prophets

147:8.5And then long into the night Je­sus pro­pounded to his apos­tles the truth that it was their faith that made them se­cure in the king­dom of the pres­ent and the fu­ture, and not their af­flic­tion of soul nor fast­ing of body. He ex­horted the apos­tles at least to live up to the ideas of the prophet of old and ex­pressed the hope that they would pro­gress far be­yond even the ide­als of Isa­iah and the older proph­ets. His last words that night were: “Grow in grace by means of that liv­ing faith which grasps the fact that you are the sons of God while at the same time it rec­og­nizes ev­ery man as a brother.”

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?

166:1.5When Je­sus would have risen to de­part, one of the lawyers who was at the ta­ble, ad­dress­ing him, said: “But, Mas­ter, in some of your state­ments you re­proach us also. Is there noth­ing good in the scribes, the Phar­isees, or the lawyers?” And Je­sus, stand­ing, replied to the lawyer: “You, like the Phar­isees, de­light in the first places at the feasts and in wear­ing long robes while you put heavy bur­dens, griev­ous to be borne, on men’s shoul­ders. And when the souls of men stag­ger un­der these heavy bur­dens, you will not so much as lift with one of your fin­gers. Woe upon you who take your great­est de­light in build­ing tombs for the proph­ets your fa­thers killed! And that you con­sent to what your fa­thers did is made man­i­fest when you now plan to kill those who come in this day do­ing what the proph­ets did in their day—pro­claim­ing the righ­teous­ness of God and re­veal­ing the mercy of the heav­enly Fa­ther. But of all the gen­er­a­tions that are past, the blood of the proph­ets and the apos­tles shall be re­quired of this per­verse and self-righ­teous gen­er­a­tion. Woe upon all of you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowl­edge from the com­mon peo­ple! You your­selves refuse to en­ter into the way of truth, and at the same time you would hin­der all oth­ers who seek to en­ter therein. But you can­not thus shut up the doors of the king­dom of heaven; these we have opened to all who have the faith to en­ter, and these por­tals of mercy shall not be closed by the prej­u­dice and ar­ro­gance of false teach­ers and un­true shep­herds who are like whited sepul­chres which, while out­wardly they ap­pear beau­ti­ful, are in­wardly full of dead men’s bones and all man­ner of spir­i­tual un­clean­ness.”

44:2.11The higher in­tel­lec­tual teach­ers and the tran­si­tion min­is­ters freely and ef­fec­tively uti­lize these var­i­ous groups of re­pro­duc­ers in their mor­ontia ed­u­ca­tional ac­tiv­i­ties. But not all of their ef­forts are de­voted to tran­sient il­lus­tra­tion; much, very much, of their work is of a per­ma­nent na­ture and will for­ever re­main as a legacy to all fu­ture time. So ver­sa­tile are these ar­ti­sans that, when they func­tion en masse, they are able to re-en­act an age, and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the se­raphic min­is­ters they can ac­tu­ally por­tray the eter­nal val­ues of the spirit world to the mor­tal seers of time.

163:6.4When Je­sus had thus spo­ken to the Fa­ther, he turned aside to speak to his apos­tles and min­is­ters: “Blessed are the eyes which see and the ears which hear these things. Let me say to you that many proph­ets and many of the great men of the past ages have de­sired to be­hold what you now see, but it was not granted them. And many gen­er­a­tions of the chil­dren of light yet to come will, when they hear of these things, envy you who have heard and seen them.”

140:3.19“I warn you against false proph­ets who will come to you in sheep’s cloth­ing, while on the in­side they are as raven­ing wolves. By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes from thorns or figs from this­tles? Even so, ev­ery good tree brings forth good fruit, but the cor­rupt tree bears evil fruit. A good tree can­not yield evil fruit, nei­ther can a cor­rupt tree pro­duce good fruit. Ev­ery tree that does not bring forth good fruit is pres­ently hewn down and cast into the fire. In gain­ing an en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, it is the mo­tive that counts. My Fa­ther looks into the hearts of men and judges by their in­ner long­ings and their sin­cere in­ten­tions.

136:0.1Je­sus be­gan his pub­lic work at the height of the pop­u­lar in­ter­est in John’s preach­ing and at a time when the Jew­ish peo­ple of Pales­tine were ea­gerly look­ing for the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. There was a great con­trast be­tween John and Je­sus. John was an ea­ger and earnest worker, but Je­sus was a calm and happy la­borer; only a few times in his en­tire life was he ever in a hurry. Je­sus was a com­fort­ing con­so­la­tion to the world and some­what of an ex­am­ple; John was hardly a com­fort or an ex­am­ple. He preached the king­dom of heaven but hardly en­tered into the hap­pi­ness thereof. Though Je­sus spoke of John as the great­est of the proph­ets of the old or­der, he also said that the least of those who saw the great light of the new way and en­tered thereby into the king­dom of heaven was in­deed greater than John.

175:1.22“But even now I of­fer you in my Fa­ther’s name mercy and for­give­ness; even now I prof­fer the lov­ing hand of eter­nal fel­low­ship. My Fa­ther has sent you the wise men and the proph­ets; some you have per­se­cuted and oth­ers you have killed. Then ap­peared John pro­claim­ing the com­ing of the Son of Man, and him you de­stroyed af­ter many had be­lieved his teach­ing. And now you make ready to shed more in­no­cent blood. Do you not com­pre­hend that a ter­ri­ble day of reck­on­ing will come when the Judge of all the earth shall re­quire of this peo­ple an ac­count­ing for the way they have re­jected, per­se­cuted, and de­stroyed these mes­sen­gers of heaven? Do you not un­der­stand that you must ac­count for all of this righ­teous blood, from the first prophet killed down to the times of Zechariah, who was slain be­tween the sanc­tu­ary and the al­tar? And if you go on in your evil ways, this ac­count­ing may be re­quired of this very gen­er­a­tion.

175:1.23“O Je­ru­sa­lem and the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you who have stoned the proph­ets and killed the teach­ers that were sent to you, even now would I gather your chil­dren to­gether as a hen gath­ers her chick­ens un­der her wings, but you will not!

148:1.1Pe­ter, James, and An­drew were the com­mit­tee des­ig­nated by Je­sus to pass upon ap­pli­cants for ad­mis­sion to the school of evan­ge­lists. All the races and na­tion­al­i­ties of the Ro­man world and the East, as far as In­dia, were rep­re­sented among the stu­dents in this new school of the proph­ets. This school was con­ducted on the plan of learn­ing and do­ing. What the stu­dents learned dur­ing the forenoon they taught to the as­sem­bly by the sea­side dur­ing the af­ter­noon. Af­ter sup­per they in­for­mally dis­cussed both the learn­ing of the forenoon and the teach­ing of the af­ter­noon.

148:1.2Each of the apos­tolic teach­ers taught his own view of the gospel of the king­dom. They made no ef­fort to teach just alike; there was no stan­dard­ized or dog­matic for­mu­la­tion of the­o­logic doc­trines. Though they all taught the same truth, each apos­tle pre­sented his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. And Je­sus up­held this pre­sen­ta­tion of the di­ver­sity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of the king­dom, un­fail­ingly har­mo­niz­ing and co-or­di­nat­ing these many and di­ver­gent views of the gospel at his weekly ques­tion hours. Not­with­stand­ing this great de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty in mat­ters of teach­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter tended to dom­i­nate the the­ol­ogy of the school of evan­ge­lists. Next to Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee ex­erted the great­est per­sonal in­flu­ence.

148:1.3The one hun­dred and more evan­ge­lists trained dur­ing this five months by the sea­side rep­re­sented the ma­te­rial from which (ex­cept­ing Ab­ner and John’s apos­tles) the later sev­enty gospel teach­ers and preach­ers were drawn. The school of evan­ge­lists did not have ev­ery­thing in com­mon to the same de­gree as did the twelve.

148:1.4These evan­ge­lists, though they taught and preached the gospel, did not bap­tize be­liev­ers un­til af­ter they were later or­dained and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus as the sev­enty mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. Only seven of the large num­ber healed at the sun­down scene at this place were to be found among these evan­ge­lis­tic stu­dents. The no­ble­man’s son of Ca­per­naum was one of those trained for gospel ser­vice in Pe­ter’s school.

138:0.2Un­til af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion, Je­sus’ en­tire fam­ily had very lit­tle to do with his min­istry. If a prophet is not with­out honor save in his own coun­try, he is not with­out un­der­stand­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion save in his own fam­ily.

150:9.1Je­sus found him­self sur­rounded in the syn­a­gogue by a great throng of his en­e­mies and a sprin­kling of his own fol­low­ers, and in re­ply to their rude ques­tions and sin­is­ter ban­ter­ings he half hu­mor­ously re­marked: “Yes, I am Joseph’s son; I am the car­pen­ter, and I am not sur­prised that you re­mind me of the proverb, ‘Physi­cian heal your­self,’ and that you chal­lenge me to do in Naz­a­reth what you have heard I did at Ca­per­naum; but I call you to wit­ness that even the Scrip­tures de­clare that ‘a prophet is not with­out honor save in his own coun­try and among his own peo­ple.’”

142:2.2When Ja­cob fin­ished speak­ing, Je­sus re­plied: “Ja­cob, you have well stated the teach­ings of the olden proph­ets who taught the chil­dren of their gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the light of their day. Our Fa­ther in Par­a­dise is change­less. But the con­cept of his na­ture has en­larged and grown from the days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the gen­er­a­tion of the prophet Isa­iah. And now have I come in the flesh to re­veal the Fa­ther in new glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds. As the gospel of this king­dom shall spread over the world with its mes­sage of good cheer and good will to all men, there will grow up im­proved and bet­ter re­la­tions among the fam­i­lies of all na­tions. As time passes, fa­thers and their chil­dren will love each other more, and thus will be brought about a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for his chil­dren on earth. Re­mem­ber, Ja­cob, that a good and true fa­ther not only loves his fam­ily as a whole—as a fam­ily—but he also truly loves and af­fec­tion­ately cares for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber.”

173:4.1When the chief Phar­isees and the scribes who had sought to en­tan­gle Je­sus with their ques­tions had fin­ished lis­ten­ing to the story of the two sons, they with­drew to take fur­ther coun­sel, and the Mas­ter, turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the lis­ten­ing mul­ti­tude, told an­other para­ble:

173:4.2“There was a good man who was a house­holder, and he planted a vine­yard. He set a hedge about it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watch­tower for the guards. Then he let this vine­yard out to ten­ants while he went on a long jour­ney into an­other coun­try. And when the sea­son of the fruits drew near, he sent ser­vants to the ten­ants to re­ceive his rental. But they took coun­sel among them­selves and re­fused to give these ser­vants the fruits due their mas­ter; in­stead, they fell upon his ser­vants, beat­ing one, ston­ing an­other, and send­ing the oth­ers away empty-handed. And when the house­holder heard about all this, he sent other and more trusted ser­vants to deal with these wicked ten­ants, and these they wounded and also treated shame­fully. And then the house­holder sent his fa­vorite ser­vant, his stew­ard, and him they killed. And still, in pa­tience and with for­bear­ance, he dis­patched many other ser­vants, but none would they re­ceive. Some they beat, oth­ers they killed, and when the house­holder had been so dealt with, he de­cided to send his son to deal with these un­grate­ful ten­ants, say­ing to him­self, ‘They may mis­treat my ser­vants, but they will surely show re­spect for my beloved son.’ But when these un­re­pen­tant and wicked ten­ants saw the son, they rea­soned among them­selves: ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and then the in­her­i­tance will be ours.’ So they laid hold on him, and af­ter cast­ing him out of the vine­yard, they killed him. When the lord of that vine­yard shall hear how they have re­jected and killed his son, what will he do to those un­grate­ful and wicked ten­ants?”

173:4.3And when the peo­ple heard this para­ble and the ques­tion Je­sus asked, they an­swered, “He will de­stroy those mis­er­able men and let out his vine­yard to other and hon­est farm­ers who will ren­der to him the fruits in their sea­son.” And when some of them who heard per­ceived that this para­ble re­ferred to the Jew­ish na­tion and its treat­ment of the proph­ets and to the im­pend­ing re­jec­tion of Je­sus and the gospel of the king­dom, they said in sor­row, “God for­bid that we should go on do­ing these things.”

173:4.4Je­sus saw a group of the Sad­ducees and Phar­isees mak­ing their way through the crowd, and he paused for a mo­ment un­til they drew near him, when he said: “You know how your fa­thers re­jected the proph­ets, and you well know that you are set in your hearts to re­ject the Son of Man.” And then, look­ing with search­ing gaze upon those priests and el­ders who were stand­ing near him, Je­sus said: “Did you never read in the Scrip­ture about the stone which the builders re­jected, and which, when the peo­ple had dis­cov­ered it, was made into the cor­ner­stone? And so once more do I warn you that, if you con­tinue to re­ject this gospel, pres­ently will the king­dom of God be taken away from you and be given to a peo­ple will­ing to re­ceive the good news and to bring forth the fruits of the spirit. And there is a mys­tery about this stone, see­ing that whoso falls upon it, while he is thereby bro­ken in pieces, shall be saved; but on whom­so­ever this stone falls, he will be ground to dust and his ashes scat­tered to the four winds.”

173:4.5When the Phar­isees heard these words, they un­der­stood that Je­sus re­ferred to them­selves and the other Jew­ish lead­ers. They greatly de­sired to lay hold on him then and there, but they feared the mul­ti­tude. How­ever, they were so an­gered by the Mas­ter’s words that they with­drew and held fur­ther coun­sel among them­selves as to how they might bring about his death. And that night both the Sad­ducees and the Phar­isees joined hands in the plan to en­trap him the next day.

173:2.3It was al­to­gether proper that the tem­ple rulers and the of­fi­cers of the Jew­ish San­hedrin should ask this ques­tion of any­one who pre­sumed to teach and per­form in the ex­traor­di­nary man­ner which had been char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus, es­pe­cially as con­cerned his re­cent con­duct in clear­ing the tem­ple of all com­merce. These traders and money-chang­ers all op­er­ated by di­rect li­cense from the high­est rulers, and a per­cent­age of their gains was sup­posed to go di­rectly into the tem­ple trea­sury. Do not for­get that au­thor­ity was the watch­word of all Jewry. The proph­ets were al­ways stir­ring up trou­ble be­cause they so boldly pre­sumed to teach with­out au­thor­ity, with­out hav­ing been duly in­structed in the rab­binic academies and sub­se­quently reg­u­larly or­dained by the San­hedrin. Lack of this au­thor­ity in pre­ten­tious pub­lic teach­ing was looked upon as in­di­cat­ing ei­ther ig­no­rant pre­sump­tion or open re­bel­lion. At this time only the San­hedrin could or­dain an el­der or teacher, and such a cer­e­mony had to take place in the pres­ence of at least three per­sons who had pre­vi­ously been so or­dained. Such an or­di­na­tion con­ferred the ti­tle of “rabbi” upon the teacher and also qual­i­fied him to act as a judge, “bind­ing and loos­ing such mat­ters as might be brought to him for ad­ju­di­ca­tion.”

175:1.4“My Fa­ther has long dealt in mercy with this peo­ple. Gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have we sent our proph­ets to teach and warn them, and gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have they killed these heaven-sent teach­ers. And now do your will­ful high priests and stub­born rulers go right on do­ing this same thing. As Herod brought about the death of John, you like­wise now make ready to de­stroy the Son of Man.

175:1.20“Woe upon you, false guides of a na­tion! Over yon­der have you built a mon­u­ment to the mar­tyred proph­ets of old, while you plot to de­stroy Him of whom they spoke. You gar­nish the tombs of the righ­teous and flat­ter your­selves that, had you lived in the days of your fa­thers, you would not have killed the proph­ets; and then in the face of such self-righ­teous think­ing you make ready to slay him of whom the proph­ets spoke, the Son of Man. Inas­much as you do these things, are you wit­ness to your­selves that you are the wicked sons of them who slew the proph­ets. Go on, then, and fill up the cup of your con­dem­na­tion to the full!

• denounced and exposed shamanism

90:2.9Ever and anon, true proph­ets and teach­ers arose to de­nounce and ex­pose shaman­ism. Even the van­ish­ing red man had such a prophet within the past hun­dred years, the Shawnee Ten­skwatawa, who pre­dicted the eclipse of the sun in 1806 and de­nounced the vices of the white man. Many true teach­ers have ap­peared among the var­i­ous tribes and races all through the long ages of evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory. And they will ever con­tinue to ap­pear to chal­lenge the shamans or priests of any age who op­pose gen­eral ed­u­ca­tion and at­tempt to thwart sci­en­tific prog­ress.

• exalt ideals

101:5.9Sci­en­tists as­sem­ble facts, philoso­phers co-or­di­nate ideas, while proph­ets ex­alt ide­als. Feel­ing and emo­tion are in­vari­able con­comi­tants of re­li­gion, but they are not re­li­gion. Re­li­gion may be the feel­ing of ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is hardly the ex­pe­ri­ence of feel­ing. Nei­ther logic (ra­tio­nal­iza­tion) nor emo­tion (feel­ing) is es­sen­tially a part of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, al­though both may var­i­ously be as­so­ci­ated with the ex­er­cise of faith in the fur­ther­ance of spir­i­tual in­sight into re­al­ity, all ac­cord­ing to the sta­tus and tem­per­a­men­tal ten­dency of the in­di­vid­ual mind.

• taught God’s will; proclaimed righteousness and mercy of God

135:5.6Some of the Jews held to the opin­ion that God might pos­si­bly es­tab­lish this new king­dom by di­rect and di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, but the vast ma­jor­ity be­lieved that he would in­ter­pose some rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­ter­me­di­ary, the Mes­siah. And that was the only pos­si­ble mean­ing the term Mes­siah could have had in the minds of the Jews of the gen­er­a­tion of John and Je­sus. Mes­siah could not pos­si­bly re­fer to one who merely taught God’s will or pro­claimed the ne­ces­sity for righ­teous liv­ing. To all such holy per­sons the Jews gave the ti­tle of prophet. The Mes­siah was to be more than a prophet; the Mes­siah was to bring in the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom, the king­dom of God. No one who failed to do this could be the Mes­siah in the tra­di­tional Jew­ish sense.

• taught God’s will; proclaimed righteousness and mercy of God

138:8.8Je­sus made plain to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­pen­tance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith—the new birth—which he re­quired as the price of ad­mis­sion to the king­dom. He taught his apos­tles that faith was the only req­ui­site to en­ter­ing the Fa­ther’s king­dom. John had taught them “re­pen­tance—to flee from the wrath to come.” Je­sus taught, “Faith is the open door for en­ter­ing into the pres­ent, per­fect, and eter­nal love of God.” Je­sus did not speak like a prophet, one who comes to de­clare the word of God. He seemed to speak of him­self as one hav­ing au­thor­ity. Je­sus sought to di­vert their minds from mir­a­cle seek­ing to the find­ing of a real and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the sat­is­fac­tion and as­sur­ance of the in­dwelling of God’s spirit of love and sav­ing grace.

85:6.2Early man re­garded all un­usual per­sons as super­hu­man, and he so feared such be­ings as to hold them in rev­er­en­tial awe; to some de­gree he lit­er­ally wor­shiped them. Even hav­ing twins was re­garded as be­ing ei­ther very lucky or very un­lucky. Lu­natics, epilep­tics, and the fee­ble-minded were of­ten wor­shiped by their nor­mal-minded fel­lows, who be­lieved that such ab­nor­mal be­ings were in­dwelt by the gods. Priests, kings, and proph­ets were wor­shiped; the holy men of old were looked upon as in­spired by the de­i­ties.