heathen

155:1.1Said Je­sus: “You should all re­call how the Psalmist spoke of these times, say­ing, ‘Why do the hea­then rage and the peo­ples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set them­selves, and the rulers of the peo­ple take coun­sel to­gether, against the Lord and against his anointed, say­ing, Let us break the bonds of mercy asun­der and let us cast away the cords of love.’

155:1.2“To­day you see this ful­filled be­fore your eyes. But you shall not see the re­main­der of the Psalmist’s prophecy ful­filled, for he en­ter­tained er­ro­neous ideas about the Son of Man and his mis­sion on earth. My king­dom is founded on love, pro­claimed in mercy, and es­tab­lished by un­selfish ser­vice. My Fa­ther does not sit in heaven laugh­ing in de­ri­sion at the hea­then. He is not wrath­ful in his great dis­plea­sure. True is the prom­ise that the Son shall have these so-called hea­then (in re­al­ity his ig­no­rant and un­taught breth­ren) for an in­her­i­tance. And I will re­ceive these gen­tiles with open arms of mercy and af­fec­tion. All this lov­ing-kind­ness shall be shown the so-called hea­then, not­with­stand­ing the un­for­tu­nate dec­la­ra­tion of the rec­ord which in­ti­mates that the tri­umphant Son ‘shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like a pot­ter’s ves­sel.’ The Psalmist ex­horted you to ‘serve the Lord with fear’—I bid you en­ter into the ex­alted priv­i­leges of di­vine son­ship by faith; he com­mands you to re­joice with trem­bling; I bid you re­joice with as­sur­ance. He says, ‘Kiss the Son, lest he be an­gry, and you per­ish when his wrath is kin­dled.’ But you who have lived with me well know that anger and wrath are not a part of the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of men. But the Psalmist did glimpse the true light when, in fin­ish­ing this ex­hor­ta­tion, he said: ‘Blessed are they who put their trust in this Son.’”

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.

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

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.”

155:1.6And many other things the Mas­ter taught his apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists be­fore they bade him good night and sought rest upon their pil­lows.