Matthew Levi

139:7.1Mat­thew, the sev­enth apos­tle, was cho­sen by An­drew. Mat­thew be­longed to a fam­ily of tax gath­er­ers, or pub­li­cans, but was him­self a cus­toms col­lec­tor in Ca­per­naum, where he lived. He was thirty-one years old and mar­ried and had four chil­dren. He was a man of mod­er­ate wealth, the only one of any means be­long­ing to the apos­tolic corps. He was a good busi­ness man, a good so­cial mixer, and was gifted with the abil­ity to make friends and to get along smoothly with a great va­ri­ety of peo­ple.

139:7.2An­drew ap­pointed Mat­thew the fi­nan­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the apos­tles. In a way he was the fis­cal agent and pub­lic­ity spokesman for the apos­tolic or­ga­ni­za­tion. He was a keen judge of hu­man na­ture and a very ef­fi­cient pro­pa­gan­dist. His is a per­son­al­ity dif­fi­cult to vi­su­al­ize, but he was a very earnest dis­ci­ple and an in­creas­ing be­liever in the mis­sion of Je­sus and in the cer­tainty of the king­dom. Je­sus never gave Levi a nick­name, but his fel­low apos­tles com­monly re­ferred to him as the “money-get­ter.”

139:7.3Levi’s strong point was his whole­hearted de­vo­tion to the cause. That he, a pub­li­can, had been taken in by Je­sus and his apos­tles was the cause for over­whelm­ing grat­i­tude on the part of the for­mer rev­enue col­lec­tor. How­ever, it re­quired some lit­tle time for the rest of the apos­tles, es­pe­cially Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Ju­das Is­car­iot, to be­come rec­on­ciled to the pub­li­can’s pres­ence in their midst. Mat­thew’s weak­ness was his short­sighted and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic view­point of life. But in all these mat­ters he made great prog­ress as the months went by. He, of course, had to be ab­sent from many of the most pre­cious sea­sons of in­struc­tion as it was his duty to keep the trea­sury re­plen­ished.

139:7.4It was the Mas­ter’s for­giv­ing dis­po­si­tion which Mat­thew most ap­pre­ci­ated. He would never cease to re­count that faith only was nec­es­sary in the busi­ness of find­ing God. He al­ways liked to speak of the king­dom as “this busi­ness of find­ing God.”

139:7.5Though Mat­thew was a man with a past, he gave an ex­cel­lent ac­count of him­self, and as time went on, his as­so­ciates be­came proud of the pub­li­can’s per­for­mances. He was one of the apos­tles who made ex­ten­sive notes on the say­ings of Je­sus, and these notes were used as the ba­sis of Isador’s sub­se­quent nar­ra­tive of the say­ings and do­ings of Je­sus, which has be­come known as the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Mat­thew.

139:7.6The great and use­ful life of Mat­thew, the busi­ness man and cus­toms col­lec­tor of Ca­per­naum, has been the means of lead­ing thou­sands upon thou­sands of other busi­ness men, pub­lic of­fi­cials, and politi­cians, down through the sub­se­quent ages, also to hear that en­gag­ing voice of the Mas­ter say­ing, “Fol­low me.” Mat­thew re­ally was a shrewd politi­cian, but he was in­tensely loyal to Je­sus and su­premely de­voted to the task of see­ing that the mes­sen­gers of the com­ing king­dom were ad­e­quately fi­nanced.

139:7.7The pres­ence of Mat­thew among the twelve was the means of keep­ing the doors of the king­dom wide open to hosts of down­hearted and out­cast souls who had re­garded them­selves as long since with­out the bounds of re­li­gious con­so­la­tion. Out­cast and de­spair­ing men and women flocked to hear Je­sus, and he never turned one away.

139:7.8Mat­thew re­ceived freely ten­dered of­fer­ings from be­liev­ing dis­ci­ples and the im­me­di­ate au­di­tors of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings, but he never openly so­licited funds from the mul­ti­tudes. He did all his fi­nan­cial work in a quiet and per­sonal way and raised most of the money among the more sub­stan­tial class of in­ter­ested be­liev­ers. He gave prac­ti­cally the whole of his mod­est for­tune to the work of the Mas­ter and his apos­tles, but they never knew of this gen­eros­ity, save Je­sus, who knew all about it. Mat­thew hes­i­tated openly to con­tribute to the apos­tolic funds for fear that Je­sus and his as­so­ciates might re­gard his money as be­ing tainted; so he gave much in the names of other be­liev­ers. Dur­ing the ear­lier months, when Mat­thew knew his pres­ence among them was more or less of a trial, he was strongly tempted to let them know that his funds of­ten sup­plied them with their daily bread, but he did not yield. When ev­i­dence of the dis­dain of the pub­li­can would be­come man­i­fest, Levi would burn to re­veal to them his gen­eros­ity, but al­ways he man­aged to keep still.

139:7.9When the funds for the week were short of the es­ti­mated re­quire­ments, Levi would of­ten draw heav­ily upon his own per­sonal re­sources. Also, some­times when he be­came greatly in­ter­ested in Je­sus’ teach­ing, he pre­ferred to re­main and hear the in­struc­tion, even though he knew he must per­son­ally make up for his fail­ure to so­licit the nec­es­sary funds. But Levi did so wish that Je­sus might know that much of the money came from his pocket! He lit­tle re­al­ized that the Mas­ter knew all about it. The apos­tles all died with­out know­ing that Mat­thew was their bene­fac­tor to such an ex­tent that, when he went forth to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom af­ter the be­gin­ning of the per­se­cu­tions, he was prac­ti­cally pen­ni­less.

139:7.10When these per­se­cu­tions caused the be­liev­ers to for­sake Je­ru­sa­lem, Mat­thew jour­neyed north, preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. He was lost to the knowl­edge of his for­mer apos­tolic as­so­ciates, but on he went, preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing, through Syria, Cap­pado­cia, Gala­tia, Bithy­nia, and Thrace. And it was in Thrace, at Lysi­machia, that cer­tain un­be­liev­ing Jews con­spired with the Ro­man sol­diers to en­com­pass his death. And this re­gen­er­ated pub­li­can died tri­umphant in the faith of a sal­va­tion he had so surely learned from the teach­ings of the Mas­ter dur­ing his re­cent so­journ on earth.

• Matthew Levi

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

• Matthew Levi

144:1.7Dur­ing these Sep­tem­ber weeks they rested, vis­ited, re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences since Je­sus first called them to ser­vice, and en­gaged in an earnest ef­fort to co-or­di­nate what the Mas­ter had so far taught them. In a mea­sure they all sensed that this would be their last op­por­tu­nity for pro­longed rest. They re­al­ized that their next pub­lic ef­fort in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee would mark the be­gin­ning of the fi­nal procla­ma­tion of the com­ing king­dom, but they had lit­tle or no set­tled idea as to what the king­dom would be when it came. John and An­drew thought the king­dom had al­ready come; Pe­ter and James be­lieved that it was yet to come; Na­than­iel and Thomas frankly con­fessed they were puz­zled; Mat­thew, Philip, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were un­cer­tain and con­fused; the twins were bliss­fully ig­no­rant of the con­tro­versy; and Ju­das Is­car­iot was silent, non­com­mit­tal.

194:1.2It was about two o’clock when Pe­ter stood up in that very place where his Mas­ter had last taught in this tem­ple, and de­liv­ered that im­pas­sioned ap­peal which re­sulted in the win­ning of more than two thou­sand souls. The Mas­ter had gone, but they sud­denly dis­cov­ered that this story about him had great power with the peo­ple. No won­der they were led on into the fur­ther procla­ma­tion of that which vin­di­cated their for­mer de­vo­tion to Je­sus and at the same time so con­strained men to be­lieve in him. Six of the apos­tles par­tic­i­pated in this meet­ing: Pe­ter, An­drew, James, John, Philip, and Mat­thew. They talked for more than an hour and a half and de­liv­ered mes­sages in Greek, He­brew, and Ara­maic, as well as a few words in even other tongues with which they had a speak­ing ac­quain­tance.

138:10.65. Mat­thew was the fis­cal agent of the apos­tolic corps. It was his duty to see that the bud­get was bal­anced, the trea­sury re­plen­ished. If the funds for mu­tual sup­port were not forth­com­ing, if do­na­tions suf­fi­cient to main­tain the party were not re­ceived, Mat­thew was em­pow­ered to or­der the twelve back to their nets for a sea­son. But this was never nec­es­sary af­ter they be­gan their pub­lic work; he al­ways had suf­fi­cient funds in the trea­surer’s hands to fi­nance their ac­tiv­i­ties.

163:0.2Je­sus gave a talk to this com­pany each morn­ing. Pe­ter taught meth­ods of pub­lic preach­ing; Na­than­iel in­structed them in the art of teach­ing; Thomas ex­plained how to an­swer ques­tions; while Mat­thew di­rected the or­ga­ni­za­tion of their group fi­nances. The other apos­tles also par­tic­i­pated in this train­ing in ac­cor­dance with their spe­cial ex­pe­ri­ence and nat­u­ral tal­ents.

191:2.1Shortly af­ter nine o’clock that evening, af­ter the de­par­ture of Cleopas and Ja­cob, while the Al­pheus twins com­forted Pe­ter, and while Na­than­iel re­mon­strated with An­drew, and as the ten apos­tles were there as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber with all the doors bolted for fear of ar­rest, the Mas­ter, in mor­ontia form, sud­denly ap­peared in the midst of them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Why are you so fright­ened when I ap­pear, as though you had seen a spirit? Did I not tell you about these things when I was pres­ent with you in the flesh? Did I not say to you that the chief priests and the rulers would de­liver me up to be killed, that one of your own num­ber would be­tray me, and that on the third day I would rise? Where­fore all your doubt­ings and all this dis­cus­sion about the re­ports of the women, Cleopas and Ja­cob, and even Pe­ter? How long will you doubt my words and refuse to be­lieve my promises? And now that you ac­tu­ally see me, will you be­lieve? Even now one of you is ab­sent. When you are gath­ered to­gether once more, and af­ter all of you know of a cer­tainty that the Son of Man has risen from the grave, go hence into Gal­i­lee. Have faith in God; have faith in one an­other; and so shall you en­ter into the new ser­vice of the king­dom of heaven. I will tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem with you un­til you are ready to go into Gal­i­lee. My peace I leave with you.”

191:2.2When the mor­ontia Je­sus had spo­ken to them, he van­ished in an in­stant from their sight. And they all fell on their faces, prais­ing God and ven­er­at­ing their van­ished Mas­ter. This was the Mas­ter’s ninth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance.

191:5.1Thomas spent a lone­some week alone with him­self in the hills around about Oli­vet. Dur­ing this time he saw only those at Si­mon’s house and John Mark. It was about nine o’clock on Sat­ur­day, April 15, when the two apos­tles found him and took him back with them to their ren­dezvous at the Mark home. The next day Thomas lis­tened to the telling of the sto­ries of the Mas­ter’s var­i­ous ap­pear­ances, but he stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve. He main­tained that Pe­ter had en­thused them into think­ing they had seen the Mas­ter. Na­than­iel rea­soned with him, but it did no good. There was an emo­tional stub­born­ness as­so­ci­ated with his cus­tom­ary doubt­ful­ness, and this state of mind, cou­pled with his cha­grin at hav­ing run away from them, con­spired to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of iso­la­tion which even Thomas him­self did not fully un­der­stand. He had with­drawn from his fel­lows, he had gone his own way, and now, even when he was back among them, he un­con­sciously tended to as­sume an at­ti­tude of dis­agree­ment. He was slow to sur­ren­der; he dis­liked to give in. With­out in­tend­ing it, he re­ally en­joyed the at­ten­tion paid him; he de­rived un­con­scious sat­is­fac­tion from the ef­forts of all his fel­lows to con­vince and con­vert him. He had missed them for a full week, and he ob­tained con­sid­er­able plea­sure from their per­sis­tent at­ten­tions.

191:5.2They were hav­ing their evening meal a lit­tle af­ter six o’clock, with Pe­ter sit­ting on one side of Thomas and Na­than­iel on the other, when the doubt­ing apos­tle said: “I will not be­lieve un­less I see the Mas­ter with my own eyes and put my fin­ger in the mark of the nails.” As they thus sat at sup­per, and while the doors were se­curely shut and barred, the mor­ontia Mas­ter sud­denly ap­peared in­side the cur­va­ture of the ta­ble and, stand­ing di­rectly in front of Thomas, said:

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

191:5.4When the Mas­ter had so spo­ken, he looked down into the face of Thomas and said: “And you, Thomas, who said you would not be­lieve un­less you could see me and put your fin­ger in the nail marks of my hands, have now be­held me and heard my words; and though you see no nail marks on my hands, since I am raised in the form that you also shall have when you de­part from this world, what will you say to your breth­ren? You will ac­knowl­edge the truth, for al­ready in your heart you had be­gun to be­lieve even when you so stoutly as­serted your un­be­lief. Your doubts, Thomas, al­ways most stub­bornly as­sert them­selves just as they are about to crum­ble. Thomas, I bid you be not faith­less but be­liev­ing—and I know you will be­lieve, even with a whole heart.”

191:5.5When Thomas heard these words, he fell on his knees be­fore the mor­ontia Mas­ter and ex­claimed, “I be­lieve! My Lord and my Mas­ter!” Then said Je­sus to Thomas: “You have be­lieved, Thomas, be­cause you have re­ally seen and heard me. Blessed are those in the ages to come who will be­lieve even though they have not seen with the eye of flesh nor heard with the mor­tal ear.”

191:5.6And then, as the Mas­ter’s form moved over near the head of the ta­ble, he ad­dressed them all, say­ing: “And now go all of you to Gal­i­lee, where I will pres­ently ap­pear to you.” Af­ter he said this, he van­ished from their sight.

191:5.7The eleven apos­tles were now fully con­vinced that Je­sus had risen from the dead, and very early the next morn­ing, be­fore the break of day, they started out for Gal­i­lee.

192:1.1About six o’clock Fri­day morn­ing, April 21, the mor­ontia Mas­ter made his thir­teenth ap­pear­ance, the first in Gal­i­lee, to the ten apos­tles as their boat drew near the shore close to the usual land­ing place at Beth­saida.

192:1.2Af­ter the apos­tles had spent the af­ter­noon and early evening of Thurs­day in wait­ing at the Zeb­e­dee home, Si­mon Pe­ter sug­gested that they go fish­ing. When Pe­ter pro­posed the fish­ing trip, all of the apos­tles de­cided to go along. All night they toiled with the nets but caught no fish. They did not much mind the fail­ure to make a catch, for they had many in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences to talk over, things which had so re­cently hap­pened to them at Je­ru­sa­lem. But when day­light came, they de­cided to re­turn to Beth­saida. As they neared the shore, they saw some­one on the beach, near the boat land­ing, stand­ing by a fire. At first they thought it was John Mark, who had come down to wel­come them back with their catch, but as they drew nearer the shore, they saw they were mis­taken—the man was too tall for John. It had oc­curred to none of them that the per­son on the shore was the Mas­ter. They did not al­to­gether un­der­stand why Je­sus wanted to meet with them amidst the scenes of their ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tions and out in the open in con­tact with na­ture, far away from the shut-in en­vi­ron­ment of Je­ru­sa­lem with its tragic as­so­ci­a­tions of fear, be­trayal, and death. He had told them that, if they would go into Gal­i­lee, he would meet them there, and he was about to ful­fill that prom­ise.

192:1.3As they dropped an­chor and pre­pared to en­ter the small boat for go­ing ashore, the man on the beach called to them, “Lads, have you caught any­thing?” And when they an­swered, “No,” he spoke again. “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find fish.” While they did not know it was Je­sus who had di­rected them, with one ac­cord they cast in the net as they had been in­structed, and im­me­di­ately it was filled, so much so that they were hardly able to draw it up. Now, John Zeb­e­dee was quick of per­cep­tion, and when he saw the heavy-laden net, he per­ceived that it was the Mas­ter who had spo­ken to them. When this thought came into his mind, he leaned over and whis­pered to Pe­ter, “It is the Mas­ter.” Pe­ter was ever a man of thought­less ac­tion and im­petu­ous de­vo­tion; so when John whis­pered this in his ear, he quickly arose and cast him­self into the wa­ter that he might the sooner reach the Mas­ter’s side. His breth­ren came up close be­hind him, hav­ing come ashore in the small boat, haul­ing the net of fishes af­ter them.

192:1.4By this time John Mark was up and, see­ing the apos­tles com­ing ashore with the heavy-laden net, ran down the beach to greet them; and when he saw eleven men in­stead of ten, he sur­mised that the un­rec­og­nized one was the risen Je­sus, and as the as­ton­ished ten stood by in si­lence, the youth rushed up to the Mas­ter and, kneel­ing at his feet, said, “My Lord and my Mas­ter.” And then Je­sus spoke, not as he had in Je­ru­sa­lem, when he greeted them with “Peace be upon you,” but in com­mon­place tones he ad­dressed John Mark: “Well, John, I am glad to see you again and in care­free Gal­i­lee, where we can have a good visit. Stay with us, John, and have break­fast.”

192:1.5As Je­sus talked with the young man, the ten were so as­ton­ished and sur­prised that they ne­glected to haul the net of fish in upon the beach. Now spoke Je­sus: “Bring in your fish and pre­pare some for break­fast. Al­ready we have the fire and much bread.”

192:1.6While John Mark had paid homage to the Mas­ter, Pe­ter had for a mo­ment been shocked at the sight of the coals of fire glow­ing there on the beach; the scene re­minded him so vividly of the mid­night fire of char­coal in the court­yard of An­nas, where he had dis­owned the Mas­ter, but he shook him­self and, kneel­ing at the Mas­ter’s feet, ex­claimed, “My Lord and my Mas­ter!”

192:1.7Pe­ter then joined his com­rades as they hauled in the net. When they had landed their catch, they counted the fish, and there were 153 large ones. And again was the mis­take made of call­ing this an­other mirac­u­lous catch of fish. There was no mir­a­cle con­nected with this episode. It was merely an ex­er­cise of the Mas­ter’s pre­knowl­edge. He knew the fish were there and ac­cord­ingly di­rected the apos­tles where to cast the net.

192:1.8Je­sus spoke to them, say­ing: “Come now, all of you, to break­fast. Even the twins should sit down while I visit with you; John Mark will dress the fish.” John Mark brought seven good-sized fish, which the Mas­ter put on the fire, and when they were cooked, the lad served them to the ten. Then Je­sus broke the bread and handed it to John, who in turn served it to the hun­gry apos­tles. When they had all been served, Je­sus bade John Mark sit down while he him­self served the fish and the bread to the lad. And as they ate, Je­sus vis­ited with them and re­counted their many ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee and by this very lake.

192:1.9This was the third time Je­sus had man­i­fested him­self to the apos­tles as a group. When Je­sus first ad­dressed them, ask­ing if they had any fish, they did not sus­pect who he was be­cause it was a com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence for these fish­er­men on the Sea of Gal­i­lee, when they came ashore, to be thus ac­costed by the fish mer­chants of Ta­ri­chea, who were usu­ally on hand to buy the fresh catches for the dry­ing es­tab­lish­ments.

192:1.10Je­sus vis­ited with the ten apos­tles and John Mark for more than an hour, and then he walked up and down the beach, talk­ing with them two and two—but not the same cou­ples he had at first sent out to­gether to teach. All eleven of the apos­tles had come down from Je­ru­sa­lem to­gether, but Si­mon Ze­lo­tes grew more and more de­spon­dent as they drew near Gal­i­lee, so that, when they reached Beth­saida, he for­sook his breth­ren and re­turned to his home.

192:1.11Be­fore tak­ing leave of them this morn­ing, Je­sus di­rected that two of the apos­tles should vol­un­teer to go to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and bring him back that very day. And Pe­ter and An­drew did so.

192:2.1When they had fin­ished break­fast, and while the oth­ers sat by the fire, Je­sus beck­oned to Pe­ter and to John that they should come with him for a stroll on the beach. As they walked along, Je­sus said to John, “John, do you love me?” And when John an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, with all my heart,” the Mas­ter said: “Then, John, give up your in­tol­er­ance and learn to love men as I have loved you. De­vote your life to prov­ing that love is the great­est thing in the world. It is the love of God that im­pels men to seek sal­va­tion. Love is the an­ces­tor of all spir­i­tual good­ness, the essence of the true and the beau­ti­ful.”

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

192:2.3Af­ter they had walked along a lit­tle far­ther, the Mas­ter turned to Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you re­ally love me?” And then said Si­mon, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And again said Je­sus: “Then take good care of my sheep. Be a good and a true shep­herd to the flock. Be­tray not their con­fi­dence in you. Be not taken by sur­prise at the en­emy’s hand. Be on guard at all times—watch and pray.”

192:2.4When they had gone a few steps far­ther, Je­sus turned to Pe­ter and, for the third time, asked, “Pe­ter, do you truly love me?” And then Pe­ter, be­ing slightly grieved at the Mas­ter’s seem­ing dis­trust of him, said with con­sid­er­able feel­ing, “Lord, you know all things, and there­fore do you know that I re­ally and truly love you.” Then said Je­sus: “Feed my sheep. Do not for­sake the flock. Be an ex­am­ple and an in­spi­ra­tion to all your fel­low shep­herds. Love the flock as I have loved you and de­vote your­self to their wel­fare even as I have de­voted my life to your wel­fare. And fol­low af­ter me even to the end.”

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

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

192:2.7When they re­turned to the oth­ers, Je­sus went for a walk and talk with An­drew and James. When they had gone a short dis­tance, Je­sus said to An­drew, “An­drew, do you trust me?” And when the for­mer chief of the apos­tles heard Je­sus ask such a ques­tion, he stood still and an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, of a cer­tainty I trust you, and you know that I do.” Then said Je­sus: “An­drew, if you trust me, trust your breth­ren more—even Pe­ter. I once trusted you with the lead­er­ship of your breth­ren. Now must you trust oth­ers as I leave you to go to the Fa­ther. When your breth­ren be­gin to scat­ter abroad be­cause of bit­ter per­se­cu­tions, be a con­sid­er­ate and wise coun­selor to James my brother in the flesh when they put heavy bur­dens upon him which he is not qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to bear. And then go on trust­ing, for I will not fail you. When you are through on earth, you shall come to me.”

192:2.8Then Je­sus turned to James, ask­ing, “James, do you trust me?” And of course James replied, “Yes, Mas­ter, I trust you with all my heart.” Then said Je­sus: “James, if you trust me more, you will be less im­pa­tient with your breth­ren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the broth­er­hood of be­liev­ers. Learn to weigh the con­se­quences of your say­ings and your do­ings. Re­mem­ber that the reap­ing is in ac­cor­dance with the sow­ing. Pray for tran­quil­lity of spirit and cul­ti­vate pa­tience. These graces, with liv­ing faith, shall sus­tain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sac­ri­fice. But never be dis­mayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to be with me.”

192:2.9Je­sus next talked with Thomas and Na­than­iel. Said he to Thomas, “Thomas, do you serve me?” Thomas replied, “Yes, Lord, I serve you now and al­ways.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would serve me, serve my breth­ren in the flesh even as I have served you. And be not weary in this well-do­ing but per­se­vere as one who has been or­dained by God for this ser­vice of love. When you have fin­ished your ser­vice with me on earth, you shall serve with me in glory. Thomas, you must cease doubt­ing; you must grow in faith and the knowl­edge of truth. Be­lieve in God like a child but cease to act so child­ishly. Have cour­age; be strong in faith and mighty in the king­dom of God.”

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

192:2.11Af­ter this the Mas­ter talked with Mat­thew and Philip. To Philip he said, “Philip, do you obey me?” Philip an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I will obey you even with my life.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would obey me, go then into the lands of the gen­tiles and pro­claim this gospel. The proph­ets have told you that to obey is bet­ter than to sac­ri­fice. By faith have you be­come a God-know­ing king­dom son. There is but one law to obey—that is the com­mand to go forth pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom. Cease to fear men; be un­afraid to preach the good news of eter­nal life to your fel­lows who lan­guish in dark­ness and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy your­self with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tid­ings just as are your breth­ren. And I will go be­fore you and be with you even to the end.”

192:2.12And then, speak­ing to Mat­thew, the Mas­ter asked, “Mat­thew, do you have it in your heart to obey me?” Mat­thew an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I am fully ded­i­cated to do­ing your will.” Then said the Mas­ter: “Mat­thew, if you would obey me, go forth to teach all peo­ples this gospel of the king­dom. No longer will you serve your breth­ren the ma­te­rial things of life; hence­forth you are also to pro­claim the good news of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion. From now on have an eye sin­gle only to obey­ing your com­mis­sion to preach this gospel of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. As I have done the Fa­ther’s will on earth, so shall you ful­fill the di­vine com­mis­sion. Re­mem­ber, both Jew and gen­tile are your breth­ren. Fear no man when you pro­claim the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And where I go, you shall pres­ently come.”

192:2.13Then he walked and talked with the Al­pheus twins, James and Ju­das, and speak­ing to both of them, he asked, “James and Ju­das, do you be­lieve in me?” And when they both an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we do be­lieve,” he said: “I will soon leave you. You see that I have al­ready left you in the flesh. I tarry only a short time in this form be­fore I go to my Fa­ther. You be­lieve in me—you are my apos­tles, and you al­ways will be. Go on be­liev­ing and re­mem­ber­ing your as­so­ci­a­tion with me, when I am gone, and af­ter you have, per­chance, re­turned to the work you used to do be­fore you came to live with me. Never al­low a change in your out­ward work to in­flu­ence your al­le­giance. Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never for­get that, when you are a faith son of God, all up­right work of the realm is sa­cred. Noth­ing which a son of God does can be com­mon. Do your work, there­fore, from this time on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and bet­ter worlds where you shall like­wise work for me. And in all of this work, on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall dwell within you.”

192:2.14It was al­most ten o’clock when Je­sus re­turned from his visit with the Al­pheus twins, and as he left the apos­tles, he said: “Farewell, un­til I meet you all on the mount of your or­di­na­tion to­mor­row at noon­time.” When he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.1At noon on Sat­ur­day, April 22, the eleven apos­tles as­sem­bled by ap­point­ment on the hill near Ca­per­naum, and Je­sus ap­peared among them. This meet­ing oc­curred on the very mount where the Mas­ter had set them apart as his apos­tles and as am­bas­sadors of the Fa­ther’s king­dom on earth. And this was the Mas­ter’s four­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion.

192:3.2At this time the eleven apos­tles knelt in a cir­cle about the Mas­ter and heard him re­peat the charges and saw him re-en­act the or­di­na­tion scene even as when they were first set apart for the spe­cial work of the king­dom. And all of this was to them as a mem­ory of their for­mer con­se­cra­tion to the Fa­ther’s ser­vice, ex­cept the Mas­ter’s prayer. When the Mas­ter—the mor­ontia Je­sus—now prayed, it was in tones of majesty and with words of power such as the apos­tles had never be­fore heard. Their Mas­ter now spoke with the rulers of the uni­verses as one who, in his own uni­verse, had had all power and au­thor­ity com­mit­ted to his hand. And these eleven men never for­got this ex­pe­ri­ence of the mor­ontia reded­i­ca­tion to the for­mer pledges of am­bas­sador­ship. The Mas­ter spent just one hour on this mount with his am­bas­sadors, and when he had taken an af­fec­tion­ate farewell of them, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.3And no one saw Je­sus for a full week. The apos­tles re­ally had no idea what to do, not know­ing whether the Mas­ter had gone to the Fa­ther. In this state of un­cer­tainty they tar­ried at Beth­saida. They were afraid to go fish­ing lest he come to visit them and they miss see­ing him. Dur­ing this en­tire week Je­sus was oc­cu­pied with the mor­ontia crea­tures on earth and with the af­fairs of the mor­ontia tran­si­tion which he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing on this world.

192:4.1Word of the ap­pear­ances of Je­sus was spread­ing through­out Gal­i­lee, and ev­ery day in­creas­ing num­bers of be­liev­ers ar­rived at the Zeb­e­dee home to in­quire about the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion and to find out the truth about these re­puted ap­pear­ances. Pe­ter, early in the week, sent out word that a pub­lic meet­ing would be held by the sea­side the next Sab­bath at three o’clock in the af­ter­noon.

192:4.2Ac­cord­ingly, on Sat­ur­day, April 29, at three o’clock, more than five hun­dred be­liev­ers from the en­vi­rons of Ca­per­naum as­sem­bled at Beth­saida to hear Pe­ter preach his first pub­lic ser­mon since the res­ur­rec­tion. The apos­tle was at his best, and af­ter he had fin­ished his ap­peal­ing dis­course, few of his hear­ers doubted that the Mas­ter had risen from the dead.

192:4.3Pe­ter ended his ser­mon, say­ing: “We af­firm that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth is not dead; we de­clare that he has risen from the tomb; we pro­claim that we have seen him and talked with him.” Just as he fin­ished mak­ing this dec­la­ra­tion of faith, there by his side, in full view of all these peo­ple, the Mas­ter ap­peared in mor­ontia form and, speak­ing to them in fa­mil­iar ac­cents, said, “Peace be upon you, and my peace I leave with you.” When he had thus ap­peared and had so spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. This was the fif­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of the risen Je­sus.

192:4.4Be­cause of cer­tain things said to the eleven while they were in con­fer­ence with the Mas­ter on the mount of or­di­na­tion, the apos­tles re­ceived the im­pres­sion that their Mas­ter would pres­ently make a pub­lic ap­pear­ance be­fore a group of the Galilean be­liev­ers, and that, af­ter he had done so, they were to re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, early the next day, Sun­day, April 30, the eleven left Beth­saida for Je­ru­sa­lem. They did con­sid­er­able teach­ing and preach­ing on the way down the Jor­dan, so that they did not ar­rive at the home of the Marks in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til late on Wednes­day, May 3.

192:4.5This was a sad home-com­ing for John Mark. Just a few hours be­fore he reached home, his fa­ther, Eli­jah Mark, sud­denly died from a hem­or­rhage in the brain. Al­though the thought of the cer­tainty of the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead did much to com­fort the apos­tles in their grief, at the same time they truly mourned the loss of their good friend, who had been their stanch sup­porter even in the times of great trou­ble and dis­ap­point­ment. John Mark did all he could to com­fort his mother and, speak­ing for her, in­vited the apos­tles to con­tinue to make their home at her house. And the eleven made this up­per cham­ber their head­quar­ters un­til af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost.

192:4.6The apos­tles had pur­posely en­tered Je­ru­sa­lem af­ter night­fall that they might not be seen by the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties. Nei­ther did they pub­licly ap­pear in con­nec­tion with the fu­neral of Eli­jah Mark. All the next day they re­mained in quiet seclu­sion in this event­ful up­per cham­ber.

192:4.7On Thurs­day night the apos­tles had a won­der­ful meet­ing in this up­per cham­ber and all pledged them­selves to go forth in the pub­lic preach­ing of the new gospel of the risen Lord ex­cept Thomas, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and the Al­pheus twins. Al­ready had be­gun the first steps of chang­ing the gospel of the king­dom—son­ship with God and broth­er­hood with man—into the procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus. Na­than­iel op­posed this shift in the bur­den of their pub­lic mes­sage, but he could not with­stand Pe­ter’s elo­quence, nei­ther could he over­come the en­thu­si­asm of the dis­ci­ples, es­pe­cially the women be­liev­ers.

192:4.8And so, un­der the vig­or­ous lead­er­ship of Pe­ter and ere the Mas­ter as­cended to the Fa­ther, his well-mean­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­gan that sub­tle pro­cess of grad­u­ally and cer­tainly chang­ing the re­li­gion of Je­sus into a new and mod­i­fied form of re­li­gion about Je­sus.

193:0.1The six­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus oc­curred on Fri­day, May 5, in the court­yard of Nicode­mus, about nine o’clock at night. On this evening the Je­ru­sa­lem be­liev­ers had made their first at­tempt to get to­gether since the res­ur­rec­tion. As­sem­bled here at this time were the eleven apos­tles, the women’s corps and their as­so­ciates, and about fifty other lead­ing dis­ci­ples of the Mas­ter, in­clud­ing a num­ber of the Greeks. This com­pany of be­liev­ers had been vis­it­ing in­for­mally for more than half an hour when, sud­denly, the mor­ontia Mas­ter ap­peared in full view and im­me­di­ately be­gan to in­struct them. Said Je­sus:

193:0.2“Peace be upon you. This is the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive group of be­liev­ers—apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, both men and women—to which I have ap­peared since the time of my de­liv­er­ance from the flesh. I now call you to wit­ness that I told you be­fore­hand that my so­journ among you must come to an end; I told you that pres­ently I must re­turn to the Fa­ther. And then I plainly told you how the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews would de­liver me up to be put to death, and that I would rise from the grave. Why, then, did you al­low your­selves to be­come so dis­con­certed by all this when it came to pass? and why were you so sur­prised when I rose from the tomb on the third day? You failed to be­lieve me be­cause you heard my words with­out com­pre­hend­ing the mean­ing thereof.

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

193:0.4“I ad­mon­ish you ever to re­mem­ber that your mis­sion among men is to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom—the re­al­ity of the fa­ther­hood of God and the truth of the son­ship of man. Pro­claim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the sav­ing gospel. Your mes­sage is not changed by my res­ur­rec­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. Son­ship with God, by faith, is still the sav­ing truth of the gospel of the king­dom. You are to go forth preach­ing the love of God and the ser­vice of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can ac­tu­ally re­al­ize, and daily ex­pe­ri­ence, this en­nobling truth. My be­stowal should help all men to know that they are the chil­dren of God, but such knowl­edge will not suf­fice if they fail per­son­ally to faith-grasp the sav­ing truth that they are the liv­ing spirit sons of the eter­nal Fa­ther. The gospel of the king­dom is con­cerned with the love of the Fa­ther and the ser­vice of his chil­dren on earth.

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.”

193:0.6When the Mas­ter had spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. It was near day­break be­fore these be­liev­ers dis­persed; all night they re­mained to­gether, earnestly dis­cussing the Mas­ter’s ad­mo­ni­tions and con­tem­plat­ing all that had be­fallen them. James Zeb­e­dee and oth­ers of the apos­tles also told them of their ex­pe­ri­ences with the mor­ontia Mas­ter in Gal­i­lee and re­cited how he had three times ap­peared to them.

193:3.1Early Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, Je­sus made his last ap­pear­ance on earth as a mor­ontia per­son­al­ity. As the eleven apos­tles were about to sit down to break­fast in the up­per cham­ber of Mary Mark’s home, Je­sus ap­peared to them and said:

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

193:3.3When he had spo­ken, he beck­oned for them to come with him, and he led them out on the Mount of Olives, where he bade them farewell prepara­tory to de­part­ing from Uran­tia. This was a solemn jour­ney to Oli­vet. Not a word was spo­ken by any of them from the time they left the up­per cham­ber un­til Je­sus paused with them on the Mount of Olives.

193:5.1It was al­most half past seven o’clock this Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, when Je­sus ar­rived on the west­ern slope of Mount Oli­vet with his eleven silent and some­what be­wil­dered apos­tles. From this lo­ca­tion, about two thirds the way up the moun­tain, they could look out over Je­ru­sa­lem and down upon Geth­sem­ane. Je­sus now pre­pared to say his last farewell to the apos­tles be­fore he took leave of Uran­tia. As he stood there be­fore them, with­out be­ing di­rected they knelt about him in a cir­cle, and the Mas­ter said:

193:5.2“I bade you tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til you were en­dowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my so­journ the Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall be­gin the new procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, first in Je­ru­sa­lem and then to the ut­ter­most parts of the world. Love men with the love where­with I have loved you and serve your fel­low mor­tals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives im­pel souls to be­lieve the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are breth­ren. Re­mem­ber all I have taught you and the life I have lived among you. My love over­shad­ows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell.”

193:5.3When the mor­ontia Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight. This so-called as­cen­sion of Je­sus was in no way dif­fer­ent from his other dis­ap­pear­ances from mor­tal vi­sion dur­ing the forty days of his mor­ontia ca­reer on Uran­tia.

193:5.4The Mas­ter went to Eden­tia by way of Je­ru­sem, where the Most Highs, un­der the ob­ser­va­tion of the Par­a­dise Son, re­leased Je­sus of Naz­a­reth from the mor­ontia state and, through the spirit chan­nels of as­cen­sion, re­turned him to the sta­tus of Par­a­dise son­ship and su­preme sov­er­eignty on Sal­ving­ton.

193:5.5It was about seven forty-five this morn­ing when the mor­ontia Je­sus dis­ap­peared from the ob­ser­va­tion of his eleven apos­tles to be­gin the as­cent to the right hand of his Fa­ther, there to re­ceive for­mal con­fir­ma­tion of his com­pleted sov­er­eignty of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

138:3.1The next day Je­sus and the six went to call upon Mat­thew, the cus­toms col­lec­tor. Mat­thew was await­ing them, hav­ing bal­anced his books and made ready to turn the af­fairs of his of­fice over to his brother. As they ap­proached the toll house, An­drew stepped for­ward with Je­sus, who, look­ing into Mat­thew’s face, said, “Fol­low me.” And he arose and went to his house with Je­sus and the apos­tles.

138:3.2Mat­thew told Je­sus of the ban­quet he had ar­ranged for that evening, at least that he wished to give such a din­ner to his fam­ily and friends if Je­sus would ap­prove and con­sent to be the guest of honor. And Je­sus nod­ded his con­sent. Pe­ter then took Mat­thew aside and ex­plained that he had in­vited one Si­mon to join the apos­tles and se­cured his con­sent that Si­mon be also bid­den to this feast.

138:3.3Af­ter a noon­tide lun­cheon at Mat­thew’s house they all went with Pe­ter to call upon Si­mon the Zealot, whom they found at his old place of busi­ness, which was now be­ing con­ducted by his nephew. When Pe­ter led Je­sus up to Si­mon, the Mas­ter greeted the fiery pa­triot and only said, “Fol­low me.”

138:3.4They all re­turned to Mat­thew’s home, where they talked much about pol­i­tics and re­li­gion un­til the hour of the evening meal. The Levi fam­ily had long been en­gaged in busi­ness and tax gath­er­ing; there­fore many of the guests bid­den to this ban­quet by Mat­thew would have been de­nom­i­nated “pub­li­cans and sin­ners” by the Phar­isees.

138:3.5In those days, when a re­cep­tion-ban­quet of this sort was ten­dered a promi­nent in­di­vid­ual, it was the cus­tom for all in­ter­ested per­sons to linger about the ban­quet room to ob­serve the guests at meat and to lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tion and speeches of the men of honor. Ac­cord­ingly, most of the Ca­per­naum Phar­isees were pres­ent on this oc­ca­sion to ob­serve Je­sus’ con­duct at this un­usual so­cial gath­er­ing.

138:3.6As the din­ner pro­gressed, the joy of the din­ers mounted to heights of good cheer, and ev­ery­body was hav­ing such a splen­did time that the on­look­ing Phar­isees be­gan, in their hearts, to crit­i­cize Je­sus for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in such a light­hearted and care­free af­fair. Later in the evening, when they were mak­ing speeches, one of the more ma­lig­nant of the Phar­isees went so far as to crit­i­cize Je­sus’ con­duct to Pe­ter, say­ing: “How dare you to teach that this man is righ­teous when he eats with pub­li­cans and sin­ners and thus lends his pres­ence to such scenes of care­less plea­sure mak­ing.” Pe­ter whis­pered this crit­i­cism to Je­sus be­fore he spoke the part­ing bless­ing upon those as­sem­bled. When Je­sus be­gan to speak, he said: “In com­ing here tonight to wel­come Mat­thew and Si­mon to our fel­low­ship, I am glad to wit­ness your light­heart­ed­ness and so­cial good cheer, but you should re­joice still more be­cause many of you will find en­trance into the com­ing king­dom of the spirit, wherein you shall more abun­dantly en­joy the good things of the king­dom of heaven. And to you who stand about crit­i­ciz­ing me in your hearts be­cause I have come here to make merry with these friends, let me say that I have come to pro­claim joy to the so­cially down­trod­den and spir­i­tual lib­erty to the moral cap­tives. Need I re­mind you that they who are whole need not a physi­cian, but rather those who are sick? I have come, not to call the righ­teous, but sin­ners.”

138:3.7And truly this was a strange sight in all Jewry: to see a man of righ­teous char­ac­ter and no­ble sen­ti­ments min­gling freely and joy­ously with the com­mon peo­ple, even with an ir­re­li­gious and plea­sure-seek­ing throng of pub­li­cans and re­puted sin­ners. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes de­sired to make a speech at this gath­er­ing in Mat­thew’s house, but An­drew, know­ing that Je­sus did not want the com­ing king­dom to be­come con­fused with the Zealots’ move­ment, pre­vailed upon him to re­frain from mak­ing any pub­lic re­marks.

138:3.8Je­sus and the apos­tles re­mained that night in Mat­thew’s house, and as the peo­ple went to their homes, they spoke of but one thing: the good­ness and friend­li­ness of Je­sus.

162:0.1When Je­sus started up to Je­ru­sa­lem with the ten apos­tles, he planned to go through Samaria, that be­ing the shorter route. Ac­cord­ingly, they passed down the east­ern shore of the lake and, by way of Scythopo­lis, en­tered the bor­ders of Samaria. Near night­fall Je­sus sent Philip and Mat­thew over to a vil­lage on the east­ern slopes of Mount Gil­boa to se­cure lodg­ing for the com­pany. It so hap­pened that these vil­lagers were greatly prej­u­diced against the Jews, even more so than the av­er­age Samar­i­tans, and these feel­ings were height­ened at this par­tic­u­lar time as so many were on their way to the feast of taber­na­cles. These peo­ple knew very lit­tle about Je­sus, and they re­fused him lodg­ing be­cause he and his as­so­ciates were Jews. When Mat­thew and Philip man­i­fested in­dig­na­tion and in­formed these Samar­i­tans that they were de­clin­ing to en­ter­tain the Holy One of Is­rael, the in­fu­ri­ated vil­lagers chased them out of the lit­tle town with sticks and stones.

138:2.41. Mat­thew Levi, the cus­toms col­lec­tor of Ca­per­naum, who had his of­fice just to the east of the city, near the bor­ders of Batanea. He was se­lected by An­drew.

181:2.14“Levi, I know much about your anx­i­eties, sac­ri­fices, and labors to keep the trea­sury re­plen­ished which your breth­ren do not know, and I am re­joiced that, though he who car­ried the bag is ab­sent, the pub­li­can am­bas­sador is here at my farewell gath­er­ing with the mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. I pray that you may dis­cern the mean­ing of my teach­ing with the eyes of the spirit. And when the new teacher comes into your heart, fol­low on as he will lead you and let your breth­ren see—even all the world—what the Fa­ther can do for a hated tax-gath­erer who dared to fol­low the Son of Man and to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. Even from the first, Levi, I loved you as I did these other Galileans. Know­ing then so well that nei­ther the Fa­ther nor the Son has re­spect of per­sons, see to it that you make no such dis­tinc­tions among those who be­come be­liev­ers in the gospel through your min­istry. And so, Mat­thew, ded­i­cate your whole fu­ture life ser­vice to show­ing all men that God is no re­specter of per­sons; that, in the sight of God and in the fel­low­ship of the king­dom, all men are equal, all be­liev­ers are the sons of God.”

190:1.3From the tomb David and Joseph went im­me­di­ately to the home of Eli­jah Mark, where they held a con­fer­ence with the ten apos­tles in the up­per cham­ber. Only John Zeb­e­dee was dis­posed to be­lieve, even faintly, that Je­sus had risen from the dead. Pe­ter had be­lieved at first but, when he failed to find the Mas­ter, fell into grave doubt­ing. They were all dis­posed to be­lieve that the Jews had re­moved the body. David would not ar­gue with them, but when he left, he said: “You are the apos­tles, and you ought to un­der­stand these things. I will not con­tend with you; nev­er­the­less, I now go back to the home of Nicode­mus, where I have ap­pointed with the mes­sen­gers to as­sem­ble this morn­ing, and when they have gath­ered to­gether, I will send them forth on their last mis­sion, as her­alds of the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion. I heard the Mas­ter say that, af­ter he should die, he would rise on the third day, and I be­lieve him.” And thus speak­ing to the de­jected and for­lorn am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, this self-ap­pointed chief of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­tel­li­gence took leave of the apos­tles. On his way from the up­per cham­ber he dropped the bag of Ju­das, con­tain­ing all the apos­tolic funds, in the lap of Mat­thew Levi.

175:2.2Many times has this un­rea­son­ing and un-Christ­like ha­tred and per­se­cu­tion of mod­ern Jews ter­mi­nated in the suf­fer­ing and death of some in­no­cent and un­of­fend­ing Jew­ish in­di­vid­ual whose very an­ces­tors, in the times of Je­sus, heart­ily ac­cepted his gospel and pres­ently died un­flinch­ingly for that truth which they so whole­heart­edly be­lieved. What a shud­der of hor­ror passes over the on­look­ing ce­les­tial be­ings as they be­hold the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus in­dulge them­selves in per­se­cut­ing, ha­rass­ing, and even mur­der­ing the later-day de­scen­dants of Pe­ter, Philip, Mat­thew, and oth­ers of the Pales­tinian Jews who so glo­ri­ously yielded up their lives as the first mar­tyrs of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom!

191:0.10Mat­thew was highly con­fused; he lis­tened to the dis­cus­sions of his fel­lows but spent most of the time turn­ing over in his mind the prob­lem of their fu­ture fi­nances. Re­gard­less of Je­sus’ sup­posed res­ur­rec­tion, Ju­das was gone, David had un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously turned the funds over to him, and they were with­out an au­thor­i­ta­tive leader. Be­fore Mat­thew got around to giv­ing se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to their ar­gu­ments about the res­ur­rec­tion, he had al­ready seen the Mas­ter face to face.

157:6.1Je­sus and the apos­tles re­mained an­other day at the home of Cel­sus, wait­ing for mes­sen­gers to ar­rive from David Zeb­e­dee with funds. Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the pop­u­lar­ity of Je­sus with the masses there oc­curred a great falling off in rev­enue. When they reached Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the trea­sury was empty. Mat­thew was loath to leave Je­sus and his breth­ren at such a time, and he had no ready funds of his own to hand over to Ju­das as he had so many times done in the past. How­ever, David Zeb­e­dee had fore­seen this prob­a­ble diminu­tion of rev­enue and had ac­cord­ingly in­structed his mes­sen­gers that, as they made their way through Judea, Samaria, and Gal­i­lee, they should act as col­lec­tors of money to be for­warded to the ex­iled apos­tles and their Mas­ter. And so, by evening of this day, these mes­sen­gers ar­rived from Beth­saida bring­ing funds suf­fi­cient to sus­tain the apos­tles un­til their re­turn to em­bark upon the De­capo­lis tour. Mat­thew ex­pected to have money from the sale of his last piece of prop­erty in Ca­per­naum by that time, hav­ing ar­ranged that these funds should be anony­mously turned over to Ju­das.

• Jesus’ avoidance of writing delayed

121:0.1Act­ing un­der the super­vi­sion of a com­mis­sion of twelve mem­bers of the United Broth­er­hood of Uran­tia Mid­way­ers, con­jointly spon­sored by the pre­sid­ing head of our or­der and the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, I am the sec­ondary mid­wayer of one­time at­tach­ment to the Apos­tle An­drew, and I am au­tho­rized to place on rec­ord the nar­ra­tive of the life trans­ac­tions of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as they were ob­served by my or­der of earth crea­tures, and as they were sub­se­quently par­tially re­corded by the hu­man sub­ject of my tem­po­ral guardian­ship. Know­ing how his Mas­ter so scrupu­lously avoided leav­ing writ­ten rec­ords be­hind him, An­drew stead­fastly re­fused to mul­ti­ply copies of his writ­ten nar­ra­tive. A sim­i­lar at­ti­tude on the part of the other apos­tles of Je­sus greatly de­layed the writ­ing of the Gospels.

• Jesus’ avoidance of writing delayed

121:8.31. The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the ear­li­est (ex­cept­ing the notes of An­drew), briefest, and most sim­ple rec­ord of Je­sus’ life. He pre­sented the Mas­ter as a min­is­ter, as man among men. Al­though Mark was a lad lin­ger­ing about many of the scenes which he de­picts, his rec­ord is in re­al­ity the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Si­mon Pe­ter. He was early as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter; later with Paul. Mark wrote this rec­ord at the in­sti­ga­tion of Pe­ter and on the earnest pe­ti­tion of the church at Rome. Know­ing how con­sis­tently the Mas­ter re­fused to write out his teach­ings when on earth and in the flesh, Mark, like the apos­tles and other lead­ing dis­ci­ples, was hes­i­tant to put them in writ­ing. But Pe­ter felt the church at Rome re­quired the as­sis­tance of such a writ­ten nar­ra­tive, and Mark con­sented to un­der­take its prepa­ra­tion. He made many notes be­fore Pe­ter died in A.D. 67, and in ac­cor­dance with the out­line ap­proved by Pe­ter and for the church at Rome, he be­gan his writ­ing soon af­ter Pe­ter’s death. The Gospel was com­pleted near the end of A.D. 68. Mark wrote en­tirely from his own mem­ory and Pe­ter’s mem­ory. The rec­ord has since been con­sid­er­ably changed, nu­mer­ous pas­sages hav­ing been taken out and some later mat­ter added at the end to re­place the lat­ter one fifth of the orig­i­nal Gospel, which was lost from the first man­u­script be­fore it was ever copied. This rec­ord by Mark, in con­junc­tion with An­drew’s and Mat­thew’s notes, was the writ­ten ba­sis of all sub­se­quent Gospel nar­ra­tives which sought to por­tray the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

• written for Jewish Christians

121:8.42. The Gospel of Mat­thew. The so-called Gospel ac­cord­ing to Mat­thew is the rec­ord of the Mas­ter’s life which was writ­ten for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion of Jew­ish Chris­tians. The au­thor of this rec­ord con­stantly seeks to show in Je­sus’ life that much which he did was that “it might be ful­filled which was spo­ken by the prophet.” Mat­thew’s Gospel por­trays Je­sus as a son of David, pic­tur­ing him as show­ing great re­spect for the law and the proph­ets.

121:8.5The Apos­tle Mat­thew did not write this Gospel. It was writ­ten by Isador, one of his dis­ci­ples, who had as a help in his work not only Mat­thew’s per­sonal re­mem­brance of these events but also a cer­tain rec­ord which the lat­ter had made of the say­ings of Je­sus di­rectly af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion. This rec­ord by Mat­thew was writ­ten in Ara­maic; Isador wrote in Greek. There was no in­tent to de­ceive in ac­cred­it­ing the pro­duc­tion to Mat­thew. It was the cus­tom in those days for pupils thus to honor their teach­ers.

121:8.6Mat­thew’s orig­i­nal rec­ord was edited and added to in A.D. 40 just be­fore he left Je­ru­sa­lem to en­gage in evan­ge­lis­tic preach­ing. It was a pri­vate rec­ord, the last copy hav­ing been de­stroyed in the burn­ing of a Syr­ian monastery in A.D. 416.

121:8.7Isador es­caped from Je­ru­sa­lem in A.D. 70 af­ter the in­vest­ment of the city by the armies of Ti­tus, tak­ing with him to Pella a copy of Mat­thew’s notes. In the year 71, while liv­ing at Pella, Isador wrote the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Mat­thew. He also had with him the first four fifths of Mark’s nar­ra­tive.

• fish with shekel in mouth

157:1.4It is not strange that you have a rec­ord of Pe­ter’s catch­ing a fish with a shekel in its mouth. In those days there were cur­rent many sto­ries about find­ing trea­sures in the mouths of fishes; such tales of near mir­a­cles were com­mon­place. So, as Pe­ter left them to go to­ward the boat, Je­sus re­marked, half-hu­mor­ously: “Strange that the sons of the king must pay trib­ute; usu­ally it is the stranger who is taxed for the up­keep of the court, but it be­hooves us to af­ford no stum­bling block for the au­thor­i­ties. Go hence! maybe you will catch the fish with the shekel in its mouth.” Je­sus hav­ing thus spo­ken, and Pe­ter so soon ap­pear­ing with the tem­ple tax, it is not sur­pris­ing that the episode be­came later ex­panded into a mir­a­cle as re­corded by the writer of Mat­thew’s Gospel.

• included Selta apocrypha

176:2.8Of all the dis­courses which the Mas­ter gave his apos­tles, none ever be­came so con­fused in their minds as this one, given this Tues­day evening on the Mount of Olives, re­gard­ing the two­fold sub­ject of the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem and his own sec­ond com­ing. There was, there­fore, lit­tle agree­ment be­tween the sub­se­quent writ­ten ac­counts based on the mem­o­ries of what the Mas­ter said on this ex­traor­di­nary oc­ca­sion. Con­se­quently, when the rec­ords were left blank con­cern­ing much that was said that Tues­day evening, there grew up many tra­di­tions; and very early in the sec­ond cen­tury a Jew­ish apoc­a­lyp­tic about the Mes­siah writ­ten by one Selta, who was at­tached to the court of the Em­peror Caligula, was bod­ily copied into the Mat­thew Gospel and sub­se­quently added (in part) to the Mark and Luke rec­ords. It was in these writ­ings of Selta that the para­ble of the ten vir­gins ap­peared. No part of the gospel rec­ord ever suf­fered such con­fus­ing mis­con­struc­tion as this evening’s teach­ing. But the Apos­tle John never be­came thus con­fused.

• retains something of human Jesus

196:2.3Mark, Mat­thew, and Luke re­tain some­thing of the pic­ture of the hu­man Je­sus as he en­gaged in the su­perb strug­gle to as­cer­tain the di­vine will and to do that will. John pre­sents a pic­ture of the tri­umphant Je­sus as he walked on earth in the full con­scious­ness of di­vin­ity. The great mis­take that has been made by those who have stud­ied the Mas­ter’s life is that some have con­ceived of him as en­tirely hu­man, while oth­ers have thought of him as only di­vine. Through­out his en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence he was truly both hu­man and di­vine, even as he yet is.

172:5.8Mat­thew was at first non­plused by this pageant per­for­mance. He did not grasp the mean­ing of what his eyes were see­ing un­til he also re­called the Scrip­ture in Zechariah where the prophet had al­luded to the re­joic­ing of Je­ru­sa­lem be­cause her king had come bring­ing sal­va­tion and rid­ing upon the colt of an ass. As the pro­ces­sion moved in the di­rec­tion of the city and then drew on to­ward the tem­ple, Mat­thew be­came ec­static; he was cer­tain that some­thing ex­traor­di­nary would hap­pen when the Mas­ter ar­rived at the tem­ple at the head of this shout­ing mul­ti­tude. When one of the Phar­isees mocked Je­sus, say­ing, “Look, ev­ery­body, see who comes here, the king of the Jews rid­ing on an ass!” Mat­thew kept his hands off of him only by ex­er­cis­ing great re­straint. None of the twelve was more de­pressed on the way back to Beth­any that evening. Next to Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, he ex­pe­ri­enced the high­est ner­vous ten­sion and was in a state of ex­haus­tion by night. But by morn­ing Mat­thew was much cheered; he was, af­ter all, a cheer­ful loser.

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”

181:2.12When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, he stepped over to Mat­thew Levi and said: “No longer will it de­volve upon you to pro­vide for the trea­sury of the apos­tolic group. Soon, very soon, you will all be scat­tered; you will not be per­mit­ted to en­joy the com­fort­ing and sus­tain­ing as­so­ci­a­tion of even one of your breth­ren. As you go on­ward preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom, you will have to find for your­selves new as­so­ciates. I have sent you forth two and two dur­ing the times of your train­ing, but now that I am leav­ing you, af­ter you have re­cov­ered from the shock, you will go out alone, and to the ends of the earth, pro­claim­ing this good news: That faith-quick­ened mor­tals are the sons of God.”

181:2.13Then spoke Mat­thew: “But, Mas­ter, who will send us, and how shall we know where to go? Will An­drew show us the way?” And Je­sus an­swered: “No, Levi, An­drew will no longer di­rect you in the procla­ma­tion of the gospel. He will, in­deed, con­tinue as your friend and coun­selor un­til that day whereon the new teacher comes, and then shall the Spirit of Truth lead each of you abroad to la­bor for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom. Many changes have come over you since that day at the cus­tom­house when you first set out to fol­low me; but many more must come be­fore you will be able to see the vi­sion of a broth­er­hood in which gen­tile sits along­side Jew in fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tion. But go on with your urge to win your Jew­ish breth­ren un­til you are fully sat­is­fied and then turn with power to the gen­tiles. One thing you may be cer­tain of, Levi: You have won the con­fi­dence and af­fec­tion of your breth­ren; they all love you.” (And all ten of them sig­ni­fied their ac­qui­es­cence in the Mas­ter’s words.)

152:2.5Philip had pro­vided a three days’ sup­ply of food for Je­sus and the twelve, which was in the cus­tody of the Mark lad, their boy of all chores. By af­ter­noon of this, the third day for al­most half of this mul­ti­tude, the food the peo­ple had brought with them was nearly ex­hausted. David Zeb­e­dee had no tented city here to feed and ac­com­mo­date the crowds. Nei­ther had Philip made food pro­vi­sion for such a mul­ti­tude. But the peo­ple, even though they were hun­gry, would not go away. It was be­ing qui­etly whis­pered about that Je­sus, de­sir­ing to avoid trou­ble with both Herod and the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers, had cho­sen this quiet spot out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion of all his en­e­mies as the proper place to be crowned king. The en­thu­si­asm of the peo­ple was ris­ing ev­ery hour. Not a word was said to Je­sus, though, of course, he knew all that was go­ing on. Even the twelve apos­tles were still tainted with such no­tions, and es­pe­cially the younger evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles who fa­vored this at­tempt to pro­claim Je­sus king were Pe­ter, John, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and Ju­das Is­car­iot. Those op­pos­ing the plan were An­drew, James, Na­than­iel, and Thomas. Mat­thew, Philip, and the Al­pheus twins were non­com­mit­tal. The ringleader of this plot to make him king was Joab, one of the young evan­ge­lists.

• good public orator

139:3.2This able apos­tle was a tem­per­a­men­tal con­tra­dic­tion; he seemed re­ally to pos­sess two na­tures, both of which were ac­tu­ated by strong feel­ings. He was par­tic­u­larly ve­he­ment when his in­dig­na­tion was once fully aroused. He had a fiery tem­per when once it was ad­e­quately pro­voked, and when the storm was over, he was al­ways wont to jus­tify and ex­cuse his anger un­der the pre­tense that it was wholly a man­i­fes­ta­tion of righ­teous in­dig­na­tion. Ex­cept for these pe­ri­odic up­heavals of wrath, James’s per­son­al­ity was much like that of An­drew. He did not have An­drew’s dis­cre­tion or in­sight into hu­man na­ture, but he was a much bet­ter pub­lic speaker. Next to Pe­ter, un­less it was Mat­thew, James was the best pub­lic or­a­tor among the twelve.

• tendency to suspicion and over-individualism

193:4.3This un­for­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of in­di­vid­ual pe­cu­liar­i­ties and men­tal ten­den­cies con­spired to de­stroy a well-in­ten­tioned man who failed to sub­due these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Ju­das need not have gone wrong is well proved by the cases of Thomas and Na­than­iel, both of whom were cursed with this same sort of sus­pi­cion and overde­vel­op­ment of the in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­dency. Even An­drew and Mat­thew had many lean­ings in this di­rec­tion; but all these men grew to love Je­sus and their fel­low apos­tles more, and not less, as time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. They be­came in­creas­ingly more trust­ful of their breth­ren and slowly de­vel­oped the abil­ity to con­fide in their fel­lows. Ju­das per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in his breth­ren. When he was im­pelled, by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of his emo­tional con­flicts, to seek re­lief in self-ex­pres­sion, he in­vari­ably sought the ad­vice and re­ceived the un­wise con­so­la­tion of his un­spir­i­tual rel­a­tives or those chance ac­quain­tances who were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent, or ac­tu­ally hos­tile, to the wel­fare and prog­ress of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the heav­enly king­dom, of which he was one of the twelve con­se­crated am­bas­sadors on earth.

163:2.11Je­sus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He re­quired only the twelve and the sev­enty to ded­i­cate all of their worldly pos­ses­sions to the com­mon cause. Even then, he pro­vided for the prof­itable liq­ui­da­tion of their prop­erty, as in the case of the Apos­tle Mat­thew. Je­sus many times ad­vised his well-to-do dis­ci­ples as he taught the rich man of Rome. The Mas­ter re­garded the wise in­vest­ment of ex­cess earn­ings as a le­git­i­mate form of in­sur­ance against fu­ture and un­avoid­able ad­ver­sity. When the apos­tolic trea­sury was over­flow­ing, Ju­das put funds on de­posit to be used sub­se­quently when they might suf­fer greatly from a diminu­tion of in­come. This Ju­das did af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with An­drew. Je­sus never per­son­ally had any­thing to do with the apos­tolic fi­nances ex­cept in the dis­burse­ment of alms. But there was one eco­nomic abuse which he many times con­demned, and that was the un­fair ex­ploita­tion of the weak, un­learned, and less for­tu­nate of men by their strong, keen, and more in­tel­li­gent fel­lows. Je­sus de­clared that such in­hu­man treat­ment of men, women, and chil­dren was in­com­pat­i­ble with the ide­als of the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven.

151:1.3The apos­tles and those who were with them, when they heard Je­sus teach the peo­ple in this man­ner, were greatly per­plexed; and af­ter much talk­ing among them­selves, that evening in the Zeb­e­dee gar­den Mat­thew said to Je­sus: “Mas­ter, what is the mean­ing of the dark say­ings which you pre­sent to the mul­ti­tude? Why do you speak in para­bles to those who seek the truth?” And Je­sus an­swered:

176:0.1This Tues­day af­ter­noon, as Je­sus and the apos­tles passed out of the tem­ple on their way to the Geth­sem­ane camp, Mat­thew, call­ing at­ten­tion to the tem­ple con­struc­tion, said: “Mas­ter, ob­serve what man­ner of build­ings these are. See the mas­sive stones and the beau­ti­ful adorn­ment; can it be that these build­ings are to be de­stroyed?” As they went on to­ward Oli­vet, Je­sus said: “You see these stones and this mas­sive tem­ple; ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: In the days soon to come there shall not be left one stone upon an­other. They shall all be thrown down.” These re­marks de­pict­ing the de­struc­tion of the sa­cred tem­ple aroused the cu­rios­ity of the apos­tles as they walked along be­hind the Mas­ter; they could con­ceive of no event short of the end of the world which would oc­ca­sion the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple.

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

163:7.3The women’s corps also pre­pared to go out, two and two, with the sev­enty to la­bor in the larger cities of Perea. This orig­i­nal group of twelve women had re­cently trained a larger corps of fifty women in the work of home vis­i­ta­tion and in the art of min­is­ter­ing to the sick and the af­flicted. Per­petua, Si­mon Pe­ter’s wife, be­came a mem­ber of this new di­vi­sion of the women’s corps and was in­trusted with the lead­er­ship of the en­larged women’s work un­der Ab­ner. Af­ter Pen­te­cost she re­mained with her il­lus­tri­ous hus­band, ac­com­pa­ny­ing him on all of his mis­sion­ary tours; and on the day Pe­ter was cru­ci­fied in Rome, she was fed to the wild beasts in the arena. This new women’s corps also had as mem­bers the wives of Philip and Mat­thew and the mother of James and John.