patience

• evidence man indwelt by God

26:11.5The mor­tal crea­ture must find God. The Cre­ator Son never stops un­til he finds man—the low­est will crea­ture. Be­yond doubt, the Cre­ator Sons and their mor­tal chil­dren are prepar­ing for some fu­ture and un­known uni­verse ser­vice. Both tra­verse the gamut of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verse and so are ed­u­cated and trained for their eter­nal mis­sion. Through­out the uni­verses there is oc­cur­ring this unique blend­ing of the hu­man and the di­vine, the com­min­gling of crea­ture and Cre­ator. Un­think­ing mor­tals have re­ferred to the man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vine mercy and ten­der­ness, es­pe­cially to­wards the weak and in be­half of the needy, as in­dica­tive of an an­thro­po­mor­phic God. What a mis­take! Rather should such man­i­fes­ta­tions of mercy and for­bear­ance by hu­man be­ings be taken as ev­i­dence that mor­tal man is in­dwelt by the spirit of the liv­ing God; that the crea­ture is, af­ter all, di­vin­ity mo­ti­vated.

• being just and fair are preconditions to showing p.

28:6.8The mercy re­flec­tors, with their ter­tiary as­so­ciates, en­gage in nu­mer­ous super­uni­verse min­istries, in­clud­ing the teach­ing of the as­cend­ing crea­tures. Among many other things the Sig­nif­i­cances of Ori­gins teach these as­cend­ers how to ap­ply spirit ethics, and fol­low­ing such train­ing, the Mem­o­ries of Mercy teach them how to be truly mer­ci­ful. While the spirit tech­niques of mercy min­istry are be­yond your con­cept, you should even now un­der­stand that mercy is a qual­ity of growth. You should re­al­ize that there is a great re­ward of per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion in be­ing first just, next fair, then pa­tient, then kind. And then, on that foun­da­tion, if you choose and have it in your heart, you can take the next step and re­ally show mercy; but you can­not ex­hibit mercy in and of it­self. These steps must be tra­versed; oth­er­wise there can be no gen­uine mercy. There may be pa­tron­age, con­de­scen­sion, or char­ity—even pity—but not mercy. True mercy comes only as the beau­ti­ful cli­max to these pre­ced­ing ad­juncts to group un­der­stand­ing, mu­tual ap­pre­ci­a­tion, fra­ter­nal fel­low­ship, spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, and di­vine har­mony.

• being long-suffering is fruit of spirit

34:6.13The con­scious­ness of the spirit dom­i­na­tion of a hu­man life is pres­ently at­tended by an in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Spirit in the life re­ac­tions of such a spirit-led mor­tal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suf­fer­ing, gen­tle­ness, good­ness, faith, meek­ness, and tem­per­ance.” Such spirit-guided and di­vinely il­lu­mi­nated mor­tals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in hu­man faith­ful­ness per­form the du­ties of their earthly as­sign­ments, have al­ready be­gun to dis­cern the lights of eter­nal life as they glim­mer on the far­away shores of an­other world; al­ready have they be­gun to com­pre­hend the re­al­ity of that in­spir­ing and com­fort­ing truth, “The king­dom of God is not meat and drink but righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And through­out ev­ery trial and in the pres­ence of ev­ery hard­ship, spirit-born souls are sus­tained by that hope which tran­scends all fear be­cause the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit.

• good derived from

39:4.12These ser­a­phim teach the fruit­ful­ness of pa­tience: That stag­na­tion is cer­tain death, but that over­rapid growth is equally sui­ci­dal; that as a drop of wa­ter from a higher level falls to a lower and, flow­ing on­ward, passes ever down­ward through a suc­ces­sion of short falls, so ever up­ward is prog­ress in the mor­ontia and spirit worlds—and just as slowly and by just such grad­ual stages.

• parable of prodigal son illustrates need for

54:4.2Par­ents, those who have borne and reared chil­dren, are bet­ter able to un­der­stand why Mi­chael, a Cre­ator-fa­ther, might be slow to con­demn and de­stroy his own Sons. Je­sus’ story of the prodi­gal son well il­lus­trates how a lov­ing fa­ther can long wait for the re­pen­tance of an erring child.

• good derived from

54:4.7The mercy de­lays of time are by the man­date of the free will of the Cre­ators. There is good to be de­rived in the uni­verse from this tech­nique of pa­tience in deal­ing with sin­ful rebels. While it is all too true that good can­not come of evil to the one who con­tem­plates and per­forms evil, it is equally true that all things (in­clud­ing evil, po­ten­tial and man­i­fest) work to­gether for good to all be­ings who know God, love to do his will, and are as­cend­ing Par­adis­e­ward ac­cord­ing to his eter­nal plan and di­vine pur­pose.

54:5.1Of the many rea­sons known to me as to why Lu­cifer and his con­fed­er­ates were not sooner in­terned or ad­ju­di­cated, I am per­mit­ted to re­cite the fol­low­ing:

54:5.21. Mercy re­quires that ev­ery wrong­doer have suf­fi­cient time in which to for­mu­late a de­lib­er­ate and fully cho­sen at­ti­tude re­gard­ing his evil thoughts and sin­ful acts.

54:5.32. Su­preme jus­tice is dom­i­nated by a Fa­ther’s love; there­fore will jus­tice never de­stroy that which mercy can save. Time to ac­cept sal­va­tion is vouch­safed ev­ery evil­doer.

• cannot function independently of time

54:5.43. No af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther is ever pre­cip­i­tate in vis­it­ing pun­ish­ment upon an erring mem­ber of his fam­ily. Pa­tience can­not func­tion in­de­pen­dently of time.

• bear with erring brother

54:5.54. While wrong­do­ing is al­ways dele­te­ri­ous to a fam­ily, wis­dom and love ad­mon­ish the up­right chil­dren to bear with an erring brother dur­ing the time granted by the af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther in which the sin­ner may see the er­ror of his way and em­brace sal­va­tion.

54:5.65. Re­gard­less of Mi­chael’s at­ti­tude to­ward Lu­cifer, not­with­stand­ing his be­ing Lu­cifer’s Cre­ator-fa­ther, it was not in the prov­ince of the Cre­ator Son to ex­er­cise sum­mary ju­ris­dic­tion over the apos­tate Sys­tem Sov­er­eign be­cause he had not then com­pleted his be­stowal ca­reer, thereby at­tain­ing un­qual­i­fied sov­er­eignty of Neb­a­don.

54:5.76. The An­cients of Days could have im­me­di­ately an­ni­hi­lated these rebels, but they sel­dom ex­e­cute wrong­do­ers with­out a full hear­ing. In this in­stance they re­fused to over­rule the Mi­chael de­ci­sions.

54:5.87. It is ev­i­dent that Im­manuel coun­seled Mi­chael to re­main aloof from the rebels and al­low re­bel­lion to pur­sue a nat­u­ral course of self-oblit­er­a­tion. And the wis­dom of the Union of Days is the time re­flec­tion of the united wis­dom of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

54:5.98. The Faith­ful of Days on Eden­tia ad­vised the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers to al­low the rebels free course to the end that all sym­pa­thy for these evil­do­ers should be the sooner up­rooted in the hearts of ev­ery pres­ent and fu­ture cit­i­zen of Nor­la­ti­adek—ev­ery mor­tal, mor­ontia, or spirit crea­ture.

54:5.109. On Je­ru­sem the per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Su­preme Ex­ec­u­tive of Or­von­ton coun­seled Ga­briel to fos­ter full op­por­tu­nity for ev­ery liv­ing crea­ture to ma­ture a de­lib­er­ate choice in those mat­ters in­volved in the Lu­cifer Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty. The is­sues of re­bel­lion hav­ing been raised, the Par­a­dise emer­gency ad­viser of Ga­briel por­trayed that, if such full and free op­por­tu­nity were not given all Nor­la­ti­adek crea­tures, then would the Par­a­dise quar­an­tine against all such pos­si­ble half­hearted or doubt-stricken crea­tures be ex­tended in self-pro­tec­tion against the en­tire con­stel­la­tion. To keep open the Par­a­dise doors of as­cen­sion to the be­ings of Nor­la­ti­adek, it was nec­es­sary to pro­vide for the full de­vel­op­ment of re­bel­lion and to in­sure the com­plete de­ter­mi­na­tion of at­ti­tude on the part of all be­ings in any way con­cerned there­with.

54:5.1110. The Di­vine Min­is­ter of Sal­ving­ton is­sued as her third in­de­pen­dent procla­ma­tion a man­date di­rect­ing that noth­ing be done to half cure, cow­ardly sup­press, or oth­er­wise hide the hideous vis­age of rebels and re­bel­lion. The an­gelic hosts were di­rected to work for full dis­clo­sure and un­lim­ited op­por­tu­nity for sin-ex­pres­sion as the quick­est tech­nique of achiev­ing the per­fect and fi­nal cure of the plague of evil and sin.

54:5.1211. An emer­gency coun­cil of ex-mor­tals con­sist­ing of Mighty Mes­sen­gers, glo­ri­fied mor­tals who had had per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with like sit­u­a­tions, to­gether with their col­leagues, was or­ga­nized on Je­ru­sem. They ad­vised Ga­briel that at least three times the num­ber of be­ings would be led astray if ar­bi­trary or sum­mary meth­ods of sup­pres­sion were at­tempted. The en­tire Uversa corps of coun­selors con­curred in ad­vis­ing Ga­briel to per­mit the re­bel­lion to take its full and nat­u­ral course, even if it should re­quire a mil­lion years to wind up the con­se­quences.

54:5.1312. Time, even in a uni­verse of time, is rel­a­tive: If a Uran­tia mor­tal of av­er­age length of life should com­mit a crime which pre­cip­i­tated world-wide pan­de­mo­nium, and if he were ap­pre­hended, tried, and ex­e­cuted within two or three days of the com­mis­sion of the crime, would it seem a long time to you? And yet that would be nearer a com­par­i­son with the length of Lu­cifer’s life even if his ad­ju­di­ca­tion, now be­gun, should not be com­pleted for a hun­dred thou­sand Uran­tia years. The rel­a­tive lapse of time from the view­point of Uversa, where the lit­i­ga­tion is pend­ing, could be in­di­cated by say­ing that the crime of Lu­cifer was be­ing brought to trial within two and a half sec­onds of its com­mis­sion. From the Par­a­dise view­point the ad­ju­di­ca­tion is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the en­act­ment.

54:5.14There are an equal num­ber of rea­sons for not ar­bi­trar­ily stop­ping the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion which would be par­tially com­pre­hen­si­ble to you, but which I am not per­mit­ted to nar­rate. I may in­form you that on Uversa we teach forty-eight rea­sons for per­mit­ting evil to run the full course of its own moral bankruptcy and spir­i­tual ex­tinc­tion. I doubt not that there are just as many ad­di­tional rea­sons not known to me.

• mortals should be slow to criticize universe delays

54:6.8Short­sighted and time-bound mor­tal minds should be slow to crit­i­cize the time de­lays of the farsee­ing and all-wise ad­min­is­tra­tors of uni­verse af­fairs.

• we will have opportunity to present any good ideas in future ages

65:3.7And in dis­cussing the fos­ter­ing of evo­lu­tion, it would not be amiss to point out that, in the long fu­ture ahead, when you may some­time be at­tached to a corps of Life Car­ri­ers, you will have abun­dant and am­ple op­por­tu­nity to of­fer sug­ges­tions and make any pos­si­ble im­prove­ments in the plans and tech­nique of life man­age­ment and trans­plan­ta­tion. Be pa­tient! If you have good ideas, if your minds are fer­tile with bet­ter meth­ods of ad­min­is­tra­tion for any part of the uni­ver­sal do­mains, you are cer­tainly go­ing to have an op­por­tu­nity to pre­sent them to your as­so­ciates and fel­low ad­min­is­tra­tors in the ages to come.

• universe not managed merely to meet our approval

65:5.3The uni­verse of uni­verses, in­clud­ing this small world called Uran­tia, is not be­ing man­aged merely to meet our ap­proval nor just to suit our con­ve­nience, much less to grat­ify our whims and sat­isfy our cu­rios­ity. The wise and all-pow­er­ful be­ings who are re­spon­si­ble for uni­verse man­age­ment un­doubt­edly know ex­actly what they are about; and so it be­comes Life Car­ri­ers and be­hooves mor­tal minds to en­list in pa­tient wait­ing and hearty co-op­er­a­tion with the rule of wis­dom, the reign of power, and the march of prog­ress.

• delays of time inevitable

65:8.1Time and space are in­dis­sol­ubly linked; there is an in­nate as­so­ci­a­tion. The de­lays of time are in­ev­i­ta­ble in the pres­ence of cer­tain space con­di­tions.

• Prince’s staff set about slowly and naturally to advance interests intrusted to them

66:6.3The Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred—grad­u­ates of the Sa­ta­nia man­sion worlds—well knew the arts and cul­ture of Je­ru­sem, but such knowl­edge is nearly val­ue­less on a bar­baric planet pop­u­lated by prim­i­tive hu­mans. These wise be­ings knew bet­ter than to un­der­take the sud­den trans­for­ma­tion, or the en masse up­lift­ing, of the prim­i­tive races of that day. They well un­der­stood the slow evo­lu­tion of the hu­man species, and they wisely re­frained from any rad­i­cal at­tempts at mod­i­fy­ing man’s mode of life on earth.

66:6.4Each of the ten plan­e­tary com­mis­sions set about slowly and nat­u­rally to ad­vance the in­ter­ests in­trusted to them. Their plan con­sisted in at­tract­ing the best minds of the sur­round­ing tribes and, af­ter train­ing them, send­ing them back to their peo­ple as emis­saries of so­cial up­lift.

66:6.5For­eign emis­saries were never sent to a race ex­cept upon the spe­cific re­quest of that peo­ple. Those who la­bored for the up­lift and ad­vance­ment of a given tribe or race were al­ways na­tives of that tribe or race. The one hun­dred would not at­tempt to im­pose the habits and mores of even a su­pe­rior race upon an­other tribe. Al­ways they pa­tiently worked to up­lift and ad­vance the time-tried mores of each race. The sim­ple folk of Uran­tia brought their so­cial cus­toms to Dala­ma­tia, not to ex­change them for new and bet­ter prac­tices, but to have them up­lifted by con­tact with a higher cul­ture and by as­so­ci­a­tion with su­pe­rior minds. The pro­cess was slow but very ef­fec­tual.

66:6.6The Dala­ma­tia teach­ers sought to add con­scious so­cial se­lec­tion to the purely nat­u­ral se­lec­tion of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion. They did not de­range hu­man so­ci­ety, but they did markedly ac­cel­er­ate its nor­mal and nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion. Their mo­tive was pro­gres­sion by evo­lu­tion and not rev­o­lu­tion by rev­e­la­tion. The hu­man race had spent ages in ac­quir­ing the lit­tle re­li­gion and morals it had, and these super­men knew bet­ter than to rob man­kind of these few ad­vances by the con­fu­sion and dis­may which al­ways re­sult when en­light­ened and su­pe­rior be­ings un­der­take to up­lift the back­ward races by overteach­ing and over­en­light­en­ment.

66:6.7When Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies go into the heart of Africa, where sons and daugh­ters are sup­posed to re­main un­der the con­trol and di­rec­tion of their par­ents through­out the life­time of the par­ents, they only bring about con­fu­sion and the break­down of all au­thor­ity when they seek, in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion, to sup­plant this prac­tice by teach­ing that these chil­dren should be free from all pa­ren­tal re­straint af­ter they have at­tained the age of twenty-one.

• go slowly in political evolution

71:2.1Democ­racy, while an ideal, is a prod­uct of civ­i­liza­tion, not of evo­lu­tion. Go slowly! se­lect care­fully! for the dan­gers of democ­racy are:

• Adam and Eve would have met with success had they exercised more

75:1.6Prob­a­bly no Ma­te­rial Sons of Neb­a­don were ever faced with such a dif­fi­cult and seem­ingly hope­less task as con­fronted Adam and Eve in the sorry plight of Uran­tia. But they would have some­time met with suc­cess had they been more farsee­ing and pa­tient. Both of them, es­pe­cially Eve, were al­to­gether too im­pa­tient; they were not will­ing to set­tle down to the long, long en­durance test. They wanted to see some im­me­di­ate re­sults, and they did, but the re­sults thus se­cured proved most dis­as­trous both to them­selves and to their world.

• Adam and Eve would have met with success had they exercised more

75:8.4In es­ti­mat­ing the re­sults of the Adamic mis­sion on your world, jus­tice de­mands the rec­og­ni­tion of the con­di­tion of the planet. Adam was con­fronted with a well-nigh hope­less task when, with his beau­ti­ful mate, he was trans­ported from Je­ru­sem to this dark and con­fused planet. But had they been guided by the coun­sel of the Mel­chiz­e­deks and their as­so­ciates, and had they been more pa­tient, they would have even­tu­ally met with suc­cess. But Eve lis­tened to the in­sid­i­ous pro­pa­ganda of per­sonal lib­erty and plan­e­tary free­dom of ac­tion. She was led to ex­per­i­ment with the life plasm of the ma­te­rial or­der of son­ship in that she al­lowed this life trust to be­come pre­ma­turely com­min­gled with that of the then mixed or­der of the orig­i­nal de­sign of the Life Car­ri­ers which had been pre­vi­ously com­bined with that of the re­pro­duc­ing be­ings once at­tached to the staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince.

• learned in one’s family

84:7.28Mar­riage, with chil­dren and con­se­quent fam­ily life, is stim­u­la­tive of the high­est po­ten­tials in hu­man na­ture and si­mul­ta­ne­ously pro­vides the ideal av­enue for the ex­pres­sion of these quick­ened at­tri­butes of mor­tal per­son­al­ity. The fam­ily pro­vides for the bi­o­logic per­pet­u­a­tion of the hu­man species. The home is the nat­u­ral so­cial arena wherein the ethics of blood broth­er­hood may be grasped by the grow­ing chil­dren. The fam­ily is the fun­da­men­tal unit of fra­ter­nity in which par­ents and chil­dren learn those lessons of pa­tience, al­tru­ism, tol­er­ance, and for­bear­ance which are so es­sen­tial to the re­al­iza­tion of broth­er­hood among all men.

• Jesus › would not act prematurely

100:7.14His cour­age was equaled only by his pa­tience. When pressed to act pre­ma­turely, he would only re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.” He was never in a hurry; his com­po­sure was sub­lime. But he was of­ten in­dig­nant at evil, in­tol­er­ant of sin. He was of­ten might­ily moved to re­sist that which was in­im­i­cal to the wel­fare of his chil­dren on earth. But his in­dig­na­tion against sin never led to anger at the sin­ner.

• cheerfully endure tasks, trials of Adjuster’s selection

110:7.10Dur­ing the mak­ing and break­ing of a con­tact be­tween the mor­tal mind of a des­tiny re­servist and the plan­e­tary super­vi­sors, some­times the in­dwelling Ad­juster is so sit­u­ated that it be­comes pos­si­ble to trans­mit a mes­sage to the mor­tal part­ner. Not long since, on Uran­tia, such a mes­sage was trans­mit­ted by a self-act­ing Ad­juster to the hu­man as­so­ciate, a mem­ber of the re­serve corps of des­tiny. This mes­sage was in­tro­duced by these words: “And now, with­out in­jury or jeop­ardy to the sub­ject of my so­lic­i­tous de­vo­tion and with­out in­tent to over­chas­tise or dis­cour­age, for me, make rec­ord of this my plea to him.” Then fol­lowed a beau­ti­fully touch­ing and ap­peal­ing ad­mo­ni­tion. Among other things, the Ad­juster pleaded “that he more faith­fully give me his sin­cere co-op­er­a­tion, more cheer­fully en­dure the tasks of my em­place­ment, more faith­fully carry out the pro­gram of my ar­range­ment, more pa­tiently go through the tri­als of my se­lec­tion, more per­sis­tently and cheer­fully tread the path of my choos­ing, more humbly re­ceive credit that may ac­crue as a re­sult of my cease­less en­deav­ors—thus trans­mit my ad­mo­ni­tion to the man of my in­dwelling. Upon him I be­stow the su­preme de­vo­tion and af­fec­tion of a di­vine spirit. And say fur­ther to my beloved sub­ject that I will func­tion with wis­dom and power un­til the very end, un­til the last earth strug­gle is over; I will be true to my per­son­al­ity trust. And I ex­hort him to sur­vival, not to dis­ap­point me, not to de­prive me of the re­ward of my pa­tient and in­tense strug­gle. On the hu­man will our achieve­ment of per­son­al­ity de­pends. Cir­cle by cir­cle I have pa­tiently as­cended this hu­man mind, and I have tes­ti­mony that I am meet­ing the ap­proval of the chief of my kind. Cir­cle by cir­cle I am pass­ing on to judg­ment. I await with plea­sure and with­out ap­pre­hen­sion the roll call of des­tiny; I am pre­pared to sub­mit all to the tri­bu­nals of the An­cients of Days.”

• exercised by mortals whose time units are short

118:1.6Pa­tience is ex­er­cised by those mor­tals whose time units are short; true ma­tu­rity tran­scends pa­tience by a for­bear­ance born of real un­der­stand­ing.

• Jesus › counsel regarding Jude

128:6.8Je­sus and Jude walked over to Beth­any for the night, ex­plain­ing why they had failed to keep their ap­point­ment for the Pass­over sup­per, and set out for Naz­a­reth the fol­low­ing day. Je­sus did not tell the fam­ily about his young brother’s ar­rest at Je­ru­sa­lem, but he had a long talk with Jude about this episode some three weeks af­ter their re­turn. Af­ter this talk with Je­sus Jude him­self told the fam­ily. He never for­got the pa­tience and for­bear­ance his brother-fa­ther man­i­fested through­out the whole of this try­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

• Jesus › counsel regarding Jude

128:7.3All this year the fam­ily af­fairs ran smoothly ex­cept for Jude. For years James had trou­ble with his young­est brother, who was not in­clined to set­tle down to work nor was he to be de­pended upon for his share of the home ex­penses. While he would live at home, he was not con­sci­en­tious about earn­ing his share of the fam­ily up­keep.

128:7.4Je­sus was a man of peace, and ever and anon was he em­bar­rassed by Jude’s bel­liger­ent ex­ploits and nu­mer­ous pa­tri­otic out­bursts. James and Joseph were in fa­vor of cast­ing him out, but Je­sus would not con­sent. When their pa­tience would be severely tried, Je­sus would only coun­sel: “Be pa­tient. Be wise in your coun­sel and elo­quent in your lives, that your young brother may first know the bet­ter way and then be con­strained to fol­low you in it.” The wise and lov­ing coun­sel of Je­sus pre­vented a break in the fam­ily; they re­mained to­gether. But Jude never was brought to his sober senses un­til af­ter his mar­riage.

• time alone ripens fruit upon tree

130:5.3One day when Ga­nid asked Je­sus why he had not de­voted him­self to the work of a pub­lic teacher, he said: “My son, ev­ery­thing must await the com­ing of its time. You are born into the world, but no amount of anx­i­ety and no man­i­fes­ta­tion of im­pa­tience will help you to grow up. You must, in all such mat­ters, wait upon time. Time alone will ripen the green fruit upon the tree. Sea­son fol­lows sea­son and sun­down fol­lows sun­rise only with the pass­ing of time. I am now on the way to Rome with you and your fa­ther, and that is suf­fi­cient for to­day. My to­mor­row is wholly in the hands of my Fa­ther in heaven.” And then he told Ga­nid the story of Moses and the forty years of watch­ful wait­ing and con­tin­ued prepa­ra­tion.

• we are in the hands of God

135:9.6These were stren­u­ous days in John’s ex­pe­ri­ence, and he prayed for the re­turn of Je­sus. Some of John’s dis­ci­ples or­ga­nized scout­ing par­ties to go in search of Je­sus, but John for­bade, say­ing: “Our times are in the hands of the God of heaven; he will di­rect his cho­sen Son.”

• natural, slow, and sure way of accomplishing divine purpose

136:8.5Je­sus was fully aware of the short cuts open to one of his pow­ers. He knew many ways in which the at­ten­tion of the na­tion, and the whole world, could be im­me­di­ately fo­cused upon him­self. Soon the Pass­over would be cel­e­brated at Je­ru­sa­lem; the city would be thronged with vis­i­tors. He could as­cend the pin­na­cle of the tem­ple and be­fore the be­wil­dered mul­ti­tude walk out on the air; that would be the kind of a Mes­siah they were look­ing for. But he would sub­se­quently dis­ap­point them since he had not come to re-es­tab­lish David’s throne. And he knew the fu­til­ity of the Cali­gas­tia method of try­ing to get ahead of the nat­u­ral, slow, and sure way of ac­com­plish­ing the di­vine pur­pose. Again the Son of Man bowed obe­di­ently to the Fa­ther’s way, the Fa­ther’s will.

• we must in all things wait upon Father’s will

137:4.8Through­out a pe­riod of many years, Mary had al­ways turned to Je­sus for help in ev­ery cri­sis of their home life at Naz­a­reth so that it was only nat­u­ral for her to think of him at this time. But this am­bi­tious mother had still other mo­tives for ap­peal­ing to her el­dest son on this oc­ca­sion. As Je­sus was stand­ing alone in a cor­ner of the gar­den, his mother ap­proached him, say­ing, “My son, they have no wine.” And Je­sus an­swered, “My good woman, what have I to do with that?” Said Mary, “But I be­lieve your hour has come; can­not you help us?” Je­sus replied: “Again I de­clare that I have not come to do things in this wise. Why do you trou­ble me again with these mat­ters?” And then, break­ing down in tears, Mary en­treated him, “But, my son, I prom­ised them that you would help us; won’t you please do some­thing for me?” And then spoke Je­sus: “Woman, what have you to do with mak­ing such promises? See that you do it not again. We must in all things wait upon the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

• Jesus › p. was Jesus’ ideal of strength of character

140:8.20Je­sus did not at­tack the teach­ings of the He­brew proph­ets or the Greek moral­ists. The Mas­ter rec­og­nized the many good things which these great teach­ers stood for, but he had come down to earth to teach some­thing ad­di­tional, “the vol­un­tary con­for­mity of man’s will to God’s will.” Je­sus did not want sim­ply to pro­duce a re­li­gious man, a mor­tal wholly oc­cu­pied with re­li­gious feel­ings and ac­tu­ated only by spir­i­tual im­pulses. Could you have had but one look at him, you would have known that Je­sus was a real man of great ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of this world. The teach­ings of Je­sus in this re­spect have been grossly per­verted and much mis­rep­re­sented all down through the cen­turies of the Chris­tian era; you have also held per­verted ideas about the Mas­ter’s meek­ness and hu­mil­ity. What he aimed at in his life ap­pears to have been a su­perb self-re­spect. He only ad­vised man to hum­ble him­self that he might be­come truly ex­alted; what he re­ally aimed at was true hu­mil­ity to­ward God. He placed great value upon sin­cer­ity—a pure heart. Fi­delity was a car­di­nal virtue in his es­ti­mate of char­ac­ter, while cour­age was the very heart of his teach­ings. “Fear not” was his watch­word, and pa­tient en­durance his ideal of strength of char­ac­ter. The teach­ings of Je­sus con­sti­tute a re­li­gion of valor, cour­age, and hero­ism. And this is just why he chose as his per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tives twelve com­mon­place men, the ma­jor­ity of whom were rugged, vir­ile, and manly fish­er­men.

• Jesus › always exhibited p. with human shortcomings

158:7.8In all the as­so­ci­a­tion of the twelve with their Mas­ter, only a few times did they see that flash­ing eye and hear such swift words of re­buke as were ad­min­is­tered to Pe­ter and the rest of them on this oc­ca­sion. Je­sus had al­ways been pa­tient with their hu­man short­com­ings, but not so when faced by an im­pend­ing threat against the pro­gram of im­plic­itly car­ry­ing out his Fa­ther’s will re­gard­ing the re­main­der of his earth ca­reer. The apos­tles were lit­er­ally stunned; they were amazed and hor­ri­fied. They could not find words to ex­press their sor­row. Slowly they be­gan to re­al­ize what the Mas­ter must en­dure, and that they must go through these ex­pe­ri­ences with him, but they did not awaken to the re­al­ity of these com­ing events un­til long af­ter these early hints of the im­pend­ing tragedy of his lat­ter days.

• possess soul in

176:1.1In an­swer­ing Na­than­iel’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Yes, I will tell you about the times when this peo­ple shall have filled up the cup of their in­iq­uity; when jus­tice shall swiftly de­scend upon this city of our fa­thers. I am about to leave you; I go to the Fa­ther. Af­ter I leave you, take heed that no man de­ceive you, for many will come as de­liv­er­ers and will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and ru­mors of wars, be not trou­bled, for though all these things will hap­pen, the end of Je­ru­sa­lem is not yet at hand. You should not be per­turbed by famines or earth­quakes; nei­ther should you be con­cerned when you are de­liv­ered up to the civil au­thor­i­ties and are per­se­cuted for the sake of the gospel. You will be thrown out of the syn­a­gogue and put in prison for my sake, and some of you will be killed. When you are brought up be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers, it shall be for a tes­ti­mony of your faith and to show your stead­fast­ness in the gospel of the king­dom. And when you stand be­fore judges, be not anx­ious be­fore­hand as to what you should say, for the spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should an­swer your ad­ver­saries. In these days of tra­vail, even your own kins­folk, un­der the lead­er­ship of those who have re­jected the Son of Man, will de­liver you up to prison and death. For a time you may be hated by all men for my sake, but even in these per­se­cu­tions I will not for­sake you; my spirit will not desert you. Be pa­tient! doubt not that this gospel of the king­dom will tri­umph over all en­e­mies and, even­tu­ally, be pro­claimed to all na­tions.”

• forbearance under provocation

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

• possess soul in

181:2.15Je­sus then stepped over to James Zeb­e­dee, who stood in si­lence as the Mas­ter ad­dressed him, say­ing: “James, when you and your younger brother once came to me seek­ing prefer­ment in the hon­ors of the king­dom, and I told you such hon­ors were for the Fa­ther to be­stow, I asked if you were able to drink my cup, and both of you an­swered that you were. Even if you were not then able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be pre­pared for such a ser­vice by the ex­pe­ri­ence you are about to pass through. By such be­hav­ior you an­gered your breth­ren at that time. If they have not al­ready fully for­given you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your min­istry be long or short, pos­sess your soul in pa­tience. When the new teacher comes, let him teach you the poise of com­pas­sion and that sym­pa­thetic tol­er­ance which is born of sub­lime con­fi­dence in me and of per­fect sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will. Ded­i­cate your life to the dem­on­stra­tion of that com­bined hu­man af­fec­tion and di­vine dig­nity of the God-know­ing and Son-be­liev­ing dis­ci­ple. And all who thus live will re­veal the gospel even in the man­ner of their death. You and your brother John will go dif­fer­ent ways, and one of you may sit down with me in the eter­nal king­dom long be­fore the other. It would help you much if you would learn that true wis­dom em­braces dis­cre­tion as well as cour­age. You should learn sagac­ity to go along with your ag­gres­sive­ness. There will come those su­preme mo­ments wherein my dis­ci­ples will not hes­i­tate to lay down their lives for this gospel, but in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances it would be far bet­ter to pla­cate the wrath of un­be­liev­ers that you might live and con­tinue to preach the glad tid­ings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that your life of many years may be fruit­ful in souls won for the heav­enly king­dom.”

• challenge evil and hatred with forbearance

194:3.12Pen­te­cost en­dowed mor­tal man with the power to for­give per­sonal in­juries, to keep sweet in the midst of the gravest in­jus­tice, to re­main un­moved in the face of ap­palling dan­ger, and to chal­lenge the evils of hate and anger by the fear­less acts of love and for­bear­ance. Uran­tia has passed through the rav­ages of great and de­struc­tive wars in its his­tory. All par­tic­i­pants in these ter­ri­ble strug­gles met with de­feat. There was but one vic­tor; there was only one who came out of these em­bit­tered strug­gles with an en­hanced rep­u­ta­tion—that was Je­sus of Naz­a­reth and his gospel of over­com­ing evil with good. The se­cret of a bet­ter civ­i­liza­tion is bound up in the Mas­ter’s teach­ings of the broth­er­hood of man, the good will of love and mu­tual trust.