history

• begins with creation of Havona

8:1.9In brief, the In­fi­nite Spirit tes­ti­fies that, since he is eter­nal, so also is the cen­tral uni­verse eter­nal. And this is the tra­di­tional start­ing point of the his­tory of the uni­verse of uni­verses. Ab­so­lutely noth­ing is known, and no rec­ords are in ex­is­tence, re­gard­ing any event or trans­ac­tion prior to this stu­pen­dous erup­tion of cre­ative en­ergy and ad­min­is­tra­tive wis­dom that crys­tal­lized the vast uni­verse which ex­ists, and so ex­qui­sitely func­tions, at the cen­ter of all things. Be­yond this event lie the un­search­able trans­ac­tions of eter­nity and the depths of in­fin­ity—ab­so­lute mys­tery.

• value › mind of man requires starting point

8:1.10And we thus por­tray the se­quen­tial ori­gin of the Third Source and Cen­ter as an in­ter­pre­ta­tive con­de­scen­sion to the time-bound and space-con­di­tioned mind of mor­tal crea­tures. The mind of man must have a start­ing point for the vi­su­al­iza­tion of uni­verse his­tory, and I have been di­rected to pro­vide this tech­nique of ap­proach to the his­toric con­cept of eter­nity. In the ma­te­rial mind, con­sis­tency de­mands a First Cause; there­fore do we pos­tu­late the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther as the First Source and the Ab­so­lute Cen­ter of all cre­ation, at the same time in­struct­ing all crea­ture minds that the Son and the Spirit are co­eter­nal with the Fa­ther in all phases of uni­verse his­tory and in all realms of cre­ative ac­tiv­ity. And we do this with­out in any sense be­ing dis­re­gard­ful of the re­al­ity and eter­nity of the Isle of Par­a­dise and of the Un­qual­i­fied, Uni­ver­sal, and De­ity Ab­so­lutes.

• value › inadequately reveals destiny

19:1.114. His­tory alone fails ad­e­quately to re­veal fu­ture de­vel­op­ment—des­tiny. Fi­nite ori­gins are help­ful, but only di­vine causes re­veal fi­nal ef­fects. Eter­nal ends are not shown in time be­gin­nings. The pres­ent can be truly in­ter­preted only in the light of the cor­re­lated past and fu­ture.

• Vorondadeks are historians of local universes

35:5.7Of­ten a corps of twelve or more Vo­ron­da­dek Sons sits en banc as a high court of re­view and ap­peal con­cern­ing spe­cial cases in­volv­ing the sta­tus of a planet or a sys­tem. But their work more largely per­tains to the leg­isla­tive func­tions in­dige­nous to the con­stel­la­tion gov­ern­ments. As a re­sult of all these ser­vices, the Vo­ron­da­dek Sons have be­come the his­to­ri­ans of the lo­cal uni­verses; they are per­son­ally fa­mil­iar with all the po­lit­i­cal strug­gles and the so­cial up­heavals of the in­hab­ited worlds.

• primary midwayers are planetary historians

38:9.12The pri­mary mid­way­ers are the plan­e­tary his­to­ri­ans who, from the time of the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince to the age of set­tled light and life, for­mu­late the pageants and de­sign the por­tray­als of plan­e­tary his­tory for the ex­hibits of the plan­ets on the sys­tem head­quar­ters worlds.

• administrative enactors, dramatists of sovereignty

44:2.97. The ad­min­is­tra­tive en­ac­tors—those who de­pict the sig­nif­i­cance of gov­ern­men­tal phi­los­o­phy and ad­min­is­tra­tive tech­nique, the ce­les­tial drama­tists of sov­er­eignty.

• survivors become familiar with local system h.

48:6.31The re­cord­ers of all the se­raphic or­ders de­vote a cer­tain amount of time to the ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing of the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. These an­gelic cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time are the ideal in­struc­tors of all fact seek­ers. Be­fore leav­ing Je­ru­sem, you will be­come quite fa­mil­iar with the his­tory of Sa­ta­nia and its 619 in­hab­ited worlds, and much of this story will be im­parted by the se­raphic re­cord­ers.

• record of man’s agelong food struggle

68:2.5His­tory is but the rec­ord of man’s age­long food strug­gle. Prim­i­tive man only thought when he was hun­gry; food sav­ing was his first self-de­nial, self-dis­ci­pline. With the growth of so­ci­ety, food hunger ceased to be the only in­cen­tive for mu­tual as­so­ci­a­tion. Nu­mer­ous other sorts of hunger, the re­al­iza­tion of var­i­ous needs, all led to the closer as­so­ci­a­tion of man­kind. But to­day so­ci­ety is top-heavy with the over­growth of sup­posed hu­man needs. Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury groans wearily un­der the tremen­dous over­load of lux­ury and the in­or­di­nate mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of hu­man de­sires and long­ings. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is en­dur­ing the strain of one of its most dan­ger­ous phases of far-flung in­teras­so­ci­a­tion and highly com­pli­cated in­ter­de­pen­dence.

97:8.1The cus­tom of look­ing upon the rec­ord of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the He­brews as sa­cred his­tory and upon the trans­ac­tions of the rest of the world as pro­fane his­tory is re­spon­si­ble for much of the con­fu­sion ex­ist­ing in the hu­man mind as to the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his­tory. And this dif­fi­culty arises be­cause there is no sec­u­lar his­tory of the Jews. Af­ter the priests of the Baby­lo­nian ex­ile had pre­pared their new rec­ord of God’s sup­pos­edly mirac­u­lous deal­ings with the He­brews, the sa­cred his­tory of Is­rael as por­trayed in the Old Tes­ta­ment, they care­fully and com­pletely de­stroyed the ex­ist­ing rec­ords of He­brew af­fairs—such books as “The Do­ings of the Kings of Is­rael” and “The Do­ings of the Kings of Ju­dah,” to­gether with sev­eral other more or less ac­cu­rate rec­ords of He­brew his­tory.

97:8.2In or­der to un­der­stand how the dev­as­tat­ing pres­sure and the in­es­cap­able co­er­cion of sec­u­lar his­tory so ter­ror­ized the cap­tive and alien-ruled Jews that they at­tempted the com­plete rewrit­ing and re­cast­ing of their his­tory, we should briefly sur­vey the rec­ord of their per­plex­ing na­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. It must be re­mem­bered that the Jews failed to evolve an ad­e­quate non­the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy of life. They strug­gled with their orig­i­nal and Egyp­tian con­cept of di­vine re­wards for righ­teous­ness cou­pled with dire pun­ish­ments for sin. The drama of Job was some­thing of a protest against this er­ro­neous phi­los­o­phy. The frank pes­simism of Ec­cle­si­astes was a worldly wise re­ac­tion to these overop­ti­mistic be­liefs in Prov­i­dence.

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

97:8.4And all of this false hope led to such a de­gree of racial dis­ap­point­ment and frus­tra­tion that the lead­ers of the Jews were so con­fused they failed to rec­og­nize and ac­cept the mis­sion and min­istry of a di­vine Son of Par­a­dise when he pres­ently came to them in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh—in­car­nated as the Son of Man.

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

97:8.6New Tes­ta­ment au­thors and later Chris­tian writ­ers fur­ther com­pli­cated the dis­tor­tion of He­brew his­tory by their well-meant at­tempts to tran­scen­den­tal­ize the Jew­ish proph­ets. Thus has He­brew his­tory been dis­as­trously ex­ploited by both Jew­ish and Chris­tian writ­ers. Sec­u­lar He­brew his­tory has been thor­oughly dog­ma­tized. It has been con­verted into a fic­tion of sa­cred his­tory and has be­come in­ex­tri­ca­bly bound up with the moral con­cepts and re­li­gious teach­ings of the so-called Chris­tian na­tions.

97:8.7A brief recital of the high points in He­brew his­tory will il­lus­trate how the facts of the rec­ord were so al­tered in Baby­lon by the Jew­ish priests as to turn the ev­ery­day sec­u­lar his­tory of their peo­ple into a fic­ti­tious and sa­cred his­tory.

• revealed facts in Urantia Papers are accurate

101:4.2Man­kind should un­der­stand that we who par­tic­i­pate in the rev­e­la­tion of truth are very rig­or­ously lim­ited by the in­struc­tions of our su­pe­ri­ors. We are not at lib­erty to an­tic­i­pate the sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies of a thou­sand years. Rev­e­la­tors must act in ac­cor­dance with the in­struc­tions which form a part of the rev­e­la­tion man­date. We see no way of over­com­ing this dif­fi­culty, ei­ther now or at any fu­ture time. We full well know that, while the his­toric facts and re­li­gious truths of this se­ries of rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tions will stand on the rec­ords of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our state­ments re­gard­ing the phys­i­cal sci­ences will stand in need of re­vi­sion in con­se­quence of ad­di­tional sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments and new dis­cov­er­ies. These new de­vel­op­ments we even now fore­see, but we are for­bid­den to in­clude such hu­manly undis­cov­ered facts in the rev­e­la­tory rec­ords. Let it be made clear that rev­e­la­tions are not nec­es­sar­ily in­spired. The cos­mol­ogy of these rev­e­la­tions is not in­spired. It is lim­ited by our per­mis­sion for the co-or­di­na­tion and sort­ing of pres­ent-day knowl­edge. While di­vine or spir­i­tual in­sight is a gift, hu­man wis­dom must evolve.

104:1.1The first Uran­tian rev­e­la­tion lead­ing to the com­pre­hen­sion of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity was made by the staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia about one-half mil­lion years ago. This ear­li­est Trin­ity con­cept was lost to the world in the un­set­tled times fol­low­ing the plan­e­tary re­bel­lion.

104:1.2The sec­ond pre­sen­ta­tion of the Trin­ity was made by Adam and Eve in the first and sec­ond gar­dens. These teach­ings had not been wholly oblit­er­ated even in the times of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek about thirty-five thou­sand years later, for the Trin­ity con­cept of the Sethites per­sisted in both Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Egypt but more es­pe­cially in In­dia, where it was long per­pet­u­ated in Agni, the Vedic three-headed fire god.

104:1.3The third pre­sen­ta­tion of the Trin­ity was made by Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek, and this doc­trine was sym­bol­ized by the three con­cen­tric cir­cles which the sage of Salem wore on his breast plate. But Ma­chi­venta found it very dif­fi­cult to teach the Pales­tinian Bed­ou­ins about the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the Eter­nal Son, and the In­fi­nite Spirit. Most of his dis­ci­ples thought that the Trin­ity con­sisted of the three Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek; a few con­ceived of the Trin­ity as the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign, the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther, and the lo­cal uni­verse Cre­ator De­ity; still fewer even re­motely grasped the idea of the Par­a­dise as­so­ci­a­tion of the Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit.

104:1.4Through the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings of the Trin­ity grad­u­ally spread through­out much of Eura­sia and north­ern Africa. It is of­ten dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish be­tween the tri­ads and the trin­i­ties in the later And­ite and the post-Mel­chiz­e­dek ages, when both con­cepts to a cer­tain ex­tent in­ter­min­gled and co­a­lesced.

104:1.5Among the Hin­dus the trini­tar­ian con­cept took root as Be­ing, In­tel­li­gence, and Joy. (A later In­dian con­cep­tion was Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu.) While the ear­lier Trin­ity por­tray­als were brought to In­dia by the Sethite priests, the later ideas of the Trin­ity were im­ported by the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies and were de­vel­oped by the na­tive in­tel­lects of In­dia through a com­pound­ing of these doc­trines with the evo­lu­tion­ary triad con­cep­tions.

104:1.6The Bud­dhist faith de­vel­oped two doc­trines of a trini­tar­ian na­ture: The ear­lier was Teacher, Law, and Broth­er­hood; that was the pre­sen­ta­tion made by Gau­tama Sid­dhartha. The later idea, de­vel­op­ing among the north­ern branch of the fol­low­ers of Bud­dha, em­braced Su­preme Lord, Holy Spirit, and In­car­nate Sav­ior.

104:1.7And these ideas of the Hin­dus and Bud­dhists were real trini­tar­ian pos­tu­lates, that is, the idea of a three­fold man­i­fes­ta­tion of a mono­the­is­tic God. A true trin­ity con­cep­tion is not just a group­ing to­gether of three sep­a­rate gods.

104:1.8The He­brews knew about the Trin­ity from the Ken­ite tra­di­tions of the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek, but their mono­the­is­tic zeal for the one God, Yah­weh, so ec­lipsed all such teach­ings that by the time of Je­sus’ ap­pear­ance the Elo­him doc­trine had been prac­ti­cally erad­i­cated from Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. The He­brew mind could not rec­on­cile the trini­tar­ian con­cept with the mono­the­is­tic be­lief in the One Lord, the God of Is­rael.

104:1.9The fol­low­ers of the Is­lamic faith like­wise failed to grasp the idea of the Trin­ity. It is al­ways dif­fi­cult for an emerg­ing mono­the­ism to tol­er­ate trini­tar­i­an­ism when con­fronted by poly­the­ism. The trin­ity idea takes best hold of those re­li­gions which have a firm mono­the­is­tic tra­di­tion cou­pled with doc­tri­nal elas­tic­ity. The great mono­the­ists, the He­brews and Mo­hammedans, found it dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish be­tween wor­ship­ing three gods, poly­the­ism, and trini­tar­i­an­ism, the wor­ship of one De­ity ex­ist­ing in a tri­une man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vin­ity and per­son­al­ity.

104:1.10Je­sus taught his apos­tles the truth re­gard­ing the per­sons of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, but they thought he spoke fig­u­ra­tively and sym­bol­i­cally. Hav­ing been nur­tured in He­braic mono­the­ism, they found it dif­fi­cult to en­ter­tain any be­lief that seemed to con­flict with their dom­i­nat­ing con­cept of Yah­weh. And the early Chris­tians in­her­ited the He­braic prej­u­dice against the Trin­ity con­cept.

104:1.11The first Trin­ity of Chris­tian­ity was pro­claimed at An­ti­och and con­sisted of God, his Word, and his Wis­dom. Paul knew of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit, but he sel­dom preached about it and made men­tion thereof in only a few of his let­ters to the newly form­ing churches. Even then, as did his fel­low apos­tles, Paul con­fused Je­sus, the Cre­ator Son of the lo­cal uni­verse, with the Sec­ond Per­son of De­ity, the Eter­nal Son of Par­a­dise.

104:1.12The Chris­tian con­cept of the Trin­ity, which be­gan to gain rec­og­ni­tion near the close of the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, was com­prised of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the Cre­ator Son of Neb­a­don, and the Di­vine Min­is­ter of Sal­ving­ton—Mother Spirit of the lo­cal uni­verse and cre­ative con­sort of the Cre­ator Son.

104:1.13Not since the times of Je­sus has the fac­tual iden­tity of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity been known on Uran­tia (ex­cept by a few in­di­vid­u­als to whom it was es­pe­cially re­vealed) un­til its pre­sen­ta­tion in these rev­e­la­tory dis­clo­sures. But though the Chris­tian con­cept of the Trin­ity erred in fact, it was prac­ti­cally true with re­spect to spir­i­tual re­la­tion­ships. Only in its philo­sophic im­pli­ca­tions and cos­mo­log­i­cal con­se­quences did this con­cept suf­fer em­bar­rass­ment: It has been dif­fi­cult for many who are cos­mic minded to be­lieve that the Sec­ond Per­son of De­ity, the sec­ond mem­ber of an in­fi­nite Trin­ity, once dwelt on Uran­tia; and while in spirit this is true, in ac­tu­al­ity it is not a fact. The Mi­chael Cre­ators fully em­body the di­vin­ity of the Eter­nal Son, but they are not the ab­so­lute per­son­al­ity.

• value › brings evaluation of past to bear on present

118:1.4Ex­pe­ri­ence, wis­dom, and judg­ment are the con­comi­tants of the length­en­ing of the time unit in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. As the hu­man mind reck­ons back­ward into the past, it is eval­u­at­ing past ex­pe­ri­ence for the pur­pose of bring­ing it to bear on a pres­ent sit­u­a­tion. As mind reaches out into the fu­ture, it is at­tempt­ing to eval­u­ate the fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance of pos­si­ble ac­tion. And hav­ing thus reck­oned with both ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom, the hu­man will ex­er­cises judg­ment-de­ci­sion in the pres­ent, and the plan of ac­tion thus born of the past and the fu­ture be­comes ex­is­tent.

• Jews viewed as providence of God

121:7.7Paul’s cult of Chris­tian­ity ex­hib­ited its moral­ity as a Jew­ish birth­mark. The Jews viewed his­tory as the prov­i­dence of God—Yah­weh at work. The Greeks brought to the new teach­ing clearer con­cepts of the eter­nal life. Paul’s doc­trines were in­flu­enced in the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy not only by Je­sus’ teach­ings but also by Plato and Philo. In ethics he was in­spired not only by Christ but also by the Sto­ics.

194:4.1When Je­sus was so sud­denly seized by his en­e­mies and so quickly cru­ci­fied be­tween two thieves, his apos­tles and dis­ci­ples were com­pletely de­mor­al­ized. The thought of the Mas­ter, ar­rested, bound, scourged, and cru­ci­fied, was too much for even the apos­tles. They for­got his teach­ings and his warn­ings. He might, in­deed, have been “a prophet mighty in deed and word be­fore God and all the peo­ple,” but he could hardly be the Mes­siah they had hoped would re­store the king­dom of Is­rael.

194:4.2Then comes the res­ur­rec­tion, with its de­liv­er­ance from de­spair and the re­turn of their faith in the Mas­ter’s di­vin­ity. Again and again they see him and talk with him, and he takes them out on Oli­vet, where he bids them farewell and tells them he is go­ing back to the Fa­ther. He has told them to tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til they are en­dowed with power—un­til the Spirit of Truth shall come. And on the day of Pen­te­cost this new teacher comes, and they go out at once to preach their gospel with new power. They are the bold and coura­geous fol­low­ers of a liv­ing Lord, not a dead and de­feated leader. The Mas­ter lives in the hearts of these evan­ge­lists; God is not a doc­trine in their minds; he has be­come a liv­ing pres­ence in their souls.

194:4.3“Day by day they con­tin­ued stead­fastly and with one ac­cord in the tem­ple and break­ing bread at home. They took their food with glad­ness and sin­gle­ness of heart, prais­ing God and hav­ing fa­vor with all the peo­ple. They were all filled with the spirit, and they spoke the word of God with bold­ness. And the mul­ti­tudes of those who be­lieved were of one heart and soul; and not one of them said that aught of the things which he pos­sessed was his own, and they had all things in com­mon.”

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.

194:4.6Christ was about to be­come the creed of the rapidly form­ing church. Je­sus lives; he died for men; he gave the spirit; he is com­ing again. Je­sus filled all their thoughts and de­ter­mined all their new con­cepts of God and ev­ery­thing else. They were too much en­thused over the new doc­trine that “God is the Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus” to be con­cerned with the old mes­sage that “God is the lov­ing Fa­ther of all men,” even of ev­ery sin­gle in­di­vid­ual. True, a mar­velous man­i­fes­ta­tion of broth­erly love and un­ex­am­pled good will did spring up in these early com­mu­ni­ties of be­liev­ers. But it was a fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers in Je­sus, not a fel­low­ship of broth­ers in the fam­ily king­dom of the Fa­ther in heaven. Their good will arose from the love born of the con­cept of Je­sus’ be­stowal and not from the rec­og­ni­tion of the broth­er­hood of mor­tal man. Nev­er­the­less, they were filled with joy, and they lived such new and unique lives that all men were at­tracted to their teach­ings about Je­sus. They made the great mis­take of us­ing the liv­ing and il­lus­tra­tive com­men­tary on the gospel of the king­dom for that gospel, but even that rep­re­sented the great­est re­li­gion man­kind had ever known.

194:4.7Un­mis­tak­ably, a new fel­low­ship was aris­ing in the world. “The mul­ti­tude who be­lieved con­tin­ued stead­fastly in the apos­tles’ teach­ing and fel­low­ship, in the break­ing of bread, and in prayers.” They called each other brother and sis­ter; they greeted one an­other with a holy kiss; they min­is­tered to the poor. It was a fel­low­ship of liv­ing as well as of wor­ship. They were not com­mu­nal by de­cree but by the de­sire to share their goods with their fel­low be­liev­ers. They con­fi­dently ex­pected that Je­sus would re­turn to com­plete the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fa­ther’s king­dom dur­ing their gen­er­a­tion. This spon­ta­neous shar­ing of earthly pos­ses­sions was not a di­rect fea­ture of Je­sus’ teach­ing; it came about be­cause these men and women so sin­cerely and so con­fi­dently be­lieved that he was to re­turn any day to fin­ish his work and to con­sum­mate the king­dom. But the fi­nal re­sults of this well-meant ex­per­i­ment in thought­less broth­erly love were dis­as­trous and sor­row-breed­ing. Thou­sands of earnest be­liev­ers sold their prop­erty and dis­posed of all their cap­i­tal goods and other pro­duc­tive as­sets. With the pass­ing of time, the dwin­dling re­sources of Chris­tian “equal-shar­ing” came to an end—but the world did not. Very soon the be­liev­ers at An­ti­och were tak­ing up a col­lec­tion to keep their fel­low be­liev­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem from starv­ing.

194:4.8In these days they cel­e­brated the Lord’s Sup­per af­ter the man­ner of its es­tab­lish­ment; that is, they as­sem­bled for a so­cial meal of good fel­low­ship and par­took of the sacra­ment at the end of the meal.

194:4.9At first they bap­tized in the name of Je­sus; it was al­most twenty years be­fore they be­gan to bap­tize in “the name of the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Bap­tism was all that was re­quired for ad­mis­sion into the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers. They had no or­ga­ni­za­tion as yet; it was sim­ply the Je­sus broth­er­hood.

194:4.10This Je­sus sect was grow­ing rapidly, and once more the Sad­ducees took no­tice of them. The Phar­isees were lit­tle both­ered about the sit­u­a­tion, see­ing that none of the teach­ings in any way in­ter­fered with the ob­ser­vance of the Jew­ish laws. But the Sad­ducees be­gan to put the lead­ers of the Je­sus sect in jail un­til they were pre­vailed upon to ac­cept the coun­sel of one of the lead­ing rab­bis, Gamaliel, who ad­vised them: “Re­frain from these men and let them alone, for if this coun­sel or this work is of men, it will be over­thrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to over­throw them, lest haply you be found even to be fight­ing against God.” They de­cided to fol­low Gamaliel’s coun­sel, and there en­sued a time of peace and quiet in Je­ru­sa­lem, dur­ing which the new gospel about Je­sus spread rapidly.

194:4.11And so all went well in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til the time of the com­ing of the Greeks in large num­bers from Alexan­dria. Two of the pupils of Ro­dan ar­rived in Je­ru­sa­lem and made many con­verts from among the Hel­lenists. Among their early con­verts were Stephen and Bar­na­bas. These able Greeks did not so much have the Jew­ish view­point, and they did not so well con­form to the Jew­ish mode of wor­ship and other cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices. And it was the do­ings of these Greek be­liev­ers that ter­mi­nated the peace­ful re­la­tions be­tween the Je­sus broth­er­hood and the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees. Stephen and his Greek as­so­ciate be­gan to preach more as Je­sus taught, and this brought them into im­me­di­ate con­flict with the Jew­ish rulers. In one of Stephen’s pub­lic ser­mons, when he reached the ob­jec­tion­able part of the dis­course, they dis­pensed with all for­mal­i­ties of trial and pro­ceeded to stone him to death on the spot.

194:4.12Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Je­sus’ be­liev­ers in Je­ru­sa­lem, thus be­came the first mar­tyr to the new faith and the spe­cific cause for the for­mal or­ga­ni­za­tion of the early Chris­tian church. This new cri­sis was met by the rec­og­ni­tion that be­liev­ers could not longer go on as a sect within the Jew­ish faith. They all agreed that they must sep­a­rate them­selves from un­be­liev­ers; and within one month from the death of Stephen the church at Je­ru­sa­lem had been or­ga­nized un­der the lead­er­ship of Pe­ter, and James the brother of Je­sus had been in­stalled as its tit­u­lar head.

194:4.13And then broke out the new and re­lent­less per­se­cu­tions by the Jews, so that the ac­tive teach­ers of the new re­li­gion about Je­sus, which sub­se­quently at An­ti­och was called Chris­tian­ity, went forth to the ends of the em­pire pro­claim­ing Je­sus. In car­ry­ing this mes­sage, be­fore the time of Paul the lead­er­ship was in Greek hands; and these first mis­sion­ar­ies, as also the later ones, fol­lowed the path of Alexan­der’s march of for­mer days, go­ing by way of Gaza and Tyre to An­ti­och and then over Asia Mi­nor to Mace­do­nia, then on to Rome and to the ut­ter­most parts of the em­pire.