kingdom of heaven

• becomes merely kingdom of good when man loses sight of love of personal God

2:5.12When man loses sight of the love of a per­sonal God, the king­dom of God be­comes merely the king­dom of good. Not­with­stand­ing the in­fi­nite unity of the di­vine na­ture, love is the dom­i­nant char­ac­ter­is­tic of all God’s per­sonal deal­ings with his crea­tures.

• establishment › do not seek to establish k. by laws or force

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.

• described › righteousness, peace, joy in Holy Spirit

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.

• entrance › less warfare between flesh and spirit after

34:7.6Not­with­stand­ing this dou­ble dis­as­ter to man’s na­ture and his en­vi­ron­ment, pres­ent-day mor­tals would ex­pe­ri­ence less of this ap­par­ent war­fare be­tween the flesh and the spirit if they would en­ter the spirit king­dom, wherein the faith sons of God en­joy com­par­a­tive de­liv­er­ance from the slave-bond­age of the flesh in the en­light­ened and lib­er­at­ing ser­vice of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Je­sus showed man­kind the new way of mor­tal liv­ing whereby hu­man be­ings may very largely es­cape the dire con­se­quences of the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and most ef­fec­tively com­pen­sate for the de­pri­va­tions re­sult­ing from the Adamic de­fault. “The spirit of the life of Christ Je­sus has made us free from the law of an­i­mal liv­ing and the temp­ta­tions of evil and sin.” “This is the vic­tory that over­comes the flesh, even your faith.”

34:7.7Those God-know­ing men and women who have been born of the Spirit ex­pe­ri­ence no more con­flict with their mor­tal na­tures than do the in­hab­i­tants of the most nor­mal of worlds, plan­ets which have never been tainted with sin nor touched by re­bel­lion. Faith sons work on in­tel­lec­tual lev­els and live on spir­i­tual planes far above the con­flicts pro­duced by un­re­strained or un­nat­u­ral phys­i­cal de­sires. The nor­mal urges of an­i­mal be­ings and the nat­u­ral ap­petites and im­pulses of the phys­i­cal na­ture are not in con­flict with even the high­est spir­i­tual at­tain­ment ex­cept in the minds of ig­no­rant, mis­taught, or un­for­tu­nately over­con­sci­en­tious per­sons.

• entrance › keys are sincerity, more sincerity, and more sincerity

39:4.14The keys of the king­dom of heaven are: sin­cer­ity, more sin­cer­ity, and more sin­cer­ity. All men have these keys. Men use them—ad­vance in spirit sta­tus—by de­ci­sions, by more de­ci­sions, and by more de­ci­sions. The high­est moral choice is the choice of the high­est pos­si­ble value, and al­ways—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the hum­blest cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem or even the least of mor­tals on Uran­tia.

• establishment › persistent pursuit of divinity leads to

54:0.1Evo­lu­tion­ary man finds it dif­fi­cult fully to com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance and to grasp the mean­ings of evil, er­ror, sin, and in­iq­uity. Man is slow to per­ceive that con­trastive per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion pro­duce po­ten­tial evil; that con­flict­ing truth and false­hood cre­ate con­fus­ing er­ror; that the di­vine en­dow­ment of free­will choice even­tu­ates in the di­ver­gent realms of sin and righ­teous­ness; that the per­sis­tent pur­suit of di­vin­ity leads to the king­dom of God as con­trasted with its con­tin­u­ous re­jec­tion, which leads to the do­mains of in­iq­uity.

• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

99:3.2The king­dom of heaven is nei­ther a so­cial nor eco­nomic or­der; it is an ex­clu­sively spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als. True, such a broth­er­hood is in it­self a new and amaz­ing so­cial phe­nom­e­non at­tended by as­tound­ing po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic reper­cus­sions.

• entrance › requires being born of Spirit

103:2.1Re­li­gion is func­tional in the hu­man mind and has been re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence prior to its ap­pear­ance in hu­man con­scious­ness. A child has been in ex­is­tence about nine months be­fore it ex­pe­ri­ences birth. But the “birth” of re­li­gion is not sud­den; it is rather a grad­ual emer­gence. Nev­er­the­less, sooner or later there is a “birth day.” You do not en­ter the king­dom of heaven un­less you have been “born again”—born of the Spirit. Many spir­i­tual births are ac­com­pa­nied by much an­guish of spirit and marked psy­cho­log­i­cal per­tur­ba­tions, as many phys­i­cal births are char­ac­ter­ized by a “stormy la­bor” and other ab­nor­mal­i­ties of “de­liv­ery.” Other spir­i­tual births are a nat­u­ral and nor­mal growth of the rec­og­ni­tion of su­preme val­ues with an en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, al­beit no re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment oc­curs with­out con­scious ef­fort and pos­i­tive and in­di­vid­ual de­ter­mi­na­tions. Re­li­gion is never a pas­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, a neg­a­tive at­ti­tude. What is termed the “birth of re­li­gion” is not di­rectly as­so­ci­ated with so-called con­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences which usu­ally char­ac­ter­ize re­li­gious episodes oc­cur­ring later in life as a re­sult of men­tal con­flict, emo­tional re­pres­sion, and tem­per­a­men­tal up­heavals.

• described › Thought Adjusters are

108:6.2No mat­ter what the pre­vi­ous sta­tus of the in­hab­i­tants of a world, sub­se­quent to the be­stowal of a di­vine Son and af­ter the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth upon all hu­mans, the Ad­justers flock to such a world to in­dwell the minds of all nor­mal will crea­tures. Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the mis­sion of a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son, these Mon­i­tors truly be­come the “king­dom of heaven within you.” Through the be­stowal of the di­vine gifts the Fa­ther makes the clos­est pos­si­ble ap­proach to sin and evil, for it is lit­er­ally true that the Ad­juster must co­ex­ist in the mor­tal mind even in the very midst of hu­man un­righ­teous­ness. The in­dwelling Ad­justers are par­tic­u­larly tor­mented by those thoughts which are purely sor­did and self­ish; they are dis­tressed by ir­rev­er­ence for that which is beau­ti­ful and di­vine, and they are vir­tu­ally thwarted in their work by many of man’s fool­ish an­i­mal fears and child­ish anx­i­eties.

• described › divine government
• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

134:4.2The king­dom of heaven, the di­vine gov­ern­ment, is founded on the fact of di­vine sov­er­eignty—God is spirit. Since God is spirit, this king­dom is spir­i­tual. The king­dom of heaven is nei­ther ma­te­rial nor merely in­tel­lec­tual; it is a spir­i­tual re­la­tion­ship be­tween God and man.

• described › free from castes, social or economic classes

134:4.7God is spirit, and God gives a frag­ment of his spirit self to dwell in the heart of man. Spir­i­tu­ally, all men are equal. The king­dom of heaven is free from castes, classes, so­cial lev­els, and eco­nomic groups. You are all breth­ren.

• described › John the Baptist’s vision of new and divine age

135:3.4From all John heard of the vice and wicked­ness of Rome and the dis­so­lute­ness and moral bar­ren­ness of the em­pire, from what he knew of the evil do­ings of Herod An­tipas and the gov­er­nors of Judea, he was minded to be­lieve that the end of the age was im­pend­ing. It seemed to this rugged and no­ble child of na­ture that the world was ripe for the end of the age of man and the dawn of the new and di­vine age—the king­dom of heaven. The feel­ing grew in John’s heart that he was to be the last of the old proph­ets and the first of the new. And he fairly vi­brated with the mount­ing im­pulse to go forth and pro­claim to all men: “Re­pent! Get right with God! Get ready for the end; pre­pare your­selves for the ap­pear­ance of the new and eter­nal or­der of earth af­fairs, the king­dom of heaven.”

135:5.1In or­der to un­der­stand John’s mes­sage, ac­count should be taken of the sta­tus of the Jew­ish peo­ple at the time he ap­peared upon the stage of ac­tion. For al­most one hun­dred years all Is­rael had been in a quandary; they were at a loss to ex­plain their con­tin­u­ous sub­ju­ga­tion to gen­tile over­lords. Had not Moses taught that righ­teous­ness was al­ways re­warded with pros­per­ity and power? Were they not God’s cho­sen peo­ple? Why was the throne of David des­o­late and va­cant? In the light of the Mo­saic doc­trines and the pre­cepts of the proph­ets the Jews found it dif­fi­cult to ex­plain their long-con­tin­ued na­tional des­o­la­tion.

• Jews › believed k. to be righteous state on earth ruled by Messiah

135:5.2About one hun­dred years be­fore the days of Je­sus and John a new school of re­li­gious teach­ers arose in Pales­tine, the apoc­a­lyp­tists. These new teach­ers evolved a sys­tem of be­lief that ac­counted for the suf­fer­ings and hu­mil­i­a­tion of the Jews on the ground that they were pay­ing the penalty for the na­tion’s sins. They fell back onto the well-known rea­sons as­signed to ex­plain the Baby­lo­nian and other cap­tiv­i­ties of for­mer times. But, so taught the apoc­a­lyp­tists, Is­rael should take heart; the days of their af­flic­tion were al­most over; the dis­ci­pline of God’s cho­sen peo­ple was about fin­ished; God’s pa­tience with the gen­tile for­eign­ers was about ex­hausted. The end of Ro­man rule was syn­ony­mous with the end of the age and, in a cer­tain sense, with the end of the world. These new teach­ers leaned heav­ily on the pre­dic­tions of Daniel, and they con­sis­tently taught that cre­ation was about to pass into its fi­nal stage; the king­doms of this world were about to be­come the king­dom of God. To the Jew­ish mind of that day this was the mean­ing of that phrase—the king­dom of heaven—which runs through­out the teach­ings of both John and Je­sus. To the Jews of Pales­tine the phrase “king­dom of heaven” had but one mean­ing: an ab­so­lutely righ­teous state in which God (the Mes­siah) would rule the na­tions of earth in per­fec­tion of power just as he ruled in heaven—“Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

135:5.3In the days of John all Jews were ex­pec­tantly ask­ing, “How soon will the king­dom come?” There was a gen­eral feel­ing that the end of the rule of the gen­tile na­tions was draw­ing near. There was pres­ent through­out all Jewry a lively hope and a keen ex­pec­ta­tion that the con­sum­ma­tion of the de­sire of the ages would oc­cur dur­ing the life­time of that gen­er­a­tion.

• Jews › believed k. near at hand
• Jews › end of world to spiritist Jews

135:5.4While the Jews dif­fered greatly in their es­ti­mates of the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom, they were alike in their be­lief that the event was im­pend­ing, near at hand, even at the door. Many who read the Old Tes­ta­ment lit­er­ally looked ex­pec­tantly for a new king in Pales­tine, for a re­gen­er­ated Jew­ish na­tion de­liv­ered from its en­e­mies and pre­sided over by the suc­ces­sor of King David, the Mes­siah who would quickly be ac­knowl­edged as the right­ful and righ­teous ruler of all the world. An­other, though smaller, group of de­vout Jews held a vastly dif­fer­ent view of this king­dom of God. They taught that the com­ing king­dom was not of this world, that the world was ap­proach­ing its cer­tain end, and that “a new heaven and a new earth” were to usher in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God; that this king­dom was to be an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, that sin was to be ended, and that the cit­i­zens of the new king­dom were to be­come im­mor­tal in their en­joy­ment of this end­less bliss.

135:5.5All were agreed that some dras­tic purg­ing or pu­ri­fy­ing dis­ci­pline would of ne­ces­sity pre­cede the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom on earth. The lit­er­al­ists taught that a world-wide war would en­sue which would de­stroy all un­be­liev­ers, while the faith­ful would sweep on to uni­ver­sal and eter­nal vic­tory. The spiri­tists taught that the king­dom would be ush­ered in by the great judg­ment of God which would rel­e­gate the un­righ­teous to their well-de­served judg­ment of pun­ish­ment and fi­nal de­struc­tion, at the same time el­e­vat­ing the be­liev­ing saints of the cho­sen peo­ple to high seats of honor and au­thor­ity with the Son of Man, who would rule over the re­deemed na­tions in God’s name. And this lat­ter group even be­lieved that many de­vout gen­tiles might be ad­mit­ted to the fel­low­ship of the new king­dom.

135:5.6Some of the Jews held to the opin­ion that God might pos­si­bly es­tab­lish this new king­dom by di­rect and di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, but the vast ma­jor­ity be­lieved that he would in­ter­pose some rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­ter­me­di­ary, the Mes­siah. And that was the only pos­si­ble mean­ing the term Mes­siah could have had in the minds of the Jews of the gen­er­a­tion of John and Je­sus. Mes­siah could not pos­si­bly re­fer to one who merely taught God’s will or pro­claimed the ne­ces­sity for righ­teous liv­ing. To all such holy per­sons the Jews gave the ti­tle of prophet. The Mes­siah was to be more than a prophet; the Mes­siah was to bring in the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom, the king­dom of God. No one who failed to do this could be the Mes­siah in the tra­di­tional Jew­ish sense.

135:5.7Who would this Mes­siah be? Again the Jew­ish teach­ers dif­fered. The older ones clung to the doc­trine of the son of David. The newer taught that, since the new king­dom was a heav­enly king­dom, the new ruler might also be a di­vine per­son­al­ity, one who had long sat at God’s right hand in heaven. And strange as it may ap­pear, those who thus con­ceived of the ruler of the new king­dom looked upon him not as a hu­man Mes­siah, not as a mere man, but as “the Son of Man”—a Son of God—a heav­enly Prince, long held in wait­ing thus to as­sume the ruler­ship of the earth made new. Such was the re­li­gious back­ground of the Jew­ish world when John went forth pro­claim­ing: “Re­pent, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand!”

135:5.8It be­comes ap­par­ent, there­fore, that John’s an­nounce­ment of the com­ing king­dom had not less than half a dozen dif­fer­ent mean­ings in the minds of those who lis­tened to his im­pas­sioned preach­ing. But no mat­ter what sig­nif­i­cance they at­tached to the phrases which John em­ployed, each of these var­i­ous groups of Jew­ish-king­dom ex­pec­tants was in­trigued by the procla­ma­tions of this sin­cere, en­thu­si­as­tic, rough-and-ready preacher of righ­teous­ness and re­pen­tance, who so solemnly ex­horted his hear­ers to “flee from the wrath to come.”

• entrance › least who enter are greater than John the Baptist

136:0.1Je­sus be­gan his pub­lic work at the height of the pop­u­lar in­ter­est in John’s preach­ing and at a time when the Jew­ish peo­ple of Pales­tine were ea­gerly look­ing for the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. There was a great con­trast be­tween John and Je­sus. John was an ea­ger and earnest worker, but Je­sus was a calm and happy la­borer; only a few times in his en­tire life was he ever in a hurry. Je­sus was a com­fort­ing con­so­la­tion to the world and some­what of an ex­am­ple; John was hardly a com­fort or an ex­am­ple. He preached the king­dom of heaven but hardly en­tered into the hap­pi­ness thereof. Though Je­sus spoke of John as the great­est of the proph­ets of the old or­der, he also said that the least of those who saw the great light of the new way and en­tered thereby into the king­dom of heaven was in­deed greater than John.

136:1.1The Jews en­ter­tained many ideas about the ex­pected de­liv­erer, and each of these dif­fer­ent schools of Mes­sianic teach­ing was able to point to state­ments in the He­brew scrip­tures as proof of their con­tentions. In a gen­eral way, the Jews re­garded their na­tional his­tory as be­gin­ning with Abra­ham and cul­mi­nat­ing in the Mes­siah and the new age of the king­dom of God. In ear­lier times they had en­vis­aged this de­liv­erer as “the ser­vant of the Lord,” then as “the Son of Man,” while lat­terly some even went so far as to re­fer to the Mes­siah as the “Son of God.” But no mat­ter whether he was called the “seed of Abra­ham” or “the son of David,” all were agreed that he was to be the Mes­siah, the “anointed one.” Thus did the con­cept evolve from the “ser­vant of the Lord” to the “son of David,” “Son of Man,” and “Son of God.”

136:1.2In the days of John and Je­sus the more learned Jews had de­vel­oped an idea of the com­ing Mes­siah as the per­fected and rep­re­sen­ta­tive Is­raelite, com­bin­ing in him­self as the “ser­vant of the Lord” the three­fold of­fice of prophet, priest, and king.

136:1.3The Jews de­voutly be­lieved that, as Moses had de­liv­ered their fa­thers from Egyp­tian bond­age by mirac­u­lous won­ders, so would the com­ing Mes­siah de­liver the Jew­ish peo­ple from Ro­man dom­i­na­tion by even greater mir­a­cles of power and mar­vels of racial tri­umph. The rab­bis had gath­ered to­gether al­most five hun­dred pas­sages from the Scrip­tures which, not­with­stand­ing their ap­par­ent con­tra­dic­tions, they averred were pro­phetic of the com­ing Mes­siah. And amidst all these de­tails of time, tech­nique, and func­tion, they al­most com­pletely lost sight of the per­son­al­ity of the prom­ised Mes­siah. They were look­ing for a restora­tion of Jew­ish na­tional glory—Is­rael’s tem­po­ral ex­al­ta­tion—rather than for the sal­va­tion of the world. It there­fore be­comes ev­i­dent that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth could never sat­isfy this ma­te­ri­al­is­tic Mes­sianic con­cept of the Jew­ish mind. Many of their re­puted Mes­sianic pre­dic­tions, had they but viewed these pro­phetic ut­ter­ances in a dif­fer­ent light, would have very nat­u­rally pre­pared their minds for a rec­og­ni­tion of Je­sus as the ter­mi­na­tor of one age and the in­au­gu­ra­tor of a new and bet­ter dis­pen­sa­tion of mercy and sal­va­tion for all na­tions.

136:1.4The Jews had been brought up to be­lieve in the doc­trine of the Shek­inah. But this re­puted sym­bol of the Di­vine Pres­ence was not to be seen in the tem­ple. They be­lieved that the com­ing of the Mes­siah would ef­fect its restora­tion. They held con­fus­ing ideas about racial sin and the sup­posed evil na­ture of man. Some taught that Adam’s sin had cursed the hu­man race, and that the Mes­siah would re­move this curse and re­store man to di­vine fa­vor. Oth­ers taught that God, in cre­at­ing man, had put into his be­ing both good and evil na­tures; that when he ob­served the out­work­ing of this ar­range­ment, he was greatly dis­ap­pointed, and that “He re­pented that he had thus made man.” And those who taught this be­lieved that the Mes­siah was to come in or­der to re­deem man from this in­her­ent evil na­ture.

136:1.5The ma­jor­ity of the Jews be­lieved that they con­tin­ued to lan­guish un­der Ro­man rule be­cause of their na­tional sins and be­cause of the half­heart­ed­ness of the gen­tile pros­e­lytes. The Jew­ish na­tion had not whole­heart­edly re­pented; there­fore did the Mes­siah de­lay his com­ing. There was much talk about re­pen­tance; where­fore the mighty and im­me­di­ate ap­peal of John’s preach­ing, “Re­pent and be bap­tized, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand.” And the king­dom of heaven could mean only one thing to any de­vout Jew: The com­ing of the Mes­siah.

136:1.6There was one fea­ture of the be­stowal of Mi­chael which was ut­terly for­eign to the Jew­ish con­cep­tion of the Mes­siah, and that was the union of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The Jews had var­i­ously con­ceived of the Mes­siah as per­fected hu­man, super­hu­man, and even as di­vine, but they never en­ter­tained the con­cept of the union of the hu­man and the di­vine. And this was the great stum­bling block of Je­sus’ early dis­ci­ples. They grasped the hu­man con­cept of the Mes­siah as the son of David, as pre­sented by the ear­lier proph­ets; as the Son of Man, the super­hu­man idea of Daniel and some of the later proph­ets; and even as the Son of God, as de­picted by the au­thor of the Book of Enoch and by cer­tain of his con­tem­po­raries; but never had they for a sin­gle mo­ment en­ter­tained the true con­cept of the union in one earth per­son­al­ity of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The in­car­na­tion of the Cre­ator in the form of the crea­ture had not been re­vealed be­fore­hand. It was re­vealed only in Je­sus; the world knew noth­ing of such things un­til the Cre­ator Son was made flesh and dwelt among the mor­tals of the realm.

• establishment › by natural, ordinary, difficult, and trying methods

136:8.6Je­sus chose to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of man­kind by nat­u­ral, or­di­nary, dif­fi­cult, and try­ing meth­ods, just such pro­ce­dures as his earth chil­dren must sub­se­quently fol­low in their work of en­larg­ing and ex­tend­ing that heav­enly king­dom. For well did the Son of Man know that it would be “through much tribu­la­tion that many of the chil­dren of all ages would en­ter into the king­dom.” Je­sus was now pass­ing through the great test of civ­i­lized man, to have power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for purely self­ish or per­sonal pur­poses.

• described › overthrow of evil in men’s hearts

136:9.2The Jews en­vis­aged a de­liv­erer who would come in mirac­u­lous power to cast down Is­rael’s en­e­mies and es­tab­lish the Jews as world rulers, free from want and op­pres­sion. Je­sus knew that this hope would never be re­al­ized. He knew that the king­dom of heaven had to do with the over­throw of evil in the hearts of men, and that it was purely a mat­ter of spir­i­tual con­cern. He thought out the ad­vis­abil­ity of in­au­gu­rat­ing the spir­i­tual king­dom with a bril­liant and daz­zling dis­play of power—and such a course would have been per­mis­si­ble and wholly within the ju­ris­dic­tion of Mi­chael—but he fully de­cided against such a plan. He would not com­pro­mise with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­niques of Cali­gas­tia. He had won the world in po­ten­tial by sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will, and he pro­posed to fin­ish his work as he had be­gun it, and as the Son of Man.

• described › enthronement of God in hearts of men

136:9.6Rome was mis­tress of the West­ern world. The Son of Man, now in iso­la­tion and achiev­ing these mo­men­tous de­ci­sions, with the hosts of heaven at his com­mand, rep­re­sented the last chance of the Jews to at­tain world do­min­ion; but this earth­born Jew, who pos­sessed such tremen­dous wis­dom and power, de­clined to use his uni­verse en­dow­ments ei­ther for the ag­gran­dize­ment of him­self or for the en­throne­ment of his peo­ple. He saw, as it were, “the king­doms of this world,” and he pos­sessed the power to take them. The Most Highs of Eden­tia had re­signed all these pow­ers into his hands, but he did not want them. The king­doms of earth were pal­try things to in­ter­est the Cre­ator and Ruler of a uni­verse. He had only one ob­jec­tive, the fur­ther rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, the rule of the heav­enly Fa­ther in the hearts of man­kind.

• establishment › do not seek to establish k. by laws or force

136:9.9By these de­ci­sions Je­sus set a wor­thy ex­am­ple for ev­ery per­son on ev­ery world through­out a vast uni­verse when he re­fused to ap­ply ma­te­rial tests to prove spir­i­tual prob­lems, when he re­fused pre­sump­tu­ously to defy nat­u­ral laws. And he set an in­spir­ing ex­am­ple of uni­verse loy­alty and moral no­bil­ity when he re­fused to grasp tem­po­ral power as the pre­lude to spir­i­tual glory.

• entrance › search for kingdom in hearts, not in hills

137:1.6Je­sus was asleep when they reached his abode, but they awak­ened him, say­ing: “How is it that, while we who have so long lived with you are search­ing in the hills for you, you pre­fer oth­ers be­fore us and choose An­drew and Si­mon as your first as­so­ciates in the new king­dom?” Je­sus an­swered them, “Be calm in your hearts and ask your­selves, ‘who di­rected that you should search for the Son of Man when he was about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness?’” Af­ter they had re­cited the de­tails of their long search in the hills, Je­sus fur­ther in­structed them: “You should learn to search for the se­cret of the new king­dom in your hearts and not in the hills. That which you sought was al­ready pres­ent in your souls. You are in­deed my breth­ren—you needed not to be re­ceived by me—al­ready were you of the king­dom, and you should be of good cheer, mak­ing ready also to go with us to­mor­row into Gal­i­lee.” John then made bold to ask, “But, Mas­ter, will James and I be as­so­ciates with you in the new king­dom, even as An­drew and Si­mon?” And Je­sus, lay­ing a hand on the shoul­der of each of them, said: “My breth­ren, you were al­ready with me in the spirit of the king­dom, even be­fore these oth­ers made re­quest to be re­ceived. You, my breth­ren, have no need to make re­quest for en­trance into the king­dom; you have been with me in the king­dom from the be­gin­ning. Be­fore men, oth­ers may take prece­dence over you, but in my heart did I also num­ber you in the coun­cils of the king­dom, even be­fore you thought to make this re­quest of me. And even so might you have been first be­fore men had you not been ab­sent en­gaged in a well-in­ten­tioned but self-ap­pointed task of seek­ing for one who was not lost. In the com­ing king­dom, be not mind­ful of those things which fos­ter your anx­i­ety but rather at all times con­cern your­selves only with do­ing the will of the Fa­ther who is in heaven.”

• entrance › only through much tribulation for many
• establishment › not with outward power, noise, glamor

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.”

• described › enthronement of God in hearts of men

137:7.1For four long months—March, April, May, and June—this tar­ry­ing time con­tin­ued; Je­sus held over one hun­dred long and earnest, though cheer­ful and joy­ous, ses­sions with these six as­so­ciates and his own brother James. Ow­ing to sick­ness in his fam­ily, Jude sel­dom was able to at­tend these classes. James, Je­sus’ brother, did not lose faith in him, but dur­ing these months of de­lay and in­ac­tion Mary nearly de­spaired of her son. Her faith, raised to such heights at Cana, now sank to new low lev­els. She could only fall back on her so oft-re­peated ex­cla­ma­tion: “I can­not un­der­stand him. I can­not fig­ure out what it all means.” But James’s wife did much to bol­ster Mary’s cour­age.

• described › enthronement of God in hearts of men

137:7.13While Je­sus later di­rected that the apos­tles should go forth, as John had, preach­ing the gospel and in­struct­ing be­liev­ers, he laid em­pha­sis on the procla­ma­tion of the “good tid­ings of the king­dom of heaven.” He un­fail­ingly im­pressed upon his as­so­ciates that they must “show forth love, com­pas­sion, and sym­pa­thy.” He early taught his fol­low­ers that the king­dom of heaven was a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing to do with the en­throne­ment of God in the hearts of men.

137:8.1On Sab­bath, June 22, shortly be­fore they went out on their first preach­ing tour and about ten days af­ter John’s im­pris­on­ment, Je­sus oc­cu­pied the syn­a­gogue pul­pit for the sec­ond time since bring­ing his apos­tles to Ca­per­naum.

137:8.2A few days be­fore the preach­ing of this ser­mon on “The King­dom,” as Je­sus was at work in the boat­shop, Pe­ter brought him the news of John’s ar­rest. Je­sus laid down his tools once more, re­moved his apron, and said to Pe­ter: “The Fa­ther’s hour has come. Let us make ready to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom.”

137:8.3Je­sus did his last work at the car­pen­ter bench on this Tues­day, June 18, A.D. 26. Pe­ter rushed out of the shop and by midafter­noon had rounded up all of his as­so­ciates, and leav­ing them in a grove by the shore, he went in quest of Je­sus. But he could not find him, for the Mas­ter had gone to a dif­fer­ent grove to pray. And they did not see him un­til late that evening when he re­turned to Zeb­e­dee’s house and asked for food. The next day he sent his brother James to ask for the priv­i­lege of speak­ing in the syn­a­gogue the com­ing Sab­bath day. And the ruler of the syn­a­gogue was much pleased that Je­sus was again will­ing to con­duct the ser­vice.

137:8.4Be­fore Je­sus preached this mem­o­rable ser­mon on the king­dom of God, the first pre­ten­tious ef­fort of his pub­lic ca­reer, he read from the Scrip­tures these pas­sages: “You shall be to me a king­dom of priests, a holy peo­ple. Yah­weh is our judge, Yah­weh is our law­giver, Yah­weh is our king; he will save us. Yah­weh is my king and my God. He is a great king over all the earth. Lov­ing-kind­ness is upon Is­rael in this king­dom. Blessed be the glory of the Lord for he is our King.”

137:8.5When he had fin­ished read­ing, Je­sus said:

137:8.6“I have come to pro­claim the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. And this king­dom shall in­clude the wor­ship­ing souls of Jew and gen­tile, rich and poor, free and bond, for my Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons; his love and his mercy are over all.

• described › not of this world
• described › righteousness, peace, joy in Holy Spirit

137:8.7“The Fa­ther in heaven sends his spirit to in­dwell the minds of men, and when I shall have fin­ished my work on earth, like­wise shall the Spirit of Truth be poured out upon all flesh. And the spirit of my Fa­ther and the Spirit of Truth shall es­tab­lish you in the com­ing king­dom of spir­i­tual un­der­stand­ing and di­vine righ­teous­ness. My king­dom is not of this world. The Son of Man will not lead forth armies in bat­tle for the es­tab­lish­ment of a throne of power or a king­dom of worldly glory. When my king­dom shall have come, you shall know the Son of Man as the Prince of Peace, the rev­e­la­tion of the ev­er­last­ing Fa­ther. The chil­dren of this world fight for the es­tab­lish­ment and en­large­ment of the king­doms of this world, but my dis­ci­ples shall en­ter the king­dom of heaven by their moral de­ci­sions and by their spirit vic­to­ries; and when they once en­ter therein, they shall find joy, righ­teous­ness, and eter­nal life.

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

137:8.8“Those who first seek to en­ter the king­dom, thus be­gin­ning to strive for a no­bil­ity of char­ac­ter like that of my Fa­ther, shall pres­ently pos­sess all else that is need­ful. But I say to you in all sin­cer­ity: Un­less you seek en­trance into the king­dom with the faith and trust­ing de­pen­dence of a lit­tle child, you shall in no wise gain ad­mis­sion.

• described › not of this world
• described › righteousness, peace, joy in Holy Spirit

137:8.9“Be not de­ceived by those who come say­ing here is the king­dom or there is the king­dom, for my Fa­ther’s king­dom con­cerns not things vis­i­ble and ma­te­rial. And this king­dom is even now among you, for where the spirit of God teaches and leads the soul of man, there in re­al­ity is the king­dom of heaven. And this king­dom of God is righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

• entrance › baptism with Holy Spirit upon

137:8.10“John did in­deed bap­tize you in to­ken of re­pen­tance and for the re­mis­sion of your sins, but when you en­ter the heav­enly king­dom, you will be bap­tized with the Holy Spirit.

• described › neither Jew nor gentile, rich nor poor, man nor woman in

137:8.11“In my Fa­ther’s king­dom there shall be nei­ther Jew nor gen­tile, only those who seek per­fec­tion through ser­vice, for I de­clare that he who would be great in my Fa­ther’s king­dom must first be­come server of all. If you are will­ing to serve your fel­lows, you shall sit down with me in my king­dom, even as, by serv­ing in the simil­i­tude of the crea­ture, I shall pres­ently sit down with my Fa­ther in his king­dom.

• described › in parables › seed in good soil
• establishment › does not attain full fruit quickly

137:8.12“This new king­dom is like a seed grow­ing in the good soil of a field. It does not at­tain full fruit quickly. There is an in­ter­val of time be­tween the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom in the soul of man and that hour when the king­dom ripens into the full fruit of ev­er­last­ing righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• described › life of progressive righteousness, joy in service

137:8.13“And this king­dom which I de­clare to you is not a reign of power and plenty. The king­dom of heaven is not a mat­ter of meat and drink but rather a life of pro­gres­sive righ­teous­ness and in­creas­ing joy in the per­fect­ing ser­vice of my Fa­ther who is in heaven. For has not the Fa­ther said of his chil­dren of the world, ‘It is my will that they should even­tu­ally be per­fect, even as I am per­fect.’

• entrance › worth whatever it costs

137:8.14“I have come to preach the glad tid­ings of the king­dom. I have not come to add to the heavy bur­dens of those who would en­ter this king­dom. I pro­claim the new and bet­ter way, and those who are able to en­ter the com­ing king­dom shall en­joy the di­vine rest. And what­ever it shall cost you in the things of the world, no mat­ter what price you may pay to en­ter the king­dom of heaven, you shall re­ceive many­fold more of joy and spir­i­tual prog­ress in this world, and in the age to come eter­nal life.

137:8.15“En­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom waits not upon march­ing armies, upon over­turned king­doms of this world, nor upon the break­ing of cap­tive yokes. The king­dom of heaven is at hand, and all who en­ter therein shall find abun­dant lib­erty and joy­ous sal­va­tion.

137:8.16“This king­dom is an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion. Those who en­ter the king­dom shall as­cend to my Fa­ther; they will cer­tainly at­tain the right hand of his glory in Par­a­dise. And all who en­ter the king­dom of heaven shall be­come the sons of God, and in the age to come so shall they as­cend to the Fa­ther. And I have not come to call the would-be righ­teous but sin­ners and all who hunger and thirst for the righ­teous­ness of di­vine per­fec­tion.

• described › believing Father loves us with infinite love

137:8.17“John came preach­ing re­pen­tance to pre­pare you for the king­dom; now have I come pro­claim­ing faith, the gift of God, as the price of en­trance into the king­dom of heaven. If you would but be­lieve that my Fa­ther loves you with an in­fi­nite love, then you are in the king­dom of God.”

137:8.18When he had thus spo­ken, he sat down. All who heard him were as­ton­ished at his words. His dis­ci­ples mar­veled. But the peo­ple were not pre­pared to re­ceive the good news from the lips of this God-man. About one third who heard him be­lieved the mes­sage even though they could not fully com­pre­hend it; about one third pre­pared in their hearts to re­ject such a purely spir­i­tual con­cept of the ex­pected king­dom, while the re­main­ing one third could not grasp his teach­ing, many truly be­liev­ing that he “was be­side him­self.”

• apostles › desire for preference in
• described › not of this world

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.”

• described › enthronement of God in hearts of men
• described › everlasting dominion beginning on earth, progressing to Paradise

140:1.2“The new king­dom which my Fa­ther is about to set up in the hearts of his earth chil­dren is to be an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion. There shall be no end of this rule of my Fa­ther in the hearts of those who de­sire to do his di­vine will. I de­clare to you that my Fa­ther is not the God of Jew or gen­tile. Many shall come from the east and from the west to sit down with us in the Fa­ther’s king­dom, while many of the chil­dren of Abra­ham will refuse to en­ter this new broth­er­hood of the rule of the Fa­ther’s spirit in the hearts of the chil­dren of men.

• described › God within
• establishment › not with outward power, noise, glamor

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.

• apostles › given authority over things temporal in

140:2.2“My Fa­ther, I now bring to you these men, my mes­sen­gers. From among our chil­dren on earth I have cho­sen these twelve to go forth to rep­re­sent me as I came forth to rep­re­sent you. Love them and be with them as you have loved and been with me. And now, my Fa­ther, give these men wis­dom as I place all the af­fairs of the com­ing king­dom in their hands. And I would, if it is your will, tarry on earth a time to help them in their labors for the king­dom. And again, my Fa­ther, I thank you for these men, and I com­mit them to your keep­ing while I go on to fin­ish the work you have given me to do.”

• apostles › given authority over things temporal in
• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

140:2.3When Je­sus had fin­ished pray­ing, the apos­tles re­mained each man bowed in his place. And it was many min­utes be­fore even Pe­ter dared lift up his eyes to look upon the Mas­ter. One by one they em­braced Je­sus, but no man said aught. A great si­lence per­vaded the place while a host of ce­les­tial be­ings looked down upon this solemn and sa­cred scene—the Cre­ator of a uni­verse plac­ing the af­fairs of the di­vine broth­er­hood of man un­der the di­rec­tion of hu­man minds.

• apostles › viewpoints

140:8.1Je­sus well knew that his apos­tles were not fully as­sim­i­lat­ing his teach­ings. He de­cided to give some spe­cial in­struc­tion to Pe­ter, James, and John, hop­ing they would be able to clar­ify the ideas of their as­so­ciates. He saw that, while some fea­tures of the idea of a spir­i­tual king­dom were be­ing grasped by the twelve, they stead­fastly per­sisted in at­tach­ing these new spir­i­tual teach­ings di­rectly onto their old and en­trenched lit­eral con­cepts of the king­dom of heaven as a restora­tion of David’s throne and the re-es­tab­lish­ment of Is­rael as a tem­po­ral power on earth. Ac­cord­ingly, on Thurs­day af­ter­noon Je­sus went out from the shore in a boat with Pe­ter, James, and John to talk over the af­fairs of the king­dom. This was a four hours’ teach­ing con­fer­ence, em­brac­ing scores of ques­tions and an­swers, and may most prof­itably be put in this rec­ord by re­or­ga­niz­ing the sum­mary of this mo­men­tous af­ter­noon as it was given by Si­mon Pe­ter to his brother, An­drew, the fol­low­ing morn­ing:

• described › in parables › mustard seed

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.

• described › in parables › pearl of great price
• entrance › by faith, sincerity, and truth hunger

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.

• entrance › sure pathway to trouble
• establishment › expect persecution

140:9.3Je­sus ad­vised them to take nei­ther money nor ex­tra cloth­ing, say­ing, “The la­borer is wor­thy of his hire.” And fi­nally he said: “Be­hold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be you there­fore as wise as ser­pents and as harm­less as doves. But take heed, for your en­e­mies will bring you up be­fore their coun­cils, while in their syn­a­gogues they will cas­ti­gate you. Be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers you will be brought be­cause you be­lieve this gospel, and your very tes­ti­mony shall be a wit­ness for me to them. And when they lead you to judg­ment, be not anx­ious about what you shall say, for the spirit of my Fa­ther in­dwells you and will at such a time speak through you. Some of you will be put to death, and be­fore you es­tab­lish the king­dom on earth, you will be hated by many peo­ples be­cause of this gospel; but fear not; I will be with you, and my spirit shall go be­fore you into all the world. And my Fa­ther’s pres­ence will abide with you while you go first to the Jews, then to the gen­tiles.”

• establishment › righteousness necessary to do work of

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.

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

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.”

• described › recognition of God’s sovereignty, our sonship, faith in our ability to be like God

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.”

• described › enthronement of God in hearts of men

141:2.1The night be­fore they left Pella, Je­sus gave the apos­tles some fur­ther in­struc­tion with re­gard to the new king­dom. Said the Mas­ter: “You have been taught to look for the com­ing of the king­dom of God, and now I come an­nounc­ing that this long-looked-for king­dom is near at hand, even that it is al­ready here and in our midst. In ev­ery king­dom there must be a king seated upon his throne and de­cree­ing the laws of the realm. And so have you de­vel­oped a con­cept of the king­dom of heaven as a glo­ri­fied rule of the Jew­ish peo­ple over all the peo­ples of the earth with Mes­siah sit­ting on David’s throne and from this place of mirac­u­lous power pro­mul­gat­ing the laws of all the world. But, my chil­dren, you see not with the eye of faith, and you hear not with the un­der­stand­ing of the spirit. I de­clare that the king­dom of heaven is the re­al­iza­tion and ac­knowl­edg­ment of God’s rule within the hearts of men. True, there is a King in this king­dom, and that King is my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther. We are in­deed his loyal sub­jects, but far tran­scend­ing that fact is the trans­form­ing truth that we are his sons. In my life this truth is to be­come man­i­fest to all. Our Fa­ther also sits upon a throne, but not one made with hands. The throne of the In­fi­nite is the eter­nal dwell­ing place of the Fa­ther in the heaven of heav­ens; he fills all things and pro­claims his laws to uni­verses upon uni­verses. And the Fa­ther also rules within the hearts of his chil­dren on earth by the spirit which he has sent to live within the souls of mor­tal men.

141:2.2“When you are the sub­jects of this king­dom, you in­deed are made to hear the law of the Uni­verse Ruler; but when, be­cause of the gospel of the king­dom which I have come to de­clare, you faith-dis­cover your­selves as sons, you hence­forth look not upon your­selves as law-sub­ject crea­tures of an all-pow­er­ful king but as priv­i­leged sons of a lov­ing and di­vine Fa­ther. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, when the Fa­ther’s will is your law, you are hardly in the king­dom. But when the Fa­ther’s will be­comes truly your will, then are you in very truth in the king­dom be­cause the king­dom has thereby be­come an es­tab­lished ex­pe­ri­ence in you. When God’s will is your law, you are no­ble slave sub­jects; but when you be­lieve in this new gospel of di­vine son­ship, my Fa­ther’s will be­comes your will, and you are el­e­vated to the high po­si­tion of the free chil­dren of God, lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom.”

• establishment › lead men into the k. and living truth will drive out error

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.

• described › not ours; we are only its ambassadors
• entrance › requires being born of Spirit

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.”

• entrance › by faith, sincerity, and truth hunger

142:1.32. By faith in the fa­ther­hood of God you may en­ter the king­dom of heaven, thus be­com­ing the sons of God.

• described › love is rule of living in

142:1.43. Love is the rule of liv­ing within the king­dom—su­preme de­vo­tion to God while lov­ing your neigh­bor as your­self.

• described › law of kingdom is obedience to Father’s will

142:1.54. Obe­di­ence to the will of the Fa­ther, yield­ing the fruits of the spirit in one’s per­sonal life, is the law of the king­dom.

• entrance › requires being born of Spirit

142:6.7And Nicode­mus said: “But how can I be­gin to lay hold upon this spirit which is to re­make me in prepa­ra­tion for en­ter­ing into the king­dom?” Je­sus an­swered: “Al­ready does the spirit of the Fa­ther in heaven in­dwell you. If you would be led by this spirit from above, very soon would you be­gin to see with the eyes of the spirit, and then by the whole­hearted choice of spirit guid­ance would you be born of the spirit since your only pur­pose in liv­ing would be to do the will of your Fa­ther who is in heaven. And so find­ing your­self born of the spirit and hap­pily in the king­dom of God, you would be­gin to bear in your daily life the abun­dant fruits of the spirit.”

• described › everlasting dominion beginning on earth, progressing to Paradise

142:7.3Very plainly Je­sus ex­plained that the king­dom of heaven was an evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence, be­gin­ning here on earth and pro­gress­ing up through suc­ces­sive life sta­tions to Par­a­dise. In the course of the evening he def­i­nitely stated that at some fu­ture stage of king­dom de­vel­op­ment he would re­visit this world in spir­i­tual power and di­vine glory.

• term › why Jesus used

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.

• establishment › service will require courageous manhood

143:1.6“Be­cause my Fa­ther is a God of love and de­lights in the prac­tice of mercy, do not im­bibe the idea that the ser­vice of the king­dom is to be one of monotonous ease. The Par­a­dise as­cent is the su­preme ad­ven­ture of all time, the rugged achieve­ment of eter­nity. The ser­vice of the king­dom on earth will call for all the coura­geous man­hood that you and your cowork­ers can muster. Many of you will be put to death for your loy­alty to the gospel of this king­dom. It is easy to die in the line of phys­i­cal bat­tle when your cour­age is strength­ened by the pres­ence of your fight­ing com­rades, but it re­quires a higher and more pro­found form of hu­man cour­age and de­vo­tion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth en­shrined in your mor­tal heart.

• described › old things pass away; all things become new in

143:2.3“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who cap­tures a city. Self-mas­tery is the mea­sure of man’s moral na­ture and the in­di­ca­tor of his spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. In the old or­der you fasted and prayed; as the new crea­ture of the re­birth of the spirit, you are taught to be­lieve and re­joice. In the Fa­ther’s king­dom you are to be­come new crea­tures; old things are to pass away; be­hold I show you how all things are to be­come new. And by your love for one an­other you are to con­vince the world that you have passed from bond­age to lib­erty, from death into life ev­er­last­ing.

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

144:4.3In all pray­ing, re­mem­ber that son­ship is a gift. No child has aught to do with earn­ing the sta­tus of son or daugh­ter. The earth child comes into be­ing by the will of its par­ents. Even so, the child of God comes into grace and the new life of the spirit by the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There­fore must the king­dom of heaven—di­vine son­ship—be re­ceived as by a lit­tle child. You earn righ­teous­ness—pro­gres­sive char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment—but you re­ceive son­ship by grace and through faith.

• entrance › least who enter are greater than John the Baptist

144:8.4“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Bap­tist; yet he who is but small in the king­dom of heaven is greater be­cause he has been born of the spirit and knows that he has be­come a son of God.”

• establishment › not advanced by healing of 683 at sundown

145:3.14But the ma­jor­ity of those who were re­cip­i­ents of super­nat­u­ral or cre­ative phys­i­cal heal­ing at this sun­down dem­on­stra­tion of di­vine en­ergy were not per­ma­nently spir­i­tu­ally ben­e­fited by this ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tion of mercy. A small num­ber were truly ed­i­fied by this phys­i­cal min­istry, but the spir­i­tual king­dom was not ad­vanced in the hearts of men by this amaz­ing erup­tion of time­less cre­ative heal­ing.

145:3.15The heal­ing won­ders which ev­ery now and then at­tended Je­sus’ mis­sion on earth were not a part of his plan of pro­claim­ing the king­dom. They were in­ci­den­tally in­her­ent in hav­ing on earth a di­vine be­ing of well-nigh un­lim­ited cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives in as­so­ci­a­tion with an un­prece­dented com­bi­na­tion of di­vine mercy and hu­man sym­pa­thy. But such so-called mir­a­cles gave Je­sus much trou­ble in that they pro­vided prej­u­dice-rais­ing pub­lic­ity and af­forded much un­sought no­to­ri­ety.

• entrance › confers eternal life

146:3.7“Ev­ery earth child who fol­lows the lead­ing of this spirit shall even­tu­ally know the will of God, and he who sur­ren­ders to the will of my Fa­ther shall abide for­ever. The way from the earth life to the eter­nal es­tate has not been made plain to you, but there is a way, there al­ways has been, and I have come to make that way new and liv­ing. He who en­ters the king­dom has eter­nal life al­ready—he shall never per­ish. But much of this you will the bet­ter un­der­stand when I shall have re­turned to the Fa­ther and you are able to view your pres­ent ex­pe­ri­ences in ret­ro­spect.”

• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

149:6.8“In the king­dom of heaven, which I have come to de­clare, there is no high and mighty king; this king­dom is a di­vine fam­ily. The uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized and un­re­servedly wor­shiped cen­ter and head of this far-flung broth­er­hood of in­tel­li­gent be­ings is my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther. I am his Son, and you are also his sons. There­fore it is eter­nally true that you and I are breth­ren in the heav­enly es­tate, and all the more so since we have be­come breth­ren in the flesh of the earthly life. Cease, then, to fear God as a king or serve him as a mas­ter; learn to rev­er­ence him as the Cre­ator; honor him as the Fa­ther of your spirit youth; love him as a mer­ci­ful de­fender; and ul­ti­mately wor­ship him as the lov­ing and all-wise Fa­ther of your more ma­ture spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

149:6.11“You do well to be meek be­fore God and self-con­trolled be­fore men, but let your meek­ness be of spir­i­tual ori­gin and not the self-de­cep­tive dis­play of a self-con­scious sense of self-righ­teous su­pe­ri­or­ity. The prophet spoke ad­vis­edly when he said, ‘Walk humbly with God,’ for, while the Fa­ther in heaven is the In­fi­nite and the Eter­nal, he also dwells ‘with him who is of a con­trite mind and a hum­ble spirit.’ My Fa­ther dis­dains pride, loathes hypocrisy, and ab­hors in­iq­uity. And it was to em­pha­size the value of sin­cer­ity and per­fect trust in the lov­ing sup­port and faith­ful guid­ance of the heav­enly Fa­ther that I have so of­ten re­ferred to the lit­tle child as il­lus­tra­tive of the at­ti­tude of mind and the re­sponse of spirit which are so es­sen­tial to the en­trance of mor­tal man into the spirit re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven.

• entrance › must be willing to leave wealth, home, wife, parents, children for

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.”

• entrance › free, but cannot stand still in

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.

• establishment › only through sorrow and bitter disappointment

150:9.4Je­sus, fol­lowed by his dis­ci­ples, pro­ceeded to their en­camp­ment, where all this was re­counted. And they made ready that evening to go back to Ca­per­naum early the next day, as Je­sus had di­rected. This tur­bu­lent end­ing of the third pub­lic preach­ing tour had a sober­ing ef­fect upon all of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers. They were be­gin­ning to re­al­ize the mean­ing of some of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings; they were awak­ing to the fact that the king­dom would come only through much sor­row and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment.

• described › in parables › hidden treasure

151:3.42. Je­sus nar­rated three or four para­bles from the He­brew scrip­tures, call­ing at­ten­tion to the fact that this method of teach­ing was not wholly new. How­ever, it be­came al­most a new method of teach­ing as he em­ployed it from this time on­ward.

• described › in parables › man casting seed

151:3.15Be­fore he dis­missed the group for the night, Je­sus said: “Now will I tell you the last of the para­ble of the sower. I would test you to know how you will re­ceive this: The king­dom of heaven is also like a man who cast good seed upon the earth; and while he slept by night and went about his busi­ness by day, the seed sprang up and grew, and al­though he knew not how it came about, the plant came to fruit. First there was the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And then when the grain was ripe, he put forth the sickle, and the har­vest was fin­ished. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.”

• described › in parables › mustard seed

151:4.2Af­ter the peo­ple had asked a few ques­tions, Je­sus spoke an­other para­ble: “The king­dom of heaven is like a grain of mus­tard seed which a man sowed in his field. Now a mus­tard seed is the least of seeds, but when it is full grown, it be­comes the great­est of all herbs and is like a tree so that the birds of heaven are able to come and rest in the branches thereof.”

• described › in parables › leaven

151:4.3“The king­dom of heaven is also like leaven which a woman took and hid in three mea­sures of meal, and in this way it came about that all of the meal was leav­ened.”

• described › in parables › pearl

151:4.5“The king­dom of heaven is also like a mer­chant seek­ing goodly pearls; and hav­ing found one pearl of great price, he went out and sold ev­ery­thing he pos­sessed that he might be able to buy the ex­traor­di­nary pearl.”

• described › in parables › net cast into sea

151:4.6“Again, the king­dom of heaven is like a sweep net which was cast into the sea, and it gath­ered up ev­ery kind of fish. Now, when the net was filled, the fish­er­men drew it up on the beach, where they sat down and sorted out the fish, gath­er­ing the good into ves­sels while the bad they threw away.”

• described › not of this world
• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

152:3.2This mighty shout en­thused Pe­ter and those of the apos­tles who still re­tained the hope of see­ing Je­sus as­sert his right to rule. But these false hopes were not to live for long. This mighty shout of the mul­ti­tude had hardly ceased to re­ver­ber­ate from the near-by rocks when Je­sus stepped upon a huge stone and, lift­ing up his right hand to com­mand their at­ten­tion, said: “My chil­dren, you mean well, but you are short­sighted and ma­te­rial-minded.” There was a brief pause; this stal­wart Galilean was there ma­jes­ti­cally posed in the en­chant­ing glow of that east­ern twi­light. Ev­ery inch he looked a king as he con­tin­ued to speak to this breath­less mul­ti­tude: “You would make me king, not be­cause your souls have been lighted with a great truth, but be­cause your stom­achs have been filled with bread. How many times have I told you that my king­dom is not of this world? This king­dom of heaven which we pro­claim is a spir­i­tual broth­er­hood, and no man rules over it seated upon a ma­te­rial throne. My Fa­ther in heaven is the all-wise and the all-pow­er­ful Ruler over this spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the sons of God on earth. Have I so failed in re­veal­ing to you the Fa­ther of spir­its that you would make a king of his Son in the flesh! Now all of you go hence to your own homes. If you must have a king, let the Fa­ther of lights be en­throned in the heart of each of you as the spirit Ruler of all things.”

• establishment › no reliance on transient religious hysteria

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.

• entrance › requires being born of Spirit

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.”

• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

153:2.4“What is it you seek as ev­i­dence of my mis­sion on earth? We have left you undis­turbed in your po­si­tions of in­flu­ence and power while we preached glad tid­ings to the poor and the out­cast. We have made no hos­tile at­tack upon that which you hold in rev­er­ence but have rather pro­claimed new lib­erty for man’s fear-rid­den soul. I came into the world to re­veal my Fa­ther and to es­tab­lish on earth the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the sons of God, the king­dom of heaven. And not­with­stand­ing that I have so many times re­minded you that my king­dom is not of this world, still has my Fa­ther granted you many man­i­fes­ta­tions of ma­te­rial won­ders in ad­di­tion to more ev­i­den­tial spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tions and re­gen­er­a­tions.

• establishment › do not seek to establish k. by laws or force

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.”

• establishment › sifting k., divestment of lukewarm multitudes, halfhearted disciples unavoidable

153:5.3It was a lit­tle af­ter mid­night when Je­sus came down from the up­per cham­ber and stood among the twelve and their as­so­ciates, num­ber­ing about thirty in all. He said: “I rec­og­nize that this sift­ing of the king­dom dis­tresses you, but it is un­avoid­able. Still, af­ter all the train­ing you have had, was there any good rea­son why you should stum­ble at my words? Why is it that you are filled with fear and con­ster­na­tion when you see the king­dom be­ing di­vested of these luke­warm mul­ti­tudes and these half­hearted dis­ci­ples? Why do you grieve when the new day is dawn­ing for the shin­ing forth in new glory of the spir­i­tual teach­ings of the king­dom of heaven? If you find it dif­fi­cult to en­dure this test, what, then, will you do when the Son of Man must re­turn to the Fa­ther? When and how will you pre­pare your­selves for the time when I as­cend to the place whence I came to this world?

• establishment › sifting k., divestment of lukewarm multitudes, halfhearted disciples unavoidable

154:1.3The last of the sea­side meet­ings was held on Sab­bath af­ter­noon, May 7. Je­sus talked to less than one hun­dred and fifty who had as­sem­bled at that time. This Sat­ur­day night marked the time of the low­est ebb in the tide of pop­u­lar re­gard for Je­sus and his teach­ings. From then on there was a steady, slow, but more health­ful and de­pend­able growth in fa­vor­able sen­ti­ment; a new fol­low­ing was built up which was bet­ter grounded in spir­i­tual faith and true re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The more or less com­pos­ite and com­pro­mis­ing tran­si­tion stage be­tween the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic con­cepts of the king­dom held by the Mas­ter’s fol­low­ers and those more ide­al­is­tic and spir­i­tual con­cepts taught by Je­sus, had now def­i­nitely ended. From now on there was a more open procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom in its larger scope and in its far-flung spir­i­tual im­pli­ca­tions.

• establishment › carry on work of k. regardless of consequences

154:5.2At this early morn­ing meet­ing Je­sus im­parted his farewell in­struc­tions to the as­sem­bled dis­ci­ples; that is, he bade them farewell for the time be­ing, know­ing well that they would soon be dis­persed from Ca­per­naum. He di­rected them all to seek God for guid­ance and to carry on the work of the king­dom re­gard­less of con­se­quences. The evan­ge­lists were to la­bor as they saw fit un­til such time as they might be called. He se­lected twelve of the evan­ge­lists to ac­com­pany him; the twelve apos­tles he di­rected to re­main with him no mat­ter what hap­pened. The twelve women he in­structed to re­main at the Zeb­e­dee house and at Pe­ter’s house un­til he should send for them.

• described › founded on love, proclaimed in mercy, established by unselfish service

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.’”

• entrance › take by persistent assaults of faith

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.

• described › acceptance of divine sonship
• described › spiritual joy of acceptance of divine sonship

155:3.1Al­though Je­sus did no pub­lic work dur­ing this two weeks’ so­journ near Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the apos­tles held nu­mer­ous quiet evening meet­ings in the city, and many of the be­liev­ers came out to the camp to talk with the Mas­ter. Very few were added to the group of be­liev­ers as a re­sult of this visit. Je­sus talked with the apos­tles each day, and they more clearly dis­cerned that a new phase of the work of preach­ing the king­dom of heaven was now be­gin­ning. They were com­menc­ing to com­pre­hend that the “king­dom of heaven is not meat and drink but the re­al­iza­tion of the spir­i­tual joy of the ac­cep­tance of di­vine son­ship.”

• entrance › 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?

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

155:6.12You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden rec­ords of the­o­logic au­thor­ity. Those who are born of the spirit of God shall hence­forth dis­cern the word of God re­gard­less of whence it ap­pears to take ori­gin. Di­vine truth must not be dis­counted be­cause the chan­nel of its be­stowal is ap­par­ently hu­man. Many of your breth­ren have minds which ac­cept the the­ory of God while they spir­i­tu­ally fail to re­al­ize the pres­ence of God. And that is just the rea­son why I have so of­ten taught you that the king­dom of heaven can best be re­al­ized by ac­quir­ing the spir­i­tual at­ti­tude of a sin­cere child. It is not the men­tal im­ma­tu­rity of the child that I com­mend to you but rather the spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity of such an easy-be­liev­ing and fully-trust­ing lit­tle one. It is not so im­por­tant that you should know about the fact of God as that you should in­creas­ingly grow in the abil­ity to feel the pres­ence of God.

• establishment › sifting k., divestment of lukewarm multitudes, halfhearted disciples unavoidable

156:6.5While Je­sus was ab­sent from Ca­per­naum and Gal­i­lee, the pe­riod of the Phoeni­cian so­journ, his en­e­mies reck­oned that the whole move­ment had been bro­ken up and con­cluded that Je­sus’ haste in with­draw­ing in­di­cated he was so thor­oughly fright­ened that he would not likely ever re­turn to bother them. All ac­tive op­po­si­tion to his teach­ings had about sub­sided. The be­liev­ers were be­gin­ning to hold pub­lic meet­ings once more, and there was oc­cur­ring a grad­ual but ef­fec­tive con­sol­i­da­tion of the tried and true sur­vivors of the great sift­ing through which the gospel be­liev­ers had just passed.

• establishment › sifting k., divestment of lukewarm multitudes, halfhearted disciples unavoidable

156:6.9And that was the sit­u­a­tion about the first of Au­gust, A.D. 29, when the Mas­ter re­turned from the Phoeni­cian mis­sion and be­gan the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of his scat­tered, tested, and de­pleted forces for this last and event­ful year of his mis­sion on earth.

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.

157:4.2It was late forenoon on this Wednes­day when the apos­tles as­sem­bled in Cel­sus’ gar­den for their noon­time meal. Dur­ing most of the night and since they had arisen that morn­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had been earnestly la­bor­ing with their breth­ren to bring them all to the point of the whole­hearted ac­cep­tance of the Mas­ter, not merely as the Mes­siah, but also as the di­vine Son of the liv­ing God. The two Si­mons were well-nigh agreed in their es­ti­mate of Je­sus, and they la­bored dili­gently to bring their breth­ren around to the full ac­cep­tance of their views. While An­drew con­tin­ued as the di­rec­tor-gen­eral of the apos­tolic corps, his brother, Si­mon Pe­ter, was be­com­ing, in­creas­ingly and by com­mon con­sent, the spokesman for the twelve.

157:4.3They were all seated in the gar­den at just about noon when the Mas­ter ap­peared. They wore ex­pres­sions of dig­ni­fied solem­nity, and all arose to their feet as he ap­proached them. Je­sus re­lieved the ten­sion by that friendly and fra­ter­nal smile which was so char­ac­ter­is­tic of him when his fol­low­ers took them­selves, or some hap­pen­ing re­lated to them­selves, too se­ri­ously. With a com­mand­ing ges­ture he in­di­cated that they should be seated. Never again did the twelve greet their Mas­ter by aris­ing when he came into their pres­ence. They saw that he did not ap­prove of such an out­ward show of re­spect.

157:4.4Af­ter they had par­taken of their meal and were en­gaged in dis­cussing plans for the forth­com­ing tour of the De­capo­lis, Je­sus sud­denly looked up into their faces and said: “Now that a full day has passed since you as­sented to Si­mon Pe­ter’s dec­la­ra­tion re­gard­ing the iden­tity of the Son of Man, I would ask if you still hold to your de­ci­sion?” On hear­ing this, the twelve stood upon their feet, and Si­mon Pe­ter, step­ping a few paces for­ward to­ward Je­sus, said: “Yes, Mas­ter, we do. We be­lieve that you are the Son of the liv­ing God.” And Pe­ter sat down with his breth­ren.

• apostles › given authority over things temporal in
• described › built upon combined human and divine natures of Jesus
• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

157:4.5Je­sus, still stand­ing, then said to the twelve: “You are my cho­sen am­bas­sadors, but I know that, in the cir­cum­stances, you could not en­ter­tain this be­lief as a re­sult of mere hu­man knowl­edge. This is a rev­e­la­tion of the spirit of my Fa­ther to your in­most souls. And when, there­fore, you make this con­fes­sion by the in­sight of the spirit of my Fa­ther which dwells within you, I am led to de­clare that upon this foun­da­tion will I build the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven. Upon this rock of spir­i­tual re­al­ity will I build the liv­ing tem­ple of spir­i­tual fel­low­ship in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not pre­vail against this hu­man fra­ter­nity of the di­vine spirit. And while my Fa­ther’s spirit shall ever be the di­vine guide and men­tor of all who en­ter the bonds of this spirit fel­low­ship, to you and your suc­ces­sors I now de­liver the keys of the out­ward king­dom—the au­thor­ity over things tem­po­ral—the so­cial and eco­nomic fea­tures of this as­so­ci­a­tion of men and women as fel­lows of the king­dom.” And again he charged them, for the time be­ing, that they should tell no man that he was the Son of God.

• apostles › given authority over things temporal in

157:4.6Je­sus was be­gin­ning to have faith in the loy­alty and in­tegrity of his apos­tles. The Mas­ter con­ceived that a faith which could stand what his cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives had re­cently passed through would un­doubt­edly en­dure the fiery tri­als which were just ahead and emerge from the ap­par­ent wreck­age of all their hopes into the new light of a new dis­pen­sa­tion and thereby be able to go forth to en­lighten a world sit­ting in dark­ness. On this day the Mas­ter be­gan to be­lieve in the faith of his apos­tles, save one.

157:4.7And ever since that day this same Je­sus has been build­ing that liv­ing tem­ple upon that same eter­nal foun­da­tion of his di­vine son­ship, and those who thereby be­come self-con­scious sons of God are the hu­man stones which con­sti­tute this liv­ing tem­ple of son­ship erect­ing to the glory and honor of the wis­dom and love of the eter­nal Fa­ther of spir­its.

157:4.8And when Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he di­rected the twelve to go apart by them­selves in the hills to seek wis­dom, strength, and spir­i­tual guid­ance un­til the time of the evening meal. And they did as the Mas­ter ad­mon­ished them.

• described › built upon combined human and divine natures of Jesus

157:5.1The new and vi­tal fea­ture of Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion was the clear-cut rec­og­ni­tion that Je­sus was the Son of God, of his un­ques­tioned di­vin­ity. Ever since his bap­tism and the wed­ding at Cana these apos­tles had var­i­ously re­garded him as the Mes­siah, but it was not a part of the Jew­ish con­cept of the na­tional de­liv­erer that he should be di­vine. The Jews had not taught that the Mes­siah would spring from di­vin­ity; he was to be the “anointed one,” but hardly had they con­tem­plated him as be­ing “the Son of God.” In the sec­ond con­fes­sion more em­pha­sis was placed upon the com­bined na­ture, the su­per­nal fact that he was the Son of Man and the Son of God, and it was upon this great truth of the union of the hu­man na­ture with the di­vine na­ture that Je­sus de­clared he would build the king­dom of heaven.

• described › built upon combined human and divine natures of Jesus

157:5.3For three years Je­sus had been pro­claim­ing that he was the “Son of Man,” while for these same three years the apos­tles had been in­creas­ingly in­sis­tent that he was the ex­pected Jew­ish Mes­siah. He now dis­closed that he was the Son of God, and upon the con­cept of the com­bined na­ture of the Son of Man and the Son of God, he de­ter­mined to build the king­dom of heaven. He had de­cided to re­frain from fur­ther ef­forts to con­vince them that he was not the Mes­siah. He now pro­posed boldly to re­veal to them what he is, and then to ig­nore their de­ter­mi­na­tion to per­sist in re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah.

• described › Father is center and circumference

157:6.5A new sig­nif­i­cance at­taches to all of Je­sus’ teach­ings from this point on. Be­fore Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi he pre­sented the gospel of the king­dom as its mas­ter teacher. Af­ter Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi he ap­peared not merely as a teacher but as the di­vine rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the eter­nal Fa­ther, who is the cen­ter and cir­cum­fer­ence of this spir­i­tual king­dom, and it was re­quired that he do all this as a hu­man be­ing, the Son of Man.

• apostles › desire for preference in

158:4.4The nine apos­tles were much sur­prised and con­sid­er­ably per­turbed when this man, ac­com­pa­nied by al­most forty other per­sons who were look­ing for Je­sus, sud­denly came upon them. At the time of the ar­rival of this group the nine apos­tles, at least the ma­jor­ity of them, had suc­cumbed to their old temp­ta­tion—that of dis­cussing who should be great­est in the com­ing king­dom; they were busily ar­gu­ing about the prob­a­ble po­si­tions which would be as­signed the in­di­vid­ual apos­tles. They sim­ply could not free them­selves en­tirely from the long-cher­ished idea of the ma­te­rial mis­sion of the Mes­siah. And now that Je­sus him­self had ac­cepted their con­fes­sion that he was in­deed the De­liv­erer—at least he had ad­mit­ted the fact of his di­vin­ity—what was more nat­u­ral than that, dur­ing this pe­riod of sep­a­ra­tion from the Mas­ter, they should fall to talk­ing about those hopes and am­bi­tions which were up­per­most in their hearts. And they were en­gaged in these dis­cus­sions when James of Safed and his fel­low seek­ers af­ter Je­sus came upon them.

• apostles › desire for preference in

158:6.2And Je­sus an­swered Thomas, say­ing: “Ev­ery­thing which your breth­ren heard on the moun­tain shall be re­vealed to you in due sea­son. But I will now show you the cause of your de­feat in that which you so un­wisely at­tempted. While your Mas­ter and his com­pan­ions, your breth­ren, as­cended yon­der moun­tain yes­ter­day to seek for a larger knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s will and to ask for a richer en­dow­ment of wis­dom ef­fec­tively to do that di­vine will, you who re­mained on watch here with in­struc­tions to strive to ac­quire the mind of spir­i­tual in­sight and to pray with us for a fuller rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s will, failed to ex­er­cise the faith at your com­mand but, in­stead, yielded to the temp­ta­tion and fell into your old evil ten­den­cies to seek for your­selves pre­ferred places in the king­dom of heaven—the ma­te­rial and tem­po­ral king­dom which you per­sist in con­tem­plat­ing. And you cling to these er­ro­neous con­cepts in spite of the re­it­er­ated dec­la­ra­tion that my king­dom is not of this world.

• described › greatest in k. humbles himself as servant, ministers truths

158:6.3“No sooner does your faith grasp the iden­tity of the Son of Man than your self­ish de­sire for worldly prefer­ment creeps back upon you, and you fall to dis­cussing among your­selves as to who should be great­est in the king­dom of heaven, a king­dom which, as you per­sist in con­ceiv­ing it, does not ex­ist, nor ever shall. Have not I told you that he who would be great­est in the king­dom of my Fa­ther’s spir­i­tual broth­er­hood must be­come lit­tle in his own eyes and thus be­come the server of his breth­ren? Spir­i­tual great­ness con­sists in an un­der­stand­ing love that is God­like and not in an en­joy­ment of the ex­er­cise of ma­te­rial power for the ex­al­ta­tion of self. In what you at­tempted, in which you so com­pletely failed, your pur­pose was not pure. Your mo­tive was not di­vine. Your ideal was not spir­i­tual. Your am­bi­tion was not al­tru­is­tic. Your pro­ce­dure was not based on love, and your goal of at­tain­ment was not the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• apostles › desire for preference in
• described › greatest in k. humbles himself as servant, ministers truths

158:8.1En­ter­ing Ca­per­naum at twi­light, they went by un­fre­quented thor­ough­fares di­rectly to the home of Si­mon Pe­ter for their evening meal. While David Zeb­e­dee made ready to take them across the lake, they lin­gered at Si­mon’s house, and Je­sus, look­ing up at Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, asked: “As you walked along to­gether this af­ter­noon, what was it that you talked about so earnestly among your­selves?” The apos­tles held their peace be­cause many of them had con­tin­ued the dis­cus­sion be­gun at Mount Her­mon as to what po­si­tions they were to have in the com­ing king­dom; who should be the great­est, and so on. Je­sus, know­ing what it was that oc­cu­pied their thoughts that day, beck­oned to one of Pe­ter’s lit­tle ones and, set­ting the child down among them, said: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, ex­cept you turn about and be­come more like this child, you will make lit­tle prog­ress in the king­dom of heaven. Whoso­ever shall hum­ble him­self and be­come as this lit­tle one, the same shall be­come great­est in the king­dom of heaven. And whoso re­ceives such a lit­tle one re­ceives me. And they who re­ceive me re­ceive also Him who sent me. If you would be first in the king­dom, seek to min­is­ter these good truths to your breth­ren in the flesh. But whoso­ever causes one of these lit­tle ones to stum­ble, it would be bet­ter for him if a mill­stone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea. If the things you do with your hands, or the things you see with your eyes give of­fense in the prog­ress of the king­dom, sac­ri­fice these cher­ished idols, for it is bet­ter to en­ter the king­dom mi­nus many of the beloved things of life rather than to cling to these idols and find your­self shut out of the king­dom. But most of all, see that you de­spise not one of these lit­tle ones, for their an­gels do al­ways be­hold the faces of the heav­enly hosts.”

• described › in parables › king ordering a reckoning

159:1.4Si­mon Pe­ter was the apos­tle in charge of the work­ers at Hip­pos, and when he heard Je­sus thus speak, he asked: “Lord, how of­ten shall my brother sin against me, and I for­give him? Un­til seven times?” And Je­sus an­swered Pe­ter: “Not only seven times but even to sev­enty times and seven. There­fore may the king­dom of heaven be likened to a cer­tain king who or­dered a fi­nan­cial reck­on­ing with his stew­ards. And when they had be­gun to con­duct this ex­am­i­na­tion of ac­counts, one of his chief re­tain­ers was brought be­fore him con­fess­ing that he owed his king ten thou­sand tal­ents. Now this of­fi­cer of the king’s court pleaded that hard times had come upon him, and that he did not have where­with to pay this obli­ga­tion. And so the king com­manded that his prop­erty be con­fis­cated, and that his chil­dren be sold to pay his debt. When this chief stew­ard heard this stern de­cree, he fell down on his face be­fore the king and im­plored him to have mercy and grant him more time, say­ing, ‘Lord, have a lit­tle more pa­tience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And when the king looked upon this neg­li­gent ser­vant and his fam­ily, he was moved with com­pas­sion. He or­dered that he should be re­leased, and that the loan should be wholly for­given.

• establishment › freely 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.”

• believers cannot escape responsibilities of

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.

• entrance › sure pathway to trouble

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.

• entrance › requires being born of Spirit

160:5.10I see in the teach­ings of Je­sus, re­li­gion at its best. This gospel en­ables us to seek for the true God and to find him. But are we will­ing to pay the price of this en­trance into the king­dom of heaven? Are we will­ing to be born again? to be re­made? Are we will­ing to be sub­ject to this ter­ri­ble and test­ing pro­cess of self-de­struc­tion and soul re­con­struc­tion? Has not the Mas­ter said: “Whoso would save his life must lose it. Think not that I have come to bring peace but rather a soul strug­gle”? True, af­ter we pay the price of ded­i­ca­tion to the Fa­ther’s will, we do ex­pe­ri­ence great peace pro­vided we con­tinue to walk in these spir­i­tual paths of con­se­crated liv­ing.

• establishment › lesser things should give way before

162:8.3As Martha bus­ied her­self with all these sup­posed du­ties, she was per­turbed be­cause Mary did noth­ing to help. There­fore she went to Je­sus and said: “Mas­ter, do you not care that my sis­ter has left me alone to do all of the serv­ing? Will you not bid her to come and help me?” Je­sus an­swered: “Martha, Martha, why are you al­ways anx­ious about so many things and trou­bled by so many tri­fles? Only one thing is re­ally worth while, and since Mary has cho­sen this good and need­ful part, I shall not take it away from her. But when will both of you learn to live as I have taught you: both serv­ing in co-op­er­a­tion and both re­fresh­ing your souls in uni­son? Can you not learn that there is a time for ev­ery­thing—that the lesser mat­ters of life should give way be­fore the greater things of the heav­enly king­dom?”

• entrance › requires surrender of pet evil

163:2.7Al­most ev­ery hu­man be­ing has some one thing which is held on to as a pet evil, and which the en­trance into the king­dom of heaven re­quires as a part of the price of ad­mis­sion. If Mata­dor­mus had parted with his wealth, it prob­a­bly would have been put right back into his hands for ad­min­is­tra­tion as trea­surer of the sev­enty. For later on, af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he did obey the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion, al­though it was then too late to en­joy mem­ber­ship in the sev­enty, and he be­came the trea­surer of the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother in the flesh was the head.

• entrance › whatever thing or person that comes between oneself and k. must be surrendered

163:3.3As they went off by them­selves, Je­sus was grieved that Mata­dor­mus did not re­main with them, for he greatly loved him. And when they had walked down by the lake, they sat there be­side the wa­ter, and Pe­ter, speak­ing for the twelve (who were all pres­ent by this time), said: “We are trou­bled by your words to the rich young man. Shall we re­quire those who would fol­low you to give up all their worldly goods?” And Je­sus said: “No, Pe­ter, only those who would be­come apos­tles, and who de­sire to live with me as you do and as one fam­ily. But the Fa­ther re­quires that the af­fec­tions of his chil­dren be pure and un­di­vided. What­ever thing or per­son comes be­tween you and the love of the truths of the king­dom, must be sur­ren­dered. If one’s wealth does not in­vade the precincts of the soul, it is of no con­se­quence in the spir­i­tual life of those who would en­ter the king­dom.”

• entrance › must be willing to leave wealth, home, wife, parents, children for

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.

• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

163:7.4The work of the king­dom now pre­pared to en­ter upon its ter­mi­nal phase un­der the per­sonal lead­er­ship of Je­sus. And this pres­ent phase was one of spir­i­tual depth in con­trast with the mir­a­cle-minded and won­der-seek­ing mul­ti­tudes who fol­lowed af­ter the Mas­ter dur­ing the for­mer days of pop­u­lar­ity in Gal­i­lee. How­ever, there were still any num­ber of his fol­low­ers who were ma­te­rial-minded, and who failed to grasp the truth that the king­dom of heaven is the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of man founded on the eter­nal fact of the uni­ver­sal fa­ther­hood of God.

• entrance › danger of postponing

166:3.4“But herein is the dan­ger to all who would post­pone their en­trance into the king­dom while they con­tinue to pur­sue the plea­sures of im­ma­tu­rity and in­dulge the sat­is­fac­tions of self­ish­ness: Hav­ing re­fused to en­ter the king­dom as a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, they may sub­se­quently seek en­trance thereto when the glory of the bet­ter way be­comes re­vealed in the age to come. And when, there­fore, those who spurned the king­dom when I came in the like­ness of hu­man­ity seek to find an en­trance when it is re­vealed in the like­ness of di­vin­ity, then will I say to all such self­ish ones: I know not whence you are. You had your chance to pre­pare for this heav­enly cit­i­zen­ship, but you re­fused all such prof­fers of mercy; you re­jected all in­vi­ta­tions to come while the door was open. Now, to you who have re­fused sal­va­tion, the door is shut. This door is not open to those who would en­ter the king­dom for self­ish glory. Sal­va­tion is not for those who are un­will­ing to pay the price of whole­hearted ded­i­ca­tion to do­ing my Fa­ther’s will. When in spirit and soul you have turned your backs upon the Fa­ther’s king­dom, it is use­less in mind and body to stand be­fore this door and knock, say­ing, ‘Lord, open to us; we would also be great in the king­dom.’ Then will I de­clare that you are not of my fold. I will not re­ceive you to be among those who have fought the good fight of faith and won the re­ward of un­selfish ser­vice in the king­dom on earth. And when you say, ‘Did we not eat and drink with you, and did you not teach in our streets?’ then shall I again de­clare that you are spir­i­tual strangers; that we were not fel­low ser­vants in the Fa­ther’s min­istry of mercy on earth; that I do not know you; and then shall the Judge of all the earth say to you: ‘De­part from us, all you who have taken de­light in the works of in­iq­uity.’

• entrance › take by persistent assaults of faith

166:3.5“But fear not; ev­ery one who sin­cerely de­sires to find eter­nal life by en­trance into the king­dom of God shall cer­tainly find such ev­er­last­ing sal­va­tion. But you who refuse this sal­va­tion will some day see the proph­ets of the seed of Abra­ham sit down with the be­liev­ers of the gen­tile na­tions in this glo­ri­fied king­dom to par­take of the bread of life and to re­fresh them­selves with the wa­ter thereof. And they who shall thus take the king­dom in spir­i­tual power and by the per­sis­tent as­saults of liv­ing faith will come from the north and the south and from the east and the west. And, be­hold, many who are first will be last, and those who are last will many times be first.”

• entrance › must be willing to leave wealth, home, wife, parents, children for

167:2.2“A cer­tain ruler gave a great sup­per, and hav­ing bid­den many guests, he dis­patched his ser­vants at sup­per­time to say to those who were in­vited, ‘Come, for ev­ery­thing is now ready.’ And they all with one ac­cord be­gan to make ex­cuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a farm, and I must needs go to prove it; I pray you have me ex­cused.’ An­other said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must go to re­ceive them; I pray you have me ex­cused.’ And an­other said, ‘I have just mar­ried a wife, and there­fore I can­not come.’ So the ser­vants went back and re­ported this to their mas­ter. When the mas­ter of the house heard this, he was very an­gry, and turn­ing to his ser­vants, he said: ‘I have made ready this mar­riage feast; the fatlings are killed, and all is in readi­ness for my guests, but they have spurned my in­vi­ta­tion; they have gone ev­ery man af­ter his lands and his mer­chan­dise, and they even show dis­re­spect to my ser­vants who bid them come to my feast. Go out quickly, there­fore, into the streets and lanes of the city, out into the high­ways and the by­ways, and bring hither the poor and the out­cast, the blind and the lame, that the mar­riage feast may have guests.’ And the ser­vants did as their lord com­manded, and even then there was room for more guests. Then said the lord to his ser­vants: ‘Go now out into the roads and the coun­try­side and con­strain those who are there to come in that my house may be filled. I de­clare that none of those who were first bid­den shall taste of my sup­per.’ And the ser­vants did as their mas­ter com­manded, and the house was filled.”

• described › in parables › little children

167:6.1That evening Je­sus’ mes­sage re­gard­ing mar­riage and the blessed­ness of chil­dren spread all over Jeri­cho, so that the next morn­ing, long be­fore Je­sus and the apos­tles pre­pared to leave, even be­fore break­fast time, scores of moth­ers came to where Je­sus lodged, bring­ing their chil­dren in their arms and lead­ing them by their hands, and de­sired that he bless the lit­tle ones. When the apos­tles went out to view this as­sem­blage of moth­ers with their chil­dren, they en­deav­ored to send them away, but these women re­fused to de­part un­til the Mas­ter laid his hands on their chil­dren and blessed them. And when the apos­tles loudly re­buked these moth­ers, Je­sus, hear­ing the tu­mult, came out and in­dig­nantly re­proved them, say­ing: “Suf­fer lit­tle chil­dren to come to me; for­bid them not, for of such is the king­dom of heaven. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, whoso­ever re­ceives not the king­dom of God as a lit­tle child shall hardly en­ter therein to grow up to the full stature of spir­i­tual man­hood.”

• term › why Jesus used

169:4.1Je­sus al­ways had trou­ble try­ing to ex­plain to the apos­tles that, while they pro­claimed the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God, the Fa­ther in heaven was not a king. At the time Je­sus lived on earth and taught in the flesh, the peo­ple of Uran­tia knew mostly of kings and em­per­ors in the gov­ern­ments of the na­tions, and the Jews had long con­tem­plated the com­ing of the king­dom of God. For these and other rea­sons, the Mas­ter thought best to des­ig­nate the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of man as the king­dom of heaven and the spirit head of this broth­er­hood as the Fa­ther in heaven. Never did Je­sus re­fer to his Fa­ther as a king. In his in­ti­mate talks with the apos­tles he al­ways re­ferred to him­self as the Son of Man and as their el­der brother. He de­picted all his fol­low­ers as ser­vants of man­kind and mes­sen­gers of the gospel of the king­dom.

• term › why Jesus used

169:4.6Je­sus never called the Fa­ther a king, and he very much re­gret­ted that the Jew­ish hope for a re­stored king­dom and John’s procla­ma­tion of a com­ing king­dom made it nec­es­sary for him to de­nom­i­nate his pro­posed spir­i­tual broth­er­hood the king­dom of heaven. With the one ex­cep­tion—the dec­la­ra­tion that “God is spirit”—Je­sus never re­ferred to De­ity in any man­ner other than in terms de­scrip­tive of his own per­sonal re­la­tion­ship with the First Source and Cen­ter of Par­a­dise.

• described › designates Jesus’ bestowal mission
• term › used interchangeably with kingdom of God

170:0.1Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, March 11, Je­sus preached his last ser­mon at Pella. This was among the no­table ad­dresses of his pub­lic min­istry, em­brac­ing a full and com­plete dis­cus­sion of the king­dom of heaven. He was aware of the con­fu­sion which ex­isted in the minds of his apos­tles and dis­ci­ples re­gard­ing the mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance of the terms “king­dom of heaven” and “king­dom of God,” which he used as in­ter­change­able des­ig­na­tions of his be­stowal mis­sion. Al­though the very term king­dom of heaven should have been enough to sep­a­rate what it stood for from all con­nec­tion with earthly king­doms and tem­po­ral gov­ern­ments, it was not. The idea of a tem­po­ral king was too deep-rooted in the Jew­ish mind thus to be dis­lodged in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. There­fore Je­sus did not at first openly op­pose this long-nour­ished con­cept of the king­dom.

170:1.1In con­nec­tion with the recital of Je­sus’ ser­mon it should be noted that through­out the He­brew scrip­tures there was a dual con­cept of the king­dom of heaven. The proph­ets pre­sented the king­dom of God as:

• described › present reality

170:1.21. A pres­ent re­al­ity; and as

• described › future hope

170:1.32. A fu­ture hope—when the king­dom would be re­al­ized in full­ness upon the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. This is the king­dom con­cept which John the Bap­tist taught.

170:1.4From the very first Je­sus and the apos­tles taught both of these con­cepts. There were two other ideas of the king­dom which should be borne in mind:

170:1.53. The later Jew­ish con­cept of a world-wide and tran­scen­den­tal king­dom of super­nat­u­ral ori­gin and mirac­u­lous in­au­gu­ra­tion.

170:1.64. The Per­sian teach­ings por­tray­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a di­vine king­dom as the achieve­ment of the tri­umph of good over evil at the end of the world.

• Jews › believed k. to be righteous state on earth ruled by Messiah

170:1.7Just be­fore the ad­vent of Je­sus on earth, the Jews com­bined and con­fused all of these ideas of the king­dom into their apoc­a­lyp­tic con­cept of the Mes­siah’s com­ing to es­tab­lish the age of the Jew­ish tri­umph, the eter­nal age of God’s su­preme rule on earth, the new world, the era in which all man­kind would wor­ship Yah­weh. In choos­ing to uti­lize this con­cept of the king­dom of heaven, Je­sus elected to ap­pro­pri­ate the most vi­tal and cul­mi­nat­ing her­itage of both the Jew­ish and Per­sian re­li­gions.

170:1.8The king­dom of heaven, as it has been un­der­stood and mis­un­der­stood down through the cen­turies of the Chris­tian era, em­braced four dis­tinct groups of ideas:

170:1.91. The con­cept of the Jews.

170:1.102. The con­cept of the Per­sians.

170:1.113. The per­sonal-ex­pe­ri­ence con­cept of Je­sus—“the king­dom of heaven within you.”

170:1.124. The com­pos­ite and con­fused con­cepts which the found­ers and pro­mul­ga­tors of Chris­tian­ity have sought to im­press upon the world.

• described › God within

170:1.13At dif­fer­ent times and in vary­ing cir­cum­stances it ap­pears that Je­sus may have pre­sented nu­mer­ous con­cepts of the “king­dom” in his pub­lic teach­ings, but to his apos­tles he al­ways taught the king­dom as em­brac­ing man’s per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in re­la­tion to his fel­lows on earth and to the Fa­ther in heaven. Con­cern­ing the king­dom, his last word al­ways was, “The king­dom is within you.”

170:1.14Cen­turies of con­fu­sion re­gard­ing the mean­ing of the term “king­dom of heaven” have been due to three fac­tors:

170:1.151. The con­fu­sion oc­ca­sioned by ob­serv­ing the idea of the “king­dom” as it passed through the var­i­ous pro­gres­sive phases of its re­cast­ing by Je­sus and his apos­tles.

170:1.162. The con­fu­sion which was in­evitably as­so­ci­ated with the trans­plan­ta­tion of early Chris­tian­ity from a Jew­ish to a gen­tile soil.

170:1.173. The con­fu­sion which was in­her­ent in the fact that Chris­tian­ity be­came a re­li­gion which was or­ga­nized about the cen­tral idea of Je­sus’ per­son; the gospel of the king­dom be­came more and more a re­li­gion about him.

• confused concepts of Christianity

170:2.87. The new gospel af­firmed that hu­man sal­va­tion is the rev­e­la­tion of a far-reach­ing di­vine pur­pose to be ful­filled and re­al­ized in the fu­ture des­tiny of the end­less ser­vice of the sal­vaged sons of God.

• described › God within

170:2.9These teach­ings cover the ex­panded idea of the king­dom which was taught by Je­sus. This great con­cept was hardly em­braced in the el­e­men­tary and con­fused king­dom teach­ings of John the Bap­tist.

• establishment › not related to second coming

170:2.10The apos­tles were un­able to grasp the real mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s ut­ter­ances re­gard­ing the king­dom. The sub­se­quent dis­tor­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ings, as they are re­corded in the New Tes­ta­ment, is be­cause the con­cept of the gospel writ­ers was col­ored by the be­lief that Je­sus was then ab­sent from the world for only a short time; that he would soon re­turn to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory—just such an idea as they held while he was with them in the flesh. But Je­sus did not con­nect the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom with the idea of his re­turn to this world. That cen­turies have passed with no signs of the ap­pear­ance of the “New Age” is in no way out of har­mony with Je­sus’ teach­ing.

• described › will of God
• term › other terms

170:2.11The great ef­fort em­bod­ied in this ser­mon was the at­tempt to trans­late the con­cept of the king­dom of heaven into the ideal of the idea of do­ing the will of God. Long had the Mas­ter taught his fol­low­ers to pray: “Your king­dom come; your will be done”; and at this time he earnestly sought to in­duce them to aban­don the use of the term king­dom of God in fa­vor of the more prac­ti­cal equiv­a­lent, the will of God. But he did not suc­ceed.

170:2.12Je­sus de­sired to sub­sti­tute for the idea of the king­dom, king, and sub­jects, the con­cept of the heav­enly fam­ily, the heav­enly Fa­ther, and the lib­er­ated sons of God en­gaged in joy­ful and vol­un­tary ser­vice for their fel­low men and in the sub­lime and in­tel­li­gent wor­ship of God the Fa­ther.

• apostles › viewpoints

170:2.13Up to this time the apos­tles had ac­quired a dou­ble view­point of the king­dom; they re­garded it as:

170:2.141. A mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence then pres­ent in the hearts of true be­liev­ers, and

170:2.152. A ques­tion of racial or world phe­nom­ena; that the king­dom was in the fu­ture, some­thing to look for­ward to.

170:2.16They looked upon the com­ing of the king­dom in the hearts of men as a grad­ual de­vel­op­ment, like the leaven in the dough or like the grow­ing of the mus­tard seed. They be­lieved that the com­ing of the king­dom in the racial or world sense would be both sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar. Je­sus never tired of telling them that the king­dom of heaven was their per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of re­al­iz­ing the higher qual­i­ties of spir­i­tual liv­ing; that these re­al­i­ties of the spirit ex­pe­ri­ence are pro­gres­sively trans­lated to new and higher lev­els of di­vine cer­tainty and eter­nal grandeur.

• described › present reality

170:2.18“First. The king­dom of God in this world, the su­preme de­sire to do the will of God, the un­selfish love of man which yields the good fruits of im­proved eth­i­cal and moral con­duct.

• described › future hope

170:2.19“Sec­ond. The king­dom of God in heaven, the goal of mor­tal be­liev­ers, the es­tate wherein the love for God is per­fected, and wherein the will of God is done more di­vinely.”

• entrance › by faith, sincerity, and truth hunger

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:

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

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.

• entrance › truth hunger essential to

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.

• term › bred persecution
• term › other terms

170:2.24By the time the Apos­tle John be­gan to write the story of Je­sus’ life and teach­ings, the early Chris­tians had ex­pe­ri­enced so much trou­ble with the king­dom-of-God idea as a breeder of per­se­cu­tion that they had largely aban­doned the use of the term. John talks much about the “eter­nal life.” Je­sus of­ten spoke of it as the “king­dom of life.” He also fre­quently re­ferred to “the king­dom of God within you.” He once spoke of such an ex­pe­ri­ence as “fam­ily fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther.” Je­sus sought to sub­sti­tute many terms for the king­dom but al­ways with­out suc­cess. Among oth­ers, he used: the fam­ily of God, the Fa­ther’s will, the friends of God, the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers, the broth­er­hood of man, the Fa­ther’s fold, the chil­dren of God, the fel­low­ship of the faith­ful, the Fa­ther’s ser­vice, and the lib­er­ated sons of God.

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

170:3.2Though Je­sus taught that faith, sim­ple child­like be­lief, is the key to the door of the king­dom, he also taught that, hav­ing en­tered the door, there are the pro­gres­sive steps of righ­teous­ness which ev­ery be­liev­ing child must as­cend in or­der to grow up to the full stature of the ro­bust sons of God.

• entrance › by faith, sincerity, and truth hunger

170:3.3It is in the con­sid­er­a­tion of the tech­nique of re­ceiv­ing God’s for­give­ness that the at­tain­ment of the righ­teous­ness of the king­dom is re­vealed. Faith is the price you pay for en­trance into the fam­ily of God; but for­give­ness is the act of God which ac­cepts your faith as the price of ad­mis­sion. And the re­cep­tion of the for­give­ness of God by a king­dom be­liever in­volves a def­i­nite and ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence and con­sists in the fol­low­ing four steps, the king­dom steps of in­ner righ­teous­ness:

• described › God within

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.

• described › 5 phases
• described › enthronement of God in hearts of men
• described › Jesus never gave precise definition of
• described › present reality

170:4.1Je­sus never gave a pre­cise def­i­ni­tion of the king­dom. At one time he would dis­course on one phase of the king­dom, and at an­other time he would dis­cuss a dif­fer­ent as­pect of the broth­er­hood of God’s reign in the hearts of men. In the course of this Sab­bath af­ter­noon’s ser­mon Je­sus noted no less than five phases, or epochs, of the king­dom, and they were:

• described › God within

170:4.21. The per­sonal and in­ward ex­pe­ri­ence of the spir­i­tual life of the fel­low­ship of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever with God the Fa­ther.

170:4.32. The en­larg­ing broth­er­hood of gospel be­liev­ers, the so­cial as­pects of the en­hanced morals and quick­ened ethics re­sult­ing from the reign of God’s spirit in the hearts of in­di­vid­ual be­liev­ers.

170:4.43. The super­mor­tal broth­er­hood of in­vis­i­ble spir­i­tual be­ings which pre­vails on earth and in heaven, the super­hu­man king­dom of God.

• described › future hope

170:4.54. The prospect of the more per­fect ful­fill­ment of the will of God, the ad­vance to­ward the dawn of a new so­cial or­der in con­nec­tion with im­proved spir­i­tual liv­ing—the next age of man.

170:4.65. The king­dom in its full­ness, the fu­ture spir­i­tual age of light and life on earth.

• described › individual righteousness, fellowship with God

170:5.9The king­dom of Je­sus’ teach­ing, the spir­i­tual ideal of in­di­vid­ual righ­teous­ness and the con­cept of man’s di­vine fel­low­ship with God, be­came grad­u­ally sub­merged into the mys­tic con­cep­tion of the per­son of Je­sus as the Re­deemer-Cre­ator and spir­i­tual head of a so­cial­ized re­li­gious com­mu­nity. In this way a for­mal and in­sti­tu­tional church be­came the sub­sti­tute for the in­di­vid­u­ally spirit-led broth­er­hood of the king­dom.

• described › enthronement of God in hearts of men

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.

• described › greatest in k. humbles himself as servant, ministers truths

171:0.6By this time some­one had car­ried word of this con­fer­ence to Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, and they were highly in­dig­nant that James and John would seek to be pre­ferred be­fore them, and that they would se­cretly go with their mother to make such a re­quest. When they fell to ar­gu­ing among them­selves, Je­sus called them all to­gether and said: “You well un­der­stand how the rulers of the gen­tiles lord it over their sub­jects, and how those who are great ex­er­cise au­thor­ity. But it shall not be so in the king­dom of heaven. Whoso­ever would be great among you, let him first be­come your ser­vant. He who would be first in the king­dom, let him be­come your min­is­ter. I de­clare to you that the Son of Man came not to be min­is­tered to but to min­is­ter; and I now go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to lay down my life in the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will and in the ser­vice of my breth­ren.” When the apos­tles heard these words, they with­drew by them­selves to pray. That evening, in re­sponse to the labors of Pe­ter, James and John made suit­able apolo­gies to the ten and were re­stored to the good graces of their breth­ren.

• entrance › must be willing to leave wealth, home, wife, parents, children for

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.

• described › not of this world

171:8.3Said Je­sus: “You think that the Son of Man goes up to Je­ru­sa­lem to re­ceive a king­dom, but I de­clare that you are doomed to dis­ap­point­ment. Do you not re­mem­ber about a cer­tain prince who went into a far coun­try to re­ceive for him­self a king­dom, but even be­fore he could re­turn, the cit­i­zens of his prov­ince, who in their hearts had al­ready re­jected him, sent an em­bassy af­ter him, say­ing, ‘We will not have this man to reign over us’? As this king was re­jected in the tem­po­ral rule, so is the Son of Man to be re­jected in the spir­i­tual rule. Again I de­clare that my king­dom is not of this world; but if the Son of Man had been ac­corded the spir­i­tual rule of his peo­ple, he would have ac­cepted such a king­dom of men’s souls and would have reigned over such a do­min­ion of hu­man hearts. Not­with­stand­ing that they re­ject my spir­i­tual rule over them, I will re­turn again to re­ceive from oth­ers such a king­dom of spirit as is now de­nied me. You will see the Son of Man re­jected now, but in an­other age that which the chil­dren of Abra­ham now re­ject will be re­ceived and ex­alted.

• described › not of this world

172:3.6Je­sus had long tried by di­rect teach­ing to im­press upon his apos­tles and his dis­ci­ples that his king­dom was not of this world, that it was a purely spir­i­tual mat­ter; but he had not suc­ceeded in this ef­fort. Now, what he had failed to do by plain and per­sonal teach­ing, he would at­tempt to ac­com­plish by a sym­bolic ap­peal. Ac­cord­ingly, right af­ter the noon lunch, Je­sus called Pe­ter and John, and af­ter di­rect­ing them to go over to Beth­page, a neigh­bor­ing vil­lage a lit­tle off the main road and a short dis­tance north­west of Beth­any, he fur­ther said: “Go to Beth­page, and when you come to the junc­tion of the roads, you will find the colt of an ass tied there. Loose the colt and bring it back with you. If any­one asks you why you do this, merely say, ‘The Mas­ter has need of him.’” And when the two apos­tles had gone into Beth­page as the Mas­ter had di­rected, they found the colt tied near his mother in the open street and close to a house on the cor­ner. As Pe­ter be­gan to un­tie the colt, the owner came over and asked why they did this, and when Pe­ter an­swered him as Je­sus had di­rected, the man said: “If your Mas­ter is Je­sus from Gal­i­lee, let him have the colt.” And so they re­turned bring­ing the colt with them.

173:5.1Af­ter the scribes and rulers had with­drawn, Je­sus ad­dressed him­self again to the as­sem­bled crowd and spoke the para­ble of the wed­ding feast. He said:

173:5.2“The king­dom of heaven may be likened to a cer­tain king who made a mar­riage feast for his son and dis­patched mes­sen­gers to call those who had pre­vi­ously been in­vited to the feast to come, say­ing, ‘Ev­ery­thing is ready for the mar­riage sup­per at the king’s palace.’ Now, many of those who had once prom­ised to at­tend, at this time re­fused to come. When the king heard of these re­jec­tions of his in­vi­ta­tion, he sent other ser­vants and mes­sen­gers, say­ing: ‘Tell all those who were bid­den, to come, for, be­hold, my din­ner is ready. My oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all is in readi­ness for the cel­e­bra­tion of the forth­com­ing mar­riage of my son.’ But again did the thought­less make light of this call of their king, and they went their ways, one to the farm, an­other to the pot­tery, and oth­ers to their mer­chan­dise. Still oth­ers were not con­tent thus to slight the king’s call, but in open re­bel­lion they laid hands on the king’s mes­sen­gers and shame­fully mis­treated them, even killing some of them. And when the king per­ceived that his cho­sen guests, even those who had ac­cepted his pre­lim­i­nary in­vi­ta­tion and had prom­ised to at­tend the wed­ding feast, had fi­nally re­jected his call and in re­bel­lion had as­saulted and slain his cho­sen mes­sen­gers, he was ex­ceed­ingly wroth. And then this in­sulted king or­dered out his armies and the armies of his al­lies and in­structed them to de­stroy these re­bel­lious mur­der­ers and to burn down their city.

173:5.3“And when he had pun­ished those who spurned his in­vi­ta­tion, he ap­pointed yet an­other day for the wed­ding feast and said to his mes­sen­gers: ‘They who were first bid­den to the wed­ding were not wor­thy; so go now into the part­ing of the ways and into the high­ways and even be­yond the bor­ders of the city, and as many as you shall find, bid even these strangers to come in and at­tend this wed­ding feast.’ And then these ser­vants went out into the high­ways and the out-of-the-way places, and they gath­ered to­gether as many as they found, good and bad, rich and poor, so that at last the wed­ding cham­ber was filled with will­ing guests. When all was ready, the king came in to view his guests, and much to his sur­prise he saw there a man with­out a wed­ding gar­ment. The king, since he had freely pro­vided wed­ding gar­ments for all his guests, ad­dress­ing this man, said: ‘Friend, how is it that you come into my guest cham­ber on this oc­ca­sion with­out a wed­ding gar­ment?’ And this un­pre­pared man was speech­less. Then said the king to his ser­vants: ‘Cast out this thought­less guest from my house to share the lot of all the oth­ers who have spurned my hos­pi­tal­ity and re­jected my call. I will have none here ex­cept those who de­light to ac­cept my in­vi­ta­tion, and who do me the honor to wear those guest gar­ments so freely pro­vided for all.’”

173:5.4Af­ter speak­ing this para­ble, Je­sus was about to dis­miss the mul­ti­tude when a sym­pa­thetic be­liever, mak­ing his way through the crowds to­ward him, asked: “But, Mas­ter, how shall we know about these things? how shall we be ready for the king’s in­vi­ta­tion? what sign will you give us whereby we shall know that you are the Son of God?” And when the Mas­ter heard this, he said, “Only one sign shall be given you.” And then, point­ing to his own body, he con­tin­ued, “De­stroy this tem­ple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But they did not un­der­stand him, and as they dis­persed, they talked among them­selves, say­ing, “Al­most fifty years has this tem­ple been in build­ing, and yet he says he will de­stroy it and raise it up in three days.” Even his own apos­tles did not com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of this ut­ter­ance, but sub­se­quently, af­ter his res­ur­rec­tion, they re­called what he had said.

173:5.5About four o’clock this af­ter­noon Je­sus beck­oned to his apos­tles and in­di­cated that he de­sired to leave the tem­ple and to go to Beth­any for their evening meal and a night of rest. On the way up Oli­vet Je­sus in­structed An­drew, Philip, and Thomas that, on the mor­row, they should es­tab­lish a camp nearer the city which they could oc­cupy dur­ing the re­main­der of the Pass­over week. In com­pli­ance with this in­struc­tion the fol­low­ing morn­ing they pitched their tents in the hill­side ravine over­look­ing the pub­lic camp­ing park of Geth­sem­ane, on a plot of ground be­long­ing to Si­mon of Beth­any.

173:5.6Again it was a silent group of Jews who made their way up the west­ern slope of Oli­vet on this Mon­day night. These twelve men, as never be­fore, were be­gin­ning to sense that some­thing tragic was about to hap­pen. While the dra­matic cleans­ing of the tem­ple dur­ing the early morn­ing had aroused their hopes of see­ing the Mas­ter as­sert him­self and man­i­fest his mighty pow­ers, the events of the en­tire af­ter­noon only op­er­ated as an an­ti­cli­max in that they all pointed to the cer­tain re­jec­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ing by the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties. The apos­tles were gripped by sus­pense and were held in the firm grasp of a ter­ri­ble un­cer­tainty. They re­al­ized that only a few short days could in­ter­vene be­tween the events of the day just passed and the crash of an im­pend­ing doom. They all felt that some­thing tremen­dous was about to hap­pen, but they knew not what to ex­pect. They went to their var­i­ous places for rest, but they slept very lit­tle. Even the Al­pheus twins were at last aroused to the re­al­iza­tion that the events of the Mas­ter’s life were mov­ing swiftly to­ward their fi­nal cul­mi­na­tion.

• lawyer in temple not far from

174:4.4Je­sus spoke the truth when he re­ferred to this lawyer as be­ing “not far from the king­dom,” for that very night he went out to the Mas­ter’s camp near Geth­sem­ane, pro­fessed faith in the gospel of the king­dom, and was bap­tized by Josiah, one of the dis­ci­ples of Ab­ner.

• shall be given to gentiles

175:1.6“And when you do once re­ject this rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the king­dom of heaven shall be given to other peo­ples, to those who will re­ceive it with joy and glad­ness. In the name of the Fa­ther who sent me, I solemnly warn you that you are about to lose your po­si­tion in the world as the stan­dard-bear­ers of eter­nal truth and the cus­to­di­ans of the di­vine law. I am just now of­fer­ing you your last chance to come for­ward and re­pent, to sig­nify your in­ten­tion to seek God with all your hearts and to en­ter, like lit­tle chil­dren and by sin­cere faith, into the se­cu­rity and sal­va­tion of the king­dom of heaven.

• entrance › free, but cannot stand still in

176:3.5“To ev­ery one who has, more shall be given, and he shall have abun­dance; but from him who has not, even that which he has shall be taken away. You can­not stand still in the af­fairs of the eter­nal king­dom. My Fa­ther re­quires all his chil­dren to grow in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. You who know these truths must yield the in­crease of the fruits of the spirit and man­i­fest a grow­ing de­vo­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of your fel­low ser­vants. And re­mem­ber that, inas­much as you min­is­ter to one of the least of my breth­ren, you have done this ser­vice to me.

• establishment › freely 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.”

• establishment › do not seek to establish k. by laws or force

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.

• establishment › do not seek to establish k. by laws or force

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.

• establishment › k. will prosper in persecutions

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.

• establishment › do not seek to establish k. by laws or force

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.

• entrance › free, but cannot stand still in

178:3.4“When you see this city de­stroyed, for­get not that you have en­tered al­ready upon the eter­nal life of end­less ser­vice in the ever-ad­vanc­ing king­dom of heaven, even of the heaven of heav­ens. You should know that in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse and in mine are many abodes, and that there awaits the chil­dren of light the rev­e­la­tion of cities whose builder is God and worlds whose habit of life is righ­teous­ness and joy in the truth. I have brought the king­dom of heaven to you here on earth, but I de­clare that all of you who by faith en­ter therein and re­main therein by the liv­ing ser­vice of truth, shall surely as­cend to the worlds on high and sit with me in the spirit king­dom of our Fa­ther. But first must you gird your­selves and com­plete the work which you have be­gun with me. You must first pass through much tribu­la­tion and en­dure many sor­rows—and these tri­als are even now upon us—and when you have fin­ished your work on earth, you shall come to my joy, even as I have fin­ished my Fa­ther’s work on earth and am about to re­turn to his em­brace.”

• apostles › desire for preference in

179:1.6They are gath­ered to­gether to cel­e­brate, at least in spirit, an in­sti­tu­tion which an­te­dated even Moses and re­ferred to the times when their fa­thers were slaves in Egypt. This sup­per is their last ren­dezvous with Je­sus, and even in such a solemn set­ting, un­der the lead­er­ship of Ju­das the apos­tles are led once more to give way to their old predilec­tion for honor, pref­er­ence, and per­sonal ex­al­ta­tion.

• described › not ours; we are only its ambassadors

181:2.7Je­sus now went over to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, who stood up and lis­tened to this ad­mo­ni­tion: “You are a true son of Abra­ham, but what a time I have had try­ing to make you a son of this heav­enly king­dom. I love you and so do all of your breth­ren. I know that you love me, Si­mon, and that you also love the king­dom, but you are still set on mak­ing this king­dom come ac­cord­ing to your lik­ing. I know full well that you will even­tu­ally grasp the spir­i­tual na­ture and mean­ing of my gospel, and that you will do valiant work in its procla­ma­tion, but I am dis­tressed about what may hap­pen to you when I de­part. I would re­joice to know that you would not fal­ter; I would be made happy if I could know that, af­ter I go to the Fa­ther, you would not cease to be my apos­tle, and that you would ac­cept­ably de­port your­self as an am­bas­sador of the heav­enly king­dom.”

• described › not of this world

181:2.9And then, lay­ing his hand on Si­mon’s shoul­der, Je­sus said: “It is in­deed re­fresh­ing to hear you talk like that, es­pe­cially at such a time as this, but, my good friend, you still do not know what you are talk­ing about. Not for one mo­ment would I doubt your loy­alty, your de­vo­tion; I know you would not hes­i­tate to go forth in bat­tle and die for me, as all these oth­ers would” (and they all nod­ded a vig­or­ous ap­proval), “but that will not be re­quired of you. I have re­peat­edly told you that my king­dom is not of this world, and that my dis­ci­ples will not fight to ef­fect its es­tab­lish­ment. I have told you this many times, Si­mon, but you refuse to face the truth. I am not con­cerned with your loy­alty to me and to the king­dom, but what will you do when I go away and you at last wake up to the re­al­iza­tion that you have failed to grasp the mean­ing of my teach­ing, and that you must ad­just your mis­con­cep­tions to the re­al­ity of an­other and spir­i­tual or­der of af­fairs in the king­dom?”

• described › realm of order; leadership always provided

181:2.16When the Mas­ter had fin­ished speak­ing to James Zeb­e­dee, he stepped around to the end of the ta­ble where An­drew sat and, look­ing his faith­ful helper in the eyes, said: “An­drew, you have faith­fully rep­re­sented me as act­ing head of the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. Al­though you have some­times doubted and at other times man­i­fested dan­ger­ous timid­ity, still, you have al­ways been sin­cerely just and em­i­nently fair in deal­ing with your as­so­ciates. Ever since the or­di­na­tion of you and your breth­ren as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, you have been self-gov­ern­ing in all group ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs ex­cept that I des­ig­nated you as the act­ing head of these cho­sen ones. In no other tem­po­ral mat­ter have I acted to di­rect or to in­flu­ence your de­ci­sions. And this I did in or­der to pro­vide for lead­er­ship in the di­rec­tion of all your sub­se­quent group de­lib­er­a­tions. In my uni­verse and in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse of uni­verses, our breth­ren-sons are dealt with as in­di­vid­u­als in all their spir­i­tual re­la­tions, but in all group re­la­tion­ships we un­fail­ingly pro­vide for def­i­nite lead­er­ship. Our king­dom is a realm of or­der, and where two or more will crea­tures act in co-op­er­a­tion, there is al­ways pro­vided the au­thor­ity of lead­er­ship.

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

181:2.20And then Je­sus went over to Philip, who, stand­ing up, heard this mes­sage from his Mas­ter: “Philip, you have asked me many fool­ish ques­tions, but I have done my ut­most to an­swer ev­ery one, and now would I an­swer the last of such ques­tion­ings which have arisen in your most hon­est but un­spir­i­tual mind. All the time I have been com­ing around to­ward you, have you been say­ing to your­self, ‘What shall I ever do if the Mas­ter goes away and leaves us alone in the world?’ O, you of lit­tle faith! And yet you have al­most as much as many of your breth­ren. You have been a good stew­ard, Philip. You failed us only a few times, and one of those fail­ures we uti­lized to man­i­fest the Fa­ther’s glory. Your of­fice of stew­ard­ship is about over. You must soon more fully do the work you were called to do—the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom. Philip, you have al­ways wanted to be shown, and very soon shall you see great things. Far bet­ter that you should have seen all this by faith, but since you were sin­cere even in your ma­te­rial sight­ed­ness, you will live to see my words ful­filled. And then, when you are blessed with spir­i­tual vi­sion, go forth to your work, ded­i­cat­ing your life to the cause of lead­ing man­kind to search for God and to seek eter­nal re­al­i­ties with the eye of spir­i­tual faith and not with the eyes of the ma­te­rial mind. Re­mem­ber, Philip, you have a great mis­sion on earth, for the world is filled with those who look at life just as you have tended to. You have a great work to do, and when it is fin­ished in faith, you shall come to me in my king­dom, and I will take great plea­sure in show­ing you that which eye has not seen, ear heard, nor the mor­tal mind con­ceived. In the mean­time, be­come as a lit­tle child in the king­dom of the spirit and per­mit me, as the spirit of the new teacher, to lead you for­ward in the spir­i­tual king­dom. And in this way will I be able to do much for you which I was not able to ac­com­plish when I so­journed with you as a mor­tal of the realm. And al­ways re­mem­ber, Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther.”

• described › not of this world

182:2.3The apos­tles fell asleep only be­cause they were lit­er­ally ex­hausted; they had been run­ning short on sleep ever since their ar­rival in Je­ru­sa­lem. Be­fore they went to their sep­a­rate sleep­ing quar­ters, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes led them all over to his tent, where were stored the swords and other arms, and sup­plied each of them with this fight­ing equip­ment. All of them re­ceived these arms and girded them­selves there­with ex­cept Na­than­iel. Na­than­iel, in re­fus­ing to arm him­self, said: “My breth­ren, the Mas­ter has re­peat­edly told us that his king­dom is not of this world, and that his dis­ci­ples should not fight with the sword to bring about its es­tab­lish­ment. I be­lieve this; I do not think the Mas­ter needs to have us em­ploy the sword in his de­fense. We have all seen his mighty power and know that he could de­fend him­self against his en­e­mies if he so de­sired. If he will not re­sist his en­e­mies, it must be that such a course rep­re­sents his at­tempt to ful­fill his Fa­ther’s will. I will pray, but I will not wield the sword.” When An­drew heard Na­than­iel’s speech, he handed his sword back to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes. And so nine of them were armed as they sep­a­rated for the night.

• described › spiritual brotherhood of sons of God

185:3.3Then said Je­sus to Pi­late: “Do you not per­ceive that my king­dom is not of this world? If my king­dom were of this world, surely would my dis­ci­ples fight that I should not be de­liv­ered into the hands of the Jews. My pres­ence here be­fore you in these bonds is suf­fi­cient to show all men that my king­dom is a spir­i­tual do­min­ion, even the broth­er­hood of men who, through faith and by love, have be­come the sons of God. And this sal­va­tion is for the gen­tile as well as for the Jew.”

185:3.4“Then you are a king af­ter all?” said Pi­late. And Je­sus an­swered: “Yes, I am such a king, and my king­dom is the fam­ily of the faith sons of my Fa­ther who is in heaven. For this pur­pose was I born into this world, even that I should show my Fa­ther to all men and bear wit­ness to the truth of God. And even now do I de­clare to you that ev­ery one who loves the truth hears my voice.”

• described › neither Jew nor gentile, rich nor poor, man nor woman in

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.

• described › neither Jew nor gentile, rich nor poor, man nor woman in

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.

• described › not of this world

190:5.4As they walked along, Je­sus said to them: “How slow you are to com­pre­hend the truth! When you tell me that it is about the teach­ings and work of this man that you have your dis­cus­sions, then may I en­lighten you since I am more than fa­mil­iar with these teach­ings. Do you not re­mem­ber that this Je­sus al­ways taught that his king­dom was not of this world, and that all men, be­ing the sons of God, should find lib­erty and free­dom in the spir­i­tual joy of the fel­low­ship of the broth­er­hood of lov­ing ser­vice in this new king­dom of the truth of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s love? Do you not re­call how this Son of Man pro­claimed the sal­va­tion of God for all men, min­is­ter­ing to the sick and af­flicted and set­ting free those who were bound by fear and en­slaved by evil? Do you not know that this man of Naz­a­reth told his dis­ci­ples that he must go to Je­ru­sa­lem, be de­liv­ered up to his en­e­mies, who would put him to death, and that he would arise on the third day? Have you not been told all this? And have you never read in the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing this day of sal­va­tion for Jew and gen­tile, where it says that in him shall all the fam­i­lies of the earth be blessed; that he will hear the cry of the needy and save the souls of the poor who seek him; that all na­tions shall call him blessed? That such a De­liv­erer shall be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. That he will feed the flock like a true shep­herd, gath­er­ing the lambs in his arms and ten­derly car­ry­ing them in his bo­som. That he will open the eyes of the spir­i­tu­ally blind and bring the pris­on­ers of de­spair out into full lib­erty and light; that all who sit in dark­ness shall see the great light of eter­nal sal­va­tion. That he will bind up the bro­ken­hearted, pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives of sin, and open up the prison to those who are en­slaved by fear and bound by evil. That he will com­fort those who mourn and be­stow upon them the joy of sal­va­tion in the place of sor­row and heav­i­ness. That he shall be the de­sire of all na­tions and the ev­er­last­ing joy of those who seek righ­teous­ness. That this Son of truth and righ­teous­ness shall rise upon the world with heal­ing light and sav­ing power; even that he will save his peo­ple from their sins; that he will re­ally seek and save those who are lost. That he will not de­stroy the weak but min­is­ter sal­va­tion to all who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness. That those who be­lieve in him shall have eter­nal life. That he will pour out his spirit upon all flesh, and that this Spirit of Truth shall be in each be­liever a well of wa­ter, spring­ing up into ev­er­last­ing life. Did you not un­der­stand how great was the gospel of the king­dom which this man de­liv­ered to you? Do you not per­ceive how great a sal­va­tion has come upon you?”

• described › neither Jew nor gentile, rich nor poor, man nor woman in

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.

• described › neither Jew nor gentile, rich nor poor, man nor woman in

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.

• establishment › freely received, freely give

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.”

• described › God within

195:10.4“The king­dom of God is within you” was prob­a­bly the great­est pro­nounce­ment Je­sus ever made, next to the dec­la­ra­tion that his Fa­ther is a liv­ing and lov­ing spirit.

• establishment › call to building k. should thrill all believers

195:10.6The call to the ad­ven­ture of build­ing a new and trans­formed hu­man so­ci­ety by means of the spir­i­tual re­birth of Je­sus’ broth­er­hood of the king­dom should thrill all who be­lieve in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his com­pan­ions in the flesh.

• described › invisible, spiritual, characterized by unity, not uniformity
• described › Jesus brotherhood

195:10.11Chris­tian­ity is se­ri­ously con­fronted with the doom em­bod­ied in one of its own slo­gans: “A house di­vided against it­self can­not stand.” The non-Chris­tian world will hardly ca­pit­u­late to a sect-di­vided Chris­ten­dom. The liv­ing Je­sus is the only hope of a pos­si­ble uni­fi­ca­tion of Chris­tian­ity. The true church—the Je­sus broth­er­hood—is in­vis­i­ble, spir­i­tual, and is char­ac­ter­ized by unity, not nec­es­sar­ily by uni­for­mity. Uni­for­mity is the ear­mark of the phys­i­cal world of mech­a­nis­tic na­ture. Spir­i­tual unity is the fruit of faith union with the liv­ing Je­sus. The vis­i­ble church should refuse longer to hand­i­cap the prog­ress of the in­vis­i­ble and spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom of God. And this broth­er­hood is des­tined to be­come a liv­ing or­gan­ism in con­trast to an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It may well uti­lize such so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions, but it must not be sup­planted by them.

• described › Jesus visualized all spirit values as found in
• described › will of God

196:0.8The faith of Je­sus vi­su­al­ized all spirit val­ues as be­ing found in the king­dom of God; there­fore he said, “Seek first the king­dom of heaven.” Je­sus saw in the ad­vanced and ideal fel­low­ship of the king­dom the achieve­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “will of God.” The very heart of the prayer which he taught his dis­ci­ples was, “Your king­dom come; your will be done.” Hav­ing thus con­ceived of the king­dom as com­pris­ing the will of God, he de­voted him­self to the cause of its re­al­iza­tion with amaz­ing self-for­get­ful­ness and un­bounded en­thu­si­asm. But in all his in­tense mis­sion and through­out his ex­traor­di­nary life there never ap­peared the fury of the fa­natic nor the su­per­fi­cial froth­i­ness of the re­li­gious ego­tist.

• entrance › illustrated by spiritual simplicity of little child

196:0.12The faith of Je­sus at­tained the pu­rity of a child’s trust. His faith was so ab­so­lute and un­doubt­ing that it re­sponded to the charm of the con­tact of fel­low be­ings and to the won­ders of the uni­verse. His sense of de­pen­dence on the di­vine was so com­plete and so con­fi­dent that it yielded the joy and the as­sur­ance of ab­so­lute per­sonal se­cu­rity. There was no hes­i­tat­ing pre­tense in his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. In this gi­ant in­tel­lect of the full-grown man the faith of the child reigned su­preme in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the re­li­gious con­scious­ness. It is not strange that he once said, “Ex­cept you be­come as a lit­tle child, you shall not en­ter the king­dom.” Not­with­stand­ing that Je­sus’ faith was child­like, it was in no sense child­ish.