Andrew

139:1.1An­drew, chair­man of the apos­tolic corps of the king­dom, was born in Ca­per­naum. He was the old­est child in a fam­ily of five—him­self, his brother Si­mon, and three sis­ters. His fa­ther, now dead, had been a part­ner of Zeb­e­dee in the fish-dry­ing busi­ness at Beth­saida, the fish­ing har­bor of Ca­per­naum. When he be­came an apos­tle, An­drew was un­mar­ried but made his home with his mar­ried brother, Si­mon Pe­ter. Both were fish­er­men and part­ners of James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

139:1.2In A.D. 26, the year he was cho­sen as an apos­tle, An­drew was 33, a full year older than Je­sus and the old­est of the apos­tles. He sprang from an ex­cel­lent line of an­ces­tors and was the ablest man of the twelve. Ex­cept­ing or­a­tory, he was the peer of his as­so­ciates in al­most ev­ery imag­in­able abil­ity. Je­sus never gave An­drew a nick­name, a fra­ter­nal des­ig­na­tion. But even as the apos­tles soon be­gan to call Je­sus Mas­ter, so they also des­ig­nated An­drew by a term the equiv­a­lent of Chief.

139:1.3An­drew was a good or­ga­nizer but a bet­ter ad­min­is­tra­tor. He was one of the in­ner cir­cle of four apos­tles, but his ap­point­ment by Je­sus as the head of the apos­tolic group made it nec­es­sary for him to re­main on duty with his breth­ren while the other three en­joyed very close com­mu­nion with the Mas­ter. To the very end An­drew re­mained dean of the apos­tolic corps.

139:1.4Al­though An­drew was never an ef­fec­tive preacher, he was an ef­fi­cient per­sonal worker, be­ing the pi­o­neer mis­sion­ary of the king­dom in that, as the first cho­sen apos­tle, he im­me­di­ately brought to Je­sus his brother, Si­mon, who sub­se­quently be­came one of the great­est preach­ers of the king­dom. An­drew was the chief sup­porter of Je­sus’ pol­icy of uti­liz­ing the pro­gram of per­sonal work as a means of train­ing the twelve as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom.

139:1.5Whether Je­sus pri­vately taught the apos­tles or preached to the mul­ti­tude, An­drew was usu­ally con­ver­sant with what was go­ing on; he was an un­der­stand­ing ex­ec­u­tive and an ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tor. He ren­dered a prompt de­ci­sion on ev­ery mat­ter brought to his no­tice un­less he deemed the prob­lem one be­yond the do­main of his au­thor­ity, in which event he would take it straight to Je­sus.

139:1.6An­drew and Pe­ter were very un­like in char­ac­ter and tem­per­a­ment, but it must be re­corded ev­er­last­ingly to their credit that they got along to­gether splen­didly. An­drew was never jeal­ous of Pe­ter’s or­a­tor­i­cal abil­ity. Not of­ten will an older man of An­drew’s type be ob­served ex­ert­ing such a pro­found in­flu­ence over a younger and tal­ented brother. An­drew and Pe­ter never seemed to be in the least jeal­ous of each other’s abil­i­ties or achieve­ments. Late on the evening of the day of Pen­te­cost, when, largely through the en­er­getic and in­spir­ing preach­ing of Pe­ter, two thou­sand souls were added to the king­dom, An­drew said to his brother: “I could not do that, but I am glad I have a brother who could.” To which Pe­ter replied: “And but for your bring­ing me to the Mas­ter and by your stead­fast­ness keep­ing me with him, I should not have been here to do this.” An­drew and Pe­ter were the ex­cep­tions to the rule, prov­ing that even broth­ers can live to­gether peace­ably and work to­gether ef­fec­tively.

139:1.7Af­ter Pen­te­cost Pe­ter was fa­mous, but it never ir­ri­tated the older An­drew to spend the rest of his life be­ing in­tro­duced as “Si­mon Pe­ter’s brother.”

139:1.8Of all the apos­tles, An­drew was the best judge of men. He knew that trou­ble was brew­ing in the heart of Ju­das Is­car­iot even when none of the oth­ers sus­pected that any­thing was wrong with their trea­surer; but he told none of them his fears. An­drew’s great ser­vice to the king­dom was in ad­vis­ing Pe­ter, James, and John con­cern­ing the choice of the first mis­sion­ar­ies who were sent out to pro­claim the gospel, and also in coun­sel­ing these early lead­ers about the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs of the king­dom. An­drew had a great gift for dis­cov­er­ing the hid­den re­sources and la­tent tal­ents of young peo­ple.

139:1.9Very soon af­ter Je­sus’ as­cen­sion on high, An­drew be­gan the writ­ing of a per­sonal rec­ord of many of the say­ings and do­ings of his de­parted Mas­ter. Af­ter An­drew’s death other copies of this pri­vate rec­ord were made and cir­cu­lated freely among the early teach­ers of the Chris­tian church. These in­for­mal notes of An­drew’s were sub­se­quently edited, amended, al­tered, and added to un­til they made up a fairly con­sec­u­tive nar­ra­tive of the Mas­ter’s life on earth. The last of these few al­tered and amended copies was de­stroyed by fire at Alexan­dria about one hun­dred years af­ter the orig­i­nal was writ­ten by the first cho­sen of the twelve apos­tles.

139:1.10An­drew was a man of clear in­sight, log­i­cal thought, and firm de­ci­sion, whose great strength of char­ac­ter con­sisted in his su­perb sta­bil­ity. His tem­per­a­men­tal hand­i­cap was his lack of en­thu­si­asm; he many times failed to en­cour­age his as­so­ciates by ju­di­cious com­men­da­tion. And this ret­i­cence to praise the wor­thy ac­com­plish­ments of his friends grew out of his ab­hor­rence of flat­tery and in­sin­cer­ity. An­drew was one of those all-round, even-tem­pered, self-made, and suc­cess­ful men of mod­est af­fairs.

139:1.11Ev­ery one of the apos­tles loved Je­sus, but it re­mains true that each of the twelve was drawn to­ward him be­cause of some cer­tain trait of per­son­al­ity which made a spe­cial ap­peal to the in­di­vid­ual apos­tle. An­drew ad­mired Je­sus be­cause of his con­sis­tent sin­cer­ity, his un­af­fected dig­nity. When men once knew Je­sus, they were pos­sessed with the urge to share him with their friends; they re­ally wanted all the world to know him.

139:1.12When the later per­se­cu­tions fi­nally scat­tered the apos­tles from Je­ru­sa­lem, An­drew jour­neyed through Ar­me­nia, Asia Mi­nor, and Mace­do­nia and, af­ter bring­ing many thou­sands into the king­dom, was fi­nally ap­pre­hended and cru­ci­fied in Pa­trae in Achaia. It was two full days be­fore this ro­bust man ex­pired on the cross, and through­out these tragic hours he con­tin­ued ef­fec­tively to pro­claim the glad tid­ings of the sal­va­tion of the king­dom of heaven.

• Andrew

143:3.1About this time a state of great ner­vous and emo­tional ten­sion de­vel­oped among the apos­tles and their im­me­di­ate dis­ci­ple as­so­ciates. They had hardly be­come ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing and work­ing to­gether. They were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing har­mo­nious re­la­tions with John’s dis­ci­ples. The con­tact with the gen­tiles and the Samar­i­tans was a great trial to these Jews. And be­sides all this, the re­cent ut­ter­ances of Je­sus had aug­mented their dis­turbed state of mind. An­drew was al­most be­side him­self; he did not know what next to do, and so he went to the Mas­ter with his prob­lems and per­plex­i­ties. When Je­sus had lis­tened to the apos­tolic chief re­late his trou­bles, he said: “An­drew, you can­not talk men out of their per­plex­i­ties when they reach such a stage of in­volve­ment, and when so many per­sons with strong feel­ings are con­cerned. I can­not do what you ask of me—I will not par­tic­i­pate in these per­sonal so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties—but I will join you in the en­joy­ment of a three-day pe­riod of rest and re­lax­ation. Go to your breth­ren and an­nounce that all of you are to go with me up on Mount Sartaba, where I de­sire to rest for a day or two.

• Andrew

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

• Andrew

144:1.7Dur­ing these Sep­tem­ber weeks they rested, vis­ited, re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences since Je­sus first called them to ser­vice, and en­gaged in an earnest ef­fort to co-or­di­nate what the Mas­ter had so far taught them. In a mea­sure they all sensed that this would be their last op­por­tu­nity for pro­longed rest. They re­al­ized that their next pub­lic ef­fort in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee would mark the be­gin­ning of the fi­nal procla­ma­tion of the com­ing king­dom, but they had lit­tle or no set­tled idea as to what the king­dom would be when it came. John and An­drew thought the king­dom had al­ready come; Pe­ter and James be­lieved that it was yet to come; Na­than­iel and Thomas frankly con­fessed they were puz­zled; Mat­thew, Philip, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were un­cer­tain and con­fused; the twins were bliss­fully ig­no­rant of the con­tro­versy; and Ju­das Is­car­iot was silent, non­com­mit­tal.

• Andrew

145:2.1The next Sab­bath, at the af­ter­noon ser­vice in the syn­a­gogue, Je­sus preached his ser­mon on “The Will of the Fa­ther in Heaven.” In the morn­ing Si­mon Pe­ter had preached on “The King­dom.” At the Thurs­day evening meet­ing of the syn­a­gogue An­drew had taught, his sub­ject be­ing “The New Way.” At this par­tic­u­lar time more peo­ple be­lieved in Je­sus in Ca­per­naum than in any other one city on earth.

• Andrew

167:0.1Through­out this pe­riod of the Perean min­istry, when men­tion is made of Je­sus and the apos­tles vis­it­ing the var­i­ous lo­cal­i­ties where the sev­enty were at work, it should be re­called that, as a rule, only ten were with him since it was the prac­tice to leave at least two of the apos­tles at Pella to in­struct the mul­ti­tude. As Je­sus pre­pared to go on to Phil­a­del­phia, Si­mon Pe­ter and his brother, An­drew, re­turned to the Pella en­camp­ment to teach the crowds there as­sem­bled. When the Mas­ter left the camp at Pella to visit about Perea, it was not un­com­mon for from three to five hun­dred of the campers to fol­low him. When he ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia, he was ac­com­pa­nied by over six hun­dred fol­low­ers.

• Andrew

191:0.6An­drew did much lis­ten­ing this day. He was ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed by the sit­u­a­tion and had more than his share of doubts, but he at least en­joyed a cer­tain sense of free­dom from re­spon­si­bil­ity for the guid­ance of his fel­low apos­tles. He was in­deed grate­ful that the Mas­ter had re­leased him from the bur­dens of lead­er­ship be­fore they fell upon these dis­tract­ing times.

• Andrew

192:1.11Be­fore tak­ing leave of them this morn­ing, Je­sus di­rected that two of the apos­tles should vol­un­teer to go to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and bring him back that very day. And Pe­ter and An­drew did so.

• Andrew

192:4.7On Thurs­day night the apos­tles had a won­der­ful meet­ing in this up­per cham­ber and all pledged them­selves to go forth in the pub­lic preach­ing of the new gospel of the risen Lord ex­cept Thomas, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and the Al­pheus twins. Al­ready had be­gun the first steps of chang­ing the gospel of the king­dom—son­ship with God and broth­er­hood with man—into the procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus. Na­than­iel op­posed this shift in the bur­den of their pub­lic mes­sage, but he could not with­stand Pe­ter’s elo­quence, nei­ther could he over­come the en­thu­si­asm of the dis­ci­ples, es­pe­cially the women be­liev­ers.

• Andrew

194:1.2It was about two o’clock when Pe­ter stood up in that very place where his Mas­ter had last taught in this tem­ple, and de­liv­ered that im­pas­sioned ap­peal which re­sulted in the win­ning of more than two thou­sand souls. The Mas­ter had gone, but they sud­denly dis­cov­ered that this story about him had great power with the peo­ple. No won­der they were led on into the fur­ther procla­ma­tion of that which vin­di­cated their for­mer de­vo­tion to Je­sus and at the same time so con­strained men to be­lieve in him. Six of the apos­tles par­tic­i­pated in this meet­ing: Pe­ter, An­drew, James, John, Philip, and Mat­thew. They talked for more than an hour and a half and de­liv­ered mes­sages in Greek, He­brew, and Ara­maic, as well as a few words in even other tongues with which they had a speak­ing ac­quain­tance.

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

191:2.1Shortly af­ter nine o’clock that evening, af­ter the de­par­ture of Cleopas and Ja­cob, while the Al­pheus twins com­forted Pe­ter, and while Na­than­iel re­mon­strated with An­drew, and as the ten apos­tles were there as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber with all the doors bolted for fear of ar­rest, the Mas­ter, in mor­ontia form, sud­denly ap­peared in the midst of them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Why are you so fright­ened when I ap­pear, as though you had seen a spirit? Did I not tell you about these things when I was pres­ent with you in the flesh? Did I not say to you that the chief priests and the rulers would de­liver me up to be killed, that one of your own num­ber would be­tray me, and that on the third day I would rise? Where­fore all your doubt­ings and all this dis­cus­sion about the re­ports of the women, Cleopas and Ja­cob, and even Pe­ter? How long will you doubt my words and refuse to be­lieve my promises? And now that you ac­tu­ally see me, will you be­lieve? Even now one of you is ab­sent. When you are gath­ered to­gether once more, and af­ter all of you know of a cer­tainty that the Son of Man has risen from the grave, go hence into Gal­i­lee. Have faith in God; have faith in one an­other; and so shall you en­ter into the new ser­vice of the king­dom of heaven. I will tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem with you un­til you are ready to go into Gal­i­lee. My peace I leave with you.”

191:2.2When the mor­ontia Je­sus had spo­ken to them, he van­ished in an in­stant from their sight. And they all fell on their faces, prais­ing God and ven­er­at­ing their van­ished Mas­ter. This was the Mas­ter’s ninth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance.

191:5.1Thomas spent a lone­some week alone with him­self in the hills around about Oli­vet. Dur­ing this time he saw only those at Si­mon’s house and John Mark. It was about nine o’clock on Sat­ur­day, April 15, when the two apos­tles found him and took him back with them to their ren­dezvous at the Mark home. The next day Thomas lis­tened to the telling of the sto­ries of the Mas­ter’s var­i­ous ap­pear­ances, but he stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve. He main­tained that Pe­ter had en­thused them into think­ing they had seen the Mas­ter. Na­than­iel rea­soned with him, but it did no good. There was an emo­tional stub­born­ness as­so­ci­ated with his cus­tom­ary doubt­ful­ness, and this state of mind, cou­pled with his cha­grin at hav­ing run away from them, con­spired to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of iso­la­tion which even Thomas him­self did not fully un­der­stand. He had with­drawn from his fel­lows, he had gone his own way, and now, even when he was back among them, he un­con­sciously tended to as­sume an at­ti­tude of dis­agree­ment. He was slow to sur­ren­der; he dis­liked to give in. With­out in­tend­ing it, he re­ally en­joyed the at­ten­tion paid him; he de­rived un­con­scious sat­is­fac­tion from the ef­forts of all his fel­lows to con­vince and con­vert him. He had missed them for a full week, and he ob­tained con­sid­er­able plea­sure from their per­sis­tent at­ten­tions.

191:5.2They were hav­ing their evening meal a lit­tle af­ter six o’clock, with Pe­ter sit­ting on one side of Thomas and Na­than­iel on the other, when the doubt­ing apos­tle said: “I will not be­lieve un­less I see the Mas­ter with my own eyes and put my fin­ger in the mark of the nails.” As they thus sat at sup­per, and while the doors were se­curely shut and barred, the mor­ontia Mas­ter sud­denly ap­peared in­side the cur­va­ture of the ta­ble and, stand­ing di­rectly in front of Thomas, said:

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

191:5.4When the Mas­ter had so spo­ken, he looked down into the face of Thomas and said: “And you, Thomas, who said you would not be­lieve un­less you could see me and put your fin­ger in the nail marks of my hands, have now be­held me and heard my words; and though you see no nail marks on my hands, since I am raised in the form that you also shall have when you de­part from this world, what will you say to your breth­ren? You will ac­knowl­edge the truth, for al­ready in your heart you had be­gun to be­lieve even when you so stoutly as­serted your un­be­lief. Your doubts, Thomas, al­ways most stub­bornly as­sert them­selves just as they are about to crum­ble. Thomas, I bid you be not faith­less but be­liev­ing—and I know you will be­lieve, even with a whole heart.”

191:5.5When Thomas heard these words, he fell on his knees be­fore the mor­ontia Mas­ter and ex­claimed, “I be­lieve! My Lord and my Mas­ter!” Then said Je­sus to Thomas: “You have be­lieved, Thomas, be­cause you have re­ally seen and heard me. Blessed are those in the ages to come who will be­lieve even though they have not seen with the eye of flesh nor heard with the mor­tal ear.”

191:5.6And then, as the Mas­ter’s form moved over near the head of the ta­ble, he ad­dressed them all, say­ing: “And now go all of you to Gal­i­lee, where I will pres­ently ap­pear to you.” Af­ter he said this, he van­ished from their sight.

191:5.7The eleven apos­tles were now fully con­vinced that Je­sus had risen from the dead, and very early the next morn­ing, be­fore the break of day, they started out for Gal­i­lee.

192:1.1About six o’clock Fri­day morn­ing, April 21, the mor­ontia Mas­ter made his thir­teenth ap­pear­ance, the first in Gal­i­lee, to the ten apos­tles as their boat drew near the shore close to the usual land­ing place at Beth­saida.

192:1.2Af­ter the apos­tles had spent the af­ter­noon and early evening of Thurs­day in wait­ing at the Zeb­e­dee home, Si­mon Pe­ter sug­gested that they go fish­ing. When Pe­ter pro­posed the fish­ing trip, all of the apos­tles de­cided to go along. All night they toiled with the nets but caught no fish. They did not much mind the fail­ure to make a catch, for they had many in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences to talk over, things which had so re­cently hap­pened to them at Je­ru­sa­lem. But when day­light came, they de­cided to re­turn to Beth­saida. As they neared the shore, they saw some­one on the beach, near the boat land­ing, stand­ing by a fire. At first they thought it was John Mark, who had come down to wel­come them back with their catch, but as they drew nearer the shore, they saw they were mis­taken—the man was too tall for John. It had oc­curred to none of them that the per­son on the shore was the Mas­ter. They did not al­to­gether un­der­stand why Je­sus wanted to meet with them amidst the scenes of their ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tions and out in the open in con­tact with na­ture, far away from the shut-in en­vi­ron­ment of Je­ru­sa­lem with its tragic as­so­ci­a­tions of fear, be­trayal, and death. He had told them that, if they would go into Gal­i­lee, he would meet them there, and he was about to ful­fill that prom­ise.

192:1.3As they dropped an­chor and pre­pared to en­ter the small boat for go­ing ashore, the man on the beach called to them, “Lads, have you caught any­thing?” And when they an­swered, “No,” he spoke again. “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find fish.” While they did not know it was Je­sus who had di­rected them, with one ac­cord they cast in the net as they had been in­structed, and im­me­di­ately it was filled, so much so that they were hardly able to draw it up. Now, John Zeb­e­dee was quick of per­cep­tion, and when he saw the heavy-laden net, he per­ceived that it was the Mas­ter who had spo­ken to them. When this thought came into his mind, he leaned over and whis­pered to Pe­ter, “It is the Mas­ter.” Pe­ter was ever a man of thought­less ac­tion and im­petu­ous de­vo­tion; so when John whis­pered this in his ear, he quickly arose and cast him­self into the wa­ter that he might the sooner reach the Mas­ter’s side. His breth­ren came up close be­hind him, hav­ing come ashore in the small boat, haul­ing the net of fishes af­ter them.

192:1.4By this time John Mark was up and, see­ing the apos­tles com­ing ashore with the heavy-laden net, ran down the beach to greet them; and when he saw eleven men in­stead of ten, he sur­mised that the un­rec­og­nized one was the risen Je­sus, and as the as­ton­ished ten stood by in si­lence, the youth rushed up to the Mas­ter and, kneel­ing at his feet, said, “My Lord and my Mas­ter.” And then Je­sus spoke, not as he had in Je­ru­sa­lem, when he greeted them with “Peace be upon you,” but in com­mon­place tones he ad­dressed John Mark: “Well, John, I am glad to see you again and in care­free Gal­i­lee, where we can have a good visit. Stay with us, John, and have break­fast.”

192:1.5As Je­sus talked with the young man, the ten were so as­ton­ished and sur­prised that they ne­glected to haul the net of fish in upon the beach. Now spoke Je­sus: “Bring in your fish and pre­pare some for break­fast. Al­ready we have the fire and much bread.”

192:1.6While John Mark had paid homage to the Mas­ter, Pe­ter had for a mo­ment been shocked at the sight of the coals of fire glow­ing there on the beach; the scene re­minded him so vividly of the mid­night fire of char­coal in the court­yard of An­nas, where he had dis­owned the Mas­ter, but he shook him­self and, kneel­ing at the Mas­ter’s feet, ex­claimed, “My Lord and my Mas­ter!”

192:1.7Pe­ter then joined his com­rades as they hauled in the net. When they had landed their catch, they counted the fish, and there were 153 large ones. And again was the mis­take made of call­ing this an­other mirac­u­lous catch of fish. There was no mir­a­cle con­nected with this episode. It was merely an ex­er­cise of the Mas­ter’s pre­knowl­edge. He knew the fish were there and ac­cord­ingly di­rected the apos­tles where to cast the net.

192:1.8Je­sus spoke to them, say­ing: “Come now, all of you, to break­fast. Even the twins should sit down while I visit with you; John Mark will dress the fish.” John Mark brought seven good-sized fish, which the Mas­ter put on the fire, and when they were cooked, the lad served them to the ten. Then Je­sus broke the bread and handed it to John, who in turn served it to the hun­gry apos­tles. When they had all been served, Je­sus bade John Mark sit down while he him­self served the fish and the bread to the lad. And as they ate, Je­sus vis­ited with them and re­counted their many ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee and by this very lake.

192:1.9This was the third time Je­sus had man­i­fested him­self to the apos­tles as a group. When Je­sus first ad­dressed them, ask­ing if they had any fish, they did not sus­pect who he was be­cause it was a com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence for these fish­er­men on the Sea of Gal­i­lee, when they came ashore, to be thus ac­costed by the fish mer­chants of Ta­ri­chea, who were usu­ally on hand to buy the fresh catches for the dry­ing es­tab­lish­ments.

192:1.10Je­sus vis­ited with the ten apos­tles and John Mark for more than an hour, and then he walked up and down the beach, talk­ing with them two and two—but not the same cou­ples he had at first sent out to­gether to teach. All eleven of the apos­tles had come down from Je­ru­sa­lem to­gether, but Si­mon Ze­lo­tes grew more and more de­spon­dent as they drew near Gal­i­lee, so that, when they reached Beth­saida, he for­sook his breth­ren and re­turned to his home.

192:2.1When they had fin­ished break­fast, and while the oth­ers sat by the fire, Je­sus beck­oned to Pe­ter and to John that they should come with him for a stroll on the beach. As they walked along, Je­sus said to John, “John, do you love me?” And when John an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, with all my heart,” the Mas­ter said: “Then, John, give up your in­tol­er­ance and learn to love men as I have loved you. De­vote your life to prov­ing that love is the great­est thing in the world. It is the love of God that im­pels men to seek sal­va­tion. Love is the an­ces­tor of all spir­i­tual good­ness, the essence of the true and the beau­ti­ful.”

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

192:2.3Af­ter they had walked along a lit­tle far­ther, the Mas­ter turned to Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you re­ally love me?” And then said Si­mon, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And again said Je­sus: “Then take good care of my sheep. Be a good and a true shep­herd to the flock. Be­tray not their con­fi­dence in you. Be not taken by sur­prise at the en­emy’s hand. Be on guard at all times—watch and pray.”

192:2.4When they had gone a few steps far­ther, Je­sus turned to Pe­ter and, for the third time, asked, “Pe­ter, do you truly love me?” And then Pe­ter, be­ing slightly grieved at the Mas­ter’s seem­ing dis­trust of him, said with con­sid­er­able feel­ing, “Lord, you know all things, and there­fore do you know that I re­ally and truly love you.” Then said Je­sus: “Feed my sheep. Do not for­sake the flock. Be an ex­am­ple and an in­spi­ra­tion to all your fel­low shep­herds. Love the flock as I have loved you and de­vote your­self to their wel­fare even as I have de­voted my life to your wel­fare. And fol­low af­ter me even to the end.”

192:2.5Pe­ter took this last state­ment lit­er­ally—that he should con­tinue to fol­low af­ter him—and turn­ing to Je­sus, he pointed to John, ask­ing, “If I fol­low on af­ter you, what shall this man do?” And then, per­ceiv­ing that Pe­ter had mis­un­der­stood his words, Je­sus said: “Pe­ter, be not con­cerned about what your breth­ren shall do. If I will that John should tarry af­ter you are gone, even un­til I come back, what is that to you? Only make sure that you fol­low me.”

192:2.6This re­mark spread among the breth­ren and was re­ceived as a state­ment by Je­sus to the ef­fect that John would not die be­fore the Mas­ter re­turned, as many thought and hoped, to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory. It was this in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Je­sus said that had much to do with get­ting Si­mon Ze­lo­tes back into ser­vice, and keep­ing him at work.

192:2.7When they re­turned to the oth­ers, Je­sus went for a walk and talk with An­drew and James. When they had gone a short dis­tance, Je­sus said to An­drew, “An­drew, do you trust me?” And when the for­mer chief of the apos­tles heard Je­sus ask such a ques­tion, he stood still and an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, of a cer­tainty I trust you, and you know that I do.” Then said Je­sus: “An­drew, if you trust me, trust your breth­ren more—even Pe­ter. I once trusted you with the lead­er­ship of your breth­ren. Now must you trust oth­ers as I leave you to go to the Fa­ther. When your breth­ren be­gin to scat­ter abroad be­cause of bit­ter per­se­cu­tions, be a con­sid­er­ate and wise coun­selor to James my brother in the flesh when they put heavy bur­dens upon him which he is not qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to bear. And then go on trust­ing, for I will not fail you. When you are through on earth, you shall come to me.”

192:2.8Then Je­sus turned to James, ask­ing, “James, do you trust me?” And of course James replied, “Yes, Mas­ter, I trust you with all my heart.” Then said Je­sus: “James, if you trust me more, you will be less im­pa­tient with your breth­ren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the broth­er­hood of be­liev­ers. Learn to weigh the con­se­quences of your say­ings and your do­ings. Re­mem­ber that the reap­ing is in ac­cor­dance with the sow­ing. Pray for tran­quil­lity of spirit and cul­ti­vate pa­tience. These graces, with liv­ing faith, shall sus­tain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sac­ri­fice. But never be dis­mayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to be with me.”

192:2.9Je­sus next talked with Thomas and Na­than­iel. Said he to Thomas, “Thomas, do you serve me?” Thomas replied, “Yes, Lord, I serve you now and al­ways.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would serve me, serve my breth­ren in the flesh even as I have served you. And be not weary in this well-do­ing but per­se­vere as one who has been or­dained by God for this ser­vice of love. When you have fin­ished your ser­vice with me on earth, you shall serve with me in glory. Thomas, you must cease doubt­ing; you must grow in faith and the knowl­edge of truth. Be­lieve in God like a child but cease to act so child­ishly. Have cour­age; be strong in faith and mighty in the king­dom of God.”

192:2.10Then said the Mas­ter to Na­than­iel, “Na­than­iel, do you serve me?” And the apos­tle an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, and with an un­di­vided af­fec­tion.” Then said Je­sus: “If, there­fore, you serve me with a whole heart, make sure that you are de­voted to the wel­fare of my breth­ren on earth with tire­less af­fec­tion. Ad­mix friend­ship with your coun­sel and add love to your phi­los­o­phy. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you. Be faith­ful to men as I have watched over you. Be less crit­i­cal; ex­pect less of some men and thereby lessen the ex­tent of your dis­ap­point­ment. And when the work down here is over, you shall serve with me on high.”

192:2.11Af­ter this the Mas­ter talked with Mat­thew and Philip. To Philip he said, “Philip, do you obey me?” Philip an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I will obey you even with my life.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would obey me, go then into the lands of the gen­tiles and pro­claim this gospel. The proph­ets have told you that to obey is bet­ter than to sac­ri­fice. By faith have you be­come a God-know­ing king­dom son. There is but one law to obey—that is the com­mand to go forth pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom. Cease to fear men; be un­afraid to preach the good news of eter­nal life to your fel­lows who lan­guish in dark­ness and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy your­self with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tid­ings just as are your breth­ren. And I will go be­fore you and be with you even to the end.”

192:2.12And then, speak­ing to Mat­thew, the Mas­ter asked, “Mat­thew, do you have it in your heart to obey me?” Mat­thew an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I am fully ded­i­cated to do­ing your will.” Then said the Mas­ter: “Mat­thew, if you would obey me, go forth to teach all peo­ples this gospel of the king­dom. No longer will you serve your breth­ren the ma­te­rial things of life; hence­forth you are also to pro­claim the good news of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion. From now on have an eye sin­gle only to obey­ing your com­mis­sion to preach this gospel of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. As I have done the Fa­ther’s will on earth, so shall you ful­fill the di­vine com­mis­sion. Re­mem­ber, both Jew and gen­tile are your breth­ren. Fear no man when you pro­claim the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And where I go, you shall pres­ently come.”

192:2.13Then he walked and talked with the Al­pheus twins, James and Ju­das, and speak­ing to both of them, he asked, “James and Ju­das, do you be­lieve in me?” And when they both an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we do be­lieve,” he said: “I will soon leave you. You see that I have al­ready left you in the flesh. I tarry only a short time in this form be­fore I go to my Fa­ther. You be­lieve in me—you are my apos­tles, and you al­ways will be. Go on be­liev­ing and re­mem­ber­ing your as­so­ci­a­tion with me, when I am gone, and af­ter you have, per­chance, re­turned to the work you used to do be­fore you came to live with me. Never al­low a change in your out­ward work to in­flu­ence your al­le­giance. Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never for­get that, when you are a faith son of God, all up­right work of the realm is sa­cred. Noth­ing which a son of God does can be com­mon. Do your work, there­fore, from this time on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and bet­ter worlds where you shall like­wise work for me. And in all of this work, on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall dwell within you.”

192:2.14It was al­most ten o’clock when Je­sus re­turned from his visit with the Al­pheus twins, and as he left the apos­tles, he said: “Farewell, un­til I meet you all on the mount of your or­di­na­tion to­mor­row at noon­time.” When he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.1At noon on Sat­ur­day, April 22, the eleven apos­tles as­sem­bled by ap­point­ment on the hill near Ca­per­naum, and Je­sus ap­peared among them. This meet­ing oc­curred on the very mount where the Mas­ter had set them apart as his apos­tles and as am­bas­sadors of the Fa­ther’s king­dom on earth. And this was the Mas­ter’s four­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion.

192:3.2At this time the eleven apos­tles knelt in a cir­cle about the Mas­ter and heard him re­peat the charges and saw him re-en­act the or­di­na­tion scene even as when they were first set apart for the spe­cial work of the king­dom. And all of this was to them as a mem­ory of their for­mer con­se­cra­tion to the Fa­ther’s ser­vice, ex­cept the Mas­ter’s prayer. When the Mas­ter—the mor­ontia Je­sus—now prayed, it was in tones of majesty and with words of power such as the apos­tles had never be­fore heard. Their Mas­ter now spoke with the rulers of the uni­verses as one who, in his own uni­verse, had had all power and au­thor­ity com­mit­ted to his hand. And these eleven men never for­got this ex­pe­ri­ence of the mor­ontia reded­i­ca­tion to the for­mer pledges of am­bas­sador­ship. The Mas­ter spent just one hour on this mount with his am­bas­sadors, and when he had taken an af­fec­tion­ate farewell of them, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.3And no one saw Je­sus for a full week. The apos­tles re­ally had no idea what to do, not know­ing whether the Mas­ter had gone to the Fa­ther. In this state of un­cer­tainty they tar­ried at Beth­saida. They were afraid to go fish­ing lest he come to visit them and they miss see­ing him. Dur­ing this en­tire week Je­sus was oc­cu­pied with the mor­ontia crea­tures on earth and with the af­fairs of the mor­ontia tran­si­tion which he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing on this world.

192:4.1Word of the ap­pear­ances of Je­sus was spread­ing through­out Gal­i­lee, and ev­ery day in­creas­ing num­bers of be­liev­ers ar­rived at the Zeb­e­dee home to in­quire about the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion and to find out the truth about these re­puted ap­pear­ances. Pe­ter, early in the week, sent out word that a pub­lic meet­ing would be held by the sea­side the next Sab­bath at three o’clock in the af­ter­noon.

192:4.2Ac­cord­ingly, on Sat­ur­day, April 29, at three o’clock, more than five hun­dred be­liev­ers from the en­vi­rons of Ca­per­naum as­sem­bled at Beth­saida to hear Pe­ter preach his first pub­lic ser­mon since the res­ur­rec­tion. The apos­tle was at his best, and af­ter he had fin­ished his ap­peal­ing dis­course, few of his hear­ers doubted that the Mas­ter had risen from the dead.

192:4.3Pe­ter ended his ser­mon, say­ing: “We af­firm that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth is not dead; we de­clare that he has risen from the tomb; we pro­claim that we have seen him and talked with him.” Just as he fin­ished mak­ing this dec­la­ra­tion of faith, there by his side, in full view of all these peo­ple, the Mas­ter ap­peared in mor­ontia form and, speak­ing to them in fa­mil­iar ac­cents, said, “Peace be upon you, and my peace I leave with you.” When he had thus ap­peared and had so spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. This was the fif­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of the risen Je­sus.

192:4.4Be­cause of cer­tain things said to the eleven while they were in con­fer­ence with the Mas­ter on the mount of or­di­na­tion, the apos­tles re­ceived the im­pres­sion that their Mas­ter would pres­ently make a pub­lic ap­pear­ance be­fore a group of the Galilean be­liev­ers, and that, af­ter he had done so, they were to re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, early the next day, Sun­day, April 30, the eleven left Beth­saida for Je­ru­sa­lem. They did con­sid­er­able teach­ing and preach­ing on the way down the Jor­dan, so that they did not ar­rive at the home of the Marks in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til late on Wednes­day, May 3.

192:4.5This was a sad home-com­ing for John Mark. Just a few hours be­fore he reached home, his fa­ther, Eli­jah Mark, sud­denly died from a hem­or­rhage in the brain. Al­though the thought of the cer­tainty of the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead did much to com­fort the apos­tles in their grief, at the same time they truly mourned the loss of their good friend, who had been their stanch sup­porter even in the times of great trou­ble and dis­ap­point­ment. John Mark did all he could to com­fort his mother and, speak­ing for her, in­vited the apos­tles to con­tinue to make their home at her house. And the eleven made this up­per cham­ber their head­quar­ters un­til af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost.

192:4.6The apos­tles had pur­posely en­tered Je­ru­sa­lem af­ter night­fall that they might not be seen by the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties. Nei­ther did they pub­licly ap­pear in con­nec­tion with the fu­neral of Eli­jah Mark. All the next day they re­mained in quiet seclu­sion in this event­ful up­per cham­ber.

192:4.8And so, un­der the vig­or­ous lead­er­ship of Pe­ter and ere the Mas­ter as­cended to the Fa­ther, his well-mean­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­gan that sub­tle pro­cess of grad­u­ally and cer­tainly chang­ing the re­li­gion of Je­sus into a new and mod­i­fied form of re­li­gion about Je­sus.

193:0.1The six­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus oc­curred on Fri­day, May 5, in the court­yard of Nicode­mus, about nine o’clock at night. On this evening the Je­ru­sa­lem be­liev­ers had made their first at­tempt to get to­gether since the res­ur­rec­tion. As­sem­bled here at this time were the eleven apos­tles, the women’s corps and their as­so­ciates, and about fifty other lead­ing dis­ci­ples of the Mas­ter, in­clud­ing a num­ber of the Greeks. This com­pany of be­liev­ers had been vis­it­ing in­for­mally for more than half an hour when, sud­denly, the mor­ontia Mas­ter ap­peared in full view and im­me­di­ately be­gan to in­struct them. Said Je­sus:

193:0.2“Peace be upon you. This is the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive group of be­liev­ers—apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, both men and women—to which I have ap­peared since the time of my de­liv­er­ance from the flesh. I now call you to wit­ness that I told you be­fore­hand that my so­journ among you must come to an end; I told you that pres­ently I must re­turn to the Fa­ther. And then I plainly told you how the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews would de­liver me up to be put to death, and that I would rise from the grave. Why, then, did you al­low your­selves to be­come so dis­con­certed by all this when it came to pass? and why were you so sur­prised when I rose from the tomb on the third day? You failed to be­lieve me be­cause you heard my words with­out com­pre­hend­ing the mean­ing thereof.

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

193:0.4“I ad­mon­ish you ever to re­mem­ber that your mis­sion among men is to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom—the re­al­ity of the fa­ther­hood of God and the truth of the son­ship of man. Pro­claim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the sav­ing gospel. Your mes­sage is not changed by my res­ur­rec­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. Son­ship with God, by faith, is still the sav­ing truth of the gospel of the king­dom. You are to go forth preach­ing the love of God and the ser­vice of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can ac­tu­ally re­al­ize, and daily ex­pe­ri­ence, this en­nobling truth. My be­stowal should help all men to know that they are the chil­dren of God, but such knowl­edge will not suf­fice if they fail per­son­ally to faith-grasp the sav­ing truth that they are the liv­ing spirit sons of the eter­nal Fa­ther. The gospel of the king­dom is con­cerned with the love of the Fa­ther and the ser­vice of his chil­dren on earth.

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”

193:0.6When the Mas­ter had spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. It was near day­break be­fore these be­liev­ers dis­persed; all night they re­mained to­gether, earnestly dis­cussing the Mas­ter’s ad­mo­ni­tions and con­tem­plat­ing all that had be­fallen them. James Zeb­e­dee and oth­ers of the apos­tles also told them of their ex­pe­ri­ences with the mor­ontia Mas­ter in Gal­i­lee and re­cited how he had three times ap­peared to them.

193:3.1Early Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, Je­sus made his last ap­pear­ance on earth as a mor­ontia per­son­al­ity. As the eleven apos­tles were about to sit down to break­fast in the up­per cham­ber of Mary Mark’s home, Je­sus ap­peared to them and said:

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

193:3.3When he had spo­ken, he beck­oned for them to come with him, and he led them out on the Mount of Olives, where he bade them farewell prepara­tory to de­part­ing from Uran­tia. This was a solemn jour­ney to Oli­vet. Not a word was spo­ken by any of them from the time they left the up­per cham­ber un­til Je­sus paused with them on the Mount of Olives.

193:5.1It was al­most half past seven o’clock this Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, when Je­sus ar­rived on the west­ern slope of Mount Oli­vet with his eleven silent and some­what be­wil­dered apos­tles. From this lo­ca­tion, about two thirds the way up the moun­tain, they could look out over Je­ru­sa­lem and down upon Geth­sem­ane. Je­sus now pre­pared to say his last farewell to the apos­tles be­fore he took leave of Uran­tia. As he stood there be­fore them, with­out be­ing di­rected they knelt about him in a cir­cle, and the Mas­ter said:

193:5.2“I bade you tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til you were en­dowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my so­journ the Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall be­gin the new procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, first in Je­ru­sa­lem and then to the ut­ter­most parts of the world. Love men with the love where­with I have loved you and serve your fel­low mor­tals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives im­pel souls to be­lieve the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are breth­ren. Re­mem­ber all I have taught you and the life I have lived among you. My love over­shad­ows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell.”

193:5.3When the mor­ontia Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight. This so-called as­cen­sion of Je­sus was in no way dif­fer­ent from his other dis­ap­pear­ances from mor­tal vi­sion dur­ing the forty days of his mor­ontia ca­reer on Uran­tia.

193:5.4The Mas­ter went to Eden­tia by way of Je­ru­sem, where the Most Highs, un­der the ob­ser­va­tion of the Par­a­dise Son, re­leased Je­sus of Naz­a­reth from the mor­ontia state and, through the spirit chan­nels of as­cen­sion, re­turned him to the sta­tus of Par­a­dise son­ship and su­preme sov­er­eignty on Sal­ving­ton.

193:5.5It was about seven forty-five this morn­ing when the mor­ontia Je­sus dis­ap­peared from the ob­ser­va­tion of his eleven apos­tles to be­gin the as­cent to the right hand of his Fa­ther, there to re­ceive for­mal con­fir­ma­tion of his com­pleted sov­er­eignty of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

158:4.7An­drew was deeply cha­grined at this ill-ad­vised ef­fort and its dis­mal fail­ure. He called the apos­tles aside for con­fer­ence and prayer. Af­ter this sea­son of med­i­ta­tion, feel­ing keenly the sting of their de­feat and sens­ing the hu­mil­i­a­tion rest­ing upon all of them, An­drew sought, in a sec­ond at­tempt, to cast out the de­mon, but only fail­ure crowned his ef­forts. An­drew frankly con­fessed de­feat and re­quested the fa­ther to re­main with them overnight or un­til Je­sus’ re­turn, say­ing: “Per­haps this sort goes not out ex­cept by the Mas­ter’s per­sonal com­mand.”

137:1.1Dur­ing this Sab­bath two of John’s lead­ing dis­ci­ples spent much time with Je­sus. Of all John’s fol­low­ers one named An­drew was the most pro­foundly im­pressed with Je­sus; he ac­com­pa­nied him on the trip to Pella with the in­jured boy. On the way back to John’s ren­dezvous he asked Je­sus many ques­tions, and just be­fore reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion, the two paused for a short talk, dur­ing which An­drew said: “I have ob­served you ever since you came to Ca­per­naum, and I be­lieve you are the new Teacher, and though I do not un­der­stand all your teach­ing, I have fully made up my mind to fol­low you; I would sit at your feet and learn the whole truth about the new king­dom.” And Je­sus, with hearty as­sur­ance, wel­comed An­drew as the first of his apos­tles, that group of twelve who were to la­bor with him in the work of es­tab­lish­ing the new king­dom of God in the hearts of men.

172:5.2An­drew was thor­oughly be­wil­dered, well-nigh con­fused. He was the one apos­tle who did not se­ri­ously un­der­take to eval­u­ate the pop­u­lar out­burst of ac­claim. He was too pre­oc­cu­pied with the thought of his re­spon­si­bil­ity as chief of the apos­tolic corps to give se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the mean­ing or sig­nif­i­cance of the loud hosan­nas of the mul­ti­tude. An­drew was busy watch­ing some of his as­so­ciates who he feared might be led away by their emo­tions dur­ing the ex­cite­ment, par­tic­u­larly Pe­ter, James, John, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes. Through­out this day and those which im­me­di­ately fol­lowed, An­drew was trou­bled with se­ri­ous doubts, but he never ex­pressed any of these mis­giv­ings to his apos­tolic as­so­ciates. He was con­cerned about the at­ti­tude of some of the twelve who he knew were armed with swords; but he did not know that his own brother, Pe­ter, was car­ry­ing such a weapon. And so the pro­ces­sion into Je­ru­sa­lem made a com­par­a­tively su­per­fi­cial im­pres­sion upon An­drew; he was too busy with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his of­fice to be oth­er­wise af­fected.

139:4.3Pe­ter, James, and John were as­signed as per­sonal aides to Je­sus soon af­ter they be­came apos­tles. Shortly af­ter the se­lec­tion of the twelve and at the time Je­sus ap­pointed An­drew to act as di­rec­tor of the group, he said to him: “And now I de­sire that you as­sign two or three of your as­so­ciates to be with me and to re­main by my side, to com­fort me and to min­is­ter to my daily needs.” And An­drew thought best to se­lect for this spe­cial duty the next three first-cho­sen apos­tles. He would have liked to vol­un­teer for such a blessed ser­vice him­self, but the Mas­ter had al­ready given him his com­mis­sion; so he im­me­di­ately di­rected that Pe­ter, James, and John at­tach them­selves to Je­sus.

137:5.2Af­ter sup­per that evening, in this home of Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome, there was held one of the most im­por­tant con­fer­ences of all Je­sus’ earthly ca­reer. Only the six apos­tles were pres­ent at this meet­ing; Jude ar­rived as they were about to sep­a­rate. These six cho­sen men had jour­neyed from Cana to Beth­saida with Je­sus, walk­ing, as it were, on air. They were alive with ex­pectancy and thrilled with the thought of hav­ing been se­lected as close as­so­ciates of the Son of Man. But when Je­sus set out to make clear to them who he was and what was to be his mis­sion on earth and how it might pos­si­bly end, they were stunned. They could not grasp what he was telling them. They were speech­less; even Pe­ter was crushed be­yond ex­pres­sion. Only the deep-think­ing An­drew dared to make re­ply to Je­sus’ words of coun­sel. When Je­sus per­ceived that they did not com­pre­hend his mes­sage, when he saw that their ideas of the Jew­ish Mes­siah were so com­pletely crys­tal­lized, he sent them to their rest while he walked and talked with his brother Jude. And be­fore Jude took leave of Je­sus, he said with much feel­ing: “My fa­ther-brother, I never have un­der­stood you. I do not know of a cer­tainty whether you are what my mother has taught us, and I do not fully com­pre­hend the com­ing king­dom, but I do know you are a mighty man of God. I heard the voice at the Jor­dan, and I am a be­liever in you, no mat­ter who you are.” And when he had spo­ken, he de­parted, go­ing to his own home at Mag­dala.

137:7.3This pe­riod of wait­ing and teach­ing was es­pe­cially hard on Si­mon Pe­ter. He re­peat­edly sought to per­suade Je­sus to launch forth with the preach­ing of the king­dom in Gal­i­lee while John con­tin­ued to preach in Judea. But Je­sus’ re­ply to Pe­ter ever was: “Be pa­tient, Si­mon. Make prog­ress. We shall be none too ready when the Fa­ther calls.” And An­drew would calm Pe­ter now and then with his more sea­soned and philo­sophic coun­sel. An­drew was tremen­dously im­pressed with the hu­man nat­u­ral­ness of Je­sus. He never grew weary of con­tem­plat­ing how one who could live so near God could be so friendly and con­sid­er­ate of men.

147:6.4But the spies did not have long to wait for their op­por­tu­nity to ac­cuse Je­sus and his as­so­ciates of Sab­bath break­ing. As the com­pany passed along the nar­row road, the wav­ing wheat, which was just then ripen­ing, was near at hand on ei­ther side, and some of the apos­tles, be­ing hun­gry, plucked the ripe grain and ate it. It was cus­tom­ary for trav­el­ers to help them­selves to grain as they passed along the road, and there­fore no thought of wrong­do­ing was at­tached to such con­duct. But the spies seized upon this as a pre­text for as­sail­ing Je­sus. When they saw An­drew rub the grain in his hand, they went up to him and said: “Do you not know that it is un­law­ful to pluck and rub the grain on the Sab­bath day?” And An­drew an­swered: “But we are hun­gry and rub only suf­fi­cient for our needs; and since when did it be­come sin­ful to eat grain on the Sab­bath day?” But the Phar­isees an­swered: “You do no wrong in eat­ing, but you do break the law in pluck­ing and rub­bing out the grain be­tween your hands; surely your Mas­ter would not ap­prove of such acts.” Then said An­drew: “But if it is not wrong to eat the grain, surely the rub­bing out be­tween our hands is hardly more work than the chew­ing of the grain, which you al­low; where­fore do you quib­ble over such tri­fles?” When An­drew in­ti­mated that they were quib­blers, they were in­dig­nant, and rush­ing back to where Je­sus walked along, talk­ing to Mat­thew, they protested, say­ing: “Be­hold, Teacher, your apos­tles do that which is un­law­ful on the Sab­bath day; they pluck, rub, and eat the grain. We are sure you will com­mand them to cease.” And then said Je­sus to the ac­cusers: “You are in­deed zeal­ous for the law, and you do well to re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; but did you never read in the Scrip­ture that, one day when David was hun­gry, he and they who were with him en­tered the house of God and ate the show­bread, which it was not law­ful for any­one to eat save the priests? and David also gave this bread to those who were with him. And have you not read in our law that it is law­ful to do many need­ful things on the Sab­bath day? And shall I not, be­fore the day is fin­ished, see you eat that which you have brought along for the needs of this day? My good men, you do well to be zeal­ous for the Sab­bath, but you would do bet­ter to guard the health and well-be­ing of your fel­lows. I de­clare that the Sab­bath was made for man and not man for the Sab­bath. And if you are here pres­ent with us to watch my words, then will I openly pro­claim that the Son of Man is lord even of the Sab­bath.”

138:7.4Je­sus now asked them how much money they had among them; he also in­quired as to what pro­vi­sion had been made for their fam­i­lies. When it de­vel­oped that they had hardly suf­fi­cient funds to main­tain them­selves for two weeks, he said: “It is not the will of my Fa­ther that we be­gin our work in this way. We will re­main here by the sea two weeks and fish or do what­ever our hands find to do; and in the mean­time, un­der the guid­ance of An­drew, the first cho­sen apos­tle, you shall so or­ga­nize your­selves as to pro­vide for ev­ery­thing need­ful in your fu­ture work, both for the pres­ent per­sonal min­istry and also when I shall sub­se­quently or­dain you to preach the gospel and in­struct be­liev­ers.” They were all greatly cheered by these words; this was their first clear-cut and pos­i­tive in­ti­ma­tion that Je­sus de­signed later on to en­ter upon more ag­gres­sive and pre­ten­tious pub­lic ef­forts.

138:10.21. An­drew, the first cho­sen apos­tle, was des­ig­nated chair­man and di­rec­tor gen­eral of the twelve.

182:2.3The apos­tles fell asleep only be­cause they were lit­er­ally ex­hausted; they had been run­ning short on sleep ever since their ar­rival in Je­ru­sa­lem. Be­fore they went to their sep­a­rate sleep­ing quar­ters, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes led them all over to his tent, where were stored the swords and other arms, and sup­plied each of them with this fight­ing equip­ment. All of them re­ceived these arms and girded them­selves there­with ex­cept Na­than­iel. Na­than­iel, in re­fus­ing to arm him­self, said: “My breth­ren, the Mas­ter has re­peat­edly told us that his king­dom is not of this world, and that his dis­ci­ples should not fight with the sword to bring about its es­tab­lish­ment. I be­lieve this; I do not think the Mas­ter needs to have us em­ploy the sword in his de­fense. We have all seen his mighty power and know that he could de­fend him­self against his en­e­mies if he so de­sired. If he will not re­sist his en­e­mies, it must be that such a course rep­re­sents his at­tempt to ful­fill his Fa­ther’s will. I will pray, but I will not wield the sword.” When An­drew heard Na­than­iel’s speech, he handed his sword back to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes. And so nine of them were armed as they sep­a­rated for the night.

150:2.2It was at Mag­dala that the women first demon­strated their use­ful­ness and vin­di­cated the wis­dom of their choos­ing. An­drew had im­posed rather strict rules upon his as­so­ciates about do­ing per­sonal work with women, es­pe­cially with those of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter. When the party en­tered Mag­dala, these ten women evan­ge­lists were free to en­ter the evil re­sorts and preach the glad tid­ings di­rectly to all their in­mates. And when vis­it­ing the sick, these women were able to draw very close in their min­istry to their af­flicted sis­ters. As the re­sult of the min­istry of these ten women (af­ter­ward known as the twelve women) at this place, Mary Mag­da­lene was won for the king­dom. Through a suc­ces­sion of mis­for­tunes and in con­se­quence of the at­ti­tude of rep­u­ta­ble so­ci­ety to­ward women who com­mit such er­rors of judg­ment, this woman had found her­self in one of the ne­far­i­ous re­sorts of Mag­dala. It was Martha and Rachel who made plain to Mary that the doors of the king­dom were open to even such as she. Mary be­lieved the good news and was bap­tized by Pe­ter the next day.

152:4.4To Pe­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence was al­ways real. He sin­cerely be­lieved that Je­sus came to them that night. He only par­tially con­vinced John Mark, which ex­plains why Mark left a por­tion of the story out of his nar­ra­tive. Luke, the physi­cian, who made care­ful search into these mat­ters, con­cluded that the episode was a vi­sion of Pe­ter’s and there­fore re­fused to give place to this story in the prepa­ra­tion of his nar­ra­tive.

191:1.5Pe­ter’s dec­la­ra­tion that he had seen Je­sus in the gar­den made a pro­found im­pres­sion upon his fel­low apos­tles, and they were about ready to sur­ren­der their doubts when An­drew got up and warned them not to be too much in­flu­enced by his brother’s re­port. An­drew in­ti­mated that Pe­ter had seen things which were not real be­fore. Al­though An­drew did not di­rectly al­lude to the vi­sion of the night on the Sea of Gal­i­lee wherein Pe­ter claimed to have seen the Mas­ter com­ing to them walk­ing on the wa­ter, he said enough to be­tray to all pres­ent that he had this in­ci­dent in mind. Si­mon Pe­ter was very much hurt by his brother’s in­sin­u­a­tions and im­me­di­ately lapsed into crest­fallen si­lence. The twins felt very sorry for Pe­ter, and they both went over to ex­press their sym­pa­thy and to say that they be­lieved him and to re­assert that their own mother had also seen the Mas­ter.

• admonitions to A.

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”

• admonitions to A.

181:2.16When the Mas­ter had fin­ished speak­ing to James Zeb­e­dee, he stepped around to the end of the ta­ble where An­drew sat and, look­ing his faith­ful helper in the eyes, said: “An­drew, you have faith­fully rep­re­sented me as act­ing head of the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. Al­though you have some­times doubted and at other times man­i­fested dan­ger­ous timid­ity, still, you have al­ways been sin­cerely just and em­i­nently fair in deal­ing with your as­so­ciates. Ever since the or­di­na­tion of you and your breth­ren as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, you have been self-gov­ern­ing in all group ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs ex­cept that I des­ig­nated you as the act­ing head of these cho­sen ones. In no other tem­po­ral mat­ter have I acted to di­rect or to in­flu­ence your de­ci­sions. And this I did in or­der to pro­vide for lead­er­ship in the di­rec­tion of all your sub­se­quent group de­lib­er­a­tions. In my uni­verse and in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse of uni­verses, our breth­ren-sons are dealt with as in­di­vid­u­als in all their spir­i­tual re­la­tions, but in all group re­la­tion­ships we un­fail­ingly pro­vide for def­i­nite lead­er­ship. Our king­dom is a realm of or­der, and where two or more will crea­tures act in co-op­er­a­tion, there is al­ways pro­vided the au­thor­ity of lead­er­ship.

181:2.17“And now, An­drew, since you are the chief of your breth­ren by au­thor­ity of my ap­point­ment, and since you have thus served as my per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and as I am about to leave you and go to my Fa­ther, I re­lease you from all re­spon­si­bil­ity as re­gards these tem­po­ral and ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs. From now on you may ex­er­cise no ju­ris­dic­tion over your breth­ren ex­cept that which you have earned in your ca­pac­ity as spir­i­tual leader, and which your breth­ren there­fore freely rec­og­nize. From this hour you may ex­er­cise no au­thor­ity over your breth­ren un­less they re­store such ju­ris­dic­tion to you by their def­i­nite leg­isla­tive ac­tion af­ter I shall have gone to the Fa­ther. But this re­lease from re­spon­si­bil­ity as the ad­min­is­tra­tive head of this group does not in any man­ner lessen your moral re­spon­si­bil­ity to do ev­ery­thing in your power to hold your breth­ren to­gether with a firm and lov­ing hand dur­ing the try­ing time just ahead, those days which must in­ter­vene be­tween my de­par­ture in the flesh and the send­ing of the new teacher who will live in your hearts, and who ul­ti­mately will lead you into all truth. As I pre­pare to leave you, I would lib­er­ate you from all ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­ity which had its in­cep­tion and au­thor­ity in my pres­ence as one among you. Hence­forth I shall ex­er­cise only spir­i­tual au­thor­ity over you and among you.

181:2.18“If your breth­ren de­sire to re­tain you as their coun­selor, I di­rect that you should, in all mat­ters tem­po­ral and spir­i­tual, do your ut­most to pro­mote peace and har­mony among the var­i­ous groups of sin­cere gospel be­liev­ers. Ded­i­cate the re­main­der of your life to pro­mot­ing the prac­ti­cal as­pects of broth­erly love among your breth­ren. Be kind to my broth­ers in the flesh when they come fully to be­lieve this gospel; man­i­fest lov­ing and im­par­tial de­vo­tion to the Greeks in the West and to Ab­ner in the East. Al­though these, my apos­tles, are soon go­ing to be scat­tered to the four cor­ners of the earth, there to pro­claim the good news of the sal­va­tion of son­ship with God, you are to hold them to­gether dur­ing the try­ing time just ahead, that sea­son of in­tense test­ing dur­ing which you must learn to be­lieve this gospel with­out my per­sonal pres­ence while you pa­tiently await the ar­rival of the new teacher, the Spirit of Truth. And so, An­drew, though it may not fall to you to do the great works as seen by men, be con­tent to be the teacher and coun­selor of those who do such things. Go on with your work on earth to the end, and then shall you con­tinue this min­istry in the eter­nal king­dom, for have I not many times told you that I have other sheep not of this flock?”

• asked A. to strengthen brethren

182:2.8Je­sus did say this to An­drew as he left his side that night: “An­drew, do what you can to keep your breth­ren to­gether un­til I come again to you af­ter I have drunk this cup. Strengthen your breth­ren, see­ing that I have al­ready told you all. Peace be with you.”

121:8.9As ma­te­rial for the com­pi­la­tion of his Gospel, Luke first de­pended upon the story of Je­sus’ life as Paul had re­lated it to him. Luke’s Gospel is, there­fore, in some ways the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Paul. But Luke had other sources of in­for­ma­tion. He not only in­ter­viewed scores of eye­wit­nesses to the nu­mer­ous episodes of Je­sus’ life which he re­cords, but he also had with him a copy of Mark’s Gospel, that is, the first four fifths, Isador’s nar­ra­tive, and a brief rec­ord made in the year A.D. 78 at An­ti­och by a be­liever named Cedes. Luke also had a mu­ti­lated and much-edited copy of some notes pur­ported to have been made by the Apos­tle An­drew.

152:2.5Philip had pro­vided a three days’ sup­ply of food for Je­sus and the twelve, which was in the cus­tody of the Mark lad, their boy of all chores. By af­ter­noon of this, the third day for al­most half of this mul­ti­tude, the food the peo­ple had brought with them was nearly ex­hausted. David Zeb­e­dee had no tented city here to feed and ac­com­mo­date the crowds. Nei­ther had Philip made food pro­vi­sion for such a mul­ti­tude. But the peo­ple, even though they were hun­gry, would not go away. It was be­ing qui­etly whis­pered about that Je­sus, de­sir­ing to avoid trou­ble with both Herod and the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers, had cho­sen this quiet spot out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion of all his en­e­mies as the proper place to be crowned king. The en­thu­si­asm of the peo­ple was ris­ing ev­ery hour. Not a word was said to Je­sus, though, of course, he knew all that was go­ing on. Even the twelve apos­tles were still tainted with such no­tions, and es­pe­cially the younger evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles who fa­vored this at­tempt to pro­claim Je­sus king were Pe­ter, John, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and Ju­das Is­car­iot. Those op­pos­ing the plan were An­drew, James, Na­than­iel, and Thomas. Mat­thew, Philip, and the Al­pheus twins were non­com­mit­tal. The ringleader of this plot to make him king was Joab, one of the young evan­ge­lists.

121:0.1Act­ing un­der the super­vi­sion of a com­mis­sion of twelve mem­bers of the United Broth­er­hood of Uran­tia Mid­way­ers, con­jointly spon­sored by the pre­sid­ing head of our or­der and the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, I am the sec­ondary mid­wayer of one­time at­tach­ment to the Apos­tle An­drew, and I am au­tho­rized to place on rec­ord the nar­ra­tive of the life trans­ac­tions of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as they were ob­served by my or­der of earth crea­tures, and as they were sub­se­quently par­tially re­corded by the hu­man sub­ject of my tem­po­ral guardian­ship. Know­ing how his Mas­ter so scrupu­lously avoided leav­ing writ­ten rec­ords be­hind him, An­drew stead­fastly re­fused to mul­ti­ply copies of his writ­ten nar­ra­tive. A sim­i­lar at­ti­tude on the part of the other apos­tles of Je­sus greatly de­layed the writ­ing of the Gospels.

121:8.1As far as pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with our man­date, we have en­deav­ored to uti­lize and to some ex­tent co-or­di­nate the ex­ist­ing rec­ords hav­ing to do with the life of Je­sus on Uran­tia. Al­though we have en­joyed ac­cess to the lost rec­ord of the Apos­tle An­drew and have ben­e­fited from the col­lab­o­ra­tion of a vast host of ce­les­tial be­ings who were on earth dur­ing the times of Mi­chael’s be­stowal (no­tably his now Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster), it has been our pur­pose also to make use of the so-called Gospels of Mat­thew, Mark, Luke, and John.

121:8.31. The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the ear­li­est (ex­cept­ing the notes of An­drew), briefest, and most sim­ple rec­ord of Je­sus’ life. He pre­sented the Mas­ter as a min­is­ter, as man among men. Al­though Mark was a lad lin­ger­ing about many of the scenes which he de­picts, his rec­ord is in re­al­ity the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Si­mon Pe­ter. He was early as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter; later with Paul. Mark wrote this rec­ord at the in­sti­ga­tion of Pe­ter and on the earnest pe­ti­tion of the church at Rome. Know­ing how con­sis­tently the Mas­ter re­fused to write out his teach­ings when on earth and in the flesh, Mark, like the apos­tles and other lead­ing dis­ci­ples, was hes­i­tant to put them in writ­ing. But Pe­ter felt the church at Rome re­quired the as­sis­tance of such a writ­ten nar­ra­tive, and Mark con­sented to un­der­take its prepa­ra­tion. He made many notes be­fore Pe­ter died in A.D. 67, and in ac­cor­dance with the out­line ap­proved by Pe­ter and for the church at Rome, he be­gan his writ­ing soon af­ter Pe­ter’s death. The Gospel was com­pleted near the end of A.D. 68. Mark wrote en­tirely from his own mem­ory and Pe­ter’s mem­ory. The rec­ord has since been con­sid­er­ably changed, nu­mer­ous pas­sages hav­ing been taken out and some later mat­ter added at the end to re­place the lat­ter one fifth of the orig­i­nal Gospel, which was lost from the first man­u­script be­fore it was ever copied. This rec­ord by Mark, in con­junc­tion with An­drew’s and Mat­thew’s notes, was the writ­ten ba­sis of all sub­se­quent Gospel nar­ra­tives which sought to por­tray the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

121:8.13The mem­o­randa which I have col­lected, and from which I have pre­pared this nar­ra­tive of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus—aside from the mem­ory of the rec­ord of the Apos­tle An­drew—em­brace thought gems and su­pe­rior con­cepts of Je­sus’ teach­ings as­sem­bled from more than two thou­sand hu­man be­ings who have lived on earth from the days of Je­sus down to the time of the in­dit­ing of these rev­e­la­tions, more cor­rectly re­state­ments. The rev­e­la­tory per­mis­sion has been uti­lized only when the hu­man rec­ord and hu­man con­cepts failed to sup­ply an ad­e­quate thought pat­tern. My rev­e­la­tory com­mis­sion for­bade me to re­sort to ex­trahu­man sources of ei­ther in­for­ma­tion or ex­pres­sion un­til such a time as I could tes­tify that I had failed in my ef­forts to find the re­quired con­cep­tual ex­pres­sion in purely hu­man sources.

148:1.1Pe­ter, James, and An­drew were the com­mit­tee des­ig­nated by Je­sus to pass upon ap­pli­cants for ad­mis­sion to the school of evan­ge­lists. All the races and na­tion­al­i­ties of the Ro­man world and the East, as far as In­dia, were rep­re­sented among the stu­dents in this new school of the proph­ets. This school was con­ducted on the plan of learn­ing and do­ing. What the stu­dents learned dur­ing the forenoon they taught to the as­sem­bly by the sea­side dur­ing the af­ter­noon. Af­ter sup­per they in­for­mally dis­cussed both the learn­ing of the forenoon and the teach­ing of the af­ter­noon.

163:2.1Over fifty dis­ci­ples who sought or­di­na­tion and ap­point­ment to mem­ber­ship in the sev­enty were re­jected by the com­mit­tee ap­pointed by Je­sus to se­lect these can­di­dates. This com­mit­tee con­sisted of An­drew, Ab­ner, and the act­ing head of the evan­ge­lis­tic corps. In all cases where this com­mit­tee of three were not unan­i­mous in agree­ment, they brought the can­di­date to Je­sus, and while the Mas­ter never re­jected a sin­gle per­son who craved or­di­na­tion as a gospel mes­sen­ger, there were more than a dozen who, when they had talked with Je­sus, no more de­sired to be­come gospel mes­sen­gers.

140:10.8In re­sponse to a ques­tion asked by An­drew, the Mas­ter made it clear that the moral­ity of his teach­ing was in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­li­gion of his liv­ing. He taught moral­ity, not from the na­ture of man, but from the re­la­tion of man to God.

141:0.2Just be­fore leav­ing, the apos­tles missed the Mas­ter, and An­drew went out to find him. Af­ter a brief search he found Je­sus sit­ting in a boat down the beach, and he was weep­ing. The twelve had of­ten seen their Mas­ter when he seemed to grieve, and they had be­held his brief sea­sons of se­ri­ous pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of mind, but none of them had ever seen him weep. An­drew was some­what star­tled to see the Mas­ter thus af­fected on the eve of their de­par­ture for Je­ru­sa­lem, and he ven­tured to ap­proach Je­sus and ask: “On this great day, Mas­ter, when we are to de­part for Je­ru­sa­lem to pro­claim the Fa­ther’s king­dom, why is it that you weep? Which of us has of­fended you?” And Je­sus, go­ing back with An­drew to join the twelve, an­swered him: “No one of you has grieved me. I am sad­dened only be­cause none of my fa­ther Joseph’s fam­ily have re­mem­bered to come over to bid us God­speed.” At this time Ruth was on a visit to her brother Joseph at Naz­a­reth. Other mem­bers of his fam­ily were kept away by pride, dis­ap­point­ment, mis­un­der­stand­ing, and petty re­sent­ment in­dulged as a re­sult of hurt feel­ings.

143:2.2At one of the evening con­fer­ences, An­drew asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, are we to prac­tice self-de­nial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-con­trol of your teach­ing? Wherein does your teach­ing dif­fer from that of John?” Je­sus an­swered: “John in­deed taught you the way of righ­teous­ness in ac­cor­dance with the light and laws of his fa­thers, and that was the re­li­gion of self-ex­am­i­na­tion and self-de­nial. But I come with a new mes­sage of self-for­get­ful­ness and self-con­trol. I show to you the way of life as re­vealed to me by my Fa­ther in heaven.

150:3.2Late that evening Je­sus gave the united group a mem­o­rable talk on “Magic and Su­per­sti­tion.” In those days the ap­pear­ance of a bright and sup­pos­edly new star was re­garded as a to­ken in­di­cat­ing that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star hav­ing then re­cently been ob­served, An­drew asked Je­sus if these be­liefs were well founded. In the long an­swer to An­drew’s ques­tion the Mas­ter en­tered upon a thor­ough­go­ing dis­cus­sion of the whole sub­ject of hu­man su­per­sti­tion. The state­ment which Je­sus made at this time may be sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

158:7.2They trav­eled on through Gal­i­lee un­til well past the time for their lunch, when they stopped in the shade to re­fresh them­selves. And af­ter they had par­taken of food, An­drew, speak­ing to Je­sus, said: “Mas­ter, my breth­ren do not com­pre­hend your deep say­ings. We have come fully to be­lieve that you are the Son of God, and now we hear these strange words about leav­ing us, about dy­ing. We do not un­der­stand your teach­ing. Are you speak­ing to us in para­bles? We pray you to speak to us di­rectly and in undis­guised form.”

165:5.1That evening af­ter sup­per, when Je­sus and the twelve gath­ered to­gether for their daily con­fer­ence, An­drew asked: “Mas­ter, while we were bap­tiz­ing the be­liev­ers, you spoke many words to the lin­ger­ing mul­ti­tude which we did not hear. Would you be will­ing to re­peat these words for our ben­e­fit?” And in re­sponse to An­drew’s re­quest, Je­sus said:

176:1.4Then An­drew in­quired: “But, Mas­ter, if the Holy City and the tem­ple are to be de­stroyed, and if you are not here to di­rect us, when should we for­sake Je­ru­sa­lem?” Said Je­sus: “You may re­main in the city af­ter I have gone, even through these times of tra­vail and bit­ter per­se­cu­tion, but when you fi­nally see Je­ru­sa­lem be­ing en­com­passed by the Ro­man armies af­ter the re­volt of the false proph­ets, then will you know that her des­o­la­tion is at hand; then must you flee to the moun­tains. Let none who are in the city and around about tarry to save aught, nei­ther let those who are out­side dare to en­ter therein. There will be great tribu­la­tion, for these will be the days of gen­tile vengeance. And af­ter you have de­serted the city, this dis­obe­di­ent peo­ple will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led cap­tive into all na­tions; and so shall Je­ru­sa­lem be trod­den down by the gen­tiles. In the mean­time, I warn you, be not de­ceived. If any man comes to you, say­ing, ‘Be­hold, here is the De­liv­erer,’ or ‘Be­hold, there is he,’ be­lieve it not, for many false teach­ers will arise and many will be led astray; but you should not be de­ceived, for I have told you all this be­fore­hand.”

181:2.13Then spoke Mat­thew: “But, Mas­ter, who will send us, and how shall we know where to go? Will An­drew show us the way?” And Je­sus an­swered: “No, Levi, An­drew will no longer di­rect you in the procla­ma­tion of the gospel. He will, in­deed, con­tinue as your friend and coun­selor un­til that day whereon the new teacher comes, and then shall the Spirit of Truth lead each of you abroad to la­bor for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom. Many changes have come over you since that day at the cus­tom­house when you first set out to fol­low me; but many more must come be­fore you will be able to see the vi­sion of a broth­er­hood in which gen­tile sits along­side Jew in fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tion. But go on with your urge to win your Jew­ish breth­ren un­til you are fully sat­is­fied and then turn with power to the gen­tiles. One thing you may be cer­tain of, Levi: You have won the con­fi­dence and af­fec­tion of your breth­ren; they all love you.” (And all ten of them sig­ni­fied their ac­qui­es­cence in the Mas­ter’s words.)

183:4.2An­drew had been re­leased from all re­spon­si­bil­ity in the group man­age­ment of his fel­low apos­tles; ac­cord­ingly, in this great­est of all crises in their lives, he was silent. Af­ter a short in­for­mal dis­cus­sion, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes stood up on the stone wall of the olive press and, mak­ing an im­pas­sioned plea for loy­alty to the Mas­ter and the cause of the king­dom, ex­horted his fel­low apos­tles and the other dis­ci­ples to has­ten on af­ter the mob and ef­fect the res­cue of Je­sus. The ma­jor­ity of the com­pany would have been dis­posed to fol­low his ag­gres­sive lead­er­ship had it not been for the ad­vice of Na­than­iel, who stood up the mo­ment Si­mon had fin­ished speak­ing and called their at­ten­tion to Je­sus’ oft-re­peated teach­ings re­gard­ing non­re­sis­tance. He fur­ther re­minded them that Je­sus had that very night in­structed them that they should pre­serve their lives for the time when they should go forth into the world pro­claim­ing the good news of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. And Na­than­iel was en­cour­aged in this stand by James Zeb­e­dee, who now told how Pe­ter and oth­ers drew their swords to de­fend the Mas­ter against ar­rest, and that Je­sus bade Si­mon Pe­ter and his fel­low swords­men sheathe their blades. Mat­thew and Philip also made speeches, but noth­ing def­i­nite came of this dis­cus­sion un­til Thomas, call­ing their at­ten­tion to the fact that Je­sus had coun­seled Laz­a­rus against ex­pos­ing him­self to death, pointed out that they could do noth­ing to save their Mas­ter inas­much as he re­fused to al­low his friends to de­fend him, and since he per­sisted in re­frain­ing from the use of his di­vine pow­ers to frus­trate his hu­man en­e­mies. Thomas per­suaded them to scat­ter, ev­ery man for him­self, with the un­der­stand­ing that David Zeb­e­dee would re­main at the camp to main­tain a clear­ing­house and mes­sen­ger head­quar­ters for the group. By half past two o’clock that morn­ing the camp was de­serted; only David re­mained on hand with three or four mes­sen­gers, the oth­ers hav­ing been dis­patched to se­cure in­for­ma­tion as to where Je­sus had been taken, and what was go­ing to be done with him.

138:2.41. Mat­thew Levi, the cus­toms col­lec­tor of Ca­per­naum, who had his of­fice just to the east of the city, near the bor­ders of Batanea. He was se­lected by An­drew.

139:7.1Mat­thew, the sev­enth apos­tle, was cho­sen by An­drew. Mat­thew be­longed to a fam­ily of tax gath­er­ers, or pub­li­cans, but was him­self a cus­toms col­lec­tor in Ca­per­naum, where he lived. He was thirty-one years old and mar­ried and had four chil­dren. He was a man of mod­er­ate wealth, the only one of any means be­long­ing to the apos­tolic corps. He was a good busi­ness man, a good so­cial mixer, and was gifted with the abil­ity to make friends and to get along smoothly with a great va­ri­ety of peo­ple.

145:5.5Mean­while, early Sun­day morn­ing, other crowds of af­flicted souls and many cu­rios­ity seek­ers be­gan to gather about the house of Zeb­e­dee. They clam­ored to see Je­sus. An­drew and the apos­tles were so per­plexed that, while Si­mon Ze­lo­tes talked to the as­sem­bly, An­drew, with sev­eral of his as­so­ciates, went to find Je­sus. When An­drew had lo­cated Je­sus in com­pany with the three, he said: “Mas­ter, why do you leave us alone with the mul­ti­tude? Be­hold, all men seek you; never be­fore have so many sought af­ter your teach­ing. Even now the house is sur­rounded by those who have come from near and far be­cause of your mighty works. Will you not re­turn with us to min­is­ter to them?”

145:5.6When Je­sus heard this, he an­swered: “An­drew, have I not taught you and these oth­ers that my mis­sion on earth is the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther, and my mes­sage the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom of heaven? How is it, then, that you would have me turn aside from my work for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the cu­ri­ous and for the sat­is­fac­tion of those who seek for signs and won­ders? Have we not been among these peo­ple all these months, and have they flocked in mul­ti­tudes to hear the good news of the king­dom? Why have they now come to be­siege us? Is it not be­cause of the heal­ing of their phys­i­cal bod­ies rather than as a re­sult of the re­cep­tion of spir­i­tual truth for the sal­va­tion of their souls? When men are at­tracted to us be­cause of ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tions, many of them come seek­ing not for truth and sal­va­tion but rather in quest of heal­ing for their phys­i­cal ail­ments and to se­cure de­liv­er­ance from their ma­te­rial dif­fi­cul­ties.

145:5.7“All this time I have been in Ca­per­naum, and both in the syn­a­gogue and by the sea­side have I pro­claimed the good news of the king­dom to all who had ears to hear and hearts to re­ceive the truth. It is not the will of my Fa­ther that I should re­turn with you to cater to these cu­ri­ous ones and to be­come oc­cu­pied with the min­istry of things phys­i­cal to the ex­clu­sion of the spir­i­tual. I have or­dained you to preach the gospel and min­is­ter to the sick, but I must not be­come en­grossed in heal­ing to the ex­clu­sion of my teach­ing. No, An­drew, I will not re­turn with you. Go and tell the peo­ple to be­lieve in that which we have taught them and to re­joice in the lib­erty of the sons of God, and make ready for our de­par­ture for the other cities of Gal­i­lee, where the way has al­ready been pre­pared for the preach­ing of the good tid­ings of the king­dom. It was for this pur­pose that I came forth from the Fa­ther. Go, then, and pre­pare for our im­me­di­ate de­par­ture while I here await your re­turn.”

193:4.3This un­for­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of in­di­vid­ual pe­cu­liar­i­ties and men­tal ten­den­cies con­spired to de­stroy a well-in­ten­tioned man who failed to sub­due these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Ju­das need not have gone wrong is well proved by the cases of Thomas and Na­than­iel, both of whom were cursed with this same sort of sus­pi­cion and overde­vel­op­ment of the in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­dency. Even An­drew and Mat­thew had many lean­ings in this di­rec­tion; but all these men grew to love Je­sus and their fel­low apos­tles more, and not less, as time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. They be­came in­creas­ingly more trust­ful of their breth­ren and slowly de­vel­oped the abil­ity to con­fide in their fel­lows. Ju­das per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in his breth­ren. When he was im­pelled, by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of his emo­tional con­flicts, to seek re­lief in self-ex­pres­sion, he in­vari­ably sought the ad­vice and re­ceived the un­wise con­so­la­tion of his un­spir­i­tual rel­a­tives or those chance ac­quain­tances who were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent, or ac­tu­ally hos­tile, to the wel­fare and prog­ress of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the heav­enly king­dom, of which he was one of the twelve con­se­crated am­bas­sadors on earth.

139:3.1James, the older of the two apos­tle sons of Zeb­e­dee, whom Je­sus nick­named “sons of thun­der,” was thirty years old when he be­came an apos­tle. He was mar­ried, had four chil­dren, and lived near his par­ents in the out­skirts of Ca­per­naum, Beth­saida. He was a fish­er­man, ply­ing his call­ing in com­pany with his younger brother John and in as­so­ci­a­tion with An­drew and Si­mon. James and his brother John en­joyed the ad­van­tage of hav­ing known Je­sus longer than any of the other apos­tles.

157:7.1That evening An­drew took it upon him­self to hold a per­sonal and search­ing con­fer­ence with each of his breth­ren, and he had prof­itable and heart­en­ing talks with all of his as­so­ciates ex­cept Ju­das Is­car­iot. An­drew had never en­joyed such in­ti­mate per­sonal as­so­ci­a­tion with Ju­das as with the other apos­tles and there­fore had not thought it of se­ri­ous ac­count that Ju­das never had freely and con­fi­den­tially re­lated him­self to the head of the apos­tolic corps. But An­drew was now so wor­ried by Ju­das’s at­ti­tude that, later on that night, af­ter all the apos­tles were fast asleep, he sought out Je­sus and pre­sented his cause for anx­i­ety to the Mas­ter. Said Je­sus: “It is not amiss, An­drew, that you have come to me with this mat­ter, but there is noth­ing more that we can do; only go on plac­ing the ut­most con­fi­dence in this apos­tle. And say noth­ing to his breth­ren con­cern­ing this talk with me.”

181:2.6And then the Mas­ter, pass­ing around his own seat, paused a mo­ment by the side of the place of Ju­das Is­car­iot. The apos­tles were rather sur­prised that Ju­das had not re­turned be­fore this, and they were very cu­ri­ous to know the sig­nif­i­cance of Je­sus’ sad coun­te­nance as he stood by the be­trayer’s va­cant seat. But none of them, ex­cept pos­si­bly An­drew, en­ter­tained even the slight­est thought that their trea­surer had gone out to be­tray his Mas­ter, as Je­sus had in­ti­mated to them ear­lier in the evening and dur­ing the sup­per. So much had been go­ing on that, for the time be­ing, they had quite for­got­ten about the Mas­ter’s an­nounce­ment that one of them would be­tray him.

182:0.2As Je­sus and the eleven made their way back to camp, the apos­tles be­gan to won­der about the mean­ing of Ju­das’s pro­longed ab­sence, and they spoke to one an­other con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s pre­dic­tion that one of them would be­tray him, and for the first time they sus­pected that all was not well with Ju­das Is­car­iot. But they did not en­gage in open com­ment about Ju­das un­til they reached the camp and ob­served that he was not there, wait­ing to re­ceive them. When they all be­sieged An­drew to know what had be­come of Ju­das, their chief re­marked only, “I do not know where Ju­das is, but I fear he has de­serted us.”