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Spirit of Truth

127 paragraphs · about 66 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under Spirit of Truth, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

2:7.6In­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness can dis­cover the beauty of truth, its spir­i­tual qual­ity, not only by the philo­sophic con­sis­tency of its con­cepts, but more cer­tainly and surely by the unerring re­sponse of the ever-pres­ent Spirit of Truth. Hap­pi­ness en­sues from the rec­og­ni­tion of truth be­cause it can be acted out; it can be lived. Dis­ap­point­ment and sor­row at­tend upon er­ror be­cause, not be­ing a re­al­ity, it can­not be re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence. Di­vine truth is best known by its spir­i­tual fla­vor.

5:1.10The Fa­ther is not in spir­i­tual hid­ing, but so many of his crea­tures have hid­den them­selves away in the mists of their own will­ful de­ci­sions and for the time be­ing have sep­a­rated them­selves from the com­mu­nion of his spirit and the spirit of his Son by the choos­ing of their own per­verse ways and by the in­dul­gence of the self-as­sertive­ness of their in­tol­er­ant minds and un­spir­i­tual na­tures.

15:9.121. The be­stowal spirit of the Par­a­dise Sons, the Com­forter of the be­stowal worlds. The Spirit of Truth, the spirit of Mi­chael on Uran­tia.

16:4.146. The sub­se­quent be­stowal of the spirit of the be­stowal Sons, on Uran­tia called the Com­forter or the Spirit of Truth.

20:1.13The Cre­ator Sons seem to pos­sess a spir­i­tual en­dow­ment cen­ter­ing in their per­sons, which they con­trol and which they can be­stow, as did your own Cre­ator Son when he poured out his spirit upon all mor­tal flesh on Uran­tia. Each Cre­ator Son is en­dowed with this spir­i­tual draw­ing power in his own realm; he is per­son­ally con­scious of ev­ery act and emo­tion of ev­ery de­scend­ing Son of God serv­ing in his do­main. Here is a di­vine re­flec­tion, a lo­cal uni­verse du­pli­ca­tion, of that ab­so­lute spir­i­tual draw­ing power of the Eter­nal Son which en­ables him to reach out to make and main­tain con­tact with all his Par­a­dise Sons, no mat­ter where they may be in all the uni­verse of uni­verses.

20:5.3Some or­der of Par­a­dise Son must be be­stowed upon each mor­tal-in­hab­ited world in or­der to make it pos­si­ble for Thought Ad­justers to in­dwell the minds of all nor­mal hu­man be­ings on that sphere, for the Ad­justers do not come to all bona fide hu­man be­ings un­til the Spirit of Truth has been poured out upon all flesh; and the send­ing of the Spirit of Truth is de­pen­dent upon the re­turn to uni­verse head­quar­ters of a Par­a­dise Son who has suc­cess­fully ex­e­cuted a mis­sion of mor­tal be­stowal upon an evolv­ing world.

20:6.8When the mor­tal in­car­na­tion is fin­ished, the Avo­nal of ser­vice pro­ceeds to Par­a­dise, is ac­cepted by the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, re­turns to the lo­cal uni­verse of as­sign­ment, and is ac­knowl­edged by the Cre­ator Son. There­upon the be­stowal Avo­nal and the Cre­ator Son send their con­joint Spirit of Truth to func­tion in the hearts of the mor­tal races dwell­ing on the be­stowal world. In the presovereignty ages of a lo­cal uni­verse, this is the joint spirit of both Sons, im­ple­mented by the Cre­ative Spirit. It dif­fers some­what from the Spirit of Truth which char­ac­ter­izes the lo­cal uni­verse ages fol­low­ing a Mi­chael’s sev­enth be­stowal.

20:6.9Upon the com­ple­tion of a Cre­ator Son’s fi­nal be­stowal the Spirit of Truth pre­vi­ously sent into all Avo­nal-be­stowal worlds of that lo­cal uni­verse changes in na­ture, be­com­ing more lit­er­ally the spirit of the sov­er­eign Mi­chael. This phe­nom­e­non takes place con­cur­rently with the lib­er­a­tion of the Spirit of Truth for ser­vice on the Mi­chael-mor­tal-be­stowal planet. There­after, each world hon­ored by a Mag­is­te­rial be­stowal will re­ceive the same spirit Com­forter from the sev­en­fold Cre­ator Son, in as­so­ci­a­tion with that Mag­is­te­rial Son, which it would have re­ceived had the lo­cal uni­verse Sov­er­eign per­son­ally in­car­nated as its be­stowal Son.

21:5.10The Mas­ter Sons seem to be in per­fect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their be­stowal worlds, not only the worlds of their per­sonal so­journ but all worlds whereon a Mag­is­te­rial Son has be­stowed him­self. This con­tact is main­tained by their own spir­i­tual pres­ence, the Spirit of Truth, which they are able to “pour out upon all flesh.” These Mas­ter Sons also main­tain an un­bro­ken con­nec­tion with the Eter­nal Mother Son at the cen­ter of all things. They pos­sess a sym­pa­thetic reach which ex­tends from the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther on high to the lowly races of plan­e­tary life in the realms of time.

32:5.8The goal of eter­nity is ahead! The ad­ven­ture of di­vin­ity at­tain­ment lies be­fore you! The race for per­fec­tion is on! whoso­ever will may en­ter, and cer­tain vic­tory will crown the ef­forts of ev­ery hu­man be­ing who will run the race of faith and trust, de­pend­ing ev­ery step of the way on the lead­ing of the in­dwelling Ad­juster and on the guid­ance of that good spirit of the Uni­verse Son, which so freely has been poured out upon all flesh.

34:4.1There are three dis­tinct spirit cir­cuits in the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don:

34:4.21. The be­stowal spirit of the Cre­ator Son, the Com­forter, the Spirit of Truth.

34:4.32. The spirit cir­cuit of the Di­vine Min­is­ter, the Holy Spirit.

34:4.43. The in­tel­li­gence-min­istry cir­cuit, in­clud­ing the more or less uni­fied ac­tiv­i­ties but di­verse func­tion­ing of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its.

34:4.5The Cre­ator Sons are en­dowed with a spirit of uni­verse pres­ence in many ways anal­o­gous to that of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its of Par­a­dise. This is the Spirit of Truth which is poured out upon a world by a be­stowal Son af­ter he re­ceives spir­i­tual ti­tle to such a sphere. This be­stowed Com­forter is the spir­i­tual force which ever draws all truth seek­ers to­wards Him who is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of truth in the lo­cal uni­verse. This spirit is an in­her­ent en­dow­ment of the Cre­ator Son, emerg­ing from his di­vine na­ture just as the mas­ter cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse are de­rived from the per­son­al­ity pres­ences of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

34:4.6The Cre­ator Son may come and go; his per­sonal pres­ence may be in the lo­cal uni­verse or else­where; yet the Spirit of Truth func­tions undis­turbed, for this di­vine pres­ence, while de­rived from the per­son­al­ity of the Cre­ator Son, is func­tion­ally cen­tered in the per­son of the Di­vine Min­is­ter.

34:4.7The Uni­verse Mother Spirit, how­ever, never leaves the lo­cal uni­verse head­quar­ters world. The spirit of the Cre­ator Son may and does func­tion in­de­pen­dently of the per­sonal pres­ence of the Son, but not so with her per­sonal spirit. The Holy Spirit of the Di­vine Min­is­ter would be­come non­func­tional if her per­sonal pres­ence should be re­moved from Sal­ving­ton. Her spirit pres­ence seems to be fixed on the uni­verse head­quar­ters world, and it is this very fact that en­ables the spirit of the Cre­ator Son to func­tion in­de­pen­dently of the where­abouts of the Son. The Uni­verse Mother Spirit acts as the uni­verse fo­cus and cen­ter of the Spirit of Truth as well as of her own per­sonal in­flu­ence, the Holy Spirit.

34:5.5Though the Spirit of Truth is poured out upon all flesh, this spirit of the Son is al­most wholly lim­ited in func­tion and power by man’s per­sonal re­cep­tion of that which con­sti­tutes the sum and sub­stance of the mis­sion of the be­stowal Son. The Holy Spirit is partly in­de­pen­dent of hu­man at­ti­tude and par­tially con­di­tioned by the de­ci­sions and co-op­er­a­tion of the will of man. Nev­er­the­less, the min­istry of the Holy Spirit be­comes in­creas­ingly ef­fec­tive in the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the in­ner life of those mor­tals who the more fully obey the di­vine lead­ings.

34:5.6As in­di­vid­u­als you do not per­son­ally pos­sess a seg­re­gated por­tion or en­tity of the spirit of the Cre­ator Fa­ther-Son or the Cre­ative Mother Spirit; these min­istries do not con­tact with, nor in­dwell, the think­ing cen­ters of the in­di­vid­ual’s mind as do the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors. Thought Ad­justers are def­i­nite in­di­vid­u­al­iza­tions of the preper­sonal re­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, ac­tu­ally in­dwelling the mor­tal mind as a very part of that mind, and they ever work in per­fect har­mony with the com­bined spir­its of the Cre­ator Son and Cre­ative Spirit.

34:7.1The flesh, the in­her­ent na­ture de­rived from the an­i­mal-ori­gin races, does not nat­u­rally bear the fruits of the di­vine Spirit. When the mor­tal na­ture has been up­stepped by the ad­di­tion of the na­ture of the Ma­te­rial Sons of God, as the Uran­tia races were in a mea­sure ad­vanced by the be­stowal of Adam, then is the way bet­ter pre­pared for the Spirit of Truth to co-op­er­ate with the in­dwelling Ad­juster to bring forth the beau­ti­ful har­vest of the char­ac­ter fruits of the spirit. If you do not re­ject this spirit, even though eter­nity may be re­quired to ful­fill the com­mis­sion, “he will guide you into all truth.”

34:7.2–7 · six paragraphs not cited here ·

34:7.2Evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals in­hab­it­ing nor­mal worlds of spir­i­tual prog­ress do not ex­pe­ri­ence the acute con­flicts be­tween the spirit and the flesh which char­ac­ter­ize the pres­ent-day Uran­tia races. But even on the most ideal plan­ets, pre-Adamic man must put forth pos­i­tive ef­forts to as­cend from the purely an­i­mal­is­tic plane of ex­is­tence up through suc­ces­sive lev­els of in­creas­ingly in­tel­lec­tual mean­ings and higher spir­i­tual val­ues.

34:7.3The mor­tals of a nor­mal world do not ex­pe­ri­ence con­stant war­fare be­tween their phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual na­tures. They are con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of climb­ing up from the an­i­mal lev­els of ex­is­tence to the higher planes of spir­i­tual liv­ing, but this as­cent is more like un­der­go­ing an ed­u­ca­tional train­ing when com­pared with the in­tense con­flicts of Uran­tia mor­tals in this realm of the di­ver­gent ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual na­tures.

34:7.4The Uran­tia peo­ples are suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences of a dou­ble de­pri­va­tion of help in this task of pro­gres­sive plan­e­tary spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. The Cali­gas­tia up­heaval pre­cip­i­tated world-wide con­fu­sion and robbed all sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of the moral as­sis­tance which a well-or­dered so­ci­ety would have pro­vided. But even more dis­as­trous was the Adamic de­fault in that it de­prived the races of that su­pe­rior type of phys­i­cal na­ture which would have been more con­so­nant with spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tions.

34:7.5Uran­tia mor­tals are com­pelled to un­dergo such marked strug­gling be­tween the spirit and the flesh be­cause their re­mote an­ces­tors were not more fully Adamized by the Edenic be­stowal. It was the di­vine plan that the mor­tal races of Uran­tia should have had phys­i­cal na­tures more nat­u­rally spirit re­spon­sive.

34:7.6Not­with­stand­ing this dou­ble dis­as­ter to man’s na­ture and his en­vi­ron­ment, pres­ent-day mor­tals would ex­pe­ri­ence less of this ap­par­ent war­fare be­tween the flesh and the spirit if they would en­ter the spirit king­dom, wherein the faith sons of God en­joy com­par­a­tive de­liv­er­ance from the slave-bond­age of the flesh in the en­light­ened and lib­er­at­ing ser­vice of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Je­sus showed man­kind the new way of mor­tal liv­ing whereby hu­man be­ings may very largely es­cape the dire con­se­quences of the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and most ef­fec­tively com­pen­sate for the de­pri­va­tions re­sult­ing from the Adamic de­fault. “The spirit of the life of Christ Je­sus has made us free from the law of an­i­mal liv­ing and the temp­ta­tions of evil and sin.” “This is the vic­tory that over­comes the flesh, even your faith.”

34:7.7Those God-know­ing men and women who have been born of the Spirit ex­pe­ri­ence no more con­flict with their mor­tal na­tures than do the in­hab­i­tants of the most nor­mal of worlds, plan­ets which have never been tainted with sin nor touched by re­bel­lion. Faith sons work on in­tel­lec­tual lev­els and live on spir­i­tual planes far above the con­flicts pro­duced by un­re­strained or un­nat­u­ral phys­i­cal de­sires. The nor­mal urges of an­i­mal be­ings and the nat­u­ral ap­petites and im­pulses of the phys­i­cal na­ture are not in con­flict with even the high­est spir­i­tual at­tain­ment ex­cept in the minds of ig­no­rant, mis­taught, or un­for­tu­nately over­con­sci­en­tious per­sons.

34:7.8Hav­ing started out on the way of life ev­er­last­ing, hav­ing ac­cepted the as­sign­ment and re­ceived your or­ders to ad­vance, do not fear the dan­gers of hu­man for­get­ful­ness and mor­tal in­con­stancy, do not be trou­bled with doubts of fail­ure or by per­plex­ing con­fu­sion, do not fal­ter and ques­tion your sta­tus and stand­ing, for in ev­ery dark hour, at ev­ery cross­road in the for­ward strug­gle, the Spirit of Truth will al­ways speak, say­ing, “This is the way.”

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.

40:10.2Spirit-fused mor­tals are of the lo­cal uni­verse; they do not, or­di­nar­ily, as­cend be­yond the con­fines of their na­tive realm, be­yond the bound­aries of the space range of the spirit that per­vades them. Son-fused as­cend­ers like­wise rise to the source of spirit en­dow­ment, for much as the Truth Spirit of a Cre­ator Son fo­cal­izes in the as­so­ci­ated Di­vine Min­is­ter, so is his “fu­sion spirit” im­ple­mented in the Re­flec­tive Spir­its of the higher uni­verses. Such spirit re­la­tion­ship be­tween the lo­cal and the super­uni­verse lev­els of God the Sev­en­fold may be dif­fi­cult of ex­pla­na­tion but not of dis­cern­ment, be­ing un­mis­tak­ably re­vealed in those chil­dren of the Re­flec­tive Spir­its—the sec­o­raphic Voices of the Cre­ator Sons. The Thought Ad­juster, hail­ing from the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise, never stops un­til the mor­tal son stands face to face with the eter­nal God.

49:5.25When the in­tel­lec­tual and eth­i­cal prog­ress of a hu­man race has reached the lim­its of evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment, there comes an Avo­nal Son of Par­a­dise on a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion; and later on, when the spir­i­tual sta­tus of such a world is near­ing its limit of nat­u­ral at­tain­ment, the planet is vis­ited by a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son. The chief mis­sion of a be­stowal Son is to es­tab­lish the plan­e­tary sta­tus, re­lease the Spirit of Truth for plan­e­tary func­tion, and thus ef­fect the uni­ver­sal com­ing of the Thought Ad­justers.

52:5.4The be­stowal Son lives and dies for the spir­i­tual up­lift of the mor­tal races of a world. He es­tab­lishes the “new and liv­ing way”; his life is an in­car­na­tion of Par­a­dise truth in mor­tal flesh, that very truth—even the Spirit of Truth—in the knowl­edge of which men shall be free.

52:5.5 · one paragraph not cited here ·

52:5.5On Uran­tia the es­tab­lish­ment of this “new and liv­ing way” was a mat­ter of fact as well as of truth. The iso­la­tion of Uran­tia in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had sus­pended the pro­ce­dure whereby mor­tals can pass, upon death, di­rectly to the shores of the man­sion worlds. Be­fore the days of Christ Mi­chael on Uran­tia all souls slept on un­til the dis­pen­sa­tional or spe­cial mil­len­nial res­ur­rec­tions. Even Moses was not per­mit­ted to go over to the other side un­til the oc­ca­sion of a spe­cial res­ur­rec­tion, the fallen Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, con­test­ing such a de­liv­er­ance. But ever since the day of Pen­te­cost, Uran­tia mor­tals again may pro­ceed di­rectly to the mor­ontia spheres.

52:5.6Upon the res­ur­rec­tion of a be­stowal Son, on the third day af­ter yield­ing up his in­car­nated life, he as­cends to the right hand of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, re­ceives the as­sur­ance of the ac­cep­tance of the be­stowal mis­sion, and re­turns to the Cre­ator Son at the head­quar­ters of the lo­cal uni­verse. There­upon the be­stowal Avo­nal and the Cre­ator Mi­chael send their joint spirit, the Spirit of Truth, into the be­stowal world. This is the oc­ca­sion when the “spirit of the tri­umphant Son is poured out upon all flesh.” The Uni­verse Mother Spirit also par­tic­i­pates in this be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, and con­comi­tant there­with there is­sues the be­stowal edict of the Thought Ad­justers. There­after all nor­mal-minded will crea­tures of that world will re­ceive Ad­justers as soon as they at­tain the age of moral re­spon­si­bil­ity, of spir­i­tual choice.

53:8.7Be­fore the be­stowal of Mi­chael these rulers of dark­ness sought to main­tain their au­thor­ity on Uran­tia, and they per­sis­tently with­stood the mi­nor and sub­or­di­nate ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. But since the day of Pen­te­cost this traitorous Cali­gas­tia and his equally con­temptible as­so­ciate, Dali­gas­tia, are servile be­fore the di­vine majesty of the Par­a­dise Thought Ad­justers and the pro­tec­tive Spirit of Truth, the spirit of Mi­chael, which has been poured out upon all flesh.

56:10.13The rec­og­ni­tion of true re­la­tions im­plies a mind com­pe­tent to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween truth and er­ror. The be­stowal Spirit of Truth which in­vests the hu­man minds of Uran­tia is unerringly re­spon­sive to truth—the liv­ing spirit re­la­tion­ship of all things and all be­ings as they are co-or­di­nated in the eter­nal as­cent God­ward.

56:10.14–16 · three paragraphs not cited here ·

56:10.14Ev­ery im­pulse of ev­ery elec­tron, thought, or spirit is an act­ing unit in the whole uni­verse. Only sin is iso­lated and evil grav­ity re­sist­ing on the men­tal and spir­i­tual lev­els. The uni­verse is a whole; no thing or be­ing ex­ists or lives in iso­la­tion. Self-re­al­iza­tion is po­ten­tially evil if it is an­ti­so­cial. It is lit­er­ally true: “No man lives by him­self.” Cos­mic so­cial­iza­tion con­sti­tutes the high­est form of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion. Said Je­sus: “He who would be great­est among you, let him be­come server of all.”

56:10.15Even truth, beauty, and good­ness—man’s in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to the uni­verse of mind, mat­ter, and spirit—must be com­bined into one uni­fied con­cept of a di­vine and su­preme ideal. As mor­tal per­son­al­ity uni­fies the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence with mat­ter, mind, and spirit, so does this di­vine and su­preme ideal be­come power-uni­fied in Su­prem­acy and then per­son­al­ized as a God of fa­therly love.

56:10.16All in­sight into the re­la­tions of the parts to any given whole re­quires an un­der­stand­ing grasp of the re­la­tion of all parts to that whole; and in the uni­verse this means the re­la­tion of cre­ated parts to the Cre­ative Whole. De­ity thus be­comes the tran­scen­den­tal, even the in­fi­nite, goal of uni­ver­sal and eter­nal at­tain­ment.

56:10.17Uni­ver­sal beauty is the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­flec­tion of the Isle of Par­a­dise in the ma­te­rial cre­ation, while eter­nal truth is the spe­cial min­istry of the Par­a­dise Sons who not only be­stow them­selves upon the mor­tal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peo­ples. Di­vine good­ness is more fully shown forth in the lov­ing min­istry of the man­i­fold per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit. But love, the sum to­tal of these three qual­i­ties, is man’s per­cep­tion of God as his spirit Fa­ther.

72:12.5The pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth pro­vides the spir­i­tual foun­da­tion for the re­al­iza­tion of great achieve­ments in the in­ter­ests of the hu­man race of the be­stowal world. Uran­tia is there­fore far bet­ter pre­pared for the more im­me­di­ate re­al­iza­tion of a plan­e­tary gov­ern­ment with its laws, mech­a­nisms, sym­bols, con­ven­tions, and lan­guage—all of which could con­tribute so might­ily to the es­tab­lish­ment of world-wide peace un­der law and could lead to the some­time dawn­ing of a real age of spir­i­tual striv­ing; and such an age is the plan­e­tary thresh­old to the utopian ages of light and life.

77:7.5On no world can evil spir­its pos­sess any mor­tal mind sub­se­quent to the life of a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son. But be­fore the days of Christ Mi­chael on Uran­tia—be­fore the uni­ver­sal com­ing of the Thought Ad­justers and the pour­ing out of the Mas­ter’s spirit upon all flesh—these rebel mid­way­ers were ac­tu­ally able to in­flu­ence the minds of cer­tain in­fe­rior mor­tals and some­what to con­trol their ac­tions. This was ac­com­plished in much the same way as the loyal mid­way crea­tures func­tion when they serve as ef­fi­cient con­tact guard­i­ans of the hu­man minds of the Uran­tia re­serve corps of des­tiny at those times when the Ad­juster is, in ef­fect, de­tached from the per­son­al­ity dur­ing a sea­son of con­tact with super­hu­man in­tel­li­gences.

77:7.6It is no mere fig­ure of speech when the rec­ord states: “And they brought to Him all sorts of sick peo­ple, those who were pos­sessed by dev­ils and those who were lu­natics.” Je­sus knew and rec­og­nized the dif­fer­ence be­tween in­san­ity and de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion, al­though these states were greatly con­fused in the minds of those who lived in his day and gen­er­a­tion.

77:7.7Even prior to Pen­te­cost no rebel spirit could dom­i­nate a nor­mal hu­man mind, and since that day even the weak minds of in­fe­rior mor­tals are free from such pos­si­bil­i­ties. The sup­posed cast­ing out of dev­ils since the ar­rival of the Spirit of Truth has been a mat­ter of con­found­ing a be­lief in de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion with hys­te­ria, in­san­ity, and fee­ble-mind­ed­ness. But just be­cause Mi­chael’s be­stowal has for­ever lib­er­ated all hu­man minds on Uran­tia from the pos­si­bil­ity of de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion, do not imag­ine that such was not a re­al­ity in for­mer ages.

77:7.8The en­tire group of rebel mid­way­ers is at pres­ent held pris­oner by or­der of the Most Highs of Eden­tia. No more do they roam this world on mis­chief bent. Re­gard­less of the pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers, the pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh for­ever made it im­pos­si­ble for dis­loyal spir­its of any sort or de­scrip­tion ever again to in­vade even the most fee­ble of hu­man minds. Since the day of Pen­te­cost there never again can be such a thing as de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion.

101:1.3The di­vine spirit makes con­tact with mor­tal man, not by feel­ings or emo­tions, but in the realm of the high­est and most spir­i­tu­al­ized think­ing. It is your thoughts, not your feel­ings, that lead you God­ward. The di­vine na­ture may be per­ceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that re­ally dis­cerns God, hears the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the pure mind. “With­out ho­li­ness no man may see the Lord.” All such in­ner and spir­i­tual com­mu­nion is termed spir­i­tual in­sight. Such re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences re­sult from the im­press made upon the mind of man by the com­bined op­er­a­tions of the Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth as they func­tion amid and upon the ideas, ide­als, in­sights, and spirit striv­ings of the evolv­ing sons of God.

101:3.2Faith-in­sight, or spir­i­tual in­tu­ition, is the en­dow­ment of the cos­mic mind in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster, which is the Fa­ther’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual rea­son, soul in­tel­li­gence, is the en­dow­ment of the Holy Spirit, the Cre­ative Spirit’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy, the wis­dom of spirit re­al­i­ties, is the en­dow­ment of the Spirit of Truth, the com­bined gift of the be­stowal Sons to the chil­dren of men. And the co-or­di­na­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of these spirit en­dow­ments con­sti­tute man a spirit per­son­al­ity in po­ten­tial des­tiny.

101:6.7Rev­e­la­tion teaches mor­tal man that, to start such a mag­nif­i­cent and in­trigu­ing ad­ven­ture through space by means of the pro­gres­sion of time, he should be­gin by the or­ga­ni­za­tion of knowl­edge into idea-de­ci­sions; next, man­date wis­dom to la­bor un­remit­tingly at its no­ble task of trans­form­ing self-pos­sessed ideas into in­creas­ingly prac­ti­cal but nonethe­less su­per­nal ide­als, even those con­cepts which are so rea­son­able as ideas and so log­i­cal as ide­als that the Ad­juster dares so to com­bine and spir­i­tize them as to ren­der them avail­able for such as­so­ci­a­tion in the fi­nite mind as will con­sti­tute them the ac­tual hu­man com­ple­ment thus made ready for the ac­tion of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space man­i­fes­ta­tions of Par­a­dise truth—uni­ver­sal truth. The co-or­di­na­tion of idea-de­ci­sions, log­i­cal ide­als, and di­vine truth con­sti­tutes the pos­ses­sion of a righ­teous char­ac­ter, the pre­req­ui­site for mor­tal ad­mis­sion to the ever-ex­pand­ing and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the mor­ontia worlds.

103:0.1All of man’s truly re­li­gious re­ac­tions are spon­sored by the early min­istry of the ad­ju­tant of wor­ship and are cen­sored by the ad­ju­tant of wis­dom. Man’s first super­mind en­dow­ment is that of per­son­al­ity en­cir­cuit­ment in the Holy Spirit of the Uni­verse Cre­ative Spirit; and long be­fore ei­ther the be­stowals of the di­vine Sons or the uni­ver­sal be­stowal of the Ad­justers, this in­flu­ence func­tions to en­large man’s view­point of ethics, re­li­gion, and spir­i­tu­al­ity. Sub­se­quent to the be­stowals of the Par­a­dise Sons the lib­er­ated Spirit of Truth makes mighty con­tri­bu­tions to the en­large­ment of the hu­man ca­pac­ity to per­ceive re­li­gious truths. As evo­lu­tion ad­vances on an in­hab­ited world, the Thought Ad­justers in­creas­ingly par­tic­i­pate in the de­vel­op­ment of the higher types of hu­man re­li­gious in­sight. The Thought Ad­juster is the cos­mic win­dow through which the fi­nite crea­ture may faith-glimpse the cer­tain­ties and di­vini­ties of lim­it­less De­ity, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

108:2.3Thus is the stage of the hu­man mind set for the re­cep­tion of Ad­justers, but as a gen­eral rule they do not im­me­di­ately ap­pear to in­dwell such minds ex­cept on those worlds where the Spirit of Truth is func­tion­ing as a spir­i­tual co-or­di­na­tor of these dif­fer­ent spirit min­istries. If this spirit of the be­stowal Sons is pres­ent, the Ad­justers un­fail­ingly come the in­stant the sev­enth ad­ju­tant mind-spirit be­gins to func­tion and sig­nal­izes to the Uni­verse Mother Spirit that it has achieved in po­ten­tial the co-or­di­na­tion of the as­so­ci­ated six ad­ju­tants of prior min­istry to such a mor­tal in­tel­lect. There­fore have the di­vine Ad­justers been uni­ver­sally be­stowed upon all nor­mal minds of moral sta­tus on Uran­tia ever since the day of Pen­te­cost.

108:6.2No mat­ter what the pre­vi­ous sta­tus of the in­hab­i­tants of a world, sub­se­quent to the be­stowal of a di­vine Son and af­ter the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth upon all hu­mans, the Ad­justers flock to such a world to in­dwell the minds of all nor­mal will crea­tures. Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the mis­sion of a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son, these Mon­i­tors truly be­come the “king­dom of heaven within you.” Through the be­stowal of the di­vine gifts the Fa­ther makes the clos­est pos­si­ble ap­proach to sin and evil, for it is lit­er­ally true that the Ad­juster must co­ex­ist in the mor­tal mind even in the very midst of hu­man un­righ­teous­ness. The in­dwelling Ad­justers are par­tic­u­larly tor­mented by those thoughts which are purely sor­did and self­ish; they are dis­tressed by ir­rev­er­ence for that which is beau­ti­ful and di­vine, and they are vir­tu­ally thwarted in their work by many of man’s fool­ish an­i­mal fears and child­ish anx­i­eties.

114:5.4This rather loosely or­ga­nized and some­what per­son­ally ad­min­is­tered plan­e­tary gov­ern­ment is more than ex­pect­edly ef­fec­tive be­cause of the time­sav­ing as­sis­tance of the arch­an­gels and their ever-ready cir­cuit, which is so fre­quently uti­lized in plan­e­tary emer­gen­cies and ad­min­is­tra­tive dif­fi­cul­ties. Tech­ni­cally, the planet is still spir­i­tu­ally iso­lated in the Nor­la­ti­adek cir­cuits, but in an emer­gency this hand­i­cap can now be cir­cum­vented through uti­liza­tion of the arch­an­gels’ cir­cuit. Plan­e­tary iso­la­tion is, of course, of lit­tle con­cern to in­di­vid­ual mor­tals since the pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh nine­teen hun­dred years ago.

117:5.9While such spir­i­tual in­flu­ences as the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth are lo­cal uni­verse min­is­tra­tions, their guid­ance is not wholly con­fined to the ge­o­graphic lim­i­ta­tions of a given lo­cal cre­ation. As the as­cend­ing mor­tal passes be­yond the bound­aries of his lo­cal uni­verse of ori­gin, he is not en­tirely de­prived of the min­istry of the Spirit of Truth which has so con­stantly taught and guided him through the philo­sophic mazes of the ma­te­rial and mor­ontial worlds, in ev­ery cri­sis of as­cen­sion un­fail­ingly di­rect­ing the Par­a­dise pil­grim, ever say­ing: “This is the way.” When you leave the do­mains of the lo­cal uni­verse, through the min­istry of the spirit of the emerg­ing Su­preme Be­ing and through the pro­vi­sions of super­uni­verse re­flec­tiv­ity, you will still be guided in your Par­a­dise as­cent by the com­fort­ing di­rec­tive spirit of the Par­a­dise be­stowal Sons of God.

120:2.4“4. In ac­cor­dance with your re­quest, Ga­briel and all con­cerned will co-op­er­ate with you in the ex­pressed de­sire to end your Uran­tia be­stowal with the pro­nounce­ment of a dis­pen­sa­tional judg­ment of the realm, ac­com­pa­nied by the ter­mi­na­tion of an age, the res­ur­rec­tion of the sleep­ing mor­tal sur­vivors, and the es­tab­lish­ment of the dis­pen­sa­tion of the be­stowed Spirit of Truth.

120:2.5 · one paragraph not cited here ·

120:2.5“5. As con­cerns the planet of your be­stowal and the im­me­di­ate gen­er­a­tion of men liv­ing thereon at the time of your mor­tal so­journ, I coun­sel you to func­tion largely in the role of a teacher. Give at­ten­tion, first, to the lib­er­a­tion and in­spi­ra­tion of man’s spir­i­tual na­ture. Next, il­lu­mi­nate the dark­ened hu­man in­tel­lect, heal the souls of men, and eman­ci­pate their minds from age-old fears. And then, in ac­cor­dance with your mor­tal wis­dom, min­is­ter to the phys­i­cal well-be­ing and ma­te­rial com­fort of your broth­ers in the flesh. Live the ideal re­li­gious life for the in­spi­ra­tion and ed­i­fi­ca­tion of all your uni­verse.

120:2.6“6. On the planet of your be­stowal, set re­bel­lion-seg­re­gated man spir­i­tu­ally free. On Uran­tia, make a fur­ther con­tri­bu­tion to the sov­er­eignty of the Su­preme, thus ex­tend­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of this sov­er­eignty through­out the broad do­mains of your per­sonal cre­ation. In this, your ma­te­rial be­stowal in the like­ness of the flesh, you are about to ex­pe­ri­ence the fi­nal en­light­en­ment of a time-space Cre­ator, the dual ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing within the na­ture of man with the will of your Par­a­dise Fa­ther. In your tem­po­ral life the will of the fi­nite crea­ture and the will of the in­fi­nite Cre­ator are to be­come as one, even as they are also unit­ing in the evolv­ing De­ity of the Su­preme Be­ing. Pour out upon the planet of your be­stowal the Spirit of Truth and thus make all nor­mal mor­tals on that iso­lated sphere im­me­di­ately and fully ac­ces­si­ble to the min­istry of the seg­re­gated pres­ence of our Par­a­dise Fa­ther, the Thought Ad­justers of the realms.

124:6.17As time passed, the mys­tery of the in­car­na­tion be­came, to all of us, more and more un­fath­omable. We could hardly com­pre­hend that this lad of Naz­a­reth was the cre­ator of all Neb­a­don. Nei­ther do we nowa­days un­der­stand how the spirit of this same Cre­ator Son and the spirit of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther are as­so­ci­ated with the souls of man­kind. With the pass­ing of time, we could see that his hu­man mind was in­creas­ingly dis­cern­ing that, while he lived his life in the flesh, in spirit on his shoul­ders rested the re­spon­si­bil­ity of a uni­verse.

137:8.7“The Fa­ther in heaven sends his spirit to in­dwell the minds of men, and when I shall have fin­ished my work on earth, like­wise shall the Spirit of Truth be poured out upon all flesh. And the spirit of my Fa­ther and the Spirit of Truth shall es­tab­lish you in the com­ing king­dom of spir­i­tual un­der­stand­ing and di­vine righ­teous­ness. My king­dom is not of this world. The Son of Man will not lead forth armies in bat­tle for the es­tab­lish­ment of a throne of power or a king­dom of worldly glory. When my king­dom shall have come, you shall know the Son of Man as the Prince of Peace, the rev­e­la­tion of the ev­er­last­ing Fa­ther. The chil­dren of this world fight for the es­tab­lish­ment and en­large­ment of the king­doms of this world, but my dis­ci­ples shall en­ter the king­dom of heaven by their moral de­ci­sions and by their spirit vic­to­ries; and when they once en­ter therein, they shall find joy, righ­teous­ness, and eter­nal life.

139:5.9The in­abil­ity of Philip to adapt him­self to a new sit­u­a­tion was well shown when the Greeks came to him at Je­ru­sa­lem, say­ing: “Sir, we de­sire to see Je­sus.” Now Philip would have said to any Jew ask­ing such a ques­tion, “Come.” But these men were for­eign­ers, and Philip could re­mem­ber no in­struc­tions from his su­pe­ri­ors re­gard­ing such mat­ters; so the only thing he could think to do was to con­sult the chief, An­drew, and then they both es­corted the in­quir­ing Greeks to Je­sus. Like­wise, when he went into Samaria preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers, as he had been in­structed by his Mas­ter, he re­frained from lay­ing hands on his con­verts in to­ken of their hav­ing re­ceived the Spirit of Truth. This was done by Pe­ter and John, who pres­ently came down from Je­ru­sa­lem to ob­serve his work in be­half of the mother church.

143:2.4“By the old way you seek to sup­press, obey, and con­form to the rules of liv­ing; by the new way you are first trans­formed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strength­ened in your in­ner soul by the con­stant spir­i­tual re­new­ing of your mind, and so are you en­dowed with the power of the cer­tain and joy­ous per­for­mance of the gra­cious, ac­cept­able, and per­fect will of God. For­get not—it is your per­sonal faith in the ex­ceed­ingly great and pre­cious promises of God that en­sures your be­com­ing par­tak­ers of the di­vine na­ture. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s trans­for­ma­tion, you be­come in re­al­ity the tem­ples of God, and his spirit ac­tu­ally dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bond­slaves of the flesh but free and lib­er­ated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit en­dows you with the lib­erty of self-mas­tery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bond­age and the slav­ery of self-de­nial.

145:2.13This young man was not pos­sessed of an un­clean spirit or de­mon; he was a vic­tim of or­di­nary epilepsy. But he had been taught that his af­flic­tion was due to pos­ses­sion by an evil spirit. He be­lieved this teach­ing and be­haved ac­cord­ingly in all that he thought or said con­cern­ing his ail­ment. The peo­ple all be­lieved that such phe­nom­ena were di­rectly caused by the pres­ence of un­clean spir­its. Ac­cord­ingly they be­lieved that Je­sus had cast a de­mon out of this man. But Je­sus did not at that time cure his epilepsy. Not un­til later on that day, af­ter sun­down, was this man re­ally healed. Long af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost the Apos­tle John, who was the last to write of Je­sus’ do­ings, avoided all ref­er­ence to these so-called acts of “cast­ing out dev­ils,” and this he did in view of the fact that such cases of de­mon pos­ses­sion never oc­curred af­ter Pen­te­cost.

146:3.6“While you can­not ob­serve the di­vine spirit at work in your minds, there is a prac­ti­cal method of dis­cov­er­ing the de­gree to which you have yielded the con­trol of your soul pow­ers to the teach­ing and guid­ance of this in­dwelling spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther, and that is the de­gree of your love for your fel­low men. This spirit of the Fa­ther par­takes of the love of the Fa­ther, and as it dom­i­nates man, it un­fail­ingly leads in the di­rec­tions of di­vine wor­ship and lov­ing re­gard for one’s fel­lows. At first you be­lieve that you are sons of God be­cause my teach­ing has made you more con­scious of the in­ner lead­ings of our Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence; but pres­ently the Spirit of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speak­ing for the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of your souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will un­fail­ingly bear wit­ness with the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence, your spirit, then dwell­ing in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in re­al­ity the sons of God.

153:4.1In the midst of the dis­cus­sions of this af­ter meet­ing, one of the Phar­isees from Je­ru­sa­lem brought to Je­sus a dis­traught youth who was pos­sessed of an un­ruly and re­bel­lious spirit. Lead­ing this de­mented lad up to Je­sus, he said: “What can you do for such af­flic­tion as this? Can you cast out dev­ils?” And when the Mas­ter looked upon the youth, he was moved with com­pas­sion and, beck­on­ing for the lad to come to him, took him by the hand and said: “You know who I am; come out of him; and I charge one of your loyal fel­lows to see that you do not re­turn.” And im­me­di­ately the lad was nor­mal and in his right mind. And this is the first case where Je­sus re­ally cast an “evil spirit” out of a hu­man be­ing. All of the pre­vi­ous cases were only sup­posed pos­ses­sion of the devil; but this was a gen­uine case of de­mo­niac pos­ses­sion, even such as some­times oc­curred in those days and right up to the day of Pen­te­cost, when the Mas­ter’s spirit was poured out upon all flesh, mak­ing it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for these few ce­les­tial rebels to take such ad­van­tage of cer­tain un­sta­ble types of hu­man be­ings.

160:5.13The con­scious­ness of the im­pulse to be like God is not true re­li­gion. The feel­ings of the emo­tion to wor­ship God are not true re­li­gion. The knowl­edge of the con­vic­tion to for­sake self and serve God is not true re­li­gion. The wis­dom of the rea­son­ing that this re­li­gion is the best of all is not re­li­gion as a per­sonal and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. True re­li­gion has ref­er­ence to des­tiny and re­al­ity of at­tain­ment as well as to the re­al­ity and ide­al­ism of that which is whole­heart­edly faith-ac­cepted. And all of this must be made per­sonal to us by the rev­e­la­tion of the Spirit of Truth.

162:6.1On the last day, the great day of the feast, as the pro­ces­sion from the pool of Siloam passed through the tem­ple courts, and just af­ter the wa­ter and the wine had been poured down upon the al­tar by the priests, Je­sus, stand­ing among the pil­grims, said: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. From the Fa­ther above I bring to this world the wa­ter of life. He who be­lieves me shall be filled with the spirit which this wa­ter rep­re­sents, for even the Scrip­tures have said, ‘Out of him shall flow rivers of liv­ing wa­ters.’ When the Son of Man has fin­ished his work on earth, there shall be poured out upon all flesh the liv­ing Spirit of Truth. Those who re­ceive this spirit shall never know spir­i­tual thirst.”

162:6.2 · one paragraph not cited here ·

162:6.2Je­sus did not in­ter­rupt the ser­vice to speak these words. He ad­dressed the wor­shipers im­me­di­ately af­ter the chant­ing of the Hal­lel, the re­spon­sive read­ing of the Psalms ac­com­pa­nied by wav­ing of the branches be­fore the al­tar. Just here was a pause while the sac­ri­fices were be­ing pre­pared, and it was at this time that the pil­grims heard the fas­ci­nat­ing voice of the Mas­ter de­clare that he was the giver of liv­ing wa­ter to ev­ery spirit-thirst­ing soul.

162:6.3At the con­clu­sion of this early morn­ing ser­vice Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach the mul­ti­tude, say­ing: “Have you not read in the Scrip­ture: ‘Be­hold, as the wa­ters are poured out upon the dry ground and spread over the parched soil, so will I give the spirit of ho­li­ness to be poured out upon your chil­dren for a bless­ing even to your chil­dren’s chil­dren’? Why will you thirst for the min­istry of the spirit while you seek to wa­ter your souls with the tra­di­tions of men, poured from the bro­ken pitch­ers of cer­e­mo­nial ser­vice? That which you see go­ing on about this tem­ple is the way in which your fa­thers sought to sym­bol­ize the be­stowal of the di­vine spirit upon the chil­dren of faith, and you have done well to per­pet­u­ate these sym­bols, even down to this day. But now has come to this gen­er­a­tion the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther of spir­its through the be­stowal of his Son, and all of this will cer­tainly be fol­lowed by the be­stowal of the spirit of the Fa­ther and the Son upon the chil­dren of men. To ev­ery one who has faith shall this be­stowal of the spirit be­come the true teacher of the way which leads to life ev­er­last­ing, to the true wa­ters of life in the king­dom of heaven on earth and in the Fa­ther’s Par­a­dise over there.”

163:6.2When the sev­enty re­lated how “even the dev­ils were sub­ject” to them, they re­ferred to the won­der­ful cures they had wrought in the cases of vic­tims of ner­vous dis­or­ders. Nev­er­the­less, there had been a few cases of real spirit pos­ses­sion re­lieved by these min­is­ters, and re­fer­ring to these, Je­sus said: “It is not strange that these dis­obe­di­ent mi­nor spir­its should be sub­ject to you, see­ing that I be­held Sa­tan falling as light­ning from heaven. But re­joice not so much over this, for I de­clare to you that, as soon as I re­turn to my Fa­ther, we will send forth our spir­its into the very minds of men so that no more can these few lost spir­its en­ter the minds of un­for­tu­nate mor­tals. I re­joice with you that you have power with men, but be not lifted up be­cause of this ex­pe­ri­ence but the rather re­joice that your names are writ­ten on the rolls of heaven, and that you are thus to go for­ward in an end­less ca­reer of spir­i­tual con­quest.”

174:5.12Then Je­sus con­tin­ued to speak: “All this has not hap­pened for my sake but for yours. I know of a cer­tainty that the Fa­ther will re­ceive me and ac­cept my mis­sion in your be­half, but it is need­ful that you be en­cour­aged and be made ready for the fiery trial which is just ahead. Let me as­sure you that vic­tory shall even­tu­ally crown our united ef­forts to en­lighten the world and lib­er­ate man­kind. The old or­der is bring­ing it­self to judg­ment; the Prince of this world I have cast down; and all men shall be­come free by the light of the spirit which I will pour out upon all flesh af­ter I have as­cended to my Fa­ther in heaven.

176:2.3In fur­ther an­swer to Pe­ter’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Why do you still look for the Son of Man to sit upon the throne of David and ex­pect that the ma­te­rial dreams of the Jews will be ful­filled? Have I not told you all these years that my king­dom is not of this world? The things which you now look down upon are com­ing to an end, but this will be a new be­gin­ning out of which the gospel of the king­dom will go to all the world and this sal­va­tion will spread to all peo­ples. And when the king­dom shall have come to its full fruition, be as­sured that the Fa­ther in heaven will not fail to visit you with an en­larged rev­e­la­tion of truth and an en­hanced dem­on­stra­tion of righ­teous­ness, even as he has al­ready be­stowed upon this world him who be­came the prince of dark­ness, and then Adam, who was fol­lowed by Mel­chiz­e­dek, and in these days, the Son of Man. And so will my Fa­ther con­tinue to man­i­fest his mercy and show forth his love, even to this dark and evil world. So also will I, af­ter my Fa­ther has in­vested me with all power and au­thor­ity, con­tinue to fol­low your for­tunes and to guide in the af­fairs of the king­dom by the pres­ence of my spirit, who shall shortly be poured out upon all flesh. Even though I shall thus be pres­ent with you in spirit, I also prom­ise that I will some­time re­turn to this world, where I have lived this life in the flesh and achieved the ex­pe­ri­ence of si­mul­ta­ne­ously re­veal­ing God to man and lead­ing man to God. Very soon must I leave you and take up the work the Fa­ther has in­trusted to my hands, but be of good cour­age, for I will some­time re­turn. In the mean­time, my Spirit of the Truth of a uni­verse shall com­fort and guide you.

176:3.7Truth is liv­ing; the Spirit of Truth is ever lead­ing the chil­dren of light into new realms of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and di­vine ser­vice. You are not given truth to crys­tal­lize into set­tled, safe, and hon­ored forms. Your rev­e­la­tion of truth must be so en­hanced by pass­ing through your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence that new beauty and ac­tual spir­i­tual gains will be dis­closed to all who be­hold your spir­i­tual fruits and in con­se­quence thereof are led to glo­rify the Fa­ther who is in heaven. Only those faith­ful ser­vants who thus grow in the knowl­edge of the truth, and who thereby de­velop the ca­pac­ity for di­vine ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties, can ever hope to “en­ter fully into the joy of their Lord.” What a sorry sight for suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus to say, re­gard­ing their stew­ard­ship of di­vine truth: “Here, Mas­ter, is the truth you com­mit­ted to us a hun­dred or a thou­sand years ago. We have lost noth­ing; we have faith­fully pre­served all you gave us; we have al­lowed no changes to be made in that which you taught us; here is the truth you gave us.” But such a plea con­cern­ing spir­i­tual in­do­lence will not jus­tify the bar­ren stew­ard of truth in the pres­ence of the Mas­ter. In ac­cor­dance with the truth com­mit­ted to your hands will the Mas­ter of truth re­quire a reck­on­ing.

176:4.3Je­sus prom­ised to do two things af­ter he had as­cended to the Fa­ther, and af­ter all power in heaven and on earth had been placed in his hands. He prom­ised, first, to send into the world, and in his stead, an­other teacher, the Spirit of Truth; and this he did on the day of Pen­te­cost. Sec­ond, he most cer­tainly prom­ised his fol­low­ers that he would some­time per­son­ally re­turn to this world. But he did not say how, where, or when he would re­visit this planet of his be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence in the flesh. On one oc­ca­sion he in­ti­mated that, whereas the eye of flesh had be­held him when he lived here in the flesh, on his re­turn (at least on one of his pos­si­ble vis­its) he would be dis­cerned only by the eye of spir­i­tual faith.

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.

178:1.7–15 · nine paragraphs not cited here ·

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.

179:5.1As they brought Je­sus the third cup of wine, the “cup of bless­ing,” he arose from the couch and, tak­ing the cup in his hands, blessed it, say­ing: “Take this cup, all of you, and drink of it. This shall be the cup of my re­mem­brance. This is the cup of the bless­ing of a new dis­pen­sa­tion of grace and truth. This shall be to you the em­blem of the be­stowal and min­istry of the di­vine Spirit of Truth. And I will not again drink this cup with you un­til I drink in new form with you in the Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom.”

179:5.2The apos­tles all sensed that some­thing out of the or­di­nary was tran­spir­ing as they drank of this cup of bless­ing in pro­found rev­er­ence and per­fect si­lence. The old Pass­over com­mem­o­rated the emer­gence of their fa­thers from a state of racial slav­ery into in­di­vid­ual free­dom; now the Mas­ter was in­sti­tut­ing a new re­mem­brance sup­per as a sym­bol of the new dis­pen­sa­tion wherein the en­slaved in­di­vid­ual emerges from the bond­age of cer­e­mo­ni­al­ism and self­ish­ness into the spir­i­tual joy of the broth­er­hood and fel­low­ship of the lib­er­ated faith sons of the liv­ing God.

179:5.3When they had fin­ished drink­ing this new cup of re­mem­brance, the Mas­ter took up the bread and, af­ter giv­ing thanks, broke it in pieces and, di­rect­ing them to pass it around, said: “Take this bread of re­mem­brance and eat it. I have told you that I am the bread of life. And this bread of life is the united life of the Fa­ther and the Son in one gift. The word of the Fa­ther, as re­vealed in the Son, is in­deed the bread of life.” When they had par­taken of the bread of re­mem­brance, the sym­bol of the liv­ing word of truth in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, they all sat down.

179:5.4–8 · five paragraphs not cited here ·

179:5.4In in­sti­tut­ing this re­mem­brance sup­per, the Mas­ter, as was al­ways his habit, re­sorted to para­bles and sym­bols. He em­ployed sym­bols be­cause he wanted to teach cer­tain great spir­i­tual truths in such a man­ner as to make it dif­fi­cult for his suc­ces­sors to at­tach pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and def­i­nite mean­ings to his words. In this way he sought to pre­vent suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions from crys­tal­liz­ing his teach­ing and bind­ing down his spir­i­tual mean­ings by the dead chains of tra­di­tion and dogma. In the es­tab­lish­ment of the only cer­e­mony or sacra­ment as­so­ci­ated with his whole life mis­sion, Je­sus took great pains to sug­gest his mean­ings rather than to com­mit him­self to pre­cise def­i­ni­tions. He did not wish to de­stroy the in­di­vid­ual’s con­cept of di­vine com­mu­nion by es­tab­lish­ing a pre­cise form; nei­ther did he de­sire to limit the be­liever’s spir­i­tual imag­i­na­tion by for­mally cramp­ing it. He rather sought to set man’s re­born soul free upon the joy­ous wings of a new and liv­ing spir­i­tual lib­erty.

179:5.5Not­with­stand­ing the Mas­ter’s ef­fort thus to es­tab­lish this new sacra­ment of the re­mem­brance, those who fol­lowed af­ter him in the in­ter­ven­ing cen­turies saw to it that his ex­press de­sire was ef­fec­tively thwarted in that his sim­ple spir­i­tual sym­bol­ism of that last night in the flesh has been re­duced to pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and sub­jected to the al­most math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion of a set for­mula. Of all Je­sus’ teach­ings none have be­come more tra­di­tion-stan­dard­ized.

179:5.6This sup­per of re­mem­brance, when it is par­taken of by those who are Son-be­liev­ing and God-know­ing, does not need to have as­so­ci­ated with its sym­bol­ism any of man’s puerile mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions re­gard­ing the mean­ing of the di­vine pres­ence, for upon all such oc­ca­sions the Mas­ter is re­ally pres­ent. The re­mem­brance sup­per is the be­liever’s sym­bolic ren­dezvous with Mi­chael. When you be­come thus spirit-con­scious, the Son is ac­tu­ally pres­ent, and his spirit frat­er­nizes with the in­dwelling frag­ment of his Fa­ther.

179:5.7Af­ter they had en­gaged in med­i­ta­tion for a few mo­ments, Je­sus con­tin­ued speak­ing: “When you do these things, re­call the life I have lived on earth among you and re­joice that I am to con­tinue to live on earth with you and to serve through you. As in­di­vid­u­als, con­tend not among your­selves as to who shall be great­est. Be you all as breth­ren. And when the king­dom grows to em­brace large groups of be­liev­ers, like­wise should you re­frain from con­tend­ing for great­ness or seek­ing prefer­ment be­tween such groups.”

179:5.8And this mighty oc­ca­sion took place in the up­per cham­ber of a friend. There was noth­ing of sa­cred form or of cer­e­mo­nial con­se­cra­tion about ei­ther the sup­per or the build­ing. The re­mem­brance sup­per was es­tab­lished with­out ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal sanc­tion.

179:5.9When Je­sus had thus es­tab­lished the sup­per of the re­mem­brance, he said to the eleven: “And as of­ten as you do this, do it in re­mem­brance of me. And when you do re­mem­ber me, first look back upon my life in the flesh, re­call that I was once with you, and then, by faith, dis­cern that you shall all some­time sup with me in the Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom. This is the new Pass­over which I leave with you, even the mem­ory of my be­stowal life, the word of eter­nal truth; and of my love for you, the out­pour­ing of my Spirit of Truth upon all flesh.”

180:4.1Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach, say­ing: “When I have gone to the Fa­ther, and af­ter he has fully ac­cepted the work I have done for you on earth, and af­ter I have re­ceived the fi­nal sov­er­eignty of my own do­main, I shall say to my Fa­ther: Hav­ing left my chil­dren alone on earth, it is in ac­cor­dance with my prom­ise to send them an­other teacher. And when the Fa­ther shall ap­prove, I will pour out the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh. Al­ready is my Fa­ther’s spirit in your hearts, and when this day shall come, you will also have me with you even as you now have the Fa­ther. This new gift is the spirit of liv­ing truth. The un­be­liev­ers will not at first lis­ten to the teach­ings of this spirit, but the sons of light will all re­ceive him gladly and with a whole heart. And you shall know this spirit when he comes even as you have known me, and you will re­ceive this gift in your hearts, and he will abide with you. You thus per­ceive that I am not go­ing to leave you with­out help and guid­ance. I will not leave you des­o­late. To­day I can be with you only in per­son. In the times to come I will be with you and all other men who de­sire my pres­ence, wher­ever you may be, and with each of you at the same time. Do you not dis­cern that it is bet­ter for me to go away; that I leave you in the flesh so that I may the bet­ter and the more fully be with you in the spirit?

180:4.2“In just a few hours the world will see me no more; but you will con­tinue to know me in your hearts even un­til I send you this new teacher, the Spirit of Truth. As I have lived with you in per­son, then shall I live in you; I shall be one with your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the spirit king­dom. And when this has come to pass, you shall surely know that I am in the Fa­ther, and that, while your life is hid with the Fa­ther in me, I am also in you. I have loved the Fa­ther and have kept his word; you have loved me, and you will keep my word. As my Fa­ther has given me of his spirit, so will I give you of my spirit. And this Spirit of Truth which I will be­stow upon you shall guide and com­fort you and shall even­tu­ally lead you into all truth.

180:4.3“I am telling you these things while I am still with you that you may be the bet­ter pre­pared to en­dure those tri­als which are even now right upon us. And when this new day comes, you will be in­dwelt by the Son as well as by the Fa­ther. And these gifts of heaven will ever work the one with the other even as the Fa­ther and I have wrought on earth and be­fore your very eyes as one per­son, the Son of Man. And this spirit friend will bring to your re­mem­brance ev­ery­thing I have taught you.”

180:4.4As the Mas­ter paused for a mo­ment, Ju­das Al­pheus made bold to ask one of the few ques­tions which ei­ther he or his brother ever ad­dressed to Je­sus in pub­lic. Said Ju­das: “Mas­ter, you have al­ways lived among us as a friend; how shall we know you when you no longer man­i­fest your­self to us save by this spirit? If the world sees you not, how shall we be cer­tain about you? How will you show your­self to us?”

180:4.5Je­sus looked down upon them all, smiled, and said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, I am go­ing away, go­ing back to my Fa­ther. In a lit­tle while you will not see me as you do here, as flesh and blood. In a very short time I am go­ing to send you my spirit, just like me ex­cept for this ma­te­rial body. This new teacher is the Spirit of Truth who will live with each one of you, in your hearts, and so will all the chil­dren of light be made one and be drawn to­ward one an­other. And in this very man­ner will my Fa­ther and I be able to live in the souls of each one of you and also in the hearts of all other men who love us and make that love real in their ex­pe­ri­ences by lov­ing one an­other, even as I am now lov­ing you.”

180:4.6Ju­das Al­pheus did not fully un­der­stand what the Mas­ter said, but he grasped the prom­ise of the new teacher, and from the ex­pres­sion on An­drew’s face, he per­ceived that his ques­tion had been sat­is­fac­to­rily an­swered.

180:5.1The new helper which Je­sus prom­ised to send into the hearts of be­liev­ers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This di­vine en­dow­ment is not the let­ter or law of truth, nei­ther is it to func­tion as the form or ex­pres­sion of truth. The new teacher is the con­vic­tion of truth, the con­scious­ness and as­sur­ance of true mean­ings on real spirit lev­els. And this new teacher is the spirit of liv­ing and grow­ing truth, ex­pand­ing, un­fold­ing, and adap­ta­tive truth.

180:5.2Di­vine truth is a spirit-dis­cerned and liv­ing re­al­ity. Truth ex­ists only on high spir­i­tual lev­els of the re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity and the con­scious­ness of com­mu­nion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can ex­pe­ri­ence the growth of truth in the soul and en­joy the lib­erty of its en­light­en­ment in the mind, but you can­not im­prison truth in for­mu­las, codes, creeds, or in­tel­lec­tual pat­terns of hu­man con­duct. When you un­der­take the hu­man for­mu­la­tion of di­vine truth, it speed­ily dies. The post-mortem sal­vage of im­pris­oned truth, even at best, can even­tu­ate only in the re­al­iza­tion of a pe­cu­liar form of in­tel­lec­tu­al­ized glo­ri­fied wis­dom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a the­ory. Liv­ing truth is dy­namic and can en­joy only an ex­pe­ri­en­tial ex­is­tence in the hu­man mind.

180:5.3In­tel­li­gence grows out of a ma­te­rial ex­is­tence which is il­lu­mi­nated by the pres­ence of the cos­mic mind. Wis­dom com­prises the con­scious­ness of knowl­edge el­e­vated to new lev­els of mean­ing and ac­ti­vated by the pres­ence of the uni­verse en­dow­ment of the ad­ju­tant of wis­dom. Truth is a spir­i­tual re­al­ity value ex­pe­ri­enced only by spirit-en­dowed be­ings who func­tion upon super­ma­te­rial lev­els of uni­verse con­scious­ness, and who, af­ter the re­al­iza­tion of truth, per­mit its spirit of ac­ti­va­tion to live and reign within their souls.

180:5.4The true child of uni­verse in­sight looks for the liv­ing Spirit of Truth in ev­ery wise say­ing. The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is con­stantly el­e­vat­ing wis­dom to the liv­ing-truth lev­els of di­vine at­tain­ment; the spir­i­tu­ally un­pro­gres­sive soul is all the while drag­ging the liv­ing truth down to the dead lev­els of wis­dom and to the do­main of mere ex­alted knowl­edge.

180:5.5The golden rule, when di­vested of the super­hu­man in­sight of the Spirit of Truth, be­comes noth­ing more than a rule of high eth­i­cal con­duct. The golden rule, when lit­er­ally in­ter­preted, may be­come the in­stru­ment of great of­fense to one’s fel­lows. With­out a spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment of the golden rule of wis­dom you might rea­son that, since you are de­sirous that all men speak the full and frank truth of their minds to you, you should there­fore fully and frankly speak the full thought of your mind to your fel­low be­ings. Such an un­spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule might re­sult in un­told un­hap­pi­ness and no end of sor­row.

180:5.6Some per­sons dis­cern and in­ter­pret the golden rule as a purely in­tel­lec­tual af­fir­ma­tion of hu­man fra­ter­nity. Oth­ers ex­pe­ri­ence this ex­pres­sion of hu­man re­la­tion­ship as an emo­tional grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the ten­der feel­ings of the hu­man per­son­al­ity. An­other mor­tal rec­og­nizes this same golden rule as the yard­stick for mea­sur­ing all so­cial re­la­tions, the stan­dard of so­cial con­duct. Still oth­ers look upon it as be­ing the pos­i­tive in­junc­tion of a great moral teacher who em­bod­ied in this state­ment the high­est con­cept of moral obli­ga­tion as re­gards all fra­ter­nal re­la­tion­ships. In the lives of such moral be­ings the golden rule be­comes the wise cen­ter and cir­cum­fer­ence of all their phi­los­o­phy.

180:5.7In the king­dom of the be­liev­ing broth­er­hood of God-know­ing truth lovers, this golden rule takes on liv­ing qual­i­ties of spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion on those higher lev­els of in­ter­pre­ta­tion which cause the mor­tal sons of God to view this in­junc­tion of the Mas­ter as re­quir­ing them so to re­late them­selves to their fel­lows that they will re­ceive the high­est pos­si­ble good as a re­sult of the be­liever’s con­tact with them. This is the essence of true re­li­gion: that you love your neigh­bor as your­self.

180:5.8But the high­est re­al­iza­tion and the truest in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule con­sists in the con­scious­ness of the spirit of the truth of the en­dur­ing and liv­ing re­al­ity of such a di­vine dec­la­ra­tion. The true cos­mic mean­ing of this rule of uni­ver­sal re­la­tion­ship is re­vealed only in its spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion, in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law of con­duct by the spirit of the Son to the spirit of the Fa­ther that in­dwells the soul of mor­tal man. And when such spirit-led mor­tals re­al­ize the true mean­ing of this golden rule, they are filled to over­flow­ing with the as­sur­ance of cit­i­zen­ship in a friendly uni­verse, and their ide­als of spirit re­al­ity are sat­is­fied only when they love their fel­lows as Je­sus loved us all, and that is the re­al­ity of the re­al­iza­tion of the love of God.

180:5.9This same phi­los­o­phy of the liv­ing flex­i­bil­ity and cos­mic adapt­abil­ity of di­vine truth to the in­di­vid­ual re­quire­ments and ca­pac­ity of ev­ery son of God, must be per­ceived be­fore you can hope ad­e­quately to un­der­stand the Mas­ter’s teach­ing and prac­tice of non­re­sis­tance to evil. The Mas­ter’s teach­ing is ba­si­cally a spir­i­tual pro­nounce­ment. Even the ma­te­rial im­pli­ca­tions of his phi­los­o­phy can­not be help­fully con­sid­ered apart from their spir­i­tual cor­re­la­tions. The spirit of the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion con­sists in the non­re­sis­tance of all self­ish re­ac­tion to the uni­verse, cou­pled with the ag­gres­sive and pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of righ­teous lev­els of true spirit val­ues: di­vine beauty, in­fi­nite good­ness, and eter­nal truth—to know God and to be­come in­creas­ingly like him.

180:5.10Love, un­selfish­ness, must un­dergo a con­stant and liv­ing readap­ta­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­la­tion­ships in ac­cor­dance with the lead­ing of the Spirit of Truth. Love must thereby grasp the ever-chang­ing and en­larg­ing con­cepts of the high­est cos­mic good of the in­di­vid­ual who is loved. And then love goes on to strike this same at­ti­tude con­cern­ing all other in­di­vid­u­als who could pos­si­bly be in­flu­enced by the grow­ing and liv­ing re­la­tion­ship of one spirit-led mor­tal’s love for other cit­i­zens of the uni­verse. And this en­tire liv­ing adap­ta­tion of love must be ef­fected in the light of both the en­vi­ron­ment of pres­ent evil and the eter­nal goal of the per­fec­tion of di­vine des­tiny.

180:5.11And so must we clearly rec­og­nize that nei­ther the golden rule nor the teach­ing of non­re­sis­tance can ever be prop­erly un­der­stood as dog­mas or pre­cepts. They can only be com­pre­hended by liv­ing them, by re­al­iz­ing their mean­ings in the liv­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Spirit of Truth, who di­rects the lov­ing con­tact of one hu­man be­ing with an­other.

180:5.12And all this clearly in­di­cates the dif­fer­ence be­tween the old re­li­gion and the new. The old re­li­gion taught self-sac­ri­fice; the new re­li­gion teaches only self-for­get­ful­ness, en­hanced self-re­al­iza­tion in con­joined so­cial ser­vice and uni­verse com­pre­hen­sion. The old re­li­gion was mo­ti­vated by fear-con­scious­ness; the new gospel of the king­dom is dom­i­nated by truth-con­vic­tion, the spirit of eter­nal and uni­ver­sal truth. And no amount of piety or creedal loy­alty can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of king­dom be­liev­ers of that spon­ta­neous, gen­er­ous, and sin­cere friend­li­ness which char­ac­ter­izes the spirit-born sons of the liv­ing God. Nei­ther tra­di­tion nor a cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem of for­mal wor­ship can atone for the lack of gen­uine com­pas­sion for one’s fel­lows.

180:6.1Af­ter Pe­ter, James, John, and Mat­thew had asked the Mas­ter nu­mer­ous ques­tions, he con­tin­ued his farewell dis­course by say­ing: “And I am telling you about all this be­fore I leave you in or­der that you may be so pre­pared for what is com­ing upon you that you will not stum­ble into se­ri­ous er­ror. The au­thor­i­ties will not be con­tent with merely putting you out of the syn­a­gogues; I warn you the hour draws near when they who kill you will think they are do­ing a ser­vice to God. And all of these things they will do to you and to those whom you lead into the king­dom of heaven be­cause they do not know the Fa­ther. They have re­fused to know the Fa­ther by re­fus­ing to re­ceive me; and they refuse to re­ceive me when they re­ject you, pro­vided you have kept my new com­mand­ment that you love one an­other even as I have loved you. I am telling you in ad­vance about these things so that, when your hour comes, as mine now has, you may be strength­ened in the knowl­edge that all was known to me, and that my spirit shall be with you in all your suf­fer­ings for my sake and the gospel’s. It was for this pur­pose that I have been talk­ing so plainly to you from the very be­gin­ning. I have even warned you that a man’s foes may be those of his own house­hold. Al­though this gospel of the king­dom never fails to bring great peace to the soul of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever, it will not bring peace on earth un­til man is will­ing to be­lieve my teach­ing whole­heart­edly and to es­tab­lish the prac­tice of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will as the chief pur­pose in liv­ing the mor­tal life.

180:6.2“Now that I am leav­ing you, see­ing that the hour has come when I am about to go to the Fa­ther, I am sur­prised that none of you have asked me, Why do you leave us? Nev­er­the­less, I know that you ask such ques­tions in your hearts. I will speak to you plainly, as one friend to an­other. It is re­ally prof­itable for you that I go away. If I go not away, the new teacher can­not come into your hearts. I must be di­vested of this mor­tal body and be re­stored to my place on high be­fore I can send this spirit teacher to live in your souls and lead your spir­its into the truth. And when my spirit comes to in­dwell you, he will il­lu­mi­nate the dif­fer­ence be­tween sin and righ­teous­ness and will en­able you to judge wisely in your hearts con­cern­ing them.

180:6.3“I have yet much to say to you, but you can­not stand any more just now. Al­beit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he shall even­tu­ally guide you into all truth as you pass through the many abodes in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse.

180:6.4“This spirit will not speak of him­self, but he will de­clare to you that which the Fa­ther has re­vealed to the Son, and he will even show you things to come; he will glo­rify me even as I have glo­ri­fied my Fa­ther. This spirit comes forth from me, and he will re­veal my truth to you. Ev­ery­thing which the Fa­ther has in this do­main is now mine; where­fore did I say that this new teacher would take of that which is mine and re­veal it to you.

180:6.5“In just a lit­tle while I will leave you for a short time. Af­ter­ward, when you again see me, I shall al­ready be on my way to the Fa­ther so that even then you will not see me for long.”

180:6.6While he paused for a mo­ment, the apos­tles be­gan to talk with each other: “What is this that he tells us? ‘In just a lit­tle while I will leave you,’ and ‘When you see me again it will not be for long, for I will be on my way to the Fa­ther.’ What can he mean by this ‘lit­tle while’ and ‘not for long’? We can­not un­der­stand what he is telling us.”

180:6.7And since Je­sus knew they asked these ques­tions, he said: “Do you in­quire among your­selves about what I meant when I said that in a lit­tle while I would not be with you, and that, when you would see me again, I would be on my way to the Fa­ther? I have plainly told you that the Son of Man must die, but that he will rise again. Can you not then dis­cern the mean­ing of my words? You will first be made sor­row­ful, but later on will you re­joice with many who will un­der­stand these things af­ter they have come to pass. A woman is in­deed sor­row­ful in the hour of her tra­vail, but when she is once de­liv­ered of her child, she im­me­di­ately for­gets her an­guish in the joy of the knowl­edge that a man has been born into the world. And so are you about to sor­row over my de­par­ture, but I will soon see you again, and then will your sor­row be turned into re­joic­ing, and there shall come to you a new rev­e­la­tion of the sal­va­tion of God which no man can ever take away from you. And all the worlds will be blessed in this same rev­e­la­tion of life in ef­fect­ing the over­throw of death. Hith­erto have you made all your re­quests in my Fa­ther’s name. Af­ter you see me again, you may also ask in my name, and I will hear you.

180:6.8“Down here I have taught you in proverbs and spo­ken to you in para­bles. I did so be­cause you were only chil­dren in the spirit; but the time is com­ing when I will talk to you plainly con­cern­ing the Fa­ther and his king­dom. And I shall do this be­cause the Fa­ther him­self loves you and de­sires to be more fully re­vealed to you. Mor­tal man can­not see the spirit Fa­ther; there­fore have I come into the world to show the Fa­ther to your crea­ture eyes. But when you have be­come per­fected in spirit growth, you shall then see the Fa­ther him­self.”

180:6.9When the eleven had heard him speak, they said to each other: “Be­hold, he does speak plainly to us. Surely the Mas­ter did come forth from God. But why does he say he must re­turn to the Fa­ther?” And Je­sus saw that they did not even yet com­pre­hend him. These eleven men could not get away from their long-nour­ished ideas of the Jew­ish con­cept of the Mes­siah. The more fully they be­lieved in Je­sus as the Mes­siah, the more trou­ble­some be­came these deep-rooted no­tions re­gard­ing the glo­ri­ous ma­te­rial tri­umph of the king­dom on earth.

181:1.1When the eleven had taken their seats, Je­sus stood and ad­dressed them: “As long as I am with you in the flesh, I can be but one in­di­vid­ual in your midst or in the en­tire world. But when I have been de­liv­ered from this in­vest­ment of mor­tal na­ture, I will be able to re­turn as a spirit in­dweller of each of you and of all other be­liev­ers in this gospel of the king­dom. In this way the Son of Man will be­come a spir­i­tual in­car­na­tion in the souls of all true be­liev­ers.

181:1.2“When I have re­turned to live in you and work through you, I can the bet­ter lead you on through this life and guide you through the many abodes in the fu­ture life in the heaven of heav­ens. Life in the Fa­ther’s eter­nal cre­ation is not an end­less rest of idle­ness and self­ish ease but rather a cease­less pro­gres­sion in grace, truth, and glory. Each of the many, many sta­tions in my Fa­ther’s house is a stop­ping place, a life de­signed to pre­pare you for the next one ahead. And so will the chil­dren of light go on from glory to glory un­til they at­tain the di­vine es­tate wherein they are spir­i­tu­ally per­fected even as the Fa­ther is per­fect in all things.

181:1.3 · one paragraph not cited here ·

181:1.3“If you would fol­low af­ter me when I leave you, put forth your earnest ef­forts to live in ac­cor­dance with the spirit of my teach­ings and with the ideal of my life—the do­ing of my Fa­ther’s will. This do in­stead of try­ing to im­i­tate my nat­u­ral life in the flesh as I have, per­force, been re­quired to live it on this world.

181:1.4“The Fa­ther sent me into this world, but only a few of you have cho­sen fully to re­ceive me. I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, but all men will not choose to re­ceive this new teacher as the guide and coun­selor of the soul. But as many as do re­ceive him shall be en­light­ened, cleansed, and com­forted. And this Spirit of Truth will be­come in them a well of liv­ing wa­ter spring­ing up into eter­nal life.

181:1.5“And now, as I am about to leave you, I would speak words of com­fort. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I make these gifts not as the world gives—by mea­sure—I give each of you all you will re­ceive. Let not your heart be trou­bled, nei­ther let it be fear­ful. I have over­come the world, and in me you shall all tri­umph through faith. I have warned you that the Son of Man will be killed, but I as­sure you I will come back be­fore I go to the Fa­ther, even though it be for only a lit­tle while. And af­ter I have as­cended to the Fa­ther, I will surely send the new teacher to be with you and to abide in your very hearts. And when you see all this come to pass, be not dis­mayed, but rather be­lieve, inas­much as you knew it all be­fore­hand. I have loved you with a great af­fec­tion, and I would not leave you, but it is the Fa­ther’s will. My hour has come.

181:2.13Then spoke Mat­thew: “But, Mas­ter, who will send us, and how shall we know where to go? Will An­drew show us the way?” And Je­sus an­swered: “No, Levi, An­drew will no longer di­rect you in the procla­ma­tion of the gospel. He will, in­deed, con­tinue as your friend and coun­selor un­til that day whereon the new teacher comes, and then shall the Spirit of Truth lead each of you abroad to la­bor for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom. Many changes have come over you since that day at the cus­tom­house when you first set out to fol­low me; but many more must come be­fore you will be able to see the vi­sion of a broth­er­hood in which gen­tile sits along­side Jew in fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tion. But go on with your urge to win your Jew­ish breth­ren un­til you are fully sat­is­fied and then turn with power to the gen­tiles. One thing you may be cer­tain of, Levi: You have won the con­fi­dence and af­fec­tion of your breth­ren; they all love you.” (And all ten of them sig­ni­fied their ac­qui­es­cence in the Mas­ter’s words.)

181:2.14–16 · three paragraphs not cited here ·

181:2.14“Levi, I know much about your anx­i­eties, sac­ri­fices, and labors to keep the trea­sury re­plen­ished which your breth­ren do not know, and I am re­joiced that, though he who car­ried the bag is ab­sent, the pub­li­can am­bas­sador is here at my farewell gath­er­ing with the mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. I pray that you may dis­cern the mean­ing of my teach­ing with the eyes of the spirit. And when the new teacher comes into your heart, fol­low on as he will lead you and let your breth­ren see—even all the world—what the Fa­ther can do for a hated tax-gath­erer who dared to fol­low the Son of Man and to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. Even from the first, Levi, I loved you as I did these other Galileans. Know­ing then so well that nei­ther the Fa­ther nor the Son has re­spect of per­sons, see to it that you make no such dis­tinc­tions among those who be­come be­liev­ers in the gospel through your min­istry. And so, Mat­thew, ded­i­cate your whole fu­ture life ser­vice to show­ing all men that God is no re­specter of per­sons; that, in the sight of God and in the fel­low­ship of the king­dom, all men are equal, all be­liev­ers are the sons of God.”

181:2.15Je­sus then stepped over to James Zeb­e­dee, who stood in si­lence as the Mas­ter ad­dressed him, say­ing: “James, when you and your younger brother once came to me seek­ing prefer­ment in the hon­ors of the king­dom, and I told you such hon­ors were for the Fa­ther to be­stow, I asked if you were able to drink my cup, and both of you an­swered that you were. Even if you were not then able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be pre­pared for such a ser­vice by the ex­pe­ri­ence you are about to pass through. By such be­hav­ior you an­gered your breth­ren at that time. If they have not al­ready fully for­given you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your min­istry be long or short, pos­sess your soul in pa­tience. When the new teacher comes, let him teach you the poise of com­pas­sion and that sym­pa­thetic tol­er­ance which is born of sub­lime con­fi­dence in me and of per­fect sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will. Ded­i­cate your life to the dem­on­stra­tion of that com­bined hu­man af­fec­tion and di­vine dig­nity of the God-know­ing and Son-be­liev­ing dis­ci­ple. And all who thus live will re­veal the gospel even in the man­ner of their death. You and your brother John will go dif­fer­ent ways, and one of you may sit down with me in the eter­nal king­dom long be­fore the other. It would help you much if you would learn that true wis­dom em­braces dis­cre­tion as well as cour­age. You should learn sagac­ity to go along with your ag­gres­sive­ness. There will come those su­preme mo­ments wherein my dis­ci­ples will not hes­i­tate to lay down their lives for this gospel, but in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances it would be far bet­ter to pla­cate the wrath of un­be­liev­ers that you might live and con­tinue to preach the glad tid­ings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that your life of many years may be fruit­ful in souls won for the heav­enly king­dom.”

181:2.16When the Mas­ter had fin­ished speak­ing to James Zeb­e­dee, he stepped around to the end of the ta­ble where An­drew sat and, look­ing his faith­ful helper in the eyes, said: “An­drew, you have faith­fully rep­re­sented me as act­ing head of the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. Al­though you have some­times doubted and at other times man­i­fested dan­ger­ous timid­ity, still, you have al­ways been sin­cerely just and em­i­nently fair in deal­ing with your as­so­ciates. Ever since the or­di­na­tion of you and your breth­ren as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, you have been self-gov­ern­ing in all group ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs ex­cept that I des­ig­nated you as the act­ing head of these cho­sen ones. In no other tem­po­ral mat­ter have I acted to di­rect or to in­flu­ence your de­ci­sions. And this I did in or­der to pro­vide for lead­er­ship in the di­rec­tion of all your sub­se­quent group de­lib­er­a­tions. In my uni­verse and in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse of uni­verses, our breth­ren-sons are dealt with as in­di­vid­u­als in all their spir­i­tual re­la­tions, but in all group re­la­tion­ships we un­fail­ingly pro­vide for def­i­nite lead­er­ship. Our king­dom is a realm of or­der, and where two or more will crea­tures act in co-op­er­a­tion, there is al­ways pro­vided the au­thor­ity of lead­er­ship.

181:2.17“And now, An­drew, since you are the chief of your breth­ren by au­thor­ity of my ap­point­ment, and since you have thus served as my per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and as I am about to leave you and go to my Fa­ther, I re­lease you from all re­spon­si­bil­ity as re­gards these tem­po­ral and ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs. From now on you may ex­er­cise no ju­ris­dic­tion over your breth­ren ex­cept that which you have earned in your ca­pac­ity as spir­i­tual leader, and which your breth­ren there­fore freely rec­og­nize. From this hour you may ex­er­cise no au­thor­ity over your breth­ren un­less they re­store such ju­ris­dic­tion to you by their def­i­nite leg­isla­tive ac­tion af­ter I shall have gone to the Fa­ther. But this re­lease from re­spon­si­bil­ity as the ad­min­is­tra­tive head of this group does not in any man­ner lessen your moral re­spon­si­bil­ity to do ev­ery­thing in your power to hold your breth­ren to­gether with a firm and lov­ing hand dur­ing the try­ing time just ahead, those days which must in­ter­vene be­tween my de­par­ture in the flesh and the send­ing of the new teacher who will live in your hearts, and who ul­ti­mately will lead you into all truth. As I pre­pare to leave you, I would lib­er­ate you from all ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­ity which had its in­cep­tion and au­thor­ity in my pres­ence as one among you. Hence­forth I shall ex­er­cise only spir­i­tual au­thor­ity over you and among you.

181:2.18–23 · six paragraphs not cited here ·

181:2.18“If your breth­ren de­sire to re­tain you as their coun­selor, I di­rect that you should, in all mat­ters tem­po­ral and spir­i­tual, do your ut­most to pro­mote peace and har­mony among the var­i­ous groups of sin­cere gospel be­liev­ers. Ded­i­cate the re­main­der of your life to pro­mot­ing the prac­ti­cal as­pects of broth­erly love among your breth­ren. Be kind to my broth­ers in the flesh when they come fully to be­lieve this gospel; man­i­fest lov­ing and im­par­tial de­vo­tion to the Greeks in the West and to Ab­ner in the East. Al­though these, my apos­tles, are soon go­ing to be scat­tered to the four cor­ners of the earth, there to pro­claim the good news of the sal­va­tion of son­ship with God, you are to hold them to­gether dur­ing the try­ing time just ahead, that sea­son of in­tense test­ing dur­ing which you must learn to be­lieve this gospel with­out my per­sonal pres­ence while you pa­tiently await the ar­rival of the new teacher, the Spirit of Truth. And so, An­drew, though it may not fall to you to do the great works as seen by men, be con­tent to be the teacher and coun­selor of those who do such things. Go on with your work on earth to the end, and then shall you con­tinue this min­istry in the eter­nal king­dom, for have I not many times told you that I have other sheep not of this flock?”

181:2.19Je­sus then went over to the Al­pheus twins and, stand­ing be­tween them, said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, you are one of the three groups of broth­ers who chose to fol­low af­ter me. All six of you have done well to work in peace with your own flesh and blood, but none have done bet­ter than you. Hard times are just ahead of us. You may not un­der­stand all that will be­fall you and your breth­ren, but never doubt that you were once called to the work of the king­dom. For some time there will be no mul­ti­tudes to man­age, but do not be­come dis­cour­aged; when your life­work is fin­ished, I will re­ceive you on high, where in glory you shall tell of your sal­va­tion to se­raphic hosts and to mul­ti­tudes of the high Sons of God. Ded­i­cate your lives to the en­hance­ment of com­mon­place toil. Show all men on earth and the an­gels of heaven how cheer­fully and coura­geously mor­tal man can, af­ter hav­ing been called to work for a sea­son in the spe­cial ser­vice of God, re­turn to the labors of for­mer days. If, for the time be­ing, your work in the out­ward af­fairs of the king­dom should be com­pleted, you should go back to your for­mer labors with the new en­light­en­ment of the ex­pe­ri­ence of son­ship with God and with the ex­alted re­al­iza­tion that, to him who is God-know­ing, there is no such thing as com­mon la­bor or sec­u­lar toil. To you who have worked with me, all things have be­come sa­cred, and all earthly la­bor has be­come a ser­vice even to God the Fa­ther. And when you hear the news of the do­ings of your for­mer apos­tolic as­so­ciates, re­joice with them and con­tinue your daily work as those who wait upon God and serve while they wait. You have been my apos­tles, and you al­ways shall be, and I will re­mem­ber you in the king­dom to come.”

181:2.20And then Je­sus went over to Philip, who, stand­ing up, heard this mes­sage from his Mas­ter: “Philip, you have asked me many fool­ish ques­tions, but I have done my ut­most to an­swer ev­ery one, and now would I an­swer the last of such ques­tion­ings which have arisen in your most hon­est but un­spir­i­tual mind. All the time I have been com­ing around to­ward you, have you been say­ing to your­self, ‘What shall I ever do if the Mas­ter goes away and leaves us alone in the world?’ O, you of lit­tle faith! And yet you have al­most as much as many of your breth­ren. You have been a good stew­ard, Philip. You failed us only a few times, and one of those fail­ures we uti­lized to man­i­fest the Fa­ther’s glory. Your of­fice of stew­ard­ship is about over. You must soon more fully do the work you were called to do—the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom. Philip, you have al­ways wanted to be shown, and very soon shall you see great things. Far bet­ter that you should have seen all this by faith, but since you were sin­cere even in your ma­te­rial sight­ed­ness, you will live to see my words ful­filled. And then, when you are blessed with spir­i­tual vi­sion, go forth to your work, ded­i­cat­ing your life to the cause of lead­ing man­kind to search for God and to seek eter­nal re­al­i­ties with the eye of spir­i­tual faith and not with the eyes of the ma­te­rial mind. Re­mem­ber, Philip, you have a great mis­sion on earth, for the world is filled with those who look at life just as you have tended to. You have a great work to do, and when it is fin­ished in faith, you shall come to me in my king­dom, and I will take great plea­sure in show­ing you that which eye has not seen, ear heard, nor the mor­tal mind con­ceived. In the mean­time, be­come as a lit­tle child in the king­dom of the spirit and per­mit me, as the spirit of the new teacher, to lead you for­ward in the spir­i­tual king­dom. And in this way will I be able to do much for you which I was not able to ac­com­plish when I so­journed with you as a mor­tal of the realm. And al­ways re­mem­ber, Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther.”

181:2.21Then went the Mas­ter over to Na­than­iel. As Na­than­iel stood up, Je­sus bade him be seated and, sit­ting down by his side, said: “Na­than­iel, you have learned to live above prej­u­dice and to prac­tice in­creased tol­er­ance since you be­came my apos­tle. But there is much more for you to learn. You have been a bless­ing to your fel­lows in that they have al­ways been ad­mon­ished by your con­sis­tent sin­cer­ity. When I have gone, it may be that your frank­ness will in­ter­fere with your get­ting along well with your breth­ren, both old and new. You should learn that the ex­pres­sion of even a good thought must be mod­u­lated in ac­cor­dance with the in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment of the hearer. Sin­cer­ity is most ser­vice­able in the work of the king­dom when it is wed­ded to dis­cre­tion.

181:2.22“If you would learn to work with your breth­ren, you might ac­com­plish more per­ma­nent things, but if you find your­self go­ing off in quest of those who think as you do, in that event ded­i­cate your life to prov­ing that the God-know­ing dis­ci­ple can be­come a king­dom builder even when alone in the world and wholly iso­lated from his fel­low be­liev­ers. I know you will be faith­ful to the end, and I will some day wel­come you to the en­larged ser­vice of my king­dom on high.”

181:2.23Then Na­than­iel spoke, ask­ing Je­sus this ques­tion: “I have lis­tened to your teach­ing ever since you first called me to the ser­vice of this king­dom, but I hon­estly can­not un­der­stand the full mean­ing of all you tell us. I do not know what to ex­pect next, and I think most of my breth­ren are like­wise per­plexed, but they hes­i­tate to con­fess their con­fu­sion. Can you help me?” Je­sus, putting his hand on Na­than­iel’s shoul­der, said: “My friend, it is not strange that you should en­counter per­plex­ity in your at­tempt to grasp the mean­ing of my spir­i­tual teach­ings since you are so hand­i­capped by your pre­con­cep­tions of Jew­ish tra­di­tion and so con­fused by your per­sis­tent ten­dency to in­ter­pret my gospel in ac­cor­dance with the teach­ings of the scribes and Phar­isees.

181:2.24“I have taught you much by word of mouth, and I have lived my life among you. I have done all that can be done to en­lighten your minds and lib­er­ate your souls, and what you have not been able to get from my teach­ings and my life, you must now pre­pare to ac­quire at the hand of that mas­ter of all teach­ers—ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. And in all of this new ex­pe­ri­ence which now awaits you, I will go be­fore you and the Spirit of Truth shall be with you. Fear not; that which you now fail to com­pre­hend, the new teacher, when he has come, will re­veal to you through­out the re­main­der of your life on earth and on through your train­ing in the eter­nal ages.”

182:1.6“And now, my Fa­ther, I would pray not only for these eleven men but also for all oth­ers who now be­lieve, or who may here­after be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom through the word of their fu­ture min­istry. I want them all to be one, even as you and I are one. You are in me and I am in you, and I de­sire that these be­liev­ers like­wise be in us; that both of our spir­its in­dwell them. If my chil­dren are one as we are one, and if they love one an­other as I have loved them, all men will then be­lieve that I came forth from you and be will­ing to re­ceive the rev­e­la­tion of truth and glory which I have made. The glory which you gave me I have re­vealed to these be­liev­ers. As you have lived with me in spirit, so have I lived with them in the flesh. As you have been one with me, so have I been one with them, and so will the new teacher ever be one with them and in them. And all this have I done that my breth­ren in the flesh may know that the Fa­ther loves them even as does the Son, and that you love them even as you love me. Fa­ther, work with me to save these be­liev­ers that they may pres­ently come to be with me in glory and then go on to join you in the Par­a­dise em­brace. Those who serve with me in hu­mil­i­a­tion, I would have with me in glory so that they may see all you have given into my hands as the eter­nal har­vest of the seed sow­ing of time in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. I long to show my earthly breth­ren the glory I had with you be­fore the found­ing of this world. This world knows very lit­tle of you, righ­teous Fa­ther, but I know you, and I have made you known to these be­liev­ers, and they will make known your name to other gen­er­a­tions. And now I prom­ise them that you will be with them in the world even as you have been with me—even so.”

190:5.4As they walked along, Je­sus said to them: “How slow you are to com­pre­hend the truth! When you tell me that it is about the teach­ings and work of this man that you have your dis­cus­sions, then may I en­lighten you since I am more than fa­mil­iar with these teach­ings. Do you not re­mem­ber that this Je­sus al­ways taught that his king­dom was not of this world, and that all men, be­ing the sons of God, should find lib­erty and free­dom in the spir­i­tual joy of the fel­low­ship of the broth­er­hood of lov­ing ser­vice in this new king­dom of the truth of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s love? Do you not re­call how this Son of Man pro­claimed the sal­va­tion of God for all men, min­is­ter­ing to the sick and af­flicted and set­ting free those who were bound by fear and en­slaved by evil? Do you not know that this man of Naz­a­reth told his dis­ci­ples that he must go to Je­ru­sa­lem, be de­liv­ered up to his en­e­mies, who would put him to death, and that he would arise on the third day? Have you not been told all this? And have you never read in the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing this day of sal­va­tion for Jew and gen­tile, where it says that in him shall all the fam­i­lies of the earth be blessed; that he will hear the cry of the needy and save the souls of the poor who seek him; that all na­tions shall call him blessed? That such a De­liv­erer shall be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. That he will feed the flock like a true shep­herd, gath­er­ing the lambs in his arms and ten­derly car­ry­ing them in his bo­som. That he will open the eyes of the spir­i­tu­ally blind and bring the pris­on­ers of de­spair out into full lib­erty and light; that all who sit in dark­ness shall see the great light of eter­nal sal­va­tion. That he will bind up the bro­ken­hearted, pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives of sin, and open up the prison to those who are en­slaved by fear and bound by evil. That he will com­fort those who mourn and be­stow upon them the joy of sal­va­tion in the place of sor­row and heav­i­ness. That he shall be the de­sire of all na­tions and the ev­er­last­ing joy of those who seek righ­teous­ness. That this Son of truth and righ­teous­ness shall rise upon the world with heal­ing light and sav­ing power; even that he will save his peo­ple from their sins; that he will re­ally seek and save those who are lost. That he will not de­stroy the weak but min­is­ter sal­va­tion to all who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness. That those who be­lieve in him shall have eter­nal life. That he will pour out his spirit upon all flesh, and that this Spirit of Truth shall be in each be­liever a well of wa­ter, spring­ing up into ev­er­last­ing life. Did you not un­der­stand how great was the gospel of the king­dom which this man de­liv­ered to you? Do you not per­ceive how great a sal­va­tion has come upon you?”

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.

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

191:6.3“As the Fa­ther sent me into this world, even so now send I you. You are all called to carry the good news to those who sit in dark­ness. This gospel of the king­dom be­longs to all who be­lieve it; it shall not be com­mit­ted to the cus­tody of mere priests. Soon will the Spirit of Truth come upon you, and he shall lead you into all truth. Go you, there­fore, into all the world preach­ing this gospel, and lo, I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages.”

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

193:5.2“I bade you tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til you were en­dowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my so­journ the Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall be­gin the new procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, first in Je­ru­sa­lem and then to the ut­ter­most parts of the world. Love men with the love where­with I have loved you and serve your fel­low mor­tals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives im­pel souls to be­lieve the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are breth­ren. Re­mem­ber all I have taught you and the life I have lived among you. My love over­shad­ows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell.”

Paper 194, Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, is cited whole. Read it in the reader ›

194:0.1About one o’clock, as the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers were en­gaged in prayer, they all be­came aware of a strange pres­ence in the room. At the same time these dis­ci­ples all be­came con­scious of a new and pro­found sense of spir­i­tual joy, se­cu­rity, and con­fi­dence. This new con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual strength was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a strong urge to go out and pub­licly pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and the good news that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

194:0.2Pe­ter stood up and de­clared that this must be the com­ing of the Spirit of Truth which the Mas­ter had prom­ised them and pro­posed that they go to the tem­ple and be­gin the procla­ma­tion of the good news com­mit­ted to their hands. And they did just what Pe­ter sug­gested.

194:0.3These men had been trained and in­structed that the gospel which they should preach was the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of man, but at just this mo­ment of spir­i­tual ec­stasy and per­sonal tri­umph, the best tid­ings, the great­est news, these men could think of was the fact of the risen Mas­ter. And so they went forth, en­dowed with power from on high, preach­ing glad tid­ings to the peo­ple—even sal­va­tion through Je­sus—but they un­in­ten­tion­ally stum­bled into the er­ror of sub­sti­tut­ing some of the facts as­so­ci­ated with the gospel for the gospel mes­sage it­self. Pe­ter un­wit­tingly led off in this mis­take, and oth­ers fol­lowed af­ter him on down to Paul, who cre­ated a new re­li­gion out of the new ver­sion of the good news.

194:0.4–5 · two paragraphs not cited here ·

194:0.4The gospel of the king­dom is: the fact of the fa­ther­hood of God, cou­pled with the re­sul­tant truth of the son­ship-broth­er­hood of men. Chris­tian­ity, as it de­vel­oped from that day, is: the fact of God as the Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­liever-fel­low­ship with the risen and glo­ri­fied Christ.

194:0.5It is not strange that these spirit-in­fused men should have seized upon this op­por­tu­nity to ex­press their feel­ings of tri­umph over the forces which had sought to de­stroy their Mas­ter and end the in­flu­ence of his teach­ings. At such a time as this it was eas­ier to re­mem­ber their per­sonal as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus and to be thrilled with the as­sur­ance that the Mas­ter still lived, that their friend­ship had not ended, and that the spirit had in­deed come upon them even as he had prom­ised.

194:0.6These be­liev­ers felt them­selves sud­denly trans­lated into an­other world, a new ex­is­tence of joy, power, and glory. The Mas­ter had told them the king­dom would come with power, and some of them thought they were be­gin­ning to dis­cern what he meant.

194:1.1The apos­tles had been in hid­ing for forty days. This day hap­pened to be the Jew­ish fes­ti­val of Pen­te­cost, and thou­sands of vis­i­tors from all parts of the world were in Je­ru­sa­lem. Many ar­rived for this feast, but a ma­jor­ity had tar­ried in the city since the Pass­over. Now these fright­ened apos­tles emerged from their weeks of seclu­sion to ap­pear boldly in the tem­ple, where they be­gan to preach the new mes­sage of a risen Mes­siah. And all the dis­ci­ples were like­wise con­scious of hav­ing re­ceived some new spir­i­tual en­dow­ment of in­sight and power.

194:2.1Je­sus lived on earth and taught a gospel which re­deemed man from the su­per­sti­tion that he was a child of the devil and el­e­vated him to the dig­nity of a faith son of God. Je­sus’ mes­sage, as he preached it and lived it in his day, was an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties in that day of its state­ment. And now that he has per­son­ally left the world, he sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is de­signed to live in man and, for each new gen­er­a­tion, to re­state the Je­sus mes­sage so that ev­ery new group of mor­tals to ap­pear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date ver­sion of the gospel, just such per­sonal en­light­en­ment and group guid­ance as will prove to be an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s ever-new and var­ied spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties.

194:2.2The first mis­sion of this spirit is, of course, to fos­ter and per­son­al­ize truth, for it is the com­pre­hen­sion of truth that con­sti­tutes the high­est form of hu­man lib­erty. Next, it is the pur­pose of this spirit to de­stroy the be­liever’s feel­ing of or­phan­hood. Je­sus hav­ing been among men, all be­liev­ers would ex­pe­ri­ence a sense of lone­li­ness had not the Spirit of Truth come to dwell in men’s hearts.

194:2.3This be­stowal of the Son’s spirit ef­fec­tively pre­pared all nor­mal men’s minds for the sub­se­quent uni­ver­sal be­stowal of the Fa­ther’s spirit (the Ad­juster) upon all man­kind. In a cer­tain sense, this Spirit of Truth is the spirit of both the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Cre­ator Son.

194:2.4Do not make the mis­take of ex­pect­ing to be­come strongly in­tel­lec­tu­ally con­scious of the out­poured Spirit of Truth. The spirit never cre­ates a con­scious­ness of him­self, only a con­scious­ness of Mi­chael, the Son. From the be­gin­ning Je­sus taught that the spirit would not speak of him­self. The proof, there­fore, of your fel­low­ship with the Spirit of Truth is not to be found in your con­scious­ness of this spirit but rather in your ex­pe­ri­ence of en­hanced fel­low­ship with Mi­chael.

194:2.5The spirit also came to help men re­call and un­der­stand the words of the Mas­ter as well as to il­lu­mi­nate and rein­ter­pret his life on earth.

194:2.6Next, the Spirit of Truth came to help the be­liever to wit­ness to the re­al­i­ties of Je­sus’ teach­ings and his life as he lived it in the flesh, and as he now again lives it anew and afresh in the in­di­vid­ual be­liever of each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion of the spirit-filled sons of God.

194:2.7Thus it ap­pears that the Spirit of Truth comes re­ally to lead all be­liev­ers into all truth, into the ex­pand­ing knowl­edge of the ex­pe­ri­ence of the liv­ing and grow­ing spir­i­tual con­scious­ness of the re­al­ity of eter­nal and as­cend­ing son­ship with God.

194:2.8–10 · three paragraphs not cited here ·

194:2.8Je­sus lived a life which is a rev­e­la­tion of man sub­mit­ted to the Fa­ther’s will, not an ex­am­ple for any man lit­er­ally to at­tempt to fol­low. This life in the flesh, to­gether with his death on the cross and sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion, pres­ently be­came a new gospel of the ran­som which had thus been paid in or­der to pur­chase man back from the clutch of the evil one—from the con­dem­na­tion of an of­fended God. Nev­er­the­less, even though the gospel did be­come greatly dis­torted, it re­mains a fact that this new mes­sage about Je­sus car­ried along with it many of the fun­da­men­tal truths and teach­ings of his ear­lier gospel of the king­dom. And, sooner or later, these con­cealed truths of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men will emerge to ef­fec­tu­ally trans­form the civ­i­liza­tion of all man­kind.

194:2.9But these mis­takes of the in­tel­lect in no way in­ter­fered with the be­liever’s great prog­ress in growth in spirit. In less than a month af­ter the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, the apos­tles made more in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress than dur­ing their al­most four years of per­sonal and lov­ing as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Nei­ther did this sub­sti­tu­tion of the fact of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus for the sav­ing gospel truth of son­ship with God in any way in­ter­fere with the rapid spread of their teach­ings; on the con­trary, this over­shad­ow­ing of Je­sus’ mes­sage by the new teach­ings about his per­son and res­ur­rec­tion seemed greatly to fa­cil­i­tate the preach­ing of the good news.

194:2.10The term “bap­tism of the spirit,” which came into such gen­eral use about this time, merely sig­ni­fied the con­scious re­cep­tion of this gift of the Spirit of Truth and the per­sonal ac­knowl­edg­ment of this new spir­i­tual power as an aug­men­ta­tion of all spir­i­tual in­flu­ences pre­vi­ously ex­pe­ri­enced by God-know­ing souls.

194:2.11Since the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, man is sub­ject to the teach­ing and guid­ance of a three­fold spirit en­dow­ment: the spirit of the Fa­ther, the Thought Ad­juster; the spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Truth; the spirit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

194:2.12In a way, man­kind is sub­ject to the dou­ble in­flu­ence of the sev­en­fold ap­peal of the uni­verse spirit in­flu­ences. The early evo­lu­tion­ary races of mor­tals are sub­ject to the pro­gres­sive con­tact of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. As man pro­gresses up­ward in the scale of in­tel­li­gence and spir­i­tual per­cep­tion, there even­tu­ally come to hover over him and dwell within him the seven higher spirit in­flu­ences. And these seven spir­its of the ad­vanc­ing worlds are:

194:3.1Many queer and strange teach­ings be­came as­so­ci­ated with the early nar­ra­tives of the day of Pen­te­cost. In sub­se­quent times the events of this day, on which the Spirit of Truth, the new teacher, came to dwell with man­kind, have be­come con­fused with the fool­ish out­breaks of ram­pant emo­tion­al­ism. The chief mis­sion of this out­poured spirit of the Fa­ther and the Son is to teach men about the truths of the Fa­ther’s love and the Son’s mercy. These are the truths of di­vin­ity which men can com­pre­hend more fully than all the other di­vine traits of char­ac­ter. The Spirit of Truth is con­cerned pri­mar­ily with the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s spirit na­ture and the Son’s moral char­ac­ter. The Cre­ator Son, in the flesh, re­vealed God to men; the Spirit of Truth, in the heart, re­veals the Cre­ator Son to men. When man yields the “fruits of the spirit” in his life, he is sim­ply show­ing forth the traits which the Mas­ter man­i­fested in his own earthly life. When Je­sus was on earth, he lived his life as one per­son­al­ity—Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. As the in­dwelling spirit of the “new teacher,” the Mas­ter has, since Pen­te­cost, been able to live his life anew in the ex­pe­ri­ence of ev­ery truth-taught be­liever.

194:3.2–4 · three paragraphs not cited here ·

194:3.2Many things which hap­pen in the course of a hu­man life are hard to un­der­stand, dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with the idea that this is a uni­verse in which truth pre­vails and in which righ­teous­ness tri­umphs. It so of­ten ap­pears that slan­der, lies, dis­hon­esty, and un­righ­teous­ness—sin—pre­vail. Does faith, af­ter all, tri­umph over evil, sin, and in­iq­uity? It does. And the life and death of Je­sus are the eter­nal proof that the truth of good­ness and the faith of the spirit-led crea­ture will al­ways be vin­di­cated. They taunted Je­sus on the cross, say­ing, “Let us see if God will come and de­liver him.” It looked dark on that day of the cru­ci­fix­ion, but it was glo­ri­ously bright on the res­ur­rec­tion morn­ing; it was still brighter and more joy­ous on the day of Pen­te­cost. The re­li­gions of pes­simistic de­spair seek to ob­tain re­lease from the bur­dens of life; they crave ex­tinc­tion in end­less slum­ber and rest. These are the re­li­gions of prim­i­tive fear and dread. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is a new gospel of faith to be pro­claimed to strug­gling hu­man­ity. This new re­li­gion is founded on faith, hope, and love.

194:3.3To Je­sus, mor­tal life had dealt its hard­est, cru­elest, and bit­ter­est blows; and this man met these min­is­tra­tions of de­spair with faith, cour­age, and the unswerv­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion to do his Fa­ther’s will. Je­sus met life in all its ter­ri­ble re­al­ity and mas­tered it—even in death. He did not use re­li­gion as a re­lease from life. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does not seek to es­cape this life in or­der to en­joy the wait­ing bliss of an­other ex­is­tence. The re­li­gion of Je­sus pro­vides the joy and peace of an­other and spir­i­tual ex­is­tence to en­hance and en­no­ble the life which men now live in the flesh.

194:3.4If re­li­gion is an opi­ate to the peo­ple, it is not the re­li­gion of Je­sus. On the cross he re­fused to drink the dead­en­ing drug, and his spirit, poured out upon all flesh, is a mighty world in­flu­ence which leads man up­ward and urges him on­ward. The spir­i­tual for­ward urge is the most pow­er­ful driv­ing force pres­ent in this world; the truth-learn­ing be­liever is the one pro­gres­sive and ag­gres­sive soul on earth.

194:3.5On the day of Pen­te­cost the re­li­gion of Je­sus broke all na­tional re­stric­tions and racial fet­ters. It is for­ever true, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.” On this day the Spirit of Truth be­came the per­sonal gift from the Mas­ter to ev­ery mor­tal. This spirit was be­stowed for the pur­pose of qual­i­fy­ing be­liev­ers more ef­fec­tively to preach the gospel of the king­dom, but they mis­took the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­ceiv­ing the out­poured spirit for a part of the new gospel which they were un­con­sciously for­mu­lat­ing.

194:3.6Do not over­look the fact that the Spirit of Truth was be­stowed upon all sin­cere be­liev­ers; this gift of the spirit did not come only to the apos­tles. The one hun­dred and twenty men and women as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber all re­ceived the new teacher, as did all the hon­est of heart through­out the whole world. This new teacher was be­stowed upon man­kind, and ev­ery soul re­ceived him in ac­cor­dance with the love for truth and the ca­pac­ity to grasp and com­pre­hend spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. At last, true re­li­gion is de­liv­ered from the cus­tody of priests and all sa­cred classes and finds its real man­i­fes­ta­tion in the in­di­vid­ual souls of men.

194:3.7 · one paragraph not cited here ·

194:3.7The re­li­gion of Je­sus fos­ters the high­est type of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion in that it cre­ates the high­est type of spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity and pro­claims the sa­cred­ness of that per­son.

194:3.8The com­ing of the Spirit of Truth on Pen­te­cost made pos­si­ble a re­li­gion which is nei­ther rad­i­cal nor con­ser­va­tive; it is nei­ther the old nor the new; it is to be dom­i­nated nei­ther by the old nor the young. The fact of Je­sus’ earthly life pro­vides a fixed point for the an­chor of time, while the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth pro­vides for the ev­er­last­ing ex­pan­sion and end­less growth of the re­li­gion which he lived and the gospel which he pro­claimed. The spirit guides into all truth; he is the teacher of an ex­pand­ing and al­ways-grow­ing re­li­gion of end­less prog­ress and di­vine un­fold­ing. This new teacher will be for­ever un­fold­ing to the truth-seek­ing be­liever that which was so di­vinely folded up in the per­son and na­ture of the Son of Man.

194:3.9 · one paragraph not cited here ·

194:3.9The man­i­fes­ta­tions as­so­ci­ated with the be­stowal of the “new teacher,” and the re­cep­tion of the apos­tles’ preach­ing by the men of var­i­ous races and na­tions gath­ered to­gether at Je­ru­sa­lem, in­di­cate the uni­ver­sal­ity of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. The gospel of the king­dom was to be iden­ti­fied with no par­tic­u­lar race, cul­ture, or lan­guage. This day of Pen­te­cost wit­nessed the great ef­fort of the spirit to lib­er­ate the re­li­gion of Je­sus from its in­her­ited Jew­ish fet­ters. Even af­ter this dem­on­stra­tion of pour­ing out the spirit upon all flesh, the apos­tles at first en­deav­ored to im­pose the re­quire­ments of Ju­daism upon their con­verts. Even Paul had trou­ble with his Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren be­cause he re­fused to sub­ject the gen­tiles to these Jew­ish prac­tices. No re­vealed re­li­gion can spread to all the world when it makes the se­ri­ous mis­take of be­com­ing per­me­ated with some na­tional cul­ture or as­so­ci­ated with es­tab­lished racial, so­cial, or eco­nomic prac­tices.

194:3.10The be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth was in­de­pen­dent of all forms, cer­e­monies, sa­cred places, and spe­cial be­hav­ior by those who re­ceived the full­ness of its man­i­fes­ta­tion. When the spirit came upon those as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber, they were sim­ply sit­ting there, hav­ing just been en­gaged in silent prayer. The spirit was be­stowed in the coun­try as well as in the city. It was not nec­es­sary for the apos­tles to go apart to a lonely place for years of soli­tary med­i­ta­tion in or­der to re­ceive the spirit. For all time, Pen­te­cost dis­as­so­ci­ates the idea of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence from the no­tion of es­pe­cially fa­vor­able en­vi­ron­ments.

194:3.11Pen­te­cost, with its spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, was de­signed for­ever to loose the re­li­gion of the Mas­ter from all de­pen­dence upon phys­i­cal force; the teach­ers of this new re­li­gion are now equipped with spir­i­tual weapons. They are to go out to con­quer the world with un­fail­ing for­give­ness, match­less good will, and abound­ing love. They are equipped to over­come evil with good, to van­quish hate by love, to de­stroy fear with a coura­geous and liv­ing faith in truth. Je­sus had al­ready taught his fol­low­ers that his re­li­gion was never pas­sive; al­ways were his dis­ci­ples to be ac­tive and pos­i­tive in their min­istry of mercy and in their man­i­fes­ta­tions of love. No longer did these be­liev­ers look upon Yah­weh as “the Lord of Hosts.” They now re­garded the eter­nal De­ity as the “God and Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ.” They made that prog­ress, at least, even if they did in some mea­sure fail fully to grasp the truth that God is also the spir­i­tual Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual.

194:3.12–18 · seven paragraphs not cited here ·

194:3.12Pen­te­cost en­dowed mor­tal man with the power to for­give per­sonal in­juries, to keep sweet in the midst of the gravest in­jus­tice, to re­main un­moved in the face of ap­palling dan­ger, and to chal­lenge the evils of hate and anger by the fear­less acts of love and for­bear­ance. Uran­tia has passed through the rav­ages of great and de­struc­tive wars in its his­tory. All par­tic­i­pants in these ter­ri­ble strug­gles met with de­feat. There was but one vic­tor; there was only one who came out of these em­bit­tered strug­gles with an en­hanced rep­u­ta­tion—that was Je­sus of Naz­a­reth and his gospel of over­com­ing evil with good. The se­cret of a bet­ter civ­i­liza­tion is bound up in the Mas­ter’s teach­ings of the broth­er­hood of man, the good will of love and mu­tual trust.

194:3.13Up to Pen­te­cost, re­li­gion had re­vealed only man seek­ing for God; since Pen­te­cost, man is still search­ing for God, but there shines out over the world the spec­ta­cle of God also seek­ing for man and send­ing his spirit to dwell within him when he has found him.

194:3.14Be­fore the teach­ings of Je­sus which cul­mi­nated in Pen­te­cost, women had lit­tle or no spir­i­tual stand­ing in the tenets of the older re­li­gions. Af­ter Pen­te­cost, in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom woman stood be­fore God on an equal­ity with man. Among the one hun­dred and twenty who re­ceived this spe­cial vis­i­ta­tion of the spirit were many of the women dis­ci­ples, and they shared these bless­ings equally with the men be­liev­ers. No longer can man pre­sume to mo­nop­o­lize the min­istry of re­li­gious ser­vice. The Phar­isee might go on thank­ing God that he was “not born a woman, a leper, or a gen­tile,” but among the fol­low­ers of Je­sus woman has been for­ever set free from all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tions based on sex. Pen­te­cost oblit­er­ated all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion founded on racial dis­tinc­tion, cul­tural dif­fer­ences, so­cial caste, or sex prej­u­dice. No won­der these be­liev­ers in the new re­li­gion would cry out, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.”

194:3.15Both the mother and brother of Je­sus were pres­ent among the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers, and as mem­bers of this com­mon group of dis­ci­ples, they also re­ceived the out­poured spirit. They re­ceived no more of the good gift than did their fel­lows. No spe­cial gift was be­stowed upon the mem­bers of Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily. Pen­te­cost marked the end of spe­cial priest­hoods and all be­lief in sa­cred fam­i­lies.

194:3.16Be­fore Pen­te­cost the apos­tles had given up much for Je­sus. They had sac­ri­ficed their homes, fam­i­lies, friends, worldly goods, and po­si­tions. At Pen­te­cost they gave them­selves to God, and the Fa­ther and the Son re­sponded by giv­ing them­selves to man—send­ing their spir­its to live within men. This ex­pe­ri­ence of los­ing self and find­ing the spirit was not one of emo­tion; it was an act of in­tel­li­gent self-sur­ren­der and un­re­served con­se­cra­tion.

194:3.17Pen­te­cost was the call to spir­i­tual unity among gospel be­liev­ers. When the spirit de­scended on the dis­ci­ples at Je­ru­sa­lem, the same thing hap­pened in Phil­a­del­phia, Alexan­dria, and at all other places where true be­liev­ers dwelt. It was lit­er­ally true that “there was but one heart and soul among the mul­ti­tude of the be­liev­ers.” The re­li­gion of Je­sus is the most pow­er­ful uni­fy­ing in­flu­ence the world has ever known.

194:3.18Pen­te­cost was de­signed to lessen the self-as­sertive­ness of in­di­vid­u­als, groups, na­tions, and races. It is this spirit of self-as­sertive­ness which so in­creases in ten­sion that it pe­ri­od­i­cally breaks loose in de­struc­tive wars. Man­kind can be uni­fied only by the spir­i­tual ap­proach, and the Spirit of Truth is a world in­flu­ence which is uni­ver­sal.

194:3.19The com­ing of the Spirit of Truth pu­ri­fies the hu­man heart and leads the re­cip­i­ent to for­mu­late a life pur­pose sin­gle to the will of God and the wel­fare of men. The ma­te­rial spirit of self­ish­ness has been swal­lowed up in this new spir­i­tual be­stowal of self­less­ness. Pen­te­cost, then and now, sig­ni­fies that the Je­sus of his­tory has be­come the di­vine Son of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. The joy of this out­poured spirit, when it is con­sciously ex­pe­ri­enced in hu­man life, is a tonic for health, a stim­u­lus for mind, and an un­fail­ing en­ergy for the soul.

Onward

See also Creator Sons; Pentecost (bestowal of Spirit of Truth)

Cited alongside: Jesus, Thought Adjusters, faith sons of God, Creator Sons, gospel, truth, demon possession, Holy Spirit