clothing

163:1.3Be­fore Je­sus laid his hands upon the heads of the sev­enty to set them apart as gospel mes­sen­gers, ad­dress­ing them, he said: “The har­vest is in­deed plen­teous, but the la­bor­ers are few; there­fore I ex­hort all of you to pray that the Lord of the har­vest will send still other la­bor­ers into his har­vest. I am about to set you apart as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom; I am about to send you to Jew and gen­tile as lambs among wolves. As you go your ways, two and two, I in­struct you to carry nei­ther purse nor ex­tra cloth­ing, for you go forth on this first mis­sion for only a short sea­son. Salute no man by the way, at­tend only to your work. When­ever you go to stay at a home, first say: Peace be to this house­hold. If those who love peace live therein, you shall abide there; if not, then shall you de­part. And hav­ing se­lected this home, re­main there for your stay in that city, eat­ing and drink­ing what­ever is set be­fore you. And you do this be­cause the la­borer is wor­thy of his sus­te­nance. Move not from house to house be­cause a bet­ter lodg­ing may be of­fered. Re­mem­ber, as you go forth pro­claim­ing peace on earth and good will among men, you must con­tend with bit­ter and self-de­ceived en­e­mies; there­fore be as wise as ser­pents while you are also as harm­less as doves.

63:2.5But the au­tumn sun was get­ting lower in the sky, and as they jour­neyed north­ward, the nights grew cooler and cooler. Al­ready they had been forced to make use of an­i­mal skins for warmth. Be­fore they had been away from home one moon, An­don sig­ni­fied to his mate that he thought he could make fire with the flint. They tried for two months to uti­lize the flint spark for kin­dling a fire but only met with fail­ure. Each day this cou­ple would strike the flints and en­deavor to ig­nite the wood. Fi­nally, one evening about the time of the set­ting of the sun, the se­cret of the tech­nique was un­rav­eled when it oc­curred to Fonta to climb a near-by tree to se­cure an aban­doned bird’s nest. The nest was dry and highly in­flammable and con­se­quently flared right up into a full blaze the mo­ment the spark fell upon it. They were so sur­prised and star­tled at their suc­cess that they al­most lost the fire, but they saved it by the ad­di­tion of suit­able fuel, and then be­gan the first search for fire­wood by the par­ents of all man­kind.

66:5.21. The coun­cil on food and ma­te­rial wel­fare. This group was pre­sided over by Ang. Food, wa­ter, clothes, and the ma­te­rial ad­vance­ment of the hu­man species were fos­tered by this able corps. They taught well dig­ging, spring con­trol, and ir­ri­ga­tion. They taught those from the higher al­ti­tudes and from the north im­proved meth­ods of treat­ing skins for use as cloth­ing, and weav­ing was later in­tro­duced by the teach­ers of art and sci­ence.

187:2.2It was the cus­tom to re­move all clothes from those who were to be cru­ci­fied, but since the Jews greatly ob­jected to the pub­lic ex­po­sure of the naked hu­man form, the Ro­mans al­ways pro­vided a suit­able loin cloth for all per­sons cru­ci­fied at Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, af­ter Je­sus’ clothes had been re­moved, he was thus garbed be­fore he was put upon the cross.

187:2.8As Je­sus saw his mother, with John and his brother and sis­ter, he smiled but said noth­ing. Mean­while the four sol­diers as­signed to the Mas­ter’s cru­ci­fix­ion, as was the cus­tom, had di­vided his clothes among them, one tak­ing the san­dals, one the tur­ban, one the gir­dle, and the fourth the cloak. This left the tu­nic, or seam­less vest­ment reach­ing down to near the knees, to be cut up into four pieces, but when the sol­diers saw what an un­usual gar­ment it was, they de­cided to cast lots for it. Je­sus looked down on them while they di­vided his gar­ments, and the thought­less crowd jeered at him.

187:2.9It was well that the Ro­man sol­diers took pos­ses­sion of the Mas­ter’s cloth­ing. Oth­er­wise, if his fol­low­ers had gained pos­ses­sion of these gar­ments, they would have been tempted to re­sort to su­per­sti­tious relic wor­ship. The Mas­ter de­sired that his fol­low­ers should have noth­ing ma­te­rial to as­so­ciate with his life on earth. He wanted to leave man­kind only the mem­ory of a hu­man life ded­i­cated to the high spir­i­tual ideal of be­ing con­se­crated to do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

147:7.2On Tues­day evening Je­sus was con­duct­ing one of his cus­tom­ary classes of ques­tions and an­swers when the leader of the six spies said to him: “I was to­day talk­ing with one of John’s dis­ci­ples who is here at­tend­ing upon your teach­ing, and we were at a loss to un­der­stand why you never com­mand your dis­ci­ples to fast and pray as we Phar­isees fast and as John bade his fol­low­ers.” And Je­sus, re­fer­ring to a state­ment by John, an­swered this ques­tioner: “Do the sons of the bridecham­ber fast while the bride­groom is with them? As long as the bride­groom re­mains with them, they can hardly fast. But the time is com­ing when the bride­groom shall be taken away, and dur­ing those times the chil­dren of the bridecham­ber un­doubt­edly will fast and pray. To pray is nat­u­ral for the chil­dren of light, but fast­ing is not a part of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Be re­minded that a wise tai­lor does not sew a piece of new and un­shrunk cloth upon an old gar­ment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink and pro­duce a worse rent. Nei­ther do men put new wine into old wine skins, lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins per­ish. The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. There­fore do my dis­ci­ples show wis­dom in that they do not bring too much of the old or­der over into the new teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom. You who have lost your teacher may be jus­ti­fied in fast­ing for a time. Fast­ing may be an ap­pro­pri­ate part of the law of Moses, but in the com­ing king­dom the sons of God shall ex­pe­ri­ence free­dom from fear and joy in the di­vine spirit.” And when they heard these words, the dis­ci­ples of John were com­forted while the Phar­isees them­selves were the more con­founded.