miracles

• our ignorance of higher laws makes natural laws appear to have been suspended

3:2.7Sit­u­a­tions do arise in which it ap­pears that emer­gency rul­ings have been made, that nat­u­ral laws have been sus­pended, that mis­adap­ta­tions have been rec­og­nized, and that an ef­fort is be­ing made to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion; but such is not the case. Such con­cepts of God have their ori­gin in the lim­ited range of your view­point, in the finite­ness of your com­pre­hen­sion, and in the cir­cum­scribed scope of your sur­vey; such mis­un­der­stand­ing of God is due to the pro­found ig­no­rance you en­joy re­gard­ing the ex­is­tence of the higher laws of the realm, the mag­ni­tude of the Fa­ther’s char­ac­ter, the in­fin­ity of his at­tri­butes, and the fact of his free-will­ness.

• modern men believe in m. like primitives did in magic

88:2.2Be­lief in relics is an out­growth of the an­cient fe­tish cult. The relics of mod­ern re­li­gions rep­re­sent an at­tempt to ra­tio­nal­ize the fe­tish of the sav­age and thus el­e­vate it to a place of dig­nity and re­spectabil­ity in the mod­ern re­li­gious sys­tems. It is hea­then­ish to be­lieve in fe­tishes and magic but sup­pos­edly all right to ac­cept relics and mir­a­cles.

• place in evolution of religious observances

90:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances pro­gressed from pla­ca­tion, avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion to sac­ri­fice, atone­ment, and re­demp­tion. The tech­nique of re­li­gious rit­ual passed from the forms of the prim­i­tive cult through fe­tishes to magic and mir­a­cles; and as rit­ual be­came more com­plex in re­sponse to man’s in­creas­ingly com­plex con­cept of the super­ma­te­rial realms, it was in­evitably dom­i­nated by med­i­cine men, shamans, and priests.

• believed performed by recognized gods, not by magic

90:2.3Witch­craft em­braced the magic per­formed by ear­lier, ir­reg­u­lar, and un­rec­og­nized spir­its; shaman­craft had to do with mir­a­cles per­formed by reg­u­lar spir­its and rec­og­nized gods of the tribe. In later times the witch be­came as­so­ci­ated with the devil, and thus was the stage set for the many com­par­a­tively re­cent ex­hi­bi­tions of re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance. Witch­craft was a re­li­gion with many prim­i­tive tribes.

• men enshroud human leaders with supernatural origins, miraculous careers

92:5.5Most great re­li­gious epochs have been in­au­gu­rated by the life and teach­ings of some out­stand­ing per­son­al­ity; lead­er­ship has orig­i­nated a ma­jor­ity of the worth-while moral move­ments of his­tory. And men have al­ways tended to ven­er­ate the leader, even at the ex­pense of his teach­ings; to re­vere his per­son­al­ity, even though los­ing sight of the truths which he pro­claimed. And this is not with­out rea­son; there is an in­stinc­tive long­ing in the heart of evo­lu­tion­ary man for help from above and be­yond. This crav­ing is de­signed to an­tic­i­pate the ap­pear­ance on earth of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the later Ma­te­rial Sons. On Uran­tia man has been de­prived of these super­hu­man lead­ers and rulers, and there­fore does he con­stantly seek to make good this loss by en­shroud­ing his hu­man lead­ers with leg­ends per­tain­ing to super­nat­u­ral ori­gins and mirac­u­lous ca­reers.

• limitations › no so-called m. prove reality of God

102:1.5God is so all real and ab­so­lute that no ma­te­rial sign of proof or no dem­on­stra­tion of so-called mir­a­cle may be of­fered in tes­ti­mony of his re­al­ity. Al­ways will we know him be­cause we trust him, and our be­lief in him is wholly based on our per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion in the di­vine man­i­fes­ta­tions of his in­fi­nite re­al­ity.

• quest for m. harks back to magic

102:8.7But re­li­gion is never en­hanced by an ap­peal to the so-called mirac­u­lous. The quest for mir­a­cles is a hark­ing back to the prim­i­tive re­li­gions of magic. True re­li­gion has noth­ing to do with al­leged mir­a­cles, and never does re­vealed re­li­gion point to mir­a­cles as proof of au­thor­ity. Re­li­gion is ever and al­ways rooted and grounded in per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. And your high­est re­li­gion, the life of Je­sus, was just such a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence: man, mor­tal man, seek­ing God and find­ing him to the full­ness dur­ing one short life in the flesh, while in the same hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence there ap­peared God seek­ing man and find­ing him to the full sat­is­fac­tion of the per­fect soul of in­fi­nite su­prem­acy. And that is re­li­gion, even the high­est yet re­vealed in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don—the earth life of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• primitive belief in natural wonders, impersonal mana

103:3.2Later re­li­gion is fore­shad­owed in the prim­i­tive be­lief in nat­u­ral won­ders and mys­ter­ies, the im­per­sonal mana. But sooner or later the evolv­ing re­li­gion re­quires that the in­di­vid­ual should make some per­sonal sac­ri­fice for the good of his so­cial group, should do some­thing to make other peo­ple hap­pier and bet­ter. Ul­ti­mately, re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the ser­vice of God and of man.

• defined as › operation of laws beyond our understanding
• incarnations of Paradise Sons are

120:4.5Uran­tia mor­tals have vary­ing con­cepts of the mirac­u­lous, but to us who live as cit­i­zens of the lo­cal uni­verse there are few mir­a­cles, and of these by far the most in­trigu­ing are the in­car­na­tional be­stowals of the Par­a­dise Sons. The ap­pear­ance in and on your world, by ap­par­ently nat­u­ral pro­cesses, of a di­vine Son, we re­gard as a mir­a­cle—the op­er­a­tion of uni­ver­sal laws be­yond our un­der­stand­ing. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was a mirac­u­lous per­son.

• believed commonplace in times of Jesus

121:7.12The Med­i­ter­ra­nean Ro­man Em­pire, the Parthian king­dom, and the ad­ja­cent peo­ples of Je­sus’ time all held crude and prim­i­tive ideas re­gard­ing the ge­og­ra­phy of the world, as­tron­omy, health, and dis­ease; and nat­u­rally they were amazed by the new and startling pro­nounce­ments of the car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth. The ideas of spirit pos­ses­sion, good and bad, ap­plied not merely to hu­man be­ings, but ev­ery rock and tree was viewed by many as be­ing spirit pos­sessed. This was an en­chanted age, and ev­ery­body be­lieved in mir­a­cles as com­mon­place oc­cur­rences.

• men enshroud human leaders with supernatural origins, miraculous careers

126:1.5By the be­gin­ning of this year both Joseph and Mary en­ter­tained fre­quent doubts about the des­tiny of their first-born son. He was in­deed a bril­liant and lov­able child, but he was so dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, so hard to fathom, and again, noth­ing ex­traor­di­nary or mirac­u­lous ever hap­pened. Scores of times had his proud mother stood in breath­less an­tic­i­pa­tion, ex­pect­ing to see her son en­gage in some super­hu­man or mirac­u­lous per­for­mance, but al­ways were her hopes dashed down in cruel dis­ap­point­ment. And all this was dis­cour­ag­ing, even dis­heart­en­ing. The de­vout peo­ple of those days truly be­lieved that proph­ets and men of prom­ise al­ways demon­strated their call­ing and es­tab­lished their di­vine au­thor­ity by per­form­ing mir­a­cles and work­ing won­ders. But Je­sus did none of these things; where­fore was the con­fu­sion of his par­ents steadily in­creased as they con­tem­plated his fu­ture.

• defined as › abridgments of time

136:5.4In ac­cept­ing this com­mand of the uni­verse hosts in at­ten­dance upon Christ Mi­chael, the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster took great pains to point out to Je­sus that, while such an as­sem­bly of uni­verse crea­tures could be lim­ited in their space ac­tiv­i­ties by the del­e­gated au­thor­ity of their Cre­ator, such lim­i­ta­tions were not op­er­a­tive in con­nec­tion with their func­tion in time. And this lim­i­ta­tion was de­pen­dent on the fact that Ad­justers are non­time be­ings when once they are per­son­al­ized. Ac­cord­ingly was Je­sus ad­mon­ished that, while the Ad­juster’s con­trol of the liv­ing in­tel­li­gences placed un­der his com­mand would be com­plete and per­fect as to all mat­ters in­volv­ing space, there could be no such per­fect lim­i­ta­tions im­posed re­gard­ing time. Said the Ad­juster: “I will, as you have di­rected, en­join the em­ploy­ment of this at­ten­dant host of uni­verse in­tel­li­gences in any man­ner in con­nec­tion with your earth ca­reer ex­cept in those cases where the Par­a­dise Fa­ther di­rects me to re­lease such agen­cies in or­der that his di­vine will of your choos­ing may be ac­com­plished, and in those in­stances where you may en­gage in any choice or act of your di­vine-hu­man will which shall only in­volve de­par­tures from the nat­u­ral earth or­der as to time. In all such events I am pow­er­less, and your crea­tures here as­sem­bled in per­fec­tion and unity of power are like­wise help­less. If your united na­tures once en­ter­tain such de­sires, these man­dates of your choice will be forth­with ex­e­cuted. Your wish in all such mat­ters will con­sti­tute the abridg­ment of time, and the thing pro­jected is ex­is­tent. Un­der my com­mand this con­sti­tutes the fullest pos­si­ble lim­i­ta­tion which can be im­posed upon your po­ten­tial sov­er­eignty. In my self-con­scious­ness time is nonex­is­tent, and there­fore I can­not limit your crea­tures in any­thing re­lated thereto.”

136:5.5Thus did Je­sus be­come ap­prised of the work­ing out of his de­ci­sion to go on liv­ing as a man among men. He had by a sin­gle de­ci­sion ex­cluded all of his at­ten­dant uni­verse hosts of var­ied in­tel­li­gences from par­tic­i­pat­ing in his en­su­ing pub­lic min­istry ex­cept in such mat­ters as con­cerned time only. It there­fore be­comes ev­i­dent that any pos­si­ble super­nat­u­ral or sup­pos­edly super­hu­man ac­com­pa­ni­ments of Je­sus’ min­istry per­tained wholly to the elim­i­na­tion of time un­less the Fa­ther in heaven specif­i­cally ruled oth­er­wise. No mir­a­cle, min­istry of mercy, or any other pos­si­ble event oc­cur­ring in con­nec­tion with Je­sus’ re­main­ing earth labors could pos­si­bly be of the na­ture or char­ac­ter of an act tran­scend­ing the nat­u­ral laws es­tab­lished and reg­u­larly work­ing in the af­fairs of man as he lives on Uran­tia ex­cept in this ex­pressly stated mat­ter of time. No lim­its, of course, could be placed upon the man­i­fes­ta­tions of “the Fa­ther’s will.” The elim­i­na­tion of time in con­nec­tion with the ex­pressed de­sire of this po­ten­tial Sov­er­eign of a uni­verse could only be avoided by the di­rect and ex­plicit act of the will of this God-man to the ef­fect that time, as re­lated to the act or event in ques­tion, should not be short­ened or elim­i­nated. In or­der to pre­vent the ap­pear­ance of ap­par­ent time mir­a­cles, it was nec­es­sary for Je­sus to re­main con­stantly time con­scious. Any lapse of time con­scious­ness on his part, in con­nec­tion with the en­ter­tain­ment of def­i­nite de­sire, was equiv­a­lent to the en­act­ment of the thing con­ceived in the mind of this Cre­ator Son, and with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of time.

136:5.6Through the super­vis­ing con­trol of his as­so­ci­ated and Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster it was pos­si­ble for Mi­chael per­fectly to limit his per­sonal earth ac­tiv­i­ties with ref­er­ence to space, but it was not pos­si­ble for the Son of Man thus to limit his new earth sta­tus as po­ten­tial Sov­er­eign of Neb­a­don as re­gards time. And this was the ac­tual sta­tus of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as he went forth to be­gin his pub­lic min­istry on Uran­tia.

• believed commonplace in times of Jesus

136:6.6The Jews were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would do even greater won­ders than Moses, who was re­puted to have brought forth wa­ter from the rock in a desert place and to have fed their fore­fa­thers with manna in the wilder­ness. Je­sus knew the sort of Mes­siah his com­pa­tri­ots ex­pected, and he had all the pow­ers and pre­rog­a­tives to mea­sure up to their most san­guine ex­pec­ta­tions, but he de­cided against such a mag­nif­i­cent pro­gram of power and glory. Je­sus looked upon such a course of ex­pected mir­a­cle work­ing as a hark­ing back to the olden days of ig­no­rant magic and the de­graded prac­tices of the sav­age med­i­cine men. Pos­si­bly, for the sal­va­tion of his crea­tures, he might ac­cel­er­ate nat­u­ral law, but to tran­scend his own laws, ei­ther for the ben­e­fit of him­self or the over­aw­ing of his fel­low men, that he would not do. And the Mas­ter’s de­ci­sion was fi­nal.

136:6.7Je­sus sor­rowed for his peo­ple; he fully un­der­stood how they had been led up to the ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing Mes­siah, the time when “the earth will yield its fruits ten thou­sand­fold, and on one vine there will be a thou­sand branches, and each branch will pro­duce a thou­sand clus­ters, and each clus­ter will pro­duce a thou­sand grapes, and each grape will pro­duce a gal­lon of wine.” The Jews be­lieved the Mes­siah would usher in an era of mirac­u­lous plenty. The He­brews had long been nur­tured on tra­di­tions of mir­a­cles and leg­ends of won­ders.

136:6.8He was not a Mes­siah com­ing to mul­ti­ply bread and wine. He came not to min­is­ter to tem­po­ral needs only; he came to re­veal his Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth, while he sought to lead his earth chil­dren to join him in a sin­cere ef­fort so to live as to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• believed commonplace in times of Jesus

136:8.1The next great prob­lem with which this God-man wres­tled and which he pres­ently de­cided in ac­cor­dance with the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, con­cerned the ques­tion as to whether or not any of his super­hu­man pow­ers should be em­ployed for the pur­pose of at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion and win­ning the ad­her­ence of his fel­low men. Should he in any man­ner lend his uni­verse pow­ers to the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Jew­ish han­ker­ing for the spec­tac­u­lar and the mar­velous? He de­cided that he should not. He set­tled upon a pol­icy of pro­ce­dure which elim­i­nated all such prac­tices as the method of bring­ing his mis­sion to the no­tice of men. And he con­sis­tently lived up to this great de­ci­sion. Even when he per­mit­ted the man­i­fes­ta­tion of nu­mer­ous time-short­en­ing min­is­tra­tions of mercy, he al­most in­vari­ably ad­mon­ished the re­cip­i­ents of his heal­ing min­istry to tell no man about the ben­e­fits they had re­ceived. And al­ways did he refuse the taunt­ing chal­lenge of his en­e­mies to “show us a sign” in proof and dem­on­stra­tion of his di­vin­ity.

• limitations › call forth only outward allegiance

136:8.2Je­sus very wisely fore­saw that the work­ing of mir­a­cles and the ex­e­cu­tion of won­ders would call forth only out­ward al­le­giance by over­aw­ing the ma­te­rial mind; such per­for­mances would not re­veal God nor save men. He re­fused to be­come a mere won­der-worker. He re­solved to be­come oc­cu­pied with but a sin­gle task—the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven.

• limitations › call forth only outward allegiance

137:4.16Mary and the dis­ci­ples of Je­sus were greatly re­joiced at the sup­posed mir­a­cle which they thought Je­sus had in­ten­tion­ally per­formed, but Je­sus with­drew to a shel­tered nook of the gar­den and en­gaged in se­ri­ous thought for a few brief mo­ments. He fi­nally de­cided that the episode was be­yond his per­sonal con­trol un­der the cir­cum­stances and, not be­ing ad­verse to his Fa­ther’s will, was in­ev­i­ta­ble. When he re­turned to the peo­ple, they re­garded him with awe; they all be­lieved in him as the Mes­siah. But Je­sus was sorely per­plexed, know­ing that they be­lieved in him only be­cause of the un­usual oc­cur­rence which they had just in­ad­ver­tently be­held. Again Je­sus re­tired for a sea­son to the house­top that he might think it all over.

• believed commonplace in times of Jesus

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.”

• limitations › kingdom cannot be built upon m.

138:8.8Je­sus made plain to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­pen­tance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith—the new birth—which he re­quired as the price of ad­mis­sion to the king­dom. He taught his apos­tles that faith was the only req­ui­site to en­ter­ing the Fa­ther’s king­dom. John had taught them “re­pen­tance—to flee from the wrath to come.” Je­sus taught, “Faith is the open door for en­ter­ing into the pres­ent, per­fect, and eter­nal love of God.” Je­sus did not speak like a prophet, one who comes to de­clare the word of God. He seemed to speak of him­self as one hav­ing au­thor­ity. Je­sus sought to di­vert their minds from mir­a­cle seek­ing to the find­ing of a real and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the sat­is­fac­tion and as­sur­ance of the in­dwelling of God’s spirit of love and sav­ing grace.

• believed commonplace in times of Jesus

145:2.17And these cases are typ­i­cal of the man­ner in which a won­der-seek­ing gen­er­a­tion and a mir­a­cle-minded peo­ple un­fail­ingly seized upon all such co­in­ci­dences as the pre­text for pro­claim­ing that an­other mir­a­cle had been wrought by Je­sus.

• limitations › kingdom cannot be built upon m.

145:3.7The sight of these af­flicted mor­tals, men, women, and chil­dren, suf­fer­ing in large mea­sure as a re­sult of the mis­takes and mis­deeds of his own trusted Sons of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion, pe­cu­liarly touched the hu­man heart of Je­sus and chal­lenged the di­vine mercy of this benev­o­lent Cre­ator Son. But Je­sus well knew he could never build an en­dur­ing spir­i­tual move­ment upon the foun­da­tion of purely ma­te­rial won­ders. It had been his con­sis­tent pol­icy to re­frain from ex­hibit­ing his cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives. Not since Cana had the super­nat­u­ral or mirac­u­lous at­tended his teach­ing; still, this af­flicted mul­ti­tude touched his sym­pa­thetic heart and might­ily ap­pealed to his un­der­stand­ing af­fec­tion.

• limitations › kingdom cannot be built upon m.

145:5.4For more than four hours Je­sus en­deav­ored to ex­plain to these three apos­tles what had hap­pened. He taught them about what had tran­spired and ex­plained the dan­gers of such man­i­fes­ta­tions. Je­sus con­fided to them the rea­son for his com­ing forth to pray. He sought to make plain to his per­sonal as­so­ciates the real rea­sons why the king­dom of the Fa­ther could not be built upon won­der-work­ing and phys­i­cal heal­ing. But they could not com­pre­hend his teach­ing.

• defined as › done in response to living faith

148:2.2Many of the cures ef­fected by Je­sus in con­nec­tion with his min­istry in be­half of El­man’s pa­tients did, in­deed, ap­pear to re­sem­ble the work­ing of mir­a­cles, but we were in­structed that they were only just such trans­for­ma­tions of mind and spirit as may oc­cur in the ex­pe­ri­ence of ex­pec­tant and faith-dom­i­nated per­sons who are un­der the im­me­di­ate and in­spi­ra­tional in­flu­ence of a strong, pos­i­tive, and benef­i­cent per­son­al­ity whose min­istry ban­ishes fear and de­stroys anx­i­ety.

• Jesus was only founder of religion who performed

149:2.7When the Cre­ator him­self was on earth, in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that some ex­traor­di­nary things should hap­pen. But you should never ap­proach Je­sus through these so-called mirac­u­lous oc­cur­rences. Learn to ap­proach the mir­a­cle through Je­sus, but do not make the mis­take of ap­proach­ing Je­sus through the mir­a­cle. And this ad­mo­ni­tion is war­ranted, not­with­stand­ing that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth is the only founder of a re­li­gion who per­formed super­ma­te­rial acts on earth.

• defined as › done in response to living faith

150:9.2But they jos­tled him and, point­ing ac­cus­ing fin­gers at him, said: “You think you are bet­ter than the peo­ple of Naz­a­reth; you moved away from us, but your brother is a com­mon work­man, and your sis­ters still live among us. We know your mother, Mary. Where are they to­day? We hear big things about you, but we no­tice that you do no won­ders when you come back.” Je­sus an­swered them: “I love the peo­ple who dwell in the city where I grew up, and I would re­joice to see you all en­ter the king­dom of heaven, but the do­ing of the works of God is not for me to de­ter­mine. The trans­for­ma­tions of grace are wrought in re­sponse to the liv­ing faith of those who are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.”

• limitations › do nothing to reveal Father
• limitations › kingdom cannot be built upon m.

152:5.4“And now do you all see that the work­ing of mir­a­cles and the per­for­mance of ma­te­rial won­ders will not win souls for the spir­i­tual king­dom? We fed the mul­ti­tude, but it did not lead them to hunger for the bread of life nei­ther to thirst for the wa­ters of spir­i­tual righ­teous­ness. When their hunger was sat­is­fied, they sought not en­trance into the king­dom of heaven but rather sought to pro­claim the Son of Man king af­ter the man­ner of the kings of this world, only that they might con­tinue to eat bread with­out hav­ing to toil there­for. And all this, in which many of you did more or less par­tic­i­pate, does noth­ing to re­veal the heav­enly Fa­ther or to ad­vance his king­dom on earth. Have we not suf­fi­cient en­e­mies among the re­li­gious lead­ers of the land with­out do­ing that which is likely to es­trange also the civil rulers? I pray that the Fa­ther will anoint your eyes that you may see and open your ears that you may hear, to the end that you may have full faith in the gospel which I have taught you.”

• limitations › do nothing to reveal Father

152:6.5Je­sus thus en­deav­ored to pre­pare the apos­tles for the im­pend­ing shock—the cri­sis in the pub­lic at­ti­tude to­ward him which was only a few days dis­tant. He ex­plained to the twelve that the re­li­gious rulers of Je­ru­sa­lem would con­spire with Herod An­tipas to ef­fect their de­struc­tion. The twelve be­gan to re­al­ize more fully (though not fi­nally) that Je­sus was not go­ing to sit on David’s throne. They saw more fully that spir­i­tual truth was not to be ad­vanced by ma­te­rial won­ders. They be­gan to re­al­ize that the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and the pop­u­lar move­ment to make Je­sus king was the apex of the mir­a­cle-seek­ing, won­der-work­ing ex­pectance of the peo­ple and the height of Je­sus’ ac­claim by the pop­u­lace. They vaguely dis­cerned and dimly fore­saw the ap­proach­ing times of spir­i­tual sift­ing and cruel ad­ver­sity. These twelve men were slowly awak­ing to the re­al­iza­tion of the real na­ture of their task as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, and they be­gan to gird them­selves for the try­ing and test­ing or­deals of the last year of the Mas­ter’s min­istry on earth.

• men enshroud human leaders with supernatural origins, miraculous careers

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.

• defined as › done in response to living faith

158:5.2When Je­sus had lis­tened to this recital, he touched the kneel­ing fa­ther and bade him rise while he gave the near-by apos­tles a search­ing sur­vey. Then said Je­sus to all those who stood be­fore him: “O faith­less and per­verse gen­er­a­tion, how long shall I bear with you? How long shall I be with you? How long ere you learn that the works of faith come not forth at the bid­ding of doubt­ing un­be­lief?” And then, point­ing to the be­wil­dered fa­ther, Je­sus said, “Bring hither your son.” And when James had brought the lad be­fore Je­sus, he asked, “How long has the boy been af­flicted in this way?” The fa­ther an­swered, “Since he was a very young child.” And as they talked, the youth was seized with a vi­o­lent at­tack and fell in their midst, gnash­ing his teeth and foam­ing at the mouth. Af­ter a suc­ces­sion of vi­o­lent con­vul­sions he lay there be­fore them as one dead. Now did the fa­ther again kneel at Je­sus’ feet while he im­plored the Mas­ter, say­ing: “If you can cure him, I be­seech you to have com­pas­sion on us and de­liver us from this af­flic­tion.” And when Je­sus heard these words, he looked down into the fa­ther’s anx­ious face, say­ing: “Ques­tion not my Fa­ther’s power of love, only the sin­cer­ity and reach of your faith. All things are pos­si­ble to him who re­ally be­lieves.” And then James of Safed spoke those long-to-be-re­mem­bered words of com­min­gled faith and doubt, “Lord, I be­lieve. I pray you help my un­be­lief.”

• defined as › impossible except in accordance with Father’s will

158:6.4“How long will it take you to learn that you can­not time-shorten the course of es­tab­lished nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena ex­cept when such things are in ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will? nor can you do spir­i­tual work in the ab­sence of spir­i­tual power. And you can do nei­ther of these, even when their po­ten­tial is pres­ent, with­out the ex­is­tence of that third and es­sen­tial hu­man fac­tor, the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of the pos­ses­sion of liv­ing faith. Must you al­ways have ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions as an at­trac­tion for the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom? Can you not grasp the spirit sig­nif­i­cance of my mis­sion with­out the vis­i­ble ex­hi­bi­tion of un­usual works? When can you be de­pended upon to ad­here to the higher and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom re­gard­less of the out­ward ap­pear­ance of all ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions?”

• refrain from teaching the sick to expect

163:4.32. While min­is­ter­ing to the sick, re­frain from teach­ing the ex­pec­ta­tion of mir­a­cles.

• night will come when it will be impossible to do m.

164:3.7Je­sus de­cided to use this beg­gar in his plans for that day’s work, but be­fore do­ing any­thing for the blind man, Josiah by name, he pro­ceeded to an­swer Na­than­iel’s ques­tion. Said the Mas­ter: “Nei­ther did this man sin nor his par­ents that the works of God might be man­i­fest in him. This blind­ness has come upon him in the nat­u­ral course of events, but we must now do the works of Him who sent me, while it is still day, for the night will cer­tainly come when it will be im­pos­si­ble to do the work we are about to per­form. When I am in the world, I am the light of the world, but in only a lit­tle while I will not be with you.”

• limitations › kingdom cannot be built upon m.

166:0.1From Febru­ary 11 to 20, Je­sus and the twelve made a tour of all the cities and vil­lages of north­ern Perea where the as­so­ciates of Ab­ner and the mem­bers of the women’s corps were work­ing. They found these mes­sen­gers of the gospel meet­ing with suc­cess, and Je­sus re­peat­edly called the at­ten­tion of his apos­tles to the fact that the gospel of the king­dom could spread with­out the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of mir­a­cles and won­ders.

• limitations › resurrection of Lazarus only hardened disbelievers’ hearts

168:2.10Though many be­lieved in Je­sus as a re­sult of this mighty work, oth­ers only hard­ened their hearts the more to re­ject him. By noon the next day this story had spread over all Je­ru­sa­lem. Scores of men and women went to Beth­any to look upon Laz­a­rus and talk with him, and the alarmed and dis­con­certed Phar­isees hastily called a meet­ing of the San­hedrin that they might de­ter­mine what should be done about these new de­vel­op­ments.

• limitations › resurrection of Lazarus only hardened disbelievers’ hearts

168:3.1Even though the tes­ti­mony of this man raised from the dead did much to con­sol­i­date the faith of the mass of be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, it had lit­tle or no in­flu­ence on the at­ti­tude of the re­li­gious lead­ers and rulers at Je­ru­sa­lem ex­cept to has­ten their de­ci­sion to de­stroy Je­sus and stop his work.

• limitations › if Moses not listened to, even rising from dead would not persuade unbelievers

169:3.2“There was a cer­tain rich man named Dives, who, be­ing clothed in pur­ple and fine linen, lived in mirth and splen­dor ev­ery day. And there was a cer­tain beg­gar named Laz­a­rus, who was laid at this rich man’s gate, cov­ered with sores and de­sir­ing to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s ta­ble; yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beg­gar died and was car­ried away by the an­gels to rest in Abra­ham’s bo­som. And then, pres­ently, this rich man also died and was buried with great pomp and re­gal splen­dor. When the rich man de­parted from this world, he waked up in Hades, and find­ing him­self in tor­ment, he lifted up his eyes and be­held Abra­ham afar off and Laz­a­rus in his bo­som. And then Dives cried aloud: ‘Fa­ther Abra­ham, have mercy on me and send over Laz­a­rus that he may dip the tip of his fin­ger in wa­ter to cool my tongue, for I am in great an­guish be­cause of my pun­ish­ment.’ And then Abra­ham replied: ‘My son, you should re­mem­ber that in your life­time you en­joyed the good things while Laz­a­rus in like man­ner suf­fered the evil. But now all this is changed, see­ing that Laz­a­rus is com­forted while you are tor­mented. And be­sides, be­tween us and you there is a great gulf so that we can­not go to you, nei­ther can you come over to us.’ Then said Dives to Abra­ham: ‘I pray you send Laz­a­rus back to my fa­ther’s house, inas­much as I have five broth­ers, that he may so tes­tify as to pre­vent my broth­ers from com­ing to this place of tor­ment.’ But Abra­ham said: ‘My son, they have Moses and the proph­ets; let them hear them.’ And then an­swered Dives: ‘No, No, Fa­ther Abra­ham! but if one go to them from the dead, they will re­pent.’ And then said Abra­ham: ‘If they hear not Moses and the proph­ets, nei­ther will they be per­suaded even if one were to rise from the dead.’”