Appearances to the Apostles and Other Leaders

191:4.1The tenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred a short time af­ter eight o’clock on Tues­day, April 11, at Phil­a­del­phia, where he showed him­self to Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus and some one hun­dred and fifty of their as­so­ciates, in­clud­ing more than fifty of the evan­ge­lis­tic corps of the sev­enty. This ap­pear­ance oc­curred just af­ter the open­ing of a spe­cial meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue which had been called by Ab­ner to dis­cuss the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus and the more re­cent re­port of the res­ur­rec­tion which had been brought by David’s mes­sen­ger. Inas­much as the res­ur­rected Laz­a­rus was now a mem­ber of this group of be­liev­ers, it was not dif­fi­cult for them to be­lieve the re­port that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

191:4.2The meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue was just be­ing opened by Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, who were stand­ing to­gether in the pul­pit, when the en­tire au­di­ence of be­liev­ers saw the form of the Mas­ter ap­pear sud­denly. He stepped for­ward from where he had ap­peared be­tween Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, nei­ther of whom had ob­served him, and salut­ing the com­pany, said:

191:4.3“Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Fa­ther in heaven, and that there is but one gospel of the king­dom—the good news of the gift of eter­nal life which men re­ceive by faith. As you re­joice in your loy­alty to the gospel, pray the Fa­ther of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and greater love for your breth­ren. You are to love all men as I have loved you; you are to serve all men as I have served you. With un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and broth­erly af­fec­tion, fel­low­ship all your breth­ren who are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the good news, whether they be Jew or gen­tile, Greek or Ro­man, Per­sian or Ethiopian. John pro­claimed the king­dom in ad­vance; you have preached the gospel in power; the Greeks al­ready teach the good news; and I am soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my breth­ren, who have so un­selfishly ded­i­cated their lives to the en­light­en­ment of their fel­lows who sit in spir­i­tual dark­ness. You are all the chil­dren of light; there­fore stum­ble not into the mis­un­der­stand­ing en­tan­gle­ments of mor­tal sus­pi­cion and hu­man in­tol­er­ance. If you are en­no­bled, by the grace of faith, to love un­be­liev­ers, should you not also equally love those who are your fel­low be­liev­ers in the far-spread­ing house­hold of faith? Re­mem­ber, as you love one an­other, all men will know that you are my dis­ci­ples.

191:4.4“Go, then, into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men to all na­tions and races and ever be wise in your choice of meth­ods for pre­sent­ing the good news to the dif­fer­ent races and tribes of man­kind. Freely you have re­ceived this gospel of the king­dom, and you will freely give the good news to all na­tions. Fear not the re­sis­tance of evil, for I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages. And my peace I leave with you.”

191:4.5When he had said, “My peace I leave with you,” he van­ished from their sight. With the ex­cep­tion of one of his ap­pear­ances in Gal­i­lee, where up­ward of five hun­dred be­liev­ers saw him at one time, this group in Phil­a­del­phia em­braced the largest num­ber of mor­tals who saw him on any sin­gle oc­ca­sion.

191:4.6Early the next morn­ing, even while the apos­tles tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem await­ing the emo­tional re­cov­ery of Thomas, these be­liev­ers at Phil­a­del­phia went forth pro­claim­ing that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth had risen from the dead.

191:4.7The next day, Wednes­day, Je­sus spent with­out in­ter­rup­tion in the so­ci­ety of his mor­ontia as­so­ciates, and dur­ing the midafter­noon hours he re­ceived vis­it­ing mor­ontia del­e­gates from the man­sion worlds of ev­ery lo­cal sys­tem of in­hab­ited spheres through­out the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek. And they all re­joiced to know their Cre­ator as one of their own or­der of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence.