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Ephesus

10 paragraphs · about 4 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under Ephesus, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

Paper 130 · On the Way to Rome

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

Paper 133 · The Return from Rome

6. At Ephesus—Discourse on the Soul

133:6.1On leav­ing Athens, the trav­el­ers went by way of Troas to Eph­esus, the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Asia. They made many trips out to the fa­mous tem­ple of Artemis of the Eph­esians, about two miles from the city. Artemis was the most fa­mous god­dess of all Asia Mi­nor and a per­pet­u­a­tion of the still ear­lier mother god­dess of an­cient Ana­to­lian times. The crude idol ex­hib­ited in the enor­mous tem­ple ded­i­cated to her wor­ship was re­puted to have fallen from heaven. Not all of Ga­nid’s early train­ing to re­spect im­ages as sym­bols of di­vin­ity had been erad­i­cated, and he thought it best to pur­chase a lit­tle sil­ver shrine in honor of this fer­til­ity god­dess of Asia Mi­nor. That night they talked at great length about the wor­ship of things made with hu­man hands.

133:6.2On the third day of their stay they walked down by the river to ob­serve the dredg­ing of the har­bor’s mouth. At noon they talked with a young Phoeni­cian who was home­sick and much dis­cour­aged; but most of all he was en­vi­ous of a cer­tain young man who had re­ceived pro­mo­tion over his head. Je­sus spoke com­fort­ing words to him and quoted the olden He­brew proverb: “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him be­fore great men.”

133:6.3Of all the large cities they vis­ited on this tour of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, they here ac­com­plished the least of value to the sub­se­quent work of the Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. Chris­tian­ity se­cured its start in Eph­esus largely through the ef­forts of Paul, who resided here more than two years, mak­ing tents for a liv­ing and con­duct­ing lec­tures on re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy each night in the main au­di­ence cham­ber of the school of Tyran­nus.

133:6.4There was a pro­gres­sive thinker con­nected with this lo­cal school of phi­los­o­phy, and Je­sus had sev­eral prof­itable ses­sions with him. In the course of these talks Je­sus had re­peat­edly used the word “soul.” This learned Greek fi­nally asked him what he meant by “soul,” and he replied:

133:6.5“The soul is the self-re­flec­tive, truth-dis­cern­ing, and spirit-per­ceiv­ing part of man which for­ever el­e­vates the hu­man be­ing above the level of the an­i­mal world. Self-con­scious­ness, in and of it­self, is not the soul. Moral self-con­scious­ness is true hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion and con­sti­tutes the foun­da­tion of the hu­man soul, and the soul is that part of man which rep­re­sents the po­ten­tial sur­vival value of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Moral choice and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, the abil­ity to know God and the urge to be like him, are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the soul. The soul of man can­not ex­ist apart from moral think­ing and spir­i­tual ac­tiv­ity. A stag­nant soul is a dy­ing soul. But the soul of man is dis­tinct from the di­vine spirit which dwells within the mind. The di­vine spirit ar­rives si­mul­ta­ne­ously with the first moral ac­tiv­ity of the hu­man mind, and that is the oc­ca­sion of the birth of the soul.

133:6.6“The sav­ing or los­ing of a soul has to do with whether or not the moral con­scious­ness at­tains sur­vival sta­tus through eter­nal al­liance with its as­so­ci­ated im­mor­tal spirit en­dow­ment. Sal­va­tion is the spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the self-re­al­iza­tion of the moral con­scious­ness, which thereby be­comes pos­sessed of sur­vival value. All forms of soul con­flict con­sist in the lack of har­mony be­tween the moral, or spir­i­tual, self-con­scious­ness and the purely in­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness.

133:6.7“The hu­man soul, when ma­tured, en­no­bled, and spir­i­tu­al­ized, ap­proaches the heav­enly sta­tus in that it comes near to be­ing an en­tity in­ter­ven­ing be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, the ma­te­rial self and the di­vine spirit. The evolv­ing soul of a hu­man be­ing is dif­fi­cult of de­scrip­tion and more dif­fi­cult of dem­on­stra­tion be­cause it is not dis­cov­er­able by the meth­ods of ei­ther ma­te­rial in­ves­ti­ga­tion or spir­i­tual prov­ing. Ma­te­rial sci­ence can­not demon­strate the ex­is­tence of a soul, nei­ther can pure spirit-test­ing. Not­with­stand­ing the fail­ure of both ma­te­rial sci­ence and spir­i­tual stan­dards to dis­cover the ex­is­tence of the hu­man soul, ev­ery morally con­scious mor­tal knows of the ex­is­tence of his soul as a real and ac­tual per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Paper 139 · The Twelve Apostles

4. John Zebedee

139:4.6Those char­ac­ter­is­tics of Je­sus which John most ap­pre­ci­ated were the Mas­ter’s love and un­selfish­ness; these traits made such an im­pres­sion on him that his whole sub­se­quent life be­came dom­i­nated by the sen­ti­ment of love and broth­erly de­vo­tion. He talked about love and wrote about love. This “son of thun­der” be­came the “apos­tle of love”; and at Eph­esus, when the aged bishop was no longer able to stand in the pul­pit and preach but had to be car­ried to church in a chair, and when at the close of the ser­vice he was asked to say a few words to the be­liev­ers, for years his only ut­ter­ance was, “My lit­tle chil­dren, love one an­other.”

139:4.7–14 · eight paragraphs not cited here ·

139:4.7John was a man of few words ex­cept when his tem­per was aroused. He thought much but said lit­tle. As he grew older, his tem­per be­came more sub­dued, bet­ter con­trolled, but he never over­came his dis­in­cli­na­tion to talk; he never fully mas­tered this ret­i­cence. But he was gifted with a re­mark­able and cre­ative imag­i­na­tion.

139:4.8There was an­other side to John that one would not ex­pect to find in this quiet and in­tro­spec­tive type. He was some­what big­oted and in­or­di­nately in­tol­er­ant. In this re­spect he and James were much alike—they both wanted to call down fire from heaven on the heads of the dis­re­spect­ful Samar­i­tans. When John en­coun­tered some strangers teach­ing in Je­sus’ name, he promptly for­bade them. But he was not the only one of the twelve who was tainted with this kind of self-es­teem and su­pe­ri­or­ity con­scious­ness.

139:4.9John’s life was tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the sight of Je­sus’ go­ing about with­out a home as he knew how faith­fully he had made pro­vi­sion for the care of his mother and fam­ily. John also deeply sym­pa­thized with Je­sus be­cause of his fam­ily’s fail­ure to un­der­stand him, be­ing aware that they were grad­u­ally with­draw­ing from him. This en­tire sit­u­a­tion, to­gether with Je­sus’ ever de­fer­ring his slight­est wish to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven and his daily life of im­plicit trust, made such a pro­found im­pres­sion on John that it pro­duced marked and per­ma­nent changes in his char­ac­ter, changes which man­i­fested them­selves through­out his en­tire sub­se­quent life.

139:4.10John had a cool and dar­ing cour­age which few of the other apos­tles pos­sessed. He was the one apos­tle who fol­lowed right along with Je­sus the night of his ar­rest and dared to ac­com­pany his Mas­ter into the very jaws of death. He was pres­ent and near at hand right up to the last earthly hour and was found faith­fully car­ry­ing out his trust with re­gard to Je­sus’ mother and ready to re­ceive such ad­di­tional in­struc­tions as might be given dur­ing the last mo­ments of the Mas­ter’s mor­tal ex­is­tence. One thing is cer­tain, John was thor­oughly de­pend­able. John usu­ally sat on Je­sus’ right hand when the twelve were at meat. He was the first of the twelve re­ally and fully to be­lieve in the res­ur­rec­tion, and he was the first to rec­og­nize the Mas­ter when he came to them on the seashore af­ter his res­ur­rec­tion.

139:4.11This son of Zeb­e­dee was very closely as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter in the early ac­tiv­i­ties of the Chris­tian move­ment, be­com­ing one of the chief sup­port­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem church. He was the right-hand sup­port of Pe­ter on the day of Pen­te­cost.

139:4.12Sev­eral years af­ter the mar­tyr­dom of James, John mar­ried his brother’s widow. The last twenty years of his life he was cared for by a lov­ing grand­daugh­ter.

139:4.13John was in prison sev­eral times and was ban­ished to the Isle of Pat­mos for a pe­riod of four years un­til an­other em­peror came to power in Rome. Had not John been tact­ful and saga­cious, he would un­doubt­edly have been killed as was his more out­spo­ken brother James. As the years passed, John, to­gether with James the Lord’s brother, learned to prac­tice wise con­cil­i­a­tion when they ap­peared be­fore the civil mag­is­trates. They found that a “soft an­swer turns away wrath.” They also learned to rep­re­sent the church as a “spir­i­tual broth­er­hood de­voted to the so­cial ser­vice of man­kind” rather than as “the king­dom of heaven.” They taught lov­ing ser­vice rather than rul­ing power—king­dom and king.

139:4.14When in tem­po­rary ex­ile on Pat­mos, John wrote the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, which you now have in greatly abridged and dis­torted form. This Book of Rev­e­la­tion con­tains the sur­viv­ing frag­ments of a great rev­e­la­tion, large por­tions of which were lost, other por­tions of which were re­moved, sub­se­quent to John’s writ­ing. It is pre­served in only frag­men­tary and adul­ter­ated form.

139:4.15John trav­eled much, la­bored in­ces­santly, and af­ter be­com­ing bishop of the Asia churches, set­tled down at Eph­esus. He di­rected his as­so­ciate, Nathan, in the writ­ing of the so-called “Gospel ac­cord­ing to John,” at Eph­esus, when he was ninety-nine years old. Of all the twelve apos­tles, John Zeb­e­dee even­tu­ally be­came the out­stand­ing the­olo­gian. He died a nat­u­ral death at Eph­esus in A.D. 103 when he was one hun­dred and one years of age.

Onward

Cited alongside: John Zebedee, Troas