sonship with God

• Adjuster, Holy Spirit, and Spirit of Truth qualify mortals to faith-realize
• full function of personality makes s. real

16:8.19The full func­tion of such a per­son­al­ity en­dow­ment is the be­gin­ning re­al­iza­tion of De­ity kin­ship. Such a self­hood, in­dwelt by a preper­sonal frag­ment of God the Fa­ther, is in truth and in fact a spir­i­tual son of God. Such a crea­ture not only dis­closes ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of the gift of the di­vine pres­ence but also ex­hibits re­ac­tive re­sponse to the per­son­al­ity-grav­ity cir­cuit of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of all per­son­al­i­ties.

• price of survival is acceptance of s.

26:4.15Abil­ity to com­pre­hend is the mor­tal pass­port to Par­a­dise. Will­ing­ness to be­lieve is the key to Ha­vona. The ac­cep­tance of son­ship, co-op­er­a­tion with the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the price of evo­lu­tion­ary sur­vival.

• Adjuster, Holy Spirit, and Spirit of Truth qualify mortals to faith-realize

34:5.7The pres­ence of the Holy Spirit of the Uni­verse Daugh­ter of the In­fi­nite Spirit, of the Spirit of Truth of the Uni­verse Son of the Eter­nal Son, and of the Ad­juster-spirit of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther in or with an evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal, de­notes sym­me­try of spir­i­tual en­dow­ment and min­istry and qual­i­fies such a mor­tal con­sciously to re­al­ize the faith-fact of son­ship with God.

• mortals are sons of God because we have accepted sonship; Michael became one of us; Spirit of Truth has been poured out upon us; Father has given us personality; Father fragment dwells within us
• sonship obtained by › grace, through faith

40:6.41. You are sons of spir­i­tual prom­ise, faith sons; you have ac­cepted the sta­tus of son­ship. You be­lieve in the re­al­ity of your son­ship, and thus does your son­ship with God be­come eter­nally real.

40:6.52. A Cre­ator Son of God be­came one of you; he is your el­der brother in fact; and if in spirit you be­come truly re­lated broth­ers of Christ, the vic­to­ri­ous Mi­chael, then in spirit must you also be sons of that Fa­ther which you have in com­mon—even the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of all.

40:6.63. You are sons be­cause the spirit of a Son has been poured out upon you, has been freely and cer­tainly be­stowed upon all Uran­tia races. This spirit ever draws you to­ward the di­vine Son, who is its source, and to­ward the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, who is the source of that di­vine Son.

40:6.74. Of his di­vine free-will­ness, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has given you your crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties. You have been en­dowed with a mea­sure of that di­vine spon­tane­ity of free­will ac­tion which God shares with all who may be­come his sons.

40:6.85. There dwells within you a frag­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and you are thus di­rectly re­lated to the di­vine Fa­ther of all the Sons of God.

• sonship obtained by › faith and freewill co-operation with Adjuster

40:7.2Your own races of sur­viv­ing mor­tals be­long to this group of the as­cend­ing Sons of God. You are now plan­e­tary sons, evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures de­rived from the Life Car­rier im­plan­ta­tions and mod­i­fied by the Adamic-life in­fu­sion, hardly yet as­cend­ing sons; but you are in­deed sons of as­cen­sion po­ten­tial—even to the high­est heights of glory and di­vin­ity at­tain­ment—and this spir­i­tual sta­tus of as­cend­ing son­ship you may at­tain by faith and by free­will co-op­er­a­tion with the spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing ac­tiv­i­ties of the in­dwelling Ad­juster. When you and your Ad­justers are fi­nally and for­ever fused, when you two are made one, even as in Christ Mi­chael the Son of God and the Son of Man are one, then in fact have you be­come the as­cend­ing sons of God.

• supreme relationship of creature to Creator

40:10.13Thus, in the fi­nal anal­y­sis, it would be hardly proper to use the words “greater” or “lesser” in con­trast­ing the des­tinies of the as­cend­ing or­ders of son­ship. Ev­ery such son of God shares the fa­ther­hood of God, and God loves each of his crea­ture sons alike; he is no more a re­specter of as­cen­dant des­tinies than is he of the crea­tures who may at­tain such des­tinies. The Fa­ther loves each of his sons, and that af­fec­tion is not less than true, holy, di­vine, un­lim­ited, eter­nal, and unique—a love be­stowed upon this son and upon that son, in­di­vid­u­ally, per­son­ally, and ex­clu­sively. And such a love ut­terly eclipses all other facts. Son­ship is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship of the crea­ture to the Cre­ator.

• man is child of God only in spiritual sense

101:10.4It is only through the mor­ontial av­enue lead­ing to spir­i­tual in­sight that man can ever break the fet­ters in­her­ent in his mor­tal sta­tus in the uni­verse. En­ergy and mind do lead back to Par­a­dise and De­ity, but nei­ther the en­ergy en­dow­ment nor the mind en­dow­ment of man pro­ceeds di­rectly from such Par­a­dise De­ity. Only in the spir­i­tual sense is man a child of God. And this is true be­cause it is only in the spir­i­tual sense that man is at pres­ent en­dowed and in­dwelt by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Man­kind can never dis­cover di­vin­ity ex­cept through the av­enue of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and by the ex­er­cise of true faith. The faith ac­cep­tance of the truth of God en­ables man to es­cape from the cir­cum­scribed con­fines of ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions and af­fords him a ra­tio­nal hope of achiev­ing safe con­duct from the ma­te­rial realm, whereon is death, to the spir­i­tual realm, wherein is life eter­nal.

• sonship obtained by › grace, through faith

117:6.8All soul-evolv­ing hu­mans are lit­er­ally the evo­lu­tion­ary sons of God the Fa­ther and God the Mother, the Su­preme Be­ing. But un­til such time as mor­tal man be­comes soul-con­scious of his di­vine her­itage, this as­sur­ance of De­ity kin­ship must be faith re­al­ized. Hu­man life ex­pe­ri­ence is the cos­mic co­coon in which the uni­verse en­dow­ments of the Su­preme Be­ing and the uni­verse pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther (none of which are per­son­al­i­ties) are evolv­ing the mor­ontia soul of time and the hu­man-di­vine fi­nal­i­ter char­ac­ter of uni­verse des­tiny and eter­nal ser­vice.

141:2.1The night be­fore they left Pella, Je­sus gave the apos­tles some fur­ther in­struc­tion with re­gard to the new king­dom. Said the Mas­ter: “You have been taught to look for the com­ing of the king­dom of God, and now I come an­nounc­ing that this long-looked-for king­dom is near at hand, even that it is al­ready here and in our midst. In ev­ery king­dom there must be a king seated upon his throne and de­cree­ing the laws of the realm. And so have you de­vel­oped a con­cept of the king­dom of heaven as a glo­ri­fied rule of the Jew­ish peo­ple over all the peo­ples of the earth with Mes­siah sit­ting on David’s throne and from this place of mirac­u­lous power pro­mul­gat­ing the laws of all the world. But, my chil­dren, you see not with the eye of faith, and you hear not with the un­der­stand­ing of the spirit. I de­clare that the king­dom of heaven is the re­al­iza­tion and ac­knowl­edg­ment of God’s rule within the hearts of men. True, there is a King in this king­dom, and that King is my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther. We are in­deed his loyal sub­jects, but far tran­scend­ing that fact is the trans­form­ing truth that we are his sons. In my life this truth is to be­come man­i­fest to all. Our Fa­ther also sits upon a throne, but not one made with hands. The throne of the In­fi­nite is the eter­nal dwell­ing place of the Fa­ther in the heaven of heav­ens; he fills all things and pro­claims his laws to uni­verses upon uni­verses. And the Fa­ther also rules within the hearts of his chil­dren on earth by the spirit which he has sent to live within the souls of mor­tal men.

141:2.2“When you are the sub­jects of this king­dom, you in­deed are made to hear the law of the Uni­verse Ruler; but when, be­cause of the gospel of the king­dom which I have come to de­clare, you faith-dis­cover your­selves as sons, you hence­forth look not upon your­selves as law-sub­ject crea­tures of an all-pow­er­ful king but as priv­i­leged sons of a lov­ing and di­vine Fa­ther. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, when the Fa­ther’s will is your law, you are hardly in the king­dom. But when the Fa­ther’s will be­comes truly your will, then are you in very truth in the king­dom be­cause the king­dom has thereby be­come an es­tab­lished ex­pe­ri­ence in you. When God’s will is your law, you are no­ble slave sub­jects; but when you be­lieve in this new gospel of di­vine son­ship, my Fa­ther’s will be­comes your will, and you are el­e­vated to the high po­si­tion of the free chil­dren of God, lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom.”

141:2.3Some of the apos­tles grasped some­thing of this teach­ing, but none of them com­pre­hended the full sig­nif­i­cance of this tremen­dous an­nounce­ment, un­less it was James Zeb­e­dee. But these words sank into their hearts and came forth to glad­den their min­istry dur­ing later years of ser­vice.

• sonship obtained by › loving neighbor as self

142:4.2The Mas­ter saw that his host was be­wil­dered at his friendly at­ti­tude to­ward art; there­fore, when they had fin­ished the sur­vey of the en­tire col­lec­tion, Je­sus said: “Be­cause you ap­pre­ci­ate the beauty of things cre­ated by my Fa­ther and fash­ioned by the artis­tic hands of man, why should you ex­pect to be re­buked? Be­cause Moses one­time sought to com­bat idol­a­try and the wor­ship of false gods, why should all men frown upon the re­pro­duc­tion of grace and beauty? I say to you, Flav­ius, Moses’ chil­dren have mis­un­der­stood him, and now do they make false gods of even his pro­hi­bi­tions of im­ages and the like­ness of things in heaven and on earth. But even if Moses taught such re­stric­tions to the dark­ened minds of those days, what has that to do with this day when the Fa­ther in heaven is re­vealed as the uni­ver­sal Spirit Ruler over all? And, Flav­ius, I de­clare that in the com­ing king­dom they shall no longer teach, ‘Do not wor­ship this and do not wor­ship that’; no longer shall they con­cern them­selves with com­mands to re­frain from this and take care not to do that, but rather shall all be con­cerned with one su­preme duty. And this duty of man is ex­pressed in two great priv­i­leges: sin­cere wor­ship of the in­fi­nite Cre­ator, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, and lov­ing ser­vice be­stowed upon one’s fel­low men. If you love your neigh­bor as you love your­self, you re­ally know that you are a son of God.

• sonship obtained by › receiving God as Father

142:5.2“As to my mes­sage and the teach­ing of my dis­ci­ples, you should judge them by their fruits. If we pro­claim to you the truths of the spirit, the spirit will wit­ness in your hearts that our mes­sage is gen­uine. Con­cern­ing the king­dom and your as­sur­ance of ac­cep­tance by the heav­enly Fa­ther, let me ask what fa­ther among you who is a wor­thy and kind­hearted fa­ther would keep his son in anx­i­ety or sus­pense re­gard­ing his sta­tus in the fam­ily or his place of se­cu­rity in the af­fec­tions of his fa­ther’s heart? Do you earth fa­thers take plea­sure in tor­tur­ing your chil­dren with un­cer­tainty about their place of abid­ing love in your hu­man hearts? Nei­ther does your Fa­ther in heaven leave his faith chil­dren of the spirit in doubt­ful un­cer­tainty as to their po­si­tion in the king­dom. If you re­ceive God as your Fa­ther, then in­deed and in truth are you the sons of God. And if you are sons, then are you se­cure in the po­si­tion and stand­ing of all that con­cerns eter­nal and di­vine son­ship. If you be­lieve my words, you thereby be­lieve in Him who sent me, and by thus be­liev­ing in the Fa­ther, you have made your sta­tus in heav­enly cit­i­zen­ship sure. If you do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, you shall never fail in the at­tain­ment of the eter­nal life of prog­ress in the di­vine king­dom.

• sonship obtained by › submission to Father’s will

142:6.8Nicode­mus was thor­oughly sin­cere. He was deeply im­pressed but went away be­wil­dered. Nicode­mus was ac­com­plished in self-de­vel­op­ment, in self-re­straint, and even in high moral qual­i­ties. He was re­fined, ego­is­tic, and al­tru­is­tic; but he did not know how to sub­mit his will to the will of the di­vine Fa­ther as a lit­tle child is will­ing to sub­mit to the guid­ance and lead­ing of a wise and lov­ing earthly fa­ther, thereby be­com­ing in re­al­ity a son of God, a pro­gres­sive heir of the eter­nal king­dom.

• sonship obtained by › grace, through faith

144:4.3In all pray­ing, re­mem­ber that son­ship is a gift. No child has aught to do with earn­ing the sta­tus of son or daugh­ter. The earth child comes into be­ing by the will of its par­ents. Even so, the child of God comes into grace and the new life of the spirit by the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There­fore must the king­dom of heaven—di­vine son­ship—be re­ceived as by a lit­tle child. You earn righ­teous­ness—pro­gres­sive char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment—but you re­ceive son­ship by grace and through faith.

• to have fellowship, assume obligations of s.

157:6.8“From this time on, if any man would have fel­low­ship with us, let him as­sume the obli­ga­tions of son­ship and fol­low me. And when I am no more with you, think not that the world will treat you bet­ter than it did your Mas­ter. If you love me, pre­pare to prove this af­fec­tion by your will­ing­ness to make the su­preme sac­ri­fice.”

178:1.1Je­sus talked to about fifty of his trusted fol­low­ers for al­most two hours and an­swered a score of ques­tions re­gard­ing the re­la­tion of the king­dom of heaven to the king­doms of this world, con­cern­ing the re­la­tion of son­ship with God to cit­i­zen­ship in earthly gov­ern­ments. This dis­course, to­gether with his an­swers to ques­tions, may be sum­ma­rized and re­stated in mod­ern lan­guage as fol­lows:

178:1.2The king­doms of this world, be­ing ma­te­rial, may of­ten find it nec­es­sary to em­ploy phys­i­cal force in the ex­e­cu­tion of their laws and for the main­te­nance of or­der. In the king­dom of heaven true be­liev­ers will not re­sort to the em­ploy­ment of phys­i­cal force. The king­dom of heaven, be­ing a spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the spirit-born sons of God, may be pro­mul­gated only by the power of the spirit. This dis­tinc­tion of pro­ce­dure refers to the re­la­tions of the king­dom of be­liev­ers to the king­doms of sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment and does not nul­lify the right of so­cial groups of be­liev­ers to main­tain or­der in their ranks and ad­min­is­ter dis­ci­pline upon un­ruly and un­wor­thy mem­bers.

178:1.3There is noth­ing in­com­pat­i­ble be­tween son­ship in the spir­i­tual king­dom and cit­i­zen­ship in the sec­u­lar or civil gov­ern­ment. It is the be­liever’s duty to ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s. There can­not be any dis­agree­ment be­tween these two re­quire­ments, the one be­ing ma­te­rial and the other spir­i­tual, un­less it should de­velop that a Cae­sar pre­sumes to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of God and de­mand that spir­i­tual homage and su­preme wor­ship be ren­dered to him. In such a case you shall wor­ship only God while you seek to en­lighten such mis­guided earthly rulers and in this way lead them also to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven. You shall not ren­der spir­i­tual wor­ship to earthly rulers; nei­ther should you em­ploy the phys­i­cal forces of earthly gov­ern­ments, whose rulers may some­time be­come be­liev­ers, in the work of fur­ther­ing the mis­sion of the spir­i­tual king­dom.

178:1.4Son­ship in the king­dom, from the stand­point of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, should as­sist you in be­com­ing the ideal cit­i­zens of the king­doms of this world since broth­er­hood and ser­vice are the cor­ner­stones of the gospel of the king­dom. The love call of the spir­i­tual king­dom should prove to be the ef­fec­tive de­stroyer of the hate urge of the un­be­liev­ing and war-minded cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms. But these ma­te­rial-minded sons in dark­ness will never know of your spir­i­tual light of truth un­less you draw very near them with that un­selfish so­cial ser­vice which is the nat­u­ral out­growth of the bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of each in­di­vid­ual be­liever.

178:1.5As mor­tal and ma­te­rial men, you are in­deed cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms, and you should be good cit­i­zens, all the bet­ter for hav­ing be­come re­born spirit sons of the heav­enly king­dom. As faith-en­light­ened and spirit-lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom of heaven, you face a dou­ble re­spon­si­bil­ity of duty to man and duty to God while you vol­un­tar­ily as­sume a third and sa­cred obli­ga­tion: ser­vice to the broth­er­hood of God-know­ing be­liev­ers.

178:1.6You may not wor­ship your tem­po­ral rulers, and you should not em­ploy tem­po­ral power in the fur­ther­ance of the spir­i­tual king­dom; but you should man­i­fest the righ­teous min­istry of lov­ing ser­vice to be­liev­ers and un­be­liev­ers alike. In the gospel of the king­dom there re­sides the mighty Spirit of Truth, and pres­ently I will pour out this same spirit upon all flesh. The fruits of the spirit, your sin­cere and lov­ing ser­vice, are the mighty so­cial lever to up­lift the races of dark­ness, and this Spirit of Truth will be­come your power-mul­ti­ply­ing ful­crum.

178:1.7Dis­play wis­dom and ex­hibit sagac­ity in your deal­ings with un­be­liev­ing civil rulers. By dis­cre­tion show your­selves to be ex­pert in iron­ing out mi­nor dis­agree­ments and in ad­just­ing tri­fling mis­un­der­stand­ings. In ev­ery pos­si­ble way—in ev­ery­thing short of your spir­i­tual al­le­giance to the rulers of the uni­verse—seek to live peace­ably with all men. Be you al­ways as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.

178:1.8You should be made all the bet­ter cit­i­zens of the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment as a re­sult of be­com­ing en­light­ened sons of the king­dom; so should the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments be­come all the bet­ter rulers in civil af­fairs as a re­sult of be­liev­ing this gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. The at­ti­tude of un­selfish ser­vice of man and in­tel­li­gent wor­ship of God should make all king­dom be­liev­ers bet­ter world cit­i­zens, while the at­ti­tude of hon­est cit­i­zen­ship and sin­cere de­vo­tion to one’s tem­po­ral duty should help to make such a cit­i­zen the more eas­ily reached by the spirit call to son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom.

178:1.9So long as the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments seek to ex­er­cise the au­thor­ity of re­li­gious dic­ta­tors, you who be­lieve this gospel can ex­pect only trou­ble, per­se­cu­tion, and even death. But the very light which you bear to the world, and even the very man­ner in which you will suf­fer and die for this gospel of the king­dom, will, in them­selves, even­tu­ally en­lighten the whole world and re­sult in the grad­ual di­vorce­ment of pol­i­tics and re­li­gion. The per­sis­tent preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom will some day bring to all na­tions a new and un­be­liev­able lib­er­a­tion, in­tel­lec­tual free­dom, and re­li­gious lib­erty.

178:1.10Un­der the soon-com­ing per­se­cu­tions by those who hate this gospel of joy and lib­erty, you will thrive and the king­dom will pros­per. But you will stand in grave dan­ger in sub­se­quent times when most men will speak well of king­dom be­liev­ers and many in high places nom­i­nally ac­cept the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. Learn to be faith­ful to the king­dom even in times of peace and pros­per­ity. Tempt not the an­gels of your super­vi­sion to lead you in trou­blous ways as a lov­ing dis­ci­pline de­signed to save your ease-drift­ing souls.

178:1.11Re­mem­ber that you are com­mis­sioned to preach this gospel of the king­dom—the su­preme de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will cou­pled with the su­preme joy of the faith re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God—and you must not al­low any­thing to di­vert your de­vo­tion to this one duty. Let all man­kind ben­e­fit from the over­flow of your lov­ing spir­i­tual min­istry, en­light­en­ing in­tel­lec­tual com­mu­nion, and up­lift­ing so­cial ser­vice; but none of these hu­man­i­tar­ian labors, nor all of them, should be per­mit­ted to take the place of pro­claim­ing the gospel. These mighty min­is­tra­tions are the so­cial by-prod­ucts of the still more mighty and sub­lime min­is­tra­tions and trans­for­ma­tions wrought in the heart of the king­dom be­liever by the liv­ing Spirit of Truth and by the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion that the faith of a spirit-born man con­fers the as­sur­ance of liv­ing fel­low­ship with the eter­nal God.

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

178:1.13When a king­dom be­liever is called upon to serve the civil gov­ern­ment, let him ren­der such ser­vice as a tem­po­ral cit­i­zen of such a gov­ern­ment, al­beit such a be­liever should dis­play in his civil ser­vice all of the or­di­nary traits of cit­i­zen­ship as these have been en­hanced by the spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment of the en­nobling as­so­ci­a­tion of the mind of mor­tal man with the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God. If the un­be­liever can qual­ify as a su­pe­rior civil ser­vant, you should se­ri­ously ques­tion whether the roots of truth in your heart have not died from the lack of the liv­ing wa­ters of com­bined spir­i­tual com­mu­nion and so­cial ser­vice. The con­scious­ness of son­ship with God should quicken the en­tire life ser­vice of ev­ery man, woman, and child who has be­come the pos­ses­sor of such a mighty stim­u­lus to all the in­her­ent pow­ers of a hu­man per­son­al­ity.

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

178:1.15This gospel of the king­dom is a liv­ing truth. I have told you it is like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mus­tard seed; and now I de­clare that it is like the seed of the liv­ing be­ing, which, from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, while it re­mains the same liv­ing seed, un­fail­ingly un­folds it­self in new man­i­fes­ta­tions and grows ac­cept­ably in chan­nels of new adap­ta­tion to the pe­cu­liar needs and con­di­tions of each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion. The rev­e­la­tion I have made to you is a liv­ing rev­e­la­tion, and I de­sire that it shall bear ap­pro­pri­ate fruits in each in­di­vid­ual and in each gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the laws of spir­i­tual growth, in­crease, and adap­ta­tive de­vel­op­ment. From gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion this gospel must show in­creas­ing vi­tal­ity and ex­hibit greater depth of spir­i­tual power. It must not be per­mit­ted to be­come merely a sa­cred mem­ory, a mere tra­di­tion about me and the times in which we now live.

178:1.16And for­get not: We have made no di­rect at­tack upon the per­sons or upon the au­thor­ity of those who sit in Moses’ seat; we only of­fered them the new light, which they have so vig­or­ously re­jected. We have as­sailed them only by the de­nun­ci­a­tion of their spir­i­tual dis­loy­alty to the very truths which they pro­fess to teach and safe­guard. We clashed with these es­tab­lished lead­ers and rec­og­nized rulers only when they threw them­selves di­rectly in the way of the preach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom to the sons of men. And even now, it is not we who as­sail them, but they who seek our de­struc­tion. Do not for­get that you are com­mis­sioned to go forth preach­ing only the good news. You are not to at­tack the old ways; you are skill­fully to put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old be­liefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work. Let con­tro­versy come only when they who de­spise the truth force it upon you. But when the will­ful un­be­liever at­tacks you, do not hes­i­tate to stand in vig­or­ous de­fense of the truth which has saved and sanc­ti­fied you.

178:1.17Through­out the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, re­mem­ber al­ways to love one an­other. Do not strive with men, even with un­be­liev­ers. Show mercy even to those who de­spite­fully abuse you. Show your­selves to be loyal cit­i­zens, up­right ar­ti­sans, praise­wor­thy neigh­bors, de­voted kins­men, un­der­stand­ing par­ents, and sin­cere be­liev­ers in the broth­er­hood of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. And my spirit shall be upon you, now and even to the end of the world.

178:1.18When Je­sus had con­cluded his teach­ing, it was al­most one o’clock, and they im­me­di­ately went back to the camp, where David and his as­so­ciates had lunch ready for them.

• sonship obtained by › grace, through faith

196:3.34The great chal­lenge to mod­ern man is to achieve bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the di­vine Mon­i­tor that dwells within the hu­man mind. Man’s great­est ad­ven­ture in the flesh con­sists in the well-bal­anced and sane ef­fort to ad­vance the bor­ders of self-con­scious­ness out through the dim realms of em­bry­onic soul-con­scious­ness in a whole­hearted ef­fort to reach the bor­der­land of spirit-con­scious­ness—con­tact with the di­vine pres­ence. Such an ex­pe­ri­ence con­sti­tutes God-con­scious­ness, an ex­pe­ri­ence might­ily con­fir­ma­tive of the pre-ex­is­tent truth of the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God. Such spirit-con­scious­ness is the equiv­a­lent of the knowl­edge of the ac­tu­al­ity of son­ship with God. Oth­er­wise, the as­sur­ance of son­ship is the ex­pe­ri­ence of faith.