Phoenicians

• Phoenicians

133:6.2On the third day of their stay they walked down by the river to ob­serve the dredg­ing of the har­bor’s mouth. At noon they talked with a young Phoeni­cian who was home­sick and much dis­cour­aged; but most of all he was en­vi­ous of a cer­tain young man who had re­ceived pro­mo­tion over his head. Je­sus spoke com­fort­ing words to him and quoted the olden He­brew proverb: “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him be­fore great men.”

155:4.1On Thurs­day morn­ing, June 9, af­ter re­ceiv­ing word re­gard­ing the prog­ress of the king­dom brought by the mes­sen­gers of David from Beth­saida, this group of twenty-five teach­ers of truth left Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi to be­gin their jour­ney to the Phoeni­cian coast. They passed around the marsh coun­try, by way of Luz, to the point of junc­tion with the Mag­dala-Mount Lebanon trail road, thence to the cross­ing with the road lead­ing to Sidon, ar­riv­ing there Fri­day af­ter­noon.

155:4.2While paus­ing for lunch un­der the shadow of an over­hang­ing ledge of rock, near Luz, Je­sus de­liv­ered one of the most re­mark­able ad­dresses which his apos­tles ever lis­tened to through­out all their years of as­so­ci­a­tion with him. No sooner had they seated them­selves to break bread than Si­mon Pe­ter asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, since the Fa­ther in heaven knows all things, and since his spirit is our sup­port in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven on earth, why is it that we flee from the threats of our en­e­mies? Why do we refuse to con­front the foes of truth?” But be­fore Je­sus had be­gun to an­swer Pe­ter’s ques­tion, Thomas broke in, ask­ing: “Mas­ter, I should re­ally like to know just what is wrong with the re­li­gion of our en­e­mies at Je­ru­sa­lem. What is the real dif­fer­ence be­tween their re­li­gion and ours? Why is it we are at such di­ver­sity of be­lief when we all pro­fess to serve the same God?” And when Thomas had fin­ished, Je­sus said: “While I would not ig­nore Pe­ter’s ques­tion, know­ing full well how easy it would be to mis­un­der­stand my rea­sons for avoid­ing an open clash with the rulers of the Jews at just this time, still it will prove more help­ful to all of you if I choose rather to an­swer Thomas’s ques­tion. And that I will pro­ceed to do when you have fin­ished your lunch.”

155:6.1And so, while they paused in the shade of the hill­side, Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach them re­gard­ing the re­li­gion of the spirit, in sub­stance say­ing:

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.

155:6.3I have called upon you to be born again, to be born of the spirit. I have called you out of the dark­ness of au­thor­ity and the lethargy of tra­di­tion into the tran­scen­dent light of the re­al­iza­tion of the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing for your­selves the great­est dis­cov­ery pos­si­ble for the hu­man soul to make—the su­per­nal ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God for your­self, in your­self, and of your­self, and of do­ing all this as a fact in your own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. And so may you pass from death to life, from the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion to the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God; thus will you pass from dark­ness to light, from a racial faith in­her­ited to a per­sonal faith achieved by ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence; and thereby will you pro­gress from a the­ol­ogy of mind handed down by your an­ces­tors to a true re­li­gion of spirit which shall be built up in your souls as an eter­nal en­dow­ment.

155:6.4Your re­li­gion shall change from the mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief in tra­di­tional au­thor­ity to the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of that liv­ing faith which is able to grasp the re­al­ity of God and all that re­lates to the di­vine spirit of the Fa­ther. The re­li­gion of the mind ties you hope­lessly to the past; the re­li­gion of the spirit con­sists in pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion and ever beck­ons you on to­ward higher and holier achieve­ments in spir­i­tual ide­als and eter­nal re­al­i­ties.

155:6.5While the re­li­gion of au­thor­ity may im­part a pres­ent feel­ing of set­tled se­cu­rity, you pay for such a tran­sient sat­is­fac­tion the price of the loss of your spir­i­tual free­dom and re­li­gious lib­erty. My Fa­ther does not re­quire of you as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom of heaven that you should force your­self to sub­scribe to a be­lief in things which are spir­i­tu­ally re­pug­nant, un­holy, and un­truth­ful. It is not re­quired of you that your own sense of mercy, jus­tice, and truth should be out­raged by sub­mis­sion to an out­worn sys­tem of re­li­gious forms and cer­e­monies. The re­li­gion of the spirit leaves you for­ever free to fol­low the truth wher­ever the lead­ings of the spirit may take you. And who can judge—per­haps this spirit may have some­thing to im­part to this gen­er­a­tion which other gen­er­a­tions have re­fused to hear?

155:6.6Shame on those false re­li­gious teach­ers who would drag hun­gry souls back into the dim and dis­tant past and there leave them! And so are these un­for­tu­nate per­sons doomed to be­come fright­ened by ev­ery new dis­cov­ery, while they are dis­com­fited by ev­ery new rev­e­la­tion of truth. The prophet who said, “He will be kept in per­fect peace whose mind is stayed on God,” was not a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­liever in au­thor­i­ta­tive the­ol­ogy. This truth-know­ing hu­man had dis­cov­ered God; he was not merely talk­ing about God.

155:6.7I ad­mon­ish you to give up the prac­tice of al­ways quot­ing the proph­ets of old and prais­ing the heroes of Is­rael, and in­stead as­pire to be­come liv­ing proph­ets of the Most High and spir­i­tual heroes of the com­ing king­dom. To honor the God-know­ing lead­ers of the past may in­deed be worth while, but why, in so do­ing, should you sac­ri­fice the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man ex­is­tence: find­ing God for your­selves and know­ing him in your own souls?

155:6.8Ev­ery race of man­kind has its own men­tal out­look upon hu­man ex­is­tence; there­fore must the re­li­gion of the mind ever run true to these var­i­ous racial view­points. Never can the re­li­gions of au­thor­ity come to uni­fi­ca­tion. Hu­man unity and mor­tal broth­er­hood can be achieved only by and through the super­en­dow­ment of the re­li­gion of the spirit. Racial minds may dif­fer, but all man­kind is in­dwelt by the same di­vine and eter­nal spirit. The hope of hu­man broth­er­hood can only be re­al­ized when, and as, the di­ver­gent mind re­li­gions of au­thor­ity be­come im­preg­nated with, and over­shad­owed by, the uni­fy­ing and en­nobling re­li­gion of the spirit—the re­li­gion of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

155:6.9The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity can only di­vide men and set them in con­sci­en­tious ar­ray against each other; the re­li­gion of the spirit will pro­gres­sively draw men to­gether and cause them to be­come un­der­stand­ingly sym­pa­thetic with one an­other. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity re­quire of men uni­for­mity in be­lief, but this is im­pos­si­ble of re­al­iza­tion in the pres­ent state of the world. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only unity of ex­pe­ri­ence—uni­for­mity of des­tiny—mak­ing full al­lowance for di­ver­sity of be­lief. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only uni­for­mity of in­sight, not uni­for­mity of view­point and out­look. The re­li­gion of the spirit does not de­mand uni­for­mity of in­tel­lec­tual views, only unity of spirit feel­ing. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity crys­tal­lize into life­less creeds; the re­li­gion of the spirit grows into the in­creas­ing joy and lib­erty of en­nobling deeds of lov­ing ser­vice and mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tion.

155:6.10But watch, lest any of you look with dis­dain upon the chil­dren of Abra­ham be­cause they have fallen on these evil days of tra­di­tional bar­ren­ness. Our fore­fa­thers gave them­selves up to the per­sis­tent and pas­sion­ate search for God, and they found him as no other whole race of men have ever known him since the times of Adam, who knew much of this as he was him­self a Son of God. My Fa­ther has not failed to mark the long and un­tir­ing strug­gle of Is­rael, ever since the days of Moses, to find God and to know God. For weary gen­er­a­tions the Jews have not ceased to toil, sweat, groan, tra­vail, and en­dure the suf­fer­ings and ex­pe­ri­ence the sor­rows of a mis­un­der­stood and de­spised peo­ple, all in or­der that they might come a lit­tle nearer the dis­cov­ery of the truth about God. And, not­with­stand­ing all the fail­ures and fal­ter­ings of Is­rael, our fa­thers pro­gres­sively, from Moses to the times of Amos and Hosea, did re­veal in­creas­ingly to the whole world an ever clearer and more truth­ful pic­ture of the eter­nal God. And so was the way pre­pared for the still greater rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther which you have been called to share.

155:6.11Never for­get there is only one ad­ven­ture which is more sat­is­fy­ing and thrilling than the at­tempt to dis­cover the will of the liv­ing God, and that is the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hon­estly try­ing to do that di­vine will. And fail not to re­mem­ber that the will of God can be done in any earthly oc­cu­pa­tion. Some call­ings are not holy and oth­ers sec­u­lar. All things are sa­cred in the lives of those who are spirit led; that is, sub­or­di­nated to truth, en­no­bled by love, dom­i­nated by mercy, and re­strained by fair­ness—jus­tice. The spirit which my Fa­ther and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but also the spirit of ide­al­is­tic beauty.

155:6.12You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden rec­ords of the­o­logic au­thor­ity. Those who are born of the spirit of God shall hence­forth dis­cern the word of God re­gard­less of whence it ap­pears to take ori­gin. Di­vine truth must not be dis­counted be­cause the chan­nel of its be­stowal is ap­par­ently hu­man. Many of your breth­ren have minds which ac­cept the the­ory of God while they spir­i­tu­ally fail to re­al­ize the pres­ence of God. And that is just the rea­son why I have so of­ten taught you that the king­dom of heaven can best be re­al­ized by ac­quir­ing the spir­i­tual at­ti­tude of a sin­cere child. It is not the men­tal im­ma­tu­rity of the child that I com­mend to you but rather the spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity of such an easy-be­liev­ing and fully-trust­ing lit­tle one. It is not so im­por­tant that you should know about the fact of God as that you should in­creas­ingly grow in the abil­ity to feel the pres­ence of God.

155:6.13When you once be­gin to find God in your soul, pres­ently you will be­gin to dis­cover him in other men’s souls and even­tu­ally in all the crea­tures and cre­ations of a mighty uni­verse. But what chance does the Fa­ther have to ap­pear as a God of su­preme loy­al­ties and di­vine ide­als in the souls of men who give lit­tle or no time to the thought­ful con­tem­pla­tion of such eter­nal re­al­i­ties? While the mind is not the seat of the spir­i­tual na­ture, it is in­deed the gate­way thereto.

155:6.14But do not make the mis­take of try­ing to prove to other men that you have found God; you can­not con­sciously pro­duce such valid proof, al­beit there are two pos­i­tive and pow­er­ful demon­stra­tions of the fact that you are God-know­ing, and they are:

155:6.151. The fruits of the spirit of God show­ing forth in your daily rou­tine life.

155:6.162. The fact that your en­tire life plan fur­nishes pos­i­tive proof that you have un­re­servedly risked ev­ery­thing you are and have on the ad­ven­ture of sur­vival af­ter death in the pur­suit of the hope of find­ing the God of eter­nity, whose pres­ence you have fore­tasted in time.

155:6.17Now, mis­take not, my Fa­ther will ever re­spond to the faintest flicker of faith. He takes note of the phys­i­cal and su­per­sti­tious emo­tions of the prim­i­tive man. And with those hon­est but fear­ful souls whose faith is so weak that it amounts to lit­tle more than an in­tel­lec­tual con­for­mity to a pas­sive at­ti­tude of as­sent to re­li­gions of au­thor­ity, the Fa­ther is ever alert to honor and fos­ter even all such fee­ble at­tempts to reach out for him. But you who have been called out of dark­ness into the light are ex­pected to be­lieve with a whole heart; your faith shall dom­i­nate the com­bined at­ti­tudes of body, mind, and spirit.

155:6.18You are my apos­tles, and to you re­li­gion shall not be­come a the­o­logic shel­ter to which you may flee in fear of fac­ing the rugged re­al­i­ties of spir­i­tual prog­ress and ide­al­is­tic ad­ven­ture; but rather shall your re­li­gion be­come the fact of real ex­pe­ri­ence which tes­ti­fies that God has found you, ide­al­ized, en­no­bled, and spir­i­tu­al­ized you, and that you have en­listed in the eter­nal ad­ven­ture of find­ing the God who has thus found and son­shipped you.

155:6.19And when Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, he beck­oned to An­drew and, point­ing to the west to­ward Phoeni­cia, said: “Let us be on our way.”

156:2.3The apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were greatly cheered by the man­ner in which the gen­tiles of Sidon re­ceived their mes­sage; dur­ing their short so­journ many were added to the king­dom. This pe­riod of about six weeks in Phoeni­cia was a very fruit­ful time in the work of win­ning souls, but the later Jew­ish writ­ers of the Gospels were wont lightly to pass over the rec­ord of this warm re­cep­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ings by these gen­tiles at this very time when such a large num­ber of his own peo­ple were in hos­tile ar­ray against him.

148:8.4On this same day, Beth-Mar­ion, a Phoeni­cian woman, be­came so fa­nat­i­cal that she went out of her head and, af­ter al­most drown­ing from try­ing to walk on the wa­ter, was sent away by her friends.

88:1.5When an­i­mals be­came fe­tishes, there en­sued the taboos on eat­ing the flesh of the fe­tish an­i­mal. Apes and mon­keys, be­cause of re­sem­blance to man, early be­came fe­tish an­i­mals; later, snakes, birds, and swine were also sim­i­larly re­garded. At one time the cow was a fe­tish, the milk be­ing taboo while the exc­reta were highly es­teemed. The ser­pent was revered in Pales­tine, es­pe­cially by the Phoeni­cians, who, along with the Jews, con­sid­ered it to be the mouth­piece of evil spir­its. Even many mod­erns be­lieve in the charm pow­ers of rep­tiles. From Ara­bia on through In­dia to the snake dance of the Mo­qui tribe of red men the ser­pent has been revered.

187:1.5Cru­ci­fix­ion was not a Jew­ish mode of pun­ish­ment. Both the Greeks and the Ro­mans learned this method of ex­e­cu­tion from the Phoeni­cians. Even Herod, with all his cru­elty, did not re­sort to cru­ci­fix­ion. The Ro­mans never cru­ci­fied a Ro­man cit­i­zen; only slaves and sub­ject peo­ples were sub­jected to this dis­hon­or­able mode of death. Dur­ing the siege of Je­ru­sa­lem, just forty years af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus, all of Gol­go­tha was cov­ered by thou­sands upon thou­sands of crosses upon which, from day to day, there per­ished the flower of the Jew­ish race. A ter­ri­ble har­vest, in­deed, of the seed-sow­ing of this day.

193:2.1The Mas­ter’s eigh­teenth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance was at Tyre, on Tues­day, May 16, at a lit­tle be­fore nine o’clock in the evening. Again he ap­peared at the close of a meet­ing of be­liev­ers, as they were about to dis­perse, say­ing:

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

193:2.3And then the Mas­ter dis­ap­peared from their sight. The next day there went out from Tyre those who car­ried this story to Sidon and even to An­ti­och and Da­mas­cus. Je­sus had been with these be­liev­ers when he was in the flesh, and they were quick to rec­og­nize him when he be­gan to teach them. While his friends could not read­ily rec­og­nize his mor­ontia form when made vis­i­ble, they were never slow to iden­tify his per­son­al­ity when he spoke to them.

89:6.7It was long the cus­tom of many peo­ples to ded­i­cate the first fruits to the spir­its. And these ob­ser­vances, now more or less sym­bolic, are all sur­vivals of the early cer­e­monies in­volv­ing hu­man sac­ri­fice. The idea of of­fer­ing the first-born as a sac­ri­fice was wide­spread among the an­cients, es­pe­cially among the Phoeni­cians, who were the last to give it up. It used to be said upon sac­ri­fic­ing, “life for life.” Now you say at death, “dust to dust.”

121:2.1The Jews were a part of the older Semitic race, which also in­cluded the Baby­lo­ni­ans, the Phoeni­cians, and the more re­cent en­e­mies of Rome, the Carthagini­ans. Dur­ing the fore part of the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, the Jews were the most in­flu­en­tial group of the Semitic peo­ples, and they hap­pened to oc­cupy a pe­cu­liarly strate­gic ge­o­graphic po­si­tion in the world as it was at that time ruled and or­ga­nized for trade.

156:3.2On Wednes­day, July 6, they all re­turned to Sidon and tar­ried at the home of Justa un­til Sun­day morn­ing, when they de­parted for Tyre, go­ing south along the coast by way of Sarepta, ar­riv­ing at Tyre on Mon­day, July 11. By this time the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were be­com­ing ac­cus­tomed to work­ing among these so-called gen­tiles, who were in re­al­ity mainly de­scended from the ear­lier Ca­naan­ite tribes of still ear­lier Semitic ori­gin. All of these peo­ples spoke the Greek lan­guage. It was a great sur­prise to the apos­tles and evan­ge­lists to ob­serve the ea­ger­ness of these gen­tiles to hear the gospel and to note the readi­ness with which many of them be­lieved.

96:2.1The Semites of the East were well-or­ga­nized and well-led horse­men who in­vaded the east­ern re­gions of the fer­tile cres­cent and there united with the Baby­lo­ni­ans. The Chaldeans near Ur were among the most ad­vanced of the east­ern Semites. The Phoeni­cians were a su­pe­rior and well-or­ga­nized group of mixed Semites who held the west­ern sec­tion of Pales­tine, along the Med­i­ter­ra­nean coast. Racially the Semites were among the most blended of Uran­tia peo­ples, con­tain­ing hered­i­tary fac­tors from al­most all of the nine world races.

89:1.5The early food taboos orig­i­nated in fet­ish­ism and to­tem­ism. The swine was sa­cred to the Phoeni­cians, the cow to the Hin­dus. The Egyp­tian taboo on pork has been per­pet­u­ated by the He­braic and Is­lamic faiths. A vari­ant of the food taboo was the be­lief that a preg­nant woman could think so much about a cer­tain food that the child, when born, would be the echo of that food. Such viands would be taboo to the child.