Nathaniel (Apostle)

139:6.1Na­than­iel, the sixth and last of the apos­tles to be cho­sen by the Mas­ter him­self, was brought to Je­sus by his friend Philip. He had been as­so­ci­ated in sev­eral busi­ness en­ter­prises with Philip and, with him, was on the way down to see John the Bap­tist when they en­coun­tered Je­sus.

139:6.2When Na­than­iel joined the apos­tles, he was twenty-five years old and was the next to the young­est of the group. He was the young­est of a fam­ily of seven, was un­mar­ried, and the only sup­port of aged and in­firm par­ents, with whom he lived at Cana; his broth­ers and sis­ter were ei­ther mar­ried or de­ceased, and none lived there. Na­than­iel and Ju­das Is­car­iot were the two best ed­u­cated men among the twelve. Na­than­iel had thought to be­come a mer­chant.

139:6.3Je­sus did not him­self give Na­than­iel a nick­name, but the twelve soon be­gan to speak of him in terms that sig­ni­fied hon­esty, sin­cer­ity. He was “with­out guile.” And this was his great virtue; he was both hon­est and sin­cere. The weak­ness of his char­ac­ter was his pride; he was very proud of his fam­ily, his city, his rep­u­ta­tion, and his na­tion, all of which is com­mend­able if it is not car­ried too far. But Na­than­iel was in­clined to go to ex­tremes with his per­sonal prej­u­dices. He was dis­posed to pre­judge in­di­vid­u­als in ac­cor­dance with his per­sonal opin­ions. He was not slow to ask the ques­tion, even be­fore he had met Je­sus, “Can any good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?” But Na­than­iel was not ob­sti­nate, even if he was proud. He was quick to re­verse him­self when he once looked into Je­sus’ face.

139:6.4In many re­spects Na­than­iel was the odd ge­nius of the twelve. He was the apos­tolic philoso­pher and dreamer, but he was a very prac­ti­cal sort of dreamer. He al­ter­nated be­tween sea­sons of pro­found phi­los­o­phy and pe­ri­ods of rare and droll hu­mor; when in the proper mood, he was prob­a­bly the best sto­ry­teller among the twelve. Je­sus greatly en­joyed hear­ing Na­than­iel dis­course on things both se­ri­ous and frivolous. Na­than­iel pro­gres­sively took Je­sus and the king­dom more se­ri­ously, but never did he take him­self se­ri­ously.

139:6.5The apos­tles all loved and re­spected Na­than­iel, and he got along with them splen­didly, ex­cept­ing Ju­das Is­car­iot. Ju­das did not think Na­than­iel took his apos­tle­ship suf­fi­ciently se­ri­ously and once had the temer­ity to go se­cretly to Je­sus and lodge com­plaint against him. Said Je­sus: “Ju­das, watch care­fully your steps; do not over­mag­nify your of­fice. Who of us is com­pe­tent to judge his brother? It is not the Fa­ther’s will that his chil­dren should par­take only of the se­ri­ous things of life. Let me re­peat: I have come that my breth­ren in the flesh may have joy, glad­ness, and life more abun­dantly. Go then, Ju­das, and do well that which has been in­trusted to you but leave Na­than­iel, your brother, to give ac­count of him­self to God.” And the mem­ory of this, with that of many sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences, long lived in the self-de­ceiv­ing heart of Ju­das Is­car­iot.

139:6.6Many times, when Je­sus was away on the moun­tain with Pe­ter, James, and John, and things were be­com­ing tense and tan­gled among the apos­tles, when even An­drew was in doubt about what to say to his dis­con­so­late breth­ren, Na­than­iel would re­lieve the ten­sion by a bit of phi­los­o­phy or a flash of hu­mor; good hu­mor, too.

139:6.7Na­than­iel’s duty was to look af­ter the fam­i­lies of the twelve. He was of­ten ab­sent from the apos­tolic coun­cils, for when he heard that sick­ness or any­thing out of the or­di­nary had hap­pened to one of his charges, he lost no time in get­ting to that home. The twelve rested se­curely in the knowl­edge that their fam­i­lies’ wel­fare was safe in the hands of Na­than­iel.

139:6.8Na­than­iel most revered Je­sus for his tol­er­ance. He never grew weary of con­tem­plat­ing the broad­mind­ed­ness and gen­er­ous sym­pa­thy of the Son of Man.

139:6.9Na­than­iel’s fa­ther (Bartholomew) died shortly af­ter Pen­te­cost, af­ter which this apos­tle went into Mes­o­po­ta­mia and In­dia pro­claim­ing the glad tid­ings of the king­dom and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. His breth­ren never knew what be­came of their one­time philoso­pher, poet, and hu­morist. But he also was a great man in the king­dom and did much to spread his Mas­ter’s teach­ings, even though he did not par­tic­i­pate in the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the sub­se­quent Chris­tian church. Na­than­iel died in In­dia.

• Nathaniel (Apostle)

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.

• Nathaniel (Apostle)

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.

• Nathaniel (Apostle)

151:2.3Je­sus, af­ter lis­ten­ing to Pe­ter’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble, asked the other apos­tles if they did not also have sug­ges­tions to of­fer. To this in­vi­ta­tion only Na­than­iel re­sponded. Said he: “Mas­ter, while I rec­og­nize many good things about Si­mon Pe­ter’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble, I do not fully agree with him. My idea of this para­ble would be: The seed rep­re­sents the gospel of the king­dom, while the sower stands for the mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. The seed which fell by the way­side on hard­ened ground rep­re­sents those who have heard but lit­tle of the gospel, along with those who are in­dif­fer­ent to the mes­sage, and who have hard­ened their hearts. The birds of the sky that snatched away the seed which fell by the way­side rep­re­sent one’s habits of life, the temp­ta­tion of evil, and the de­sires of the flesh. The seed which fell among the rocks stands for those emo­tional souls who are quick to re­ceive new teach­ing and equally quick to give up the truth when con­fronted with the dif­fi­cul­ties and re­al­i­ties of liv­ing up to this truth; they lack spir­i­tual per­cep­tion. The seed which fell among the thorns rep­re­sents those who are at­tracted to the truths of the gospel; they are minded to fol­low its teach­ings, but they are pre­vented by the pride of life, jeal­ousy, envy, and the anx­i­eties of hu­man ex­is­tence. The seed which fell on good soil, spring­ing up to bear, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hun­dred­fold, rep­re­sents the nat­u­ral and vary­ing de­grees of abil­ity to com­pre­hend truth and re­spond to its spir­i­tual teach­ings by men and women who pos­sess di­verse en­dow­ments of spirit il­lu­mi­na­tion.”

• Nathaniel (Apostle)

164:0.1As the camp at Pella was be­ing es­tab­lished, Je­sus, tak­ing with him Na­than­iel and Thomas, se­cretly went up to Je­ru­sa­lem to at­tend the feast of the ded­i­ca­tion. Not un­til they passed over the Jor­dan at the Beth­any ford, did the two apos­tles be­come aware that their Mas­ter was go­ing on to Je­ru­sa­lem. When they per­ceived that he re­ally in­tended to be pres­ent at the feast of ded­i­ca­tion, they re­mon­strated with him most earnestly, and us­ing ev­ery sort of ar­gu­ment, they sought to dis­suade him. But their ef­forts were of no avail; Je­sus was de­ter­mined to visit Je­ru­sa­lem. To all their en­treaties and to all their warn­ings em­pha­siz­ing the folly and dan­ger of plac­ing him­self in the hands of the San­hedrin, he would re­ply only, “I would give these teach­ers in Is­rael an­other op­por­tu­nity to see the light, be­fore my hour comes.”

• Nathaniel (Apostle)

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.

147:4.10Noth­ing Je­sus had said to the apos­tles up to this time had ever more as­ton­ished them. They con­tin­ued to dis­cuss the Mas­ter’s words long af­ter he had re­tired. While Na­than­iel was slow to re­cover from his sup­po­si­tion that Je­sus had mis­un­der­stood the spirit of his ques­tion, the oth­ers were more than thank­ful that their philo­sophic fel­low apos­tle had had the cour­age to ask such a thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tion.

191:0.7More than once dur­ing the long and weary hours of this tragic day, the only sus­tain­ing in­flu­ence of the group was the fre­quent con­tri­bu­tion of Na­than­iel’s char­ac­ter­is­tic philo­sophic coun­sel. He was re­ally the con­trol­ling in­flu­ence among the ten through­out the en­tire day. Never once did he ex­press him­self con­cern­ing ei­ther be­lief or dis­be­lief in the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion. But as the day wore on, he be­came in­creas­ingly in­clined to­ward be­liev­ing that Je­sus had ful­filled his prom­ise to rise again.

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.

192:4.8And 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.

164:5.3Je­sus con­tin­ued his teach­ing: “Many lov­ing works have I shown you from the Fa­ther, so that now would I in­quire for which one of these good works do you think to stone me?” And then an­swered one of the Phar­isees: “For no good work would we stone you but for blas­phemy, inas­much as you, be­ing a man, dare to make your­self equal with God.” And Je­sus an­swered: “You charge the Son of Man with blas­phemy be­cause you re­fused to be­lieve me when I de­clared to you that I was sent by God. If I do not the works of God, be­lieve me not, but if I do the works of God, even though you be­lieve not in me, I should think you would be­lieve the works. But that you may be cer­tain of what I pro­claim, let me again as­sert that the Fa­ther is in me and I in the Fa­ther, and that, as the Fa­ther dwells in me, so will I dwell in ev­ery one who be­lieves this gospel.” And when the peo­ple heard these words, many of them rushed out to lay hands upon the stones to cast at him, but he passed out through the tem­ple precincts; and meet­ing Na­than­iel and Thomas, who had been in at­ten­dance upon the ses­sion of the San­hedrin, he waited with them near the tem­ple un­til Josiah came from the coun­cil cham­ber.

• can any good come out of Nazareth?

137:2.6Philip now mo­tioned to the group to re­main where they were while he hur­ried back to break the news of his de­ci­sion to his friend Na­than­iel, who still tar­ried be­hind un­der the mul­berry tree, turn­ing over in his mind the many things which he had heard con­cern­ing John the Bap­tist, the com­ing king­dom, and the ex­pected Mes­siah. Philip broke in upon these med­i­ta­tions, ex­claim­ing, “I have found the De­liv­erer, him of whom Moses and the proph­ets wrote and whom John has pro­claimed.” Na­than­iel, look­ing up, in­quired, “Whence comes this teacher?” And Philip replied, “He is Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the son of Joseph, the car­pen­ter, more re­cently re­sid­ing at Ca­per­naum.” And then, some­what shocked, Na­than­iel asked, “Can any such good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?” But Philip, tak­ing him by the arm, said, “Come and see.”

• honest; sincere doubter

137:2.7Philip led Na­than­iel to Je­sus, who, look­ing be­nignly into the face of the sin­cere doubter, said: “Be­hold a gen­uine Is­raelite, in whom there is no de­ceit. Fol­low me.” And Na­than­iel, turn­ing to Philip, said: “You are right. He is in­deed a mas­ter of men. I will also fol­low, if I am wor­thy.” And Je­sus nod­ded to Na­than­iel, again say­ing, “Fol­low me.”

• opposed proclaiming Jesus king

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.

• cursed with suspicion, over-individualism, pride, prejudice

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.

• opposed change in gospel to resurrection of Jesus

193:6.4Soon af­ter Pen­te­cost the twins re­turned to their homes in Gal­i­lee. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was in re­tire­ment for some time be­fore he went forth preach­ing the gospel. Thomas wor­ried for a shorter pe­riod and then re­sumed his teach­ing. Na­than­iel dif­fered in­creas­ingly with Pe­ter re­gard­ing preach­ing about Je­sus in the place of pro­claim­ing the for­mer gospel of the king­dom. This dis­agree­ment be­came so acute by the mid­dle of the fol­low­ing month that Na­than­iel with­drew, go­ing to Phil­a­del­phia to visit Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus; and af­ter tar­ry­ing there for more than a year, he went on into the lands be­yond Mes­o­po­ta­mia preach­ing the gospel as he un­der­stood it.

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

183:4.2An­drew had been re­leased from all re­spon­si­bil­ity in the group man­age­ment of his fel­low apos­tles; ac­cord­ingly, in this great­est of all crises in their lives, he was silent. Af­ter a short in­for­mal dis­cus­sion, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes stood up on the stone wall of the olive press and, mak­ing an im­pas­sioned plea for loy­alty to the Mas­ter and the cause of the king­dom, ex­horted his fel­low apos­tles and the other dis­ci­ples to has­ten on af­ter the mob and ef­fect the res­cue of Je­sus. The ma­jor­ity of the com­pany would have been dis­posed to fol­low his ag­gres­sive lead­er­ship had it not been for the ad­vice of Na­than­iel, who stood up the mo­ment Si­mon had fin­ished speak­ing and called their at­ten­tion to Je­sus’ oft-re­peated teach­ings re­gard­ing non­re­sis­tance. He fur­ther re­minded them that Je­sus had that very night in­structed them that they should pre­serve their lives for the time when they should go forth into the world pro­claim­ing the good news of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. And Na­than­iel was en­cour­aged in this stand by James Zeb­e­dee, who now told how Pe­ter and oth­ers drew their swords to de­fend the Mas­ter against ar­rest, and that Je­sus bade Si­mon Pe­ter and his fel­low swords­men sheathe their blades. Mat­thew and Philip also made speeches, but noth­ing def­i­nite came of this dis­cus­sion un­til Thomas, call­ing their at­ten­tion to the fact that Je­sus had coun­seled Laz­a­rus against ex­pos­ing him­self to death, pointed out that they could do noth­ing to save their Mas­ter inas­much as he re­fused to al­low his friends to de­fend him, and since he per­sisted in re­frain­ing from the use of his di­vine pow­ers to frus­trate his hu­man en­e­mies. Thomas per­suaded them to scat­ter, ev­ery man for him­self, with the un­der­stand­ing that David Zeb­e­dee would re­main at the camp to main­tain a clear­ing­house and mes­sen­ger head­quar­ters for the group. By half past two o’clock that morn­ing the camp was de­serted; only David re­mained on hand with three or four mes­sen­gers, the oth­ers hav­ing been dis­patched to se­cure in­for­ma­tion as to where Je­sus had been taken, and what was go­ing to be done with him.

137:2.1Sun­day morn­ing, Febru­ary 24, A.D. 26, Je­sus took leave of John the Bap­tist by the river near Pella, never again to see him in the flesh.

137:2.2That day, as Je­sus and his four dis­ci­ple-apos­tles de­parted for Gal­i­lee, there was a great tu­mult in the camp of John’s fol­low­ers. The first great di­vi­sion was about to take place. The day be­fore, John had made his pos­i­tive pro­nounce­ment to An­drew and Ezra that Je­sus was the De­liv­erer. An­drew de­cided to fol­low Je­sus, but Ezra re­jected the mild-man­nered car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth, pro­claim­ing to his as­so­ciates: “The Prophet Daniel de­clares that the Son of Man will come with the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory. This Galilean car­pen­ter, this Ca­per­naum boat­builder, can­not be the De­liv­erer. Can such a gift of God come out of Naz­a­reth? This Je­sus is a rel­a­tive of John, and through much kind­ness of heart has our teacher been de­ceived. Let us re­main aloof from this false Mes­siah.” When John re­buked Ezra for these ut­ter­ances, he drew away with many dis­ci­ples and has­tened south. And this group con­tin­ued to bap­tize in John’s name and even­tu­ally founded a sect of those who be­lieved in John but re­fused to ac­cept Je­sus. A rem­nant of this group per­sists in Mes­o­po­ta­mia even to this day.

137:2.3While this trou­ble was brew­ing among John’s fol­low­ers, Je­sus and his four dis­ci­ple-apos­tles were well on their way to­ward Gal­i­lee. Be­fore they crossed the Jor­dan, to go by way of Nain to Naz­a­reth, Je­sus, look­ing ahead and up the road, saw one Philip of Beth­saida with a friend com­ing to­ward them. Je­sus had known Philip afore­time, and he was also well known to all four of the new apos­tles. He was on his way with his friend Na­than­iel to visit John at Pella to learn more about the re­ported com­ing of the king­dom of God, and he was de­lighted to greet Je­sus. Philip had been an ad­mirer of Je­sus ever since he first came to Ca­per­naum. But Na­than­iel, who lived at Cana of Gal­i­lee, did not know Je­sus. Philip went for­ward to greet his friends while Na­than­iel rested un­der the shade of a tree by the road­side.

137:2.4Pe­ter took Philip to one side and pro­ceeded to ex­plain that they, re­fer­ring to him­self, An­drew, James, and John, had all be­come as­so­ciates of Je­sus in the new king­dom and strongly urged Philip to vol­un­teer for ser­vice. Philip was in a quandary. What should he do? Here, with­out a mo­ment’s warn­ing—on the road­side near the Jor­dan—there had come up for im­me­di­ate de­ci­sion the most mo­men­tous ques­tion of a life­time. By this time he was in earnest con­verse with Pe­ter, An­drew, and John while Je­sus was out­lin­ing to James the trip through Gal­i­lee and on to Ca­per­naum. Fi­nally, An­drew sug­gested to Philip, “Why not ask the Teacher?”

137:2.5It sud­denly dawned on Philip that Je­sus was a re­ally great man, pos­si­bly the Mes­siah, and he de­cided to abide by Je­sus’ de­ci­sion in this mat­ter; and he went straight to him, ask­ing, “Teacher, shall I go down to John or shall I join my friends who fol­low you?” And Je­sus an­swered, “Fol­low me.” Philip was thrilled with the as­sur­ance that he had found the De­liv­erer.

137:2.8Je­sus had now as­sem­bled one half of his fu­ture corps of in­ti­mate as­so­ciates, five who had for some time known him and one stranger, Na­than­iel. With­out fur­ther de­lay they crossed the Jor­dan and, go­ing by the vil­lage of Nain, reached Naz­a­reth late that evening.

137:2.9They all re­mained overnight with Joseph in Je­sus’ boy­hood home. The as­so­ciates of Je­sus lit­tle un­der­stood why their new-found teacher was so con­cerned with com­pletely de­stroy­ing ev­ery ves­tige of his writ­ing which re­mained about the home in the form of the ten com­mand­ments and other mot­toes and say­ings. But this pro­ceed­ing, to­gether with the fact that they never saw him sub­se­quently write—ex­cept upon the dust or in the sand—made a deep im­pres­sion upon their minds.

191:0.5James Zeb­e­dee at first ad­vo­cated that they all go to the tomb; he was strongly in fa­vor of do­ing some­thing to get to the bot­tom of the mys­tery. It was Na­than­iel who pre­vented them from go­ing out in pub­lic in re­sponse to James’s urg­ing, and he did this by re­mind­ing them of Je­sus’ warn­ing against un­duly jeop­ar­diz­ing their lives at this time. By noon­time James had set­tled down with the oth­ers to watch­ful wait­ing. He said lit­tle; he was tremen­dously dis­ap­pointed be­cause Je­sus did not ap­pear to them, and he did not know of the Mas­ter’s many ap­pear­ances to other groups and in­di­vid­u­als.

172:5.7Na­than­iel, aside from the sym­bolic and pro­phetic as­pects, came the near­est to un­der­stand­ing the Mas­ter’s rea­son for en­list­ing the pop­u­lar sup­port of the Pass­over pil­grims. He rea­soned it out, be­fore they reached the tem­ple, that with­out such a demon­stra­tive en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem Je­sus would have been ar­rested by the San­hedrin of­fi­cials and cast into prison the mo­ment he pre­sumed to en­ter the city. He was not, there­fore, in the least sur­prised that the Mas­ter made no fur­ther use of the cheer­ing crowds when he had once got in­side the walls of the city and had thus so forcibly im­pressed the Jew­ish lead­ers that they would re­frain from plac­ing him un­der im­me­di­ate ar­rest. Un­der­stand­ing the real rea­son for the Mas­ter’s en­ter­ing the city in this man­ner, Na­than­iel nat­u­rally fol­lowed along with more poise and was less per­turbed and dis­ap­pointed by Je­sus’ sub­se­quent con­duct than were the other apos­tles. Na­than­iel had great con­fi­dence in Je­sus’ un­der­stand­ing of men as well as in his sagac­ity and clev­er­ness in han­dling dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions.

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.”

181:2.21Then went the Mas­ter over to Na­than­iel. As Na­than­iel stood up, Je­sus bade him be seated and, sit­ting down by his side, said: “Na­than­iel, you have learned to live above prej­u­dice and to prac­tice in­creased tol­er­ance since you be­came my apos­tle. But there is much more for you to learn. You have been a bless­ing to your fel­lows in that they have al­ways been ad­mon­ished by your con­sis­tent sin­cer­ity. When I have gone, it may be that your frank­ness will in­ter­fere with your get­ting along well with your breth­ren, both old and new. You should learn that the ex­pres­sion of even a good thought must be mod­u­lated in ac­cor­dance with the in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment of the hearer. Sin­cer­ity is most ser­vice­able in the work of the king­dom when it is wed­ded to dis­cre­tion.

181:2.22“If you would learn to work with your breth­ren, you might ac­com­plish more per­ma­nent things, but if you find your­self go­ing off in quest of those who think as you do, in that event ded­i­cate your life to prov­ing that the God-know­ing dis­ci­ple can be­come a king­dom builder even when alone in the world and wholly iso­lated from his fel­low be­liev­ers. I know you will be faith­ful to the end, and I will some day wel­come you to the en­larged ser­vice of my king­dom on high.”

181:2.23Then Na­than­iel spoke, ask­ing Je­sus this ques­tion: “I have lis­tened to your teach­ing ever since you first called me to the ser­vice of this king­dom, but I hon­estly can­not un­der­stand the full mean­ing of all you tell us. I do not know what to ex­pect next, and I think most of my breth­ren are like­wise per­plexed, but they hes­i­tate to con­fess their con­fu­sion. Can you help me?” Je­sus, putting his hand on Na­than­iel’s shoul­der, said: “My friend, it is not strange that you should en­counter per­plex­ity in your at­tempt to grasp the mean­ing of my spir­i­tual teach­ings since you are so hand­i­capped by your pre­con­cep­tions of Jew­ish tra­di­tion and so con­fused by your per­sis­tent ten­dency to in­ter­pret my gospel in ac­cor­dance with the teach­ings of the scribes and Phar­isees.

181:2.24“I have taught you much by word of mouth, and I have lived my life among you. I have done all that can be done to en­lighten your minds and lib­er­ate your souls, and what you have not been able to get from my teach­ings and my life, you must now pre­pare to ac­quire at the hand of that mas­ter of all teach­ers—ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. And in all of this new ex­pe­ri­ence which now awaits you, I will go be­fore you and the Spirit of Truth shall be with you. Fear not; that which you now fail to com­pre­hend, the new teacher, when he has come, will re­veal to you through­out the re­main­der of your life on earth and on through your train­ing in the eter­nal ages.”

159:4.1And then went Je­sus over to Abila, where Na­than­iel and his as­so­ciates la­bored. Na­than­iel was much both­ered by some of Je­sus’ pro­nounce­ments which seemed to de­tract from the au­thor­ity of the rec­og­nized He­brew scrip­tures. Ac­cord­ingly, on this night, af­ter the usual pe­riod of ques­tions and an­swers, Na­than­iel took Je­sus away from the oth­ers and asked: “Mas­ter, could you trust me to know the truth about the Scrip­tures? I ob­serve that you teach us only a por­tion of the sa­cred writ­ings—the best as I view it—and I in­fer that you re­ject the teach­ings of the rab­bis to the ef­fect that the words of the law are the very words of God, hav­ing been with God in heaven even be­fore the times of Abra­ham and Moses. What is the truth about the Scrip­tures?” When Je­sus heard the ques­tion of his be­wil­dered apos­tle, he an­swered:

159:4.2“Na­than­iel, you have rightly judged; I do not re­gard the Scrip­tures as do the rab­bis. I will talk with you about this mat­ter on con­di­tion that you do not re­late these things to your breth­ren, who are not all pre­pared to re­ceive this teach­ing. The words of the law of Moses and the teach­ings of the Scrip­tures were not in ex­is­tence be­fore Abra­ham. Only in re­cent times have the Scrip­tures been gath­ered to­gether as we now have them. While they con­tain the best of the higher thoughts and long­ings of the Jew­ish peo­ple, they also con­tain much that is far from be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the char­ac­ter and teach­ings of the Fa­ther in heaven; where­fore must I choose from among the bet­ter teach­ings those truths which are to be gleaned for the gospel of the king­dom.

159:4.3“These writ­ings are the work of men, some of them holy men, oth­ers not so holy. The teach­ings of these books rep­re­sent the views and ex­tent of en­light­en­ment of the times in which they had their ori­gin. As a rev­e­la­tion of truth, the last are more de­pend­able than the first. The Scrip­tures are faulty and al­to­gether hu­man in ori­gin, but mis­take not, they do con­sti­tute the best col­lec­tion of re­li­gious wis­dom and spir­i­tual truth to be found in all the world at this time.

159:4.4“Many of these books were not writ­ten by the per­sons whose names they bear, but that in no way de­tracts from the value of the truths which they con­tain. If the story of Jonah should not be a fact, even if Jonah had never lived, still would the pro­found truth of this nar­ra­tive, the love of God for Nin­eveh and the so-called hea­then, be none the less pre­cious in the eyes of all those who love their fel­low men. The Scrip­tures are sa­cred be­cause they pre­sent the thoughts and acts of men who were search­ing for God, and who in these writ­ings left on rec­ord their high­est con­cepts of righ­teous­ness, truth, and ho­li­ness. The Scrip­tures con­tain much that is true, very much, but in the light of your pres­ent teach­ing, you know that these writ­ings also con­tain much that is mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther in heaven, the lov­ing God I have come to re­veal to all the worlds.

159:4.5“Na­than­iel, never per­mit your­self for one mo­ment to be­lieve the Scrip­ture rec­ords which tell you that the God of love di­rected your fore­fa­thers to go forth in bat­tle to slay all their en­e­mies—men, women, and chil­dren. Such rec­ords are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are not the word of God. The Scrip­tures al­ways have, and al­ways will, re­flect the in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and spir­i­tual sta­tus of those who cre­ate them. Have you not noted that the con­cepts of Yah­weh grow in beauty and glory as the proph­ets make their rec­ords from Samuel to Isa­iah? And you should re­mem­ber that the Scrip­tures are in­tended for re­li­gious in­struc­tion and spir­i­tual guid­ance. They are not the works of ei­ther his­to­ri­ans or philoso­phers.

159:4.6“The thing most de­plorable is not merely this er­ro­neous idea of the ab­so­lute per­fec­tion of the Scrip­ture rec­ord and the in­fal­li­bil­ity of its teach­ings, but rather the con­fus­ing mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of these sa­cred writ­ings by the tra­di­tion-en­slaved scribes and Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem. And now will they em­ploy both the doc­trine of the in­spi­ra­tion of the Scrip­tures and their mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions thereof in their de­ter­mined ef­fort to with­stand these newer teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom. Na­than­iel, never for­get, the Fa­ther does not limit the rev­e­la­tion of truth to any one gen­er­a­tion or to any one peo­ple. Many earnest seek­ers af­ter the truth have been, and will con­tinue to be, con­fused and dis­heart­ened by these doc­trines of the per­fec­tion of the Scrip­tures.

159:4.7“The au­thor­ity of truth is the very spirit that in­dwells its liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions, and not the dead words of the less il­lu­mi­nated and sup­pos­edly in­spired men of an­other gen­er­a­tion. And even if these holy men of old lived in­spired and spirit-filled lives, that does not mean that their words were sim­i­larly spir­i­tu­ally in­spired. To­day we make no rec­ord of the teach­ings of this gospel of the king­dom lest, when I have gone, you speed­ily be­come di­vided up into sundry groups of truth con­tenders as a re­sult of the di­ver­sity of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my teach­ings. For this gen­er­a­tion it is best that we live these truths while we shun the mak­ing of rec­ords.

159:4.8“Mark you well my words, Na­than­iel, noth­ing which hu­man na­ture has touched can be re­garded as in­fal­li­ble. Through the mind of man di­vine truth may in­deed shine forth, but al­ways of rel­a­tive pu­rity and par­tial di­vin­ity. The crea­ture may crave in­fal­li­bil­ity, but only the Cre­ators pos­sess it.

159:4.9“But the great­est er­ror of the teach­ing about the Scrip­tures is the doc­trine of their be­ing sealed books of mys­tery and wis­dom which only the wise minds of the na­tion dare to in­ter­pret. The rev­e­la­tions of di­vine truth are not sealed ex­cept by hu­man ig­no­rance, big­otry, and nar­row-minded in­tol­er­ance. The light of the Scrip­tures is only dimmed by prej­u­dice and dark­ened by su­per­sti­tion. A false fear of sa­cred­ness has pre­vented re­li­gion from be­ing safe­guarded by com­mon sense. The fear of the au­thor­ity of the sa­cred writ­ings of the past ef­fec­tively pre­vents the hon­est souls of to­day from ac­cept­ing the new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-know­ing men of an­other gen­er­a­tion so in­tensely longed to see.

159:4.10“But the sad­dest fea­ture of all is the fact that some of the teach­ers of the sanc­tity of this tra­di­tion­al­ism know this very truth. They more or less fully un­der­stand these lim­i­ta­tions of Scrip­ture, but they are moral cow­ards, in­tel­lec­tu­ally dis­hon­est. They know the truth re­gard­ing the sa­cred writ­ings, but they pre­fer to with­hold such dis­turb­ing facts from the peo­ple. And thus do they per­vert and dis­tort the Scrip­tures, mak­ing them the guide to slav­ish de­tails of the daily life and an au­thor­ity in things non­spir­i­tual in­stead of ap­peal­ing to the sa­cred writ­ings as the re­pos­i­tory of the moral wis­dom, re­li­gious in­spi­ra­tion, and the spir­i­tual teach­ing of the God-know­ing men of other gen­er­a­tions.”

159:4.11Na­than­iel was en­light­ened, and shocked, by the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment. He long pon­dered this talk in the depths of his soul, but he told no man con­cern­ing this con­fer­ence un­til af­ter Je­sus’ as­cen­sion; and even then he feared to im­part the full story of the Mas­ter’s in­struc­tion.

154:2.4This was the week that Na­than­iel and James Zeb­e­dee suf­fered from more than a slight ill­ness. For three days and nights they were acutely af­flicted with a painful di­ges­tive dis­tur­bance. On the third night Je­sus sent Sa­lome, James’s mother, to her rest, while he min­is­tered to his suf­fer­ing apos­tles. Of course Je­sus could have in­stantly healed these two men, but that is not the method of ei­ther the Son or the Fa­ther in deal­ing with these com­mon­place dif­fi­cul­ties and af­flic­tions of the chil­dren of men on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space. Never once, through­out all of his event­ful life in the flesh, did Je­sus en­gage in any sort of super­nat­u­ral min­is­tra­tion to any mem­ber of his earth fam­ily or in be­half of any one of his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers.

141:3.2Pe­ter, James, and John did most of the pub­lic preach­ing. Philip, Na­than­iel, Thomas, and Si­mon did much of the per­sonal work and con­ducted classes for spe­cial groups of in­quir­ers; the twins con­tin­ued their gen­eral po­lice super­vi­sion, while An­drew, Mat­thew, and Ju­das de­vel­oped into a gen­eral man­age­rial com­mit­tee of three, al­though each of these three also did con­sid­er­able re­li­gious work.

195:3.10Con­di­tions, how­ever, were not so bad at Alexan­dria. The early schools con­tin­ued to hold much of Je­sus’ teach­ings free from com­pro­mise. Pan­taenus taught Clement and then went on to fol­low Na­than­iel in pro­claim­ing Christ in In­dia. While some of the ide­als of Je­sus were sac­ri­ficed in the build­ing of Chris­tian­ity, it should in all fair­ness be re­corded that, by the end of the sec­ond cen­tury, prac­ti­cally all the great minds of the Greco-Ro­man world had be­come Chris­tian. The tri­umph was ap­proach­ing com­ple­tion.

140:6.9Then asked Na­than­iel: “Mas­ter, shall we give no place to jus­tice? The law of Moses says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ What shall we say?” And Je­sus an­swered: “You shall re­turn good for evil. My mes­sen­gers must not strive with men, but be gen­tle to­ward all. Mea­sure for mea­sure shall not be your rule. The rulers of men may have such laws, but not so in the king­dom; mercy al­ways shall de­ter­mine your judg­ments and love your con­duct. And if these are hard say­ings, you can even now turn back. If you find the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship too hard, you may re­turn to the less rig­or­ous path­way of dis­ci­ple­ship.”

146:2.1While the com­mon peo­ple of Jo­ta­p­ata heard Je­sus and his apos­tles gladly and many ac­cepted the gospel of the king­dom, it was the dis­course of Je­sus to the twenty-four on the sec­ond evening of their so­journ in this small town that dis­tin­guishes the Jo­ta­p­ata mis­sion. Na­than­iel was con­fused in his mind about the Mas­ter’s teach­ings con­cern­ing prayer, thanks­giv­ing, and wor­ship, and in re­sponse to his ques­tion Je­sus spoke at great length in fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion of his teach­ing. Sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, this dis­course may be pre­sented as em­pha­siz­ing the fol­low­ing points:

147:4.1On the evening of this same Sab­bath day, at Beth­any, while Je­sus, the twelve, and a group of be­liev­ers were as­sem­bled about the fire in Laz­a­rus’s gar­den, Na­than­iel asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “Mas­ter, al­though you have taught us the pos­i­tive ver­sion of the old rule of life, in­struct­ing us that we should do to oth­ers as we wish them to do to us, I do not fully dis­cern how we can al­ways abide by such an in­junc­tion. Let me il­lus­trate my con­tention by cit­ing the ex­am­ple of a lust­ful man who thus wickedly looks upon his in­tended con­sort in sin. How can we teach that this evil-in­tend­ing man should do to oth­ers as he would they should do to him?”

148:5.1At an­other of these pri­vate in­ter­views in the gar­den Na­than­iel asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, though I am be­gin­ning to un­der­stand why you refuse to prac­tice heal­ing in­dis­crim­i­nately, I am still at a loss to un­der­stand why the lov­ing Fa­ther in heaven per­mits so many of his chil­dren on earth to suf­fer so many af­flic­tions.” The Mas­ter an­swered Na­than­iel, say­ing:

156:5.3On the evening of this same day Na­than­iel asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, why do we pray that God will lead us not into temp­ta­tion when we well know from your rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther that he never does such things?” Je­sus an­swered Na­than­iel:

164:3.2As the Mas­ter stood there be­fore the blind man, en­grossed in deep thought, Na­than­iel, pon­der­ing the pos­si­ble cause of this man’s blind­ness, asked: “Mas­ter, who did sin, this man or his par­ents, that he should be born blind?”

167:7.1As they jour­neyed up the hills from Jeri­cho to Beth­any, Na­than­iel walked most of the way by the side of Je­sus, and their dis­cus­sion of chil­dren in re­la­tion to the king­dom of heaven led in­di­rectly to the con­sid­er­a­tion of the min­istry of an­gels. Na­than­iel fi­nally asked the Mas­ter this ques­tion: “See­ing that the high priest is a Sad­ducee, and since the Sad­ducees do not be­lieve in an­gels, what shall we teach the peo­ple re­gard­ing the heav­enly min­is­ters?” Then, among other things, Je­sus said:

176:0.2In or­der to avoid the crowds pass­ing along the Kidron val­ley to­ward Geth­sem­ane, Je­sus and his as­so­ciates were minded to climb up the west­ern slope of Oli­vet for a short dis­tance and then fol­low a trail over to their pri­vate camp near Geth­sem­ane lo­cated a short dis­tance above the pub­lic camp­ing ground. As they turned to leave the road lead­ing on to Beth­any, they ob­served the tem­ple, glo­ri­fied by the rays of the set­ting sun; and while they tar­ried on the mount, they saw the lights of the city ap­pear and be­held the beauty of the il­lu­mi­nated tem­ple; and there, un­der the mel­low light of the full moon, Je­sus and the twelve sat down. The Mas­ter talked with them, and pres­ently Na­than­iel asked this ques­tion: “Tell us, Mas­ter, how shall we know when these events are about to come to pass?”

138:2.96. Ju­das Is­car­iot was an only son of wealthy Jew­ish par­ents liv­ing in Jeri­cho. He had be­come at­tached to John the Bap­tist, and his Sad­ducee par­ents had dis­owned him. He was look­ing for em­ploy­ment in these re­gions when Je­sus’ apos­tles found him, and chiefly be­cause of his ex­pe­ri­ence with fi­nances, Na­than­iel in­vited him to join their ranks. Ju­das Is­car­iot was the only Judean among the twelve apos­tles.

139:12.2When Na­than­iel met Ju­das at Ta­ri­chea, he was seek­ing em­ploy­ment with a fish-dry­ing en­ter­prise at the lower end of the Sea of Gal­i­lee. He was thirty years of age and un­mar­ried when he joined the apos­tles. He was prob­a­bly the best-ed­u­cated man among the twelve and the only Judean in the Mas­ter’s apos­tolic fam­ily. Ju­das had no out­stand­ing trait of per­sonal strength, though he had many out­wardly ap­pear­ing traits of cul­ture and habits of train­ing. He was a good thinker but not al­ways a truly hon­est thinker. Ju­das did not re­ally un­der­stand him­self; he was not re­ally sin­cere in deal­ing with him­self.

177:3.2It was about midafter­noon when Na­than­iel made his speech on “Su­preme De­sire” to about half a dozen of the apos­tles and as many dis­ci­ples, the end­ing of which was: “What is wrong with most of us is that we are only half­hearted. We fail to love the Mas­ter as he loves us. If we had all wanted to go with him as much as John Mark did, he would surely have taken us all. We stood by while the lad ap­proached the Mas­ter and of­fered him the bas­ket, but when the Mas­ter took hold of it, the lad would not let go. And so the Mas­ter left us here while he went off to the hills with bas­ket, boy, and all.”

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.

171:8.9It was Na­than­iel who so well taught the mean­ing of these two para­bles in the af­ter years, sum­ming up his teach­ings in these con­clu­sions:

171:8.101. Abil­ity is the prac­ti­cal mea­sure of life’s op­por­tu­ni­ties. You will never be held re­spon­si­ble for the ac­com­plish­ment of that which is be­yond your abil­i­ties.

171:8.112. Faith­ful­ness is the unerring mea­sure of hu­man trust­wor­thi­ness. He who is faith­ful in lit­tle things is also likely to ex­hibit faith­ful­ness in ev­ery­thing con­sis­tent with his en­dow­ments.

171:8.123. The Mas­ter grants the lesser re­ward for lesser faith­ful­ness when there is like op­por­tu­nity.

171:8.134. He grants a like re­ward for like faith­ful­ness when there is lesser op­por­tu­nity.

138:10.54. Na­than­iel watched over the needs of the fam­i­lies of the twelve. He re­ceived reg­u­lar re­ports as to the re­quire­ments of each apos­tle’s fam­ily and, mak­ing req­ui­si­tion on Ju­das, the trea­surer, would send funds each week to those in need.