The Farewell Discourse

180:6.1Af­ter Pe­ter, James, John, and Mat­thew had asked the Mas­ter nu­mer­ous ques­tions, he con­tin­ued his farewell dis­course by say­ing: “And I am telling you about all this be­fore I leave you in or­der that you may be so pre­pared for what is com­ing upon you that you will not stum­ble into se­ri­ous er­ror. The au­thor­i­ties will not be con­tent with merely putting you out of the syn­a­gogues; I warn you the hour draws near when they who kill you will think they are do­ing a ser­vice to God. And all of these things they will do to you and to those whom you lead into the king­dom of heaven be­cause they do not know the Fa­ther. They have re­fused to know the Fa­ther by re­fus­ing to re­ceive me; and they refuse to re­ceive me when they re­ject you, pro­vided you have kept my new com­mand­ment that you love one an­other even as I have loved you. I am telling you in ad­vance about these things so that, when your hour comes, as mine now has, you may be strength­ened in the knowl­edge that all was known to me, and that my spirit shall be with you in all your suf­fer­ings for my sake and the gospel’s. It was for this pur­pose that I have been talk­ing so plainly to you from the very be­gin­ning. I have even warned you that a man’s foes may be those of his own house­hold. Al­though this gospel of the king­dom never fails to bring great peace to the soul of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever, it will not bring peace on earth un­til man is will­ing to be­lieve my teach­ing whole­heart­edly and to es­tab­lish the prac­tice of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will as the chief pur­pose in liv­ing the mor­tal life.

180:6.2“Now that I am leav­ing you, see­ing that the hour has come when I am about to go to the Fa­ther, I am sur­prised that none of you have asked me, Why do you leave us? Nev­er­the­less, I know that you ask such ques­tions in your hearts. I will speak to you plainly, as one friend to an­other. It is re­ally prof­itable for you that I go away. If I go not away, the new teacher can­not come into your hearts. I must be di­vested of this mor­tal body and be re­stored to my place on high be­fore I can send this spirit teacher to live in your souls and lead your spir­its into the truth. And when my spirit comes to in­dwell you, he will il­lu­mi­nate the dif­fer­ence be­tween sin and righ­teous­ness and will en­able you to judge wisely in your hearts con­cern­ing them.

180:6.3“I have yet much to say to you, but you can­not stand any more just now. Al­beit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he shall even­tu­ally guide you into all truth as you pass through the many abodes in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse.

180:6.4“This spirit will not speak of him­self, but he will de­clare to you that which the Fa­ther has re­vealed to the Son, and he will even show you things to come; he will glo­rify me even as I have glo­ri­fied my Fa­ther. This spirit comes forth from me, and he will re­veal my truth to you. Ev­ery­thing which the Fa­ther has in this do­main is now mine; where­fore did I say that this new teacher would take of that which is mine and re­veal it to you.

180:6.5“In just a lit­tle while I will leave you for a short time. Af­ter­ward, when you again see me, I shall al­ready be on my way to the Fa­ther so that even then you will not see me for long.”

180:6.6While he paused for a mo­ment, the apos­tles be­gan to talk with each other: “What is this that he tells us? ‘In just a lit­tle while I will leave you,’ and ‘When you see me again it will not be for long, for I will be on my way to the Fa­ther.’ What can he mean by this ‘lit­tle while’ and ‘not for long’? We can­not un­der­stand what he is telling us.”

180:6.7And since Je­sus knew they asked these ques­tions, he said: “Do you in­quire among your­selves about what I meant when I said that in a lit­tle while I would not be with you, and that, when you would see me again, I would be on my way to the Fa­ther? I have plainly told you that the Son of Man must die, but that he will rise again. Can you not then dis­cern the mean­ing of my words? You will first be made sor­row­ful, but later on will you re­joice with many who will un­der­stand these things af­ter they have come to pass. A woman is in­deed sor­row­ful in the hour of her tra­vail, but when she is once de­liv­ered of her child, she im­me­di­ately for­gets her an­guish in the joy of the knowl­edge that a man has been born into the world. And so are you about to sor­row over my de­par­ture, but I will soon see you again, and then will your sor­row be turned into re­joic­ing, and there shall come to you a new rev­e­la­tion of the sal­va­tion of God which no man can ever take away from you. And all the worlds will be blessed in this same rev­e­la­tion of life in ef­fect­ing the over­throw of death. Hith­erto have you made all your re­quests in my Fa­ther’s name. Af­ter you see me again, you may also ask in my name, and I will hear you.

180:6.8“Down here I have taught you in proverbs and spo­ken to you in para­bles. I did so be­cause you were only chil­dren in the spirit; but the time is com­ing when I will talk to you plainly con­cern­ing the Fa­ther and his king­dom. And I shall do this be­cause the Fa­ther him­self loves you and de­sires to be more fully re­vealed to you. Mor­tal man can­not see the spirit Fa­ther; there­fore have I come into the world to show the Fa­ther to your crea­ture eyes. But when you have be­come per­fected in spirit growth, you shall then see the Fa­ther him­self.”

180:6.9When the eleven had heard him speak, they said to each other: “Be­hold, he does speak plainly to us. Surely the Mas­ter did come forth from God. But why does he say he must re­turn to the Fa­ther?” And Je­sus saw that they did not even yet com­pre­hend him. These eleven men could not get away from their long-nour­ished ideas of the Jew­ish con­cept of the Mes­siah. The more fully they be­lieved in Je­sus as the Mes­siah, the more trou­ble­some be­came these deep-rooted no­tions re­gard­ing the glo­ri­ous ma­te­rial tri­umph of the king­dom on earth.