Pentecost (bestowal of Spirit of Truth)

194:3.16Be­fore Pen­te­cost the apos­tles had given up much for Je­sus. They had sac­ri­ficed their homes, fam­i­lies, friends, worldly goods, and po­si­tions. At Pen­te­cost they gave them­selves to God, and the Fa­ther and the Son re­sponded by giv­ing them­selves to man—send­ing their spir­its to live within men. This ex­pe­ri­ence of los­ing self and find­ing the spirit was not one of emo­tion; it was an act of in­tel­li­gent self-sur­ren­der and un­re­served con­se­cra­tion.

108:2.3Thus is the stage of the hu­man mind set for the re­cep­tion of Ad­justers, but as a gen­eral rule they do not im­me­di­ately ap­pear to in­dwell such minds ex­cept on those worlds where the Spirit of Truth is func­tion­ing as a spir­i­tual co-or­di­na­tor of these dif­fer­ent spirit min­istries. If this spirit of the be­stowal Sons is pres­ent, the Ad­justers un­fail­ingly come the in­stant the sev­enth ad­ju­tant mind-spirit be­gins to func­tion and sig­nal­izes to the Uni­verse Mother Spirit that it has achieved in po­ten­tial the co-or­di­na­tion of the as­so­ci­ated six ad­ju­tants of prior min­istry to such a mor­tal in­tel­lect. There­fore have the di­vine Ad­justers been uni­ver­sally be­stowed upon all nor­mal minds of moral sta­tus on Uran­tia ever since the day of Pen­te­cost.

146:3.6“While you can­not ob­serve the di­vine spirit at work in your minds, there is a prac­ti­cal method of dis­cov­er­ing the de­gree to which you have yielded the con­trol of your soul pow­ers to the teach­ing and guid­ance of this in­dwelling spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther, and that is the de­gree of your love for your fel­low men. This spirit of the Fa­ther par­takes of the love of the Fa­ther, and as it dom­i­nates man, it un­fail­ingly leads in the di­rec­tions of di­vine wor­ship and lov­ing re­gard for one’s fel­lows. At first you be­lieve that you are sons of God be­cause my teach­ing has made you more con­scious of the in­ner lead­ings of our Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence; but pres­ently the Spirit of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speak­ing for the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of your souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will un­fail­ingly bear wit­ness with the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence, your spirit, then dwell­ing in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in re­al­ity the sons of God.

77:7.2The orig­i­nal num­ber of sec­ondary mid­way­ers was 1,984, and of these 873 failed to align them­selves with the rule of Mi­chael and were duly in­terned in con­nec­tion with the plan­e­tary ad­ju­di­ca­tion of Uran­tia on the day of Pen­te­cost. No one can fore­cast the fu­ture of these fallen crea­tures.

77:7.8The en­tire group of rebel mid­way­ers is at pres­ent held pris­oner by or­der of the Most Highs of Eden­tia. No more do they roam this world on mis­chief bent. Re­gard­less of the pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers, the pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh for­ever made it im­pos­si­ble for dis­loyal spir­its of any sort or de­scrip­tion ever again to in­vade even the most fee­ble of hu­man minds. Since the day of Pen­te­cost there never again can be such a thing as de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion.

194:3.1Many queer and strange teach­ings be­came as­so­ci­ated with the early nar­ra­tives of the day of Pen­te­cost. In sub­se­quent times the events of this day, on which the Spirit of Truth, the new teacher, came to dwell with man­kind, have be­come con­fused with the fool­ish out­breaks of ram­pant emo­tion­al­ism. The chief mis­sion of this out­poured spirit of the Fa­ther and the Son is to teach men about the truths of the Fa­ther’s love and the Son’s mercy. These are the truths of di­vin­ity which men can com­pre­hend more fully than all the other di­vine traits of char­ac­ter. The Spirit of Truth is con­cerned pri­mar­ily with the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s spirit na­ture and the Son’s moral char­ac­ter. The Cre­ator Son, in the flesh, re­vealed God to men; the Spirit of Truth, in the heart, re­veals the Cre­ator Son to men. When man yields the “fruits of the spirit” in his life, he is sim­ply show­ing forth the traits which the Mas­ter man­i­fested in his own earthly life. When Je­sus was on earth, he lived his life as one per­son­al­ity—Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. As the in­dwelling spirit of the “new teacher,” the Mas­ter has, since Pen­te­cost, been able to live his life anew in the ex­pe­ri­ence of ev­ery truth-taught be­liever.

194:3.5On the day of Pen­te­cost the re­li­gion of Je­sus broke all na­tional re­stric­tions and racial fet­ters. It is for­ever true, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.” On this day the Spirit of Truth be­came the per­sonal gift from the Mas­ter to ev­ery mor­tal. This spirit was be­stowed for the pur­pose of qual­i­fy­ing be­liev­ers more ef­fec­tively to preach the gospel of the king­dom, but they mis­took the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­ceiv­ing the out­poured spirit for a part of the new gospel which they were un­con­sciously for­mu­lat­ing.

194:3.14Be­fore the teach­ings of Je­sus which cul­mi­nated in Pen­te­cost, women had lit­tle or no spir­i­tual stand­ing in the tenets of the older re­li­gions. Af­ter Pen­te­cost, in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom woman stood be­fore God on an equal­ity with man. Among the one hun­dred and twenty who re­ceived this spe­cial vis­i­ta­tion of the spirit were many of the women dis­ci­ples, and they shared these bless­ings equally with the men be­liev­ers. No longer can man pre­sume to mo­nop­o­lize the min­istry of re­li­gious ser­vice. The Phar­isee might go on thank­ing God that he was “not born a woman, a leper, or a gen­tile,” but among the fol­low­ers of Je­sus woman has been for­ever set free from all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tions based on sex. Pen­te­cost oblit­er­ated all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion founded on racial dis­tinc­tion, cul­tural dif­fer­ences, so­cial caste, or sex prej­u­dice. No won­der these be­liev­ers in the new re­li­gion would cry out, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.”

194:3.15Both the mother and brother of Je­sus were pres­ent among the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers, and as mem­bers of this com­mon group of dis­ci­ples, they also re­ceived the out­poured spirit. They re­ceived no more of the good gift than did their fel­lows. No spe­cial gift was be­stowed upon the mem­bers of Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily. Pen­te­cost marked the end of spe­cial priest­hoods and all be­lief in sa­cred fam­i­lies.

139:1.6An­drew and Pe­ter were very un­like in char­ac­ter and tem­per­a­ment, but it must be re­corded ev­er­last­ingly to their credit that they got along to­gether splen­didly. An­drew was never jeal­ous of Pe­ter’s or­a­tor­i­cal abil­ity. Not of­ten will an older man of An­drew’s type be ob­served ex­ert­ing such a pro­found in­flu­ence over a younger and tal­ented brother. An­drew and Pe­ter never seemed to be in the least jeal­ous of each other’s abil­i­ties or achieve­ments. Late on the evening of the day of Pen­te­cost, when, largely through the en­er­getic and in­spir­ing preach­ing of Pe­ter, two thou­sand souls were added to the king­dom, An­drew said to his brother: “I could not do that, but I am glad I have a brother who could.” To which Pe­ter replied: “And but for your bring­ing me to the Mas­ter and by your stead­fast­ness keep­ing me with him, I should not have been here to do this.” An­drew and Pe­ter were the ex­cep­tions to the rule, prov­ing that even broth­ers can live to­gether peace­ably and work to­gether ef­fec­tively.

51:3.8On the day of Pen­te­cost the loyal pri­mary and the sec­ondary mid­way­ers ef­fected a vol­un­tary union and have func­tioned as one unit in world af­fairs ever since. They serve un­der the lead­er­ship of loyal mid­way­ers al­ter­nately cho­sen from the two groups.

141:4.8Je­sus ex­plained to his apos­tles on sev­eral oc­ca­sions the na­ture, and some­thing con­cern­ing the ori­gin, of these evil spir­its, in that day of­ten also called un­clean spir­its. The Mas­ter well knew the dif­fer­ence be­tween the pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its and in­san­ity, but the apos­tles did not. Nei­ther was it pos­si­ble, in view of their lim­ited knowl­edge of the early his­tory of Uran­tia, for Je­sus to un­der­take to make this mat­ter fully un­der­stand­able. But he many times said to them, al­lud­ing to these evil spir­its: “They shall no more mo­lest men when I shall have as­cended to my Fa­ther in heaven, and af­ter I shall have poured out my spirit upon all flesh in those times when the king­dom will come in great power and spir­i­tual glory.”

145:2.13This young man was not pos­sessed of an un­clean spirit or de­mon; he was a vic­tim of or­di­nary epilepsy. But he had been taught that his af­flic­tion was due to pos­ses­sion by an evil spirit. He be­lieved this teach­ing and be­haved ac­cord­ingly in all that he thought or said con­cern­ing his ail­ment. The peo­ple all be­lieved that such phe­nom­ena were di­rectly caused by the pres­ence of un­clean spir­its. Ac­cord­ingly they be­lieved that Je­sus had cast a de­mon out of this man. But Je­sus did not at that time cure his epilepsy. Not un­til later on that day, af­ter sun­down, was this man re­ally healed. Long af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost the Apos­tle John, who was the last to write of Je­sus’ do­ings, avoided all ref­er­ence to these so-called acts of “cast­ing out dev­ils,” and this he did in view of the fact that such cases of de­mon pos­ses­sion never oc­curred af­ter Pen­te­cost.

153:4.1In the midst of the dis­cus­sions of this af­ter meet­ing, one of the Phar­isees from Je­ru­sa­lem brought to Je­sus a dis­traught youth who was pos­sessed of an un­ruly and re­bel­lious spirit. Lead­ing this de­mented lad up to Je­sus, he said: “What can you do for such af­flic­tion as this? Can you cast out dev­ils?” And when the Mas­ter looked upon the youth, he was moved with com­pas­sion and, beck­on­ing for the lad to come to him, took him by the hand and said: “You know who I am; come out of him; and I charge one of your loyal fel­lows to see that you do not re­turn.” And im­me­di­ately the lad was nor­mal and in his right mind. And this is the first case where Je­sus re­ally cast an “evil spirit” out of a hu­man be­ing. All of the pre­vi­ous cases were only sup­posed pos­ses­sion of the devil; but this was a gen­uine case of de­mo­niac pos­ses­sion, even such as some­times oc­curred in those days and right up to the day of Pen­te­cost, when the Mas­ter’s spirit was poured out upon all flesh, mak­ing it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for these few ce­les­tial rebels to take such ad­van­tage of cer­tain un­sta­ble types of hu­man be­ings.

163:6.2When the sev­enty re­lated how “even the dev­ils were sub­ject” to them, they re­ferred to the won­der­ful cures they had wrought in the cases of vic­tims of ner­vous dis­or­ders. Nev­er­the­less, there had been a few cases of real spirit pos­ses­sion re­lieved by these min­is­ters, and re­fer­ring to these, Je­sus said: “It is not strange that these dis­obe­di­ent mi­nor spir­its should be sub­ject to you, see­ing that I be­held Sa­tan falling as light­ning from heaven. But re­joice not so much over this, for I de­clare to you that, as soon as I re­turn to my Fa­ther, we will send forth our spir­its into the very minds of men so that no more can these few lost spir­its en­ter the minds of un­for­tu­nate mor­tals. I re­joice with you that you have power with men, but be not lifted up be­cause of this ex­pe­ri­ence but the rather re­joice that your names are writ­ten on the rolls of heaven, and that you are thus to go for­ward in an end­less ca­reer of spir­i­tual con­quest.”

52:5.5On Uran­tia the es­tab­lish­ment of this “new and liv­ing way” was a mat­ter of fact as well as of truth. The iso­la­tion of Uran­tia in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had sus­pended the pro­ce­dure whereby mor­tals can pass, upon death, di­rectly to the shores of the man­sion worlds. Be­fore the days of Christ Mi­chael on Uran­tia all souls slept on un­til the dis­pen­sa­tional or spe­cial mil­len­nial res­ur­rec­tions. Even Moses was not per­mit­ted to go over to the other side un­til the oc­ca­sion of a spe­cial res­ur­rec­tion, the fallen Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, con­test­ing such a de­liv­er­ance. But ever since the day of Pen­te­cost, Uran­tia mor­tals again may pro­ceed di­rectly to the mor­ontia spheres.

194:1.1The apos­tles had been in hid­ing for forty days. This day hap­pened to be the Jew­ish fes­ti­val of Pen­te­cost, and thou­sands of vis­i­tors from all parts of the world were in Je­ru­sa­lem. Many ar­rived for this feast, but a ma­jor­ity had tar­ried in the city since the Pass­over. Now these fright­ened apos­tles emerged from their weeks of seclu­sion to ap­pear boldly in the tem­ple, where they be­gan to preach the new mes­sage of a risen Mes­siah. And all the dis­ci­ples were like­wise con­scious of hav­ing re­ceived some new spir­i­tual en­dow­ment of in­sight and power.

194:1.2It was about two o’clock when Pe­ter stood up in that very place where his Mas­ter had last taught in this tem­ple, and de­liv­ered that im­pas­sioned ap­peal which re­sulted in the win­ning of more than two thou­sand souls. The Mas­ter had gone, but they sud­denly dis­cov­ered that this story about him had great power with the peo­ple. No won­der they were led on into the fur­ther procla­ma­tion of that which vin­di­cated their for­mer de­vo­tion to Je­sus and at the same time so con­strained men to be­lieve in him. Six of the apos­tles par­tic­i­pated in this meet­ing: Pe­ter, An­drew, James, John, Philip, and Mat­thew. They talked for more than an hour and a half and de­liv­ered mes­sages in Greek, He­brew, and Ara­maic, as well as a few words in even other tongues with which they had a speak­ing ac­quain­tance.

194:1.3The lead­ers of the Jews were as­tounded at the bold­ness of the apos­tles, but they feared to mo­lest them be­cause of the large num­bers who be­lieved their story.

194:1.4By half past four o’clock more than two thou­sand new be­liev­ers fol­lowed the apos­tles down to the pool of Siloam, where Pe­ter, An­drew, James, and John bap­tized them in the Mas­ter’s name. And it was dark when they had fin­ished with bap­tiz­ing this mul­ti­tude.

194:1.5Pen­te­cost was the great fes­ti­val of bap­tism, the time for fel­low­ship­ping the pros­e­lytes of the gate, those gen­tiles who de­sired to serve Yah­weh. It was, there­fore, the more easy for large num­bers of both the Jews and be­liev­ing gen­tiles to sub­mit to bap­tism on this day. In do­ing this, they were in no way dis­con­nect­ing them­selves from the Jew­ish faith. Even for some time af­ter this the be­liev­ers in Je­sus were a sect within Ju­daism. All of them, in­clud­ing the apos­tles, were still loyal to the es­sen­tial re­quire­ments of the Jew­ish cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem.

194:2.1Je­sus lived on earth and taught a gospel which re­deemed man from the su­per­sti­tion that he was a child of the devil and el­e­vated him to the dig­nity of a faith son of God. Je­sus’ mes­sage, as he preached it and lived it in his day, was an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties in that day of its state­ment. And now that he has per­son­ally left the world, he sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is de­signed to live in man and, for each new gen­er­a­tion, to re­state the Je­sus mes­sage so that ev­ery new group of mor­tals to ap­pear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date ver­sion of the gospel, just such per­sonal en­light­en­ment and group guid­ance as will prove to be an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s ever-new and var­ied spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties.

194:2.2The first mis­sion of this spirit is, of course, to fos­ter and per­son­al­ize truth, for it is the com­pre­hen­sion of truth that con­sti­tutes the high­est form of hu­man lib­erty. Next, it is the pur­pose of this spirit to de­stroy the be­liever’s feel­ing of or­phan­hood. Je­sus hav­ing been among men, all be­liev­ers would ex­pe­ri­ence a sense of lone­li­ness had not the Spirit of Truth come to dwell in men’s hearts.

194:2.3This be­stowal of the Son’s spirit ef­fec­tively pre­pared all nor­mal men’s minds for the sub­se­quent uni­ver­sal be­stowal of the Fa­ther’s spirit (the Ad­juster) upon all man­kind. In a cer­tain sense, this Spirit of Truth is the spirit of both the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Cre­ator Son.

194:2.4Do not make the mis­take of ex­pect­ing to be­come strongly in­tel­lec­tu­ally con­scious of the out­poured Spirit of Truth. The spirit never cre­ates a con­scious­ness of him­self, only a con­scious­ness of Mi­chael, the Son. From the be­gin­ning Je­sus taught that the spirit would not speak of him­self. The proof, there­fore, of your fel­low­ship with the Spirit of Truth is not to be found in your con­scious­ness of this spirit but rather in your ex­pe­ri­ence of en­hanced fel­low­ship with Mi­chael.

194:2.5The spirit also came to help men re­call and un­der­stand the words of the Mas­ter as well as to il­lu­mi­nate and rein­ter­pret his life on earth.

194:2.6Next, the Spirit of Truth came to help the be­liever to wit­ness to the re­al­i­ties of Je­sus’ teach­ings and his life as he lived it in the flesh, and as he now again lives it anew and afresh in the in­di­vid­ual be­liever of each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion of the spirit-filled sons of God.

194:2.7Thus it ap­pears that the Spirit of Truth comes re­ally to lead all be­liev­ers into all truth, into the ex­pand­ing knowl­edge of the ex­pe­ri­ence of the liv­ing and grow­ing spir­i­tual con­scious­ness of the re­al­ity of eter­nal and as­cend­ing son­ship with God.

194:2.8Je­sus lived a life which is a rev­e­la­tion of man sub­mit­ted to the Fa­ther’s will, not an ex­am­ple for any man lit­er­ally to at­tempt to fol­low. This life in the flesh, to­gether with his death on the cross and sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion, pres­ently be­came a new gospel of the ran­som which had thus been paid in or­der to pur­chase man back from the clutch of the evil one—from the con­dem­na­tion of an of­fended God. Nev­er­the­less, even though the gospel did be­come greatly dis­torted, it re­mains a fact that this new mes­sage about Je­sus car­ried along with it many of the fun­da­men­tal truths and teach­ings of his ear­lier gospel of the king­dom. And, sooner or later, these con­cealed truths of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men will emerge to ef­fec­tu­ally trans­form the civ­i­liza­tion of all man­kind.

194:2.9But these mis­takes of the in­tel­lect in no way in­ter­fered with the be­liever’s great prog­ress in growth in spirit. In less than a month af­ter the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, the apos­tles made more in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress than dur­ing their al­most four years of per­sonal and lov­ing as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Nei­ther did this sub­sti­tu­tion of the fact of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus for the sav­ing gospel truth of son­ship with God in any way in­ter­fere with the rapid spread of their teach­ings; on the con­trary, this over­shad­ow­ing of Je­sus’ mes­sage by the new teach­ings about his per­son and res­ur­rec­tion seemed greatly to fa­cil­i­tate the preach­ing of the good news.

194:2.10The term “bap­tism of the spirit,” which came into such gen­eral use about this time, merely sig­ni­fied the con­scious re­cep­tion of this gift of the Spirit of Truth and the per­sonal ac­knowl­edg­ment of this new spir­i­tual power as an aug­men­ta­tion of all spir­i­tual in­flu­ences pre­vi­ously ex­pe­ri­enced by God-know­ing souls.

194:2.11Since the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, man is sub­ject to the teach­ing and guid­ance of a three­fold spirit en­dow­ment: the spirit of the Fa­ther, the Thought Ad­juster; the spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Truth; the spirit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

194:2.12In a way, man­kind is sub­ject to the dou­ble in­flu­ence of the sev­en­fold ap­peal of the uni­verse spirit in­flu­ences. The early evo­lu­tion­ary races of mor­tals are sub­ject to the pro­gres­sive con­tact of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. As man pro­gresses up­ward in the scale of in­tel­li­gence and spir­i­tual per­cep­tion, there even­tu­ally come to hover over him and dwell within him the seven higher spirit in­flu­ences. And these seven spir­its of the ad­vanc­ing worlds are:

194:2.131. The be­stowed spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther—the Thought Ad­justers.

194:2.142. The spirit pres­ence of the Eter­nal Son—the spirit grav­ity of the uni­verse of uni­verses and the cer­tain chan­nel of all spirit com­mu­nion.

194:2.153. The spirit pres­ence of the In­fi­nite Spirit—the uni­ver­sal spirit-mind of all cre­ation, the spir­i­tual source of the in­tel­lec­tual kin­ship of all pro­gres­sive in­tel­li­gences.

194:2.164. The spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Cre­ator Son—the Spirit of Truth, gen­er­ally re­garded as the spirit of the Uni­verse Son.

194:2.175. The spirit of the In­fi­nite Spirit and the Uni­verse Mother Spirit—the Holy Spirit, gen­er­ally re­garded as the spirit of the Uni­verse Spirit.

194:2.186. The mind-spirit of the Uni­verse Mother Spirit—the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse.

194:2.197. The spirit of the Fa­ther, Sons, and Spir­its—the new-name spirit of the as­cend­ing mor­tals of the realms af­ter the fu­sion of the mor­tal spirit-born soul with the Par­a­dise Thought Ad­juster and af­ter the sub­se­quent at­tain­ment of the di­vin­ity and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the sta­tus of the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

194:2.20And so did the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth bring to the world and its peo­ples the last of the spirit en­dow­ment de­signed to aid in the as­cend­ing search for God.

194:3.2Many things which hap­pen in the course of a hu­man life are hard to un­der­stand, dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with the idea that this is a uni­verse in which truth pre­vails and in which righ­teous­ness tri­umphs. It so of­ten ap­pears that slan­der, lies, dis­hon­esty, and un­righ­teous­ness—sin—pre­vail. Does faith, af­ter all, tri­umph over evil, sin, and in­iq­uity? It does. And the life and death of Je­sus are the eter­nal proof that the truth of good­ness and the faith of the spirit-led crea­ture will al­ways be vin­di­cated. They taunted Je­sus on the cross, say­ing, “Let us see if God will come and de­liver him.” It looked dark on that day of the cru­ci­fix­ion, but it was glo­ri­ously bright on the res­ur­rec­tion morn­ing; it was still brighter and more joy­ous on the day of Pen­te­cost. The re­li­gions of pes­simistic de­spair seek to ob­tain re­lease from the bur­dens of life; they crave ex­tinc­tion in end­less slum­ber and rest. These are the re­li­gions of prim­i­tive fear and dread. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is a new gospel of faith to be pro­claimed to strug­gling hu­man­ity. This new re­li­gion is founded on faith, hope, and love.

194:3.3To Je­sus, mor­tal life had dealt its hard­est, cru­elest, and bit­ter­est blows; and this man met these min­is­tra­tions of de­spair with faith, cour­age, and the unswerv­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion to do his Fa­ther’s will. Je­sus met life in all its ter­ri­ble re­al­ity and mas­tered it—even in death. He did not use re­li­gion as a re­lease from life. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does not seek to es­cape this life in or­der to en­joy the wait­ing bliss of an­other ex­is­tence. The re­li­gion of Je­sus pro­vides the joy and peace of an­other and spir­i­tual ex­is­tence to en­hance and en­no­ble the life which men now live in the flesh.

194:3.4If re­li­gion is an opi­ate to the peo­ple, it is not the re­li­gion of Je­sus. On the cross he re­fused to drink the dead­en­ing drug, and his spirit, poured out upon all flesh, is a mighty world in­flu­ence which leads man up­ward and urges him on­ward. The spir­i­tual for­ward urge is the most pow­er­ful driv­ing force pres­ent in this world; the truth-learn­ing be­liever is the one pro­gres­sive and ag­gres­sive soul on earth.

194:3.6Do not over­look the fact that the Spirit of Truth was be­stowed upon all sin­cere be­liev­ers; this gift of the spirit did not come only to the apos­tles. The one hun­dred and twenty men and women as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber all re­ceived the new teacher, as did all the hon­est of heart through­out the whole world. This new teacher was be­stowed upon man­kind, and ev­ery soul re­ceived him in ac­cor­dance with the love for truth and the ca­pac­ity to grasp and com­pre­hend spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. At last, true re­li­gion is de­liv­ered from the cus­tody of priests and all sa­cred classes and finds its real man­i­fes­ta­tion in the in­di­vid­ual souls of men.

194:3.7The re­li­gion of Je­sus fos­ters the high­est type of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion in that it cre­ates the high­est type of spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity and pro­claims the sa­cred­ness of that per­son.

194:3.8The com­ing of the Spirit of Truth on Pen­te­cost made pos­si­ble a re­li­gion which is nei­ther rad­i­cal nor con­ser­va­tive; it is nei­ther the old nor the new; it is to be dom­i­nated nei­ther by the old nor the young. The fact of Je­sus’ earthly life pro­vides a fixed point for the an­chor of time, while the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth pro­vides for the ev­er­last­ing ex­pan­sion and end­less growth of the re­li­gion which he lived and the gospel which he pro­claimed. The spirit guides into all truth; he is the teacher of an ex­pand­ing and al­ways-grow­ing re­li­gion of end­less prog­ress and di­vine un­fold­ing. This new teacher will be for­ever un­fold­ing to the truth-seek­ing be­liever that which was so di­vinely folded up in the per­son and na­ture of the Son of Man.

194:3.9The man­i­fes­ta­tions as­so­ci­ated with the be­stowal of the “new teacher,” and the re­cep­tion of the apos­tles’ preach­ing by the men of var­i­ous races and na­tions gath­ered to­gether at Je­ru­sa­lem, in­di­cate the uni­ver­sal­ity of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. The gospel of the king­dom was to be iden­ti­fied with no par­tic­u­lar race, cul­ture, or lan­guage. This day of Pen­te­cost wit­nessed the great ef­fort of the spirit to lib­er­ate the re­li­gion of Je­sus from its in­her­ited Jew­ish fet­ters. Even af­ter this dem­on­stra­tion of pour­ing out the spirit upon all flesh, the apos­tles at first en­deav­ored to im­pose the re­quire­ments of Ju­daism upon their con­verts. Even Paul had trou­ble with his Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren be­cause he re­fused to sub­ject the gen­tiles to these Jew­ish prac­tices. No re­vealed re­li­gion can spread to all the world when it makes the se­ri­ous mis­take of be­com­ing per­me­ated with some na­tional cul­ture or as­so­ci­ated with es­tab­lished racial, so­cial, or eco­nomic prac­tices.

194:3.10The be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth was in­de­pen­dent of all forms, cer­e­monies, sa­cred places, and spe­cial be­hav­ior by those who re­ceived the full­ness of its man­i­fes­ta­tion. When the spirit came upon those as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber, they were sim­ply sit­ting there, hav­ing just been en­gaged in silent prayer. The spirit was be­stowed in the coun­try as well as in the city. It was not nec­es­sary for the apos­tles to go apart to a lonely place for years of soli­tary med­i­ta­tion in or­der to re­ceive the spirit. For all time, Pen­te­cost dis­as­so­ci­ates the idea of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence from the no­tion of es­pe­cially fa­vor­able en­vi­ron­ments.

194:3.11Pen­te­cost, with its spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, was de­signed for­ever to loose the re­li­gion of the Mas­ter from all de­pen­dence upon phys­i­cal force; the teach­ers of this new re­li­gion are now equipped with spir­i­tual weapons. They are to go out to con­quer the world with un­fail­ing for­give­ness, match­less good will, and abound­ing love. They are equipped to over­come evil with good, to van­quish hate by love, to de­stroy fear with a coura­geous and liv­ing faith in truth. Je­sus had al­ready taught his fol­low­ers that his re­li­gion was never pas­sive; al­ways were his dis­ci­ples to be ac­tive and pos­i­tive in their min­istry of mercy and in their man­i­fes­ta­tions of love. No longer did these be­liev­ers look upon Yah­weh as “the Lord of Hosts.” They now re­garded the eter­nal De­ity as the “God and Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ.” They made that prog­ress, at least, even if they did in some mea­sure fail fully to grasp the truth that God is also the spir­i­tual Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual.

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.

194:3.13Up to Pen­te­cost, re­li­gion had re­vealed only man seek­ing for God; since Pen­te­cost, man is still search­ing for God, but there shines out over the world the spec­ta­cle of God also seek­ing for man and send­ing his spirit to dwell within him when he has found him.

194:3.17Pen­te­cost was the call to spir­i­tual unity among gospel be­liev­ers. When the spirit de­scended on the dis­ci­ples at Je­ru­sa­lem, the same thing hap­pened in Phil­a­del­phia, Alexan­dria, and at all other places where true be­liev­ers dwelt. It was lit­er­ally true that “there was but one heart and soul among the mul­ti­tude of the be­liev­ers.” The re­li­gion of Je­sus is the most pow­er­ful uni­fy­ing in­flu­ence the world has ever known.

194:3.18Pen­te­cost was de­signed to lessen the self-as­sertive­ness of in­di­vid­u­als, groups, na­tions, and races. It is this spirit of self-as­sertive­ness which so in­creases in ten­sion that it pe­ri­od­i­cally breaks loose in de­struc­tive wars. Man­kind can be uni­fied only by the spir­i­tual ap­proach, and the Spirit of Truth is a world in­flu­ence which is uni­ver­sal.

194:3.19The com­ing of the Spirit of Truth pu­ri­fies the hu­man heart and leads the re­cip­i­ent to for­mu­late a life pur­pose sin­gle to the will of God and the wel­fare of men. The ma­te­rial spirit of self­ish­ness has been swal­lowed up in this new spir­i­tual be­stowal of self­less­ness. Pen­te­cost, then and now, sig­ni­fies that the Je­sus of his­tory has be­come the di­vine Son of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. The joy of this out­poured spirit, when it is con­sciously ex­pe­ri­enced in hu­man life, is a tonic for health, a stim­u­lus for mind, and an un­fail­ing en­ergy for the soul.

194:3.20Prayer did not bring the spirit on the day of Pen­te­cost, but it did have much to do with de­ter­min­ing the ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity which char­ac­ter­ized the in­di­vid­ual be­liev­ers. Prayer does not move the di­vine heart to lib­er­al­ity of be­stowal, but it does so of­ten dig out larger and deeper chan­nels wherein the di­vine be­stowals may flow to the hearts and souls of those who thus re­mem­ber to main­tain un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with their Maker through sin­cere prayer and true wor­ship.