­tensely longed to see.

159:4.10“But the sad­dest fea­ture of all is the fact that some of the teach­ers of the sanc­tity of this tra­di­tion­al­ism know this very truth. They more or less fully un­der­stand these lim­i­ta­tions of Scrip­ture, but they are moral cow­ards, in­tel­lec­tu­ally dis­hon­est. They know the truth re­gard­ing the sa­cred writ­ings, but they pre­fer to with­hold such dis­turb­ing facts from the peo­ple. And thus do they per­vert and dis­tort the Scrip­tures, mak­ing them the guide to slav­ish de­tails of the daily life and an au­thor­ity in things non­spir­i­tual in­stead of ap­peal­ing to the sa­cred writ­ings as the re­pos­i­tory of the moral wis­dom, re­li­gious in­spi­ra­tion, and the spir­i­tual teach­ing of the God-know­ing men of other gen­er­a­tions.”

159:4.11Na­than­iel was en­light­ened, and shocked, by the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment. He long pon­dered this talk in the depths of his soul, but he told no man con­cern­ing this con­fer­ence un­til af­ter Je­sus’ as­cen­sion; and even then he feared to im­part the full story of the Mas­ter’s in­struc­tion.