ironies

79:8.1While the red man suf­fered from too much war­fare, it is not al­to­gether amiss to say that the de­vel­op­ment of state­hood among the Chi­nese was de­layed by the thor­ough­ness of their con­quest of Asia. They had a great po­ten­tial of racial sol­i­dar­ity, but it failed prop­erly to de­velop be­cause the con­tin­u­ous driv­ing stim­u­lus of the ever-pres­ent dan­ger of ex­ter­nal ag­gres­sion was lack­ing.

95:5.9The fa­tal weak­ness of Ikh­na­ton’s gospel was its great­est truth, the teach­ing that Aton was not only the cre­ator of Egypt but also of the “whole world, man and beasts, and all the for­eign lands, even Syria and Kush, be­sides this land of Egypt. He sets all in their place and pro­vides all with their needs.” These con­cepts of De­ity were high and ex­alted, but they were not na­tion­al­is­tic. Such sen­ti­ments of in­ter­na­tion­al­ity in re­li­gion failed to aug­ment the morale of the Egyp­tian army on the bat­tle­field, while they pro­vided ef­fec­tive weapons for the priests to use against the young king and his new re­li­gion. He had a De­ity con­cept far above that of the later He­brews, but it was too ad­vanced to serve the pur­poses of a na­tion builder.

29:3.8It is ut­terly be­yond my abil­ity to ex­plain the man­ner in which these liv­ing be­ings en­com­pass the ma­nip­u­la­tion and reg­u­la­tion of the mas­ter cir­cuits of uni­verse en­ergy. To un­der­take to in­form you fur­ther con­cern­ing the size and func­tion of these gi­gan­tic and al­most per­fectly ef­fi­cient power cen­ters, would only add to your con­fu­sion and con­ster­na­tion. They are both liv­ing and “per­sonal,” but they are be­yond your com­pre­hen­sion.

13:1.6This sphere also holds the se­crets of the na­ture, pur­pose, and ac­tiv­i­ties of all other forms of Fa­ther frag­ments, of the Grav­ity Mes­sen­gers, and of hosts of other be­ings un­re­vealed to you. It is highly prob­a­ble that those truths per­tain­ing to Di­vin­ing­ton which are with­held from me, if re­vealed, would merely con­fuse and hand­i­cap me in my pres­ent work, and still again, per­haps they are be­yond the con­cep­tual ca­pac­ity of my or­der of be­ing.

39:5.9In the more ad­vanced plan­e­tary ages these ser­a­phim en­hance man’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the truth that un­cer­tainty is the se­cret of con­tented con­ti­nu­ity. They help the mor­tal philoso­phers to re­al­ize that, when ig­no­rance is es­sen­tial to suc­cess, it would be a colos­sal blun­der for the crea­ture to know the fu­ture. They heighten man’s taste for the sweet­ness of un­cer­tainty, for the ro­mance and charm of the in­def­i­nite and un­known fu­ture.

138:7.1Je­sus had planned for a quiet mis­sion­ary cam­paign of five months’ per­sonal work. He did not tell the apos­tles how long this was to last; they worked from week to week. And early on this first day of the week, just as he was about to an­nounce this to his twelve apos­tles, Si­mon Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee, and Ju­das Is­car­iot came to have pri­vate con­verse with him. Tak­ing Je­sus aside, Pe­ter made bold to say: “Mas­ter, we come at the be­hest of our as­so­ciates to in­quire whether the time is not now ripe to en­ter into the king­dom. And will you pro­claim the king­dom at Ca­per­naum, or are we to move on to Je­ru­sa­lem? And when shall we learn, each of us, the po­si­tions we are to oc­cupy with you in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom—” and Pe­ter would have gone on ask­ing fur­ther ques­tions, but Je­sus raised an ad­mon­i­tory hand and stopped him. And beck­on­ing the other apos­tles stand­ing near by to join them, Je­sus said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, how long shall I bear with you! Have I not made it plain to you that my king­dom is not of this world? I have told you many times that I have not come to sit on David’s throne, and now how is it that you are in­quir­ing which place each of you will oc­cupy in the Fa­ther’s king­dom? Can you not per­ceive that I have called you as am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom? Do you not un­der­stand that soon, very soon, you are to rep­re­sent me in the world and in the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom, even as I now rep­re­sent my Fa­ther who is in heaven? Can it be that I have cho­sen you and in­structed you as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, and yet you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture and sig­nif­i­cance of this com­ing king­dom of di­vine pre-em­i­nence in the hearts of men? My friends, hear me once more. Ban­ish from your minds this idea that my king­dom is a rule of power or a reign of glory. In­deed, all power in heaven and on earth will pres­ently be given into my hands, but it is not the Fa­ther’s will that we use this di­vine en­dow­ment to glo­rify our­selves dur­ing this age. In an­other age you shall in­deed sit with me in power and glory, but it be­hooves us now to sub­mit to the will of the Fa­ther and to go forth in hum­ble obe­di­ence to ex­e­cute his bid­ding on earth.”

71:3.2Much as it is to be re­gret­ted, na­tional ego­tism has been es­sen­tial to so­cial sur­vival. The cho­sen peo­ple doc­trine has been a prime fac­tor in tribal weld­ing and na­tion build­ing right on down to mod­ern times. But no state can at­tain ideal lev­els of func­tion­ing un­til ev­ery form of in­tol­er­ance is mas­tered; it is ev­er­last­ingly in­im­i­cal to hu­man prog­ress. And in­tol­er­ance is best com­bated by the co-or­di­na­tion of sci­ence, com­merce, play, and re­li­gion.

81:2.18It was from these early huts that the sub­se­quent idea of all sorts of bas­ket weav­ing in­de­pen­dently orig­i­nated. Among one group the idea of mak­ing pot­tery arose from ob­serv­ing the ef­fects of smear­ing these pole frame­works with moist clay. The prac­tice of hard­en­ing pot­tery by bak­ing was dis­cov­ered when one of these clay-cov­ered prim­i­tive huts ac­ci­den­tally burned. The arts of olden days were many times de­rived from the ac­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rences at­ten­dant upon the daily life of early peo­ples. At least, this was al­most wholly true of the evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress of man­kind up to the com­ing of Adam.

192:2.5Pe­ter took this last state­ment lit­er­ally—that he should con­tinue to fol­low af­ter him—and turn­ing to Je­sus, he pointed to John, ask­ing, “If I fol­low on af­ter you, what shall this man do?” And then, per­ceiv­ing that Pe­ter had mis­un­der­stood his words, Je­sus said: “Pe­ter, be not con­cerned about what your breth­ren shall do. If I will that John should tarry af­ter you are gone, even un­til I come back, what is that to you? Only make sure that you fol­low me.”

192:2.6This re­mark spread among the breth­ren and was re­ceived as a state­ment by Je­sus to the ef­fect that John would not die be­fore the Mas­ter re­turned, as many thought and hoped, to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory. It was this in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Je­sus said that had much to do with get­ting Si­mon Ze­lo­tes back into ser­vice, and keep­ing him at work.

73:7.2We can­not re­gard this dis­ap­pear­ance of the Gar­den as be­ing in any way a re­sult of the mis­car­riage of the di­vine plans or as a re­sult of the mis­takes of Adam and Eve. We do not re­gard the sub­mer­gence of Eden as any­thing but a nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence, but it does seem to us that the sink­ing of the Gar­den was timed to oc­cur at just about the date of the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the re­serves of the vi­o­let race for un­der­tak­ing the work of re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing the world peo­ples.