hopes

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.

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.”

11:4.5But a fur­ther at­tempt to vi­su­al­ize to you the glo­ries of Par­a­dise would be fu­tile. You must wait, and as­cend while you wait, for truly, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nei­ther has it en­tered into the mind of mor­tal man, the things which the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has pre­pared for those who sur­vive the life in the flesh on the worlds of time and space.”

24:6.2I am not for­bid­den to un­der­take to tell you of the work of these Grad­u­ate Guides, but it is so ul­tra­spir­i­tual that I de­spair of be­ing able to ad­e­quately por­tray to the ma­te­rial mind a con­cept of their man­i­fold ac­tiv­i­ties. On the man­sion worlds, af­ter your vi­sion range is ex­tended and you are freed from the fet­ters of ma­te­rial com­par­isons, you can be­gin to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of those re­al­i­ties which “eye can­not see nor ear hear, and which have never en­tered the con­cept of hu­man minds,” even those things which “God has pre­pared for those who love such eter­nal ver­i­ties.” You are not al­ways to be so lim­ited in the range of your vi­sion and spir­i­tual com­pre­hen­sion.

43:6.8If you en­joy the flow­ers, shrubs, and trees of Uran­tia, then will you feast your eyes upon the botan­i­cal beauty and the flo­ral grandeur of the su­per­nal gar­dens of Eden­tia. But it is be­yond my pow­ers of de­scrip­tion to un­der­take to con­vey to the mor­tal mind an ad­e­quate con­cept of these beau­ties of the heav­enly worlds. Truly, eye has not seen such glo­ries as await your ar­rival on these worlds of the mor­tal-as­cen­sion ad­ven­ture.

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.

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.”

3:5.83. Is hope—the grandeur of trust—de­sir­a­ble? Then hu­man ex­is­tence must con­stantly be con­fronted with in­se­cu­ri­ties and re­cur­rent un­cer­tain­ties.

181:1.7Je­sus gives peace to his fel­low do­ers of the will of God but not on the or­der of the joys and sat­is­fac­tions of this ma­te­rial world. Un­be­liev­ing ma­te­ri­al­ists and fa­tal­ists can hope to en­joy only two kinds of peace and soul com­fort: Ei­ther they must be sto­ics, with stead­fast res­o­lu­tion de­ter­mined to face the in­ev­i­ta­ble and to en­dure the worst; or they must be op­ti­mists, ever in­dulging that hope which springs eter­nal in the hu­man breast, vainly long­ing for a peace which never re­ally comes.

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

139:0.1It is an elo­quent tes­ti­mony to the charm and righ­teous­ness of Je­sus’ earth life that, al­though he re­peat­edly dashed to pieces the hopes of his apos­tles and tore to shreds their ev­ery am­bi­tion for per­sonal ex­al­ta­tion, only one de­serted him.

145:4.3And again did twelve dis­ap­pointed, per­plexed, and heart-sor­row­ing men go to their rest; few of them, ex­cept the twins, slept much that night. No sooner would the Mas­ter do some­thing to cheer the souls and glad­den the hearts of his apos­tles, than he seemed im­me­di­ately to dash their hopes in pieces and ut­terly to de­mol­ish the foun­da­tions of their cour­age and en­thu­si­asm. As these be­wil­dered fish­er­men looked into each other’s eyes, there was but one thought: “We can­not un­der­stand him. What does all this mean?”

153:1.3The Mas­ter well knew that many of his fol­low­ers were slowly but surely prepar­ing their minds fi­nally to re­ject him. He like­wise knew that many of his dis­ci­ples were slowly but cer­tainly pass­ing through that train­ing of mind and that dis­ci­pline of soul which would en­able them to tri­umph over doubt and coura­geously to as­sert their full-fledged faith in the gospel of the king­dom. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how men pre­pare them­selves for the de­ci­sions of a cri­sis and the per­for­mance of sud­den deeds of coura­geous choos­ing by the slow pro­cess of the re­it­er­ated choos­ing be­tween the re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions of good and evil. He sub­jected his cho­sen mes­sen­gers to re­peated re­hearsals in dis­ap­point­ment and pro­vided them with fre­quent and test­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for choos­ing be­tween the right and the wrong way of meet­ing spir­i­tual tri­als. He knew he could de­pend on his fol­low­ers, when they met the fi­nal test, to make their vi­tal de­ci­sions in ac­cor­dance with prior and ha­bit­ual men­tal at­ti­tudes and spirit re­ac­tions.

153:5.1Time and again had Je­sus dashed to pieces the hopes of his apos­tles, re­peat­edly had he crushed their fond­est ex­pec­ta­tions, but no time of dis­ap­point­ment or sea­son of sor­row had ever equaled that which now over­took them. And, too, there was now ad­mixed with their de­pres­sion a real fear for their safety. They were all sur­pris­ingly star­tled by the sud­den­ness and com­plete­ness of the de­ser­tion of the pop­u­lace. They were also some­what fright­ened and dis­con­certed by the un­ex­pected bold­ness and as­sertive de­ter­mi­na­tion ex­hib­ited by the Phar­isees who had come down from Je­ru­sa­lem. But most of all they were be­wil­dered by Je­sus’ sud­den change of tac­tics. Un­der or­di­nary cir­cum­stances they would have wel­comed the ap­pear­ance of this more mil­i­tant at­ti­tude, but com­ing as it did, along with so much that was un­ex­pected, it star­tled them.

157:4.1Since the oc­ca­sions of Je­sus’ bap­tism by John and the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana, the apos­tles had, at var­i­ous times, vir­tu­ally ac­cepted him as the Mes­siah. For short pe­ri­ods some of them had truly be­lieved that he was the ex­pected De­liv­erer. But hardly would such hopes spring up in their hearts than the Mas­ter would dash them to pieces by some crush­ing word or dis­ap­point­ing deed. They had long been in a state of tur­moil due to con­flict be­tween the con­cepts of the ex­pected Mes­siah which they held in their minds and the ex­pe­ri­ence of their ex­traor­di­nary as­so­ci­a­tion with this ex­traor­di­nary man which they held in their hearts.

158:5.4It was in­deed a dis­il­lu­sion­ment for the three apos­tles who had so re­cently en­joyed the spir­i­tual ec­stasy of the scenes and ex­pe­ri­ences of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion, so soon to re­turn to this scene of the de­feat and dis­com­fi­ture of their fel­low apos­tles. But it was ever so with these twelve am­bas­sadors of the king­dom. They never failed to al­ter­nate be­tween ex­al­ta­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion in their life ex­pe­ri­ences.

192:2.10Then said the Mas­ter to Na­than­iel, “Na­than­iel, do you serve me?” And the apos­tle an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, and with an un­di­vided af­fec­tion.” Then said Je­sus: “If, there­fore, you serve me with a whole heart, make sure that you are de­voted to the wel­fare of my breth­ren on earth with tire­less af­fec­tion. Ad­mix friend­ship with your coun­sel and add love to your phi­los­o­phy. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you. Be faith­ful to men as I have watched over you. Be less crit­i­cal; ex­pect less of some men and thereby lessen the ex­tent of your dis­ap­point­ment. And when the work down here is over, you shall serve with me on high.”

3:5.16The full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of truth, beauty, and good­ness is in­her­ent in the per­fec­tion of the di­vine uni­verse. The in­hab­i­tants of the Ha­vona worlds do not re­quire the po­ten­tial of rel­a­tive value lev­els as a choice stim­u­lus; such per­fect be­ings are able to iden­tify and choose the good in the ab­sence of all con­trastive and thought-com­pelling moral sit­u­a­tions. But all such per­fect be­ings are, in moral na­ture and spir­i­tual sta­tus, what they are by virtue of the fact of ex­is­tence. They have ex­pe­ri­en­tially earned ad­vance­ment only within their in­her­ent sta­tus. Mor­tal man earns even his sta­tus as an as­cen­sion can­di­date by his own faith and hope. Ev­ery­thing di­vine which the hu­man mind grasps and the hu­man soul ac­quires is an ex­pe­ri­en­tial at­tain­ment; it is a re­al­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence and is there­fore a unique pos­ses­sion in con­trast to the in­her­ent good­ness and righ­teous­ness of the in­errant per­son­al­i­ties of Ha­vona.

100:2.8Af­ter such spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, whether se­cured by grad­ual growth or spe­cific cri­sis, there oc­curs a new ori­en­ta­tion of per­son­al­ity as well as the de­vel­op­ment of a new stan­dard of val­ues. Such spirit-born in­di­vid­u­als are so re­mo­ti­vated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fond­est am­bi­tions per­ish and their keen­est hopes crash; they pos­i­tively know that such catas­tro­phes are but the redi­rect­ing cat­a­clysms which wreck one’s tem­po­ral cre­ations pre­lim­i­nary to the rear­ing of the more no­ble and en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of a new and more sub­lime level of uni­verse at­tain­ment.

101:10.8When you ex­pe­ri­ence such a trans­for­ma­tion of faith, you are no longer a slav­ish part of the math­e­mat­i­cal cos­mos but rather a lib­er­ated vo­li­tional son of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. No longer is such a lib­er­ated son fight­ing alone against the in­ex­orable doom of the ter­mi­na­tion of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence; no longer does he com­bat all na­ture, with the odds hope­lessly against him; no longer is he stag­gered by the par­a­lyz­ing fear that, per­chance, he has put his trust in a hope­less phan­tasm or pinned his faith to a fan­ci­ful er­ror.