possessions

171:2.4“Now, then, must each of you sit down and count the cost of be­ing my dis­ci­ple. From now on you will not be able to fol­low af­ter us, lis­ten­ing to the teach­ing and be­hold­ing the works; you will be re­quired to face bit­ter per­se­cu­tions and to bear wit­ness for this gospel in the face of crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment. If you are un­will­ing to re­nounce all that you are and to ded­i­cate all that you have, then are you un­wor­thy to be my dis­ci­ple. If you have al­ready con­quered your­self within your own heart, you need have no fear of that out­ward vic­tory which you must pres­ently gain when the Son of Man is re­jected by the chief priests and the Sad­ducees and is given into the hands of mock­ing un­be­liev­ers.

194:4.2Then comes the res­ur­rec­tion, with its de­liv­er­ance from de­spair and the re­turn of their faith in the Mas­ter’s di­vin­ity. Again and again they see him and talk with him, and he takes them out on Oli­vet, where he bids them farewell and tells them he is go­ing back to the Fa­ther. He has told them to tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til they are en­dowed with power—un­til the Spirit of Truth shall come. And on the day of Pen­te­cost this new teacher comes, and they go out at once to preach their gospel with new power. They are the bold and coura­geous fol­low­ers of a liv­ing Lord, not a dead and de­feated leader. The Mas­ter lives in the hearts of these evan­ge­lists; God is not a doc­trine in their minds; he has be­come a liv­ing pres­ence in their souls.

194:4.7Un­mis­tak­ably, a new fel­low­ship was aris­ing in the world. “The mul­ti­tude who be­lieved con­tin­ued stead­fastly in the apos­tles’ teach­ing and fel­low­ship, in the break­ing of bread, and in prayers.” They called each other brother and sis­ter; they greeted one an­other with a holy kiss; they min­is­tered to the poor. It was a fel­low­ship of liv­ing as well as of wor­ship. They were not com­mu­nal by de­cree but by the de­sire to share their goods with their fel­low be­liev­ers. They con­fi­dently ex­pected that Je­sus would re­turn to com­plete the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fa­ther’s king­dom dur­ing their gen­er­a­tion. This spon­ta­neous shar­ing of earthly pos­ses­sions was not a di­rect fea­ture of Je­sus’ teach­ing; it came about be­cause these men and women so sin­cerely and so con­fi­dently be­lieved that he was to re­turn any day to fin­ish his work and to con­sum­mate the king­dom. But the fi­nal re­sults of this well-meant ex­per­i­ment in thought­less broth­erly love were dis­as­trous and sor­row-breed­ing. Thou­sands of earnest be­liev­ers sold their prop­erty and dis­posed of all their cap­i­tal goods and other pro­duc­tive as­sets. With the pass­ing of time, the dwin­dling re­sources of Chris­tian “equal-shar­ing” came to an end—but the world did not. Very soon the be­liev­ers at An­ti­och were tak­ing up a col­lec­tion to keep their fel­low be­liev­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem from starv­ing.

165:4.1As the apos­tles bap­tized be­liev­ers, the Mas­ter talked with those who tar­ried. And a cer­tain young man said to him: “Mas­ter, my fa­ther died leav­ing much prop­erty to me and my brother, but my brother re­fuses to give me that which is my own. Will you, then, bid my brother di­vide this in­her­i­tance with me?” Je­sus was mildly in­dig­nant that this ma­te­rial-minded youth should bring up for dis­cus­sion such a ques­tion of busi­ness; but he pro­ceeded to use the oc­ca­sion for the im­par­ta­tion of fur­ther in­struc­tion. Said Je­sus: “Man, who made me a di­vider over you? Where did you get the idea that I give at­ten­tion to the ma­te­rial af­fairs of this world?” And then, turn­ing to all who were about him, he said: “Take heed and keep your­selves free from cov­etous­ness; a man’s life con­sists not in the abun­dance of the things which he may pos­sess. Hap­pi­ness comes not from the power of wealth, and joy springs not from riches. Wealth, in it­self, is not a curse, but the love of riches many times leads to such de­vo­tion to the things of this world that the soul be­comes blinded to the beau­ti­ful at­trac­tions of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of God on earth and to the joys of eter­nal life in heaven.

89:3.2Just about the time bar­bar­ian man was re­cov­er­ing from the waste­ful prac­tice of burn­ing and bury­ing prop­erty with the dead, just as the eco­nomic struc­ture of the races was be­gin­ning to take shape, this new re­li­gious doc­trine of re­nun­ci­a­tion ap­peared, and tens of thou­sands of earnest souls be­gan to court pov­erty. Prop­erty was re­garded as a spir­i­tual hand­i­cap. These no­tions of the spir­i­tual dan­gers of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sion were widespreadly en­ter­tained in the times of Philo and Paul, and they have markedly in­flu­enced Eu­ro­pean phi­los­o­phy ever since.

117:4.14God’s gifts—his be­stowal of re­al­ity—are not di­vorce­ments from him­self; he does not alien­ate cre­ation from him­self, but he has set up ten­sions in the cre­ations cir­cling Par­a­dise. God first loves man and con­fers upon him the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal­ity—eter­nal re­al­ity. And as man loves God, so does man be­come eter­nal in ac­tu­al­ity. And here is mys­tery: The more closely man ap­proaches God through love, the greater the re­al­ity—ac­tu­al­ity—of that man. The more man with­draws from God, the more nearly he ap­proaches non­re­al­ity—ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence. When man con­se­crates his will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is.