gospel

• proclaiming the gospel › personal experience with God is only positive proof

1:2.8Those who know God have ex­pe­ri­enced the fact of his pres­ence; such God-know­ing mor­tals hold in their per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence the only pos­i­tive proof of the ex­is­tence of the liv­ing God which one hu­man be­ing can of­fer to an­other. The ex­is­tence of God is ut­terly be­yond all pos­si­bil­ity of dem­on­stra­tion ex­cept for the con­tact be­tween the God-con­scious­ness of the hu­man mind and the God-pres­ence of the Thought Ad­juster that in­dwells the mor­tal in­tel­lect and is be­stowed upon man as the free gift of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• proclaiming the gospel › spiritual experiences for edification of believers, not to convince unbelievers

1:6.6The more com­pletely man un­der­stands him­self and ap­pre­ci­ates the per­son­al­ity val­ues of his fel­lows, the more he will crave to know the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity, and the more earnestly such a God-know­ing hu­man will strive to be­come like the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity. You can ar­gue over opin­ions about God, but ex­pe­ri­ence with him and in him ex­ists above and be­yond all hu­man con­tro­versy and mere in­tel­lec­tual logic. The God-know­ing man de­scribes his spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ences, not to con­vince un­be­liev­ers, but for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion and mu­tual sat­is­fac­tion of be­liev­ers.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › use of law or force to compel
• proclaiming the gospel › morality is disseminated by moral fragrance

16:7.9Moral­ity can never be ad­vanced by law or by force. It is a per­sonal and free­will mat­ter and must be dis­sem­i­nated by the con­ta­gion of the con­tact of morally fra­grant per­sons with those who are less morally re­spon­sive, but who are also in some mea­sure de­sirous of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

• proclaiming the gospel › deferred rewards inherent in service for truth

28:5.176. The Sat­is­fac­tion of Ser­vice. These an­gels are highly re­flec­tive of the at­ti­tude of the di­rec­tors of con­duct on Par­a­dise, and func­tion­ing much as do the Joys of Ex­is­tence, they strive to en­hance the value of ser­vice and to aug­ment the sat­is­fac­tions to be de­rived there­from. They have done much to il­lu­mi­nate the de­ferred re­wards in­her­ent in un­selfish ser­vice, ser­vice for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom of truth.

• proclaiming the gospel › whet appetites of associates for truth

48:7.1614. Whet the ap­petites of your as­so­ciates for truth; give ad­vice only when it is asked for.

• Melchizedek receivers proclaimed g. to Adam

76:5.1Not long af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the sec­ond Eden, Adam and Eve were duly in­formed that their re­pen­tance was ac­cept­able, and that, while they were doomed to suf­fer the fate of the mor­tals of their world, they should cer­tainly be­come el­i­gi­ble for ad­mis­sion to the ranks of the sleep­ing sur­vivors of Uran­tia. They fully be­lieved this gospel of res­ur­rec­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion which the Mel­chiz­e­deks so touch­ingly pro­claimed to them. Their trans­gres­sion had been an er­ror of judg­ment and not the sin of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

92:5.16The fu­ture of Uran­tia will doubt­less be char­ac­ter­ized by the ap­pear­ance of teach­ers of re­li­gious truth—the Fa­ther­hood of God and the fra­ter­nity of all crea­tures. But it is to be hoped that the ar­dent and sin­cere ef­forts of these fu­ture proph­ets will be di­rected less to­ward the strength­en­ing of in­ter­re­li­gious bar­ri­ers and more to­ward the aug­men­ta­tion of the re­li­gious broth­er­hood of spir­i­tual wor­ship among the many fol­low­ers of the dif­fer­ing in­tel­lec­tual the­olo­gies which so char­ac­ter­ize Uran­tia of Sa­ta­nia.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

93:4.43. I prom­ise to obey the seven com­mand­ments of Mel­chiz­e­dek and to tell the good news of this covenant with the Most High to all men.

• difficult to perpetuate prior to printing

93:7.4You who to­day en­joy the ad­van­tages of the art of print­ing lit­tle un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult it was to per­pet­u­ate truth dur­ing these ear­lier times; how easy it was to lose sight of a new doc­trine from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other. There was al­ways a ten­dency for the new doc­trine to be­come ab­sorbed into the older body of re­li­gious teach­ing and mag­i­cal prac­tice. A new rev­e­la­tion is al­ways con­tam­i­nated by the older evo­lu­tion­ary be­liefs.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

94:4.10To­day, in In­dia, the great need is for the por­trayal of the Je­su­so­nian gospel—the Fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship and con­se­quent broth­er­hood of all men, which is per­son­ally re­al­ized in lov­ing min­istry and so­cial ser­vice. In In­dia the phil­o­soph­i­cal frame­work is ex­is­tent, the cult struc­ture is pres­ent; all that is needed is the vi­tal­iz­ing spark of the dy­namic love por­trayed in the orig­i­nal gospel of the Son of Man, di­vested of the Oc­ci­den­tal dog­mas and doc­trines which have tended to make Mi­chael’s life be­stowal a white man’s re­li­gion.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

94:7.2Gau­tama for­mu­lated those the­o­ries which grew into the phi­los­o­phy of Bud­dhism af­ter six years of the fu­tile prac­tice of Yoga. Sid­dhartha made a de­ter­mined but un­avail­ing fight against the grow­ing caste sys­tem. There was a lofty sin­cer­ity and a unique un­selfish­ness about this young prophet prince that greatly ap­pealed to the men of those days. He de­tracted from the prac­tice of seek­ing in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion through phys­i­cal af­flic­tion and per­sonal pain. And he ex­horted his fol­low­ers to carry his gospel to all the world.

• proclaiming the gospel › all Urantia waiting for

94:12.7All Uran­tia is wait­ing for the procla­ma­tion of the en­nobling mes­sage of Mi­chael, un­en­cum­bered by the ac­cu­mu­lated doc­trines and dog­mas of nine­teen cen­turies of con­tact with the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin. The hour is strik­ing for pre­sent­ing to Bud­dhism, to Chris­tian­ity, to Hin­duism, even to the peo­ples of all faiths, not the gospel about Je­sus, but the liv­ing, spir­i­tual re­al­ity of the gospel of Je­sus.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › attacking old ways, reforming mores; rather add new truth

95:1.6The early prog­ress of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing was highly grat­i­fy­ing un­til Na­bo­dad, the leader of the school at Kish, de­cided to make a con­certed at­tack upon the preva­lent prac­tices of tem­ple har­lotry. But the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies failed in their ef­fort to bring about this so­cial re­form, and in the wreck of this fail­ure all their more im­por­tant spir­i­tual and philo­sophic teach­ings went down in de­feat.

95:1.7This de­feat of the Salem gospel was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a great in­crease in the cult of Ishtar, a rit­ual which had al­ready in­vaded Pales­tine as Ash­toreth, Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the north­ern tribes as As­tarte. And it was in con­nec­tion with this re­vival of the wor­ship of Ishtar that the Baby­lo­nian priests turned anew to stargaz­ing; as­trol­ogy ex­pe­ri­enced its last great Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­vival, for­tunetelling be­came the vogue, and for cen­turies the priest­hood in­creas­ingly de­te­ri­o­rated.

95:1.8Mel­chiz­e­dek had warned his fol­low­ers to teach about the one God, the Fa­ther and Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of di­vine fa­vor through faith alone. But it has of­ten been the er­ror of the teach­ers of new truth to at­tempt too much, to at­tempt to sup­plant slow evo­lu­tion by sud­den rev­o­lu­tion. The Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies in Mes­o­po­ta­mia raised a moral stan­dard too high for the peo­ple; they at­tempted too much, and their no­ble cause went down in de­feat. They had been com­mis­sioned to preach a def­i­nite gospel, to pro­claim the truth of the re­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but they be­came en­tan­gled in the ap­par­ently wor­thy cause of re­form­ing the mores, and thus was their great mis­sion side­tracked and vir­tu­ally lost in frus­tra­tion and obliv­ion.

95:1.9In one gen­er­a­tion the Salem head­quar­ters at Kish came to an end, and the pro­pa­ganda of the be­lief in one God vir­tu­ally ceased through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia. But rem­nants of the Salem schools per­sisted. Small bands scat­tered here and there con­tin­ued their be­lief in the one Cre­ator and fought against the idol­a­try and im­moral­ity of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian priests.

• proclaiming the gospel › be more gracious, less stringent in collateral social requirements
• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

95:7.3Here and there through­out Ara­bia were fam­i­lies and clans that held on to the hazy idea of the one God. Such groups trea­sured the tra­di­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek, Abra­ham, Moses, and Zoroaster. There were nu­mer­ous cen­ters that might have re­sponded to the Je­su­so­nian gospel, but the Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies of the desert lands were an aus­tere and un­yield­ing group in con­trast with the com­pro­mis­ers and in­no­va­tors who func­tioned as mis­sion­ar­ies in the Med­i­ter­ra­nean coun­tries. Had the fol­low­ers of Je­sus taken more se­ri­ously his in­junc­tion to “go into all the world and preach the gospel,” and had they been more gra­cious in that preach­ing, less strin­gent in col­lat­eral so­cial re­quire­ments of their own de­vis­ing, then many lands would gladly have re­ceived the sim­ple gospel of the car­pen­ter’s son, Ara­bia among them.

• proclaiming the gospel › restate form of expression as language is revised

99:1.6Re­li­gion must not be­come or­gan­i­cally in­volved in the sec­u­lar work of so­cial re­con­struc­tion and eco­nomic re­or­ga­ni­za­tion. But it must ac­tively keep pace with all these ad­vances in civ­i­liza­tion by mak­ing clear-cut and vig­or­ous re­state­ments of its moral man­dates and spir­i­tual pre­cepts, its pro­gres­sive phi­los­o­phy of hu­man liv­ing and tran­scen­dent sur­vival. The spirit of re­li­gion is eter­nal, but the form of its ex­pres­sion must be re­stated ev­ery time the dic­tio­nary of hu­man lan­guage is re­vised.

• explained › truth, beauty, goodness, love, and worship meaningful as fellowship with man, sonship with God

99:4.4No mat­ter what up­heavals may at­tend the so­cial and eco­nomic growth of civ­i­liza­tion, re­li­gion is gen­uine and worth while if it fos­ters in the in­di­vid­ual an ex­pe­ri­ence in which the sov­er­eignty of truth, beauty, and good­ness pre­vails, for such is the true spir­i­tual con­cept of su­preme re­al­ity. And through love and wor­ship this be­comes mean­ing­ful as fel­low­ship with man and son­ship with God.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › requiring God-conscious men to reject their historic leadership

99:5.11What a mis­take for Chris­tians to make when, in pre­sent­ing Christ as the su­preme ideal of spir­i­tual lead­er­ship, they dare to re­quire God-con­scious men and women to re­ject the his­toric lead­er­ship of the God-know­ing men who have con­tributed to their par­tic­u­lar na­tional or racial il­lu­mi­na­tion dur­ing past ages.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

100:7.6Je­sus was very broad in his out­look. He ex­horted his fol­low­ers to preach the gospel to all peo­ples. He was free from all nar­row-mind­ed­ness. His sym­pa­thetic heart em­braced all man­kind, even a uni­verse. Al­ways his in­vi­ta­tion was, “Whoso­ever will, let him come.”

• proclaiming the gospel › preach to all without fear or favor

102:7.6The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is not one who is blind to the dif­fi­cul­ties or un­mind­ful of the ob­sta­cles which stand in the way of find­ing God in the maze of su­per­sti­tion, tra­di­tion, and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies of mod­ern times. He has en­coun­tered all these de­ter­rents and tri­umphed over them, sur­mounted them by liv­ing faith, and at­tained the high­lands of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in spite of them. But it is true that many who are in­wardly sure about God fear to as­sert such feel­ings of cer­tainty be­cause of the mul­ti­plic­ity and clev­er­ness of those who as­sem­ble ob­jec­tions and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties about be­liev­ing in God. It re­quires no great depth of in­tel­lect to pick flaws, ask ques­tions, or raise ob­jec­tions. But it does re­quire bril­liance of mind to an­swer these ques­tions and solve these dif­fi­cul­ties; faith cer­tainty is the great­est tech­nique for deal­ing with all such su­per­fi­cial con­tentions.

• proclaiming the gospel › challenge uncertainty of unbelievers by profound faith and certainty

103:8.5The cer­tainty of the God-know­ing re­li­gion­ist should not be dis­turbed by the un­cer­tainty of the doubt­ing ma­te­ri­al­ist; rather should the un­cer­tainty of the un­be­liever be might­ily chal­lenged by the pro­found faith and un­shak­able cer­tainty of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­liever.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › becoming embroiled in politics

120:3.4“3. In your re­la­tions to the so­cial or­der we ad­vise that you con­fine your ef­forts largely to spir­i­tual re­gen­er­a­tion and in­tel­lec­tual eman­ci­pa­tion. Avoid all en­tan­gle­ments with the eco­nomic struc­ture and the po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ments of your day. More es­pe­cially de­vote your­self to liv­ing the ideal re­li­gious life on Uran­tia.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › dishonesty, unfairness, ignoble tactics

125:5.8And all the day through, those who lis­tened mar­veled at these ques­tions, and none was more as­ton­ished than Si­mon. For more than four hours this Naz­a­reth youth plied these Jew­ish teach­ers with thought-pro­vok­ing and heart-search­ing ques­tions. He made few com­ments on the re­marks of his el­ders. He con­veyed his teach­ing by the ques­tions he would ask. By the deft and sub­tle phras­ing of a ques­tion he would at one and the same time chal­lenge their teach­ing and sug­gest his own. In the man­ner of his ask­ing a ques­tion there was an ap­peal­ing com­bi­na­tion of sagac­ity and hu­mor which en­deared him even to those who more or less re­sented his youth­ful­ness. He was al­ways em­i­nently fair and con­sid­er­ate in the ask­ing of these pen­e­trat­ing ques­tions. On this event­ful af­ter­noon in the tem­ple he ex­hib­ited that same re­luc­tance to take un­fair ad­van­tage of an op­po­nent which char­ac­ter­ized his en­tire sub­se­quent pub­lic min­istry. As a youth, and later on as a man, he seemed to be ut­terly free from all ego­is­tic de­sire to win an ar­gu­ment merely to ex­pe­ri­ence log­i­cal tri­umph over his fel­lows, be­ing in­ter­ested su­premely in just one thing: to pro­claim ev­er­last­ing truth and thus ef­fect a fuller rev­e­la­tion of the eter­nal God.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › dishonesty, unfairness, ignoble tactics

128:4.7This same mo­tive also ex­plains why he per­mit­ted him­self to be known by dif­fer­ent ti­tles dur­ing var­i­ous epochs of his di­ver­si­fied life on earth. Again, he did not want to bring any un­due in­flu­ence to bear upon his fam­ily or oth­ers which would lead them to be­lieve in him against their hon­est con­vic­tions. He al­ways re­fused to take un­due or un­fair ad­van­tage of the hu­man mind. He did not want men to be­lieve in him un­less their hearts were re­spon­sive to the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties re­vealed in his teach­ings.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › overpowering arguments, appeals, or miracles

129:3.5In all your ef­forts to de­ci­pher the mean­ing of Je­sus’ life on Uran­tia, you must be mind­ful of the mo­ti­va­tion of the Mi­chael be­stowal. If you would com­pre­hend the mean­ing of many of his ap­par­ently strange do­ings, you must dis­cern the pur­pose of his so­journ on your world. He was con­sis­tently care­ful not to build up an over­at­trac­tive and at­ten­tion-con­sum­ing per­sonal ca­reer. He wanted to make no un­usual or over­pow­er­ing ap­peals to his fel­low men. He was ded­i­cated to the work of re­veal­ing the heav­enly Fa­ther to his fel­low mor­tals and at the same time was con­se­crated to the sub­lime task of liv­ing his mor­tal earth life all the while sub­ject to the will of the same Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• proclaiming the gospel › live so as to lead others to inquire

130:2.4One of the young men who worked with Je­sus one day on the steer­ing pad­dle be­came much in­ter­ested in the words which he dropped from hour to hour as they toiled in the ship­yard. When Je­sus in­ti­mated that the Fa­ther in heaven was in­ter­ested in the wel­fare of his chil­dren on earth, this young Greek, Anaxand, said: “If the Gods are in­ter­ested in me, then why do they not re­move the cruel and un­just fore­man of this work­shop?” He was star­tled when Je­sus replied, “Since you know the ways of kind­ness and value jus­tice, per­haps the Gods have brought this erring man near that you may lead him into this bet­ter way. Maybe you are the salt which is to make this brother more agree­able to all other men; that is, if you have not lost your sa­vor. As it is, this man is your mas­ter in that his evil ways un­fa­vor­ably in­flu­ence you. Why not as­sert your mas­tery of evil by virtue of the power of good­ness and thus be­come the mas­ter of all re­la­tions be­tween the two of you? I pre­dict that the good in you could over­come the evil in him if you gave it a fair and liv­ing chance. There is no ad­ven­ture in the course of mor­tal ex­is­tence more en­thralling than to en­joy the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of be­com­ing the ma­te­rial life part­ner with spir­i­tual en­ergy and di­vine truth in one of their tri­umphant strug­gles with er­ror and evil. It is a mar­velous and trans­form­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to be­come the liv­ing chan­nel of spir­i­tual light to the mor­tal who sits in spir­i­tual dark­ness. If you are more blessed with truth than is this man, his need should chal­lenge you. Surely you are not the cow­ard who could stand by on the seashore and watch a fel­low man who could not swim per­ish! How much more of value is this man’s soul floun­der­ing in dark­ness com­pared to his body drown­ing in wa­ter!”

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › attacking old ways, reforming mores; rather add new truth

132:0.4Je­sus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valu­able of all the man­i­fold ex­pe­ri­ences of his six months’ so­journ in that city was his con­tact with, and in­flu­ence upon, the re­li­gious lead­ers of the em­pire’s cap­i­tal. Be­fore the end of the first week in Rome Je­sus had sought out, and had made the ac­quain­tance of, the worth-while lead­ers of the Cyn­ics, the Sto­ics, and the mys­tery cults, in par­tic­u­lar the Mith­raic group. Whether or not it was ap­par­ent to Je­sus that the Jews were go­ing to re­ject his mis­sion, he most cer­tainly fore­saw that his mes­sen­gers were pres­ently com­ing to Rome to pro­claim the king­dom of heaven; and he there­fore set about, in the most amaz­ing man­ner, to pre­pare the way for the bet­ter and more cer­tain re­cep­tion of their mes­sage. He se­lected five of the lead­ing Sto­ics, eleven of the Cyn­ics, and six­teen of the mys­tery-cult lead­ers and spent much of his spare time for al­most six months in in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with these re­li­gious teach­ers. And this was his method of in­struc­tion: Never once did he at­tack their er­rors or even men­tion the flaws in their teach­ings. In each case he would se­lect the truth in what they taught and then pro­ceed so to em­bel­lish and il­lu­mi­nate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this en­hance­ment of the truth ef­fec­tively crowded out the as­so­ci­ated er­ror; and thus were these Je­sus-taught men and women pre­pared for the sub­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of ad­di­tional and sim­i­lar truths in the teach­ings of the early Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. It was this early ac­cep­tance of the teach­ings of the gospel preach­ers which gave that pow­er­ful im­pe­tus to the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity in Rome and from there through­out the em­pire.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men
• proclaiming the gospel › by asking or answering questions

132:4.2Al­ways the bur­den of his mes­sage was: the fact of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s love and the truth of his mercy, cou­pled with the good news that man is a faith-son of this same God of love. Je­sus’ usual tech­nique of so­cial con­tact was to draw peo­ple out and into talk­ing with him by ask­ing them ques­tions. The in­ter­view would usu­ally be­gin by his ask­ing them ques­tions and end by their ask­ing him ques­tions. He was equally adept in teach­ing by ei­ther ask­ing or an­swer­ing ques­tions. As a rule, to those he taught the most, he said the least. Those who de­rived most ben­e­fit from his per­sonal min­istry were over­bur­dened, anx­ious, and de­jected mor­tals who gained much re­lief be­cause of the op­por­tu­nity to un­bur­den their souls to a sym­pa­thetic and un­der­stand­ing lis­tener, and he was all that and more. And when these mal­ad­justed hu­man be­ings had told Je­sus about their trou­bles, al­ways was he able to of­fer prac­ti­cal and im­me­di­ately help­ful sug­ges­tions look­ing to­ward the cor­rec­tion of their real dif­fi­cul­ties, al­beit he did not ne­glect to speak words of pres­ent com­fort and im­me­di­ate con­so­la­tion. And in­vari­ably would he tell these dis­tressed mor­tals about the love of God and im­part the in­for­ma­tion, by var­i­ous and sundry meth­ods, that they were the chil­dren of this lov­ing Fa­ther in heaven.

• proclaiming the gospel › cannot reveal God to those not seeking

132:7.1Je­sus, Gonod, and Ga­nid made five trips away from Rome to points of in­ter­est in the sur­round­ing ter­ri­tory. On their visit to the north­ern Ital­ian lakes Je­sus had the long talk with Ga­nid con­cern­ing the im­pos­si­bil­ity of teach­ing a man about God if the man does not de­sire to know God. They had ca­su­ally met a thought­less pa­gan while on their jour­ney up to the lakes, and Ga­nid was sur­prised that Je­sus did not fol­low out his usual prac­tice of en­list­ing the man in con­ver­sa­tion which would nat­u­rally lead up to the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual ques­tions. When Ga­nid asked his teacher why he evinced so lit­tle in­ter­est in this pa­gan, Je­sus an­swered:

• proclaiming the gospel › cannot reveal God to those not seeking
• proclaiming the gospel › live so as to lead others to inquire

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.”

• proclaiming the gospel › suit presentation to audience

133:4.2The miller he taught about grind­ing up the grains of truth in the mill of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence so as to ren­der the dif­fi­cult things of di­vine life read­ily re­ceiv­able by even the weak and fee­ble among one’s fel­low mor­tals. Said Je­sus: “Give the milk of truth to those who are babes in spir­i­tual per­cep­tion. In your liv­ing and lov­ing min­istry serve spir­i­tual food in at­trac­tive form and suited to the ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity of each of your in­quir­ers.”

• explained › joy and liberty of new kingdom

136:0.2When John preached the com­ing king­dom, the bur­den of his mes­sage was: Re­pent! flee from the wrath to come. When Je­sus be­gan to preach, there re­mained the ex­hor­ta­tion to re­pen­tance, but such a mes­sage was al­ways fol­lowed by the gospel, the good tid­ings of the joy and lib­erty of the new king­dom.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › overpowering arguments, appeals, or miracles

136:6.6The Jews were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would do even greater won­ders than Moses, who was re­puted to have brought forth wa­ter from the rock in a desert place and to have fed their fore­fa­thers with manna in the wilder­ness. Je­sus knew the sort of Mes­siah his com­pa­tri­ots ex­pected, and he had all the pow­ers and pre­rog­a­tives to mea­sure up to their most san­guine ex­pec­ta­tions, but he de­cided against such a mag­nif­i­cent pro­gram of power and glory. Je­sus looked upon such a course of ex­pected mir­a­cle work­ing as a hark­ing back to the olden days of ig­no­rant magic and the de­graded prac­tices of the sav­age med­i­cine men. Pos­si­bly, for the sal­va­tion of his crea­tures, he might ac­cel­er­ate nat­u­ral law, but to tran­scend his own laws, ei­ther for the ben­e­fit of him­self or the over­aw­ing of his fel­low men, that he would not do. And the Mas­ter’s de­ci­sion was fi­nal.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › overpowering arguments, appeals, or miracles

136:8.2Je­sus very wisely fore­saw that the work­ing of mir­a­cles and the ex­e­cu­tion of won­ders would call forth only out­ward al­le­giance by over­aw­ing the ma­te­rial mind; such per­for­mances would not re­veal God nor save men. He re­fused to be­come a mere won­der-worker. He re­solved to be­come oc­cu­pied with but a sin­gle task—the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › artificial situations

136:8.8Je­sus por­trayed to all the worlds of his vast uni­verse the folly of cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tions for the pur­pose of ex­hibit­ing ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity or of in­dulging ex­cep­tional power for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing moral val­ues or ac­cel­er­at­ing spir­i­tual prog­ress. Je­sus de­cided that he would not lend his mis­sion on earth to a rep­e­ti­tion of the dis­ap­point­ment of the reign of the Mac­cabees. He re­fused to pros­ti­tute his di­vine at­tri­butes for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing un­earned pop­u­lar­ity or for gain­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. He would not coun­te­nance the trans­mu­ta­tion of di­vine and cre­ative en­ergy into na­tional power or in­ter­na­tional pres­tige. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth re­fused to com­pro­mise with evil, much less to con­sort with sin. The Mas­ter tri­umphantly put loy­alty to his Fa­ther’s will above ev­ery other earthly and tem­po­ral con­sid­er­a­tion.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › artificial situations

137:6.5Je­sus in­structed them to take up their reg­u­lar du­ties un­til “the hour of the king­dom comes.” And to en­cour­age them, he set an ex­am­ple by go­ing back reg­u­larly to work in the boat­shop. In ex­plain­ing that they should spend three hours ev­ery evening in study and prepa­ra­tion for their fu­ture work, Je­sus fur­ther said: “We will all re­main here­about un­til the Fa­ther bids me call you. Each of you must now re­turn to his ac­cus­tomed work just as if noth­ing had hap­pened. Tell no man about me and re­mem­ber that my king­dom is not to come with noise and glamor, but rather must it come through the great change which my Fa­ther will have wrought in your hearts and in the hearts of those who shall be called to join you in the coun­cils of the king­dom. You are now my friends; I trust you and I love you; you are soon to be­come my per­sonal as­so­ciates. Be pa­tient, be gen­tle. Be ever obe­di­ent to the Fa­ther’s will. Make your­selves ready for the call of the king­dom. While you will ex­pe­ri­ence great joy in the ser­vice of my Fa­ther, you should also be pre­pared for trou­ble, for I warn you that it will be only through much tribu­la­tion that many will en­ter the king­dom. But those who have found the king­dom, their joy will be full, and they shall be called the blest of all the earth. But do not en­ter­tain false hope; the world will stum­ble at my words. Even you, my friends, do not fully per­ceive what I am un­fold­ing to your con­fused minds. Make no mis­take; we go forth to la­bor for a gen­er­a­tion of sign seek­ers. They will de­mand won­der-work­ing as the proof that I am sent by my Fa­ther, and they will be slow to rec­og­nize in the rev­e­la­tion of my Fa­ther’s love the cre­den­tials of my mis­sion.”

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › becoming embroiled in politics

137:7.5In this time of wait­ing Je­sus en­deav­ored to teach his as­so­ciates what their at­ti­tude should be to­ward the var­i­ous re­li­gious groups and the po­lit­i­cal par­ties of Pales­tine. Je­sus’ words al­ways were, “We are seek­ing to win all of them, but we are not of any of them.”

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › becoming embroiled in politics

137:7.12All of these par­ties and sects, in­clud­ing the smaller Nazarite broth­er­hood, be­lieved in the some­time com­ing of the Mes­siah. They all looked for a na­tional de­liv­erer. But Je­sus was very pos­i­tive in mak­ing it clear that he and his dis­ci­ples would not be­come al­lied to any of these schools of thought or prac­tice. The Son of Man was to be nei­ther a Nazarite nor an Es­sene.

• do not try to fit into old forms of religious belief

138:5.2When they had re­freshed them­selves, Je­sus took the twelve apart for a sea­son to pray with them and to in­struct them in the na­ture and work of the Holy Spirit, but again did they largely fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of those won­der­ful truths which he en­deav­ored to teach them. One would grasp one point and one would com­pre­hend an­other, but none of them could en­com­pass the whole of his teach­ing. Al­ways would they make the mis­take of try­ing to fit Je­sus’ new gospel into their old forms of re­li­gious be­lief. They could not grasp the idea that Je­sus had come to pro­claim a new gospel of sal­va­tion and to es­tab­lish a new way of find­ing God; they did not per­ceive that he was a new rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• proclaiming the gospel › clash only when rulers throw themselves in way of g.

138:5.4Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome had gone to live with their son David so that their large home could be turned over to Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles. Here Je­sus spent a quiet Sab­bath with his cho­sen mes­sen­gers; he care­fully out­lined the plans for pro­claim­ing the king­dom and fully ex­plained the im­por­tance of avoid­ing any clash with the civil au­thor­i­ties, say­ing: “If the civil rulers are to be re­buked, leave that task to me. See that you make no de­nun­ci­a­tions of Cae­sar or his ser­vants.” It was this same evening that Ju­das Is­car­iot took Je­sus aside to in­quire why noth­ing was done to get John out of prison. And Ju­das was not wholly sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ at­ti­tude.

• explained › not dependent on death or resurrection of Jesus

138:6.3Je­sus en­deav­ored to make clear to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween his teach­ings and his life among them and the teach­ings which might sub­se­quently spring up about him. Said Je­sus: “My king­dom and the gospel re­lated thereto shall be the bur­den of your mes­sage. Be not side­tracked into preach­ing about me and about my teach­ings. Pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and por­tray my rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven but do not be mis­led into the by­paths of cre­at­ing leg­ends and build­ing up a cult hav­ing to do with be­liefs and teach­ings about my be­liefs and teach­ings.” But again they did not un­der­stand why he thus spoke, and no man dared to ask why he so taught them.

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

138:8.9The dis­ci­ples early learned that the Mas­ter had a pro­found re­spect and sym­pa­thetic re­gard for ev­ery hu­man be­ing he met, and they were tremen­dously im­pressed by this uni­form and un­vary­ing con­sid­er­a­tion which he so con­sis­tently gave to all sorts of men, women, and chil­dren. He would pause in the midst of a pro­found dis­course that he might go out in the road to speak good cheer to a pass­ing woman laden with her bur­den of body and soul. He would in­ter­rupt a se­ri­ous con­fer­ence with his apos­tles to frat­er­nize with an in­trud­ing child. Noth­ing ever seemed so im­por­tant to Je­sus as the in­di­vid­ual hu­man who chanced to be in his im­me­di­ate pres­ence. He was mas­ter and teacher, but he was more—he was also a friend and neigh­bor, an un­der­stand­ing com­rade.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › becoming embroiled in politics

139:11.9The Mas­ter had many talks with Si­mon, but he never fully suc­ceeded in mak­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist out of this ar­dent Jew­ish na­tion­al­ist. Je­sus of­ten told Si­mon that it was proper to want to see the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal or­ders im­proved, but he would al­ways add: “That is not the busi­ness of the king­dom of heaven. We must be ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will. Our busi­ness is to be am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual gov­ern­ment on high, and we must not im­me­di­ately con­cern our­selves with aught but the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the will and char­ac­ter of the di­vine Fa­ther who stands at the head of the gov­ern­ment whose cre­den­tials we bear.” It was all dif­fi­cult for Si­mon to com­pre­hend, but grad­u­ally he be­gan to grasp some­thing of the mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing.

• explained › seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › artificial situations

140:1.5“Your mes­sage to the world shall be: Seek first the king­dom of God and his righ­teous­ness, and in find­ing these, all other things es­sen­tial to eter­nal sur­vival shall be se­cured there­with. And now would I make it plain to you that this king­dom of my Fa­ther will not come with an out­ward show of power or with un­seemly dem­on­stra­tion. You are not to go hence in the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom, say­ing, ‘it is here’ or ‘it is there,’ for this king­dom of which you preach is God within you.

• proclaiming the gospel › live so as to lead others to inquire
• proclaiming the gospel › proclaim kingdom not just with words but in life

140:1.7“And this which your eyes now be­hold, this small be­gin­ning of twelve com­mon­place men, shall mul­ti­ply and grow un­til even­tu­ally the whole earth shall be filled with the praise of my Fa­ther. And it will not be so much by the words you speak as by the lives you live that men will know you have been with me and have learned of the re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. And while I would lay no griev­ous bur­dens upon your minds, I am about to put upon your souls the solemn re­spon­si­bil­ity of rep­re­sent­ing me in the world when I shall pres­ently leave you as I now rep­re­sent my Fa­ther in this life which I am liv­ing in the flesh.” And when he had fin­ished speak­ing, he stood up.

• explained › Sermon on Mount is not the g.

140:4.1The so-called “Ser­mon on the Mount” is not the gospel of Je­sus. It does con­tain much help­ful in­struc­tion, but it was Je­sus’ or­di­na­tion charge to the twelve apos­tles. It was the Mas­ter’s per­sonal com­mis­sion to those who were to go on preach­ing the gospel and as­pir­ing to rep­re­sent him in the world of men even as he was so elo­quently and per­fectly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his Fa­ther.

• do not try to fit into old forms of religious belief

140:6.2When he had en­tered the gar­den, he gath­ered the apos­tles around him and taught them fur­ther, say­ing: “You find it dif­fi­cult to re­ceive my mes­sage be­cause you would build the new teach­ing di­rectly upon the old, but I de­clare that you must be re­born. You must start out afresh as lit­tle chil­dren and be will­ing to trust my teach­ing and be­lieve in God. The new gospel of the king­dom can­not be made to con­form to that which is. You have wrong ideas of the Son of Man and his mis­sion on earth. But do not make the mis­take of think­ing that I have come to set aside the law and the proph­ets; I have not come to de­stroy but to ful­fill, to en­large and il­lu­mi­nate. I come not to transgress the law but rather to write these new com­mand­ments on the tablets of your hearts.

• proclaiming the gospel › those who give lives to proclaiming g. shall live by g.

140:6.13And then Thomas asked Je­sus if they should “con­tinue hav­ing ev­ery­thing in com­mon.” Said the Mas­ter: “Yes, my breth­ren, I would that we should live to­gether as one un­der­stand­ing fam­ily. You are in­trusted with a great work, and I crave your un­di­vided ser­vice. You know that it has been well said: ‘No man can serve two mas­ters.’ You can­not sin­cerely wor­ship God and at the same time whole­heart­edly serve mam­mon. Hav­ing now en­listed un­re­servedly in the work of the king­dom, be not anx­ious for your lives; much less be con­cerned with what you shall eat or what you shall drink; nor yet for your bod­ies, what cloth­ing you shall wear. Al­ready have you learned that will­ing hands and earnest hearts shall not go hun­gry. And now, when you pre­pare to de­vote all of your en­er­gies to the work of the king­dom, be as­sured that the Fa­ther will not be un­mind­ful of your needs. Seek first the king­dom of God, and when you have found en­trance thereto, all things need­ful shall be added to you. Be not, there­fore, un­duly anx­ious for the mor­row. Suf­fi­cient for the day is the trou­ble thereof.”

• explained › applies to individual, not state

140:8.5He never ceased to warn his dis­ci­ples against the evil prac­tice of re­tal­i­a­tion; he made no al­low­ance for re­venge, the idea of get­ting even. He de­plored the hold­ing of grudges. He dis­al­lowed the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He dis­coun­te­nanced the whole con­cept of pri­vate and per­sonal re­venge, as­sign­ing these mat­ters to civil gov­ern­ment, on the one hand, and to the judg­ment of God, on the other. He made it clear to the three that his teach­ings ap­plied to the in­di­vid­ual, not the state. He sum­ma­rized his in­struc­tions up to that time re­gard­ing these mat­ters, as:

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › becoming embroiled in politics
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › identifying with a particular race, culture, political system

140:8.92. Po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tude. He cau­tioned his apos­tles to be dis­creet in their re­marks con­cern­ing the strained re­la­tions then ex­ist­ing be­tween the Jew­ish peo­ple and the Ro­man gov­ern­ment; he for­bade them to be­come in any way em­broiled in these dif­fi­cul­ties. He was al­ways care­ful to avoid the po­lit­i­cal snares of his en­e­mies, ever mak­ing re­ply, “Ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s.” He re­fused to have his at­ten­tion di­verted from his mis­sion of es­tab­lish­ing a new way of sal­va­tion; he would not per­mit him­self to be con­cerned about any­thing else. In his per­sonal life he was al­ways duly ob­ser­vant of all civil laws and reg­u­la­tions; in all his pub­lic teach­ings he ig­nored the civic, so­cial, and eco­nomic realms. He told the three apos­tles that he was con­cerned only with the prin­ci­ples of man’s in­ner and per­sonal spir­i­tual life.

140:8.10Je­sus was not, there­fore, a po­lit­i­cal re­former. He did not come to re­or­ga­nize the world; even if he had done this, it would have been ap­pli­ca­ble only to that day and gen­er­a­tion. Nev­er­the­less, he did show man the best way of liv­ing, and no gen­er­a­tion is ex­empt from the la­bor of dis­cov­er­ing how best to adapt Je­sus’ life to its own prob­lems. But never make the mis­take of iden­ti­fy­ing Je­sus’ teach­ings with any po­lit­i­cal or eco­nomic the­ory, with any so­cial or in­dus­trial sys­tem.

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

140:8.113. So­cial at­ti­tude. The Jew­ish rab­bis had long de­bated the ques­tion: Who is my neigh­bor? Je­sus came pre­sent­ing the idea of ac­tive and spon­ta­neous kind­ness, a love of one’s fel­low men so gen­uine that it ex­panded the neigh­bor­hood to in­clude the whole world, thereby mak­ing all men one’s neigh­bors. But with all this, Je­sus was in­ter­ested only in the in­di­vid­ual, not the mass. Je­sus was not a so­ci­ol­o­gist, but he did la­bor to break down all forms of self­ish iso­la­tion. He taught pure sym­pa­thy, com­pas­sion. Mi­chael of Neb­a­don is a mercy-dom­i­nated Son; com­pas­sion is his very na­ture.

140:8.12The Mas­ter did not say that men should never en­ter­tain their friends at meat, but he did say that his fol­low­ers should make feasts for the poor and the un­for­tu­nate. Je­sus had a firm sense of jus­tice, but it was al­ways tem­pered with mercy. He did not teach his apos­tles that they were to be im­posed upon by so­cial par­a­sites or pro­fes­sional alms-seek­ers. The near­est he came to mak­ing so­ci­o­log­i­cal pro­nounce­ments was to say, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

140:8.13He made it clear that in­dis­crim­i­nate kind­ness may be blamed for many so­cial evils. The fol­low­ing day Je­sus def­i­nitely in­structed Ju­das that no apos­tolic funds were to be given out as alms ex­cept upon his re­quest or upon the joint pe­ti­tion of two of the apos­tles. In all these mat­ters it was the prac­tice of Je­sus al­ways to say, “Be as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.” It seemed to be his pur­pose in all so­cial sit­u­a­tions to teach pa­tience, tol­er­ance, and for­give­ness.

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

140:8.154. Eco­nomic at­ti­tude. Je­sus worked, lived, and traded in the world as he found it. He was not an eco­nomic re­former, al­though he did fre­quently call at­ten­tion to the in­jus­tice of the un­equal dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth. But he did not of­fer any sug­ges­tions by way of rem­edy. He made it plain to the three that, while his apos­tles were not to hold prop­erty, he was not preach­ing against wealth and prop­erty, merely its un­equal and un­fair dis­tri­bu­tion. He rec­og­nized the need for so­cial jus­tice and in­dus­trial fair­ness, but he of­fered no rules for their at­tain­ment.

140:8.16He never taught his fol­low­ers to avoid earthly pos­ses­sions, only his twelve apos­tles. Luke, the physi­cian, was a strong be­liever in so­cial equal­ity, and he did much to in­ter­pret Je­sus’ say­ings in har­mony with his per­sonal be­liefs. Je­sus never per­son­ally di­rected his fol­low­ers to adopt a com­mu­nal mode of life; he made no pro­nounce­ment of any sort re­gard­ing such mat­ters.

140:8.17Je­sus fre­quently warned his lis­ten­ers against cov­etous­ness, declar­ing that “a man’s hap­pi­ness con­sists not in the abun­dance of his ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions.” He con­stantly re­it­er­ated, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He made no di­rect at­tack on the pos­ses­sion of prop­erty, but he did in­sist that it is eter­nally es­sen­tial that spir­i­tual val­ues come first. In his later teach­ings he sought to cor­rect many er­ro­neous Uran­tia views of life by nar­rat­ing nu­mer­ous para­bles which he pre­sented in the course of his pub­lic min­istry. Je­sus never in­tended to for­mu­late eco­nomic the­o­ries; he well knew that each age must evolve its own reme­dies for ex­ist­ing trou­bles. And if Je­sus were on earth to­day, liv­ing his life in the flesh, he would be a great dis­ap­point­ment to the ma­jor­ity of good men and women for the sim­ple rea­son that he would not take sides in pres­ent-day po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic dis­putes. He would re­main grandly aloof while teach­ing you how to per­fect your in­ner spir­i­tual life so as to ren­der you many­fold more com­pe­tent to at­tack the so­lu­tion of your purely hu­man prob­lems.

140:8.18Je­sus would make all men God­like and then stand by sym­pa­thet­i­cally while these sons of God solve their own po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, and eco­nomic prob­lems. It was not wealth that he de­nounced, but what wealth does to the ma­jor­ity of its devo­tees. On this Thurs­day af­ter­noon Je­sus first told his as­so­ciates that “it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive.”

140:8.195. Per­sonal re­li­gion. You, as did his apos­tles, should the bet­ter un­der­stand Je­sus’ teach­ings by his life. He lived a per­fected life on Uran­tia, and his unique teach­ings can only be un­der­stood when that life is vi­su­al­ized in its im­me­di­ate back­ground. It is his life, and not his lessons to the twelve or his ser­mons to the mul­ti­tudes, that will as­sist most in re­veal­ing the Fa­ther’s di­vine char­ac­ter and lov­ing per­son­al­ity.

140:8.20Je­sus did not at­tack the teach­ings of the He­brew proph­ets or the Greek moral­ists. The Mas­ter rec­og­nized the many good things which these great teach­ers stood for, but he had come down to earth to teach some­thing ad­di­tional, “the vol­un­tary con­for­mity of man’s will to God’s will.” Je­sus did not want sim­ply to pro­duce a re­li­gious man, a mor­tal wholly oc­cu­pied with re­li­gious feel­ings and ac­tu­ated only by spir­i­tual im­pulses. Could you have had but one look at him, you would have known that Je­sus was a real man of great ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of this world. The teach­ings of Je­sus in this re­spect have been grossly per­verted and much mis­rep­re­sented all down through the cen­turies of the Chris­tian era; you have also held per­verted ideas about the Mas­ter’s meek­ness and hu­mil­ity. What he aimed at in his life ap­pears to have been a su­perb self-re­spect. He only ad­vised man to hum­ble him­self that he might be­come truly ex­alted; what he re­ally aimed at was true hu­mil­ity to­ward God. He placed great value upon sin­cer­ity—a pure heart. Fi­delity was a car­di­nal virtue in his es­ti­mate of char­ac­ter, while cour­age was the very heart of his teach­ings. “Fear not” was his watch­word, and pa­tient en­durance his ideal of strength of char­ac­ter. The teach­ings of Je­sus con­sti­tute a re­li­gion of valor, cour­age, and hero­ism. And this is just why he chose as his per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tives twelve com­mon­place men, the ma­jor­ity of whom were rugged, vir­ile, and manly fish­er­men.

140:8.21Je­sus had lit­tle to say about the so­cial vices of his day; sel­dom did he make ref­er­ence to moral delin­quency. He was a pos­i­tive teacher of true virtue. He stu­diously avoided the neg­a­tive method of im­part­ing in­struc­tion; he re­fused to ad­ver­tise evil. He was not even a moral re­former. He well knew, and so taught his apos­tles, that the sen­sual urges of man­kind are not sup­pressed by ei­ther re­li­gious re­buke or le­gal pro­hi­bi­tions. His few de­nun­ci­a­tions were largely di­rected against pride, cru­elty, op­pres­sion, and hypocrisy.

140:8.22Je­sus did not ve­he­mently de­nounce even the Phar­isees, as did John. He knew many of the scribes and Phar­isees were hon­est of heart; he un­der­stood their en­slav­ing bond­age to re­li­gious tra­di­tions. Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis on “first mak­ing the tree good.” He im­pressed the three that he val­ued the whole life, not just a cer­tain few spe­cial virtues.

140:8.23The one thing which John gained from this day’s teach­ing was that the heart of Je­sus’ re­li­gion con­sisted in the ac­quire­ment of a com­pas­sion­ate char­ac­ter cou­pled with a per­son­al­ity mo­ti­vated to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

140:8.24Pe­ter grasped the idea that the gospel they were about to pro­claim was re­ally a fresh be­gin­ning for the whole hu­man race. He con­veyed this im­pres­sion sub­se­quently to Paul, who for­mu­lated there­from his doc­trine of Christ as “the sec­ond Adam.”

140:8.25James grasped the thrilling truth that Je­sus wanted his chil­dren on earth to live as though they were al­ready cit­i­zens of the com­pleted heav­enly king­dom.

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.

140:8.27The three apos­tles were shocked this af­ter­noon when they re­al­ized that their Mas­ter’s re­li­gion made no pro­vi­sion for spir­i­tual self-ex­am­i­na­tion. All re­li­gions be­fore and af­ter the times of Je­sus, even Chris­tian­ity, care­fully pro­vide for con­sci­en­tious self-ex­am­i­na­tion. But not so with the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life is with­out re­li­gious in­tro­spec­tion. The car­pen­ter’s son never taught char­ac­ter build­ing; he taught char­ac­ter growth, declar­ing that the king­dom of heaven is like a mus­tard seed. But Je­sus said noth­ing which would pro­scribe self-anal­y­sis as a pre­ven­tion of con­ceited ego­tism.

140:8.28The right to en­ter the king­dom is con­di­tioned by faith, per­sonal be­lief. The cost of re­main­ing in the pro­gres­sive as­cent of the king­dom is the pearl of great price, in or­der to pos­sess which a man sells all that he has.

140:8.29The teach­ing of Je­sus is a re­li­gion for ev­ery­body, not alone for weak­lings and slaves. His re­li­gion never be­came crys­tal­lized (dur­ing his day) into creeds and the­o­log­i­cal laws; he left not a line of writ­ing be­hind him. His life and teach­ings were be­queathed the uni­verse as an in­spi­ra­tional and ide­al­is­tic in­her­i­tance suit­able for the spir­i­tual guid­ance and moral in­struc­tion of all ages on all worlds. And even to­day, Je­sus’ teach­ing stands apart from all re­li­gions, as such, al­beit it is the liv­ing hope of ev­ery one of them.

140:8.30Je­sus did not teach his apos­tles that re­li­gion is man’s only earthly pur­suit; that was the Jew­ish idea of serv­ing God. But he did in­sist that re­li­gion was the ex­clu­sive busi­ness of the twelve. Je­sus taught noth­ing to de­ter his be­liev­ers from the pur­suit of gen­uine cul­ture; he only de­tracted from the tra­di­tion-bound re­li­gious schools of Je­ru­sa­lem. He was lib­eral, big-hearted, learned, and tol­er­ant. Self-con­scious piety had no place in his phi­los­o­phy of righ­teous liv­ing.

140:8.31The Mas­ter of­fered no so­lu­tions for the non­re­li­gious prob­lems of his own age nor for any sub­se­quent age. Je­sus wished to de­velop spir­i­tual in­sight into eter­nal re­al­i­ties and to stim­u­late ini­tia­tive in the orig­i­nal­ity of liv­ing; he con­cerned him­self ex­clu­sively with the un­der­ly­ing and per­ma­nent spir­i­tual needs of the hu­man race. He re­vealed a good­ness equal to God. He ex­alted love—truth, beauty, and good­ness—as the di­vine ideal and the eter­nal re­al­ity.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

140:9.2Je­sus re­viewed many fea­tures of the or­di­na­tion ser­mon, de­liv­ered on this same spot, and then, call­ing them be­fore him one by one, he com­mis­sioned them to go forth in the world as his rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Mas­ter’s con­se­cra­tion charge was: “Go into all the world and preach the glad tid­ings of the king­dom. Lib­er­ate spir­i­tual cap­tives, com­fort the op­pressed, and min­is­ter to the af­flicted. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give.”

• explained › salvation by faith alone; liberty through truth

140:10.1That evening while teach­ing in the house, for it had be­gun to rain, Je­sus talked at great length, try­ing to show the twelve what they must be, not what they must do. They knew only a re­li­gion that im­posed the do­ing of cer­tain things as the means of at­tain­ing righ­teous­ness—sal­va­tion. But Je­sus would re­it­er­ate, “In the king­dom you must be righ­teous in or­der to do the work.” Many times did he re­peat, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” All the while was the Mas­ter ex­plain­ing to his be­wil­dered apos­tles that the sal­va­tion which he had come to bring to the world was to be had only by be­liev­ing, by sim­ple and sin­cere faith. Said Je­sus: “John preached a bap­tism of re­pen­tance, sor­row for the old way of liv­ing. You are to pro­claim the bap­tism of fel­low­ship with God. Preach re­pen­tance to those who stand in need of such teach­ing, but to those al­ready seek­ing sin­cere en­trance to the king­dom, open the doors wide and bid them en­ter into the joy­ous fel­low­ship of the sons of God.” But it was a dif­fi­cult task to per­suade these Galilean fish­er­men that, in the king­dom, be­ing righ­teous, by faith, must pre­cede do­ing righ­teous­ness in the daily life of the mor­tals of earth.

• explained › by faith becoming spirit-conscious of sonship with God

140:10.4This same evening Thomas asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, you say that we must be­come as lit­tle chil­dren be­fore we can gain en­trance to the Fa­ther’s king­dom, and yet you have warned us not to be de­ceived by false proph­ets nor to be­come guilty of cast­ing our pearls be­fore swine. Now, I am hon­estly puz­zled. I can­not un­der­stand your teach­ing.” Je­sus replied to Thomas: “How long shall I bear with you! Ever you in­sist on mak­ing lit­eral all that I teach. When I asked you to be­come as lit­tle chil­dren as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom, I re­ferred not to ease of de­cep­tion, mere will­ing­ness to be­lieve, nor to quick­ness to trust pleas­ing strangers. What I did de­sire that you should gather from the il­lus­tra­tion was the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. You are the child, and it is your Fa­ther’s king­dom you seek to en­ter. There is pres­ent that nat­u­ral af­fec­tion be­tween ev­ery nor­mal child and its fa­ther which in­sures an un­der­stand­ing and lov­ing re­la­tion­ship, and which for­ever pre­cludes all dis­po­si­tion to bar­gain for the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. And the gospel you are go­ing forth to preach has to do with a sal­va­tion grow­ing out of the faith-re­al­iza­tion of this very and eter­nal child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship.”

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

140:10.5The one char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus’ teach­ing was that the moral­ity of his phi­los­o­phy orig­i­nated in the per­sonal re­la­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to God—this very child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the in­di­vid­ual, not on the race or na­tion. While eat­ing sup­per, Je­sus had the talk with Mat­thew in which he ex­plained that the moral­ity of any act is de­ter­mined by the in­di­vid­ual’s mo­tive. Je­sus’ moral­ity was al­ways pos­i­tive. The golden rule as re­stated by Je­sus de­mands ac­tive so­cial con­tact; the older neg­a­tive rule could be obeyed in iso­la­tion. Je­sus stripped moral­ity of all rules and cer­e­monies and el­e­vated it to ma­jes­tic lev­els of spir­i­tual think­ing and truly righ­teous liv­ing.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › identifying with a particular race, culture, political system

140:10.6This new re­li­gion of Je­sus was not with­out its prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions, but what­ever of prac­ti­cal po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic value there is to be found in his teach­ing is the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of this in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of the soul as it man­i­fests the fruits of the spirit in the spon­ta­neous daily min­istry of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

• explained › by faith becoming spirit-conscious of sonship with God

140:10.7Af­ter Je­sus and Mat­thew had fin­ished talk­ing, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes asked, “But, Mas­ter, are all men the sons of God?” And Je­sus an­swered: “Yes, Si­mon, all men are the sons of God, and that is the good news you are go­ing to pro­claim.” But the apos­tles could not grasp such a doc­trine; it was a new, strange, and startling an­nounce­ment. And it was be­cause of his de­sire to im­press this truth upon them that Je­sus taught his fol­low­ers to treat all men as their broth­ers.

• explained › by faith every mortal may have salvation

140:10.9John asked Je­sus, “Mas­ter, what is the king­dom of heaven?” And Je­sus an­swered: “The king­dom of heaven con­sists in these three es­sen­tials: first, rec­og­ni­tion of the fact of the sov­er­eignty of God; sec­ond, be­lief in the truth of son­ship with God; and third, faith in the ef­fec­tive­ness of the su­preme hu­man de­sire to do the will of God—to be like God. And this is the good news of the gospel: that by faith ev­ery mor­tal may have all these es­sen­tials of sal­va­tion.”

• explained › by faith becoming spirit-conscious of sonship with God

141:4.2In an­swer to Thomas’s ques­tion, “Who is this God of the king­dom?” Je­sus replied: “God is your Fa­ther, and re­li­gion—my gospel—is noth­ing more nor less than the be­liev­ing rec­og­ni­tion of the truth that you are his son. And I am here among you in the flesh to make clear both of these ideas in my life and teach­ings.”

• explained › God is Father, we are his sons; believing this is salvation
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › attacking old ways, reforming mores; rather add new truth
• proclaiming the gospel › first get man securely within kingdom

141:6.2When Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Je­sus were alone, Si­mon asked the Mas­ter: “Why is it that I could not per­suade him? Why did he so re­sist me and so read­ily lend an ear to you?” Je­sus an­swered: “Si­mon, Si­mon, how many times have I in­structed you to re­frain from all ef­forts to take some­thing out of the hearts of those who seek sal­va­tion? How of­ten have I told you to la­bor only to put some­thing into these hun­gry souls? Lead men into the king­dom, and the great and liv­ing truths of the king­dom will pres­ently drive out all se­ri­ous er­ror. When you have pre­sented to mor­tal man the good news that God is his Fa­ther, you can the eas­ier per­suade him that he is in re­al­ity a son of God. And hav­ing done that, you have brought the light of sal­va­tion to the one who sits in dark­ness. Si­mon, when the Son of Man came first to you, did he come de­nounc­ing Moses and the proph­ets and pro­claim­ing a new and bet­ter way of life? No. I came not to take away that which you had from your fore­fa­thers but to show you the per­fected vi­sion of that which your fa­thers saw only in part. Go then, Si­mon, teach­ing and preach­ing the king­dom, and when you have a man safely and se­curely within the king­dom, then is the time, when such a one shall come to you with in­quiries, to im­part in­struc­tion hav­ing to do with the pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ment of the soul within the di­vine king­dom.”

141:6.3Si­mon was as­ton­ished at these words, but he did as Je­sus had in­structed him, and Teherma, the Per­sian, was num­bered among those who en­tered the king­dom.

• explained › God is Father, we are his sons; believing this is salvation
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › striving

141:6.4That night Je­sus dis­coursed to the apos­tles on the new life in the king­dom. He said in part: “When you en­ter the king­dom, you are re­born. You can­not teach the deep things of the spirit to those who have been born only of the flesh; first see that men are born of the spirit be­fore you seek to in­struct them in the ad­vanced ways of the spirit. Do not un­der­take to show men the beau­ties of the tem­ple un­til you have first taken them into the tem­ple. In­tro­duce men to God and as the sons of God be­fore you dis­course on the doc­trines of the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of men. Do not strive with men—al­ways be pa­tient. It is not your king­dom; you are only am­bas­sadors. Sim­ply go forth pro­claim­ing: This is the king­dom of heaven—God is your Fa­ther and you are his sons, and this good news, if you whole­heart­edly be­lieve it, is your eter­nal sal­va­tion.”

• proclaiming the gospel › live so as to lead others to inquire

141:7.3Je­sus en­deav­ored to make clear that he de­sired his dis­ci­ples, hav­ing tasted of the good spirit re­al­i­ties of the king­dom, so to live in the world that men, by see­ing their lives, would be­come king­dom con­scious and hence be led to in­quire of be­liev­ers con­cern­ing the ways of the king­dom. All such sin­cere seek­ers for the truth are al­ways glad to hear the glad tid­ings of the faith gift which in­sures ad­mis­sion to the king­dom with its eter­nal and di­vine spirit re­al­i­ties.

• explained › God is Father, we are his sons; believing this is salvation
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › diverting devotion from one duty to proclaim g.

141:7.4The Mas­ter sought to im­press upon all teach­ers of the gospel of the king­dom that their only busi­ness was to re­veal God to the in­di­vid­ual man as his Fa­ther—to lead this in­di­vid­ual man to be­come son-con­scious; then to pre­sent this same man to God as his faith son. Both of these es­sen­tial rev­e­la­tions are ac­com­plished in Je­sus. He be­came, in­deed, “the way, the truth, and the life.” The re­li­gion of Je­sus was wholly based on the liv­ing of his be­stowal life on earth. When Je­sus de­parted from this world, he left be­hind no books, laws, or other forms of hu­man or­ga­ni­za­tion af­fect­ing the re­li­gious life of the in­di­vid­ual.

• explained › salvation by faith alone; liberty through truth

141:7.6Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis upon what he called the two truths of first im­port in the teach­ings of the king­dom, and they are: the at­tain­ment of sal­va­tion by faith, and faith alone, as­so­ci­ated with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary teach­ing of the at­tain­ment of hu­man lib­erty through the sin­cere rec­og­ni­tion of truth, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Je­sus was the truth made man­i­fest in the flesh, and he prom­ised to send his Spirit of Truth into the hearts of all his chil­dren af­ter his re­turn to the Fa­ther in heaven.

• proclaiming the gospel › be bold and emphatic

141:7.8To in­sure the rec­og­ni­tion of his Fa­ther in the un­fold­ing of the plan of the king­dom, Je­sus ex­plained that he had pur­posely ig­nored the “great men of earth.” He be­gan his work with the poor, the very class which had been so ne­glected by most of the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions of pre­ced­ing times. He de­spised no man; his plan was world-wide, even uni­ver­sal. He was so bold and em­phatic in these an­nounce­ments that even Pe­ter, James, and John were tempted to think he might pos­si­bly be be­side him­self.

• will triumph and be proclaimed to all nations

142:2.2When Ja­cob fin­ished speak­ing, Je­sus re­plied: “Ja­cob, you have well stated the teach­ings of the olden proph­ets who taught the chil­dren of their gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the light of their day. Our Fa­ther in Par­a­dise is change­less. But the con­cept of his na­ture has en­larged and grown from the days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the gen­er­a­tion of the prophet Isa­iah. And now have I come in the flesh to re­veal the Fa­ther in new glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds. As the gospel of this king­dom shall spread over the world with its mes­sage of good cheer and good will to all men, there will grow up im­proved and bet­ter re­la­tions among the fam­i­lies of all na­tions. As time passes, fa­thers and their chil­dren will love each other more, and thus will be brought about a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for his chil­dren on earth. Re­mem­ber, Ja­cob, that a good and true fa­ther not only loves his fam­ily as a whole—as a fam­ily—but he also truly loves and af­fec­tion­ately cares for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber.”

• explained › by faith becoming spirit-conscious of sonship with God

142:3.86. The Fa­ther in heaven. And now do we know God as our Fa­ther in heaven. Our teach­ing pro­vides a re­li­gion wherein the be­liever is a son of God. That is the good news of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Co­ex­is­tent with the Fa­ther are the Son and the Spirit, and the rev­e­la­tion of the na­ture and min­istry of these Par­a­dise De­i­ties will con­tinue to en­large and brighten through­out the end­less ages of the eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion of the as­cend­ing sons of God. At all times and dur­ing all ages the true wor­ship of any hu­man be­ing—as con­cerns in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress—is rec­og­nized by the in­dwelling spirit as homage ren­dered to the Fa­ther in heaven.

• explained › love of Father and service of his children
• proclaiming the gospel › no longer be concerned with commands to refrain

142:4.2The Mas­ter saw that his host was be­wil­dered at his friendly at­ti­tude to­ward art; there­fore, when they had fin­ished the sur­vey of the en­tire col­lec­tion, Je­sus said: “Be­cause you ap­pre­ci­ate the beauty of things cre­ated by my Fa­ther and fash­ioned by the artis­tic hands of man, why should you ex­pect to be re­buked? Be­cause Moses one­time sought to com­bat idol­a­try and the wor­ship of false gods, why should all men frown upon the re­pro­duc­tion of grace and beauty? I say to you, Flav­ius, Moses’ chil­dren have mis­un­der­stood him, and now do they make false gods of even his pro­hi­bi­tions of im­ages and the like­ness of things in heaven and on earth. But even if Moses taught such re­stric­tions to the dark­ened minds of those days, what has that to do with this day when the Fa­ther in heaven is re­vealed as the uni­ver­sal Spirit Ruler over all? And, Flav­ius, I de­clare that in the com­ing king­dom they shall no longer teach, ‘Do not wor­ship this and do not wor­ship that’; no longer shall they con­cern them­selves with com­mands to re­frain from this and take care not to do that, but rather shall all be con­cerned with one su­preme duty. And this duty of man is ex­pressed in two great priv­i­leges: sin­cere wor­ship of the in­fi­nite Cre­ator, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, and lov­ing ser­vice be­stowed upon one’s fel­low men. If you love your neigh­bor as you love your­self, you re­ally know that you are a son of God.

• proclaiming the gospel › duty of those who know spirit realities

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?”

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

142:7.4He next ex­plained that the “king­dom idea” was not the best way to il­lus­trate man’s re­la­tion to God; that he em­ployed such fig­ures of speech be­cause the Jew­ish peo­ple were ex­pect­ing the king­dom, and be­cause John had preached in terms of the com­ing king­dom. Je­sus said: “The peo­ple of an­other age will bet­ter un­der­stand the gospel of the king­dom when it is pre­sented in terms ex­pres­sive of the fam­ily re­la­tion­ship—when man un­der­stands re­li­gion as the teach­ing of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man, son­ship with God.” Then the Mas­ter dis­coursed at some length on the earthly fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of the heav­enly fam­ily, re­stat­ing the two fun­da­men­tal laws of liv­ing: the first com­mand­ment of love for the fa­ther, the head of the fam­ily, and the sec­ond com­mand­ment of mu­tual love among the chil­dren, to love your brother as your­self. And then he ex­plained that such a qual­ity of broth­erly af­fec­tion would in­vari­ably man­i­fest it­self in un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › identifying with a particular race, culture, political system

142:7.17Je­sus replied: “Thomas, Thomas, how long be­fore you will ac­quire the abil­ity to lis­ten with the ear of the spirit? How long will it be be­fore you dis­cern that this king­dom is a spir­i­tual king­dom, and that my Fa­ther is also a spir­i­tual be­ing? Do you not un­der­stand that I am teach­ing you as spir­i­tual chil­dren in the spirit fam­ily of heaven, of which the fa­ther­head is an in­fi­nite and eter­nal spirit? Will you not al­low me to use the earth fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of di­vine re­la­tion­ships with­out so lit­er­ally ap­ply­ing my teach­ing to ma­te­rial af­fairs? In your minds can­not you sep­a­rate the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom from the ma­te­rial, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems of the age? When I speak the lan­guage of the spirit, why do you in­sist on trans­lat­ing my mean­ing into the lan­guage of the flesh just be­cause I pre­sume to em­ploy com­mon­place and lit­eral re­la­tion­ships for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion? My chil­dren, I im­plore that you cease to ap­ply the teach­ing of the king­dom of the spirit to the sor­did af­fairs of slav­ery, pov­erty, houses, and lands, and to the ma­te­rial prob­lems of hu­man eq­uity and jus­tice. These tem­po­ral mat­ters are the con­cern of the men of this world, and while in a way they af­fect all men, you have been called to rep­re­sent me in the world, even as I rep­re­sent my Fa­ther. You are spir­i­tual am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the spirit Fa­ther. By this time it should be pos­si­ble for me to in­struct you as full-grown men of the spirit king­dom. Must I ever ad­dress you only as chil­dren? Will you never grow up in spirit per­cep­tion? Nev­er­the­less, I love you and will bear with you, even to the very end of our as­so­ci­a­tion in the flesh. And even then shall my spirit go be­fore you into all the world.”

• will triumph and be proclaimed to all nations

143:1.4“I have come into this world to do the will of my Fa­ther and to re­veal his lov­ing char­ac­ter to all man­kind. That, my breth­ren, is my mis­sion. And this one thing I will do, re­gard­less of the mis­un­der­stand­ing of my teach­ings by Jews or gen­tiles of this day or of an­other gen­er­a­tion. But you should not over­look the fact that even di­vine love has its se­vere dis­ci­plines. A fa­ther’s love for his son of­ten­times im­pels the fa­ther to re­strain the un­wise acts of his thought­less off­spring. The child does not al­ways com­pre­hend the wise and lov­ing mo­tives of the fa­ther’s re­strain­ing dis­ci­pline. But I de­clare to you that my Fa­ther in Par­a­dise does rule a uni­verse of uni­verses by the com­pelling power of his love. Love is the great­est of all spirit re­al­i­ties. Truth is a lib­er­at­ing rev­e­la­tion, but love is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship. And no mat­ter what blun­ders your fel­low men make in their world man­age­ment of to­day, in an age to come the gospel which I de­clare to you will rule this very world. The ul­ti­mate goal of hu­man prog­ress is the rev­er­ent rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God and the lov­ing ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• proclaiming the gospel › preach to all without fear or favor

143:1.5“But who told you that my gospel was in­tended only for slaves and weak­lings? Do you, my cho­sen apos­tles, re­sem­ble weak­lings? Did John look like a weak­ling? Do you ob­serve that I am en­slaved by fear? True, the poor and op­pressed of this gen­er­a­tion have the gospel preached to them. The re­li­gions of this world have ne­glected the poor, but my Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons. Be­sides, the poor of this day are the first to heed the call to re­pen­tance and ac­cep­tance of son­ship. The gospel of the king­dom is to be preached to all men—Jew and gen­tile, Greek and Ro­man, rich and poor, free and bond—and equally to young and old, male and fe­male.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

143:1.7“To­day, the un­be­liev­ers may taunt you with preach­ing a gospel of non­re­sis­tance and with liv­ing lives of non­vi­o­lence, but you are the first vol­un­teers of a long line of sin­cere be­liev­ers in the gospel of this king­dom who will as­ton­ish all man­kind by their heroic de­vo­tion to these teach­ings. No armies of the world have ever dis­played more cour­age and brav­ery than will be por­trayed by you and your loyal suc­ces­sors who shall go forth to all the world pro­claim­ing the good news—the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men. The cour­age of the flesh is the low­est form of brav­ery. Mind brav­ery is a higher type of hu­man cour­age, but the high­est and su­preme is un­com­pro­mis­ing loy­alty to the en­light­ened con­vic­tions of pro­found spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. And such cour­age con­sti­tutes the hero­ism of the God-know­ing man. And you are all God-know­ing men; you are in very truth the per­sonal as­so­ciates of the Son of Man.”

• proclaiming the gospel › be aggressive, unafraid, even to ends of earth

143:1.9The re­sult upon the pub­lic preach­ing and per­sonal min­istry of the apos­tles was im­me­di­ate; from that very day their mes­sage took on a new note of coura­geous dom­i­nance. The twelve con­tin­ued to ac­quire the spirit of pos­i­tive ag­gres­sion in the new gospel of the king­dom. From this day for­ward they did not oc­cupy them­selves so much with the preach­ing of the neg­a­tive virtues and the pas­sive in­junc­tions of their Mas­ter’s many-sided teach­ing.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

143:6.6Je­sus and the twelve camped on Mount Ger­izim un­til the end of Au­gust. They preached the good news of the king­dom—the fa­ther­hood of God—to the Samar­i­tans in the cities by day and spent the nights at the camp. The work which Je­sus and the twelve did in these Samar­i­tan cities yielded many souls for the king­dom and did much to pre­pare the way for the mar­velous work of Philip in these re­gions af­ter Je­sus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion, sub­se­quent to the dis­per­sion of the apos­tles to the ends of the earth by the bit­ter per­se­cu­tion of be­liev­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

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.”

• explained › applies to individual, not state

145:2.10The apos­tles were greatly helped by this ser­mon. All of them re­al­ized more fully that the gospel of the king­dom is a mes­sage di­rected to the in­di­vid­ual, not to the na­tion.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › subordination of gospel to physical ministry

145:5.1Nei­ther did Je­sus sleep much that Sat­ur­day night. He re­al­ized that the world was filled with phys­i­cal dis­tress and over­run with ma­te­rial dif­fi­cul­ties, and he con­tem­plated the great dan­ger of be­ing com­pelled to de­vote so much of his time to the care of the sick and af­flicted that his mis­sion of es­tab­lish­ing the spir­i­tual king­dom in the hearts of men would be in­ter­fered with or at least sub­or­di­nated to the min­istry of things phys­i­cal. Be­cause of these and sim­i­lar thoughts which oc­cu­pied the mor­tal mind of Je­sus dur­ing the night, he arose that Sun­day morn­ing long be­fore day­break and went all alone to one of his fa­vorite places for com­mu­nion with the Fa­ther. The theme of Je­sus’ prayer on this early morn­ing was for wis­dom and judg­ment that he might not al­low his hu­man sym­pa­thy, joined with his di­vine mercy, to make such an ap­peal to him in the pres­ence of mor­tal suf­fer­ing that all of his time would be oc­cu­pied with phys­i­cal min­istry to the ne­glect of the spir­i­tual. Though he did not wish al­to­gether to avoid min­is­ter­ing to the sick, he knew that he must also do the more im­por­tant work of spir­i­tual teach­ing and re­li­gious train­ing.

145:5.2Je­sus went out in the hills to pray so many times be­cause there were no pri­vate rooms suit­able for his per­sonal de­vo­tions.

145:5.3Pe­ter could not sleep that night; so, very early, shortly af­ter Je­sus had gone out to pray, he aroused James and John, and the three went to find their Mas­ter. Af­ter more than an hour’s search they found Je­sus and be­sought him to tell them the rea­son for his strange con­duct. They de­sired to know why he ap­peared to be trou­bled by the mighty out­pour­ing of the spirit of heal­ing when all the peo­ple were over­joyed and his apos­tles so much re­joiced.

145:5.4For more than four hours Je­sus en­deav­ored to ex­plain to these three apos­tles what had hap­pened. He taught them about what had tran­spired and ex­plained the dan­gers of such man­i­fes­ta­tions. Je­sus con­fided to them the rea­son for his com­ing forth to pray. He sought to make plain to his per­sonal as­so­ciates the real rea­sons why the king­dom of the Fa­ther could not be built upon won­der-work­ing and phys­i­cal heal­ing. But they could not com­pre­hend his teach­ing.

145:5.5Mean­while, early Sun­day morn­ing, other crowds of af­flicted souls and many cu­rios­ity seek­ers be­gan to gather about the house of Zeb­e­dee. They clam­ored to see Je­sus. An­drew and the apos­tles were so per­plexed that, while Si­mon Ze­lo­tes talked to the as­sem­bly, An­drew, with sev­eral of his as­so­ciates, went to find Je­sus. When An­drew had lo­cated Je­sus in com­pany with the three, he said: “Mas­ter, why do you leave us alone with the mul­ti­tude? Be­hold, all men seek you; never be­fore have so many sought af­ter your teach­ing. Even now the house is sur­rounded by those who have come from near and far be­cause of your mighty works. Will you not re­turn with us to min­is­ter to them?”

145:5.6When Je­sus heard this, he an­swered: “An­drew, have I not taught you and these oth­ers that my mis­sion on earth is the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther, and my mes­sage the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom of heaven? How is it, then, that you would have me turn aside from my work for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the cu­ri­ous and for the sat­is­fac­tion of those who seek for signs and won­ders? Have we not been among these peo­ple all these months, and have they flocked in mul­ti­tudes to hear the good news of the king­dom? Why have they now come to be­siege us? Is it not be­cause of the heal­ing of their phys­i­cal bod­ies rather than as a re­sult of the re­cep­tion of spir­i­tual truth for the sal­va­tion of their souls? When men are at­tracted to us be­cause of ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tions, many of them come seek­ing not for truth and sal­va­tion but rather in quest of heal­ing for their phys­i­cal ail­ments and to se­cure de­liv­er­ance from their ma­te­rial dif­fi­cul­ties.

145:5.7“All this time I have been in Ca­per­naum, and both in the syn­a­gogue and by the sea­side have I pro­claimed the good news of the king­dom to all who had ears to hear and hearts to re­ceive the truth. It is not the will of my Fa­ther that I should re­turn with you to cater to these cu­ri­ous ones and to be­come oc­cu­pied with the min­istry of things phys­i­cal to the ex­clu­sion of the spir­i­tual. I have or­dained you to preach the gospel and min­is­ter to the sick, but I must not be­come en­grossed in heal­ing to the ex­clu­sion of my teach­ing. No, An­drew, I will not re­turn with you. Go and tell the peo­ple to be­lieve in that which we have taught them and to re­joice in the lib­erty of the sons of God, and make ready for our de­par­ture for the other cities of Gal­i­lee, where the way has al­ready been pre­pared for the preach­ing of the good tid­ings of the king­dom. It was for this pur­pose that I came forth from the Fa­ther. Go, then, and pre­pare for our im­me­di­ate de­par­ture while I here await your re­turn.”

• explained › unfolds truths of being

146:3.1At Ramah Je­sus had the mem­o­rable dis­cus­sion with the aged Greek philoso­pher who taught that sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy were suf­fi­cient to sat­isfy the needs of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Je­sus lis­tened with pa­tience and sym­pa­thy to this Greek teacher, al­low­ing the truth of many things he said but point­ing out that, when he was through, he had failed in his dis­cus­sion of hu­man ex­is­tence to ex­plain “whence, why, and whither,” and added: “Where you leave off, we be­gin. Re­li­gion is a rev­e­la­tion to man’s soul deal­ing with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties which the mind alone could never dis­cover or fully fathom. In­tel­lec­tual striv­ings may re­veal the facts of life, but the gospel of the king­dom un­folds the truths of be­ing. You have dis­cussed the ma­te­rial shad­ows of truth; will you now lis­ten while I tell you about the eter­nal and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties which cast these tran­sient time shad­ows of the ma­te­rial facts of mor­tal ex­is­tence?” For more than an hour Je­sus taught this Greek the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom. The old philoso­pher was sus­cep­ti­ble to the Mas­ter’s mode of ap­proach, and be­ing sin­cerely hon­est of heart, he quickly be­lieved this gospel of sal­va­tion.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › substituting wonders and healing for

147:3.2The apos­tles were some­what rest­less un­der the re­stric­tions im­posed by Je­sus, and John, the young­est of the twelve, was es­pe­cially restive un­der this re­straint. He had brought Je­sus to the pool think­ing that the sight of the as­sem­bled suf­fer­ers would make such an ap­peal to the Mas­ter’s com­pas­sion that he would be moved to per­form a mir­a­cle of heal­ing, and thereby would all Je­ru­sa­lem be as­tounded and pres­ently be won to be­lieve in the gospel of the king­dom. Said John to Je­sus: “Mas­ter, see all of these suf­fer­ing ones; is there noth­ing we can do for them?” And Je­sus replied: “John, why would you tempt me to turn aside from the way I have cho­sen? Why do you go on de­sir­ing to sub­sti­tute the work­ing of won­ders and the heal­ing of the sick for the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of eter­nal truth? My son, I may not do that which you de­sire, but gather to­gether these sick and af­flicted that I may speak words of good cheer and eter­nal com­fort to them.”

• explained › God is Father, we are his sons; believing this is salvation

147:3.3In speak­ing to those as­sem­bled, Je­sus said: “Many of you are here, sick and af­flicted, be­cause of your many years of wrong liv­ing. Some suf­fer from the ac­ci­dents of time, oth­ers as a re­sult of the mis­takes of their fore­bears, while some of you strug­gle un­der the hand­i­caps of the im­per­fect con­di­tions of your tem­po­ral ex­is­tence. But my Fa­ther works, and I would work, to im­prove your earthly state but more es­pe­cially to in­sure your eter­nal es­tate. None of us can do much to change the dif­fi­cul­ties of life un­less we dis­cover the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Af­ter all, we are all be­holden to do the will of the Eter­nal. If you could all be healed of your phys­i­cal af­flic­tions, you would in­deed mar­vel, but it is even greater that you should be cleansed of all spir­i­tual dis­ease and find your­selves healed of all moral in­fir­mi­ties. You are all God’s chil­dren; you are the sons of the heav­enly Fa­ther. The bonds of time may seem to af­flict you, but the God of eter­nity loves you. And when the time of judg­ment shall come, fear not, you shall all find, not only jus­tice, but an abun­dance of mercy. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: He who hears the gospel of the king­dom and be­lieves in this teach­ing of son­ship with God, has eter­nal life; al­ready are such be­liev­ers pass­ing from judg­ment and death to light and life. And the hour is com­ing in which even those who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the res­ur­rec­tion.”

• do not try to fit into old forms of religious belief
• explained › fasting not part of

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

147:7.3Then the Mas­ter pro­ceeded to warn his hear­ers against en­ter­tain­ing the no­tion that all olden teach­ing should be re­placed en­tirely by new doc­trines. Said Je­sus: “That which is old and also true must abide. Like­wise, that which is new but false must be re­jected. But that which is new and also true, have the faith and cour­age to ac­cept. Re­mem­ber it is writ­ten: ‘For­sake not an old friend, for the new is not com­pa­ra­ble to him. As new wine, so is a new friend; if it be­comes old, you shall drink it with glad­ness.’”

• proclaiming the gospel › allow apostolic teachers to teach own views

148:1.2Each of the apos­tolic teach­ers taught his own view of the gospel of the king­dom. They made no ef­fort to teach just alike; there was no stan­dard­ized or dog­matic for­mu­la­tion of the­o­logic doc­trines. Though they all taught the same truth, each apos­tle pre­sented his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. And Je­sus up­held this pre­sen­ta­tion of the di­ver­sity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of the king­dom, un­fail­ingly har­mo­niz­ing and co-or­di­nat­ing these many and di­ver­gent views of the gospel at his weekly ques­tion hours. Not­with­stand­ing this great de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty in mat­ters of teach­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter tended to dom­i­nate the the­ol­ogy of the school of evan­ge­lists. Next to Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee ex­erted the great­est per­sonal in­flu­ence.

• left as Jesus presented, all religions would have accepted

149:2.1Je­sus un­der­stood the minds of men. He knew what was in the heart of man, and had his teach­ings been left as he pre­sented them, the only com­men­tary be­ing the in­spired in­ter­pre­ta­tion af­forded by his earth life, all na­tions and all re­li­gions of the world would speed­ily have em­braced the gospel of the king­dom. The well-meant ef­forts of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers to re­state his teach­ings so as to make them the more ac­cept­able to cer­tain na­tions, races, and re­li­gions, only re­sulted in mak­ing such teach­ings the less ac­cept­able to all other na­tions, races, and re­li­gions.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

149:2.42. The sec­ond great blun­der of the Mas­ter’s early fol­low­ers, and one which all sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions have per­sisted in per­pet­u­at­ing, was to or­ga­nize the Chris­tian teach­ing so com­pletely about the per­son of Je­sus. This overem­pha­sis of the per­son­al­ity of Je­sus in the the­ol­ogy of Chris­tian­ity has worked to ob­scure his teach­ings, and all of this has made it in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult for Jews, Mo­hammedans, Hin­dus, and other East­ern re­li­gion­ists to ac­cept the teach­ings of Je­sus. We would not be­lit­tle the place of the per­son of Je­sus in a re­li­gion which might bear his name, but we would not per­mit such con­sid­er­a­tion to eclipse his in­spired life or to sup­plant his sav­ing mes­sage: the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man.

• proclaiming the gospel › approach others recognizing common truths

149:2.5The teach­ers of the re­li­gion of Je­sus should ap­proach other re­li­gions with the rec­og­ni­tion of the truths which are held in com­mon (many of which come di­rectly or in­di­rectly from Je­sus’ mes­sage) while they re­frain from plac­ing so much em­pha­sis on the dif­fer­ences.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › dishonesty, unfairness, ignoble tactics

149:4.5It was not so much what Je­sus taught about the bal­anced char­ac­ter that im­pressed his as­so­ciates as the fact that his own life was such an elo­quent ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of his teach­ing. He lived in the midst of stress and storm, but he never wa­vered. His en­e­mies con­tin­u­ally laid snares for him, but they never en­trapped him. The wise and learned en­deav­ored to trip him, but he did not stum­ble. They sought to em­broil him in de­bate, but his an­swers were al­ways en­light­en­ing, dig­ni­fied, and fi­nal. When he was in­ter­rupted in his dis­courses with mul­ti­tudi­nous ques­tions, his an­swers were al­ways sig­nif­i­cant and con­clu­sive. Never did he re­sort to ig­no­ble tac­tics in meet­ing the con­tin­u­ous pres­sure of his en­e­mies, who did not hes­i­tate to em­ploy ev­ery sort of false, un­fair, and un­righ­teous mode of at­tack upon him.

• proclaiming the gospel › fear not those who can kill the body

150:4.2Je­sus ar­ranged the date for meet­ing the twelve at Naz­a­reth, and in part­ing, he said: “On this mis­sion go not to any city of the gen­tiles, nei­ther go into Samaria, but go in­stead to the lost sheep of the house of Is­rael. Preach the gospel of the king­dom and pro­claim the sav­ing truth that man is a son of God. Re­mem­ber that the dis­ci­ple is hardly above his mas­ter nor a ser­vant greater than his lord. It is enough for the dis­ci­ple to be equal with his mas­ter and the ser­vant to be­come like his lord. If some peo­ple have dared to call the mas­ter of the house an as­so­ciate of Beelze­bub, how much more shall they so re­gard those of his house­hold! But you should not fear these un­be­liev­ing en­e­mies. I de­clare to you that there is noth­ing cov­ered up that is not go­ing to be re­vealed; there is noth­ing hid­den that shall not be known. What I have taught you pri­vately, that preach with wis­dom in the open. What I have re­vealed to you in the in­ner cham­ber, that you are to pro­claim in due sea­son from the house­tops. And I say to you, my friends and dis­ci­ples, be not afraid of those who can kill the body, but who are not able to de­stroy the soul; rather put your trust in Him who is able to sus­tain the body and save the soul.

• believers must love g. more than mother, father, wife, husband, children, or siblings

150:4.3“Are not two spar­rows sold for a penny? And yet I de­clare that not one of them is for­got­ten in God’s sight. Know you not that the very hairs of your head are all num­bered? Fear not, there­fore; you are of more value than a great many spar­rows. Be not ashamed of my teach­ing; go forth pro­claim­ing peace and good will, but be not de­ceived—peace will not al­ways at­tend your preach­ing. I came to bring peace on earth, but when men re­ject my gift, di­vi­sion and tur­moil re­sult. When all of a fam­ily re­ceive the gospel of the king­dom, truly peace abides in that house; but when some of the fam­ily en­ter the king­dom and oth­ers re­ject the gospel, such di­vi­sion can pro­duce only sor­row and sad­ness. La­bor earnestly to save the whole fam­ily lest a man’s foes be­come those of his own house­hold. But, when you have done your ut­most for all of ev­ery fam­ily, I de­clare to you that he who loves fa­ther or mother more than this gospel is not wor­thy of the king­dom.”

• explained › salvation by faith alone; liberty through truth

150:5.2“When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall an­swer, Be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom; ac­cept di­vine for­give­ness. By faith rec­og­nize the in­dwelling spirit of God, whose ac­cep­tance makes you a son of God. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where it says, ‘In the Lord have I righ­teous­ness and strength.’ Also where the Fa­ther says, ‘My righ­teous­ness is near; my sal­va­tion has gone forth, and my arms shall en­fold my peo­ple.’ ‘My soul shall be joy­ful in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with the robe of his righ­teous­ness.’ Have you not also read of the Fa­ther that his name ‘shall be called the Lord our righ­teous­ness.’ ‘Take away the filthy rags of self-righ­teous­ness and clothe my son with the robe of di­vine righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.’ It is for­ever true, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ En­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom is wholly free, but prog­ress—growth in grace—is es­sen­tial to con­tin­u­ance therein.

• explained › revelation of goodness of God

150:5.5In sum­ming up his fi­nal state­ment, Je­sus said: “You can­not buy sal­va­tion; you can­not earn righ­teous­ness. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God, and righ­teous­ness is the nat­u­ral fruit of the spirit-born life of son­ship in the king­dom. You are not to be saved be­cause you live a righ­teous life; rather is it that you live a righ­teous life be­cause you have al­ready been saved, have rec­og­nized son­ship as the gift of God and ser­vice in the king­dom as the su­preme de­light of life on earth. When men be­lieve this gospel, which is a rev­e­la­tion of the good­ness of God, they will be led to vol­un­tary re­pen­tance of all known sin. Re­al­iza­tion of son­ship is in­com­pat­i­ble with the de­sire to sin. King­dom be­liev­ers hunger for righ­teous­ness and thirst for di­vine per­fec­tion.”

• proclaiming the gospel › employ analogies, true stories to illustrate one central truth, not fables or allegories

151:2.5The Mas­ter per­mit­ted this con­fu­sion to pass the point of most in­tense ex­pres­sion; then he clapped his hands and called them about him. When they had all gath­ered around him once more, he said, “Be­fore I tell you about this para­ble, do any of you have aught to say?” Fol­low­ing a mo­ment of si­lence, Thomas spoke up: “Yes, Mas­ter, I wish to say a few words. I re­mem­ber that you once told us to be­ware of this very thing. You in­structed us that, when us­ing il­lus­tra­tions for our preach­ing, we should em­ploy true sto­ries, not fa­bles, and that we should se­lect a story best suited to the il­lus­tra­tion of the one cen­tral and vi­tal truth which we wished to teach the peo­ple, and that, hav­ing so used the story, we should not at­tempt to make a spir­i­tual ap­pli­ca­tion of all the mi­nor de­tails in­volved in the telling of the story. I hold that Pe­ter and Na­than­iel are both wrong in their at­tempts to in­ter­pret this para­ble. I ad­mire their abil­ity to do these things, but I am equally sure that all such at­tempts to make a nat­u­ral para­ble yield spir­i­tual analo­gies in all its fea­tures can only re­sult in con­fu­sion and se­ri­ous mis­con­cep­tion of the true pur­pose of such a para­ble. That I am right is fully proved by the fact that, whereas we were all of one mind an hour ago, now are we di­vided into two sep­a­rate groups who hold dif­fer­ent opin­ions con­cern­ing this para­ble and hold such opin­ions so earnestly as to in­ter­fere, in my opin­ion, with our abil­ity fully to grasp the great truth which you had in mind when you pre­sented this para­ble to the mul­ti­tude and sub­se­quently asked us to make com­ment upon it.”

• proclaiming the gospel › effort attended by varying degrees of success

151:2.6The words which Thomas spoke had a qui­et­ing ef­fect on all of them. He caused them to re­call what Je­sus had taught them on for­mer oc­ca­sions, and be­fore Je­sus re­sumed speak­ing, An­drew arose, say­ing: “I am per­suaded that Thomas is right, and I would like to have him tell us what mean­ing he at­taches to the para­ble of the sower.” Af­ter Je­sus had beck­oned Thomas to speak, he said: “My breth­ren, I did not wish to pro­long this dis­cus­sion, but if you so de­sire, I will say that I think this para­ble was spo­ken to teach us one great truth. And that is that our teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom, no mat­ter how faith­fully and ef­fi­ciently we ex­e­cute our di­vine com­mis­sions, is go­ing to be at­tended by vary­ing de­grees of suc­cess; and that all such dif­fer­ences in re­sults are di­rectly due to con­di­tions in­her­ent in the cir­cum­stances of our min­istry, con­di­tions over which we have lit­tle or no con­trol.”

• proclaiming the gospel › suit presentation to audience

151:3.1The apos­tles were para­ble-minded, so much so that the whole of the next evening was de­voted to the fur­ther dis­cus­sion of para­bles. Je­sus in­tro­duced the evening’s con­fer­ence by say­ing: “My beloved, you must al­ways make a dif­fer­ence in teach­ing so as to suit your pre­sen­ta­tion of truth to the minds and hearts be­fore you. When you stand be­fore a mul­ti­tude of vary­ing in­tel­lects and tem­per­a­ments, you can­not speak dif­fer­ent words for each class of hear­ers, but you can tell a story to con­vey your teach­ing; and each group, even each in­di­vid­ual, will be able to make his own in­ter­pre­ta­tion of your para­ble in ac­cor­dance with his own in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. You are to let your light shine but do so with wis­dom and dis­cre­tion. No man, when he lights a lamp, cov­ers it up with a ves­sel or puts it un­der the bed; he puts his lamp on a stand where all can be­hold the light. Let me tell you that noth­ing is hid in the king­dom of heaven which shall not be made man­i­fest; nei­ther are there any se­crets which shall not ul­ti­mately be made known. Even­tu­ally, all these things shall come to light. Think not only of the mul­ti­tudes and how they hear the truth; take heed also to your­selves how you hear. Re­mem­ber that I have many times told you: To him who has shall be given more, while from him who has not shall be taken away even that which he thinks he has.”

• proclaiming the gospel › employ analogies, true stories to illustrate one central truth, not fables or allegories

151:3.31. Je­sus ad­vised against the use of ei­ther fa­bles or al­le­gories in teach­ing the truths of the gospel. He did rec­om­mend the free use of para­bles, es­pe­cially na­ture para­bles. He em­pha­sized the value of uti­liz­ing the anal­ogy ex­ist­ing be­tween the nat­u­ral and the spir­i­tual worlds as a means of teach­ing truth. He fre­quently al­luded to the nat­u­ral as “the un­real and fleet­ing shadow of spirit re­al­i­ties.”

• explained › divine sonship, spiritual liberty, eternal salvation

152:5.6The news of the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and the at­tempt to make Je­sus king aroused wide­spread cu­rios­ity and stirred up the fears of both the re­li­gious lead­ers and the civil rulers through­out all Gal­i­lee and Judea. While this great mir­a­cle did noth­ing to fur­ther the gospel of the king­dom in the souls of ma­te­rial-minded and half­hearted be­liev­ers, it did serve the pur­pose of bring­ing to a head the mir­a­cle-seek­ing and king-crav­ing pro­cliv­i­ties of Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate fam­ily of apos­tles and close dis­ci­ples. This spec­tac­u­lar episode brought an end to the early era of teach­ing, train­ing, and heal­ing, thereby prepar­ing the way for the in­au­gu­ra­tion of this last year of pro­claim­ing the higher and more spir­i­tual phases of the new gospel of the king­dom—di­vine son­ship, spir­i­tual lib­erty, and eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › appeal to fear, mind, religious hysteria, emotion, pity, or sentiment
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › promoting righteous cause by force
• proclaiming the gospel › promulgate g. only by power of spirit

152:6.2While Je­sus and the twelve were rest­ing at Gen­nesaret, the mul­ti­tudes dis­persed, some go­ing to their homes, oth­ers go­ing on up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. In less than one month’s time the en­thu­si­as­tic and open fol­low­ers of Je­sus, who num­bered more than fifty thou­sand in Gal­i­lee alone, shrank to less than five hun­dred. Je­sus de­sired to give his apos­tles such an ex­pe­ri­ence with the fick­le­ness of pop­u­lar ac­claim that they would not be tempted to rely on such man­i­fes­ta­tions of tran­sient re­li­gious hys­te­ria af­ter he should leave them alone in the work of the king­dom, but he was only par­tially suc­cess­ful in this ef­fort.

152:6.3The sec­ond night of their so­journ at Gen­nesaret the Mas­ter again told the apos­tles the para­ble of the sower and added these words: “You see, my chil­dren, the ap­peal to hu­man feel­ings is tran­si­tory and ut­terly dis­ap­point­ing; the ex­clu­sive ap­peal to the in­tel­lect of man is like­wise empty and bar­ren; it is only by mak­ing your ap­peal to the spirit which lives within the hu­man mind that you can hope to achieve last­ing suc­cess and ac­com­plish those mar­velous trans­for­ma­tions of hu­man char­ac­ter that are pres­ently shown in the abun­dant yield­ing of the gen­uine fruits of the spirit in the daily lives of all who are thus de­liv­ered from the dark­ness of doubt by the birth of the spirit into the light of faith—the king­dom of heaven.”

152:6.4Je­sus taught the ap­peal to the emo­tions as the tech­nique of ar­rest­ing and fo­cus­ing the in­tel­lec­tual at­ten­tion. He des­ig­nated the mind thus aroused and quick­ened as the gate­way to the soul, where there re­sides that spir­i­tual na­ture of man which must rec­og­nize truth and re­spond to the spir­i­tual ap­peal of the gospel in or­der to af­ford the per­ma­nent re­sults of true char­ac­ter trans­for­ma­tions.

• proclaiming the gospel › cannot reveal God to those not seeking

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

• proclaiming the gospel › be bold and emphatic

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › live so as to lead others to inquire

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.”

• proclaiming the gospel › uncertain troublous future in proclaiming g.

155:5.13Point­ing out each of the twenty-four and call­ing them by name, Je­sus said: “And now, which one of you would pre­fer to take this easy path of con­for­mity to an es­tab­lished and fos­silized re­li­gion, as de­fended by the Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem, rather than to suf­fer the dif­fi­cul­ties and per­se­cu­tions at­ten­dant upon the mis­sion of pro­claim­ing a bet­ter way of sal­va­tion to men while you re­al­ize the sat­is­fac­tion of dis­cov­er­ing for your­selves the beau­ties of the re­al­i­ties of a liv­ing and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the eter­nal truths and su­preme grandeurs of the king­dom of heaven? Are you fear­ful, soft, and ease-seek­ing? Are you afraid to trust your fu­ture in the hands of the God of truth, whose sons you are? Are you dis­trust­ful of the Fa­ther, whose chil­dren you are? Will you go back to the easy path of the cer­tainty and in­tel­lec­tual set­tled­ness of the re­li­gion of tra­di­tional au­thor­ity, or will you gird your­selves to go for­ward with me into that un­cer­tain and trou­blous fu­ture of pro­claim­ing the new truths of the re­li­gion of the spirit, the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of men?”

• proclaiming the gospel › no requirement to subscribe to things repugnant, unholy, or untruthful

155:6.5While the re­li­gion of au­thor­ity may im­part a pres­ent feel­ing of set­tled se­cu­rity, you pay for such a tran­sient sat­is­fac­tion the price of the loss of your spir­i­tual free­dom and re­li­gious lib­erty. My Fa­ther does not re­quire of you as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom of heaven that you should force your­self to sub­scribe to a be­lief in things which are spir­i­tu­ally re­pug­nant, un­holy, and un­truth­ful. It is not re­quired of you that your own sense of mercy, jus­tice, and truth should be out­raged by sub­mis­sion to an out­worn sys­tem of re­li­gious forms and cer­e­monies. The re­li­gion of the spirit leaves you for­ever free to fol­low the truth wher­ever the lead­ings of the spirit may take you. And who can judge—per­haps this spirit may have some­thing to im­part to this gen­er­a­tion which other gen­er­a­tions have re­fused to hear?

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › dishonesty, unfairness, ignoble tactics

156:5.19Avoid dis­hon­esty and un­fair­ness in all your ef­forts to preach truth and pro­claim the gospel. Seek no un­earned rec­og­ni­tion and crave no un­de­served sym­pa­thy. Love, freely re­ceive from both di­vine and hu­man sources re­gard­less of your deserts, and love freely in re­turn. But in all other things re­lated to honor and adu­la­tion seek only that which hon­estly be­longs to you.

• explained › salvation by faith alone; liberty through truth

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

• proclaiming the gospel › freely you have received, freely give

159:1.5“And this chief stew­ard, hav­ing thus re­ceived mercy and for­give­ness at the hands of the king, went about his busi­ness, and find­ing one of his sub­or­di­nate stew­ards who owed him a mere hun­dred denarii, he laid hold upon him and, tak­ing him by the throat, said, ‘Pay me all you owe.’ And then did this fel­low stew­ard fall down be­fore the chief stew­ard and, be­seech­ing him, said: ‘Only have pa­tience with me, and I will pres­ently be able to pay you.’ But the chief stew­ard would not show mercy to his fel­low stew­ard but rather had him cast in prison un­til he should pay his debt. When his fel­low ser­vants saw what had hap­pened, they were so dis­tressed that they went and told their lord and mas­ter, the king. When the king heard of the do­ings of his chief stew­ard, he called this un­grate­ful and un­for­giv­ing man be­fore him and said: ‘You are a wicked and un­wor­thy stew­ard. When you sought for com­pas­sion, I freely for­gave you your en­tire debt. Why did you not also show mercy to your fel­low stew­ard, even as I showed mercy to you?’ And the king was so very an­gry that he de­liv­ered his un­grate­ful chief stew­ard to the jail­ers that they might hold him un­til he had paid all that was due. And even so shall my heav­enly Fa­ther show the more abun­dant mercy to those who freely show mercy to their fel­lows. How can you come to God ask­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for your short­com­ings when you are wont to chas­tise your breth­ren for be­ing guilty of these same hu­man frail­ties? I say to all of you: Freely you have re­ceived the good things of the king­dom; there­fore freely give to your fel­lows on earth.”

• proclaiming the gospel › strange preacher not to be forbidden

159:2.1Je­sus went over to Gamala to visit John and those who worked with him at that place. That evening, af­ter the ses­sion of ques­tions and an­swers, John said to Je­sus: “Mas­ter, yes­ter­day I went over to Ashtaroth to see a man who was teach­ing in your name and even claim­ing to be able to cast out dev­ils. Now this fel­low had never been with us, nei­ther does he fol­low af­ter us; there­fore I for­bade him to do such things.” Then said Je­sus: “For­bid him not. Do you not per­ceive that this gospel of the king­dom shall pres­ently be pro­claimed in all the world? How can you ex­pect that all who will be­lieve the gospel shall be sub­ject to your di­rec­tion? Re­joice that al­ready our teach­ing has be­gun to man­i­fest it­self be­yond the bounds of our per­sonal in­flu­ence. Do you not see, John, that those who pro­fess to do great works in my name must even­tu­ally sup­port our cause? They cer­tainly will not be quick to speak evil of me. My son, in mat­ters of this sort it would be bet­ter for you to reckon that he who is not against us is for us. In the gen­er­a­tions to come many who are not wholly wor­thy will do many strange things in my name, but I will not for­bid them. I tell you that, even when a cup of cold wa­ter is given to a thirsty soul, the Fa­ther’s mes­sen­gers shall ever make rec­ord of such a ser­vice of love.”

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:

• proclaiming the gospel › always respect personality of man
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › appeal to fear, mind, religious hysteria, emotion, pity, or sentiment
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › overpowering arguments, appeals, or miracles
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › promoting righteous cause by force
• proclaiming the gospel › promulgate g. only by power of spirit

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.”

• proclaiming the gospel › accord generous recognition

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › indulging in sarcasm or cynicism

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › appeal to fear, mind, religious hysteria, emotion, pity, or sentiment
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › promoting righteous cause by force
• proclaiming the gospel › promulgate g. only by power of spirit

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.

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.

• explained › friendship with God

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.

• infectious in its transforming power

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › false sympathy; self-pity; mere fellowship in misery; withhold pity from cowards and quitters

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › distracting details, flowery language

159:5.17In all his teach­ing Je­sus un­fail­ingly avoided dis­tract­ing de­tails. He shunned flow­ery lan­guage and avoided the mere po­etic im­agery of a play upon words. He ha­bit­u­ally put large mean­ings into small ex­pres­sions. For pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion Je­sus re­versed the cur­rent mean­ings of many terms, such as salt, leaven, fish­ing, and lit­tle chil­dren. He most ef­fec­tively em­ployed the an­tithe­sis, com­par­ing the minute to the in­fi­nite and so on. His pic­tures were strik­ing, such as, “The blind lead­ing the blind.” But the great­est strength to be found in his il­lus­tra­tive teach­ing was its nat­u­ral­ness. Je­sus brought the phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion from heaven down to earth. He por­trayed the el­e­men­tal needs of the soul with a new in­sight and a new be­stowal of af­fec­tion.

• frees men from burdens of formal religion

162:2.2When the crowd heard these words, they fell to wran­gling among them­selves. Some said he was mad; some that he had a devil. Oth­ers said this was in­deed the prophet of Gal­i­lee whom the scribes and Phar­isees had long sought to kill. Some said the re­li­gious au­thor­i­ties were afraid to mo­lest him; oth­ers thought that they laid not hands upon him be­cause they had be­come be­liev­ers in him. Af­ter con­sid­er­able de­bate one of the crowd stepped for­ward and asked Je­sus, “Why do the rulers seek to kill you?” And he replied: “The rulers seek to kill me be­cause they re­sent my teach­ing about the good news of the king­dom, a gospel that sets men free from the bur­den­some tra­di­tions of a for­mal re­li­gion of cer­e­monies which these teach­ers are de­ter­mined to up­hold at any cost. They cir­cum­cise in ac­cor­dance with the law on the Sab­bath day, but they would kill me be­cause I once on the Sab­bath day set free a man held in the bond­age of af­flic­tion. They fol­low af­ter me on the Sab­bath to spy on me but would kill me be­cause on an­other oc­ca­sion I chose to make a griev­ously stricken man com­pletely whole on the Sab­bath day. They seek to kill me be­cause they well know that, if you hon­estly be­lieve and dare to ac­cept my teach­ing, their sys­tem of tra­di­tional re­li­gion will be over­thrown, for­ever de­stroyed. Thus will they be de­prived of au­thor­ity over that to which they have de­voted their lives since they stead­fastly refuse to ac­cept this new and more glo­ri­ous gospel of the king­dom of God. And now do I ap­peal to ev­ery one of you: Judge not ac­cord­ing to out­ward ap­pear­ances but rather judge by the true spirit of these teach­ings; judge righ­teously.”

• explained › salvation by faith alone; liberty through truth

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

• believers must love g. more than mother, father, wife, husband, children, or siblings

163:3.4And then said Pe­ter, “But, Mas­ter, we have left ev­ery­thing to fol­low you, what then shall we have?” And Je­sus spoke to all of the twelve: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife, breth­ren, par­ents, or chil­dren for my sake and for the sake of the king­dom of heaven who shall not re­ceive man­i­fold more in this world, per­haps with some per­se­cu­tions, and in the world to come eter­nal life. But many who are first shall be last, while the last shall of­ten be first. The Fa­ther deals with his crea­tures in ac­cor­dance with their needs and in obe­di­ence to his just laws of mer­ci­ful and lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for the wel­fare of a uni­verse.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

163:4.21. The gospel of the king­dom must be pro­claimed to all the world, to gen­tile as well as to Jew.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › diverting devotion from one duty to proclaim g.

163:4.54. Avoid loss of time through over­much so­cial vis­it­ing and other triv­i­al­i­ties which might de­tract from whole­hearted de­vo­tion to preach­ing the gospel.

• hidden from wise and self-righteous

163:6.3And it was at this time, just be­fore par­tak­ing of the evening meal, that Je­sus ex­pe­ri­enced one of those rare mo­ments of emo­tional ec­stasy which his fol­low­ers had oc­ca­sion­ally wit­nessed. He said: “I thank you, my Fa­ther, Lord of heaven and earth, that, while this won­der­ful gospel was hid­den from the wise and self-righ­teous, the spirit has re­vealed these spir­i­tual glo­ries to these chil­dren of the king­dom. Yes, my Fa­ther, it must have been pleas­ing in your sight to do this, and I re­joice to know that the good news will spread to all the world even af­ter I shall have re­turned to you and the work which you have given me to per­form. I am might­ily moved as I re­al­ize you are about to de­liver all au­thor­ity into my hands, that only you re­ally know who I am, and that only I re­ally know you, and those to whom I have re­vealed you. And when I have fin­ished this rev­e­la­tion to my breth­ren in the flesh, I will con­tinue the rev­e­la­tion to your crea­tures on high.”

• proclaiming the gospel › extent necessity to go to the people reveals lack of righteous life

163:7.2It was no longer nec­es­sary for Je­sus to go abroad to teach the peo­ple. They now came to him in in­creas­ing num­bers each week and from all parts, not only from Pales­tine but from the whole Ro­man world and from the Near East. Al­though the Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated with the sev­enty in the tour of Perea, he spent much of his time at the Pella camp, teach­ing the mul­ti­tude and in­struct­ing the twelve. Through­out this three months’ pe­riod at least ten of the apos­tles re­mained with Je­sus.

• Jesus dwells in all who believe his g.

164:5.3Je­sus con­tin­ued his teach­ing: “Many lov­ing works have I shown you from the Fa­ther, so that now would I in­quire for which one of these good works do you think to stone me?” And then an­swered one of the Phar­isees: “For no good work would we stone you but for blas­phemy, inas­much as you, be­ing a man, dare to make your­self equal with God.” And Je­sus an­swered: “You charge the Son of Man with blas­phemy be­cause you re­fused to be­lieve me when I de­clared to you that I was sent by God. If I do not the works of God, be­lieve me not, but if I do the works of God, even though you be­lieve not in me, I should think you would be­lieve the works. But that you may be cer­tain of what I pro­claim, let me again as­sert that the Fa­ther is in me and I in the Fa­ther, and that, as the Fa­ther dwells in me, so will I dwell in ev­ery one who be­lieves this gospel.” And when the peo­ple heard these words, many of them rushed out to lay hands upon the stones to cast at him, but he passed out through the tem­ple precincts; and meet­ing Na­than­iel and Thomas, who had been in at­ten­dance upon the ses­sion of the San­hedrin, he waited with them near the tem­ple un­til Josiah came from the coun­cil cham­ber.

• he who knowingly denies g. shall be denied by angels

165:3.5“All of you who have had the cour­age to con­fess faith in my gospel be­fore men I will pres­ently ac­knowl­edge be­fore the an­gels of heaven; but he who shall know­ingly deny the truth of my teach­ings be­fore men shall be de­nied by his guard­ian of des­tiny even be­fore the an­gels of heaven.

• proclaiming the gospel › those who give lives to proclaiming g. shall live by g.

165:5.2“Yes, An­drew, I will speak to you about these mat­ters of wealth and self-sup­port, but my words to you, the apos­tles, must be some­what dif­fer­ent from those spo­ken to the dis­ci­ples and the mul­ti­tude since you have for­saken ev­ery­thing, not only to fol­low me, but to be or­dained as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom. Al­ready have you had sev­eral years’ ex­pe­ri­ence, and you know that the Fa­ther whose king­dom you pro­claim will not for­sake you. You have ded­i­cated your lives to the min­istry of the king­dom; there­fore be not anx­ious or wor­ried about the things of the tem­po­ral life, what you shall eat, nor yet for your body, what you shall wear. The wel­fare of the soul is more than food and drink; the prog­ress in the spirit is far above the need of rai­ment. When you are tempted to doubt the sure­ness of your bread, con­sider the ravens; they sow not nei­ther reap, they have no store­houses or barns, and yet the Fa­ther pro­vides food for ev­ery one of them that seeks it. And of how much more value are you than many birds! Be­sides, all of your anx­i­ety or fret­ting doubts can do noth­ing to sup­ply your ma­te­rial needs. Which of you by anx­i­ety can add a hand­breadth to your stature or a day to your life? Since such mat­ters are not in your hands, why do you give anx­ious thought to any of these prob­lems?

165:5.3“Con­sider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, nei­ther do they spin; yet I say to you, even Sol­o­mon in all his glory was not ar­rayed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive to­day and to­mor­row is cut down and cast into the fire, how much more shall he clothe you, the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. O you of lit­tle faith! When you whole­heart­edly de­vote your­selves to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, you should not be of doubt­ful minds con­cern­ing the sup­port of your­selves or the fam­i­lies you have for­saken. If you give your lives truly to the gospel, you shall live by the gospel. If you are only be­liev­ing dis­ci­ples, you must earn your own bread and con­tribute to the sus­te­nance of all who teach and preach and heal. If you are anx­ious about your bread and wa­ter, wherein are you dif­fer­ent from the na­tions of the world who so dili­gently seek such ne­ces­si­ties? De­vote your­selves to your work, be­liev­ing that both the Fa­ther and I know that you have need of all these things. Let me as­sure you, once and for all, that, if you ded­i­cate your lives to the work of the king­dom, all your real needs shall be sup­plied. Seek the greater thing, and the lesser will be found therein; ask for the heav­enly, and the earthly shall be in­cluded. The shadow is cer­tain to fol­low the sub­stance.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

165:6.3“But if the ser­vant is sloth­ful and be­gins to say in his heart, ‘My mas­ter de­lays his com­ing,’ and be­gins to mis­treat his fel­low ser­vants and to eat and drink with the drunken, then the lord of that ser­vant will come at a time when he looks not for him and, find­ing him un­faith­ful, will cast him out in dis­grace. There­fore you do well to pre­pare your­selves for that day when you will be vis­ited sud­denly and in an un­ex­pected man­ner. Re­mem­ber, much has been given to you; there­fore will much be re­quired of you. Fiery tri­als are draw­ing near you. I have a bap­tism to be bap­tized with, and I am on watch un­til this is ac­com­plished. You preach peace on earth, but my mis­sion will not bring peace in the ma­te­rial af­fairs of men—not for a time, at least. Di­vi­sion can only be the re­sult where two mem­bers of a fam­ily be­lieve in me and three mem­bers re­ject this gospel. Friends, rel­a­tives, and loved ones are des­tined to be set against each other by the gospel you preach. True, each of these be­liev­ers shall have great and last­ing peace in his own heart, but peace on earth will not come un­til all are will­ing to be­lieve and en­ter into their glo­ri­ous in­her­i­tance of son­ship with God. Nev­er­the­less, go into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel to all na­tions, to ev­ery man, woman, and child.”

• explained › Jesus’ teachings, not his personality

166:0.2This en­tire mis­sion of three months in Perea was suc­cess­fully car­ried on with lit­tle help from the twelve apos­tles, and the gospel from this time on re­flected, not so much Je­sus’ per­son­al­ity, as his teach­ings. But his fol­low­ers did not long fol­low his in­struc­tions, for soon af­ter Je­sus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion they de­parted from his teach­ings and be­gan to build the early church around the mirac­u­lous con­cepts and the glo­ri­fied mem­o­ries of his di­vine-hu­man per­son­al­ity.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › dishonesty, unfairness, ignoble tactics
• proclaiming the gospel › reiterate message

166:4.12As they jour­neyed on to­ward Phil­a­del­phia, Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach them and to an­swer their ques­tions hav­ing to do with ac­ci­dents, sick­ness, and mir­a­cles, but they were not able fully to com­pre­hend this in­struc­tion. One hour of teach­ing will not wholly change the be­liefs of a life­time, and so Je­sus found it nec­es­sary to re­it­er­ate his mes­sage, to tell again and again that which he wished them to un­der­stand; and even then they failed to grasp the mean­ing of his earth mis­sion un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › becoming embroiled in politics

167:5.6It was very dif­fi­cult for the apos­tles to un­der­stand the Mas­ter’s re­luc­tance to make pos­i­tive pro­nounce­ments rel­a­tive to sci­en­tific, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems. They did not fully re­al­ize that his earth mis­sion was ex­clu­sively con­cerned with rev­e­la­tions of spir­i­tual and re­li­gious truths.

• proclaiming the gospel › show diligence in gaining souls

169:2.2“Some of you, be­fore you en­tered the king­dom, were very shrewd in deal­ing with your busi­ness as­so­ciates. If you were un­just and of­ten un­fair, you were nonethe­less pru­dent and farsee­ing in that you trans­acted your busi­ness with an eye sin­gle to your pres­ent profit and fu­ture safety. Like­wise should you now so or­der your lives in the king­dom as to pro­vide for your pres­ent joy while you also make cer­tain of your fu­ture en­joy­ment of trea­sures laid up in heaven. If you were so dili­gent in mak­ing gains for your­selves when in the ser­vice of self, why should you show less dili­gence in gain­ing souls for the king­dom since you are now ser­vants of the broth­er­hood of man and stew­ards of God?

• explained › joy and liberty of new kingdom
• frees men from burdens of formal religion

170:2.1The Mas­ter made it clear that the king­dom of heaven must be­gin with, and be cen­tered in, the dual con­cept of the truth of the fa­ther­hood of God and the cor­re­lated fact of the broth­er­hood of man. The ac­cep­tance of such a teach­ing, Je­sus de­clared, would lib­er­ate man from the age-long bond­age of an­i­mal fear and at the same time en­rich hu­man liv­ing with the fol­low­ing en­dow­ments of the new life of spir­i­tual lib­erty:

170:2.21. The pos­ses­sion of new cour­age and aug­mented spir­i­tual power. The gospel of the king­dom was to set man free and in­spire him to dare to hope for eter­nal life.

• explained › salvation by faith alone; liberty through truth

170:2.20Je­sus taught that, by faith, the be­liever en­ters the king­dom now. In the var­i­ous dis­courses he taught that two things are es­sen­tial to faith-en­trance into the king­dom:

170:2.211. Faith, sin­cer­ity. To come as a lit­tle child, to re­ceive the be­stowal of son­ship as a gift; to sub­mit to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will with­out ques­tion­ing and in the full con­fi­dence and gen­uine trust­ful­ness of the Fa­ther’s wis­dom; to come into the king­dom free from prej­u­dice and pre­con­cep­tion; to be open-minded and teach­able like an un­spoiled child.

170:2.222. Truth hunger. The thirst for righ­teous­ness, a change of mind, the ac­quire­ment of the mo­tive to be like God and to find God.

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

170:3.10The re­li­gion of the king­dom is per­sonal, in­di­vid­ual; the fruits, the re­sults, are fa­mil­ial, so­cial. Je­sus never failed to ex­alt the sa­cred­ness of the in­di­vid­ual as con­trasted with the com­mu­nity. But he also rec­og­nized that man de­vel­ops his char­ac­ter by un­selfish ser­vice; that he un­folds his moral na­ture in lov­ing re­la­tions with his fel­lows.

170:3.11By teach­ing that the king­dom is within, by ex­alt­ing the in­di­vid­ual, Je­sus struck the death­blow of the old so­ci­ety in that he ush­ered in the new dis­pen­sa­tion of true so­cial righ­teous­ness. This new or­der of so­ci­ety the world has lit­tle known be­cause it has re­fused to prac­tice the prin­ci­ples of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And when this king­dom of spir­i­tual pre-em­i­nence does come upon the earth, it will not be man­i­fested in mere im­proved so­cial and ma­te­rial con­di­tions, but rather in the glo­ries of those en­hanced and en­riched spir­i­tual val­ues which are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the ap­proach­ing age of im­proved hu­man re­la­tions and ad­vanc­ing spir­i­tual at­tain­ments.

• explained › cardinal features

170:4.8The Mas­ter on this oc­ca­sion placed em­pha­sis on the fol­low­ing five points as rep­re­sent­ing the car­di­nal fea­tures of the gospel of the king­dom:

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

170:4.91. The pre-em­i­nence of the in­di­vid­ual.

• explained › cardinal features › will as determining factor

170:4.102. The will as the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in man’s ex­pe­ri­ence.

• explained › cardinal features › spiritual fellowship with Father

170:4.113. Spir­i­tual fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther.

• explained › cardinal features › satisfactions of loving service

170:4.124. The su­preme sat­is­fac­tions of the lov­ing ser­vice of man.

• explained › cardinal features › spiritual is transcendent over the material

170:4.135. The tran­scen­dency of the spir­i­tual over the ma­te­rial in hu­man per­son­al­ity.

• explained › Jesus’ teachings, not his personality

170:5.19Sooner or later an­other and greater John the Bap­tist is due to arise pro­claim­ing “the king­dom of God is at hand”—mean­ing a re­turn to the high spir­i­tual con­cept of Je­sus, who pro­claimed that the king­dom is the will of his heav­enly Fa­ther dom­i­nant and tran­scen­dent in the heart of the be­liever—and do­ing all this with­out in any way re­fer­ring ei­ther to the vis­i­ble church on earth or to the an­tic­i­pated sec­ond com­ing of Christ. There must come a re­vival of the ac­tual teach­ings of Je­sus, such a re­state­ment as will undo the work of his early fol­low­ers who went about to cre­ate a so­cio­philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem of be­lief re­gard­ing the fact of Mi­chael’s so­journ on earth. In a short time the teach­ing of this story about Je­sus nearly sup­planted the preach­ing of Je­sus’ gospel of the king­dom. In this way a his­tor­i­cal re­li­gion dis­placed that teach­ing in which Je­sus had blended man’s high­est moral ideas and spir­i­tual ide­als with man’s most sub­lime hope for the fu­ture—eter­nal life. And that was the gospel of the king­dom.

• believers must love g. more than mother, father, wife, husband, children, or siblings

171:2.2“You who would fol­low af­ter me from this time on, must be will­ing to pay the price of whole­hearted ded­i­ca­tion to the do­ing of my Fa­ther’s will. If you would be my dis­ci­ples, you must be will­ing to for­sake fa­ther, mother, wife, chil­dren, broth­ers, and sis­ters. If any one of you would now be my dis­ci­ple, you must be will­ing to give up even your life just as the Son of Man is about to of­fer up his life for the com­ple­tion of the mis­sion of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will on earth and in the flesh.

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

171:7.4Je­sus could help men so much be­cause he loved them so sin­cerely. He truly loved each man, each woman, and each child. He could be such a true friend be­cause of his re­mark­able in­sight—he knew so fully what was in the heart and in the mind of man. He was an in­ter­ested and keen ob­server. He was an ex­pert in the com­pre­hen­sion of hu­man need, clever in de­tect­ing hu­man long­ings.

• proclaiming the gospel › recipients felt they were conferring with Jesus, not confessing to him

171:7.5Je­sus was never in a hurry. He had time to com­fort his fel­low men “as he passed by.” And he al­ways made his friends feel at ease. He was a charm­ing lis­tener. He never en­gaged in the med­dle­some prob­ing of the souls of his as­so­ciates. As he com­forted hun­gry minds and min­is­tered to thirsty souls, the re­cip­i­ents of his mercy did not so much feel that they were con­fess­ing to him as that they were con­fer­ring with him. They had un­bounded con­fi­dence in him be­cause they saw he had so much faith in them.

• common people hear gladly

173:3.2And the peo­ple spoke with one ac­cord, say­ing, “The first son.” And then said Je­sus: “Even so; and now do I de­clare that the pub­li­cans and har­lots, even though they ap­pear to refuse the call to re­pen­tance, shall see the er­ror of their way and go on into the king­dom of God be­fore you, who make great pre­ten­sions of serv­ing the Fa­ther in heaven while you refuse to do the works of the Fa­ther. It was not you, the Phar­isees and scribes, who be­lieved John, but rather the pub­li­cans and sin­ners; nei­ther do you be­lieve my teach­ing, but the com­mon peo­ple hear my words gladly.”

• 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.

• will triumph and be proclaimed to all nations

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.”

• proclaiming the gospel › freely you have received, freely give

176:3.10Said Je­sus that night as they went to their rest: “Freely have you re­ceived; there­fore freely should you give of the truth of heaven, and in the giv­ing will this truth mul­ti­ply and show forth the in­creas­ing light of sav­ing grace, even as you min­is­ter it.”

• loyalty to g. dependent on sound early home training

177:2.2“I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the king­dom be­cause I can de­pend upon your pres­ent faith and love when these qual­i­ties are grounded upon such an early train­ing as has been your por­tion at home. You are the prod­uct of a home where the par­ents bear each other a sin­cere af­fec­tion, and there­fore you have not been overloved so as in­ju­ri­ously to ex­alt your con­cept of self-im­por­tance. Nei­ther has your per­son­al­ity suf­fered dis­tor­tion in con­se­quence of your par­ents’ love­less ma­neu­ver­ing for your con­fi­dence and loy­alty, the one against the other. You have en­joyed that pa­ren­tal love which in­sures laud­able self-con­fi­dence and which fos­ters nor­mal feel­ings of se­cu­rity. But you have also been for­tu­nate in that your par­ents pos­sessed wis­dom as well as love; and it was wis­dom which led them to with­hold most forms of in­dul­gence and many lux­u­ries which wealth can buy while they sent you to the syn­a­gogue school along with your neigh­bor­hood playfel­lows, and they also en­cour­aged you to learn how to live in this world by per­mit­ting you to have orig­i­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. You came over to the Jor­dan, where we preached and John’s dis­ci­ples bap­tized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you de­sired to go with us. When you re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, your par­ents con­sented; Amos’s par­ents re­fused; they loved their son so much that they de­nied him the blessed ex­pe­ri­ence which you have had, even such as you this day en­joy. By run­ning away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so do­ing he would have wounded love and sac­ri­ficed loy­alty. Even if such a course had been wise, it would have been a ter­ri­ble price to pay for ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, and lib­erty. Wise par­ents, such as yours, see to it that their chil­dren do not have to wound love or sti­fle loy­alty in or­der to de­velop in­de­pen­dence and en­joy in­vig­o­rat­ing lib­erty when they have grown up to your age.

• acceptance of g. immediately improves home life

177:2.6It is our sin­cere be­lief that the gospel of Je­sus’ teach­ing, founded as it is on the fa­ther-child re­la­tion­ship, can hardly en­joy a world-wide ac­cep­tance un­til such a time as the home life of the mod­ern civ­i­lized peo­ples em­braces more of love and more of wis­dom. Not­with­stand­ing that par­ents of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury pos­sess great knowl­edge and in­creased truth for im­prov­ing the home and en­nobling the home life, it re­mains a fact that very few mod­ern homes are such good places in which to nur­ture boys and girls as Je­sus’ home in Gal­i­lee and John Mark’s home in Judea, al­beit the ac­cep­tance of Je­sus’ gospel will re­sult in the im­me­di­ate im­prove­ment of home life. The love life of a wise home and the loyal de­vo­tion of true re­li­gion ex­ert a pro­found re­cip­ro­cal in­flu­ence upon each other. Such a home life en­hances re­li­gion, and gen­uine re­li­gion al­ways glo­ri­fies the home.

• believers undependable unless g. experienced in heart

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.”

178:1.1Je­sus talked to about fifty of his trusted fol­low­ers for al­most two hours and an­swered a score of ques­tions re­gard­ing the re­la­tion of the king­dom of heaven to the king­doms of this world, con­cern­ing the re­la­tion of son­ship with God to cit­i­zen­ship in earthly gov­ern­ments. This dis­course, to­gether with his an­swers to ques­tions, may be sum­ma­rized and re­stated in mod­ern lan­guage as fol­lows:

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › promoting righteous cause by force
• proclaiming the gospel › promulgate g. only by power of spirit

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › use of law or force to compel

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.

• explained › love of Father and service of his children

178:1.4Son­ship in the king­dom, from the stand­point of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, should as­sist you in be­com­ing the ideal cit­i­zens of the king­doms of this world since broth­er­hood and ser­vice are the cor­ner­stones of the gospel of the king­dom. The love call of the spir­i­tual king­dom should prove to be the ef­fec­tive de­stroyer of the hate urge of the un­be­liev­ing and war-minded cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms. But these ma­te­rial-minded sons in dark­ness will never know of your spir­i­tual light of truth un­less you draw very near them with that un­selfish so­cial ser­vice which is the nat­u­ral out­growth of the bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of each in­di­vid­ual be­liever.

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › promoting righteous cause by force
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › use of law or force to compel

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.

178:1.7Dis­play wis­dom and ex­hibit sagac­ity in your deal­ings with un­be­liev­ing civil rulers. By dis­cre­tion show your­selves to be ex­pert in iron­ing out mi­nor dis­agree­ments and in ad­just­ing tri­fling mis­un­der­stand­ings. In ev­ery pos­si­ble way—in ev­ery­thing short of your spir­i­tual al­le­giance to the rulers of the uni­verse—seek to live peace­ably with all men. Be you al­ways as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.

178:1.8You should be made all the bet­ter cit­i­zens of the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment as a re­sult of be­com­ing en­light­ened sons of the king­dom; so should the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments be­come all the bet­ter rulers in civil af­fairs as a re­sult of be­liev­ing this gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. The at­ti­tude of un­selfish ser­vice of man and in­tel­li­gent wor­ship of God should make all king­dom be­liev­ers bet­ter world cit­i­zens, while the at­ti­tude of hon­est cit­i­zen­ship and sin­cere de­vo­tion to one’s tem­po­ral duty should help to make such a cit­i­zen the more eas­ily reached by the spirit call to son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom.

• proclaiming the gospel › persistent preaching will result in unbelievable liberation
• proclaiming the gospel › reiterate message

178:1.9So long as the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments seek to ex­er­cise the au­thor­ity of re­li­gious dic­ta­tors, you who be­lieve this gospel can ex­pect only trou­ble, per­se­cu­tion, and even death. But the very light which you bear to the world, and even the very man­ner in which you will suf­fer and die for this gospel of the king­dom, will, in them­selves, even­tu­ally en­lighten the whole world and re­sult in the grad­ual di­vorce­ment of pol­i­tics and re­li­gion. The per­sis­tent preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom will some day bring to all na­tions a new and un­be­liev­able lib­er­a­tion, in­tel­lec­tual free­dom, and re­li­gious lib­erty.

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.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › diverting devotion from one duty to proclaim g.

178:1.11Re­mem­ber that you are com­mis­sioned to preach this gospel of the king­dom—the su­preme de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will cou­pled with the su­preme joy of the faith re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God—and you must not al­low any­thing to di­vert your de­vo­tion to this one duty. Let all man­kind ben­e­fit from the over­flow of your lov­ing spir­i­tual min­istry, en­light­en­ing in­tel­lec­tual com­mu­nion, and up­lift­ing so­cial ser­vice; but none of these hu­man­i­tar­ian labors, nor all of them, should be per­mit­ted to take the place of pro­claim­ing the gospel. These mighty min­is­tra­tions are the so­cial by-prod­ucts of the still more mighty and sub­lime min­is­tra­tions and trans­for­ma­tions wrought in the heart of the king­dom be­liever by the liv­ing Spirit of Truth and by the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion that the faith of a spirit-born man con­fers the as­sur­ance of liv­ing fel­low­ship with the eter­nal God.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › use of law or force to compel

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

178:1.13When a king­dom be­liever is called upon to serve the civil gov­ern­ment, let him ren­der such ser­vice as a tem­po­ral cit­i­zen of such a gov­ern­ment, al­beit such a be­liever should dis­play in his civil ser­vice all of the or­di­nary traits of cit­i­zen­ship as these have been en­hanced by the spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment of the en­nobling as­so­ci­a­tion of the mind of mor­tal man with the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God. If the un­be­liever can qual­ify as a su­pe­rior civil ser­vant, you should se­ri­ously ques­tion whether the roots of truth in your heart have not died from the lack of the liv­ing wa­ters of com­bined spir­i­tual com­mu­nion and so­cial ser­vice. The con­scious­ness of son­ship with God should quicken the en­tire life ser­vice of ev­ery man, woman, and child who has be­come the pos­ses­sor of such a mighty stim­u­lus to all the in­her­ent pow­ers of a hu­man per­son­al­ity.

• proclaiming the gospel › be aggressive, unafraid, even to ends of earth

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

• must show increasing vitality, depth of spiritual power

178:1.15This gospel of the king­dom is a liv­ing truth. I have told you it is like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mus­tard seed; and now I de­clare that it is like the seed of the liv­ing be­ing, which, from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, while it re­mains the same liv­ing seed, un­fail­ingly un­folds it­self in new man­i­fes­ta­tions and grows ac­cept­ably in chan­nels of new adap­ta­tion to the pe­cu­liar needs and con­di­tions of each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion. The rev­e­la­tion I have made to you is a liv­ing rev­e­la­tion, and I de­sire that it shall bear ap­pro­pri­ate fruits in each in­di­vid­ual and in each gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the laws of spir­i­tual growth, in­crease, and adap­ta­tive de­vel­op­ment. From gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion this gospel must show in­creas­ing vi­tal­ity and ex­hibit greater depth of spir­i­tual power. It must not be per­mit­ted to be­come merely a sa­cred mem­ory, a mere tra­di­tion about me and the times in which we now live.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › attacking old ways, reforming mores; rather add new truth
• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › striving
• proclaiming the gospel › be aggressive, unafraid, even to ends of earth
• proclaiming the gospel › clash only when rulers throw themselves in way of g.

178:1.16And for­get not: We have made no di­rect at­tack upon the per­sons or upon the au­thor­ity of those who sit in Moses’ seat; we only of­fered them the new light, which they have so vig­or­ously re­jected. We have as­sailed them only by the de­nun­ci­a­tion of their spir­i­tual dis­loy­alty to the very truths which they pro­fess to teach and safe­guard. We clashed with these es­tab­lished lead­ers and rec­og­nized rulers only when they threw them­selves di­rectly in the way of the preach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom to the sons of men. And even now, it is not we who as­sail them, but they who seek our de­struc­tion. Do not for­get that you are com­mis­sioned to go forth preach­ing only the good news. You are not to at­tack the old ways; you are skill­fully to put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old be­liefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work. Let con­tro­versy come only when they who de­spise the truth force it upon you. But when the will­ful un­be­liever at­tacks you, do not hes­i­tate to stand in vig­or­ous de­fense of the truth which has saved and sanc­ti­fied you.

178:1.17Through­out the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, re­mem­ber al­ways to love one an­other. Do not strive with men, even with un­be­liev­ers. Show mercy even to those who de­spite­fully abuse you. Show your­selves to be loyal cit­i­zens, up­right ar­ti­sans, praise­wor­thy neigh­bors, de­voted kins­men, un­der­stand­ing par­ents, and sin­cere be­liev­ers in the broth­er­hood of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. And my spirit shall be upon you, now and even to the end of the world.

178:1.18When Je­sus had con­cluded his teach­ing, it was al­most one o’clock, and they im­me­di­ately went back to the camp, where David and his as­so­ciates had lunch ready for them.

• proclaiming the gospel › make provision for own support

180:0.2“You well re­mem­ber when I sent you forth with­out purse or wal­let and even ad­vised that you take with you no ex­tra clothes. And you will all re­call that you lacked noth­ing. But now have you come upon trou­blous times. No longer can you de­pend upon the good will of the mul­ti­tudes. Hence­forth, he who has a purse, let him take it with him. When you go out into the world to pro­claim this gospel, make such pro­vi­sion for your sup­port as seems best. I have come to bring peace, but it will not ap­pear for a time.

• dominated by truth conviction

180:5.12And all this clearly in­di­cates the dif­fer­ence be­tween the old re­li­gion and the new. The old re­li­gion taught self-sac­ri­fice; the new re­li­gion teaches only self-for­get­ful­ness, en­hanced self-re­al­iza­tion in con­joined so­cial ser­vice and uni­verse com­pre­hen­sion. The old re­li­gion was mo­ti­vated by fear-con­scious­ness; the new gospel of the king­dom is dom­i­nated by truth-con­vic­tion, the spirit of eter­nal and uni­ver­sal truth. And no amount of piety or creedal loy­alty can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of king­dom be­liev­ers of that spon­ta­neous, gen­er­ous, and sin­cere friend­li­ness which char­ac­ter­izes the spirit-born sons of the liv­ing God. Nei­ther tra­di­tion nor a cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem of for­mal wor­ship can atone for the lack of gen­uine com­pas­sion for one’s fel­lows.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › striving

181:2.5As John Zeb­e­dee stood there in the up­per cham­ber, the tears rolling down his cheeks, he looked into the Mas­ter’s face and said: “And so I will, my Mas­ter, but how can I learn to love my breth­ren more?” And then an­swered Je­sus: “You will learn to love your breth­ren more when you first learn to love their Fa­ther in heaven more, and af­ter you have be­come truly more in­ter­ested in their wel­fare in time and in eter­nity. And all such hu­man in­ter­est is fos­tered by un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy, un­selfish ser­vice, and un­stinted for­give­ness. No man should de­spise your youth, but I ex­hort you al­ways to give due con­sid­er­a­tion to the fact that age of­ten­times rep­re­sents ex­pe­ri­ence, and that noth­ing in hu­man af­fairs can take the place of ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Strive to live peace­ably with all men, es­pe­cially your friends in the broth­er­hood of the heav­enly king­dom. And, John, al­ways re­mem­ber, strive not with the souls you would win for the king­dom.”

• explained › by faith becoming spirit-conscious of sonship with God

181:2.12When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, he stepped over to Mat­thew Levi and said: “No longer will it de­volve upon you to pro­vide for the trea­sury of the apos­tolic group. Soon, very soon, you will all be scat­tered; you will not be per­mit­ted to en­joy the com­fort­ing and sus­tain­ing as­so­ci­a­tion of even one of your breth­ren. As you go on­ward preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom, you will have to find for your­selves new as­so­ciates. I have sent you forth two and two dur­ing the times of your train­ing, but now that I am leav­ing you, af­ter you have re­cov­ered from the shock, you will go out alone, and to the ends of the earth, pro­claim­ing this good news: That faith-quick­ened mor­tals are the sons of God.”

• explained › by faith becoming spirit-conscious of sonship with God

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?”

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

182:1.5“You gave me twelve men, and I have kept them all save one, the son of re­venge, who would not have fur­ther fel­low­ship with us. These men are weak and frail, but I know we can trust them; I have proved them; they love me, even as they rev­er­ence you. While they must suf­fer much for my sake, I de­sire that they should also be filled with the joy of the as­sur­ance of son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom. I have given these men your word and have taught them the truth. The world may hate them, even as it has hated me, but I do not ask that you take them out of the world, only that you keep them from the evil in the world. Sanc­tify them in the truth; your word is truth. And as you sent me into this world, even so am I about to send these men into the world. For their sakes I have lived among men and have con­se­crated my life to your ser­vice that I might in­spire them to be pu­ri­fied through the truth I have taught them and the love I have re­vealed to them. I well know, my Fa­ther, that there is no need for me to ask you to watch over these breth­ren af­ter I have gone; I know you love them even as I, but I do this that they may the bet­ter re­al­ize the Fa­ther loves mor­tal men even as does the Son.

• evidence of belief in g. is love shown to one another
• proclaiming the gospel › live so as to lead others to inquire

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.”

• explained › by faith becoming spirit-conscious of sonship with God
• explained › not dependent on death or resurrection of Jesus

186:5.4The gospel of the good news that mor­tal man may, by faith, be­come spirit-con­scious that he is a son of God, is not de­pen­dent on the death of Je­sus. True, in­deed, all this gospel of the king­dom has been tremen­dously il­lu­mi­nated by the Mas­ter’s death, but even more so by his life.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

190:3.1The fifth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to the rec­og­ni­tion of mor­tal eyes oc­curred in the pres­ence of some twenty-five women be­liev­ers as­sem­bled at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea, at about fif­teen min­utes past four o’clock on this same Sun­day af­ter­noon. Mary Mag­da­lene had re­turned to Joseph’s house just a few min­utes be­fore this ap­pear­ance. James, Je­sus’ brother, had re­quested that noth­ing be said to the apos­tles con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s ap­pear­ance at Beth­any. He had not asked Mary to re­frain from re­port­ing the oc­cur­rence to her sis­ter be­liev­ers. Ac­cord­ingly, af­ter Mary had pledged all the women to se­crecy, she pro­ceeded to re­late what had so re­cently hap­pened while she was with Je­sus’ fam­ily at Beth­any. And she was in the very midst of this thrilling recital when a sud­den and solemn hush fell over them; they be­held in their very midst the fully vis­i­ble form of the risen Je­sus. He greeted them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. In the fel­low­ship of the king­dom there shall be nei­ther Jew nor gen­tile, rich nor poor, free nor bond, man nor woman. You also are called to pub­lish the good news of the lib­erty of man­kind through the gospel of son­ship with God in the king­dom of heaven. Go to all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel and con­firm­ing be­liev­ers in the faith thereof. And while you do this, for­get not to min­is­ter to the sick and strengthen those who are faint­hearted and fear-rid­den. And I will be with you al­ways, even to the ends of the earth.” And when he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight, while the women fell on their faces and wor­shiped in si­lence.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

190:4.1About half past four o’clock, at the home of one Flav­ius, the Mas­ter made his sixth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance to some forty Greek be­liev­ers there as­sem­bled. While they were en­gaged in dis­cussing the re­ports of the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion, he man­i­fested him­self in their midst, not­with­stand­ing that the doors were se­curely fas­tened, and speak­ing to them, said: “Peace be upon you. While the Son of Man ap­peared on earth among the Jews, he came to min­is­ter to all men. In the king­dom of my Fa­ther there shall be nei­ther Jew nor gen­tile; you will all be breth­ren—the sons of God. Go you, there­fore, to all the world, pro­claim­ing this gospel of sal­va­tion as you have re­ceived it from the am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, and I will fel­low­ship you in the broth­er­hood of the Fa­ther’s sons of faith and truth.” And when he had thus charged them, he took leave, and they saw him no more. They re­mained within the house all evening; they were too much over­come with awe and fear to ven­ture forth. Nei­ther did any of these Greeks sleep that night; they stayed awake dis­cussing these things and hop­ing that the Mas­ter might again visit them. Among this group were many of the Greeks who were at Geth­sem­ane when the sol­diers ar­rested Je­sus and Ju­das be­trayed him with a kiss.

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

191:1.2When Pe­ter thought of the lov­ing look of the Mas­ter as he passed by on An­nas’s porch, and as he turned over in his mind that won­der­ful mes­sage brought him early that morn­ing by the women who came from the empty tomb, “Go tell my apos­tles—and Pe­ter”—as he con­tem­plated these to­kens of mercy, his faith be­gan to sur­mount his doubts, and he stood still, clench­ing his fists, while he spoke aloud: “I be­lieve he has risen from the dead; I will go and tell my breth­ren.” And as he said this, there sud­denly ap­peared in front of him the form of a man, who spoke to him in fa­mil­iar tones, say­ing: “Pe­ter, the en­emy de­sired to have you, but I would not give you up. I knew it was not from the heart that you dis­owned me; there­fore I for­gave you even be­fore you asked; but now must you cease to think about your­self and the trou­bles of the hour while you pre­pare to carry the good news of the gospel to those who sit in dark­ness. No longer should you be con­cerned with what you may ob­tain from the king­dom but rather be ex­er­cised about what you can give to those who live in dire spir­i­tual pov­erty. Gird your­self, Si­mon, for the bat­tle of a new day, the strug­gle with spir­i­tual dark­ness and the evil doubt­ings of the nat­u­ral minds of men.”

• explained › gift of eternal life received by faith

191:4.3“Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Fa­ther in heaven, and that there is but one gospel of the king­dom—the good news of the gift of eter­nal life which men re­ceive by faith. As you re­joice in your loy­alty to the gospel, pray the Fa­ther of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and greater love for your breth­ren. You are to love all men as I have loved you; you are to serve all men as I have served you. With un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and broth­erly af­fec­tion, fel­low­ship all your breth­ren who are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the good news, whether they be Jew or gen­tile, Greek or Ro­man, Per­sian or Ethiopian. John pro­claimed the king­dom in ad­vance; you have preached the gospel in power; the Greeks al­ready teach the good news; and I am soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my breth­ren, who have so un­selfishly ded­i­cated their lives to the en­light­en­ment of their fel­lows who sit in spir­i­tual dark­ness. You are all the chil­dren of light; there­fore stum­ble not into the mis­un­der­stand­ing en­tan­gle­ments of mor­tal sus­pi­cion and hu­man in­tol­er­ance. If you are en­no­bled, by the grace of faith, to love un­be­liev­ers, should you not also equally love those who are your fel­low be­liev­ers in the far-spread­ing house­hold of faith? Re­mem­ber, as you love one an­other, all men will know that you are my dis­ci­ples.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men
• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child
• proclaiming the gospel › suit presentation to audience

191:4.4“Go, then, into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men to all na­tions and races and ever be wise in your choice of meth­ods for pre­sent­ing the good news to the dif­fer­ent races and tribes of man­kind. Freely you have re­ceived this gospel of the king­dom, and you will freely give the good news to all na­tions. Fear not the re­sis­tance of evil, for I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages. And my peace I leave with you.”

• explained › founded on fact of Jesus’ God-revealing life
• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

• proclaiming the gospel › live so as to lead others to inquire

191:6.2“Peace be upon you. That which my Fa­ther sent me into the world to es­tab­lish be­longs not to a race, a na­tion, nor to a spe­cial group of teach­ers or preach­ers. This gospel of the king­dom be­longs to both Jew and gen­tile, to rich and poor, to free and bond, to male and fe­male, even to the lit­tle chil­dren. And you are all to pro­claim this gospel of love and truth by the lives which you live in the flesh. You shall love one an­other with a new and startling af­fec­tion, even as I have loved you. You will serve man­kind with a new and amaz­ing de­vo­tion, even as I have served you. And when men see you so love them, and when they be­hold how fer­vently you serve them, they will per­ceive that you have be­come faith-fel­lows of the king­dom of heaven, and they will fol­low af­ter the Spirit of Truth which they see in your lives, to the find­ing of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• belongs to all who believe, not merely to priests
• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

191:6.3“As the Fa­ther sent me into this world, even so now send I you. You are all called to carry the good news to those who sit in dark­ness. This gospel of the king­dom be­longs to all who be­lieve it; it shall not be com­mit­ted to the cus­tody of mere priests. Soon will the Spirit of Truth come upon you, and he shall lead you into all truth. Go you, there­fore, into all the world preach­ing this gospel, and lo, I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages.”

• proclaiming the gospel › preach to all without fear or favor

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

• proclaiming the gospel › be aggressive, unafraid, even to ends of earth
• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child
• proclaiming the gospel › only law to obey is command to preach g.

192:2.11Af­ter this the Mas­ter talked with Mat­thew and Philip. To Philip he said, “Philip, do you obey me?” Philip an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I will obey you even with my life.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would obey me, go then into the lands of the gen­tiles and pro­claim this gospel. The proph­ets have told you that to obey is bet­ter than to sac­ri­fice. By faith have you be­come a God-know­ing king­dom son. There is but one law to obey—that is the com­mand to go forth pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom. Cease to fear men; be un­afraid to preach the good news of eter­nal life to your fel­lows who lan­guish in dark­ness and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy your­self with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tid­ings just as are your breth­ren. And I will go be­fore you and be with you even to the end.”

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › diverting devotion from one duty to proclaim g.

192:2.12And then, speak­ing to Mat­thew, the Mas­ter asked, “Mat­thew, do you have it in your heart to obey me?” Mat­thew an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I am fully ded­i­cated to do­ing your will.” Then said the Mas­ter: “Mat­thew, if you would obey me, go forth to teach all peo­ples this gospel of the king­dom. No longer will you serve your breth­ren the ma­te­rial things of life; hence­forth you are also to pro­claim the good news of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion. From now on have an eye sin­gle only to obey­ing your com­mis­sion to preach this gospel of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. As I have done the Fa­ther’s will on earth, so shall you ful­fill the di­vine com­mis­sion. Re­mem­ber, both Jew and gen­tile are your breth­ren. Fear no man when you pro­claim the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And where I go, you shall pres­ently come.”

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

192:4.7On Thurs­day night the apos­tles had a won­der­ful meet­ing in this up­per cham­ber and all pledged them­selves to go forth in the pub­lic preach­ing of the new gospel of the risen Lord ex­cept Thomas, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and the Al­pheus twins. Al­ready had be­gun the first steps of chang­ing the gospel of the king­dom—son­ship with God and broth­er­hood with man—into the procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus. Na­than­iel op­posed this shift in the bur­den of their pub­lic mes­sage, but he could not with­stand Pe­ter’s elo­quence, nei­ther could he over­come the en­thu­si­asm of the dis­ci­ples, es­pe­cially the women be­liev­ers.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men
• explained › love of Father and service of his children
• proclaiming the gospel › proclaim whole truth, not just part

193:0.4“I ad­mon­ish you ever to re­mem­ber that your mis­sion among men is to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom—the re­al­ity of the fa­ther­hood of God and the truth of the son­ship of man. Pro­claim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the sav­ing gospel. Your mes­sage is not changed by my res­ur­rec­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. Son­ship with God, by faith, is still the sav­ing truth of the gospel of the king­dom. You are to go forth preach­ing the love of God and the ser­vice of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can ac­tu­ally re­al­ize, and daily ex­pe­ri­ence, this en­nobling truth. My be­stowal should help all men to know that they are the chil­dren of God, but such knowl­edge will not suf­fice if they fail per­son­ally to faith-grasp the sav­ing truth that they are the liv­ing spirit sons of the eter­nal Fa­ther. The gospel of the king­dom is con­cerned with the love of the Fa­ther and the ser­vice of his chil­dren on earth.

• proclaiming the gospel › freely you have received, freely give
• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

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.”

• explained › not dependent on death or resurrection of Jesus
• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

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.”

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

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.”

• proclaiming the gospel › go into all the world, to every man, woman, and child

193:5.2“I bade you tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til you were en­dowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my so­journ the Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall be­gin the new procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, first in Je­ru­sa­lem and then to the ut­ter­most parts of the world. Love men with the love where­with I have loved you and serve your fel­low mor­tals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives im­pel souls to be­lieve the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are breth­ren. Re­mem­ber all I have taught you and the life I have lived among you. My love over­shad­ows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell.”

• proclaiming the gospel › Spirit of Truth gives strong urge to proclaim

194:0.1About one o’clock, as the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers were en­gaged in prayer, they all be­came aware of a strange pres­ence in the room. At the same time these dis­ci­ples all be­came con­scious of a new and pro­found sense of spir­i­tual joy, se­cu­rity, and con­fi­dence. This new con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual strength was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a strong urge to go out and pub­licly pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and the good news that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men
• explained › not dependent on death or resurrection of Jesus

194:0.3These men had been trained and in­structed that the gospel which they should preach was the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of man, but at just this mo­ment of spir­i­tual ec­stasy and per­sonal tri­umph, the best tid­ings, the great­est news, these men could think of was the fact of the risen Mas­ter. And so they went forth, en­dowed with power from on high, preach­ing glad tid­ings to the peo­ple—even sal­va­tion through Je­sus—but they un­in­ten­tion­ally stum­bled into the er­ror of sub­sti­tut­ing some of the facts as­so­ci­ated with the gospel for the gospel mes­sage it­self. Pe­ter un­wit­tingly led off in this mis­take, and oth­ers fol­lowed af­ter him on down to Paul, who cre­ated a new re­li­gion out of the new ver­sion of the good news.

194:0.4The gospel of the king­dom is: the fact of the fa­ther­hood of God, cou­pled with the re­sul­tant truth of the son­ship-broth­er­hood of men. Chris­tian­ity, as it de­vel­oped from that day, is: the fact of God as the Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­liever-fel­low­ship with the risen and glo­ri­fied Christ.

• explained › not dependent on death or resurrection of Jesus

194:0.7And when all of this is taken into con­sid­er­a­tion, it is not dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how these men came to preach a new gospel about Je­sus in the place of their for­mer mes­sage of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men.

• explained › solvent for spiritual difficulties

194:2.1Je­sus lived on earth and taught a gospel which re­deemed man from the su­per­sti­tion that he was a child of the devil and el­e­vated him to the dig­nity of a faith son of God. Je­sus’ mes­sage, as he preached it and lived it in his day, was an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties in that day of its state­ment. And now that he has per­son­ally left the world, he sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is de­signed to live in man and, for each new gen­er­a­tion, to re­state the Je­sus mes­sage so that ev­ery new group of mor­tals to ap­pear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date ver­sion of the gospel, just such per­sonal en­light­en­ment and group guid­ance as will prove to be an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s ever-new and var­ied spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties.

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

194:3.7The re­li­gion of Je­sus fos­ters the high­est type of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion in that it cre­ates the high­est type of spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity and pro­claims the sa­cred­ness of that per­son.

• proclaiming the gospel › avoid › identifying with a particular race, culture, political system

194:3.9The man­i­fes­ta­tions as­so­ci­ated with the be­stowal of the “new teacher,” and the re­cep­tion of the apos­tles’ preach­ing by the men of var­i­ous races and na­tions gath­ered to­gether at Je­ru­sa­lem, in­di­cate the uni­ver­sal­ity of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. The gospel of the king­dom was to be iden­ti­fied with no par­tic­u­lar race, cul­ture, or lan­guage. This day of Pen­te­cost wit­nessed the great ef­fort of the spirit to lib­er­ate the re­li­gion of Je­sus from its in­her­ited Jew­ish fet­ters. Even af­ter this dem­on­stra­tion of pour­ing out the spirit upon all flesh, the apos­tles at first en­deav­ored to im­pose the re­quire­ments of Ju­daism upon their con­verts. Even Paul had trou­ble with his Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren be­cause he re­fused to sub­ject the gen­tiles to these Jew­ish prac­tices. No re­vealed re­li­gion can spread to all the world when it makes the se­ri­ous mis­take of be­com­ing per­me­ated with some na­tional cul­ture or as­so­ci­ated with es­tab­lished racial, so­cial, or eco­nomic prac­tices.

• explained › not dependent on death or resurrection of Jesus

194:4.4What has hap­pened to these men whom Je­sus had or­dained to go forth preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom, the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man? They have a new gospel; they are on fire with a new ex­pe­ri­ence; they are filled with a new spir­i­tual en­ergy. Their mes­sage has sud­denly shifted to the procla­ma­tion of the risen Christ: “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, a man God ap­proved by mighty works and won­ders; him, be­ing de­liv­ered up by the de­ter­mi­nate coun­sel and fore­knowl­edge of God, you did cru­cify and slay. The things which God fore­shad­owed by the mouth of all the proph­ets, he thus ful­filled. This Je­sus did God raise up. God has made him both Lord and Christ. Be­ing, by the right hand of God, ex­alted and hav­ing re­ceived from the Fa­ther the prom­ise of the spirit, he has poured forth this which you see and hear. Re­pent, that your sins may be blot­ted out; that the Fa­ther may send the Christ, who has been ap­pointed for you, even Je­sus, whom the heaven must re­ceive un­til the times of the restora­tion of all things.”

194:4.5The gospel of the king­dom, the mes­sage of Je­sus, had been sud­denly changed into the gospel of the Lord Je­sus Christ. They now pro­claimed the facts of his life, death, and res­ur­rec­tion and preached the hope of his speedy re­turn to this world to fin­ish the work he be­gan. Thus the mes­sage of the early be­liev­ers had to do with preach­ing about the facts of his first com­ing and with teach­ing the hope of his sec­ond com­ing, an event which they deemed to be very near at hand.

• explained › cardinal features › sacredness of the individual

195:1.1The Hel­l­eniza­tion of Chris­tian­ity started in earnest on that event­ful day when the Apos­tle Paul stood be­fore the coun­cil of the Are­opa­gus in Athens and told the Athe­ni­ans about “the Un­known God.” There, un­der the shadow of the Acrop­o­lis, this Ro­man cit­i­zen pro­claimed to these Greeks his ver­sion of the new re­li­gion which had taken ori­gin in the Jew­ish land of Gal­i­lee. And there was some­thing strangely alike in Greek phi­los­o­phy and many of the teach­ings of Je­sus. They had a com­mon goal—both aimed at the emer­gence of the in­di­vid­ual. The Greek, at so­cial and po­lit­i­cal emer­gence; Je­sus, at moral and spir­i­tual emer­gence. The Greek taught in­tel­lec­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal free­dom; Je­sus taught spir­i­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to re­li­gious lib­erty. These two ideas put to­gether con­sti­tuted a new and mighty char­ter for hu­man free­dom; they pre­saged man’s so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and spir­i­tual lib­erty.

• proclaiming the gospel › be aggressive, unafraid, even to ends of earth

195:10.1Chris­tian­ity has in­deed done a great ser­vice for this world, but what is now most needed is Je­sus. The world needs to see Je­sus liv­ing again on earth in the ex­pe­ri­ence of spirit-born mor­tals who ef­fec­tively re­veal the Mas­ter to all men. It is fu­tile to talk about a re­vival of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­ity; you must go for­ward from where you find your­selves. Mod­ern cul­ture must be­come spir­i­tu­ally bap­tized with a new rev­e­la­tion of Je­sus’ life and il­lu­mi­nated with a new un­der­stand­ing of his gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion. And when Je­sus be­comes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to him­self. Je­sus’ dis­ci­ples should be more than con­querors, even over­flow­ing sources of in­spi­ra­tion and en­hanced liv­ing to all men. Re­li­gion is only an ex­alted hu­man­ism un­til it is made di­vine by the dis­cov­ery of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God in per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• proclaiming the gospel › second-milers needed

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.

• explained › fatherhood of God, sonship-brotherhood of men

195:10.21The hope of mod­ern Chris­tian­ity is that it should cease to spon­sor the so­cial sys­tems and in­dus­trial poli­cies of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion while it humbly bows it­self be­fore the cross it so valiantly ex­tols, there to learn anew from Je­sus of Naz­a­reth the great­est truths mor­tal man can ever hear—the liv­ing gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood 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.