Philadelphia

• Philadelphia

128:3.2They jour­neyed to Je­ru­sa­lem by way of the De­capo­lis and through Pella, Gerasa, Phil­a­del­phia, Hes­h­bon, and Jeri­cho. They re­turned to Naz­a­reth by the coast route, touch­ing Ly­dda, Joppa, Cae­sarea, thence around Mount Carmel to Ptole­mais and Naz­a­reth. This trip fairly well ac­quainted Je­sus with the whole of Pales­tine north of the Je­ru­sa­lem dis­trict.

• Jesus › meeting with merchant of Damascus at

128:3.3At Phil­a­del­phia Je­sus and Si­mon be­came ac­quainted with a mer­chant from Da­mas­cus who de­vel­oped such a great lik­ing for the Naz­a­reth cou­ple that he in­sisted they stop with him at his Je­ru­sa­lem head­quar­ters. While Si­mon gave at­ten­dance at the tem­ple, Je­sus spent much of his time talk­ing with this well-ed­u­cated and much-trav­eled man of world af­fairs. This mer­chant owned over four thou­sand car­a­van camels; he had in­ter­ests all over the Ro­man world and was now on his way to Rome. He pro­posed that Je­sus come to Da­mas­cus to en­ter his Ori­en­tal im­port busi­ness, but Je­sus ex­plained that he did not feel jus­ti­fied in go­ing so far away from his fam­ily just then. But on the way back home he thought much about these dis­tant cities and the even more re­mote coun­tries of the Far West and the Far East, coun­tries he had so fre­quently heard spo­ken of by the car­a­van pas­sen­gers and con­duc­tors.

• center of Abnerian kingdom of heaven; held faithfully to Jesus’ teachings

130:2.3While the east­ern branch of the early Chris­tian church, hav­ing its head­quar­ters at Phil­a­del­phia, held more faith­fully to the teach­ings of Je­sus than did the Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren, it was re­gret­table that there was no one like Pe­ter to go into China, or like Paul to en­ter In­dia, where the spir­i­tual soil was then so fa­vor­able for plant­ing the seed of the new gospel of the king­dom. These very teach­ings of Je­sus, as they were held by the Philadel­phi­ans, would have made just such an im­me­di­ate and ef­fec­tive ap­peal to the minds of the spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry Asi­atic peo­ples as did the preach­ing of Pe­ter and Paul in the West.

• Philadelphia

152:7.1Sun­day, April 3, Je­sus, ac­com­pa­nied only by the twelve apos­tles, started from Beth­saida on the jour­ney to Je­ru­sa­lem. To avoid the mul­ti­tudes and to at­tract as lit­tle at­ten­tion as pos­si­ble, they jour­neyed by way of Gerasa and Phil­a­del­phia. He for­bade them to do any pub­lic teach­ing on this trip; nei­ther did he per­mit them to teach or preach while so­journ­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem. They ar­rived at Beth­any, near Je­ru­sa­lem, late on Wednes­day evening, April 6. For this one night they stopped at the home of Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary, but the next day they sep­a­rated. Je­sus, with John, stayed at the home of a be­liever named Si­mon, near the house of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. Ju­das Is­car­iot and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes stopped with friends in Je­ru­sa­lem, while the rest of the apos­tles so­journed, two and two, in dif­fer­ent homes.

• Philadelphia

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:

• Philadelphia

165:0.1On Tues­day, Jan­uary 3, A.D. 30, Ab­ner, the for­mer chief of the twelve apos­tles of John the Bap­tist, a Nazarite and one­time head of the Nazarite school at En­gedi, now chief of the sev­enty mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, called his as­so­ciates to­gether and gave them fi­nal in­struc­tions be­fore send­ing them on a mis­sion to all of the cities and vil­lages of Perea. This Perean mis­sion con­tin­ued for al­most three months and was the last min­istry of the Mas­ter. From these labors Je­sus went di­rectly to Je­ru­sa­lem to pass through his fi­nal ex­pe­ri­ences in the flesh. The sev­enty, sup­ple­mented by the pe­ri­odic labors of Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles, worked in the fol­low­ing cities and towns and some fifty ad­di­tional vil­lages: Za­phon, Gadara, Macad, Ar­bela, Ra­math, Edrei, Bosora, Caspin, Mis­peh, Gerasa, Ragaba, Suc­coth, Am­athus, Adam, Penuel, Capi­to­lias, Dion, Hatita, Gadda, Phil­a­del­phia, Jog­be­hah, Gilead, Beth-Nim­rah, Tyrus, Elealah, Livias, Hes­h­bon, Cal­lir­rhoe, Beth-Peor, Shit­tim, Sibmah, Medeba, Beth-Meon, Are­opo­lis, and Aroer.

• Abner taught 3 times a day in synagogue of
• synagogue never subject to Jerusalem

166:5.1Je­sus and the twelve were on their way to visit Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates, who were preach­ing and teach­ing in Phil­a­del­phia. Of all the cities of Perea, in Phil­a­del­phia the largest group of Jews and gen­tiles, rich and poor, learned and un­learned, em­braced the teach­ings of the sev­enty, thereby en­ter­ing into the king­dom of heaven. The syn­a­gogue of Phil­a­del­phia had never been sub­ject to the super­vi­sion of the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem and there­fore had never been closed to the teach­ings of Je­sus and his as­so­ciates. At this very time, Ab­ner was teach­ing three times a day in the Phil­a­del­phia syn­a­gogue.

166:5.2This very syn­a­gogue later on be­came a Chris­tian church and was the mis­sion­ary head­quar­ters for the pro­mul­ga­tion of the gospel through the re­gions to the east. It was long a stronghold of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings and stood alone in this re­gion as a cen­ter of Chris­tian learn­ing for cen­turies.

166:5.3The Jews at Je­ru­sa­lem had al­ways had trou­ble with the Jews of Phil­a­del­phia. And af­ter the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother was head, be­gan to have se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties with the Phil­a­del­phia con­gre­ga­tion of be­liev­ers. Ab­ner be­came the head of the Phil­a­del­phia church, con­tin­u­ing as such un­til his death. And this es­trange­ment with Je­ru­sa­lem ex­plains why noth­ing is heard of Ab­ner and his work in the Gospel rec­ords of the New Tes­ta­ment. This feud be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Phil­a­del­phia lasted through­out the life­times of James and Ab­ner and con­tin­ued for some time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem. Phil­a­del­phia was re­ally the head­quar­ters of the early church in the south and east as An­ti­och was in the north and west.

166:5.4It was the ap­par­ent mis­for­tune of Ab­ner to be at vari­ance with all of the lead­ers of the early Chris­tian church. He fell out with Pe­ter and James (Je­sus’ brother) over ques­tions of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem church; he parted com­pany with Paul over dif­fer­ences of phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­ogy. Ab­ner was more Baby­lo­nian than Hel­lenic in his phi­los­o­phy, and he stub­bornly re­sisted all at­tempts of Paul to re­make the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to pre­sent less that was ob­jec­tion­able, first to the Jews, then to the Greco-Ro­man be­liev­ers in the mys­ter­ies.

166:5.5Thus was Ab­ner com­pelled to live a life of iso­la­tion. He was head of a church which was with­out stand­ing at Je­ru­sa­lem. He had dared to defy James the Lord’s brother, who was sub­se­quently sup­ported by Pe­ter. Such con­duct ef­fec­tively sep­a­rated him from all his for­mer as­so­ciates. Then he dared to with­stand Paul. Al­though he was wholly sym­pa­thetic with Paul in his mis­sion to the gen­tiles, and though he sup­ported him in his con­tentions with the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he bit­terly op­posed the ver­sion of Je­sus’ teach­ings which Paul elected to preach. In his last years Ab­ner de­nounced Paul as the “clever cor­rupter of the life teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the Son of the liv­ing God.”

• center of Abnerian kingdom of heaven; held faithfully to Jesus’ teachings

166:5.6Dur­ing the later years of Ab­ner and for some time there­after, the be­liev­ers at Phil­a­del­phia held more strictly to the re­li­gion of Je­sus, as he lived and taught, than any other group on earth.

166:5.7Ab­ner lived to be 89 years old, dy­ing at Phil­a­del­phia on the 21^st day of Novem­ber, A.D. 74. And to the very end he was a faith­ful be­liever in, and teacher of, the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom.

• Jesus › arrived accompanied by 600 followers

167:0.1Through­out this pe­riod of the Perean min­istry, when men­tion is made of Je­sus and the apos­tles vis­it­ing the var­i­ous lo­cal­i­ties where the sev­enty were at work, it should be re­called that, as a rule, only ten were with him since it was the prac­tice to leave at least two of the apos­tles at Pella to in­struct the mul­ti­tude. As Je­sus pre­pared to go on to Phil­a­del­phia, Si­mon Pe­ter and his brother, An­drew, re­turned to the Pella en­camp­ment to teach the crowds there as­sem­bled. When the Mas­ter left the camp at Pella to visit about Perea, it was not un­com­mon for from three to five hun­dred of the campers to fol­low him. When he ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia, he was ac­com­pa­nied by over six hun­dred fol­low­ers.

• chief ruler of synagogue was unfriendly Pharisee; deposed

167:3.2Not­with­stand­ing that this woman’s af­flic­tion was wholly men­tal, her bowed-over form be­ing the re­sult of her de­pressed mind, the peo­ple thought that Je­sus had healed a real phys­i­cal dis­or­der. Al­though the con­gre­ga­tion of the syn­a­gogue at Phil­a­del­phia was friendly to­ward the teach­ings of Je­sus, the chief ruler of the syn­a­gogue was an un­friendly Phar­isee. And as he shared the opin­ion of the con­gre­ga­tion that Je­sus had healed a phys­i­cal dis­or­der, and be­ing in­dig­nant be­cause Je­sus had pre­sumed to do such a thing on the Sab­bath, he stood up be­fore the con­gre­ga­tion and said: “Are there not six days in which men should do all their work? In these work­ing days come, there­fore, and be healed, but not on the Sab­bath day.”

167:3.3When the un­friendly ruler had thus spo­ken, Je­sus re­turned to the speaker’s plat­form and said: “Why play the part of hyp­ocrites? Does not ev­ery one of you, on the Sab­bath, loose his ox from the stall and lead him forth for wa­ter­ing? If such a ser­vice is per­mis­si­ble on the Sab­bath day, should not this woman, a daugh­ter of Abra­ham who has been bound down by evil these eigh­teen years, be loosed from this bond­age and led forth to par­take of the wa­ters of lib­erty and life, even on this Sab­bath day?” And as the woman con­tin­ued to glo­rify God, his critic was put to shame, and the con­gre­ga­tion re­joiced with her that she had been healed.

167:3.4As a re­sult of his pub­lic crit­i­cism of Je­sus on this Sab­bath the chief ruler of the syn­a­gogue was de­posed, and a fol­lower of Je­sus was put in his place.

• Lazarus was treasurer of church at

168:5.3Soon af­ter this Martha and Mary dis­posed of their lands at Beth­any and joined their brother in Perea. Mean­time, Laz­a­rus had be­come the trea­surer of the church at Phil­a­del­phia. He be­came a strong sup­porter of Ab­ner in his con­tro­versy with Paul and the Je­ru­sa­lem church and ul­ti­mately died, when 67 years old, of the same sick­ness that car­ried him off when he was a younger man at Beth­any.

• David Zebedee oversaw large interests of kingdom at
• Lazarus was treasurer of church at

171:1.5David was pres­ent in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the tragic last week, tak­ing his mother back with him to Beth­saida af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion. While await­ing Je­sus and the apos­tles, David stopped with Laz­a­rus at Beth­any and be­came tremen­dously ag­i­tated by the man­ner in which the Phar­isees had be­gun to per­se­cute and ha­rass him since his res­ur­rec­tion. An­drew had di­rected David to dis­con­tinue the mes­sen­ger ser­vice; and this was con­strued by all as an in­di­ca­tion of the early es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom at Je­ru­sa­lem. David found him­self with­out a job, and he had about de­cided to be­come the self-ap­pointed de­fender of Laz­a­rus when pres­ently the ob­ject of his in­dig­nant so­lic­i­tude fled in haste to Phil­a­del­phia. Ac­cord­ingly, some­time af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and also af­ter the death of his mother, David be­took him­self to Phil­a­del­phia, hav­ing first as­sisted Martha and Mary in dis­pos­ing of their real es­tate; and there, in as­so­ci­a­tion with Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, he spent the re­main­der of his life, be­com­ing the fi­nan­cial over­seer of all those large in­ter­ests of the king­dom which had their cen­ter at Phil­a­del­phia dur­ing the life­time of Ab­ner.

• center of Abnerian kingdom of heaven; held faithfully to Jesus’ teachings

171:1.6Within a short time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem, An­ti­och be­came the head­quar­ters of Pauline Chris­tian­ity, while Phil­a­del­phia re­mained the cen­ter of the Ab­ne­r­ian king­dom of heaven. From An­ti­och the Pauline ver­sion of the teach­ings of Je­sus and about Je­sus spread to all the West­ern world; from Phil­a­del­phia the mis­sion­ar­ies of the Ab­ne­r­ian ver­sion of the king­dom of heaven spread through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Ara­bia un­til the later times when these un­com­pro­mis­ing emis­saries of the teach­ings of Je­sus were over­whelmed by the sud­den rise of Is­lam.

• Lazarus was treasurer of church at

172:2.4Af­ter the con­fer­ence with the apos­tles Je­sus held con­verse with Laz­a­rus and in­structed him to avoid the sac­ri­fice of his life to the venge­ful­ness of the San­hedrin. It was in obe­di­ence to this ad­mo­ni­tion that Laz­a­rus, a few days later, fled to Phil­a­del­phia when the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin sent men to ar­rest him.

• Philadelphia

186:3.2As soon as Je­sus was turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers by Pi­late for cru­ci­fix­ion, a mes­sen­ger has­tened away to Geth­sem­ane to in­form David, and within five min­utes run­ners were on their way to Beth­saida, Pella, Phil­a­del­phia, Sidon, Shechem, He­bron, Da­mas­cus, and Alexan­dria. And these mes­sen­gers car­ried the news that Je­sus was about to be cru­ci­fied by the Ro­mans at the in­sis­tent be­hest of the rulers of the Jews.

186:3.3Through­out this tragic day, un­til the mes­sage fi­nally went forth that the Mas­ter had been laid in the tomb, David sent mes­sen­gers about ev­ery half hour with re­ports to the apos­tles, the Greeks, and Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily, as­sem­bled at the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. When the mes­sen­gers de­parted with the word that Je­sus had been buried, David dis­missed his corps of lo­cal run­ners for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion and for the com­ing Sab­bath of rest, in­struct­ing them to re­port to him qui­etly on Sun­day morn­ing at the home of Nicode­mus, where he pro­posed to go in hid­ing for a few days with An­drew and Si­mon Pe­ter.

• Philadelphia

190:1.8These twenty-six were dis­patched to the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any and to all of the be­liever cen­ters, from Beer­sheba in the south to Da­mas­cus and Sidon in the north; and from Phil­a­del­phia in the east to Alexan­dria in the west.

• David Zebedee, Ruth, sisters of Lazarus moved to

190:1.9When David had taken leave of his breth­ren, he went over to the home of Joseph for his mother, and they then went out to Beth­any to join the wait­ing fam­ily of Je­sus. David abode there in Beth­any with Martha and Mary un­til af­ter they had dis­posed of their earthly pos­ses­sions, and he ac­com­pa­nied them on their jour­ney to join their brother, Laz­a­rus, at Phil­a­del­phia.

190:1.10In about one week from this time John Zeb­e­dee took Mary the mother of Je­sus to his home in Beth­saida. James, Je­sus’ el­dest brother, re­mained with his fam­ily in Je­ru­sa­lem. Ruth re­mained at Beth­any with Laz­a­rus’s sis­ters. The rest of Je­sus’ fam­ily re­turned to Gal­i­lee. David Zeb­e­dee left Beth­any with Martha and Mary, for Phil­a­del­phia, early in June, the day af­ter his mar­riage to Ruth, Je­sus’ young­est sis­ter.

191:4.1The tenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred a short time af­ter eight o’clock on Tues­day, April 11, at Phil­a­del­phia, where he showed him­self to Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus and some one hun­dred and fifty of their as­so­ciates, in­clud­ing more than fifty of the evan­ge­lis­tic corps of the sev­enty. This ap­pear­ance oc­curred just af­ter the open­ing of a spe­cial meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue which had been called by Ab­ner to dis­cuss the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus and the more re­cent re­port of the res­ur­rec­tion which had been brought by David’s mes­sen­ger. Inas­much as the res­ur­rected Laz­a­rus was now a mem­ber of this group of be­liev­ers, it was not dif­fi­cult for them to be­lieve the re­port that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

191:4.2The meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue was just be­ing opened by Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, who were stand­ing to­gether in the pul­pit, when the en­tire au­di­ence of be­liev­ers saw the form of the Mas­ter ap­pear sud­denly. He stepped for­ward from where he had ap­peared be­tween Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, nei­ther of whom had ob­served him, and salut­ing the com­pany, said:

191:4.3“Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Fa­ther in heaven, and that there is but one gospel of the king­dom—the good news of the gift of eter­nal life which men re­ceive by faith. As you re­joice in your loy­alty to the gospel, pray the Fa­ther of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and greater love for your breth­ren. You are to love all men as I have loved you; you are to serve all men as I have served you. With un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and broth­erly af­fec­tion, fel­low­ship all your breth­ren who are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the good news, whether they be Jew or gen­tile, Greek or Ro­man, Per­sian or Ethiopian. John pro­claimed the king­dom in ad­vance; you have preached the gospel in power; the Greeks al­ready teach the good news; and I am soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my breth­ren, who have so un­selfishly ded­i­cated their lives to the en­light­en­ment of their fel­lows who sit in spir­i­tual dark­ness. You are all the chil­dren of light; there­fore stum­ble not into the mis­un­der­stand­ing en­tan­gle­ments of mor­tal sus­pi­cion and hu­man in­tol­er­ance. If you are en­no­bled, by the grace of faith, to love un­be­liev­ers, should you not also equally love those who are your fel­low be­liev­ers in the far-spread­ing house­hold of faith? Re­mem­ber, as you love one an­other, all men will know that you are my dis­ci­ples.

191:4.4“Go, then, into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men to all na­tions and races and ever be wise in your choice of meth­ods for pre­sent­ing the good news to the dif­fer­ent races and tribes of man­kind. Freely you have re­ceived this gospel of the king­dom, and you will freely give the good news to all na­tions. Fear not the re­sis­tance of evil, for I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages. And my peace I leave with you.”

191:4.5When he had said, “My peace I leave with you,” he van­ished from their sight. With the ex­cep­tion of one of his ap­pear­ances in Gal­i­lee, where up­ward of five hun­dred be­liev­ers saw him at one time, this group in Phil­a­del­phia em­braced the largest num­ber of mor­tals who saw him on any sin­gle oc­ca­sion.

191:4.6Early the next morn­ing, even while the apos­tles tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem await­ing the emo­tional re­cov­ery of Thomas, these be­liev­ers at Phil­a­del­phia went forth pro­claim­ing that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth had risen from the dead.

191:4.7The next day, Wednes­day, Je­sus spent with­out in­ter­rup­tion in the so­ci­ety of his mor­ontia as­so­ciates, and dur­ing the midafter­noon hours he re­ceived vis­it­ing mor­ontia del­e­gates from the man­sion worlds of ev­ery lo­cal sys­tem of in­hab­ited spheres through­out the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek. And they all re­joiced to know their Cre­ator as one of their own or­der of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence.

• Nathaniel lived at P. for 1 year

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