faith sons of God

102:6.5Con­vic­tions about God may be ar­rived at through wise rea­son­ing, but the in­di­vid­ual be­comes God-know­ing only by faith, through per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. In much that per­tains to life, prob­a­bil­ity must be reck­oned with, but when con­tact­ing with cos­mic re­al­ity, cer­tainty may be ex­pe­ri­enced when such mean­ings and val­ues are ap­proached by liv­ing faith. The God-know­ing soul dares to say, “I know,” even when this knowl­edge of God is ques­tioned by the un­be­liever who de­nies such cer­ti­tude be­cause it is not wholly sup­ported by in­tel­lec­tual logic. To ev­ery such doubter the be­liever only replies, “How do you know that I do not know?”

• believe in God of love who fosters survival

5:5.3The fact-seek­ing sci­en­tist con­ceives of God as the First Cause, a God of force. The emo­tional artist sees God as the ideal of beauty, a God of aes­thet­ics. The rea­son­ing philoso­pher is some­times in­clined to posit a God of uni­ver­sal unity, even a pan­the­is­tic De­ity. The re­li­gion­ist of faith be­lieves in a God who fos­ters sur­vival, the Fa­ther in heaven, the God of love.

• led by Spirit of God

8:6.4“The love of the Spirit” is real, as also are his sor­rows; there­fore “Grieve not the Spirit of God.” Whether we ob­serve the In­fi­nite Spirit as Par­a­dise De­ity or as a lo­cal uni­verse Cre­ative Spirit, we find that the Con­joint Cre­ator is not only the Third Source and Cen­ter but also a di­vine per­son. This di­vine per­son­al­ity also re­acts to the uni­verse as a per­son. The Spirit speaks to you, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says.” “The Spirit him­self makes in­ter­ces­sion for you.” The Spirit ex­erts a di­rect and per­sonal in­flu­ence upon cre­ated be­ings, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

• conscious of universe citizenship, contact with superhuman power

16:6.83. Wor­ship—the spir­i­tual do­main of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of di­vine fel­low­ship, the rec­og­ni­tion of spirit val­ues, the as­sur­ance of eter­nal sur­vival, the as­cent from the sta­tus of ser­vants of God to the joy and lib­erty of the sons of God. This is the high­est in­sight of the cos­mic mind, the rev­er­en­tial and wor­ship­ful form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

• only individuals who can love others as themselves

16:9.8Un­selfish so­cial con­scious­ness must be, at bot­tom, a re­li­gious con­scious­ness; that is, if it is ob­jec­tive; oth­er­wise it is a purely sub­jec­tive philo­sophic ab­strac­tion and there­fore de­void of love. Only a God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual can love an­other per­son as he loves him­self.

16:9.9Self-con­scious­ness is in essence a com­mu­nal con­scious­ness: God and man, Fa­ther and son, Cre­ator and crea­ture. In hu­man self-con­scious­ness four uni­verse-re­al­ity re­al­iza­tions are la­tent and in­her­ent:

16:9.101. The quest for knowl­edge, the logic of sci­ence.

16:9.112. The quest for moral val­ues, the sense of duty.

16:9.123. The quest for spir­i­tual val­ues, the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

16:9.134. The quest for per­son­al­ity val­ues, the abil­ity to rec­og­nize the re­al­ity of God as a per­son­al­ity and the con­cur­rent re­al­iza­tion of our fra­ter­nal re­la­tion­ship with fel­low per­son­al­i­ties.

16:9.14You be­come con­scious of man as your crea­ture brother be­cause you are al­ready con­scious of God as your Cre­ator Fa­ther. Fa­ther­hood is the re­la­tion­ship out of which we rea­son our­selves into the rec­og­ni­tion of broth­er­hood. And Fa­ther­hood be­comes, or may be­come, a uni­verse re­al­ity to all moral crea­tures be­cause the Fa­ther has him­self be­stowed per­son­al­ity upon all such be­ings and has en­cir­cuited them within the grasp of the uni­ver­sal per­son­al­ity cir­cuit. We wor­ship God, first, be­cause he is, then, be­cause he is in us, and last, be­cause we are in him.

• certain of salvation

34:6.13The con­scious­ness of the spirit dom­i­na­tion of a hu­man life is pres­ently at­tended by an in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Spirit in the life re­ac­tions of such a spirit-led mor­tal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suf­fer­ing, gen­tle­ness, good­ness, faith, meek­ness, and tem­per­ance.” Such spirit-guided and di­vinely il­lu­mi­nated mor­tals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in hu­man faith­ful­ness per­form the du­ties of their earthly as­sign­ments, have al­ready be­gun to dis­cern the lights of eter­nal life as they glim­mer on the far­away shores of an­other world; al­ready have they be­gun to com­pre­hend the re­al­ity of that in­spir­ing and com­fort­ing truth, “The king­dom of God is not meat and drink but righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And through­out ev­ery trial and in the pres­ence of ev­ery hard­ship, spirit-born souls are sus­tained by that hope which tran­scends all fear be­cause the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

34:7.1The flesh, the in­her­ent na­ture de­rived from the an­i­mal-ori­gin races, does not nat­u­rally bear the fruits of the di­vine Spirit. When the mor­tal na­ture has been up­stepped by the ad­di­tion of the na­ture of the Ma­te­rial Sons of God, as the Uran­tia races were in a mea­sure ad­vanced by the be­stowal of Adam, then is the way bet­ter pre­pared for the Spirit of Truth to co-op­er­ate with the in­dwelling Ad­juster to bring forth the beau­ti­ful har­vest of the char­ac­ter fruits of the spirit. If you do not re­ject this spirit, even though eter­nity may be re­quired to ful­fill the com­mis­sion, “he will guide you into all truth.”

• enjoy comparative deliverance from the flesh

34:7.6Not­with­stand­ing this dou­ble dis­as­ter to man’s na­ture and his en­vi­ron­ment, pres­ent-day mor­tals would ex­pe­ri­ence less of this ap­par­ent war­fare be­tween the flesh and the spirit if they would en­ter the spirit king­dom, wherein the faith sons of God en­joy com­par­a­tive de­liv­er­ance from the slave-bond­age of the flesh in the en­light­ened and lib­er­at­ing ser­vice of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Je­sus showed man­kind the new way of mor­tal liv­ing whereby hu­man be­ings may very largely es­cape the dire con­se­quences of the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and most ef­fec­tively com­pen­sate for the de­pri­va­tions re­sult­ing from the Adamic de­fault. “The spirit of the life of Christ Je­sus has made us free from the law of an­i­mal liv­ing and the temp­ta­tions of evil and sin.” “This is the vic­tory that over­comes the flesh, even your faith.”

34:7.7Those God-know­ing men and women who have been born of the Spirit ex­pe­ri­ence no more con­flict with their mor­tal na­tures than do the in­hab­i­tants of the most nor­mal of worlds, plan­ets which have never been tainted with sin nor touched by re­bel­lion. Faith sons work on in­tel­lec­tual lev­els and live on spir­i­tual planes far above the con­flicts pro­duced by un­re­strained or un­nat­u­ral phys­i­cal de­sires. The nor­mal urges of an­i­mal be­ings and the nat­u­ral ap­petites and im­pulses of the phys­i­cal na­ture are not in con­flict with even the high­est spir­i­tual at­tain­ment ex­cept in the minds of ig­no­rant, mis­taught, or un­for­tu­nately over­con­sci­en­tious per­sons.

• difficulties stimulate

48:7.75. Dif­fi­cul­ties may chal­lenge medi­ocrity and de­feat the fear­ful, but they only stim­u­late the true chil­dren of the Most Highs.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

56:10.13The rec­og­ni­tion of true re­la­tions im­plies a mind com­pe­tent to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween truth and er­ror. The be­stowal Spirit of Truth which in­vests the hu­man minds of Uran­tia is unerringly re­spon­sive to truth—the liv­ing spirit re­la­tion­ship of all things and all be­ings as they are co-or­di­nated in the eter­nal as­cent God­ward.

• borrow best from others rather than denounce worst

92:7.3The many re­li­gions of Uran­tia are all good to the ex­tent that they bring man to God and bring the re­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther to man. It is a fal­lacy for any group of re­li­gion­ists to con­ceive of their creed as The Truth; such at­ti­tudes be­speak more of the­o­log­i­cal ar­ro­gance than of cer­tainty of faith. There is not a Uran­tia re­li­gion that could not prof­itably study and as­sim­i­late the best of the truths con­tained in ev­ery other faith, for all con­tain truth. Re­li­gion­ists would do bet­ter to bor­row the best in their neigh­bors’ liv­ing spir­i­tual faith rather than to de­nounce the worst in their lin­ger­ing su­per­sti­tions and out­worn rit­u­als.

• co-operate from unity of ideals and purposes

99:5.7Just as cer­tainly as men share their re­li­gious be­liefs, they cre­ate a re­li­gious group of some sort which even­tu­ally cre­ates com­mon goals. Some­day re­li­gion­ists will get to­gether and ac­tu­ally ef­fect co-op­er­a­tion on the ba­sis of unity of ide­als and pur­poses rather than at­tempt­ing to do so on the ba­sis of psy­cho­log­i­cal opin­ions and the­o­log­i­cal be­liefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify re­li­gion­ists. Since true re­li­gion is a mat­ter of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, it is in­ev­i­ta­ble that each in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist must have his own and per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of that spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Let the term “faith” stand for the in­di­vid­ual’s re­la­tion to God rather than for the creedal for­mu­la­tion of what some group of mor­tals have been able to agree upon as a com­mon re­li­gious at­ti­tude. “Have you faith? Then have it to your­self.”

• dedicated to wholehearted service of brotherhood of man

99:5.9Prim­i­tive man made lit­tle ef­fort to put his re­li­gious con­vic­tions into words. His re­li­gion was danced out rather than thought out. Mod­ern men have thought out many creeds and cre­ated many tests of re­li­gious faith. Fu­ture re­li­gion­ists must live out their re­li­gion, ded­i­cate them­selves to the whole­hearted ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man. It is high time that man had a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence so per­sonal and so sub­lime that it could be re­al­ized and ex­pressed only by “feel­ings that lie too deep for words.”

• unconcerned if all things earthly crash

100:2.7Je­sus por­trayed the pro­found surety of the God-know­ing mor­tal when he said: “To a God-know­ing king­dom be­liever, what does it mat­ter if all things earthly crash?” Tem­po­ral se­cu­ri­ties are vul­ner­a­ble, but spir­i­tual sureties are im­preg­nable. When the flood tides of hu­man ad­ver­sity, self­ish­ness, cru­elty, hate, mal­ice, and jeal­ousy beat about the mor­tal soul, you may rest in the as­sur­ance that there is one in­ner bas­tion, the citadel of the spirit, which is ab­so­lutely unas­sail­able; at least this is true of ev­ery hu­man be­ing who has ded­i­cated the keep­ing of his soul to the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God.

• conscious of universe citizenship, contact with superhuman power

100:6.3The marks of hu­man re­sponse to the re­li­gious im­pulse em­brace the qual­i­ties of no­bil­ity and grandeur. The sin­cere re­li­gion­ist is con­scious of uni­verse cit­i­zen­ship and is aware of mak­ing con­tact with sources of super­hu­man power. He is thrilled and en­er­gized with the as­sur­ance of be­long­ing to a su­pe­rior and en­no­bled fel­low­ship of the sons of God. The con­scious­ness of self-worth has be­come aug­mented by the stim­u­lus of the quest for the high­est uni­verse ob­jec­tives—su­preme goals.

• detached from purely temporal, trivial matters

100:6.5But true re­li­gion is a liv­ing love, a life of ser­vice. The re­li­gion­ist’s de­tach­ment from much that is purely tem­po­ral and triv­ial never leads to so­cial iso­la­tion, and it should not de­stroy the sense of hu­mor. Gen­uine re­li­gion takes noth­ing away from hu­man ex­is­tence, but it does add new mean­ings to all of life; it gen­er­ates new types of en­thu­si­asm, zeal, and cour­age. It may even en­gen­der the spirit of the cru­sader, which is more than dan­ger­ous if not con­trolled by spir­i­tual in­sight and loyal de­vo­tion to the com­mon­place so­cial obli­ga­tions of hu­man loy­al­ties.

• trust in God’s goodness despite bitter disappointment and crushing defeat

101:3.62. Pro­duces a sub­lime trust in the good­ness of God even in the face of bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment and crush­ing de­feat.

• live and triumph irrespective of crushing overload

101:3.139. Lives and tri­umphs ir­re­spec­tive of the crush­ing over­load of the com­plex and par­tial civ­i­liza­tions of mod­ern times.

• go right on worshiping God in spite of anything

101:3.1612. Goes right on wor­ship­ing God in spite of any­thing and ev­ery­thing. Dares to de­clare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”

• emancipated from haste, painful stress
• live as if in presence of the Eternal

102:2.3It is dif­fi­cult to iden­tify and an­a­lyze the fac­tors of a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is not dif­fi­cult to ob­serve that such re­li­gious prac­ti­tion­ers live and carry on as if al­ready in the pres­ence of the Eter­nal. Be­liev­ers re­act to this tem­po­ral life as if im­mor­tal­ity al­ready were within their grasp. In the lives of such mor­tals there is a valid orig­i­nal­ity and a spon­tane­ity of ex­pres­sion that for­ever seg­re­gate them from those of their fel­lows who have im­bibed only the wis­dom of the world. Re­li­gion­ists seem to live in ef­fec­tive eman­ci­pa­tion from har­ry­ing haste and the painful stress of the vi­cis­si­tudes in­her­ent in the tem­po­ral cur­rents of time; they ex­hibit a sta­bi­liza­tion of per­son­al­ity and a tran­quil­lity of char­ac­ter not ex­plained by the laws of phys­i­ol­ogy, psy­chol­ogy, and so­ci­ol­ogy.

• when Father wills, desire of faith sons IS

118:6.5Vo­li­tion on any level short of the ab­so­lute en­coun­ters lim­i­ta­tions which are con­sti­tu­tive in the very per­son­al­ity ex­er­cis­ing the power of choice. Man can­not choose be­yond the range of that which is choos­able. He can­not, for in­stance, choose to be other than a hu­man be­ing ex­cept that he can elect to be­come more than a man; he can choose to em­bark upon the voy­age of uni­verse as­cen­sion, but this is be­cause the hu­man choice and the di­vine will hap­pen to be co­in­ci­dent upon this point. And what a son de­sires and the Fa­ther wills will cer­tainly come to pass.

• knowing God and desiring to do his will, are divinely stable

118:8.11An au­to­matic uni­verse re­ac­tion is sta­ble and, in some form, con­tin­u­ing in the cos­mos. A per­son­al­ity who knows God and de­sires to do his will, who has spirit in­sight, is di­vinely sta­ble and eter­nally ex­is­tent. Man’s great uni­verse ad­ven­ture con­sists in the tran­sit of his mor­tal mind from the sta­bil­ity of me­chan­i­cal stat­ics to the di­vin­ity of spir­i­tual dy­nam­ics, and he achieves this trans­for­ma­tion by the force and con­stancy of his own per­son­al­ity de­ci­sions, in each of life’s sit­u­a­tions declar­ing, “It is my will that your will be done.”

• live as to permit Father to reveal himself

132:7.2“Ga­nid, the man was not hun­gry for truth. He was not dis­sat­is­fied with him­self. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not open to re­ceive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the har­vest of sal­va­tion; he must be al­lowed more time for the tri­als and dif­fi­cul­ties of life to pre­pare him for the re­cep­tion of wis­dom and higher learn­ing. Or, if we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Fa­ther in heaven, and thus would he be­come so at­tracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be con­strained to in­quire about our Fa­ther. You can­not re­veal God to those who do not seek for him; you can­not lead un­will­ing souls into the joys of sal­va­tion. Man must be­come hun­gry for truth as a re­sult of the ex­pe­ri­ences of liv­ing, or he must de­sire to know God as the re­sult of con­tact with the lives of those who are ac­quainted with the di­vine Fa­ther be­fore an­other hu­man be­ing can act as the means of lead­ing such a fel­low mor­tal to the Fa­ther in heaven. If we know God, our real busi­ness on earth is so to live as to per­mit the Fa­ther to re­veal him­self in our lives, and thus will all God-seek­ing per­sons see the Fa­ther and ask for our help in find­ing out more about the God who in this man­ner finds ex­pres­sion in our lives.”

• show companionship with Jesus in their lives

141:5.2“In this way you may ex­pe­ri­ence a per­fected unity of spirit pur­pose and spirit un­der­stand­ing grow­ing out of the mu­tual con­scious­ness of the iden­tity of each of your in­dwelling Par­a­dise spir­its; and you may en­joy all of this pro­found spir­i­tual unity in the very face of the ut­most di­ver­sity of your in­di­vid­ual at­ti­tudes of in­tel­lec­tual think­ing, tem­per­a­men­tal feel­ing, and so­cial con­duct. Your per­son­al­i­ties may be re­fresh­ingly di­verse and markedly dif­fer­ent, while your spir­i­tual na­tures and spirit fruits of di­vine wor­ship and broth­erly love may be so uni­fied that all who be­hold your lives will of a surety take cog­nizance of this spirit iden­tity and soul unity; they will rec­og­nize that you have been with me and have thereby learned, and ac­cept­ably, how to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. You can achieve the unity of the ser­vice of God even while you ren­der such ser­vice in ac­cor­dance with the tech­nique of your own orig­i­nal en­dow­ments of mind, body, and soul.

• live as to permit Father to reveal himself

142:6.6Nicode­mus replied: “But I do not under­stand—how can that be?” Said Je­sus: “Can it be that you are a teacher in Is­rael and yet ig­no­rant of all this? It be­comes, then, the duty of those who know about the re­al­i­ties of the spirit to re­veal these things to those who dis­cern only the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the ma­te­rial world. But will you be­lieve us if we tell you of the heav­enly truths? Do you have the cour­age, Nicode­mus, to be­lieve in one who has de­scended from heaven, even the Son of Man?”

• when Father wills, desire of faith sons IS

146:2.76. When you have be­come wholly ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, the an­swer to all your pe­ti­tions will be forth­com­ing be­cause your prayers will be in full ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will, and the Fa­ther’s will is ever man­i­fest through­out his vast uni­verse. What the true son de­sires and the in­fi­nite Fa­ther wills IS. Such a prayer can­not re­main unan­swered, and no other sort of pe­ti­tion can pos­si­bly be fully an­swered.

• demonstrate fruits of spirit; risk all to find God

155:6.14But do not make the mis­take of try­ing to prove to other men that you have found God; you can­not con­sciously pro­duce such valid proof, al­beit there are two pos­i­tive and pow­er­ful demon­stra­tions of the fact that you are God-know­ing, and they are:

155:6.151. The fruits of the spirit of God show­ing forth in your daily rou­tine life.

155:6.162. The fact that your en­tire life plan fur­nishes pos­i­tive proof that you have un­re­servedly risked ev­ery­thing you are and have on the ad­ven­ture of sur­vival af­ter death in the pur­suit of the hope of find­ing the God of eter­nity, whose pres­ence you have fore­tasted in time.

• have implicit faith in triumph of righteousness
• renew spirits by worshipful communion

156:5.12King­dom be­liev­ers should pos­sess an im­plicit faith, a whole-souled be­lief, in the cer­tain tri­umph of righ­teous­ness. King­dom builders must be un­doubt­ing of the truth of the gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion. Be­liev­ers must in­creas­ingly learn how to step aside from the rush of life—es­cape the ha­rass­ments of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence—while they re­fresh the soul, in­spire the mind, and re­new the spirit by wor­ship­ful com­mu­nion.

• ever find it easier to do right

156:5.13God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als are not dis­cour­aged by mis­for­tune or down­cast by dis­ap­point­ment. Be­liev­ers are im­mune to the de­pres­sion con­se­quent upon purely ma­te­rial up­heavals; spirit liv­ers are not per­turbed by the episodes of the ma­te­rial world. Can­di­dates for eter­nal life are prac­ti­tion­ers of an in­vig­o­rat­ing and con­struc­tive tech­nique for meet­ing all of the vi­cis­si­tudes and ha­rass­ments of mor­tal liv­ing. Ev­ery day a true be­liever lives, he finds it eas­ier to do the right thing.

• ever more skillful in alluring fellows

156:5.15As the days pass, ev­ery true be­liever be­comes more skill­ful in al­lur­ing his fel­lows into the love of eter­nal truth. Are you more re­source­ful in re­veal­ing good­ness to hu­man­ity to­day than you were yes­ter­day? Are you a bet­ter righ­teous­ness rec­om­mender this year than you were last year? Are you be­com­ing in­creas­ingly artis­tic in your tech­nique of lead­ing hun­gry souls into the spir­i­tual king­dom?

• certain of salvation

156:5.20The God-con­scious mor­tal is cer­tain of sal­va­tion; he is un­afraid of life; he is hon­est and con­sis­tent. He knows how bravely to en­dure un­avoid­able suf­fer­ing; he is un­com­plain­ing when faced by in­es­cap­able hard­ship.

• establish kingdom in hearts of mankind

157:6.14“And now have I brought you apart with me and by your­selves for a lit­tle while that you may com­pre­hend the glory, and grasp the grandeur, of the life to which I have called you: the faith-ad­ven­ture of the es­tab­lish­ment of my Fa­ther’s king­dom in the hearts of man­kind, the build­ing of my fel­low­ship of liv­ing as­so­ci­a­tion with the souls of all who be­lieve this gospel.”

• disregard selves, take up responsibilities daily

158:7.5Af­ter they had re­cov­ered from the first shock of Je­sus’ sting­ing re­buke, and be­fore they re­sumed their jour­ney, the Mas­ter spoke fur­ther: “If any man would come af­ter me, let him dis­re­gard him­self, take up his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily, and fol­low me. For whoso­ever would save his life self­ishly, shall lose it, but whoso­ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What would a man give in ex­change for eter­nal life? Be not ashamed of me and my words in this sin­ful and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion, even as I will not be ashamed to ac­knowl­edge you when in glory I ap­pear be­fore my Fa­ther in the pres­ence of all the ce­les­tial hosts. Nev­er­the­less, many of you now stand­ing be­fore me shall not taste death till you see this king­dom of God come with power.”

• live up to responsibilities and privileges

159:5.10Je­sus did not ad­vo­cate the prac­tice of neg­a­tive sub­mis­sion to the in­dig­ni­ties of those who might pur­posely seek to im­pose upon the prac­ti­tion­ers of non­re­sis­tance to evil, but rather that his fol­low­ers should be wise and alert in the quick and pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of good to evil to the end that they might ef­fec­tively over­come evil with good. For­get not, the truly good is in­vari­ably more pow­er­ful than the most ma­lig­nant evil. The Mas­ter taught a pos­i­tive stan­dard of righ­teous­ness: “Whoso­ever wishes to be my dis­ci­ple, let him dis­re­gard him­self and take up the full mea­sure of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily to fol­low me.” And he so lived him­self in that “he went about do­ing good.” And this as­pect of the gospel was well il­lus­trated by many para­bles which he later spoke to his fol­low­ers. He never ex­horted his fol­low­ers pa­tiently to bear their obli­ga­tions but rather with en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to live up to the full mea­sure of their hu­man re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­vine priv­i­leges in the king­dom of God.

• jealously guard life purpose from temptation to transient attainment

160:3.5This new gospel of the king­dom ren­ders a great ser­vice to the art of liv­ing in that it sup­plies a new and richer in­cen­tive for higher liv­ing. It pre­sents a new and ex­alted goal of des­tiny, a su­preme life pur­pose. And these new con­cepts of the eter­nal and di­vine goal of ex­is­tence are in them­selves tran­scen­dent stim­uli, call­ing forth the re­ac­tion of the very best that is res­i­dent in man’s higher na­ture. On ev­ery moun­tain­top of in­tel­lec­tual thought are to be found re­lax­ation for the mind, strength for the soul, and com­mu­nion for the spirit. From such van­tage points of high liv­ing, man is able to tran­scend the ma­te­rial ir­ri­ta­tions of the lower lev­els of think­ing—worry, jeal­ousy, envy, re­venge, and the pride of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These high-climb­ing souls de­liver them­selves from a mul­ti­tude of the cross­cur­rent con­flicts of the tri­fles of liv­ing, thus be­com­ing free to at­tain con­scious­ness of the higher cur­rents of spirit con­cept and ce­les­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the life pur­pose must be jeal­ously guarded from the temp­ta­tion to seek for easy and tran­sient at­tain­ment; like­wise must it be so fos­tered as to be­come im­mune to the dis­as­trous threats of fa­nati­cism.

• have same eternal life which raised Jesus from the dead

162:7.5“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you who be­lieve the gospel that, if a man will keep this word of truth alive in his heart, he shall never taste death. And now just at my side a scribe says this state­ment proves that I have a devil, see­ing that Abra­ham is dead, also the proph­ets. And he asks: ‘Are you so much greater than Abra­ham and the proph­ets that you dare to stand here and say that whoso keeps your word shall not taste death? Who do you claim to be that you dare to ut­ter such blas­phemies?’ And I say to all such that, if I glo­rify my­self, my glory is as noth­ing. But it is the Fa­ther who shall glo­rify me, even the same Fa­ther whom you call God. But you have failed to know this your God and my Fa­ther, and I have come to bring you to­gether; to show you how to be­come truly the sons of God. Though you know not the Fa­ther, I truly know him. Even Abra­ham re­joiced to see my day, and by faith he saw it and was glad.”

• dispense wealth in spirit of stewardship

165:4.5When Je­sus had fin­ished his story, an­other man rose up and asked him: “Mas­ter, I know that your apos­tles have sold all their earthly pos­ses­sions to fol­low you, and that they have all things in com­mon as do the Es­senes, but would you have all of us who are your dis­ci­ples do like­wise? Is it a sin to pos­sess hon­est wealth?” And Je­sus replied to this ques­tion: “My friend, it is not a sin to have hon­or­able wealth; but it is a sin if you con­vert the wealth of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions into trea­sures which may ab­sorb your in­ter­ests and di­vert your af­fec­tions from de­vo­tion to the spir­i­tual pur­suits of the king­dom. There is no sin in hav­ing hon­est pos­ses­sions on earth pro­vided your trea­sure is in heaven, for where your trea­sure is there will your heart be also. There is a great dif­fer­ence be­tween wealth which leads to cov­etous­ness and self­ish­ness and that which is held and dis­pensed in the spirit of stew­ard­ship by those who have an abun­dance of this world’s goods, and who so boun­ti­fully con­tribute to the sup­port of those who de­vote all their en­er­gies to the work of the king­dom. Many of you who are here and with­out money are fed and lodged in yon­der tented city be­cause lib­eral men and women of means have given funds to your host, David Zeb­e­dee, for such pur­poses.

• common people hear gladly

174:4.7A short time back the Phar­isees had en­joyed the man­ner in which the Sad­ducees had been si­lenced by the Mas­ter; now the Sad­ducees were de­lighted by the fail­ure of the Phar­isees; but such ri­valry was only mo­men­tary; they speed­ily for­got their time-hon­ored dif­fer­ences in the united ef­fort to stop Je­sus’ teach­ings and do­ings. But through­out all of these ex­pe­ri­ences the com­mon peo­ple heard him gladly.

• spirit will teach how to answer judges

176:1.1In an­swer­ing Na­than­iel’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Yes, I will tell you about the times when this peo­ple shall have filled up the cup of their in­iq­uity; when jus­tice shall swiftly de­scend upon this city of our fa­thers. I am about to leave you; I go to the Fa­ther. Af­ter I leave you, take heed that no man de­ceive you, for many will come as de­liv­er­ers and will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and ru­mors of wars, be not trou­bled, for though all these things will hap­pen, the end of Je­ru­sa­lem is not yet at hand. You should not be per­turbed by famines or earth­quakes; nei­ther should you be con­cerned when you are de­liv­ered up to the civil au­thor­i­ties and are per­se­cuted for the sake of the gospel. You will be thrown out of the syn­a­gogue and put in prison for my sake, and some of you will be killed. When you are brought up be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers, it shall be for a tes­ti­mony of your faith and to show your stead­fast­ness in the gospel of the king­dom. And when you stand be­fore judges, be not anx­ious be­fore­hand as to what you should say, for the spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should an­swer your ad­ver­saries. In these days of tra­vail, even your own kins­folk, un­der the lead­er­ship of those who have re­jected the Son of Man, will de­liver you up to prison and death. For a time you may be hated by all men for my sake, but even in these per­se­cu­tions I will not for­sake you; my spirit will not desert you. Be pa­tient! doubt not that this gospel of the king­dom will tri­umph over all en­e­mies and, even­tu­ally, be pro­claimed to all na­tions.”

• unconcerned if all things earthly crash

176:3.2“And even you, Thomas, fail to com­pre­hend what I have been say­ing. Have I not all this time taught you that your con­nec­tion with the king­dom is spir­i­tual and in­di­vid­ual, wholly a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the spirit by the faith-re­al­iza­tion that you are a son of God? What more shall I say? The down­fall of na­tions, the crash of em­pires, the de­struc­tion of the un­be­liev­ing Jews, the end of an age, even the end of the world, what have these things to do with one who be­lieves this gospel, and who has hid his life in the surety of the eter­nal king­dom? You who are God-know­ing and gospel-be­liev­ing have al­ready re­ceived the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. Since your lives have been lived in the spirit and for the Fa­ther, noth­ing can be of se­ri­ous con­cern to you. King­dom builders, the ac­cred­ited cit­i­zens of the heav­enly worlds, are not to be dis­turbed by tem­po­ral up­heavals or per­turbed by ter­res­trial cat­a­clysms. What does it mat­ter to you who be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom if na­tions over­turn, the age ends, or all things vis­i­ble crash, since you know that your life is the gift of the Son, and that it is eter­nally se­cure in the Fa­ther? Hav­ing lived the tem­po­ral life by faith and hav­ing yielded the fruits of the spirit as the righ­teous­ness of lov­ing ser­vice for your fel­lows, you can con­fi­dently look for­ward to the next step in the eter­nal ca­reer with the same sur­vival faith that has car­ried you through your first and earthly ad­ven­ture in son­ship with God.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

176:3.7Truth is liv­ing; the Spirit of Truth is ever lead­ing the chil­dren of light into new realms of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and di­vine ser­vice. You are not given truth to crys­tal­lize into set­tled, safe, and hon­ored forms. Your rev­e­la­tion of truth must be so en­hanced by pass­ing through your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence that new beauty and ac­tual spir­i­tual gains will be dis­closed to all who be­hold your spir­i­tual fruits and in con­se­quence thereof are led to glo­rify the Fa­ther who is in heaven. Only those faith­ful ser­vants who thus grow in the knowl­edge of the truth, and who thereby de­velop the ca­pac­ity for di­vine ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties, can ever hope to “en­ter fully into the joy of their Lord.” What a sorry sight for suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus to say, re­gard­ing their stew­ard­ship of di­vine truth: “Here, Mas­ter, is the truth you com­mit­ted to us a hun­dred or a thou­sand years ago. We have lost noth­ing; we have faith­fully pre­served all you gave us; we have al­lowed no changes to be made in that which you taught us; here is the truth you gave us.” But such a plea con­cern­ing spir­i­tual in­do­lence will not jus­tify the bar­ren stew­ard of truth in the pres­ence of the Mas­ter. In ac­cor­dance with the truth com­mit­ted to your hands will the Mas­ter of truth re­quire a reck­on­ing.

• fulfill threefold duty to man, God, and fellowship

178:1.5As mor­tal and ma­te­rial men, you are in­deed cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms, and you should be good cit­i­zens, all the bet­ter for hav­ing be­come re­born spirit sons of the heav­enly king­dom. As faith-en­light­ened and spirit-lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom of heaven, you face a dou­ble re­spon­si­bil­ity of duty to man and duty to God while you vol­un­tar­ily as­sume a third and sa­cred obli­ga­tion: ser­vice to the broth­er­hood of God-know­ing be­liev­ers.

• unconcerned if all things earthly crash

178:3.4“When you see this city de­stroyed, for­get not that you have en­tered al­ready upon the eter­nal life of end­less ser­vice in the ever-ad­vanc­ing king­dom of heaven, even of the heaven of heav­ens. You should know that in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse and in mine are many abodes, and that there awaits the chil­dren of light the rev­e­la­tion of cities whose builder is God and worlds whose habit of life is righ­teous­ness and joy in the truth. I have brought the king­dom of heaven to you here on earth, but I de­clare that all of you who by faith en­ter therein and re­main therein by the liv­ing ser­vice of truth, shall surely as­cend to the worlds on high and sit with me in the spirit king­dom of our Fa­ther. But first must you gird your­selves and com­plete the work which you have be­gun with me. You must first pass through much tribu­la­tion and en­dure many sor­rows—and these tri­als are even now upon us—and when you have fin­ished your work on earth, you shall come to my joy, even as I have fin­ished my Fa­ther’s work on earth and am about to re­turn to his em­brace.”

• exist only to love one another as Jesus loved us

180:2.5When there ex­ists this liv­ing con­nec­tion be­tween di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity, if hu­man­ity should thought­lessly and ig­no­rantly pray for self­ish ease and vain­glo­ri­ous ac­com­plish­ments, there could be only one di­vine an­swer: more and in­creased bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit on the stems of the liv­ing branches. When the branch of the vine is alive, there can be only one an­swer to all its pe­ti­tions: in­creased grape bear­ing. In fact, the branch ex­ists only for, and can do noth­ing ex­cept, fruit bear­ing, yield­ing grapes. So does the true be­liever ex­ist only for the pur­pose of bear­ing the fruits of the spirit: to love man as he him­self has been loved by God—that we should love one an­other, even as Je­sus has loved us.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

180:4.2“In just a few hours the world will see me no more; but you will con­tinue to know me in your hearts even un­til I send you this new teacher, the Spirit of Truth. As I have lived with you in per­son, then shall I live in you; I shall be one with your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the spirit king­dom. And when this has come to pass, you shall surely know that I am in the Fa­ther, and that, while your life is hid with the Fa­ther in me, I am also in you. I have loved the Fa­ther and have kept his word; you have loved me, and you will keep my word. As my Fa­ther has given me of his spirit, so will I give you of my spirit. And this Spirit of Truth which I will be­stow upon you shall guide and com­fort you and shall even­tu­ally lead you into all truth.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

180:4.5Je­sus looked down upon them all, smiled, and said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, I am go­ing away, go­ing back to my Fa­ther. In a lit­tle while you will not see me as you do here, as flesh and blood. In a very short time I am go­ing to send you my spirit, just like me ex­cept for this ma­te­rial body. This new teacher is the Spirit of Truth who will live with each one of you, in your hearts, and so will all the chil­dren of light be made one and be drawn to­ward one an­other. And in this very man­ner will my Fa­ther and I be able to live in the souls of each one of you and also in the hearts of all other men who love us and make that love real in their ex­pe­ri­ences by lov­ing one an­other, even as I am now lov­ing you.”

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

180:6.3“I have yet much to say to you, but you can­not stand any more just now. Al­beit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he shall even­tu­ally guide you into all truth as you pass through the many abodes in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse.

• indwelt by Spirit of Truth

181:1.1When the eleven had taken their seats, Je­sus stood and ad­dressed them: “As long as I am with you in the flesh, I can be but one in­di­vid­ual in your midst or in the en­tire world. But when I have been de­liv­ered from this in­vest­ment of mor­tal na­ture, I will be able to re­turn as a spirit in­dweller of each of you and of all other be­liev­ers in this gospel of the king­dom. In this way the Son of Man will be­come a spir­i­tual in­car­na­tion in the souls of all true be­liev­ers.

181:1.2“When I have re­turned to live in you and work through you, I can the bet­ter lead you on through this life and guide you through the many abodes in the fu­ture life in the heaven of heav­ens. Life in the Fa­ther’s eter­nal cre­ation is not an end­less rest of idle­ness and self­ish ease but rather a cease­less pro­gres­sion in grace, truth, and glory. Each of the many, many sta­tions in my Fa­ther’s house is a stop­ping place, a life de­signed to pre­pare you for the next one ahead. And so will the chil­dren of light go on from glory to glory un­til they at­tain the di­vine es­tate wherein they are spir­i­tu­ally per­fected even as the Fa­ther is per­fect in all things.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

181:2.17“And now, An­drew, since you are the chief of your breth­ren by au­thor­ity of my ap­point­ment, and since you have thus served as my per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and as I am about to leave you and go to my Fa­ther, I re­lease you from all re­spon­si­bil­ity as re­gards these tem­po­ral and ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs. From now on you may ex­er­cise no ju­ris­dic­tion over your breth­ren ex­cept that which you have earned in your ca­pac­ity as spir­i­tual leader, and which your breth­ren there­fore freely rec­og­nize. From this hour you may ex­er­cise no au­thor­ity over your breth­ren un­less they re­store such ju­ris­dic­tion to you by their def­i­nite leg­isla­tive ac­tion af­ter I shall have gone to the Fa­ther. But this re­lease from re­spon­si­bil­ity as the ad­min­is­tra­tive head of this group does not in any man­ner lessen your moral re­spon­si­bil­ity to do ev­ery­thing in your power to hold your breth­ren to­gether with a firm and lov­ing hand dur­ing the try­ing time just ahead, those days which must in­ter­vene be­tween my de­par­ture in the flesh and the send­ing of the new teacher who will live in your hearts, and who ul­ti­mately will lead you into all truth. As I pre­pare to leave you, I would lib­er­ate you from all ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­ity which had its in­cep­tion and au­thor­ity in my pres­ence as one among you. Hence­forth I shall ex­er­cise only spir­i­tual au­thor­ity over you and among you.

• promote peace and harmony among various groups of sincere believers

181:2.18“If your breth­ren de­sire to re­tain you as their coun­selor, I di­rect that you should, in all mat­ters tem­po­ral and spir­i­tual, do your ut­most to pro­mote peace and har­mony among the var­i­ous groups of sin­cere gospel be­liev­ers. Ded­i­cate the re­main­der of your life to pro­mot­ing the prac­ti­cal as­pects of broth­erly love among your breth­ren. Be kind to my broth­ers in the flesh when they come fully to be­lieve this gospel; man­i­fest lov­ing and im­par­tial de­vo­tion to the Greeks in the West and to Ab­ner in the East. Al­though these, my apos­tles, are soon go­ing to be scat­tered to the four cor­ners of the earth, there to pro­claim the good news of the sal­va­tion of son­ship with God, you are to hold them to­gether dur­ing the try­ing time just ahead, that sea­son of in­tense test­ing dur­ing which you must learn to be­lieve this gospel with­out my per­sonal pres­ence while you pa­tiently await the ar­rival of the new teacher, the Spirit of Truth. And so, An­drew, though it may not fall to you to do the great works as seen by men, be con­tent to be the teacher and coun­selor of those who do such things. Go on with your work on earth to the end, and then shall you con­tinue this min­istry in the eter­nal king­dom, for have I not many times told you that I have other sheep not of this flock?”

• one with Jesus
• promote peace and harmony among various groups of sincere believers

182:1.6“And now, my Fa­ther, I would pray not only for these eleven men but also for all oth­ers who now be­lieve, or who may here­after be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom through the word of their fu­ture min­istry. I want them all to be one, even as you and I are one. You are in me and I am in you, and I de­sire that these be­liev­ers like­wise be in us; that both of our spir­its in­dwell them. If my chil­dren are one as we are one, and if they love one an­other as I have loved them, all men will then be­lieve that I came forth from you and be will­ing to re­ceive the rev­e­la­tion of truth and glory which I have made. The glory which you gave me I have re­vealed to these be­liev­ers. As you have lived with me in spirit, so have I lived with them in the flesh. As you have been one with me, so have I been one with them, and so will the new teacher ever be one with them and in them. And all this have I done that my breth­ren in the flesh may know that the Fa­ther loves them even as does the Son, and that you love them even as you love me. Fa­ther, work with me to save these be­liev­ers that they may pres­ently come to be with me in glory and then go on to join you in the Par­a­dise em­brace. Those who serve with me in hu­mil­i­a­tion, I would have with me in glory so that they may see all you have given into my hands as the eter­nal har­vest of the seed sow­ing of time in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. I long to show my earthly breth­ren the glory I had with you be­fore the found­ing of this world. This world knows very lit­tle of you, righ­teous Fa­ther, but I know you, and I have made you known to these be­liev­ers, and they will make known your name to other gen­er­a­tions. And now I prom­ise them that you will be with them in the world even as you have been with me—even so.”

• delivered from isolation
• one with Jesus

184:4.6These are the mo­ments of the Mas­ter’s great­est vic­to­ries in all his long and event­ful ca­reer as maker, up­holder, and sav­ior of a vast and far-flung uni­verse. Hav­ing lived to the full a life of re­veal­ing God to man, Je­sus is now en­gaged in mak­ing a new and un­prece­dented rev­e­la­tion of man to God. Je­sus is now re­veal­ing to the worlds the fi­nal tri­umph over all fears of crea­ture per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion. The Son of Man has fi­nally achieved the re­al­iza­tion of iden­tity as the Son of God. Je­sus does not hes­i­tate to as­sert that he and the Fa­ther are one; and on the ba­sis of the fact and truth of that su­preme and su­per­nal ex­pe­ri­ence, he ad­mon­ishes ev­ery king­dom be­liever to be­come one with him even as he and his Fa­ther are one. The liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­li­gion of Je­sus thus be­comes the sure and cer­tain tech­nique whereby the spir­i­tu­ally iso­lated and cos­mi­cally lonely mor­tals of earth are en­abled to es­cape per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion, with all its con­se­quences of fear and as­so­ci­ated feel­ings of help­less­ness. In the fra­ter­nal re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven the faith sons of God find fi­nal de­liv­er­ance from the iso­la­tion of the self, both per­sonal and plan­e­tary. The God-know­ing be­liever in­creas­ingly ex­pe­ri­ences the ec­stasy and grandeur of spir­i­tual so­cial­iza­tion on a uni­verse scale—cit­i­zen­ship on high in as­so­ci­a­tion with the eter­nal re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine des­tiny of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment.

• have same eternal life which raised Jesus from the dead

190:0.2All this power which is in­her­ent in Je­sus—the en­dow­ment of life—and which en­abled him to rise from the dead, is the very gift of eter­nal life which he be­stows upon king­dom be­liev­ers, and which even now makes cer­tain their res­ur­rec­tion from the bonds of nat­u­ral death.

• have same eternal life which raised Jesus from the dead

193:1.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life, but this will avail you noth­ing un­less you are first born of the eter­nal spirit, thereby com­ing to pos­sess, by faith, the gift of eter­nal life. If you are the faith sons of my Fa­ther, you shall never die; you shall not per­ish. The gospel of the king­dom has taught you that all men are the sons of God. And this good news con­cern­ing the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his chil­dren on earth must be car­ried to all the world. The time has come when you wor­ship God nei­ther on Ger­izim nor at Je­ru­sa­lem, but where you are, as you are, in spirit and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God to all who be­lieve they are his sons. But be not de­ceived; while sal­va­tion is the free gift of God and is be­stowed upon all who ac­cept it by faith, there fol­lows the ex­pe­ri­ence of bear­ing the fruits of this spirit life as it is lived in the flesh. The ac­cep­tance of the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God im­plies that you also freely ac­cept the as­so­ci­ated truth of the broth­er­hood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more than your neigh­bor, whom the Fa­ther re­quires you to love as your­self. Your brother, be­ing of your own fam­ily, you will not only love with a fam­ily af­fec­tion, but you will also serve as you would serve your­self. And you will thus love and serve your brother be­cause you, be­ing my breth­ren, have been thus loved and served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news to all crea­tures of ev­ery race, tribe, and na­tion. My spirit shall go be­fore you, and I will be with you al­ways.”

• trust and confide in one another

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

• Jesus lives anew in each

194:2.6Next, the Spirit of Truth came to help the be­liever to wit­ness to the re­al­i­ties of Je­sus’ teach­ings and his life as he lived it in the flesh, and as he now again lives it anew and afresh in the in­di­vid­ual be­liever of each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion of the spirit-filled sons of God.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

194:2.7Thus it ap­pears that the Spirit of Truth comes re­ally to lead all be­liev­ers into all truth, into the ex­pand­ing knowl­edge of the ex­pe­ri­ence of the liv­ing and grow­ing spir­i­tual con­scious­ness of the re­al­ity of eter­nal and as­cend­ing son­ship with God.

• Jesus lives anew in each

194:3.1Many queer and strange teach­ings be­came as­so­ci­ated with the early nar­ra­tives of the day of Pen­te­cost. In sub­se­quent times the events of this day, on which the Spirit of Truth, the new teacher, came to dwell with man­kind, have be­come con­fused with the fool­ish out­breaks of ram­pant emo­tion­al­ism. The chief mis­sion of this out­poured spirit of the Fa­ther and the Son is to teach men about the truths of the Fa­ther’s love and the Son’s mercy. These are the truths of di­vin­ity which men can com­pre­hend more fully than all the other di­vine traits of char­ac­ter. The Spirit of Truth is con­cerned pri­mar­ily with the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s spirit na­ture and the Son’s moral char­ac­ter. The Cre­ator Son, in the flesh, re­vealed God to men; the Spirit of Truth, in the heart, re­veals the Cre­ator Son to men. When man yields the “fruits of the spirit” in his life, he is sim­ply show­ing forth the traits which the Mas­ter man­i­fested in his own earthly life. When Je­sus was on earth, he lived his life as one per­son­al­ity—Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. As the in­dwelling spirit of the “new teacher,” the Mas­ter has, since Pen­te­cost, been able to live his life anew in the ex­pe­ri­ence of ev­ery truth-taught be­liever.

• Spirit of Truth draws together, leads into all truth

194:3.8The com­ing of the Spirit of Truth on Pen­te­cost made pos­si­ble a re­li­gion which is nei­ther rad­i­cal nor con­ser­va­tive; it is nei­ther the old nor the new; it is to be dom­i­nated nei­ther by the old nor the young. The fact of Je­sus’ earthly life pro­vides a fixed point for the an­chor of time, while the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth pro­vides for the ev­er­last­ing ex­pan­sion and end­less growth of the re­li­gion which he lived and the gospel which he pro­claimed. The spirit guides into all truth; he is the teacher of an ex­pand­ing and al­ways-grow­ing re­li­gion of end­less prog­ress and di­vine un­fold­ing. This new teacher will be for­ever un­fold­ing to the truth-seek­ing be­liever that which was so di­vinely folded up in the per­son and na­ture of the Son of Man.

• common people hear gladly

196:1.4The com­mon peo­ple heard Je­sus gladly, and they will again re­spond to the pre­sen­ta­tion of his sin­cere hu­man life of con­se­crated re­li­gious mo­ti­va­tion if such truths shall again be pro­claimed to the world. The peo­ple heard him gladly be­cause he was one of them, an un­pre­ten­tious lay­man; the world’s great­est re­li­gious teacher was in­deed a lay­man.

• trust God as Jesus trusted God

196:1.5It should not be the aim of king­dom be­liev­ers lit­er­ally to im­i­tate the out­ward life of Je­sus in the flesh but rather to share his faith; to trust God as he trusted God and to be­lieve in men as he be­lieved in men. Je­sus never ar­gued about ei­ther the fa­ther­hood of God or the broth­er­hood of men; he was a liv­ing il­lus­tra­tion of the one and a pro­found dem­on­stra­tion of the other.

103:5.12When a mem­ber of a so­cial re­li­gious group has com­plied with the re­quire­ments of such a group, he should be en­cour­aged to en­joy re­li­gious lib­erty in the full ex­pres­sion of his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the truths of re­li­gious be­lief and the facts of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The se­cu­rity of a re­li­gious group de­pends on spir­i­tual unity, not on the­o­log­i­cal uni­for­mity. A re­li­gious group should be able to en­joy the lib­erty of free­think­ing with­out hav­ing to be­come “free­thinkers.” There is great hope for any church that wor­ships the liv­ing God, val­i­dates the broth­er­hood of man, and dares to re­move all creedal pres­sure from its mem­bers.

5:4.3God is not only the de­ter­miner of des­tiny; he is man’s eter­nal des­ti­na­tion. All non­re­li­gious hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties seek to bend the uni­verse to the dis­tort­ing ser­vice of self; the truly re­li­gious in­di­vid­ual seeks to iden­tify the self with the uni­verse and then to ded­i­cate the ac­tiv­i­ties of this uni­fied self to the ser­vice of the uni­verse fam­ily of fel­low be­ings, hu­man and super­hu­man.

182:1.4“I have man­i­fested you to the men whom you chose from the world and gave to me. They are yours—as all life is in your hands—you gave them to me, and I have lived among them, teach­ing them the way of life, and they have be­lieved. These men are learn­ing that all I have comes from you, and that the life I live in the flesh is to make known my Fa­ther to the worlds. The truth which you have given to me I have re­vealed to them. These, my friends and am­bas­sadors, have sin­cerely willed to re­ceive your word. I have told them that I came forth from you, that you sent me into this world, and that I am about to re­turn to you. Fa­ther, I do pray for these cho­sen men. And I pray for them not as I would pray for the world, but as for those whom I have cho­sen out of the world to rep­re­sent me to the world af­ter I have re­turned to your work, even as I have rep­re­sented you in this world dur­ing my so­journ in the flesh. These men are mine; you gave them to me; but all things which are mine are ever yours, and all that which was yours you have now caused to be mine. You have been ex­alted in me, and I now pray that I may be hon­ored in these men. I can no longer be in this world; I am about to re­turn to the work you have given me to do. I must leave these men be­hind to rep­re­sent us and our king­dom among men. Fa­ther, keep these men faith­ful as I pre­pare to yield up my life in the flesh. Help these, my friends, to be one in spirit, even as we are one. As long as I could be with them, I could watch over them and guide them, but now am I about to go away. Be near them, Fa­ther, un­til we can send the new teacher to com­fort and strengthen them.

40:6.1The mor­tal races stand as the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the low­est or­der of in­tel­li­gent and per­sonal cre­ation. You mor­tals are di­vinely beloved, and ev­ery one of you may choose to ac­cept the cer­tain des­tiny of a glo­ri­ous ex­pe­ri­ence, but you are not yet by na­ture of the di­vine or­der; you are wholly mor­tal. You will be reck­oned as as­cend­ing sons the in­stant fu­sion takes place, but the sta­tus of the mor­tals of time and space is that of faith sons prior to the event of the fi­nal amal­ga­ma­tion of the sur­viv­ing mor­tal soul with some type of eter­nal and im­mor­tal spirit.

40:6.2It is a solemn and su­per­nal fact that such lowly and ma­te­rial crea­tures as Uran­tia hu­man be­ings are the sons of God, faith chil­dren of the High­est. “Be­hold, what man­ner of love the Fa­ther has be­stowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.” “As many as re­ceived him, to them gave he the power to rec­og­nize that they are the sons of God.” While “it does not yet ap­pear what you shall be,” even now “you are the faith sons of God”; “for you have not re­ceived the spirit of bond­age again to fear, but you have re­ceived the spirit of son­ship, whereby you cry, ‘our Fa­ther.’” Spoke the prophet of old in the name of the eter­nal God: “Even to them will I give in my house a place and a name bet­ter than sons; I will give them an ev­er­last­ing name, one that shall not be cut off.” “And be­cause you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts.”

40:6.3All evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of mor­tal habi­ta­tion har­bor these faith sons of God, sons of grace and mercy, mor­tal be­ings be­long­ing to the di­vine fam­ily and ac­cord­ingly called the sons of God. Uran­tia mor­tals are en­ti­tled to re­gard them­selves as be­ing the sons of God be­cause:

40:6.41. You are sons of spir­i­tual prom­ise, faith sons; you have ac­cepted the sta­tus of son­ship. You be­lieve in the re­al­ity of your son­ship, and thus does your son­ship with God be­come eter­nally real.

40:6.52. A Cre­ator Son of God be­came one of you; he is your el­der brother in fact; and if in spirit you be­come truly re­lated broth­ers of Christ, the vic­to­ri­ous Mi­chael, then in spirit must you also be sons of that Fa­ther which you have in com­mon—even the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of all.

40:6.63. You are sons be­cause the spirit of a Son has been poured out upon you, has been freely and cer­tainly be­stowed upon all Uran­tia races. This spirit ever draws you to­ward the di­vine Son, who is its source, and to­ward the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, who is the source of that di­vine Son.

40:6.74. Of his di­vine free-will­ness, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has given you your crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties. You have been en­dowed with a mea­sure of that di­vine spon­tane­ity of free­will ac­tion which God shares with all who may be­come his sons.

40:6.85. There dwells within you a frag­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and you are thus di­rectly re­lated to the di­vine Fa­ther of all the Sons of God.

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.

195:10.5In win­ning souls for the Mas­ter, it is not the first mile of com­pul­sion, duty, or con­ven­tion that will trans­form man and his world, but rather the sec­ond mile of free ser­vice and lib­erty-lov­ing de­vo­tion that be­to­kens the Je­su­so­nian reach­ing forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep him on un­der spir­i­tual guid­ance to­ward the higher and di­vine goal of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Chris­tian­ity even now will­ingly goes the first mile, but man­kind lan­guishes and stum­bles along in moral dark­ness be­cause there are so few gen­uine sec­ond-mil­ers—so few pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus who re­ally live and love as he taught his dis­ci­ples to live and love and serve.

142:5.2“As to my mes­sage and the teach­ing of my dis­ci­ples, you should judge them by their fruits. If we pro­claim to you the truths of the spirit, the spirit will wit­ness in your hearts that our mes­sage is gen­uine. Con­cern­ing the king­dom and your as­sur­ance of ac­cep­tance by the heav­enly Fa­ther, let me ask what fa­ther among you who is a wor­thy and kind­hearted fa­ther would keep his son in anx­i­ety or sus­pense re­gard­ing his sta­tus in the fam­ily or his place of se­cu­rity in the af­fec­tions of his fa­ther’s heart? Do you earth fa­thers take plea­sure in tor­tur­ing your chil­dren with un­cer­tainty about their place of abid­ing love in your hu­man hearts? Nei­ther does your Fa­ther in heaven leave his faith chil­dren of the spirit in doubt­ful un­cer­tainty as to their po­si­tion in the king­dom. If you re­ceive God as your Fa­ther, then in­deed and in truth are you the sons of God. And if you are sons, then are you se­cure in the po­si­tion and stand­ing of all that con­cerns eter­nal and di­vine son­ship. If you be­lieve my words, you thereby be­lieve in Him who sent me, and by thus be­liev­ing in the Fa­ther, you have made your sta­tus in heav­enly cit­i­zen­ship sure. If you do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, you shall never fail in the at­tain­ment of the eter­nal life of prog­ress in the di­vine king­dom.

142:5.3“The Su­preme Spirit shall bear wit­ness with your spir­its that you are truly the chil­dren of God. And if you are the sons of God, then have you been born of the spirit of God; and whoso­ever has been born of the spirit has in him­self the power to over­come all doubt, and this is the vic­tory that over­comes all un­cer­tainty, even your faith.

• must function in society as individuals, not as groups

99:2.3Re­li­gion­ists must func­tion in so­ci­ety, in in­dus­try, and in pol­i­tics as in­di­vid­u­als, not as groups, par­ties, or in­sti­tu­tions. A re­li­gious group which pre­sumes to func­tion as such, apart from re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties, im­me­di­ately be­comes a po­lit­i­cal party, an eco­nomic or­ga­ni­za­tion, or a so­cial in­sti­tu­tion. Re­li­gious col­lec­tivism must con­fine its ef­forts to the fur­ther­ance of re­li­gious causes.

• must function in society as individuals, not as groups

99:3.15Re­li­gion­ists, as a group, must never con­cern them­selves with any­thing but re­li­gion, al­beit any one such re­li­gion­ist, as an in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen, may be­come the out­stand­ing leader of some so­cial, eco­nomic, or po­lit­i­cal re­con­struc­tion move­ment.

• must not try to mold others to some pattern

140:8.26Je­sus knew men were dif­fer­ent, and he so taught his apos­tles. He con­stantly ex­horted them to re­frain from try­ing to mold the dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers ac­cord­ing to some set pat­tern. He sought to al­low each soul to de­velop in its own way, a per­fect­ing and sep­a­rate in­di­vid­ual be­fore God. In an­swer to one of Pe­ter’s many ques­tions, the Mas­ter said: “I want to set men free so that they can start out afresh as lit­tle chil­dren upon the new and bet­ter life.” Je­sus al­ways in­sisted that true good­ness must be un­con­scious, in be­stow­ing char­ity not al­low­ing the left hand to know what the right hand does.

• fainthearted believers will turn away

152:5.2Of the five thou­sand who were mirac­u­lously fed, and who, when their stom­achs were full and their hearts empty, would have made him king, only about five hun­dred per­sisted in fol­low­ing af­ter him. But be­fore these re­ceived word that he was back in Beth­saida, Je­sus asked An­drew to as­sem­ble the twelve apos­tles and their as­so­ciates, in­clud­ing the women, say­ing, “I de­sire to speak with them.” And when all were ready, Je­sus said:

• fainthearted believers will turn away

153:5.3It was a lit­tle af­ter mid­night when Je­sus came down from the up­per cham­ber and stood among the twelve and their as­so­ciates, num­ber­ing about thirty in all. He said: “I rec­og­nize that this sift­ing of the king­dom dis­tresses you, but it is un­avoid­able. Still, af­ter all the train­ing you have had, was there any good rea­son why you should stum­ble at my words? Why is it that you are filled with fear and con­ster­na­tion when you see the king­dom be­ing di­vested of these luke­warm mul­ti­tudes and these half­hearted dis­ci­ples? Why do you grieve when the new day is dawn­ing for the shin­ing forth in new glory of the spir­i­tual teach­ings of the king­dom of heaven? If you find it dif­fi­cult to en­dure this test, what, then, will you do when the Son of Man must re­turn to the Fa­ther? When and how will you pre­pare your­selves for the time when I as­cend to the place whence I came to this world?

• languish in futile yearning from not obeying truth
• too vacillating and indefinite in teaching conduct

155:1.3Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach the twenty-four, say­ing: “The hea­then are not with­out ex­cuse when they rage at us. Be­cause their out­look is small and nar­row, they are able to con­cen­trate their en­er­gies en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. Their goal is near and more or less vis­i­ble; where­fore do they strive with valiant and ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion. You who have pro­fessed en­trance into the king­dom of heaven are al­to­gether too vac­il­lat­ing and in­def­i­nite in your teach­ing con­duct. The hea­then strike di­rectly for their ob­jec­tives; you are guilty of too much chronic yearn­ing. If you de­sire to en­ter the king­dom, why do you not take it by spir­i­tual as­sault even as the hea­then take a city they lay siege to? You are hardly wor­thy of the king­dom when your ser­vice con­sists so largely in an at­ti­tude of re­gret­ting the past, whin­ing over the pres­ent, and vainly hop­ing for the fu­ture. Why do the hea­then rage? Be­cause they know not the truth. Why do you lan­guish in fu­tile yearn­ing? Be­cause you obey not the truth. Cease your use­less yearn­ing and go forth bravely do­ing that which con­cerns the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom.

• necessity to take gospel to people shows failure to live righteous life

155:1.5“Let me em­phat­i­cally state this eter­nal truth: If you, by truth co-or­di­na­tion, learn to ex­em­plify in your lives this beau­ti­ful whole­ness of righ­teous­ness, your fel­low men will then seek af­ter you that they may gain what you have so ac­quired. The mea­sure where­with truth seek­ers are drawn to you rep­re­sents the mea­sure of your truth en­dow­ment, your righ­teous­ness. The ex­tent to which you have to go with your mes­sage to the peo­ple is, in a way, the mea­sure of your fail­ure to live the whole or righ­teous life, the truth-co-or­di­nated life.”

159:3.1At Edrei, where Thomas and his as­so­ciates la­bored, Je­sus spent a day and a night and, in the course of the evening’s dis­cus­sion, gave ex­pres­sion to the prin­ci­ples which should guide those who preach truth, and which should ac­ti­vate all who teach the gospel of the king­dom. Sum­ma­rized and re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus taught:

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.”

159:3.3In bring­ing men into the king­dom, do not lessen or de­stroy their self-re­spect. While over­much self-re­spect may de­stroy proper hu­mil­ity and end in pride, con­ceit, and ar­ro­gance, the loss of self-re­spect of­ten ends in paral­y­sis of the will. It is the pur­pose of this gospel to re­store self-re­spect to those who have lost it and to re­strain it in those who have it. Make not the mis­take of only con­demn­ing the wrongs in the lives of your pupils; re­mem­ber also to ac­cord gen­er­ous rec­og­ni­tion for the most praise­wor­thy things in their lives. For­get not that I will stop at noth­ing to re­store self-re­spect to those who have lost it, and who re­ally de­sire to re­gain it.

159:3.4Take care that you do not wound the self-re­spect of timid and fear­ful souls. Do not in­dulge in sar­casm at the ex­pense of my sim­ple-minded breth­ren. Be not cyn­i­cal with my fear-rid­den chil­dren. Idle­ness is de­struc­tive of self-re­spect; there­fore, ad­mon­ish your breth­ren ever to keep busy at their cho­sen tasks, and put forth ev­ery ef­fort to se­cure work for those who find them­selves with­out em­ploy­ment.

159:3.5Never be guilty of such un­wor­thy tac­tics as en­deav­or­ing to frighten men and women into the king­dom. A lov­ing fa­ther does not frighten his chil­dren into yield­ing obe­di­ence to his just re­quire­ments.

159:3.6Some­time the chil­dren of the king­dom will re­al­ize that strong feel­ings of emo­tion are not equiv­a­lent to the lead­ings of the di­vine spirit. To be strongly and strangely im­pressed to do some­thing or to go to a cer­tain place, does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that such im­pulses are the lead­ings of the in­dwelling spirit.

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.

• only battle is against doubt

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.

159:3.9In preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom, you are sim­ply teach­ing friend­ship with God. And this fel­low­ship will ap­peal alike to men and women in that both will find that which most truly sat­is­fies their char­ac­ter­is­tic long­ings and ide­als. Tell my chil­dren that I am not only ten­der of their feel­ings and pa­tient with their frail­ties, but that I am also ruth­less with sin and in­tol­er­ant of in­iq­uity. I am in­deed meek and hum­ble in the pres­ence of my Fa­ther, but I am equally and re­lent­lessly in­ex­orable where there is de­lib­er­ate evil-do­ing and sin­ful re­bel­lion against the will of my Fa­ther in heaven.

159:3.10You shall not por­tray your teacher as a man of sor­rows. Fu­ture gen­er­a­tions shall know also the ra­di­ance of our joy, the buoy­ance of our good will, and the in­spi­ra­tion of our good hu­mor. We pro­claim a mes­sage of good news which is in­fec­tious in its trans­form­ing power. Our re­li­gion is throb­bing with new life and new mean­ings. Those who ac­cept this teach­ing are filled with joy and in their hearts are con­strained to re­joice ev­er­more. In­creas­ing hap­pi­ness is al­ways the ex­pe­ri­ence of all who are cer­tain about God.

159:3.11Teach all be­liev­ers to avoid lean­ing upon the in­se­cure props of false sym­pa­thy. You can­not de­velop strong char­ac­ters out of the in­dul­gence of self-pity; hon­estly en­deavor to avoid the de­cep­tive in­flu­ence of mere fel­low­ship in mis­ery. Ex­tend sym­pa­thy to the brave and coura­geous while you with­hold over­much pity from those cow­ardly souls who only half­heart­edly stand up be­fore the tri­als of liv­ing. Of­fer not con­so­la­tion to those who lie down be­fore their trou­bles with­out a strug­gle. Sym­pa­thize not with your fel­lows merely that they may sym­pa­thize with you in re­turn.

159:3.12When my chil­dren once be­come self-con­scious of the as­sur­ance of the di­vine pres­ence, such a faith will ex­pand the mind, en­no­ble the soul, re­in­force the per­son­al­ity, aug­ment the hap­pi­ness, deepen the spirit per­cep­tion, and en­hance the power to love and be loved.

159:3.13Teach all be­liev­ers that those who en­ter the king­dom are not thereby ren­dered im­mune to the ac­ci­dents of time or to the or­di­nary catas­tro­phes of na­ture. Be­liev­ing the gospel will not pre­vent get­ting into trou­ble, but it will in­sure that you shall be un­afraid when trou­ble does over­take you. If you dare to be­lieve in me and whole­heart­edly pro­ceed to fol­low af­ter me, you shall most cer­tainly by so do­ing en­ter upon the sure path­way to trou­ble. I do not prom­ise to de­liver you from the wa­ters of ad­ver­sity, but I do prom­ise to go with you through all of them.

159:3.14And much more did Je­sus teach this group of be­liev­ers be­fore they made ready for the night’s sleep. And they who heard these say­ings trea­sured them in their hearts and did of­ten re­cite them for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion of the apos­tles and dis­ci­ples who were not pres­ent when they were spo­ken.

• only battle is against doubt

165:5.5“But in the work which is just ahead of us, and in that which re­mains for you af­ter I go to the Fa­ther, you will be griev­ously tried. You must all be on your watch against fear and doubts. Ev­ery one of you, gird up the loins of your minds and let your lamps be kept burn­ing. Keep your­selves like men who are watch­ing for their mas­ter to re­turn from the mar­riage feast so that, when he comes and knocks, you may quickly open to him. Such watch­ful ser­vants are blessed by the mas­ter who finds them faith­ful at such a great mo­ment. Then will the mas­ter make his ser­vants sit down while he him­self serves them. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you that a cri­sis is just ahead in your lives, and it be­hooves you to watch and be ready.

• children of world wiser than

169:2.1One evening Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, com­ment­ing on one of Je­sus’ state­ments, said: “Mas­ter, what did you mean when you said to­day that many of the chil­dren of the world are wiser in their gen­er­a­tion than are the chil­dren of the king­dom since they are skill­ful in mak­ing friends with the mam­mon of un­righ­teous­ness?” Je­sus an­swered:

• children of world wiser than

169:2.5“And it is in this way that the sons of this world some­times show more wis­dom in their prepa­ra­tion for the fu­ture than do the chil­dren of light. I say to you who pro­fess to be ac­quir­ing trea­sure in heaven: Take lessons from those who make friends with the mam­mon of un­righ­teous­ness, and like­wise so con­duct your lives that you make eter­nal friend­ship with the forces of righ­teous­ness in or­der that, when all things earthly fail, you shall be joy­fully re­ceived into the eter­nal habi­ta­tions.

• dependable only when gospel experienced in hearts

177:5.2This was the oc­ca­sion of Je­sus’ warn­ing his fol­low­ers to be­ware of the sup­port of the mul­ti­tude. He re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee when time and again great throngs of peo­ple en­thu­si­as­ti­cally fol­lowed them around and then just as ar­dently turned against them and re­turned to their for­mer ways of be­liev­ing and liv­ing. And then he said: “And so you must not al­low your­selves to be de­ceived by the great crowds who heard us in the tem­ple, and who seemed to be­lieve our teach­ings. These mul­ti­tudes lis­ten to the truth and be­lieve it su­per­fi­cially with their minds, but few of them per­mit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with liv­ing roots. Those who know the gospel only in the mind, and who have not ex­pe­ri­enced it in the heart, can­not be de­pended upon for sup­port when real trou­ble comes. When the rulers of the Jews reach an agree­ment to de­stroy the Son of Man, and when they strike with one ac­cord, you will see the mul­ti­tude ei­ther flee in dis­may or else stand by in silent amaze­ment while these mad­dened and blinded rulers lead the teach­ers of the gospel truth to their death. And then, when ad­ver­sity and per­se­cu­tion de­scend upon you, still oth­ers who you think love the truth will be scat­tered, and some will re­nounce the gospel and desert you. Some who have been very close to us have al­ready made up their minds to desert. You have rested to­day in prepa­ra­tion for those times which are now upon us. Watch, there­fore, and pray that on the mor­row you may be strength­ened for the days that are just ahead.”

• must not resort to physical force for kingdom

178:1.2The king­doms of this world, be­ing ma­te­rial, may of­ten find it nec­es­sary to em­ploy phys­i­cal force in the ex­e­cu­tion of their laws and for the main­te­nance of or­der. In the king­dom of heaven true be­liev­ers will not re­sort to the em­ploy­ment of phys­i­cal force. The king­dom of heaven, be­ing a spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the spirit-born sons of God, may be pro­mul­gated only by the power of the spirit. This dis­tinc­tion of pro­ce­dure refers to the re­la­tions of the king­dom of be­liev­ers to the king­doms of sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment and does not nul­lify the right of so­cial groups of be­liev­ers to main­tain or­der in their ranks and ad­min­is­ter dis­ci­pline upon un­ruly and un­wor­thy mem­bers.

178:1.3There is noth­ing in­com­pat­i­ble be­tween son­ship in the spir­i­tual king­dom and cit­i­zen­ship in the sec­u­lar or civil gov­ern­ment. It is the be­liever’s duty to ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s. There can­not be any dis­agree­ment be­tween these two re­quire­ments, the one be­ing ma­te­rial and the other spir­i­tual, un­less it should de­velop that a Cae­sar pre­sumes to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of God and de­mand that spir­i­tual homage and su­preme wor­ship be ren­dered to him. In such a case you shall wor­ship only God while you seek to en­lighten such mis­guided earthly rulers and in this way lead them also to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven. You shall not ren­der spir­i­tual wor­ship to earthly rulers; nei­ther should you em­ploy the phys­i­cal forces of earthly gov­ern­ments, whose rulers may some­time be­come be­liev­ers, in the work of fur­ther­ing the mis­sion of the spir­i­tual king­dom.

• must not resort to physical force for kingdom

178:1.6You may not wor­ship your tem­po­ral rulers, and you should not em­ploy tem­po­ral power in the fur­ther­ance of the spir­i­tual king­dom; but you should man­i­fest the righ­teous min­istry of lov­ing ser­vice to be­liev­ers and un­be­liev­ers alike. In the gospel of the king­dom there re­sides the mighty Spirit of Truth, and pres­ently I will pour out this same spirit upon all flesh. The fruits of the spirit, your sin­cere and lov­ing ser­vice, are the mighty so­cial lever to up­lift the races of dark­ness, and this Spirit of Truth will be­come your power-mul­ti­ply­ing ful­crum.

• grave danger in times of nominal acceptance of gospel

178:1.10Un­der the soon-com­ing per­se­cu­tions by those who hate this gospel of joy and lib­erty, you will thrive and the king­dom will pros­per. But you will stand in grave dan­ger in sub­se­quent times when most men will speak well of king­dom be­liev­ers and many in high places nom­i­nally ac­cept the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. Learn to be faith­ful to the king­dom even in times of peace and pros­per­ity. Tempt not the an­gels of your super­vi­sion to lead you in trou­blous ways as a lov­ing dis­ci­pline de­signed to save your ease-drift­ing souls.

• fainthearted believers will turn away

180:3.1The eleven had scarcely ceased their dis­cus­sions of the dis­course on the vine and the branches when the Mas­ter, in­di­cat­ing that he was de­sirous of speak­ing to them fur­ther and know­ing that his time was short, said: “When I have left you, be not dis­cour­aged by the en­mity of the world. Be not down­cast even when faint­hearted be­liev­ers turn against you and join hands with the en­e­mies of the king­dom. If the world shall hate you, you should re­call that it hated me even be­fore it hated you. If you were of this world, then would the world love its own, but be­cause you are not, the world re­fuses to love you. You are in this world, but your lives are not to be world­like. I have cho­sen you out of the world to rep­re­sent the spirit of an­other world even to this world from which you have been cho­sen. But al­ways re­mem­ber the words I have spo­ken to you: The ser­vant is not greater than his mas­ter. If they dare to per­se­cute me, they will also per­se­cute you. If my words of­fend the un­be­liev­ers, so also will your words of­fend the un­godly. And all of this will they do to you be­cause they be­lieve not in me nor in Him who sent me; so will you suf­fer many things for the sake of my gospel. But when you en­dure these tribu­la­tions, you should re­call that I also suf­fered be­fore you for the sake of this gospel of the heav­enly king­dom.

180:3.2“Many of those who will as­sail you are ig­no­rant of the light of heaven, but this is not true of some who now per­se­cute us. If we had not taught them the truth, they might do many strange things with­out falling un­der con­dem­na­tion, but now, since they have known the light and pre­sumed to re­ject it, they have no ex­cuse for their at­ti­tude. He who hates me hates my Fa­ther. It can­not be oth­er­wise; the light which would save you if ac­cepted can only con­demn you if it is know­ingly re­jected. And what have I done to these men that they should hate me with such a ter­ri­ble ha­tred? Noth­ing, save to of­fer them fel­low­ship on earth and sal­va­tion in heaven. But have you not read in the Scrip­ture the say­ing: ‘And they hated me with­out a cause’?

180:3.3“But I will not leave you alone in the world. Very soon, af­ter I have gone, I will send you a spirit helper. You shall have with you one who will take my place among you, one who will con­tinue to teach you the way of truth, who will even com­fort you.

180:3.4“Let not your hearts be trou­bled. You be­lieve in God; con­tinue to be­lieve also in me. Even though I must leave you, I will not be far from you. I have al­ready told you that in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse there are many tar­ry­ing-places. If this were not true, I would not have re­peat­edly told you about them. I am go­ing to re­turn to these worlds of light, sta­tions in the Fa­ther’s heaven to which you shall some­time as­cend. From these places I came into this world, and the hour is now at hand when I must re­turn to my Fa­ther’s work in the spheres on high.

180:3.5“If I thus go be­fore you into the Fa­ther’s heav­enly king­dom, so will I surely send for you that you may be with me in the places that were pre­pared for the mor­tal sons of God be­fore this world was. Even though I must leave you, I will be pres­ent with you in spirit, and even­tu­ally you shall be with me in per­son when you have as­cended to me in my uni­verse even as I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther in his greater uni­verse. And what I have told you is true and ev­er­last­ing, even though you may not fully com­pre­hend it. I go to the Fa­ther, and though you can­not now fol­low me, you shall cer­tainly fol­low me in the ages to come.”

180:3.6When Je­sus sat down, Thomas arose and said: “Mas­ter, we do not know where you are go­ing; so of course we do not know the way. But we will fol­low you this very night if you will show us the way.”

180:3.7When Je­sus heard Thomas, he an­swered: “Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man goes to the Fa­ther ex­cept through me. All who find the Fa­ther, first find me. If you know me, you know the way to the Fa­ther. And you do know me, for you have lived with me and you now see me.”

180:3.8But this teach­ing was too deep for many of the apos­tles, es­pe­cially for Philip, who, af­ter speak­ing a few words with Na­than­iel, arose and said: “Mas­ter, show us the Fa­ther, and ev­ery­thing you have said will be made plain.”

180:3.9And when Philip had spo­ken, Je­sus said: “Philip, have I been so long with you and yet you do not even now know me? Again do I de­clare: He who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther. How can you then say, Show us the Fa­ther? Do you not be­lieve that I am in the Fa­ther and the Fa­ther in me? Have I not taught you that the words which I speak are not my words but the words of the Fa­ther? I speak for the Fa­ther and not of my­self. I am in this world to do the Fa­ther’s will, and that I have done. My Fa­ther abides in me and works through me. Be­lieve me when I say that the Fa­ther is in me, and that I am in the Fa­ther, or else be­lieve me for the sake of the very life I have lived—for the work’s sake.”

180:3.10As the Mas­ter went aside to re­fresh him­self with wa­ter, the eleven en­gaged in a spir­ited dis­cus­sion of these teach­ings, and Pe­ter was be­gin­ning to de­liver him­self of an ex­tended speech when Je­sus re­turned and beck­oned them to be seated.

• will be killed by those who think they do God service

180:6.1Af­ter Pe­ter, James, John, and Mat­thew had asked the Mas­ter nu­mer­ous ques­tions, he con­tin­ued his farewell dis­course by say­ing: “And I am telling you about all this be­fore I leave you in or­der that you may be so pre­pared for what is com­ing upon you that you will not stum­ble into se­ri­ous er­ror. The au­thor­i­ties will not be con­tent with merely putting you out of the syn­a­gogues; I warn you the hour draws near when they who kill you will think they are do­ing a ser­vice to God. And all of these things they will do to you and to those whom you lead into the king­dom of heaven be­cause they do not know the Fa­ther. They have re­fused to know the Fa­ther by re­fus­ing to re­ceive me; and they refuse to re­ceive me when they re­ject you, pro­vided you have kept my new com­mand­ment that you love one an­other even as I have loved you. I am telling you in ad­vance about these things so that, when your hour comes, as mine now has, you may be strength­ened in the knowl­edge that all was known to me, and that my spirit shall be with you in all your suf­fer­ings for my sake and the gospel’s. It was for this pur­pose that I have been talk­ing so plainly to you from the very be­gin­ning. I have even warned you that a man’s foes may be those of his own house­hold. Al­though this gospel of the king­dom never fails to bring great peace to the soul of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever, it will not bring peace on earth un­til man is will­ing to be­lieve my teach­ing whole­heart­edly and to es­tab­lish the prac­tice of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will as the chief pur­pose in liv­ing the mor­tal life.

• who bear not fruits of spirit are dead

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.”

159:1.3“The Fa­ther in heaven loves his chil­dren, and there­fore should you learn to love one an­other; the Fa­ther in heaven for­gives you your sins; there­fore should you learn to for­give one an­other. If your brother sins against you, go to him and with tact and pa­tience show him his fault. And do all this be­tween you and him alone. If he will lis­ten to you, then have you won your brother. But if your brother will not hear you, if he per­sists in the er­ror of his way, go again to him, tak­ing with you one or two mu­tual friends that you may thus have two or even three wit­nesses to con­firm your tes­ti­mony and es­tab­lish the fact that you have dealt justly and mer­ci­fully with your of­fend­ing brother. Now if he re­fuses to hear your breth­ren, you may tell the whole story to the con­gre­ga­tion, and then, if he re­fuses to hear the broth­er­hood, let them take such ac­tion as they deem wise; let such an un­ruly mem­ber be­come an out­cast from the king­dom. While you can­not pre­tend to sit in judg­ment on the souls of your fel­lows, and while you may not for­give sins or oth­er­wise pre­sume to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of the super­vi­sors of the heav­enly hosts, at the same time, it has been com­mit­ted to your hands that you should main­tain tem­po­ral or­der in the king­dom on earth. While you may not med­dle with the di­vine de­crees con­cern­ing eter­nal life, you shall de­ter­mine the is­sues of con­duct as they con­cern the tem­po­ral wel­fare of the broth­er­hood on earth. And so, in all these mat­ters con­nected with the dis­ci­pline of the broth­er­hood, what­so­ever you shall de­cree on earth, shall be rec­og­nized in heaven. Al­though you can­not de­ter­mine the eter­nal fate of the in­di­vid­ual, you may leg­is­late re­gard­ing the con­duct of the group, for, where two or three of you agree con­cern­ing any of these things and ask of me, it shall be done for you if your pe­ti­tion is not in­con­sis­tent with the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. And all this is ever true, for, where two or three be­liev­ers are gath­ered to­gether, there am I in the midst of them.”