old things

27:1.5The last rest of time has been en­joyed; the last tran­si­tion sleep has been ex­pe­ri­enced; now you awake to life ev­er­last­ing on the shores of the eter­nal abode. “And there shall be no more sleep. The pres­ence of God and his Son are be­fore you, and you are eter­nally his ser­vants; you have seen his face, and his name is your spirit. There shall be no night there; and they need no light of the sun, for the Great Source and Cen­ter gives them light; they shall live for­ever and ever. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nei­ther sor­row nor cry­ing, nei­ther shall there be any more pain, for the for­mer things have passed away.”

100:7.18Je­sus was the per­fectly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity. And to­day, as in Gal­i­lee, he con­tin­ues to unify mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence and to co-or­di­nate hu­man en­deav­ors. He uni­fies life, en­no­bles char­ac­ter, and sim­pli­fies ex­pe­ri­ence. He en­ters the hu­man mind to el­e­vate, trans­form, and trans­fig­ure it. It is lit­er­ally true: “If any man has Christ Je­sus within him, he is a new crea­ture; old things are pass­ing away; be­hold, all things are be­com­ing new.”

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

81:6.3914. So­cial changes. So­ci­ety is not a di­vine in­sti­tu­tion; it is a phe­nom­e­non of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion; and ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion is al­ways de­layed when its lead­ers are slow in mak­ing those changes in the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion which are es­sen­tial to keep­ing pace with the sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments of the age. For all that, things must not be de­spised just be­cause they are old, nei­ther should an idea be un­con­di­tion­ally em­braced just be­cause it is novel and new.

147:7.3Then the Mas­ter pro­ceeded to warn his hear­ers against en­ter­tain­ing the no­tion that all olden teach­ing should be re­placed en­tirely by new doc­trines. Said Je­sus: “That which is old and also true must abide. Like­wise, that which is new but false must be re­jected. But that which is new and also true, have the faith and cour­age to ac­cept. Re­mem­ber it is writ­ten: ‘For­sake not an old friend, for the new is not com­pa­ra­ble to him. As new wine, so is a new friend; if it be­comes old, you shall drink it with glad­ness.’”

195:9.1Do not over­look the value of your spir­i­tual her­itage, the river of truth run­ning down through the cen­turies, even to the bar­ren times of a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic and sec­u­lar age. In all your wor­thy ef­forts to rid your­selves of the su­per­sti­tious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eter­nal truth. But be pa­tient! when the pres­ent su­per­sti­tion re­volt is over, the truths of Je­sus’ gospel will per­sist glo­ri­ously to il­lu­mi­nate a new and bet­ter way.

92:2.2Re­li­gion clings to the mores; that which was is an­cient and sup­pos­edly sa­cred. For this rea­son and no other, stone im­ple­ments per­sisted long into the age of bronze and iron. This state­ment is of rec­ord: “And if you will make me an al­tar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for, if you use your tools in mak­ing it, you have pol­luted it.” Even to­day, the Hin­dus kin­dle their al­tar fires by us­ing a prim­i­tive fire drill. In the course of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, nov­elty has al­ways been re­garded as sac­ri­lege. The sacra­ment must con­sist, not of new and man­u­fac­tured food, but of the most prim­i­tive of viands: “The flesh roasted with fire and un­leav­ened bread served with bit­ter herbs.” All types of so­cial us­age and even le­gal pro­ce­dures cling to the old forms.