Amathus

• Amathus

128:1.14This year Je­sus went up to Je­ru­sa­lem with Joseph to cel­e­brate the Pass­over. Hav­ing taken James to the tem­ple for con­se­cra­tion, he deemed it his duty to take Joseph. Je­sus never ex­hib­ited any de­gree of par­tial­ity in deal­ing with his fam­ily. He went with Joseph to Je­ru­sa­lem by the usual Jor­dan val­ley route, but he re­turned to Naz­a­reth by the east Jor­dan way, which led through Am­athus. Go­ing down the Jor­dan, Je­sus nar­rated Jew­ish his­tory to Joseph and on the re­turn trip told him about the ex­pe­ri­ences of the re­puted tribes of Ruben, Gad, and Gilead that tra­di­tion­ally had dwelt in these re­gions east of the river.

141:3.1The Mas­ter and his apos­tles re­mained near Am­athus for al­most three weeks. The apos­tles con­tin­ued to preach twice daily to the mul­ti­tude, and Je­sus preached each Sab­bath af­ter­noon. It be­came im­pos­si­ble to con­tinue the Wednes­day play­time; so An­drew ar­ranged that two apos­tles should rest each day of the six days in the week, while all were on duty dur­ing the Sab­bath ser­vices.

141:3.2Pe­ter, James, and John did most of the pub­lic preach­ing. Philip, Na­than­iel, Thomas, and Si­mon did much of the per­sonal work and con­ducted classes for spe­cial groups of in­quir­ers; the twins con­tin­ued their gen­eral po­lice super­vi­sion, while An­drew, Mat­thew, and Ju­das de­vel­oped into a gen­eral man­age­rial com­mit­tee of three, al­though each of these three also did con­sid­er­able re­li­gious work.

141:3.3An­drew was much oc­cu­pied with the task of ad­just­ing the con­stantly re­cur­ring mis­un­der­stand­ings and dis­agree­ments be­tween the dis­ci­ples of John and the newer dis­ci­ples of Je­sus. Se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions would arise ev­ery few days, but An­drew, with the as­sis­tance of his apos­tolic as­so­ciates, man­aged to in­duce the con­tend­ing par­ties to come to some sort of agree­ment, at least tem­porar­ily. Je­sus re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in any of these con­fer­ences; nei­ther would he give any ad­vice about the proper ad­just­ment of these dif­fi­cul­ties. He never once of­fered a sug­ges­tion as to how the apos­tles should solve these per­plex­ing prob­lems. When An­drew came to Je­sus with these ques­tions, he would al­ways say: “It is not wise for the host to par­tic­i­pate in the fam­ily trou­bles of his guests; a wise par­ent never takes sides in the petty quar­rels of his own chil­dren.”

141:3.4The Mas­ter dis­played great wis­dom and man­i­fested per­fect fair­ness in all of his deal­ings with his apos­tles and with all of his dis­ci­ples. Je­sus was truly a mas­ter of men; he ex­er­cised great in­flu­ence over his fel­low men be­cause of the com­bined charm and force of his per­son­al­ity. There was a sub­tle com­mand­ing in­flu­ence in his rugged, no­madic, and home­less life. There was in­tel­lec­tual at­trac­tive­ness and spir­i­tual draw­ing power in his au­thor­i­ta­tive man­ner of teach­ing, in his lu­cid logic, his strength of rea­son­ing, his saga­cious in­sight, his alert­ness of mind, his match­less poise, and his sub­lime tol­er­ance. He was sim­ple, manly, hon­est, and fear­less. With all of this phys­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tual in­flu­ence man­i­fest in the Mas­ter’s pres­ence, there were also all those spir­i­tual charms of be­ing which have be­come as­so­ci­ated with his per­son­al­ity—pa­tience, ten­der­ness, meek­ness, gen­tle­ness, and hu­mil­ity.

141:3.5Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was in­deed a strong and force­ful per­son­al­ity; he was an in­tel­lec­tual power and a spir­i­tual stronghold. His per­son­al­ity not only ap­pealed to the spir­i­tu­ally minded women among his fol­low­ers, but also to the ed­u­cated and in­tel­lec­tual Nicode­mus and to the hardy Ro­man sol­dier, the cap­tain sta­tioned on guard at the cross, who, when he had fin­ished watch­ing the Mas­ter die, said, “Truly, this was a Son of God.” And red-blooded, rugged Galilean fish­er­men called him Mas­ter.

141:3.6The pic­tures of Je­sus have been most un­for­tu­nate. These paint­ings of the Christ have ex­erted a dele­te­ri­ous in­flu­ence on youth; the tem­ple mer­chants would hardly have fled be­fore Je­sus if he had been such a man as your artists usu­ally have de­picted. His was a dig­ni­fied man­hood; he was good, but nat­u­ral. Je­sus did not pose as a mild, sweet, gen­tle, and kindly mys­tic. His teach­ing was thrillingly dy­namic. He not only meant well, but he went about ac­tu­ally do­ing good.

141:3.7The Mas­ter never said, “Come to me all you who are in­do­lent and all who are dream­ers.” But he did many times say, “Come to me all you who la­bor, and I will give you rest—spir­i­tual strength.” The Mas­ter’s yoke is, in­deed, easy, but even so, he never im­poses it; ev­ery in­di­vid­ual must take this yoke of his own free will.

141:3.8Je­sus por­trayed con­quest by sac­ri­fice, the sac­ri­fice of pride and self­ish­ness. By show­ing mercy, he meant to por­tray spir­i­tual de­liv­er­ance from all grudges, grievances, anger, and the lust for self­ish power and re­venge. And when he said, “Re­sist not evil,” he later ex­plained that he did not mean to con­done sin or to coun­sel fra­ter­nity with in­iq­uity. He in­tended the more to teach for­give­ness, to “re­sist not evil treat­ment of one’s per­son­al­ity, evil in­jury to one’s feel­ings of per­sonal dig­nity.”

141:4.1While so­journ­ing at Am­athus, Je­sus spent much time with the apos­tles in­struct­ing them in the new con­cept of God; again and again did he im­press upon them that God is a Fa­ther, not a great and su­preme book­keeper who is chiefly en­gaged in mak­ing dam­ag­ing en­tries against his erring chil­dren on earth, record­ings of sin and evil to be used against them when he sub­se­quently sits in judg­ment upon them as the just Judge of all cre­ation. The Jews had long con­ceived of God as a king over all, even as a Fa­ther of the na­tion, but never be­fore had large num­bers of mor­tal men held the idea of God as a lov­ing Fa­ther of the in­di­vid­ual.

141:4.2In an­swer to Thomas’s ques­tion, “Who is this God of the king­dom?” Je­sus replied: “God is your Fa­ther, and re­li­gion—my gospel—is noth­ing more nor less than the be­liev­ing rec­og­ni­tion of the truth that you are his son. And I am here among you in the flesh to make clear both of these ideas in my life and teach­ings.”

141:4.3Je­sus also sought to free the minds of his apos­tles from the idea of of­fer­ing an­i­mal sac­ri­fices as a re­li­gious duty. But these men, trained in the re­li­gion of the daily sac­ri­fice, were slow to com­pre­hend what he meant. Nev­er­the­less, the Mas­ter did not grow weary in his teach­ing. When he failed to reach the minds of all of the apos­tles by means of one il­lus­tra­tion, he would re­state his mes­sage and em­ploy an­other type of para­ble for pur­poses of il­lu­mi­na­tion.

141:4.4At this same time Je­sus be­gan to teach the twelve more fully con­cern­ing their mis­sion “to com­fort the af­flicted and min­is­ter to the sick.” The Mas­ter taught them much about the whole man—the union of body, mind, and spirit to form the in­di­vid­ual man or woman. Je­sus told his as­so­ciates about the three forms of af­flic­tion they would meet and went on to ex­plain how they should min­is­ter to all who suf­fer the sor­rows of hu­man sick­ness. He taught them to rec­og­nize:

141:4.51. Dis­eases of the flesh—those af­flic­tions com­monly re­garded as phys­i­cal sick­ness.

141:4.62. Trou­bled minds—those non­phys­i­cal af­flic­tions which were sub­se­quently looked upon as emo­tional and men­tal dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­tur­bances.

141:4.73. The pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its.

141:4.8Je­sus ex­plained to his apos­tles on sev­eral oc­ca­sions the na­ture, and some­thing con­cern­ing the ori­gin, of these evil spir­its, in that day of­ten also called un­clean spir­its. The Mas­ter well knew the dif­fer­ence be­tween the pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its and in­san­ity, but the apos­tles did not. Nei­ther was it pos­si­ble, in view of their lim­ited knowl­edge of the early his­tory of Uran­tia, for Je­sus to un­der­take to make this mat­ter fully un­der­stand­able. But he many times said to them, al­lud­ing to these evil spir­its: “They shall no more mo­lest men when I shall have as­cended to my Fa­ther in heaven, and af­ter I shall have poured out my spirit upon all flesh in those times when the king­dom will come in great power and spir­i­tual glory.”

141:4.9From week to week and from month to month, through­out this en­tire year, the apos­tles paid more and more at­ten­tion to the heal­ing min­istry of the sick.

141:5.1One of the most event­ful of all the evening con­fer­ences at Am­athus was the ses­sion hav­ing to do with the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual unity. James Zeb­e­dee had asked, “Mas­ter, how shall we learn to see alike and thereby en­joy more har­mony among our­selves?” When Je­sus heard this ques­tion, he was stirred within his spirit, so much so that he replied: “James, James, when did I teach you that you should all see alike? I have come into the world to pro­claim spir­i­tual lib­erty to the end that mor­tals may be em­pow­ered to live in­di­vid­ual lives of orig­i­nal­ity and free­dom be­fore God. I do not de­sire that so­cial har­mony and fra­ter­nal peace shall be pur­chased by the sac­ri­fice of free per­son­al­ity and spir­i­tual orig­i­nal­ity. What I re­quire of you, my apos­tles, is spirit unity—and that you can ex­pe­ri­ence in the joy of your united ded­i­ca­tion to the whole­hearted do­ing of the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in or­der spir­i­tu­ally to be alike. Spir­i­tual unity is de­rived from the con­scious­ness that each of you is in­dwelt, and in­creas­ingly dom­i­nated, by the spirit gift of the heav­enly Fa­ther. Your apos­tolic har­mony must grow out of the fact that the spirit hope of each of you is iden­ti­cal in ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny.

141:5.2“In this way you may ex­pe­ri­ence a per­fected unity of spirit pur­pose and spirit un­der­stand­ing grow­ing out of the mu­tual con­scious­ness of the iden­tity of each of your in­dwelling Par­a­dise spir­its; and you may en­joy all of this pro­found spir­i­tual unity in the very face of the ut­most di­ver­sity of your in­di­vid­ual at­ti­tudes of in­tel­lec­tual think­ing, tem­per­a­men­tal feel­ing, and so­cial con­duct. Your per­son­al­i­ties may be re­fresh­ingly di­verse and markedly dif­fer­ent, while your spir­i­tual na­tures and spirit fruits of di­vine wor­ship and broth­erly love may be so uni­fied that all who be­hold your lives will of a surety take cog­nizance of this spirit iden­tity and soul unity; they will rec­og­nize that you have been with me and have thereby learned, and ac­cept­ably, how to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. You can achieve the unity of the ser­vice of God even while you ren­der such ser­vice in ac­cor­dance with the tech­nique of your own orig­i­nal en­dow­ments of mind, body, and soul.

141:5.3“Your spirit unity im­plies two things, which al­ways will be found to har­mo­nize in the lives of in­di­vid­ual be­liev­ers: First, you are pos­sessed with a com­mon mo­tive for life ser­vice; you all de­sire above ev­ery­thing to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Sec­ond, you all have a com­mon goal of ex­is­tence; you all pur­pose to find the Fa­ther in heaven, thereby prov­ing to the uni­verse that you have be­come like him.”

141:5.4Many times dur­ing the train­ing of the twelve Je­sus re­verted to this theme. Re­peat­edly he told them it was not his de­sire that those who be­lieved in him should be­come dog­ma­tized and stan­dard­ized in ac­cor­dance with the re­li­gious in­ter­pre­ta­tions of even good men. Again and again he warned his apos­tles against the for­mu­la­tion of creeds and the es­tab­lish­ment of tra­di­tions as a means of guid­ing and con­trol­ling be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom.

141:6.1Near the end of the last week at Am­athus, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes brought to Je­sus one Teherma, a Per­sian do­ing busi­ness at Da­mas­cus. Teherma had heard of Je­sus and had come to Ca­per­naum to see him, and there learn­ing that Je­sus had gone with his apos­tles down the Jor­dan on the way to Je­ru­sa­lem, he set out to find him. An­drew had pre­sented Teherma to Si­mon for in­struc­tion. Si­mon looked upon the Per­sian as a “fire wor­shiper,” al­though Teherma took great pains to ex­plain that fire was only the vis­i­ble sym­bol of the Pure and Holy One. Af­ter talk­ing with Je­sus, the Per­sian sig­ni­fied his in­ten­tion of re­main­ing for sev­eral days to hear the teach­ing and lis­ten to the preach­ing.

141:6.2When Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Je­sus were alone, Si­mon asked the Mas­ter: “Why is it that I could not per­suade him? Why did he so re­sist me and so read­ily lend an ear to you?” Je­sus an­swered: “Si­mon, Si­mon, how many times have I in­structed you to re­frain from all ef­forts to take some­thing out of the hearts of those who seek sal­va­tion? How of­ten have I told you to la­bor only to put some­thing into these hun­gry souls? Lead men into the king­dom, and the great and liv­ing truths of the king­dom will pres­ently drive out all se­ri­ous er­ror. When you have pre­sented to mor­tal man the good news that God is his Fa­ther, you can the eas­ier per­suade him that he is in re­al­ity a son of God. And hav­ing done that, you have brought the light of sal­va­tion to the one who sits in dark­ness. Si­mon, when the Son of Man came first to you, did he come de­nounc­ing Moses and the proph­ets and pro­claim­ing a new and bet­ter way of life? No. I came not to take away that which you had from your fore­fa­thers but to show you the per­fected vi­sion of that which your fa­thers saw only in part. Go then, Si­mon, teach­ing and preach­ing the king­dom, and when you have a man safely and se­curely within the king­dom, then is the time, when such a one shall come to you with in­quiries, to im­part in­struc­tion hav­ing to do with the pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ment of the soul within the di­vine king­dom.”

141:6.3Si­mon was as­ton­ished at these words, but he did as Je­sus had in­structed him, and Teherma, the Per­sian, was num­bered among those who en­tered the king­dom.

141:6.4That night Je­sus dis­coursed to the apos­tles on the new life in the king­dom. He said in part: “When you en­ter the king­dom, you are re­born. You can­not teach the deep things of the spirit to those who have been born only of the flesh; first see that men are born of the spirit be­fore you seek to in­struct them in the ad­vanced ways of the spirit. Do not un­der­take to show men the beau­ties of the tem­ple un­til you have first taken them into the tem­ple. In­tro­duce men to God and as the sons of God be­fore you dis­course on the doc­trines of the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of men. Do not strive with men—al­ways be pa­tient. It is not your king­dom; you are only am­bas­sadors. Sim­ply go forth pro­claim­ing: This is the king­dom of heaven—God is your Fa­ther and you are his sons, and this good news, if you whole­heart­edly be­lieve it, is your eter­nal sal­va­tion.”

141:6.5The apos­tles made great prog­ress dur­ing the so­journ at Am­athus. But they were very much dis­ap­pointed that Je­sus would give them no sug­ges­tions about deal­ing with John’s dis­ci­ples. Even in the im­por­tant mat­ter of bap­tism, all that Je­sus said was: “John did in­deed bap­tize with wa­ter, but when you en­ter the king­dom of heaven, you shall be bap­tized with the Spirit.”

• Amathus

147:6.3Pe­ter preached to the as­sem­bled mul­ti­tude at the cross­ing of the Jor­dan, and the fol­low­ing morn­ing they moved up the river to­ward Am­athus. They wanted to pro­ceed straight on to Ca­per­naum, but such a crowd gath­ered here they re­mained three days, preach­ing, teach­ing, and bap­tiz­ing. They did not move to­ward home un­til early Sab­bath morn­ing, the first day of May. The Je­ru­sa­lem spies were sure they would now se­cure their first charge against Je­sus—that of Sab­bath break­ing—since he had pre­sumed to start his jour­ney on the Sab­bath day. But they were doomed to dis­ap­point­ment be­cause, just be­fore their de­par­ture, Je­sus called An­drew into his pres­ence and be­fore them all in­structed him to pro­ceed for a dis­tance of only one thou­sand yards, the le­gal Jew­ish Sab­bath day’s jour­ney.

• Amathus

165:0.1On Tues­day, Jan­uary 3, A.D. 30, Ab­ner, the for­mer chief of the twelve apos­tles of John the Bap­tist, a Nazarite and one­time head of the Nazarite school at En­gedi, now chief of the sev­enty mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, called his as­so­ciates to­gether and gave them fi­nal in­struc­tions be­fore send­ing them on a mis­sion to all of the cities and vil­lages of Perea. This Perean mis­sion con­tin­ued for al­most three months and was the last min­istry of the Mas­ter. From these labors Je­sus went di­rectly to Je­ru­sa­lem to pass through his fi­nal ex­pe­ri­ences in the flesh. The sev­enty, sup­ple­mented by the pe­ri­odic labors of Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles, worked in the fol­low­ing cities and towns and some fifty ad­di­tional vil­lages: Za­phon, Gadara, Macad, Ar­bela, Ra­math, Edrei, Bosora, Caspin, Mis­peh, Gerasa, Ragaba, Suc­coth, Am­athus, Adam, Penuel, Capi­to­lias, Dion, Hatita, Gadda, Phil­a­del­phia, Jog­be­hah, Gilead, Beth-Nim­rah, Tyrus, Elealah, Livias, Hes­h­bon, Cal­lir­rhoe, Beth-Peor, Shit­tim, Sibmah, Medeba, Beth-Meon, Are­opo­lis, and Aroer.

166:2.1The next day Je­sus went with the twelve over to Am­athus, near the bor­der of Samaria, and as they ap­proached the city, they en­coun­tered a group of ten lep­ers who so­journed near this place. Nine of this group were Jews, one a Samar­i­tan. Or­di­nar­ily these Jews would have re­frained from all as­so­ci­a­tion or con­tact with this Samar­i­tan, but their com­mon af­flic­tion was more than enough to over­come all re­li­gious prej­u­dice. They had heard much of Je­sus and his ear­lier mir­a­cles of heal­ing, and since the sev­enty made a prac­tice of an­nounc­ing the time of Je­sus’ ex­pected ar­rival when the Mas­ter was out with the twelve on these tours, the ten lep­ers had been made aware that he was ex­pected to ap­pear in this vicin­ity at about this time; and they were, ac­cord­ingly, posted here on the out­skirts of the city where they hoped to at­tract his at­ten­tion and ask for heal­ing. When the lep­ers saw Je­sus draw­ing near them, not dar­ing to ap­proach him, they stood afar off and cried to him: “Mas­ter, have mercy on us; cleanse us from our af­flic­tion. Heal us as you have healed oth­ers.”

166:2.2Je­sus had just been ex­plain­ing to the twelve why the gen­tiles of Perea, to­gether with the less or­tho­dox Jews, were more will­ing to be­lieve the gospel preached by the sev­enty than were the more or­tho­dox and tra­di­tion-bound Jews of Judea. He had called their at­ten­tion to the fact that their mes­sage had like­wise been more read­ily re­ceived by the Galileans, and even by the Samar­i­tans. But the twelve apos­tles were hardly yet will­ing to en­ter­tain kind feel­ings for the long-de­spised Samar­i­tans.

166:2.3Ac­cord­ingly, when Si­mon Ze­lo­tes ob­served the Samar­i­tan among the lep­ers, he sought to in­duce the Mas­ter to pass on into the city with­out even hes­i­tat­ing to ex­change greet­ings with them. Said Je­sus to Si­mon: “But what if the Samar­i­tan loves God as well as the Jews? Should we sit in judg­ment on our fel­low men? Who can tell? if we make these ten men whole, per­haps the Samar­i­tan will prove more grate­ful even than the Jews. Do you feel cer­tain about your opin­ions, Si­mon?” And Si­mon quickly replied, “If you cleanse them, you will soon find out.” And Je­sus replied: “So shall it be, Si­mon, and you will soon know the truth re­gard­ing the grat­i­tude of men and the lov­ing mercy of God.”

166:2.4Je­sus, go­ing near the lep­ers, said: “If you would be made whole, go forth­with and show your­selves to the priests as re­quired by the law of Moses.” And as they went, they were made whole. But when the Samar­i­tan saw that he was be­ing healed, he turned back and, go­ing in quest of Je­sus, be­gan to glo­rify God with a loud voice. And when he had found the Mas­ter, he fell on his knees at his feet and gave thanks for his cleans­ing. The nine oth­ers, the Jews, had also dis­cov­ered their heal­ing, and while they also were grate­ful for their cleans­ing, they con­tin­ued on their way to show them­selves to the priests.

166:2.5As the Samar­i­tan re­mained kneel­ing at Je­sus’ feet, the Mas­ter, look­ing about at the twelve, es­pe­cially at Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, said: “Were not ten cleansed? Where, then, are the other nine, the Jews? Only one, this alien, has re­turned to give glory to God.” And then he said to the Samar­i­tan, “Arise and go your way; your faith has made you whole.”

166:2.6Je­sus looked again at his apos­tles as the stranger de­parted. And the apos­tles all looked at Je­sus, save Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, whose eyes were down­cast. The twelve said not a word. Nei­ther did Je­sus speak; it was not nec­es­sary that he should.

166:2.7Though all ten of these men re­ally be­lieved they had lep­rosy, only four were thus af­flicted. The other six were cured of a skin dis­ease which had been mis­taken for lep­rosy. But the Samar­i­tan re­ally had lep­rosy.

166:2.8Je­sus en­joined the twelve to say noth­ing about the cleans­ing of the lep­ers, and as they went on into Am­athus, he re­marked: “You see how it is that the chil­dren of the house, even when they are in­sub­or­di­nate to their Fa­ther’s will, take their bless­ings for granted. They think it a small mat­ter if they ne­glect to give thanks when the Fa­ther be­stows heal­ing upon them, but the strangers, when they re­ceive gifts from the head of the house, are filled with won­der and are con­strained to give thanks in rec­og­ni­tion of the good things be­stowed upon them.” And still the apos­tles said noth­ing in re­ply to the Mas­ter’s words.