Last Visit to Northern Perea

166:5.1Je­sus and the twelve were on their way to visit Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates, who were preach­ing and teach­ing in Phil­a­del­phia. Of all the cities of Perea, in Phil­a­del­phia the largest group of Jews and gen­tiles, rich and poor, learned and un­learned, em­braced the teach­ings of the sev­enty, thereby en­ter­ing into the king­dom of heaven. The syn­a­gogue of Phil­a­del­phia had never been sub­ject to the super­vi­sion of the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem and there­fore had never been closed to the teach­ings of Je­sus and his as­so­ciates. At this very time, Ab­ner was teach­ing three times a day in the Phil­a­del­phia syn­a­gogue.

166:5.2This very syn­a­gogue later on be­came a Chris­tian church and was the mis­sion­ary head­quar­ters for the pro­mul­ga­tion of the gospel through the re­gions to the east. It was long a stronghold of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings and stood alone in this re­gion as a cen­ter of Chris­tian learn­ing for cen­turies.

166:5.3The Jews at Je­ru­sa­lem had al­ways had trou­ble with the Jews of Phil­a­del­phia. And af­ter the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother was head, be­gan to have se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties with the Phil­a­del­phia con­gre­ga­tion of be­liev­ers. Ab­ner be­came the head of the Phil­a­del­phia church, con­tin­u­ing as such un­til his death. And this es­trange­ment with Je­ru­sa­lem ex­plains why noth­ing is heard of Ab­ner and his work in the Gospel rec­ords of the New Tes­ta­ment. This feud be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Phil­a­del­phia lasted through­out the life­times of James and Ab­ner and con­tin­ued for some time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem. Phil­a­del­phia was re­ally the head­quar­ters of the early church in the south and east as An­ti­och was in the north and west.

166:5.4It was the ap­par­ent mis­for­tune of Ab­ner to be at vari­ance with all of the lead­ers of the early Chris­tian church. He fell out with Pe­ter and James (Je­sus’ brother) over ques­tions of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem church; he parted com­pany with Paul over dif­fer­ences of phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­ogy. Ab­ner was more Baby­lo­nian than Hel­lenic in his phi­los­o­phy, and he stub­bornly re­sisted all at­tempts of Paul to re­make the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to pre­sent less that was ob­jec­tion­able, first to the Jews, then to the Greco-Ro­man be­liev­ers in the mys­ter­ies.

166:5.5Thus was Ab­ner com­pelled to live a life of iso­la­tion. He was head of a church which was with­out stand­ing at Je­ru­sa­lem. He had dared to defy James the Lord’s brother, who was sub­se­quently sup­ported by Pe­ter. Such con­duct ef­fec­tively sep­a­rated him from all his for­mer as­so­ciates. Then he dared to with­stand Paul. Al­though he was wholly sym­pa­thetic with Paul in his mis­sion to the gen­tiles, and though he sup­ported him in his con­tentions with the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he bit­terly op­posed the ver­sion of Je­sus’ teach­ings which Paul elected to preach. In his last years Ab­ner de­nounced Paul as the “clever cor­rupter of the life teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the Son of the liv­ing God.”

166:5.6Dur­ing the later years of Ab­ner and for some time there­after, the be­liev­ers at Phil­a­del­phia held more strictly to the re­li­gion of Je­sus, as he lived and taught, than any other group on earth.

166:5.7Ab­ner lived to be 89 years old, dy­ing at Phil­a­del­phia on the 21^st day of Novem­ber, A.D. 74. And to the very end he was a faith­ful be­liever in, and teacher of, the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom.