bread

• word of God; Jesus’ life in the flesh is

121:5.12But do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus with the mys­ter­ies. The pop­u­lar­ity of the mys­ter­ies re­veals man’s quest for sur­vival, thus por­tray­ing a real hunger and thirst for per­sonal re­li­gion and in­di­vid­ual righ­teous­ness. Al­though the mys­ter­ies failed ad­e­quately to sat­isfy this long­ing, they did pre­pare the way for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Je­sus, who truly brought to this world the bread of life and the wa­ter thereof.

• Passover emblem

127:6.7That evening about twi­light these four sat down and par­took of the first Pass­over feast ever to be cel­e­brated by de­vout Jews with­out the paschal lamb. The un­leav­ened bread and the wine had been made ready for this Pass­over, and these em­blems, which Je­sus termed “the bread of life” and “the wa­ter of life,” he served to his com­pan­ions, and they ate in solemn con­for­mity with the teach­ings just im­parted. It was his cus­tom to en­gage in this sacra­men­tal rit­ual when­ever he paid sub­se­quent vis­its to Beth­any. When he re­turned home, he told all this to his mother. She was shocked at first but came grad­u­ally to see his view­point; nev­er­the­less, she was greatly re­lieved when Je­sus as­sured her that he did not in­tend to in­tro­duce this new idea of the Pass­over in their fam­ily. At home with the chil­dren he con­tin­ued, year by year, to eat the Pass­over “ac­cord­ing to the law of Moses.”

• Jesus fed fruit vendor with

130:8.3At Messina they stopped for only one day, but that was long enough to change the life of a small boy, a fruit ven­dor, of whom Je­sus bought fruit and in turn fed with the bread of life. The lad never for­got the words of Je­sus and the kindly look which went with them when, plac­ing his hand on the boy’s shoul­der, he said: “Farewell, my lad, be of good cour­age as you grow up to man­hood and af­ter you have fed the body learn how also to feed the soul. And my Fa­ther in heaven will be with you and go be­fore you.” The lad be­came a devo­tee of the Mith­raic re­li­gion and later on turned to the Chris­tian faith.

• Jesus is united life of Father and Son

153:2.7“My breth­ren, han­ker not af­ter the meat which per­ishes but rather seek for the spir­i­tual food that nour­ishes even to eter­nal life; and this is the bread of life which the Son gives to all who will take it and eat, for the Fa­ther has given the Son this life with­out mea­sure. And when you asked me, ‘What must we do to per­form the works of God?’ I plainly told you: ‘This is the work of God, that you be­lieve him whom he has sent.’”

153:2.8And then said Je­sus, point­ing up to the de­vice of a pot of manna which dec­o­rated the lin­tel of this new syn­a­gogue, and which was em­bel­lished with grape clus­ters: “You have thought that your fore­fa­thers in the wilder­ness ate manna—the bread of heaven—but I say to you that this was the bread of earth. While Moses did not give your fa­thers bread from heaven, my Fa­ther now stands ready to give you the true bread of life. The bread of heaven is that which comes down from God and gives eter­nal life to the men of the world. And when you say to me, Give us this liv­ing bread, I will an­swer: I am this bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger, while he who be­lieves me shall never thirst. You have seen me, lived with me, and be­held my works, yet you be­lieve not that I came forth from the Fa­ther. But to those who do be­lieve—fear not. All those led of the Fa­ther shall come to me, and he who comes to me shall in no­wise be cast out.

• realization of united nature of God and man

153:2.12“I am this bread of life. Your fa­thers ate manna in the wilder­ness and are dead. But this bread which comes down from God, if a man eats thereof, he shall never die in spirit. I re­peat, I am this liv­ing bread, and ev­ery soul who at­tains the re­al­iza­tion of this united na­ture of God and man shall live for­ever. And this bread of life which I give to all who will re­ceive is my own liv­ing and com­bined na­ture. The Fa­ther in the Son and the Son one with the Fa­ther—that is my life-giv­ing rev­e­la­tion to the world and my sav­ing gift to all na­tions.”

• word of God; Jesus’ life in the flesh is

153:3.2One of the vis­it­ing Phar­isees, mount­ing a lamp­stand, shouted out this ques­tion: “You tell us that you are the bread of life. How can you give us your flesh to eat or your blood to drink? What avail is your teach­ing if it can­not be car­ried out?” And Je­sus an­swered this ques­tion, say­ing: “I did not teach you that my flesh is the bread of life nor that my blood is the wa­ter thereof. But I did say that my life in the flesh is a be­stowal of the bread of heaven. The fact of the Word of God be­stowed in the flesh and the phe­nom­e­non of the Son of Man sub­ject to the will of God, con­sti­tute a re­al­ity of ex­pe­ri­ence which is equiv­a­lent to the di­vine sus­te­nance. You can­not eat my flesh nor can you drink my blood, but you can be­come one in spirit with me even as I am one in spirit with the Fa­ther. You can be nour­ished by the eter­nal word of God, which is in­deed the bread of life, and which has been be­stowed in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh; and you can be wa­tered in soul by the di­vine spirit, which is truly the wa­ter of life. The Fa­ther has sent me into the world to show how he de­sires to in­dwell and di­rect all men; and I have so lived this life in the flesh as to in­spire all men like­wise ever to seek to know and do the will of the in­dwelling heav­enly Fa­ther.”

• souls famish in very presence of

159:3.8The world is filled with hun­gry souls who fam­ish in the very pres­ence of the bread of life; men die search­ing for the very God who lives within them. Men seek for the trea­sures of the king­dom with yearn­ing hearts and weary feet when they are all within the im­me­di­ate grasp of liv­ing faith. Faith is to re­li­gion what sails are to a ship; it is an ad­di­tion of power, not an added bur­den of life. There is but one strug­gle for those who en­ter the king­dom, and that is to fight the good fight of faith. The be­liever has only one bat­tle, and that is against doubt—un­be­lief.

• partaken of in world to come

166:3.5“But fear not; ev­ery one who sin­cerely de­sires to find eter­nal life by en­trance into the king­dom of God shall cer­tainly find such ev­er­last­ing sal­va­tion. But you who refuse this sal­va­tion will some day see the proph­ets of the seed of Abra­ham sit down with the be­liev­ers of the gen­tile na­tions in this glo­ri­fied king­dom to par­take of the bread of life and to re­fresh them­selves with the wa­ter thereof. And they who shall thus take the king­dom in spir­i­tual power and by the per­sis­tent as­saults of liv­ing faith will come from the north and the south and from the east and the west. And, be­hold, many who are first will be last, and those who are last will many times be first.”

• Jesus is united life of Father and Son

179:5.3When they had fin­ished drink­ing this new cup of re­mem­brance, the Mas­ter took up the bread and, af­ter giv­ing thanks, broke it in pieces and, di­rect­ing them to pass it around, said: “Take this bread of re­mem­brance and eat it. I have told you that I am the bread of life. And this bread of life is the united life of the Fa­ther and the Son in one gift. The word of the Fa­ther, as re­vealed in the Son, is in­deed the bread of life.” When they had par­taken of the bread of re­mem­brance, the sym­bol of the liv­ing word of truth in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, they all sat down.

• Jesus is united life of Father and Son

182:1.10I am the bread of life.

• given only to those who hunger for truth

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

136:6.1Hav­ing set­tled his pol­icy con­cern­ing all per­son­al­i­ties of all classes of his cre­ated in­tel­li­gences, so far as this could be de­ter­mined in view of the in­her­ent po­ten­tial of his new sta­tus of di­vin­ity, Je­sus now turned his thoughts to­ward him­self. What would he, now the fully self-con­scious cre­ator of all things and be­ings ex­is­tent in this uni­verse, do with these cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives in the re­cur­ring life sit­u­a­tions which would im­me­di­ately con­front him when he re­turned to Gal­i­lee to re­sume his work among men? In fact, al­ready, and right where he was in these lonely hills, had this prob­lem forcibly pre­sented it­self in the mat­ter of ob­tain­ing food. By the third day of his soli­tary med­i­ta­tions the hu­man body grew hun­gry. Should he go in quest of food as any or­di­nary man would, or should he merely ex­er­cise his nor­mal cre­ative pow­ers and pro­duce suit­able bod­ily nour­ish­ment ready at hand? And this great de­ci­sion of the Mas­ter has been por­trayed to you as a temp­ta­tion—as a chal­lenge by sup­posed en­e­mies that he “com­mand that these stones be­come loaves of bread.”

152:2.8For a mo­ment Je­sus stood in si­lence. There was a far­away look in his eyes. The apos­tles said noth­ing. Je­sus turned sud­denly to An­drew and said, “Bring me the loaves and fishes.” And when An­drew had brought the bas­ket to Je­sus, the Mas­ter said: “Di­rect the peo­ple to sit down on the grass in com­pa­nies of one hun­dred and ap­point a leader over each group while you bring all of the evan­ge­lists here with us.”

144:2.4“Which of you who is a fa­ther, if his son asks un­wisely, would hes­i­tate to give in ac­cor­dance with pa­ren­tal wis­dom rather than in the terms of the son’s faulty pe­ti­tion? If the child needs a loaf, will you give him a stone just be­cause he un­wisely asks for it? If your son needs a fish, will you give him a wa­ter­snake just be­cause it may chance to come up in the net with the fish and the child fool­ishly asks for the ser­pent? If you, then, be­ing mor­tal and fi­nite, know how to an­swer prayer and give good and ap­pro­pri­ate gifts to your chil­dren, how much more shall your heav­enly Fa­ther give the spirit and many ad­di­tional bless­ings to those who ask him? Men ought al­ways to pray and not be­come dis­cour­aged.

169:3.2“There was a cer­tain rich man named Dives, who, be­ing clothed in pur­ple and fine linen, lived in mirth and splen­dor ev­ery day. And there was a cer­tain beg­gar named Laz­a­rus, who was laid at this rich man’s gate, cov­ered with sores and de­sir­ing to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s ta­ble; yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beg­gar died and was car­ried away by the an­gels to rest in Abra­ham’s bo­som. And then, pres­ently, this rich man also died and was buried with great pomp and re­gal splen­dor. When the rich man de­parted from this world, he waked up in Hades, and find­ing him­self in tor­ment, he lifted up his eyes and be­held Abra­ham afar off and Laz­a­rus in his bo­som. And then Dives cried aloud: ‘Fa­ther Abra­ham, have mercy on me and send over Laz­a­rus that he may dip the tip of his fin­ger in wa­ter to cool my tongue, for I am in great an­guish be­cause of my pun­ish­ment.’ And then Abra­ham replied: ‘My son, you should re­mem­ber that in your life­time you en­joyed the good things while Laz­a­rus in like man­ner suf­fered the evil. But now all this is changed, see­ing that Laz­a­rus is com­forted while you are tor­mented. And be­sides, be­tween us and you there is a great gulf so that we can­not go to you, nei­ther can you come over to us.’ Then said Dives to Abra­ham: ‘I pray you send Laz­a­rus back to my fa­ther’s house, inas­much as I have five broth­ers, that he may so tes­tify as to pre­vent my broth­ers from com­ing to this place of tor­ment.’ But Abra­ham said: ‘My son, they have Moses and the proph­ets; let them hear them.’ And then an­swered Dives: ‘No, No, Fa­ther Abra­ham! but if one go to them from the dead, they will re­pent.’ And then said Abra­ham: ‘If they hear not Moses and the proph­ets, nei­ther will they be per­suaded even if one were to rise from the dead.’”

136:6.4Be­fore his bap­tismal il­lu­mi­na­tion he had lived in per­fect sub­mis­sion to the will and guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther. He em­phat­i­cally de­cided to con­tinue on in just such im­plicit mor­tal de­pen­dence on the Fa­ther’s will. He pur­posed to fol­low the un­nat­u­ral course—he de­cided not to seek self-preser­va­tion. He chose to go on pur­su­ing the pol­icy of re­fus­ing to de­fend him­self. He for­mu­lated his con­clu­sions in the words of Scrip­ture fa­mil­iar to his hu­man mind: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by ev­ery word that pro­ceeds from the mouth of God.” In reach­ing this con­clu­sion in re­gard to the ap­petite of the phys­i­cal na­ture as ex­pressed in hunger for food, the Son of Man made his fi­nal dec­la­ra­tion con­cern­ing all other urges of the flesh and the nat­u­ral im­pulses of hu­man na­ture.

93:4.14While no sac­ri­fices were per­mit­ted within the colony, Mel­chiz­e­dek well knew how dif­fi­cult it is to sud­denly up­root long-es­tab­lished cus­toms and ac­cord­ingly had wisely of­fered these peo­ple the sub­sti­tute of a sacra­ment of bread and wine for the older sac­ri­fice of flesh and blood. It is of rec­ord, “Mel­chiz­e­dek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine.” But even this cau­tious in­no­va­tion was not al­to­gether suc­cess­ful; the var­i­ous tribes all main­tained aux­il­iary cen­ters on the out­skirts of Salem where they of­fered sac­ri­fices and burnt of­fer­ings. Even Abra­ham re­sorted to this bar­barous prac­tice af­ter his vic­tory over Ched­or­la­o­mer; he sim­ply did not feel quite at ease un­til he had of­fered a con­ven­tional sac­ri­fice. And Mel­chiz­e­dek never did suc­ceed in fully erad­i­cat­ing this pro­cliv­ity to sac­ri­fice from the re­li­gious prac­tices of his fol­low­ers, even of Abra­ham.

156:1.5Then came for­ward Si­mon Ze­lo­tes to re­mon­strate with No­rana. Said Si­mon: “Woman, you are a Greek-speak­ing gen­tile. It is not right that you should ex­pect the Mas­ter to take the bread in­tended for the chil­dren of the fa­vored house­hold and cast it to the dogs.” But No­rana re­fused to take of­fense at Si­mon’s thrust. She replied only: “Yes, teacher, I un­der­stand your words. I am only a dog in the eyes of the Jews, but as con­cerns your Mas­ter, I am a be­liev­ing dog. I am de­ter­mined that he shall see my daugh­ter, for I am per­suaded that, if he shall but look upon her, he will heal her. And even you, my good man, would not dare to de­prive the dogs of the priv­i­lege of ob­tain­ing the crumbs which chance to fall from the chil­dren’s ta­ble.”

144:2.3“Prayer is the breath of the soul and should lead you to be per­sis­tent in your at­tempt to as­cer­tain the Fa­ther’s will. If any one of you has a neigh­bor, and you go to him at mid­night and say: ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine on a jour­ney has come to see me, and I have noth­ing to set be­fore him’; and if your neigh­bor an­swers, ‘Trou­ble me not, for the door is now shut and the chil­dren and I are in bed; there­fore I can­not rise and give you bread,’ you will per­sist, ex­plain­ing that your friend hungers, and that you have no food to of­fer him. I say to you, though your neigh­bor will not rise and give you bread be­cause he is your friend, yet be­cause of your im­por­tu­nity he will get up and give you as many loaves as you need. If, then, per­sis­tence will win fa­vors even from mor­tal man, how much more will your per­sis­tence in the spirit win the bread of life for you from the will­ing hands of the Fa­ther in heaven. Again I say to you: Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For ev­ery one who asks re­ceives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door of sal­va­tion will be opened.