Bethany beyond Jordan

• John the Baptist at

135:6.5John preached four months at Beth­any ford be­fore start­ing north up the Jor­dan. Tens of thou­sands of lis­ten­ers, some cu­ri­ous but many earnest and se­ri­ous, came to hear him from all parts of Judea, Perea, and Samaria. Even a few came from Gal­i­lee.

• John the Baptist at

135:10.2Near the vil­lage of Adam, John tar­ried for sev­eral weeks, and it was here that he made the mem­o­rable at­tack upon Herod An­tipas for un­law­fully tak­ing the wife of an­other man. By June of this year (A.D. 26) John was back at the Beth­any ford of the Jor­dan, where he had be­gun his preach­ing of the com­ing king­dom more than a year pre­vi­ously. In the weeks fol­low­ing the bap­tism of Je­sus the char­ac­ter of John’s preach­ing grad­u­ally changed into a procla­ma­tion of mercy for the com­mon peo­ple, while he de­nounced with re­newed ve­he­mence the cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gious rulers.

141:7.1On Febru­ary 26, Je­sus, his apos­tles, and a large group of fol­low­ers jour­neyed down the Jor­dan to the ford near Beth­any in Perea, the place where John first made procla­ma­tion of the com­ing king­dom. Je­sus with his apos­tles re­mained here, teach­ing and preach­ing, for four weeks be­fore they went on up to Je­ru­sa­lem.

141:7.2The sec­ond week of the so­journ at Beth­any be­yond Jor­dan, Je­sus took Pe­ter, James, and John into the hills across the river and south of Jeri­cho for a three days’ rest. The Mas­ter taught these three many new and ad­vanced truths about the king­dom of heaven. For the pur­pose of this rec­ord we will re­or­ga­nize and clas­sify these teach­ings as fol­lows:

141:7.3Je­sus en­deav­ored to make clear that he de­sired his dis­ci­ples, hav­ing tasted of the good spirit re­al­i­ties of the king­dom, so to live in the world that men, by see­ing their lives, would be­come king­dom con­scious and hence be led to in­quire of be­liev­ers con­cern­ing the ways of the king­dom. All such sin­cere seek­ers for the truth are al­ways glad to hear the glad tid­ings of the faith gift which in­sures ad­mis­sion to the king­dom with its eter­nal and di­vine spirit re­al­i­ties.

141:7.4The Mas­ter sought to im­press upon all teach­ers of the gospel of the king­dom that their only busi­ness was to re­veal God to the in­di­vid­ual man as his Fa­ther—to lead this in­di­vid­ual man to be­come son-con­scious; then to pre­sent this same man to God as his faith son. Both of these es­sen­tial rev­e­la­tions are ac­com­plished in Je­sus. He be­came, in­deed, “the way, the truth, and the life.” The re­li­gion of Je­sus was wholly based on the liv­ing of his be­stowal life on earth. When Je­sus de­parted from this world, he left be­hind no books, laws, or other forms of hu­man or­ga­ni­za­tion af­fect­ing the re­li­gious life of the in­di­vid­ual.

141:7.5Je­sus made it plain that he had come to es­tab­lish per­sonal and eter­nal re­la­tions with men which should for­ever take prece­dence over all other hu­man re­la­tion­ships. And he em­pha­sized that this in­ti­mate spir­i­tual fel­low­ship was to be ex­tended to all men of all ages and of all so­cial con­di­tions among all peo­ples. The only re­ward which he held out for his chil­dren was: in this world—spir­i­tual joy and di­vine com­mu­nion; in the next world—eter­nal life in the prog­ress of the di­vine spirit re­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

141:7.6Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis upon what he called the two truths of first im­port in the teach­ings of the king­dom, and they are: the at­tain­ment of sal­va­tion by faith, and faith alone, as­so­ci­ated with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary teach­ing of the at­tain­ment of hu­man lib­erty through the sin­cere rec­og­ni­tion of truth, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Je­sus was the truth made man­i­fest in the flesh, and he prom­ised to send his Spirit of Truth into the hearts of all his chil­dren af­ter his re­turn to the Fa­ther in heaven.

141:7.7The Mas­ter was teach­ing these apos­tles the es­sen­tials of truth for an en­tire age on earth. They of­ten lis­tened to his teach­ings when in re­al­ity what he said was in­tended for the in­spi­ra­tion and ed­i­fi­ca­tion of other worlds. He ex­em­pli­fied a new and orig­i­nal plan of life. From the hu­man stand­point he was in­deed a Jew, but he lived his life for all the world as a mor­tal of the realm.

141:7.8To in­sure the rec­og­ni­tion of his Fa­ther in the un­fold­ing of the plan of the king­dom, Je­sus ex­plained that he had pur­posely ig­nored the “great men of earth.” He be­gan his work with the poor, the very class which had been so ne­glected by most of the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions of pre­ced­ing times. He de­spised no man; his plan was world-wide, even uni­ver­sal. He was so bold and em­phatic in these an­nounce­ments that even Pe­ter, James, and John were tempted to think he might pos­si­bly be be­side him­self.

141:7.9He sought mildly to im­part to these apos­tles the truth that he had come on this be­stowal mis­sion, not to set an ex­am­ple for a few earth crea­tures, but to es­tab­lish and demon­strate a stan­dard of hu­man life for all peo­ples upon all worlds through­out his en­tire uni­verse. And this stan­dard ap­proached the high­est per­fec­tion, even the fi­nal good­ness of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. But the apos­tles could not grasp the mean­ing of his words.

141:7.10He an­nounced that he had come to func­tion as a teacher, a teacher sent from heaven to pre­sent spir­i­tual truth to the ma­te­rial mind. And this is ex­actly what he did; he was a teacher, not a preacher. From the hu­man view­point Pe­ter was a much more ef­fec­tive preacher than Je­sus. Je­sus’ preach­ing was so ef­fec­tive be­cause of his unique per­son­al­ity, not so much be­cause of com­pelling or­a­tory or emo­tional ap­peal. Je­sus spoke di­rectly to men’s souls. He was a teacher of man’s spirit, but through the mind. He lived with men.

141:7.11It was on this oc­ca­sion that Je­sus in­ti­mated to Pe­ter, James, and John that his work on earth was in some re­spects to be lim­ited by the com­mis­sion of his “as­so­ciate on high,” re­fer­ring to the pre­be­stowal in­struc­tions of his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel. He told them that he had come to do his Fa­ther’s will and only his Fa­ther’s will. Be­ing thus mo­ti­vated by a whole­hearted sin­gle­ness of pur­pose, he was not anx­iously both­ered by the evil in the world.

141:7.12The apos­tles were be­gin­ning to rec­og­nize the un­af­fected friend­li­ness of Je­sus. Though the Mas­ter was easy of ap­proach, he al­ways lived in­de­pen­dent of, and above, all hu­man be­ings. Not for one mo­ment was he ever dom­i­nated by any purely mor­tal in­flu­ence or sub­ject to frail hu­man judg­ment. He paid no at­ten­tion to pub­lic opin­ion, and he was un­in­flu­enced by praise. He sel­dom paused to cor­rect mis­un­der­stand­ings or to re­sent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He never asked any man for ad­vice; he never made re­quests for prayers.

141:7.13James was as­ton­ished at how Je­sus seemed to see the end from the be­gin­ning. The Mas­ter rarely ap­peared to be sur­prised. He was never ex­cited, vexed, or dis­con­certed. He never apol­o­gized to any man. He was at times sad­dened, but never dis­cour­aged.

141:7.14More clearly John rec­og­nized that, not­with­stand­ing all of his di­vine en­dow­ments, af­ter all, he was hu­man. Je­sus lived as a man among men and un­der­stood, loved, and knew how to man­age men. In his per­sonal life he was so hu­man, and yet so fault­less. And he was al­ways un­selfish.

141:7.15Al­though Pe­ter, James, and John could not un­der­stand very much of what Je­sus said on this oc­ca­sion, his gra­cious words lin­gered in their hearts, and af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion and res­ur­rec­tion they came forth greatly to en­rich and glad­den their sub­se­quent min­istry. No won­der these apos­tles did not fully com­pre­hend the Mas­ter’s words, for he was pro­ject­ing to them the plan of a new age.

• John’s disciples remained at

141:9.2The dis­ci­ples of John re­mained at Beth­any be­yond the Jor­dan, teach­ing and bap­tiz­ing the mul­ti­tudes, so that Je­sus was ac­com­pa­nied only by the twelve when he ar­rived at Laz­a­rus’s home. Here Je­sus and the apos­tles tar­ried for five days, rest­ing and re­fresh­ing them­selves be­fore go­ing on to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. It was a great event in the lives of Martha and Mary to have the Mas­ter and his apos­tles in the home of their brother, where they could min­is­ter to their needs.

• Bethany ford of river Jordan

171:2.1When Je­sus and the com­pany of al­most one thou­sand fol­low­ers ar­rived at the Beth­any ford of the Jor­dan some­times called Bethabara, his dis­ci­ples be­gan to re­al­ize that he was not go­ing di­rectly to Je­ru­sa­lem. While they hes­i­tated and de­bated among them­selves, Je­sus climbed upon a huge stone and de­liv­ered that dis­course which has be­come known as “Count­ing the Cost.” The Mas­ter said: