Tuesday Evening on Mount Olivet

176:3.1As they gath­ered about the camp­fire, some twenty of them, Thomas asked: “Since you are to re­turn to fin­ish the work of the king­dom, what should be our at­ti­tude while you are away on the Fa­ther’s busi­ness?” As Je­sus looked them over by the fire­light, he an­swered:

176:3.2“And even you, Thomas, fail to com­pre­hend what I have been say­ing. Have I not all this time taught you that your con­nec­tion with the king­dom is spir­i­tual and in­di­vid­ual, wholly a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the spirit by the faith-re­al­iza­tion that you are a son of God? What more shall I say? The down­fall of na­tions, the crash of em­pires, the de­struc­tion of the un­be­liev­ing Jews, the end of an age, even the end of the world, what have these things to do with one who be­lieves this gospel, and who has hid his life in the surety of the eter­nal king­dom? You who are God-know­ing and gospel-be­liev­ing have al­ready re­ceived the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. Since your lives have been lived in the spirit and for the Fa­ther, noth­ing can be of se­ri­ous con­cern to you. King­dom builders, the ac­cred­ited cit­i­zens of the heav­enly worlds, are not to be dis­turbed by tem­po­ral up­heavals or per­turbed by ter­res­trial cat­a­clysms. What does it mat­ter to you who be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom if na­tions over­turn, the age ends, or all things vis­i­ble crash, since you know that your life is the gift of the Son, and that it is eter­nally se­cure in the Fa­ther? Hav­ing lived the tem­po­ral life by faith and hav­ing yielded the fruits of the spirit as the righ­teous­ness of lov­ing ser­vice for your fel­lows, you can con­fi­dently look for­ward to the next step in the eter­nal ca­reer with the same sur­vival faith that has car­ried you through your first and earthly ad­ven­ture in son­ship with God.

176:3.3“Each gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers should carry on their work, in view of the pos­si­ble re­turn of the Son of Man, ex­actly as each in­di­vid­ual be­liever car­ries for­ward his life­work in view of in­ev­i­ta­ble and ever-im­pend­ing nat­u­ral death. When you have by faith once es­tab­lished your­self as a son of God, noth­ing else mat­ters as re­gards the surety of sur­vival. But make no mis­take! this sur­vival faith is a liv­ing faith, and it in­creas­ingly man­i­fests the fruits of that di­vine spirit which first in­spired it in the hu­man heart. That you have once ac­cepted son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom will not save you in the face of the know­ing and per­sis­tent re­jec­tion of those truths which have to do with the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual fruit-bear­ing of the sons of God in the flesh. You who have been with me in the Fa­ther’s busi­ness on earth can even now desert the king­dom if you find that you love not the way of the Fa­ther’s ser­vice for man­kind.

176:3.4“As in­di­vid­u­als, and as a gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers, hear me while I speak a para­ble: There was a cer­tain great man who, be­fore start­ing out on a long jour­ney to an­other coun­try, called all his trusted ser­vants be­fore him and de­liv­ered into their hands all his goods. To one he gave five tal­ents, to an­other two, and to an­other one. And so on down through the en­tire group of hon­ored stew­ards, to each he in­trusted his goods ac­cord­ing to their sev­eral abil­i­ties; and then he set out on his jour­ney. When their lord had de­parted, his ser­vants set them­selves at work to gain prof­its from the wealth in­trusted to them. Im­me­di­ately he who had re­ceived five tal­ents be­gan to trade with them and very soon had made a profit of an­other five tal­ents. In like man­ner he who had re­ceived two tal­ents soon had gained two more. And so did all of these ser­vants make gains for their mas­ter ex­cept him who re­ceived but one tal­ent. He went away by him­self and dug a hole in the earth where he hid his lord’s money. Pres­ently the lord of those ser­vants un­ex­pect­edly re­turned and called upon his stew­ards for a reck­on­ing. And when they had all been called be­fore their mas­ter, he who had re­ceived the five tal­ents came for­ward with the money which had been in­trusted to him and brought five ad­di­tional tal­ents, say­ing, ‘Lord, you gave me five tal­ents to in­vest, and I am glad to pre­sent five other tal­ents as my gain.’ And then his lord said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant, you have been faith­ful over a few things; I will now set you as stew­ard over many; en­ter forth­with into the joy of your lord.’ And then he who had re­ceived the two tal­ents came for­ward, say­ing: ‘Lord, you de­liv­ered into my hands two tal­ents; be­hold, I have gained these other two tal­ents.’ And his lord then said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful stew­ard; you also have been faith­ful over a few things, and I will now set you over many; en­ter you into the joy of your lord.’ And then there came to the ac­count­ing he who had re­ceived the one tal­ent. This ser­vant came for­ward, say­ing, ‘Lord, I knew you and re­al­ized that you were a shrewd man in that you ex­pected gains where you had not per­son­ally la­bored; there­fore was I afraid to risk aught of that which was in­trusted to me. I safely hid your tal­ent in the earth; here it is; you now have what be­longs to you.’ But his lord an­swered: ‘You are an in­do­lent and sloth­ful stew­ard. By your own words you con­fess that you knew I would re­quire of you an ac­count­ing with rea­son­able profit, such as your dili­gent fel­low ser­vants have this day ren­dered. Know­ing this, you ought, there­fore, to have at least put my money into the hands of the bankers that on my re­turn I might have re­ceived my own with in­ter­est.’ And then to the chief stew­ard this lord said: ‘Take away this one tal­ent from this un­prof­itable ser­vant and give it to him who has the ten tal­ents.’

176:3.5“To ev­ery one who has, more shall be given, and he shall have abun­dance; but from him who has not, even that which he has shall be taken away. You can­not stand still in the af­fairs of the eter­nal king­dom. My Fa­ther re­quires all his chil­dren to grow in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. You who know these truths must yield the in­crease of the fruits of the spirit and man­i­fest a grow­ing de­vo­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of your fel­low ser­vants. And re­mem­ber that, inas­much as you min­is­ter to one of the least of my breth­ren, you have done this ser­vice to me.

176:3.6“And so should you go about the work of the Fa­ther’s busi­ness, now and hence­forth, even forever­more. Carry on un­til I come. In faith­ful­ness do that which is in­trusted to you, and thereby shall you be ready for the reck­on­ing call of death. And hav­ing thus lived for the glory of the Fa­ther and the sat­is­fac­tion of the Son, you shall en­ter with joy and ex­ceed­ingly great plea­sure into the eter­nal ser­vice of the ev­er­last­ing king­dom.”

176:3.7Truth is liv­ing; the Spirit of Truth is ever lead­ing the chil­dren of light into new realms of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and di­vine ser­vice. You are not given truth to crys­tal­lize into set­tled, safe, and hon­ored forms. Your rev­e­la­tion of truth must be so en­hanced by pass­ing through your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence that new beauty and ac­tual spir­i­tual gains will be dis­closed to all who be­hold your spir­i­tual fruits and in con­se­quence thereof are led to glo­rify the Fa­ther who is in heaven. Only those faith­ful ser­vants who thus grow in the knowl­edge of the truth, and who thereby de­velop the ca­pac­ity for di­vine ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties, can ever hope to “en­ter fully into the joy of their Lord.” What a sorry sight for suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus to say, re­gard­ing their stew­ard­ship of di­vine truth: “Here, Mas­ter, is the truth you com­mit­ted to us a hun­dred or a thou­sand years ago. We have lost noth­ing; we have faith­fully pre­served all you gave us; we have al­lowed no changes to be made in that which you taught us; here is the truth you gave us.” But such a plea con­cern­ing spir­i­tual in­do­lence will not jus­tify the bar­ren stew­ard of truth in the pres­ence of the Mas­ter. In ac­cor­dance with the truth com­mit­ted to your hands will the Mas­ter of truth re­quire a reck­on­ing.

176:3.8In the next world you will be asked to give an ac­count of the en­dow­ments and stew­ard­ships of this world. Whether in­her­ent tal­ents are few or many, a just and mer­ci­ful reck­on­ing must be faced. If en­dow­ments are used only in self­ish pur­suits and no thought is be­stowed upon the higher duty of ob­tain­ing in­creased yield of the fruits of the spirit, as they are man­i­fested in the ever-ex­pand­ing ser­vice of men and the wor­ship of God, such self­ish stew­ards must ac­cept the con­se­quences of their de­lib­er­ate choos­ing.

176:3.9And how much like all self­ish mor­tals was this un­faith­ful ser­vant with the one tal­ent in that he blamed his sloth­ful­ness di­rectly upon his lord. How prone is man, when he is con­fronted with the fail­ures of his own mak­ing, to put the blame upon oth­ers, of­ten­times upon those who least de­serve it!

176:3.10Said Je­sus that night as they went to their rest: “Freely have you re­ceived; there­fore freely should you give of the truth of heaven, and in the giv­ing will this truth mul­ti­ply and show forth the in­creas­ing light of sav­ing grace, even as you min­is­ter it.”