Old Testament

148:5.4“Na­than­iel, it is our mis­sion to help men solve their spir­i­tual prob­lems and in this way to quicken their minds so that they may be the bet­ter pre­pared and in­spired to go about solv­ing their man­i­fold ma­te­rial prob­lems. I know of your con­fu­sion as you have read the Scrip­tures. All too of­ten there has pre­vailed a ten­dency to as­cribe to God the re­spon­si­bil­ity for ev­ery­thing which ig­no­rant man fails to un­der­stand. The Fa­ther is not per­son­ally re­spon­si­ble for all you may fail to com­pre­hend. Do not doubt the love of the Fa­ther just be­cause some just and wise law of his or­dain­ing chances to af­flict you be­cause you have in­no­cently or de­lib­er­ately trans­gressed such a di­vine or­di­nance.

156:5.4“It is not strange that you ask such ques­tions see­ing that you are be­gin­ning to know the Fa­ther as I know him, and not as the early He­brew proph­ets so dimly saw him. You well know how our fore­fa­thers were dis­posed to see God in al­most ev­ery­thing that hap­pened. They looked for the hand of God in all nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences and in ev­ery un­usual episode of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. They con­nected God with both good and evil. They thought he soft­ened the heart of Moses and hard­ened the heart of Pharaoh. When man had a strong urge to do some­thing, good or evil, he was in the habit of ac­count­ing for these un­usual emo­tions by re­mark­ing: ‘The Lord spoke to me say­ing, do thus and so, or go here and there.’ Ac­cord­ingly, since men so of­ten and so vi­o­lently ran into temp­ta­tion, it be­came the habit of our fore­fa­thers to be­lieve that God led them thither for test­ing, pun­ish­ing, or strength­en­ing. But you, in­deed, now know bet­ter. You know that men are all too of­ten led into temp­ta­tion by the urge of their own self­ish­ness and by the im­pulses of their an­i­mal na­tures. When you are in this way tempted, I ad­mon­ish you that, while you rec­og­nize temp­ta­tion hon­estly and sin­cerely for just what it is, you in­tel­li­gently redi­rect the en­er­gies of spirit, mind, and body, which are seek­ing ex­pres­sion, into higher chan­nels and to­ward more ide­al­is­tic goals. In this way may you trans­form your temp­ta­tions into the high­est types of up­lift­ing mor­tal min­istry while you al­most wholly avoid these waste­ful and weak­en­ing con­flicts be­tween the an­i­mal and spir­i­tual na­tures.

74:8.8In his early teach­ings, Moses very wisely did not at­tempt to go back of Adam’s time, and since Moses was the su­preme teacher of the He­brews, the sto­ries of Adam be­came in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with those of cre­ation. That the ear­lier tra­di­tions rec­og­nized pre-Adamic civ­i­liza­tion is clearly shown by the fact that later ed­i­tors, in­tend­ing to erad­i­cate all ref­er­ence to hu­man af­fairs be­fore Adam’s time, ne­glected to re­move the tell­tale ref­er­ence to Cain’s em­i­gra­tion to the “land of Nod,” where he took him­self a wife.

93:9.7What the Old Tes­ta­ment rec­ords de­scribe as con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Abra­ham and God were in re­al­ity con­fer­ences be­tween Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek. Later scribes re­garded the term Mel­chiz­e­dek as syn­ony­mous with God. The rec­ord of so many con­tacts of Abra­ham and Sarah with “the an­gel of the Lord” refers to their nu­mer­ous vis­its with Mel­chiz­e­dek.

• en masse editing in Babylon

93:9.6The teach­ing of Mel­chiz­e­dek was full and re­plete, but the rec­ords of these days seemed im­pos­si­ble and fan­tas­tic to the later He­brew priests, al­though many had some un­der­stand­ing of these trans­ac­tions, at least up to the times of the en masse edit­ing of the Old Tes­ta­ment rec­ords in Baby­lon.

93:9.8The He­brew nar­ra­tives of Isaac, Ja­cob, and Joseph are far more re­li­able than those about Abra­ham, al­though they also con­tain many di­ver­sions from the facts, al­ter­ations made in­ten­tion­ally and un­in­ten­tion­ally at the time of the com­pi­la­tion of these rec­ords by the He­brew priests dur­ing the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. Ke­tu­rah was not a wife of Abra­ham; like Ha­gar, she was merely a con­cu­bine. All of Abra­ham’s prop­erty went to Isaac, the son of Sarah, the sta­tus wife. Abra­ham was not so old as the rec­ords in­di­cate, and his wife was much younger. These ages were de­lib­er­ately al­tered in or­der to pro­vide for the sub­se­quent al­leged mirac­u­lous birth of Isaac.

• Melchizedek edited out

93:9.9The na­tional ego of the Jews was tremen­dously de­pressed by the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. In their re­ac­tion against na­tional in­fe­ri­or­ity they swung to the other ex­treme of na­tional and racial ego­tism, in which they dis­torted and per­verted their tra­di­tions with the view of ex­alt­ing them­selves above all races as the cho­sen peo­ple of God; and hence they care­fully edited all their rec­ords for the pur­pose of rais­ing Abra­ham and their other na­tional lead­ers high up above all other per­sons, not ex­cept­ing Mel­chiz­e­dek him­self. The He­brew scribes there­fore de­stroyed ev­ery rec­ord of these mo­men­tous times which they could find, pre­serv­ing only the nar­ra­tive of the meet­ing of Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek af­ter the bat­tle of Sid­dim, which they deemed re­flected great honor upon Abra­ham.

• differing stories on David being made king

97:9.8The dif­fer­ence be­tween sa­cred and pro­fane his­tory is well il­lus­trated by the two dif­fer­ing sto­ries con­cern­ing mak­ing David king as they are found in the Old Tes­ta­ment. A part of the sec­u­lar story of how his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers (his army) made him king was in­ad­ver­tently left in the rec­ord by the priests who sub­se­quently pre­pared the lengthy and pro­saic ac­count of the sa­cred his­tory wherein is de­picted how the prophet Samuel, by di­vine di­rec­tion, se­lected David from among his breth­ren and pro­ceeded for­mally and by elab­o­rate and solemn cer­e­monies to anoint him king over the He­brews and then to pro­claim him Saul’s suc­ces­sor.

• battle between Ahab and Shalmaneser deleted

97:9.18There were ups and downs—wars be­tween Is­rael and Ju­dah. Af­ter four years of civil war and three dy­nas­ties, Is­rael fell un­der the rule of city despots who be­gan to trade in land. Even King Omri at­tempted to buy She­mer’s es­tate. But the end drew on apace when Shal­maneser III de­cided to con­trol the Med­i­ter­ra­nean coast. King Ahab of Ephraim gath­ered ten other groups and re­sisted at Karkar; the bat­tle was a draw. The As­syr­ian was stopped but the al­lies were dec­i­mated. This great fight is not even men­tioned in the Old Tes­ta­ment.

• God or Satan provoked David to number Israel

142:3.9Never be­fore had the apos­tles been so shocked as they were upon hear­ing this re­count­ing of the growth of the con­cept of God in the Jew­ish minds of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions; they were too be­wil­dered to ask ques­tions. As they sat be­fore Je­sus in si­lence, the Mas­ter con­tin­ued: “And you would have known these truths had you read the Scrip­tures. Have you not read in Samuel where it says: ‘And the anger of the Lord was kin­dled against Is­rael, so much so that he moved David against them, say­ing, go num­ber Is­rael and Ju­dah’? And this was not strange be­cause in the days of Samuel the chil­dren of Abra­ham re­ally be­lieved that Yah­weh cre­ated both good and evil. But when a later writer nar­rated these events, sub­se­quent to the en­large­ment of the Jew­ish con­cept of the na­ture of God, he did not dare at­trib­ute evil to Yah­weh; there­fore he said: ‘And Sa­tan stood up against Is­rael and pro­voked David to num­ber Is­rael.’ Can­not you dis­cern that such rec­ords in the Scrip­tures clearly show how the con­cept of the na­ture of God con­tin­ued to grow from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other?

131:2.1The Ken­ites of Pales­tine sal­vaged much of the teach­ing of Mel­chiz­e­dek, and from these rec­ords, as pre­served and mod­i­fied by the Jews, Je­sus and Ga­nid made the fol­low­ing se­lec­tion:

131:2.2“In the be­gin­ning God cre­ated the heav­ens and the earth and all things therein. And, be­hold, all he cre­ated was very good. The Lord, he is God; there is none be­side him in heaven above or upon the earth be­neath. There­fore shall you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. The earth shall be full of the knowl­edge of the Lord as the wa­ters cover the sea. The heav­ens de­clare the glory of God, and the fir­ma­ment shows his hand­i­work. Day af­ter day ut­ters speech; night af­ter night shows knowl­edge. There is no speech or lan­guage where their voice is not heard. The Lord’s work is great, and in wis­dom has he made all things; the great­ness of the Lord is un­search­able. He knows the num­ber of the stars; he calls them all by their names.

131:2.3“The power of the Lord is great and his un­der­stand­ing in­fi­nite. Says the Lord: ‘As the heav­ens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’ God re­veals the deep and se­cret things be­cause the light dwells with him. The Lord is mer­ci­ful and gra­cious; he is long-suf­fer­ing and abun­dant in good­ness and truth. The Lord is good and up­right; the meek will he guide in judg­ment. Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts God. God is our refuge and strength, a very pres­ent help in trou­ble.

131:2.4“The mercy of the Lord is from ev­er­last­ing to ev­er­last­ing upon those who fear him and his righ­teous­ness even to our chil­dren’s chil­dren. The Lord is gra­cious and full of com­pas­sion. The Lord is good to all, and his ten­der mer­cies are over all his cre­ation; he heals the bro­ken­hearted and binds up their wounds. Whither shall I go from God’s spirit? whither shall I flee from the di­vine pres­ence? Thus says the High and Lofty One who in­hab­its eter­nity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place; also with him who is of a con­trite heart and a hum­ble spirit!’ None can hide him­self from our God, for he fills heaven and earth. Let the heav­ens be glad and let the earth re­joice. Let all na­tions say: The Lord reigns! Give thanks to God, for his mercy en­dures for­ever.

131:2.5“The heav­ens de­clare God’s righ­teous­ness, and all the peo­ple have seen his glory. It is God who has made us, and not we our­selves; we are his peo­ple, the sheep of his pas­ture. His mercy is ev­er­last­ing, and his truth en­dures to all gen­er­a­tions. Our God is gov­er­nor among the na­tions. Let the earth be filled with his glory! O that men would praise the Lord for his good­ness and for his won­der­ful gifts to the chil­dren of men!

131:2.6“God has made man a lit­tle less than di­vine and has crowned him with love and mercy. The Lord knows the way of the righ­teous, but the way of the un­godly shall per­ish. The fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom; the knowl­edge of the Su­preme is un­der­stand­ing. Says the Al­mighty God: ‘Walk be­fore me and be per­fect.’ For­get not that pride goes be­fore de­struc­tion and a haughty spirit be­fore a fall. He who rules his own spirit is might­ier than he who takes a city. Says the Lord God, the Holy One: ‘In re­turn­ing to your spir­i­tual rest shall you be saved; in quiet­ness and con­fi­dence shall be your strength.’ They who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings like ea­gles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint. The Lord shall give you rest from your fear. Says the Lord: ‘Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dis­mayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; yes, I will up­hold you with the right hand of my righ­teous­ness.’

131:2.7“God is our Fa­ther; the Lord is our re­deemer. God has cre­ated the uni­ver­sal hosts, and he pre­serves them all. His righ­teous­ness is like the moun­tains and his judg­ment like the great deep. He causes us to drink of the river of his plea­sures, and in his light we shall see light. It is good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to the Most High; to show forth lov­ing-kind­ness in the morn­ing and the di­vine faith­ful­ness ev­ery night. God’s king­dom is an ev­er­last­ing king­dom, and his do­min­ion en­dures through­out all gen­er­a­tions. The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pas­tures; he leads me be­side still wa­ters. He re­stores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righ­teous­ness. Yes, even though I walk through the val­ley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me. Surely good­ness and mercy shall fol­low me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for­ever.

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

131:2.9“The Lord is near all who call upon him in sin­cer­ity and in truth. Weep­ing may en­dure for a night, but joy comes in the morn­ing. A merry heart does good like a med­i­cine. No good thing will God with­hold from those who walk up­rightly. Fear God and keep his com­mand­ments, for this is the whole duty of man. Thus says the Lord who cre­ated the heav­ens and who formed the earth: ‘There is no God be­side me, a just God and a sav­ior. Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. If you seek me, you shall find me if you search for me with all your heart.’ The meek shall in­herit the earth and shall de­light them­selves in the abun­dance of peace. Who­ever sows in­iq­uity shall reap calamity; they who sow the wind shall reap the whirl­wind.

131:2.10“‘Come now, let us rea­son to­gether,’ says the Lord, ‘Though your sins be as scar­let, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crim­son, they shall be as wool.’ But there is no peace for the wicked; it is your own sins which have with­held the good things from you. God is the health of my coun­te­nance and the joy of my soul. The eter­nal God is my strength; he is our dwell­ing place, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms. The Lord is near to those who are bro­ken­hearted; he saves all who have a child­like spirit. Many are the af­flic­tions of the righ­teous man, but the Lord de­liv­ers him out of them all. Com­mit your way to the Lord—trust him—and he will bring it to pass. He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.

131:2.11“Love your neigh­bor as your­self; bear a grudge against no man. What­so­ever you hate do to no man. Love your brother, for the Lord has said: ‘I will love my chil­dren freely.’ The path of the just is as a shin­ing light which shines more and more un­til the per­fect day. They who are wise shall shine as the bright­ness of the fir­ma­ment and they who turn many to righ­teous­ness as the stars for­ever and ever. Let the wicked for­sake his evil way and the un­righ­teous man his re­bel­lious thoughts. Says the Lord: ‘Let them re­turn to me, and I will have mercy on them; I will abun­dantly par­don.’

131:2.12“Says God, the cre­ator of heaven and earth: ‘Great peace have they who love my law. My com­mand­ments are: You shall love me with all your heart; you shall have no gods be­fore me; you shall not take my name in vain; re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; honor your fa­ther and mother; you shall not kill; you shall not com­mit adul­tery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false wit­ness; you shall not covet.’

131:2.13“And to all who love the Lord su­premely and their neigh­bors like them­selves, the God of heaven says: ‘I will ran­som you from the grave; I will re­deem you from death. I will be mer­ci­ful to your chil­dren, as well as just. Have I not said of my crea­tures on earth, you are the sons of the liv­ing God? And have I not loved you with an ev­er­last­ing love? Have I not called you to be­come like me and to dwell for­ever with me in Par­a­dise?’”

77:2.11The rec­ords of such long-lived in­di­vid­u­als are also due to the con­fu­sion of months and years as time pe­ri­ods. This may also be ob­served in the Bib­li­cal ge­neal­ogy of Abra­ham and in the early rec­ords of the Chi­nese. The con­fu­sion of the twenty-eight-day month, or sea­son, with the later in­tro­duced year of more than three hun­dred and fifty days is re­spon­si­ble for the tra­di­tions of such long hu­man lives. There are rec­ords of a man who lived over nine hun­dred “years.” This pe­riod rep­re­sents not quite sev­enty years, and such lives were re­garded for ages as very long, “three­score years and ten” as such a life span was later des­ig­nated.

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.”

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

• Messianic prophecies distorted to fit Jesus

122:4.4Most of the so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the Old Tes­ta­ment were made to ap­ply to Je­sus long af­ter his life had been lived on earth. For cen­turies the He­brew proph­ets had pro­claimed the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, and these promises had been con­strued by suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions as re­fer­ring to a new Jew­ish ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and, by the re­puted mirac­u­lous meth­ods of Moses, pro­ceed to es­tab­lish the Jews in Pales­tine as a pow­er­ful na­tion, free from all for­eign dom­i­na­tion. Again, many fig­u­ra­tive pas­sages found through­out the He­brew scrip­tures were sub­se­quently mis­ap­plied to the life mis­sion of Je­sus. Many Old Tes­ta­ment say­ings were so dis­torted as to ap­pear to fit some episode of the Mas­ter’s earth life. Je­sus him­self one­time pub­licly de­nied any con­nec­tion with the royal house of David. Even the pas­sage, “a maiden shall bear a son,” was made to read, “a vir­gin shall bear a son.” This was also true of the many ge­nealo­gies of both Joseph and Mary which were con­structed sub­se­quent to Mi­chael’s ca­reer on earth. Many of these lin­eages con­tain much of the Mas­ter’s an­ces­try, but on the whole they are not gen­uine and may not be de­pended upon as fac­tual. The early fol­low­ers of Je­sus all too of­ten suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion to make all the olden pro­phetic ut­ter­ances ap­pear to find ful­fill­ment in the life of their Lord and Mas­ter.

• knowledge of

122:5.4From Joseph Je­sus se­cured his strict train­ing in the us­ages of the Jew­ish cer­e­mo­ni­als and his un­usual ac­quain­tance with the He­brew scrip­tures; from Mary he de­rived a broader view­point of re­li­gious life and a more lib­eral con­cept of per­sonal spir­i­tual free­dom.

• Jesus given Greek translation

123:0.3Through­out the two years of their so­journ at Alexan­dria, Je­sus en­joyed good health and con­tin­ued to grow nor­mally. Aside from a few friends and rel­a­tives no one was told about Je­sus’ be­ing a “child of prom­ise.” One of Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­vealed this to a few friends in Mem­phis, de­scen­dants of the dis­tant Ikh­na­ton, and they, with a small group of Alexan­drian be­liev­ers, as­sem­bled at the pala­tial home of Joseph’s rel­a­tive-bene­fac­tor a short time be­fore the re­turn to Pales­tine to wish the Naz­a­reth fam­ily well and to pay their re­spects to the child. On this oc­ca­sion the as­sem­bled friends pre­sented Je­sus with a com­plete copy of the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. But this copy of the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings was not placed in Joseph’s hands un­til both he and Mary had fi­nally de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion of their Mem­phis and Alexan­drian friends to re­main in Egypt. These be­liev­ers in­sisted that the child of des­tiny would be able to ex­ert a far greater world in­flu­ence as a res­i­dent of Alexan­dria than of any des­ig­nated place in Pales­tine. These per­sua­sions de­layed their de­par­ture for Pales­tine for some time af­ter they re­ceived the news of Herod’s death.

• possession of Greek translation brought truth seekers to Jesus’ home

123:3.1Al­ready, with his mother’s help, Je­sus had mas­tered the Galilean di­alect of the Ara­maic tongue; and now his fa­ther be­gan teach­ing him Greek. Mary spoke lit­tle Greek, but Joseph was a flu­ent speaker of both Ara­maic and Greek. The text­book for the study of the Greek lan­guage was the copy of the He­brew scrip­tures—a com­plete ver­sion of the law and the proph­ets, in­clud­ing the Psalms—which had been pre­sented to them on leav­ing Egypt. There were only two com­plete copies of the Scrip­tures in Greek in all Naz­a­reth, and the pos­ses­sion of one of them by the car­pen­ter’s fam­ily made Joseph’s home a much-sought place and en­abled Je­sus, as he grew up, to meet an al­most end­less pro­ces­sion of earnest stu­dents and sin­cere truth seek­ers. Be­fore this year ended, Je­sus had as­sumed cus­tody of this price­less man­u­script, hav­ing been told on his sixth birth­day that the sa­cred book had been pre­sented to him by Alexan­drian friends and rel­a­tives. And in a very short time he could read it read­ily.

• knowledge of

125:6.2Again he jour­neyed to the tem­ple, but he did not pause to med­i­tate at the brow of Oli­vet. In the course of the morn­ing’s dis­cus­sions much time was de­voted to the law and the proph­ets, and the teach­ers were as­ton­ished that Je­sus was so fa­mil­iar with the Scrip­tures, in He­brew as well as Greek. But they were amazed not so much by his knowl­edge of truth as by his youth.

• Jesus gave Greek translation to Nazareth synagogue

126:5.6Fear­ing that the copy of the Greek scrip­tures might be dis­cov­ered and con­fis­cated by the tax col­lec­tors, Je­sus, on his fif­teenth birth­day, pre­sented it to the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue li­brary as his ma­tu­rity of­fer­ing to the Lord.

• selected passages so comment unnecessary

127:3.8Sev­eral times a year, when vis­i­tors were not pres­ent thus to func­tion, Je­sus con­tin­ued to read the Sab­bath scrip­tures at the syn­a­gogue and many times of­fered com­ments on the les­son, but usu­ally he so se­lected the pas­sages that com­ment was un­nec­es­sary. He was skill­ful, so ar­rang­ing the or­der of the read­ing of the var­i­ous pas­sages that the one would il­lu­mi­nate the other. He never failed, weather per­mit­ting, to take his broth­ers and sis­ters out on Sab­bath af­ter­noons for their na­ture strolls.

• came to fulfill law and prophets

140:6.2When he had en­tered the gar­den, he gath­ered the apos­tles around him and taught them fur­ther, say­ing: “You find it dif­fi­cult to re­ceive my mes­sage be­cause you would build the new teach­ing di­rectly upon the old, but I de­clare that you must be re­born. You must start out afresh as lit­tle chil­dren and be will­ing to trust my teach­ing and be­lieve in God. The new gospel of the king­dom can­not be made to con­form to that which is. You have wrong ideas of the Son of Man and his mis­sion on earth. But do not make the mis­take of think­ing that I have come to set aside the law and the proph­ets; I have not come to de­stroy but to ful­fill, to en­large and il­lu­mi­nate. I come not to transgress the law but rather to write these new com­mand­ments on the tablets of your hearts.

• quoted from

148:5.5“But, Na­than­iel, there is much in the Scrip­tures which would have in­structed you if you had only read with dis­cern­ment. Do you not re­mem­ber that it is writ­ten: ‘My son, de­spise not the chas­ten­ing of the Lord; nei­ther be weary of his cor­rec­tion, for whom the Lord loves he cor­rects, even as the fa­ther cor­rects the son in whom he takes de­light.’ ‘The Lord does not af­flict will­ingly.’ ‘Be­fore I was af­flicted, I went astray, but now do I keep the law. Af­flic­tion was good for me that I might thereby learn the di­vine statutes.’ ‘I know your sor­rows. The eter­nal God is your refuge, while un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms.’ ‘The Lord also is a refuge for the op­pressed, a haven of rest in times of trou­ble.’ ‘The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of af­flic­tion; the Lord will not for­get the sick.’ ‘As a fa­ther shows com­pas­sion for his chil­dren, so is the Lord com­pas­sion­ate to those who fear him. He knows your body; he re­mem­bers that you are dust.’ ‘He heals the bro­ken­hearted and binds up their wounds.’ ‘He is the hope of the poor, the strength of the needy in his dis­tress, a refuge from the storm, and a shadow from the dev­as­tat­ing heat.’ ‘He gives power to the faint, and to them who have no might he in­creases strength.’ ‘A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smok­ing flax he will not quench.’ ‘When you pass through the wa­ters of af­flic­tion, I will be with you, and when the rivers of ad­ver­sity over­flow you, I will not for­sake you.’ ‘He has sent me to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to com­fort all who mourn.’ ‘There is cor­rec­tion in suf­fer­ing; af­flic­tion does not spring forth from the dust.’”

• quoted from

149:4.2“Anger is a ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tion which rep­re­sents, in a gen­eral way, the mea­sure of the fail­ure of the spir­i­tual na­ture to gain con­trol of the com­bined in­tel­lec­tual and phys­i­cal na­tures. Anger in­di­cates your lack of tol­er­ant broth­erly love plus your lack of self-re­spect and self-con­trol. Anger de­pletes the health, de­bases the mind, and hand­i­caps the spirit teacher of man’s soul. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures that ‘wrath kills the fool­ish man,’ and that man ‘tears him­self in his anger’? That ‘he who is slow of wrath is of great un­der­stand­ing,’ while ‘he who is hasty of tem­per ex­alts folly’? You all know that ‘a soft an­swer turns away wrath,’ and how ‘griev­ous words stir up anger.’ ‘Dis­cre­tion de­fers anger,’ while ‘he who has no con­trol over his own self is like a de­fense­less city with­out walls.’ ‘Wrath is cruel and anger is out­ra­geous.’ ‘An­gry men stir up strife, while the fu­ri­ous mul­ti­ply their trans­gres­sions.’ ‘Be not hasty in spirit, for anger rests in the bo­som of fools.’” Be­fore Je­sus ceased speak­ing, he said fur­ther: “Let your hearts be so dom­i­nated by love that your spirit guide will have lit­tle trou­ble in de­liv­er­ing you from the ten­dency to give vent to those out­bursts of an­i­mal anger which are in­con­sis­tent with the sta­tus of di­vine son­ship.”

• quoted from

149:5.2“Si­mon, some per­sons are nat­u­rally more happy than oth­ers. Much, very much, de­pends upon the will­ing­ness of man to be led and di­rected by the Fa­ther’s spirit which lives within him. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures the words of the wise man, ‘The spirit of man is the can­dle of the Lord, search­ing all the in­ward parts’? And also that such spirit-led mor­tals say: ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleas­ant places; yes, I have a goodly her­itage.’ ‘A lit­tle that a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked,’ for ‘a good man shall be sat­is­fied from within him­self.’ ‘A merry heart makes a cheer­ful coun­te­nance and is a con­tin­ual feast. Bet­ter is a lit­tle with the rev­er­ence of the Lord than great trea­sure and trou­ble there­with. Bet­ter is a din­ner of herbs where love is than a fat­ted ox and ha­tred there­with. Bet­ter is a lit­tle with righ­teous­ness than great rev­enues with­out rec­ti­tude.’ ‘A merry heart does good like a med­i­cine.’ ‘Bet­ter is a hand­ful with com­po­sure than a super­abun­dance with sor­row and vex­a­tion of spirit.’

149:5.3“Much of man’s sor­row is born of the dis­ap­point­ment of his am­bi­tions and the wound­ing of his pride. Al­though men owe a duty to them­selves to make the best of their lives on earth, hav­ing thus sin­cerely ex­erted them­selves, they should cheer­fully ac­cept their lot and ex­er­cise in­ge­nu­ity in mak­ing the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s trou­bles take ori­gin in the fear soil of his own nat­u­ral heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pur­sues.’ ‘The wicked are like the trou­bled sea, for it can­not rest, but its wa­ters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

• quoted from

150:5.2“When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall an­swer, Be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom; ac­cept di­vine for­give­ness. By faith rec­og­nize the in­dwelling spirit of God, whose ac­cep­tance makes you a son of God. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where it says, ‘In the Lord have I righ­teous­ness and strength.’ Also where the Fa­ther says, ‘My righ­teous­ness is near; my sal­va­tion has gone forth, and my arms shall en­fold my peo­ple.’ ‘My soul shall be joy­ful in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with the robe of his righ­teous­ness.’ Have you not also read of the Fa­ther that his name ‘shall be called the Lord our righ­teous­ness.’ ‘Take away the filthy rags of self-righ­teous­ness and clothe my son with the robe of di­vine righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.’ It is for­ever true, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ En­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom is wholly free, but prog­ress—growth in grace—is es­sen­tial to con­tin­u­ance therein.

150:5.3“Sal­va­tion is the gift of the Fa­ther and is re­vealed by his Sons. Ac­cep­tance by faith on your part makes you a par­taker of the di­vine na­ture, a son or a daugh­ter of God. By faith you are jus­ti­fied; by faith are you saved; and by this same faith are you eter­nally ad­vanced in the way of pro­gres­sive and di­vine per­fec­tion. By faith was Abra­ham jus­ti­fied and made aware of sal­va­tion by the teach­ings of Mel­chiz­e­dek. All down through the ages has this same faith saved the sons of men, but now has a Son come forth from the Fa­ther to make sal­va­tion more real and ac­cept­able.”

• Jesus gave Greek translation to Nazareth synagogue

150:8.1This Sab­bath was a beau­ti­ful day, and all Naz­a­reth, friends and foes, turned out to hear this for­mer cit­i­zen of their town dis­course in the syn­a­gogue. Many of the apos­tolic ret­inue had to re­main with­out the syn­a­gogue; there was not room for all who had come to hear him. As a young man Je­sus had of­ten spo­ken in this place of wor­ship, and this morn­ing, when the ruler of the syn­a­gogue handed him the roll of sa­cred writ­ings from which to read the Scrip­ture les­son, none pres­ent seemed to re­call that this was the very man­u­script which he had pre­sented to this syn­a­gogue.

• quoted from

152:5.3“How long shall I bear with you? Are you all slow of spir­i­tual com­pre­hen­sion and de­fi­cient in liv­ing faith? All these months have I taught you the truths of the king­dom, and yet are you dom­i­nated by ma­te­rial mo­tives in­stead of spir­i­tual con­sid­er­a­tions. Have you not even read in the Scrip­tures where Moses ex­horted the un­be­liev­ing chil­dren of Is­rael, say­ing: ‘Fear not, stand still and see the sal­va­tion of the Lord’? Said the singer: ‘Put your trust in the Lord.’ ‘Be pa­tient, wait upon the Lord and be of good cour­age. He shall strengthen your heart.’ ‘Cast your bur­den on the Lord, and he shall sus­tain you. Trust him at all times and pour out your heart to him, for God is your refuge.’ ‘He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.’ ‘It is bet­ter to trust the Lord than to put con­fi­dence in hu­man princes.’

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.

159:4.11Na­than­iel 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.

• appropriated cream of O.T.; repudiated lesser

159:5.1At Phil­a­del­phia, where James was work­ing, Je­sus taught the dis­ci­ples about the pos­i­tive na­ture of the gospel of the king­dom. When, in the course of his re­marks, he in­ti­mated that some parts of the Scrip­ture were more truth-con­tain­ing than oth­ers and ad­mon­ished his hear­ers to feed their souls upon the best of the spir­i­tual food, James in­ter­rupted the Mas­ter, ask­ing: “Would you be good enough, Mas­ter, to sug­gest to us how we may choose the bet­ter pas­sages from the Scrip­tures for our per­sonal ed­i­fi­ca­tion?” And Je­sus replied: “Yes, James, when you read the Scrip­tures look for those eter­nally true and di­vinely beau­ti­ful teach­ings, such as:

159:5.2“Cre­ate in me a clean heart, O Lord.

159:5.3“The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want.

159:5.4“You should love your neigh­bor as your­self.

159:5.5“For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, say­ing, fear not; I will help you.

159:5.6“Nei­ther shall the na­tions learn war any more.”

159:5.7And this is il­lus­tra­tive of the way Je­sus, day by day, ap­pro­pri­ated the cream of the He­brew scrip­tures for the in­struc­tion of his fol­low­ers and for in­clu­sion in the teach­ings of the new gospel of the king­dom. Other re­li­gions had sug­gested the thought of the near­ness of God to man, but Je­sus made the care of God for man like the so­lic­i­tude of a lov­ing fa­ther for the wel­fare of his de­pen­dent chil­dren and then made this teach­ing the cor­ner­stone of his re­li­gion. And thus did the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God make im­per­a­tive the prac­tice of the broth­er­hood of man. The wor­ship of God and the ser­vice of man be­came the sum and sub­stance of his re­li­gion. Je­sus took the best of the Jew­ish re­li­gion and trans­lated it to a wor­thy set­ting in the new teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom.

159:5.8Je­sus put the spirit of pos­i­tive ac­tion into the pas­sive doc­trines of the Jew­ish re­li­gion. In the place of neg­a­tive com­pli­ance with cer­e­mo­nial re­quire­ments, Je­sus en­joined the pos­i­tive do­ing of that which his new re­li­gion re­quired of those who ac­cepted it. Je­sus’ re­li­gion con­sisted not merely in be­liev­ing, but in ac­tu­ally do­ing, those things which the gospel re­quired. He did not teach that the essence of his re­li­gion con­sisted in so­cial ser­vice, but rather that so­cial ser­vice was one of the cer­tain ef­fects of the pos­ses­sion of the spirit of true re­li­gion.

159:5.9Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the bet­ter half of a Scrip­ture while he re­pu­di­ated the lesser por­tion. His great ex­hor­ta­tion, “Love your neigh­bor as your­self,” he took from the Scrip­ture which reads: “You shall not take vengeance against the chil­dren of your peo­ple, but you shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.” Je­sus ap­pro­pri­ated the pos­i­tive por­tion of this Scrip­ture while re­ject­ing the neg­a­tive part. He even op­posed neg­a­tive or purely pas­sive non­re­sis­tance. Said he: “When an en­emy smites you on one cheek, do not stand there dumb and pas­sive but in pos­i­tive at­ti­tude turn the other; that is, do the best thing pos­si­ble ac­tively to lead your brother in er­ror away from the evil paths into the bet­ter ways of righ­teous liv­ing.” Je­sus re­quired his fol­low­ers to re­act pos­i­tively and ag­gres­sively to ev­ery life sit­u­a­tion. The turn­ing of the other cheek, or what­ever act that may typ­ify, de­mands ini­tia­tive, ne­ces­si­tates vig­or­ous, ac­tive, and coura­geous ex­pres­sion of the be­liever’s per­son­al­ity.

• quoted from

165:4.8Then, as the peo­ple went down by the river to wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the first man came pri­vately to Je­sus about his in­her­i­tance inas­much as he thought Je­sus had dealt harshly with him; and when the Mas­ter had again heard him, he replied: “My son, why do you miss the op­por­tu­nity to feed upon the bread of life on a day like this in or­der to in­dulge your cov­etous dis­po­si­tion? Do you not know that the Jew­ish laws of in­her­i­tance will be justly ad­min­is­tered if you will go with your com­plaint to the court of the syn­a­gogue? Can you not see that my work has to do with mak­ing sure that you know about your heav­enly in­her­i­tance? Have you not read the Scrip­ture: ‘There is he who waxes rich by his wari­ness and much pinch­ing, and this is the por­tion of his re­ward: Whereas he says, I have found rest and now shall be able to eat con­tin­u­ally of my goods, yet he knows not what time shall bring upon him, and also that he must leave all these things to oth­ers when he dies.’ Have you not read the com­mand­ment: ‘You shall not covet.’ And again, ‘They have eaten and filled them­selves and waxed fat, and then did they turn to other gods.’ Have you read in the Psalms that ‘the Lord ab­hors the cov­etous,’ and that ‘the lit­tle a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked.’ ‘If riches in­crease, set not your heart upon them.’ Have you read where Jeremiah said, ‘Let not the rich man glory in his riches’; and Eze­kiel spoke truth when he said, ‘With their mouths they make a show of love, but their hearts are set upon their own self­ish gain.’”

• constantly appealed to

167:5.5Al­though Je­sus did not of­fer new man­dates gov­ern­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, he did urge the Jews to live up to their own laws and higher teach­ings. He con­stantly ap­pealed to the writ­ten Scrip­tures in his ef­fort to im­prove their prac­tices along these so­cial lines. While thus up­hold­ing the high and ideal con­cepts of mar­riage, Je­sus skill­fully avoided clash­ing with his ques­tion­ers about the so­cial prac­tices rep­re­sented by ei­ther their writ­ten laws or their much-cher­ished di­vorce priv­i­leges.

• quoted from

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

97:7.3These He­brew priests and scribes had a sin­gle idea in their minds, and that was the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Jew­ish na­tion, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of He­brew tra­di­tions, and the ex­al­ta­tion of their racial his­tory. If there is re­sent­ment of the fact that these priests have fas­tened their er­ro­neous ideas upon such a large part of the Oc­ci­den­tal world, it should be re­mem­bered that they did not in­ten­tion­ally do this; they did not claim to be writ­ing by in­spi­ra­tion; they made no pro­fes­sion to be writ­ing a sa­cred book. They were merely prepar­ing a text­book de­signed to bol­ster up the dwin­dling cour­age of their fel­lows in cap­tiv­ity. They were def­i­nitely aim­ing at im­prov­ing the na­tional spirit and morale of their com­pa­tri­ots. It re­mained for later-day men to as­sem­ble these and other writ­ings into a guide book of sup­pos­edly in­fal­li­ble teach­ings.

• creation account written long after Moses

74:8.7The Old Tes­ta­ment ac­count of cre­ation dates from long af­ter the time of Moses; he never taught the He­brews such a dis­torted story. But he did pre­sent a sim­ple and con­densed nar­ra­tive of cre­ation to the Is­raelites, hop­ing thereby to aug­ment his ap­peal to wor­ship the Cre­ator, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, whom he called the Lord God of Is­rael.

• written to bolster Jews’ courage in captivity

74:8.9The He­brews had no writ­ten lan­guage in gen­eral us­age for a long time af­ter they reached Pales­tine. They learned the use of an al­pha­bet from the neigh­bor­ing Phil­is­tines, who were po­lit­i­cal refugees from the higher civ­i­liza­tion of Crete. The He­brews did lit­tle writ­ing un­til about 900 B.C., and hav­ing no writ­ten lan­guage un­til such a late date, they had sev­eral dif­fer­ent sto­ries of cre­ation in cir­cu­la­tion, but af­ter the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity they in­clined more to­ward ac­cept­ing a mod­i­fied Mes­o­po­ta­mian ver­sion.

74:8.10Jew­ish tra­di­tion be­came crys­tal­lized about Moses, and be­cause he en­deav­ored to trace the lin­eage of Abra­ham back to Adam, the Jews as­sumed that Adam was the first of all man­kind. Yah­weh was the cre­ator, and since Adam was sup­posed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to mak­ing Adam. And then the tra­di­tion of Adam’s six days got wo­ven into the story, with the re­sult that al­most a thou­sand years af­ter Moses’ so­journ on earth the tra­di­tion of cre­ation in six days was writ­ten out and sub­se­quently cred­ited to him.

74:8.11When the Jew­ish priests re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they had al­ready com­pleted the writ­ing of their nar­ra­tive of the be­gin­ning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a re­cently dis­cov­ered story of cre­ation writ­ten by Moses. But the con­tem­po­rary He­brews of around 500 B.C. did not con­sider these writ­ings to be di­vine rev­e­la­tions; they looked upon them much as later peo­ples re­gard mytho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tives.

• Ptolemy translated story of creation into Greek; used 70 scholars

74:8.12This spu­ri­ous doc­u­ment, re­puted to be the teach­ings of Moses, was brought to the at­ten­tion of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it trans­lated into Greek by a com­mis­sion of sev­enty schol­ars for his new li­brary at Alexan­dria. And so this ac­count found its place among those writ­ings which sub­se­quently be­came a part of the later col­lec­tions of the “sa­cred scrip­tures” of the He­brew and Chris­tian re­li­gions. And through iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with these the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems, such con­cepts for a long time pro­foundly in­flu­enced the phi­los­o­phy of many Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples.

• written to bolster Jews’ courage in captivity

78:7.3Al­most five thou­sand years later, as the He­brew priests in Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity sought to trace the Jew­ish peo­ple back to Adam, they found great dif­fi­culty in piec­ing the story to­gether; and it oc­curred to one of them to aban­don the ef­fort, to let the whole world drown in its wicked­ness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to trace Abra­ham right back to one of the three sur­viv­ing sons of Noah.

• inscription of Psalms on stone

95:1.10It was the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies of the pe­riod fol­low­ing the re­jec­tion of their teach­ing who wrote many of the Old Tes­ta­ment Psalms, in­scrib­ing them on stone, where later-day He­brew priests found them dur­ing the cap­tiv­ity and sub­se­quently in­cor­po­rated them among the col­lec­tion of hymns as­cribed to Jew­ish au­thor­ship. These beau­ti­ful psalms from Baby­lon were not writ­ten in the tem­ples of Bel-Mar­duk; they were the work of the de­scen­dants of the ear­lier Salem mis­sion­ar­ies, and they are a strik­ing con­trast to the mag­i­cal con­glom­er­a­tions of the Baby­lo­nian priests. The Book of Job is a fairly good re­flec­tion of the teach­ings of the Salem school at Kish and through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

• written to bolster Jews’ courage in captivity

97:7.1The de­struc­tion of the He­brew na­tion and their cap­tiv­ity in Mes­o­po­ta­mia would have proved of great ben­e­fit to their ex­pand­ing the­ol­ogy had it not been for the de­ter­mined ac­tion of their priest­hood. Their na­tion had fallen be­fore the armies of Baby­lon, and their na­tion­al­is­tic Yah­weh had suf­fered from the in­ter­na­tional preach­ments of the spir­i­tual lead­ers. It was re­sent­ment of the loss of their na­tional god that led the Jew­ish priests to go to such lengths in the in­ven­tion of fa­bles and the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of mirac­u­lous ap­pear­ing events in He­brew his­tory in an ef­fort to re­store the Jews as the cho­sen peo­ple of even the new and ex­panded idea of an in­ter­na­tion­al­ized God of all na­tions.

97:7.2Dur­ing the cap­tiv­ity the Jews were much in­flu­enced by Baby­lo­nian tra­di­tions and leg­ends, al­though it should be noted that they un­fail­ingly im­proved the moral tone and spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance of the Chaldean sto­ries which they adopted, not­with­stand­ing that they in­vari­ably dis­torted these leg­ends to re­flect honor and glory upon the an­ces­try and his­tory of Is­rael.

• real beginning was secret writing of Elijah, Amos, and Hosea

97:9.20New life ap­peared as Je­hoash and his son Jer­oboam de­liv­ered Is­rael from its en­e­mies. But by this time there ruled in Samaria a gang­ster-no­bil­ity whose depre­da­tions ri­valed those of the Da­vidic dy­nasty of olden days. State and church went along hand in hand. The at­tempt to sup­press free­dom of speech led Eli­jah, Amos, and Hosea to be­gin their se­cret writ­ing, and this was the real be­gin­ning of the Jew­ish and Chris­tian Bibles.

84:3.2The scant cour­tesy paid wom­ankind dur­ing the Old Tes­ta­ment era is a true re­flec­tion of the mores of the herds­men. The He­brew pa­tri­archs were all herds­men, as is wit­nessed by the say­ing, “The Lord is my Shep­herd.”

• directions for making wives of women captives

69:8.4The hunter, like the Amer­i­can red man, did not en­slave. He ei­ther adopted or killed his cap­tives. Slav­ery was not preva­lent among the pas­toral peo­ples, for they needed few la­bor­ers. In war the herders made a prac­tice of killing all men cap­tives and tak­ing as slaves only the women and chil­dren. The Mo­saic code con­tained spe­cific di­rec­tions for mak­ing wives of these women cap­tives. If not sat­is­fac­tory, they could be sent away, but the He­brews were not al­lowed to sell such re­jected con­sorts as slaves—that was at least one ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion. Though the so­cial stan­dards of the He­brews were crude, they were far above those of the sur­round­ing tribes.

• marital guilt test

70:10.6The Old Tes­ta­ment re­cords one of these or­deals, a mar­i­tal guilt test: If a man sus­pected his wife of be­ing un­true to him, he took her to the priest and stated his sus­pi­cions, af­ter which the priest would pre­pare a con­coc­tion con­sist­ing of holy wa­ter and sweep­ings from the tem­ple floor. Af­ter due cer­e­mony, in­clud­ing threat­en­ing curses, the ac­cused wife was made to drink the nasty po­tion. If she was guilty, “the wa­ter that causes the curse shall en­ter into her and be­come bit­ter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be ac­cursed among her peo­ple.” If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symp­toms of phys­i­cal ill­ness, she was ac­quit­ted of the charges made by her jeal­ous hus­band.

70:10.8It is not to be won­dered that the He­brews and other semi­civ­i­lized tribes prac­ticed such prim­i­tive tech­niques of jus­tice ad­min­is­tra­tion three thou­sand years ago, but it is most amaz­ing that think­ing men would sub­se­quently re­tain such a relic of bar­barism within the pages of a col­lec­tion of sa­cred writ­ings. Re­flec­tive think­ing should make it clear that no di­vine be­ing ever gave mor­tal man such un­fair in­struc­tions re­gard­ing the de­tec­tion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion of sus­pected mar­i­tal un­faith­ful­ness.

• women considered as property in

82:4.3As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced and pri­vate prop­erty gained fur­ther rec­og­ni­tion in the mores, steal­ing be­came the great crime. Adul­tery was rec­og­nized as a form of steal­ing, an in­fringe­ment of the hus­band’s prop­erty rights; it is not there­fore specif­i­cally men­tioned in the ear­lier codes and mores. Woman started out as the prop­erty of her fa­ther, who trans­ferred his ti­tle to her hus­band, and all le­gal­ized sex re­la­tions grew out of these pre-ex­is­tent prop­erty rights. The Old Tes­ta­ment deals with women as a form of prop­erty; the Ko­ran teaches their in­fe­ri­or­ity. Man had the right to lend his wife to a friend or guest, and this cus­tom still ob­tains among cer­tain peo­ples.

• full of things clean and unclean

89:1.3Among the ear­li­est pro­hi­bi­tions were re­stric­tions on the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of women and other prop­erty. As re­li­gion be­gan to play a larger part in the evo­lu­tion of the taboo, the ar­ti­cle rest­ing un­der ban was re­garded as un­clean, sub­se­quently as un­holy. The rec­ords of the He­brews are full of the men­tion of things clean and un­clean, holy and un­holy, but their be­liefs along these lines were far less cum­ber­some and ex­ten­sive than were those of many other peo­ples.

• records Lord approving of human sacrifice

89:6.3There is no more tragic and pa­thetic ex­pe­ri­ence on rec­ord, il­lus­tra­tive of the heart-tear­ing con­tentions be­tween an­cient and time-hon­ored re­li­gious cus­toms and the con­trary de­mands of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, than the He­brew nar­ra­tive of Jeph­thah and his only daugh­ter. As was com­mon cus­tom, this well-mean­ing man had made a fool­ish vow, had bar­gained with the “god of bat­tles,” agree­ing to pay a cer­tain price for vic­tory over his en­e­mies. And this price was to make a sac­ri­fice of that which first came out of his house to meet him when he re­turned to his home. Jeph­thah thought that one of his trusty slaves would thus be on hand to greet him, but it turned out that his daugh­ter and only child came out to wel­come him home. And so, even at that late date and among a sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized peo­ple, this beau­ti­ful maiden, af­ter two months to mourn her fate, was ac­tu­ally of­fered as a hu­man sac­ri­fice by her fa­ther, and with the ap­proval of his fel­low tribes­men. And all this was done in the face of Moses’ strin­gent rul­ings against the of­fer­ing of hu­man sac­ri­fice. But men and women are ad­dicted to mak­ing fool­ish and need­less vows, and the men of old held all such pledges to be highly sa­cred.

• records Lord approving of human sacrifice

89:6.6A petty king in Pales­tine, in build­ing the walls of Jeri­cho, “laid the foun­da­tion thereof in Abi­ram, his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his young­est son, Segub.” At that late date, not only did this fa­ther put two of his sons alive in the foun­da­tion holes of the city’s gates, but his ac­tion is also re­corded as be­ing “ac­cord­ing to the word of the Lord.” Moses had for­bid­den these foun­da­tion sac­ri­fices, but the Is­raelites re­verted to them soon af­ter his death. The twen­ti­eth-cen­tury cer­e­mony of de­posit­ing trin­kets and keep­sakes in the cor­ner­stone of a new build­ing is rem­i­nis­cent of the prim­i­tive foun­da­tion sac­ri­fices.

121:6.2In the days of Je­sus three lan­guages pre­vailed in Pales­tine: The com­mon peo­ple spoke some di­alect of Ara­maic; the priests and rab­bis spoke He­brew; the ed­u­cated classes and the bet­ter strata of Jews in gen­eral spoke Greek. The early trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at Alexan­dria was re­spon­si­ble in no small mea­sure for the sub­se­quent pre­dom­i­nance of the Greek wing of Jew­ish cul­ture and the­ol­ogy. And the writ­ings of the Chris­tian teach­ers were soon to ap­pear in the same lan­guage. The re­nais­sance of Ju­daism dates from the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. This was a vi­tal in­flu­ence which later de­ter­mined the drift of Paul’s Chris­tian cult to­ward the West in­stead of to­ward the East.

195:2.7And so did these Ro­man­ized Greeks force both Jews and Chris­tians to phi­los­o­phize their re­li­gion, to co-or­di­nate its ideas and sys­tem­atize its ide­als, to adapt re­li­gious prac­tices to the ex­ist­ing cur­rent of life. And all this was enor­mously helped by trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek and by the later record­ing of the New Tes­ta­ment in the Greek tongue.

97:8.1The cus­tom of look­ing upon the rec­ord of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the He­brews as sa­cred his­tory and upon the trans­ac­tions of the rest of the world as pro­fane his­tory is re­spon­si­ble for much of the con­fu­sion ex­ist­ing in the hu­man mind as to the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his­tory. And this dif­fi­culty arises be­cause there is no sec­u­lar his­tory of the Jews. Af­ter the priests of the Baby­lo­nian ex­ile had pre­pared their new rec­ord of God’s sup­pos­edly mirac­u­lous deal­ings with the He­brews, the sa­cred his­tory of Is­rael as por­trayed in the Old Tes­ta­ment, they care­fully and com­pletely de­stroyed the ex­ist­ing rec­ords of He­brew af­fairs—such books as “The Do­ings of the Kings of Is­rael” and “The Do­ings of the Kings of Ju­dah,” to­gether with sev­eral other more or less ac­cu­rate rec­ords of He­brew his­tory.

97:8.2In or­der to un­der­stand how the dev­as­tat­ing pres­sure and the in­es­cap­able co­er­cion of sec­u­lar his­tory so ter­ror­ized the cap­tive and alien-ruled Jews that they at­tempted the com­plete rewrit­ing and re­cast­ing of their his­tory, we should briefly sur­vey the rec­ord of their per­plex­ing na­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. It must be re­mem­bered that the Jews failed to evolve an ad­e­quate non­the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy of life. They strug­gled with their orig­i­nal and Egyp­tian con­cept of di­vine re­wards for righ­teous­ness cou­pled with dire pun­ish­ments for sin. The drama of Job was some­thing of a protest against this er­ro­neous phi­los­o­phy. The frank pes­simism of Ec­cle­si­astes was a worldly wise re­ac­tion to these overop­ti­mistic be­liefs in Prov­i­dence.

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

97:8.4And all of this false hope led to such a de­gree of racial dis­ap­point­ment and frus­tra­tion that the lead­ers of the Jews were so con­fused they failed to rec­og­nize and ac­cept the mis­sion and min­istry of a di­vine Son of Par­a­dise when he pres­ently came to them in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh—in­car­nated as the Son of Man.

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

97:8.6New Tes­ta­ment au­thors and later Chris­tian writ­ers fur­ther com­pli­cated the dis­tor­tion of He­brew his­tory by their well-meant at­tempts to tran­scen­den­tal­ize the Jew­ish proph­ets. Thus has He­brew his­tory been dis­as­trously ex­ploited by both Jew­ish and Chris­tian writ­ers. Sec­u­lar He­brew his­tory has been thor­oughly dog­ma­tized. It has been con­verted into a fic­tion of sa­cred his­tory and has be­come in­ex­tri­ca­bly bound up with the moral con­cepts and re­li­gious teach­ings of the so-called Chris­tian na­tions.

97:8.7A brief recital of the high points in He­brew his­tory will il­lus­trate how the facts of the rec­ord were so al­tered in Baby­lon by the Jew­ish priests as to turn the ev­ery­day sec­u­lar his­tory of their peo­ple into a fic­ti­tious and sa­cred his­tory.

174:3.4Je­sus ap­pealed only to Moses in his en­counter with the Sad­ducees be­cause this re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal sect ac­knowl­edged the va­lid­ity of only the five so-called Books of Moses; they did not al­low that the teach­ings of the proph­ets were ad­mis­si­ble as a ba­sis of doc­tri­nal dog­mas. The Mas­ter in his an­swer, though pos­i­tively af­firm­ing the fact of the sur­vival of mor­tal crea­tures by the tech­nique of the res­ur­rec­tion, did not in any sense speak ap­prov­ingly of the Phar­i­saic be­liefs in the res­ur­rec­tion of the lit­eral hu­man body. The point Je­sus wished to em­pha­size was: That the Fa­ther had said, “I am the God of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob,” not I was their God.

142:2.2When Ja­cob fin­ished speak­ing, Je­sus re­plied: “Ja­cob, you have well stated the teach­ings of the olden proph­ets who taught the chil­dren of their gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the light of their day. Our Fa­ther in Par­a­dise is change­less. But the con­cept of his na­ture has en­larged and grown from the days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the gen­er­a­tion of the prophet Isa­iah. And now have I come in the flesh to re­veal the Fa­ther in new glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds. As the gospel of this king­dom shall spread over the world with its mes­sage of good cheer and good will to all men, there will grow up im­proved and bet­ter re­la­tions among the fam­i­lies of all na­tions. As time passes, fa­thers and their chil­dren will love each other more, and thus will be brought about a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for his chil­dren on earth. Re­mem­ber, Ja­cob, that a good and true fa­ther not only loves his fam­ily as a whole—as a fam­ily—but he also truly loves and af­fec­tion­ately cares for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber.”

142:3.1The twelve apos­tles, most of whom had lis­tened to this dis­cus­sion of the char­ac­ter of God, that night asked Je­sus many ques­tions about the Fa­ther in heaven. The Mas­ter’s an­swers to these ques­tions can best be pre­sented by the fol­low­ing sum­mary in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy:

142:3.2Je­sus mildly up­braided the twelve, in sub­stance say­ing: Do you not know the tra­di­tions of Is­rael re­lat­ing to the growth of the idea of Yah­weh, and are you ig­no­rant of the teach­ing of the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing the doc­trine of God? And then did the Mas­ter pro­ceed to in­struct the apos­tles about the evo­lu­tion of the con­cept of De­ity through­out the course of the de­vel­op­ment of the Jew­ish peo­ple. He called at­ten­tion to the fol­low­ing phases of the growth of the God idea:

142:3.31. Yah­weh—the god of the Sinai clans. This was the prim­i­tive con­cept of De­ity which Moses ex­alted to the higher level of the Lord God of Is­rael. The Fa­ther in heaven never fails to ac­cept the sin­cere wor­ship of his chil­dren on earth, no mat­ter how crude their con­cept of De­ity or by what name they sym­bol­ize his di­vine na­ture.

142:3.42. The Most High. This con­cept of the Fa­ther in heaven was pro­claimed by Mel­chiz­e­dek to Abra­ham and was car­ried far from Salem by those who sub­se­quently be­lieved in this en­larged and ex­panded idea of De­ity. Abra­ham and his brother left Ur be­cause of the es­tab­lish­ment of sun wor­ship, and they be­came be­liev­ers in Mel­chiz­e­dek’s teach­ing of El Elyon—the Most High God. Theirs was a com­pos­ite con­cept of God, con­sist­ing in a blend­ing of their older Mes­o­po­ta­mian ideas and the Most High doc­trine.

142:3.53. El Shad­dai. Dur­ing these early days many of the He­brews wor­shiped El Shad­dai, the Egyp­tian con­cept of the God of heaven, which they learned about dur­ing their cap­tiv­ity in the land of the Nile. Long af­ter the times of Mel­chiz­e­dek all three of these con­cepts of God be­came joined to­gether to form the doc­trine of the cre­ator De­ity, the Lord God of Is­rael.

142:3.64. Elo­him. From the times of Adam the teach­ing of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity has per­sisted. Do you not re­call how the Scrip­tures be­gin by as­sert­ing that “In the be­gin­ning the Gods cre­ated the heav­ens and the earth”? This in­di­cates that when that rec­ord was made the Trin­ity con­cept of three Gods in one had found lodg­ment in the re­li­gion of our fore­bears.

142:3.75. The Su­preme Yah­weh. By the times of Isa­iah these be­liefs about God had ex­panded into the con­cept of a Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator who was si­mul­ta­ne­ously all-pow­er­ful and all-mer­ci­ful. And this evolv­ing and en­larg­ing con­cept of God vir­tu­ally sup­planted all pre­vi­ous ideas of De­ity in our fa­thers’ re­li­gion.

142:3.86. The Fa­ther in heaven. And now do we know God as our Fa­ther in heaven. Our teach­ing pro­vides a re­li­gion wherein the be­liever is a son of God. That is the good news of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Co­ex­is­tent with the Fa­ther are the Son and the Spirit, and the rev­e­la­tion of the na­ture and min­istry of these Par­a­dise De­i­ties will con­tinue to en­large and brighten through­out the end­less ages of the eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion of the as­cend­ing sons of God. At all times and dur­ing all ages the true wor­ship of any hu­man be­ing—as con­cerns in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress—is rec­og­nized by the in­dwelling spirit as homage ren­dered to the Fa­ther in heaven.

142:3.10“Again should you have dis­cerned the growth of the un­der­stand­ing of di­vine law in per­fect keep­ing with these en­larg­ing con­cepts of di­vin­ity. When the chil­dren of Is­rael came out of Egypt in the days be­fore the en­larged rev­e­la­tion of Yah­weh, they had ten com­mand­ments which served as their law right up to the times when they were en­camped be­fore Sinai. And these ten com­mand­ments were:

142:3.11“1. You shall wor­ship no other god, for the Lord is a jeal­ous God.

142:3.12“2. You shall not make molten gods.

142:3.13“3. You shall not ne­glect to keep the feast of un­leav­ened bread.

142:3.14“4. Of all the males of men or cat­tle, the first-born are mine, says the Lord.

142:3.15“5. Six days you may work, but on the sev­enth day you shall rest.

142:3.16“6. You shall not fail to ob­serve the feast of the first fruits and the feast of the in­gath­er­ing at the end of the year.

142:3.17“7. You shall not of­fer the blood of any sac­ri­fice with leav­ened bread.

142:3.18“8. The sac­ri­fice of the feast of the Pass­over shall not be left un­til morn­ing.

142:3.19“9. The first of the first fruits of the ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.

142:3.20“10. You shall not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.

142:3.21“And then, amidst the thun­ders and light­nings of Sinai, Moses gave them the new ten com­mand­ments, which you will all al­low are more wor­thy ut­ter­ances to ac­com­pany the en­larg­ing Yah­weh con­cepts of De­ity. And did you never take no­tice of these com­mand­ments as twice re­corded in the Scrip­tures, that in the first case de­liv­er­ance from Egypt is as­signed as the rea­son for Sab­bath keep­ing, while in a later rec­ord the ad­vanc­ing re­li­gious be­liefs of our fore­fa­thers de­manded that this be changed to the rec­og­ni­tion of the fact of cre­ation as the rea­son for Sab­bath ob­ser­vance?

142:3.22“And then will you re­mem­ber that once again—in the greater spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment of Isa­iah’s day—these ten neg­a­tive com­mand­ments were changed into the great and pos­i­tive law of love, the in­junc­tion to love God su­premely and your neigh­bor as your­self. And it is this su­preme law of love for God and for man that I also de­clare to you as con­sti­tut­ing the whole duty of man.”

142:3.23And when he had fin­ished speak­ing, no man asked him a ques­tion. They went, each one to his sleep.