fellowship of believers

157:4.5Je­sus, still stand­ing, then said to the twelve: “You are my cho­sen am­bas­sadors, but I know that, in the cir­cum­stances, you could not en­ter­tain this be­lief as a re­sult of mere hu­man knowl­edge. This is a rev­e­la­tion of the spirit of my Fa­ther to your in­most souls. And when, there­fore, you make this con­fes­sion by the in­sight of the spirit of my Fa­ther which dwells within you, I am led to de­clare that upon this foun­da­tion will I build the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven. Upon this rock of spir­i­tual re­al­ity will I build the liv­ing tem­ple of spir­i­tual fel­low­ship in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not pre­vail against this hu­man fra­ter­nity of the di­vine spirit. And while my Fa­ther’s spirit shall ever be the di­vine guide and men­tor of all who en­ter the bonds of this spirit fel­low­ship, to you and your suc­ces­sors I now de­liver the keys of the out­ward king­dom—the au­thor­ity over things tem­po­ral—the so­cial and eco­nomic fea­tures of this as­so­ci­a­tion of men and women as fel­lows of the king­dom.” And again he charged them, for the time be­ing, that they should tell no man that he was the Son of God.

159:2.2This in­struc­tion greatly per­plexed John. Had he not heard the Mas­ter say, “He who is not with me is against me”? And he did not per­ceive that in this case Je­sus was re­fer­ring to man’s per­sonal re­la­tion to the spir­i­tual teach­ings of the king­dom, while in the other case ref­er­ence was made to the out­ward and far-flung so­cial re­la­tions of be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the ques­tions of ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol and the ju­ris­dic­tion of one group of be­liev­ers over the work of other groups which would even­tu­ally com­pose the forth­com­ing world-wide broth­er­hood.

195:10.11Chris­tian­ity is se­ri­ously con­fronted with the doom em­bod­ied in one of its own slo­gans: “A house di­vided against it­self can­not stand.” The non-Chris­tian world will hardly ca­pit­u­late to a sect-di­vided Chris­ten­dom. The liv­ing Je­sus is the only hope of a pos­si­ble uni­fi­ca­tion of Chris­tian­ity. The true church—the Je­sus broth­er­hood—is in­vis­i­ble, spir­i­tual, and is char­ac­ter­ized by unity, not nec­es­sar­ily by uni­for­mity. Uni­for­mity is the ear­mark of the phys­i­cal world of mech­a­nis­tic na­ture. Spir­i­tual unity is the fruit of faith union with the liv­ing Je­sus. The vis­i­ble church should refuse longer to hand­i­cap the prog­ress of the in­vis­i­ble and spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom of God. And this broth­er­hood is des­tined to be­come a liv­ing or­gan­ism in con­trast to an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It may well uti­lize such so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions, but it must not be sup­planted by them.

144:6.3An­drew and Ab­ner al­ter­nated in pre­sid­ing over these joint meet­ings of the two apos­tolic groups. These men had many dif­fi­cul­ties to dis­cuss and nu­mer­ous prob­lems to solve. Again and again would they take their trou­bles to Je­sus, only to hear him say: “I am con­cerned only with your per­sonal and purely re­li­gious prob­lems. I am the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther to the in­di­vid­ual, not to the group. If you are in per­sonal dif­fi­culty in your re­la­tions with God, come to me, and I will hear you and coun­sel you in the so­lu­tion of your prob­lem. But when you en­ter upon the co-or­di­na­tion of di­ver­gent hu­man in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gious ques­tions and upon the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion, you are des­tined to solve all such prob­lems by your own de­ci­sions. Al­beit, I am ever sym­pa­thetic and al­ways in­ter­ested, and when you ar­rive at your con­clu­sions touch­ing these mat­ters of non­spir­i­tual im­port, pro­vided you are all agreed, then I pledge in ad­vance my full ap­proval and hearty co-op­er­a­tion. And now, in or­der to leave you un­ham­pered in your de­lib­er­a­tions, I am leav­ing you for two weeks. Be not anx­ious about me, for I will re­turn to you. I will be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness, for we have other realms be­sides this one.”

170:2.24By the time the Apos­tle John be­gan to write the story of Je­sus’ life and teach­ings, the early Chris­tians had ex­pe­ri­enced so much trou­ble with the king­dom-of-God idea as a breeder of per­se­cu­tion that they had largely aban­doned the use of the term. John talks much about the “eter­nal life.” Je­sus of­ten spoke of it as the “king­dom of life.” He also fre­quently re­ferred to “the king­dom of God within you.” He once spoke of such an ex­pe­ri­ence as “fam­ily fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther.” Je­sus sought to sub­sti­tute many terms for the king­dom but al­ways with­out suc­cess. Among oth­ers, he used: the fam­ily of God, the Fa­ther’s will, the friends of God, the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers, the broth­er­hood of man, the Fa­ther’s fold, the chil­dren of God, the fel­low­ship of the faith­ful, the Fa­ther’s ser­vice, and the lib­er­ated sons of God.

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.”

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.

133:0.3One day while rest­ing at lunch, about half­way to Tar­en­tum, Ga­nid asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion as to what he thought of In­dia’s caste sys­tem. Said Je­sus: “Though hu­man be­ings dif­fer in many ways, the one from an­other, be­fore God and in the spir­i­tual world all mor­tals stand on an equal foot­ing. There are only two groups of mor­tals in the eyes of God: those who de­sire to do his will and those who do not. As the uni­verse looks upon an in­hab­ited world, it like­wise dis­cerns two great classes: those who know God and those who do not. Those who can­not know God are reck­oned among the an­i­mals of any given realm. Man­kind can ap­pro­pri­ately be di­vided into many classes in ac­cor­dance with dif­fer­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions, as they may be viewed phys­i­cally, men­tally, so­cially, vo­ca­tion­ally, or morally, but as these dif­fer­ent classes of mor­tals ap­pear be­fore the judg­ment bar of God, they stand on an equal foot­ing; God is truly no re­specter of per­sons. Al­though you can­not es­cape the rec­og­ni­tion of dif­fer­en­tial hu­man abil­i­ties and en­dow­ments in mat­ters in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, and moral, you should make no such dis­tinc­tions in the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of men when as­sem­bled for wor­ship in the pres­ence of God.”

182:1.8Je­sus prayed for unity among his fol­low­ers, but he did not de­sire uni­for­mity. Sin cre­ates a dead level of evil in­er­tia, but righ­teous­ness nour­ishes the cre­ative spirit of in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in the liv­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nal truth and in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nion of the di­vine spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Son. In the spir­i­tual fel­low­ship of the be­liever-son with the di­vine Fa­ther there can never be doc­tri­nal fi­nal­ity and sec­tar­ian su­pe­ri­or­ity of group con­scious­ness.

195:10.14It is all too true that such a church would not have sur­vived un­less there had been men in the world who pre­ferred such a style of wor­ship. Many spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent souls crave an an­cient and au­thor­i­ta­tive re­li­gion of rit­ual and sa­cred tra­di­tions. Hu­man evo­lu­tion and spir­i­tual prog­ress are hardly suf­fi­cient to en­able all men to dis­pense with re­li­gious au­thor­ity. And the in­vis­i­ble broth­er­hood of the king­dom may well in­clude these fam­ily groups of var­i­ous so­cial and tem­per­a­men­tal classes if they are only will­ing to be­come truly spirit-led sons of God. But in this broth­er­hood of Je­sus there is no place for sec­tar­ian ri­valry, group bit­ter­ness, nor as­ser­tions of moral su­pe­ri­or­ity and spir­i­tual in­fal­li­bil­ity.

10:5.2The func­tions of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity are not sim­ply the sum of the Fa­ther’s ap­par­ent en­dow­ment of di­vin­ity plus those spe­cial­ized at­tri­butes that are unique in the per­sonal ex­is­tence of the Son and the Spirit. The Trin­ity as­so­ci­a­tion of the three Par­a­dise De­i­ties re­sults in the evo­lu­tion, even­tu­a­tion, and deiti­za­tion of new mean­ings, val­ues, pow­ers, and ca­pac­i­ties for uni­ver­sal rev­e­la­tion, ac­tion, and ad­min­is­tra­tion. Liv­ing as­so­ci­a­tions, hu­man fam­i­lies, so­cial groups, or the Par­a­dise Trin­ity are not aug­mented by mere arith­meti­cal sum­ma­tion. The group po­ten­tial is al­ways far in ex­cess of the sim­ple sum of the at­tri­butes of the com­po­nent in­di­vid­u­als.

68:1.4Prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings early learned that groups are vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their in­di­vid­ual units. One hun­dred men united and work­ing in uni­son can move a great stone; a score of well-trained guard­i­ans of the peace can re­strain an an­gry mob. And so so­ci­ety was born, not of mere as­so­ci­a­tion of num­bers, but rather as a re­sult of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tors. But co-op­er­a­tion is not a nat­u­ral trait of man; he learns to co-op­er­ate first through fear and then later be­cause he dis­cov­ers it is most ben­e­fi­cial in meet­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of time and guard­ing against the sup­posed per­ils of eter­nity.

133:5.1They shortly ar­rived at the olden cen­ter of Greek sci­ence and learn­ing, and Ga­nid was thrilled with the thought of be­ing in Athens, of be­ing in Greece, the cul­tural cen­ter of the one­time Alexan­drian em­pire, which had ex­tended its bor­ders even to his own land of In­dia. There was lit­tle busi­ness to trans­act; so Gonod spent most of his time with Je­sus and Ga­nid, vis­it­ing the many points of in­ter­est and lis­ten­ing to the in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sions of the lad and his ver­sa­tile teacher.

7:1.6Spirit-grav­ity pull and re­sponse thereto op­er­ate not only on the uni­verse as a whole but also even be­tween in­di­vid­u­als and groups of in­di­vid­u­als. There is a spir­i­tual co­he­sive­ness among the spir­i­tual and spir­i­tized per­son­al­i­ties of any world, race, na­tion, or be­liev­ing group of in­di­vid­u­als. There is a di­rect at­trac­tive­ness of a spirit na­ture be­tween spir­i­tu­ally minded per­sons of like tastes and long­ings. The term kin­dred spir­its is not wholly a fig­ure of speech.