door

• Creator Sons stand at d. of consciousness and knock

1:4.2The phys­i­cal bod­ies of mor­tals are “the tem­ples of God.” Not­with­stand­ing that the Sov­er­eign Cre­ator Sons come near the crea­tures of their in­hab­ited worlds and “draw all men to them­selves”; though they “stand at the door” of con­scious­ness “and knock” and de­light to come in to all who will “open the doors of their hearts”; al­though there does ex­ist this in­ti­mate per­sonal com­mu­nion be­tween the Cre­ator Sons and their mor­tal crea­tures, nev­er­the­less, mor­tal men have some­thing from God him­self which ac­tu­ally dwells within them; their bod­ies are the tem­ples thereof.

• Jesus stands at d. and knocks

159:3.2Al­ways re­spect the per­son­al­ity of man. Never should a righ­teous cause be pro­moted by force; spir­i­tual vic­to­ries can be won only by spir­i­tual power. This in­junc­tion against the em­ploy­ment of ma­te­rial in­flu­ences refers to psy­chic force as well as to phys­i­cal force. Over­pow­er­ing ar­gu­ments and men­tal su­pe­ri­or­ity are not to be em­ployed to co­erce men and women into the king­dom. Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic or over­awed by shrewd elo­quence. While emo­tion as a fac­tor in hu­man de­ci­sions can­not be wholly elim­i­nated, it should not be di­rectly ap­pealed to in the teach­ings of those who would ad­vance the cause of the king­dom. Make your ap­peals di­rectly to the di­vine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. Do not ap­peal to fear, pity, or mere sen­ti­ment. In ap­peal­ing to men, be fair; ex­er­cise self-con­trol and ex­hibit due re­straint; show proper re­spect for the per­son­al­i­ties of your pupils. Re­mem­ber that I have said: “Be­hold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open, I will come in.”

• wise man seeks for key to unlock

160:3.4My phi­los­o­phy tells me that there are times when I must fight, if need be, for the de­fense of my con­cept of righ­teous­ness, but I doubt not that the Mas­ter, with a more ma­ture type of per­son­al­ity, would eas­ily and grace­fully gain an equal vic­tory by his su­pe­rior and win­some tech­nique of tact and tol­er­ance. All too of­ten, when we bat­tle for the right, it turns out that both the vic­tor and the van­quished have sus­tained de­feat. I heard the Mas­ter say only yes­ter­day that the “wise man, when seek­ing en­trance through the locked door, would not de­stroy the door but rather would seek for the key where­with to un­lock it.” Too of­ten we en­gage in a fight merely to con­vince our­selves that we are not afraid.

• Jesus stands at d. and knocks

166:3.7Slowly the apos­tles and many of the dis­ci­ples were learn­ing the mean­ing of Je­sus’ early dec­la­ra­tion: “Un­less you are born again, born of the spirit, you can­not en­ter the king­dom of God.” Nev­er­the­less, to all who are hon­est of heart and sin­cere in faith, it re­mains eter­nally true: “Be­hold, I stand at the doors of men’s hearts and knock, and if any man will open to me, I will come in and sup with him and will feed him with the bread of life; we shall be one in spirit and pur­pose, and so shall we ever be breth­ren in the long and fruit­ful ser­vice of the search for the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.” And so, whether few or many are to be saved al­to­gether de­pends on whether few or many will heed the in­vi­ta­tion: “I am the door, I am the new and liv­ing way, and whoso­ever wills may en­ter to em­bark upon the end­less truth-search for eter­nal life.”