Last Visit to Northern Perea

166:4.1While most Pales­tini­ans ate only two meals a day, it was the cus­tom of Je­sus and the apos­tles, when on a jour­ney, to pause at mid­day for rest and re­fresh­ment. And it was at such a noon­tide stop on the way to Phil­a­del­phia that Thomas asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, from hear­ing your re­marks as we jour­neyed this morn­ing, I would like to in­quire whether spir­i­tual be­ings are con­cerned in the pro­duc­tion of strange and ex­traor­di­nary events in the ma­te­rial world and, fur­ther, to ask whether the an­gels and other spirit be­ings are able to pre­vent ac­ci­dents.”

166:4.2In an­swer to Thomas’s in­quiry, Je­sus said: “Have I been so long with you, and yet you con­tinue to ask me such ques­tions? Have you failed to ob­serve how the Son of Man lives as one with you and con­sis­tently re­fuses to em­ploy the forces of heaven for his per­sonal sus­te­nance? Do we not all live by the same means whereby all men ex­ist? Do you see the power of the spir­i­tual world man­i­fested in the ma­te­rial life of this world, save for the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther and the some­time heal­ing of his af­flicted chil­dren?

166:4.3“All too long have your fa­thers be­lieved that pros­per­ity was the to­ken of di­vine ap­proval; that ad­ver­sity was the proof of God’s dis­plea­sure. I de­clare that such be­liefs are su­per­sti­tions. Do you not ob­serve that far greater num­bers of the poor joy­fully re­ceive the gospel and im­me­di­ately en­ter the king­dom? If riches ev­i­dence di­vine fa­vor, why do the rich so many times refuse to be­lieve this good news from heaven?

166:4.4“The Fa­ther causes his rain to fall on the just and the un­just; the sun like­wise shines on the righ­teous and the un­righ­teous. You know about those Galileans whose blood Pi­late min­gled with the sac­ri­fices, but I tell you these Galileans were not in any man­ner sin­ners above all their fel­lows just be­cause this hap­pened to them. You also know about the eigh­teen men upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, killing them. Think not that these men who were thus de­stroyed were of­fend­ers above all their breth­ren in Je­ru­sa­lem. These folks were sim­ply in­no­cent vic­tims of one of the ac­ci­dents of time.

166:4.5“There are three groups of events which may oc­cur in your lives:

166:4.6“1. You may share in those nor­mal hap­pen­ings which are a part of the life you and your fel­lows live on the face of the earth.

166:4.7“2. You may chance to fall vic­tim to one of the ac­ci­dents of na­ture, one of the mis­chances of men, know­ing full well that such oc­cur­rences are in no way pre­ar­ranged or oth­er­wise pro­duced by the spir­i­tual forces of the realm.

166:4.8“3. You may reap the har­vest of your di­rect ef­forts to com­ply with the nat­u­ral laws gov­ern­ing the world.

166:4.9“There was a cer­tain man who planted a fig tree in his yard, and when he had many times sought fruit thereon and found none, he called the vine­dressers be­fore him and said: ‘Here have I come these three sea­sons look­ing for fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut down this bar­ren tree; why should it en­cum­ber the ground?’ But the head gar­dener an­swered his mas­ter: ‘Let it alone for one more year so that I may dig around it and put on fer­til­izer, and then, next year, if it bears no fruit, it shall be cut down.’ And when they had thus com­plied with the laws of fruit­ful­ness, since the tree was liv­ing and good, they were re­warded with an abun­dant yield.

166:4.10“In the mat­ter of sick­ness and health, you should know that these bod­ily states are the re­sult of ma­te­rial causes; health is not the smile of heaven, nei­ther is af­flic­tion the frown of God.

166:4.11“The Fa­ther’s hu­man chil­dren have equal ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of ma­te­rial bless­ings; there­fore does he be­stow things phys­i­cal upon the chil­dren of men with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion. When it comes to the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts, the Fa­ther is lim­ited by man’s ca­pac­ity for re­ceiv­ing these di­vine en­dow­ments. Al­though the Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons, in the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts he is lim­ited by man’s faith and by his will­ing­ness al­ways to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.”

166:4.12As they jour­neyed on to­ward Phil­a­del­phia, Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach them and to an­swer their ques­tions hav­ing to do with ac­ci­dents, sick­ness, and mir­a­cles, but they were not able fully to com­pre­hend this in­struc­tion. One hour of teach­ing will not wholly change the be­liefs of a life­time, and so Je­sus found it nec­es­sary to re­it­er­ate his mes­sage, to tell again and again that which he wished them to un­der­stand; and even then they failed to grasp the mean­ing of his earth mis­sion un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion.