spiritual rebirth

100:5.1The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the the­o­logic sense but lost in the di­rec­tional mean­ing, wan­der­ing about in con­fu­sion among the isms and cults of a frus­trated philo­sophic era. Too few have learned how to in­stall a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing in the place of re­li­gious au­thor­ity. (The sym­bols of so­cial­ized re­li­gion are not to be de­spised as chan­nels of growth, al­beit the river bed is not the river.)

100:5.2The pro­gres­sion of re­li­gious growth leads from stag­na­tion through con­flict to co-or­di­na­tion, from in­se­cu­rity to un­doubt­ing faith, from con­fu­sion of cos­mic con­scious­ness to uni­fi­ca­tion of per­son­al­ity, from the tem­po­ral ob­jec­tive to the eter­nal, from the bond­age of fear to the lib­erty of di­vine son­ship.

100:5.3It should be made clear that pro­fes­sions of loy­alty to the su­preme ide­als—the psy­chic, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual aware­ness of God-con­scious­ness—may be a nat­u­ral and grad­ual growth or may some­times be ex­pe­ri­enced at cer­tain junc­tures, as in a cri­sis. The Apos­tle Paul ex­pe­ri­enced just such a sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar con­ver­sion that event­ful day on the Da­mas­cus road. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence the night he sat alone and sought to pen­e­trate the mys­tery of fi­nal truth. Many oth­ers have had like ex­pe­ri­ences, and many true be­liev­ers have pro­gressed in the spirit with­out sud­den con­ver­sion.

100:5.4Most of the spec­tac­u­lar phe­nom­ena as­so­ci­ated with so-called re­li­gious con­ver­sions are en­tirely psy­cho­logic in na­ture, but now and then there do oc­cur ex­pe­ri­ences which are also spir­i­tual in ori­gin. When the men­tal mo­bi­liza­tion is ab­so­lutely to­tal on any level of the psy­chic up­reach to­ward spirit at­tain­ment, when there ex­ists per­fec­tion of the hu­man mo­ti­va­tion of loy­al­ties to the di­vine idea, then there very of­ten oc­curs a sud­den down-grasp of the in­dwelling spirit to syn­chro­nize with the con­cen­trated and con­se­crated pur­pose of the super­con­scious mind of the be­liev­ing mor­tal. And it is such ex­pe­ri­ences of uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena that con­sti­tute the con­ver­sion which con­sists in fac­tors over and above purely psy­cho­logic in­volve­ment.

100:5.5But emo­tion alone is a false con­ver­sion; one must have faith as well as feel­ing. To the ex­tent that such psy­chic mo­bi­liza­tion is par­tial, and in so far as such hu­man-loy­alty mo­ti­va­tion is in­com­plete, to that ex­tent will the ex­pe­ri­ence of con­ver­sion be a blended in­tel­lec­tual, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual re­al­ity.

100:5.6If one is dis­posed to rec­og­nize a the­o­ret­i­cal sub­con­scious mind as a prac­ti­cal work­ing hy­poth­e­sis in the oth­er­wise uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual life, then, to be con­sis­tent, one should pos­tu­late a sim­i­lar and cor­re­spond­ing realm of as­cend­ing in­tel­lec­tual ac­tiv­ity as the super­con­scious level, the zone of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the in­dwelling spirit en­tity, the Thought Ad­juster. The great dan­ger in all these psy­chic spec­u­la­tions is that vi­sions and other so-called mys­tic ex­pe­ri­ences, along with ex­traor­di­nary dreams, may be re­garded as di­vine com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the hu­man mind. In times past, di­vine be­ings have re­vealed them­selves to cer­tain God-know­ing per­sons, not be­cause of their mys­tic trances or mor­bid vi­sions, but in spite of all these phe­nom­ena.

100:5.7In con­trast with con­ver­sion-seek­ing, the bet­ter ap­proach to the mor­ontia zones of pos­si­ble con­tact with the Thought Ad­juster would be through liv­ing faith and sin­cere wor­ship, whole­hearted and un­selfish prayer. Al­to­gether too much of the up­rush of the mem­o­ries of the un­con­scious lev­els of the hu­man mind has been mis­taken for di­vine rev­e­la­tions and spirit lead­ings.

100:5.8There is great dan­ger as­so­ci­ated with the ha­bit­ual prac­tice of re­li­gious day­dream­ing; mys­ti­cism may be­come a tech­nique of re­al­ity avoid­ance, al­beit it has some­times been a means of gen­uine spir­i­tual com­mu­nion. Short sea­sons of re­treat from the busy scenes of life may not be se­ri­ously dan­ger­ous, but pro­longed iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity is most un­de­sir­able. Un­der no cir­cum­stances should the trance­like state of vi­sion­ary con­scious­ness be cul­ti­vated as a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

100:5.9The char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mys­ti­cal state are dif­fu­sion of con­scious­ness with vivid is­lands of fo­cal at­ten­tion op­er­at­ing on a com­par­a­tively pas­sive in­tel­lect. All of this grav­i­tates con­scious­ness to­ward the sub­con­scious rather than in the di­rec­tion of the zone of spir­i­tual con­tact, the super­con­scious. Many mys­tics have car­ried their men­tal dis­so­ci­a­tion to the level of ab­nor­mal men­tal man­i­fes­ta­tions.

100:5.10The more health­ful at­ti­tude of spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion is to be found in re­flec­tive wor­ship and in the prayer of thanks­giv­ing. The di­rect com­mu­nion with one’s Thought Ad­juster, such as oc­curred in the later years of Je­sus’ life in the flesh, should not be con­fused with these so-called mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences. The fac­tors which con­tribute to the ini­ti­a­tion of mys­tic com­mu­nion are in­dica­tive of the dan­ger of such psy­chic states. The mys­tic sta­tus is fa­vored by such things as: phys­i­cal fa­tigue, fast­ing, psy­chic dis­so­ci­a­tion, pro­found aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences, vivid sex im­pulses, fear, anx­i­ety, rage, and wild danc­ing. Much of the ma­te­rial aris­ing as a re­sult of such pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion has its ori­gin in the sub­con­scious mind.

100:5.11How­ever fa­vor­able may have been the con­di­tions for mys­tic phe­nom­ena, it should be clearly un­der­stood that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth never re­sorted to such meth­ods for com­mu­nion with the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Je­sus had no sub­con­scious delu­sions or super­con­scious il­lu­sions.

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

• transformation may occur gradually or suddenly

65:8.6When phys­i­cal con­di­tions are ripe, sud­den men­tal evo­lu­tions may take place; when mind sta­tus is pro­pi­tious, sud­den spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tions may oc­cur; when spir­i­tual val­ues re­ceive proper rec­og­ni­tion, then cos­mic mean­ings be­come dis­cern­i­ble, and in­creas­ingly the per­son­al­ity is re­leased from the hand­i­caps of time and de­liv­ered from the lim­i­ta­tions of space.

• transformation may occur gradually or suddenly

100:2.8Af­ter such spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, whether se­cured by grad­ual growth or spe­cific cri­sis, there oc­curs a new ori­en­ta­tion of per­son­al­ity as well as the de­vel­op­ment of a new stan­dard of val­ues. Such spirit-born in­di­vid­u­als are so re­mo­ti­vated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fond­est am­bi­tions per­ish and their keen­est hopes crash; they pos­i­tively know that such catas­tro­phes are but the redi­rect­ing cat­a­clysms which wreck one’s tem­po­ral cre­ations pre­lim­i­nary to the rear­ing of the more no­ble and en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of a new and more sub­lime level of uni­verse at­tain­ment.

• so-called conversion usually result of mental conflict, emotional repression
• some stormy, some natural

103:2.1Re­li­gion is func­tional in the hu­man mind and has been re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence prior to its ap­pear­ance in hu­man con­scious­ness. A child has been in ex­is­tence about nine months be­fore it ex­pe­ri­ences birth. But the “birth” of re­li­gion is not sud­den; it is rather a grad­ual emer­gence. Nev­er­the­less, sooner or later there is a “birth day.” You do not en­ter the king­dom of heaven un­less you have been “born again”—born of the Spirit. Many spir­i­tual births are ac­com­pa­nied by much an­guish of spirit and marked psy­cho­log­i­cal per­tur­ba­tions, as many phys­i­cal births are char­ac­ter­ized by a “stormy la­bor” and other ab­nor­mal­i­ties of “de­liv­ery.” Other spir­i­tual births are a nat­u­ral and nor­mal growth of the rec­og­ni­tion of su­preme val­ues with an en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, al­beit no re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment oc­curs with­out con­scious ef­fort and pos­i­tive and in­di­vid­ual de­ter­mi­na­tions. Re­li­gion is never a pas­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, a neg­a­tive at­ti­tude. What is termed the “birth of re­li­gion” is not di­rectly as­so­ci­ated with so-called con­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences which usu­ally char­ac­ter­ize re­li­gious episodes oc­cur­ring later in life as a re­sult of men­tal con­flict, emo­tional re­pres­sion, and tem­per­a­men­tal up­heavals.

103:2.2But those per­sons who were so reared by their par­ents that they grew up in the con­scious­ness of be­ing chil­dren of a lov­ing heav­enly Fa­ther, should not look askance at their fel­low mor­tals who could only at­tain such con­scious­ness of fel­low­ship with God through a psy­cho­log­i­cal cri­sis, an emo­tional up­heaval.

• transformation may occur gradually or suddenly

129:4.2The purely hu­man re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—the per­sonal spir­i­tual growth—of the Son of Man well-nigh reached the apex of at­tain­ment dur­ing this, the twenty-ninth year. This ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment was a con­sis­tently grad­ual growth from the mo­ment of the ar­rival of his Thought Ad­juster un­til the day of the com­ple­tion and con­fir­ma­tion of that nat­u­ral and nor­mal hu­man re­la­tion­ship be­tween the ma­te­rial mind of man and the mind-en­dow­ment of the spirit—the phe­nom­e­non of the mak­ing of these two minds one, the ex­pe­ri­ence which the Son of Man at­tained in com­ple­tion and fi­nal­ity, as an in­car­nated mor­tal of the realm, on the day of his bap­tism in the Jor­dan.

• espousal of Adjuster’s leading

34:6.4Spir­i­tual forces unerringly seek and at­tain their own orig­i­nal lev­els. Hav­ing gone out from the Eter­nal, they are cer­tain to re­turn thereto, bring­ing with them all those chil­dren of time and space who have es­poused the lead­ing and teach­ing of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, those who have been truly “born of the Spirit,” the faith sons of God.

• receiving indwelling of God

34:6.7Those who have re­ceived and rec­og­nized the in­dwelling of God have been born of the Spirit. “You are the tem­ple of God, and the spirit of God dwells in you.” It is not enough that this spirit be poured out upon you; the di­vine Spirit must dom­i­nate and con­trol ev­ery phase of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• necessary to enter kingdom

142:6.4Je­sus an­swered Nicode­mus: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, Nicode­mus, ex­cept a man be born from above, he can­not see the king­dom of God.” Then replied Nicode­mus: “But how can a man be born again when he is old? He can­not en­ter a sec­ond time into his mother’s womb to be born.”

142:6.5Je­sus said: “Nev­er­the­less, I de­clare to you, ex­cept a man be born of the spirit, he can­not en­ter into the king­dom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. But you should not mar­vel that I said you must be born from above. When the wind blows, you hear the rus­tle of the leaves, but you do not see the wind—whence it comes or whither it goes—and so it is with ev­ery­one born of the spirit. With the eyes of the flesh you can be­hold the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the spirit, but you can­not ac­tu­ally dis­cern the spirit.”

• wholehearted choice of spirit guidance

142:6.7And Nicode­mus said: “But how can I be­gin to lay hold upon this spirit which is to re­make me in prepa­ra­tion for en­ter­ing into the king­dom?” Je­sus an­swered: “Al­ready does the spirit of the Fa­ther in heaven in­dwell you. If you would be led by this spirit from above, very soon would you be­gin to see with the eyes of the spirit, and then by the whole­hearted choice of spirit guid­ance would you be born of the spirit since your only pur­pose in liv­ing would be to do the will of your Fa­ther who is in heaven. And so find­ing your­self born of the spirit and hap­pily in the king­dom of God, you would be­gin to bear in your daily life the abun­dant fruits of the spirit.”

• essential to deliverance from evil

148:4.6“By na­ture, be­fore the re­birth of the spirit, mor­tal man is sub­ject to in­her­ent evil ten­den­cies, but such nat­u­ral im­per­fec­tions of be­hav­ior are nei­ther sin nor in­iq­uity. Mor­tal man is just be­gin­ning his long as­cent to the per­fec­tion of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. To be im­per­fect or par­tial in nat­u­ral en­dow­ment is not sin­ful. Man is in­deed sub­ject to evil, but he is in no sense the child of the evil one un­less he has know­ingly and de­lib­er­ately cho­sen the paths of sin and the life of in­iq­uity. Evil is in­her­ent in the nat­u­ral or­der of this world, but sin is an at­ti­tude of con­scious re­bel­lion which was brought to this world by those who fell from spir­i­tual light into gross dark­ness.

• essential to deliverance from evil

148:4.8“Men are, in­deed, by na­ture evil, but not nec­es­sar­ily sin­ful. The new birth—the bap­tism of the spirit—is es­sen­tial to de­liv­er­ance from evil and nec­es­sary for en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, but none of this de­tracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Nei­ther does this in­her­ent pres­ence of po­ten­tial evil mean that man is in some mys­te­ri­ous way es­tranged from the Fa­ther in heaven so that, as an alien, for­eigner, or stepchild, he must in some man­ner seek for le­gal adop­tion by the Fa­ther. All such no­tions are born, first, of your mis­un­der­stand­ing of the Fa­ther and, sec­ond, of your ig­no­rance of the ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny of man.

• receiving indwelling of God

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

• testing process of self-destruction and soul reconstruction

160:5.10I see in the teach­ings of Je­sus, re­li­gion at its best. This gospel en­ables us to seek for the true God and to find him. But are we will­ing to pay the price of this en­trance into the king­dom of heaven? Are we will­ing to be born again? to be re­made? Are we will­ing to be sub­ject to this ter­ri­ble and test­ing pro­cess of self-de­struc­tion and soul re­con­struc­tion? Has not the Mas­ter said: “Whoso would save his life must lose it. Think not that I have come to bring peace but rather a soul strug­gle”? True, af­ter we pay the price of ded­i­ca­tion to the Fa­ther’s will, we do ex­pe­ri­ence great peace pro­vided we con­tinue to walk in these spir­i­tual paths of con­se­crated liv­ing.

• necessary to enter kingdom

166:3.7Slowly the apos­tles and many of the dis­ci­ples were learn­ing the mean­ing of Je­sus’ early dec­la­ra­tion: “Un­less you are born again, born of the spirit, you can­not en­ter the king­dom of God.” Nev­er­the­less, to all who are hon­est of heart and sin­cere in faith, it re­mains eter­nally true: “Be­hold, I stand at the doors of men’s hearts and knock, and if any man will open to me, I will come in and sup with him and will feed him with the bread of life; we shall be one in spirit and pur­pose, and so shall we ever be breth­ren in the long and fruit­ful ser­vice of the search for the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.” And so, whether few or many are to be saved al­to­gether de­pends on whether few or many will heed the in­vi­ta­tion: “I am the door, I am the new and liv­ing way, and whoso­ever wills may en­ter to em­bark upon the end­less truth-search for eter­nal life.”

• conscious reception of Spirit of Truth

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.

• necessary to enter kingdom

195:10.6The call to the ad­ven­ture of build­ing a new and trans­formed hu­man so­ci­ety by means of the spir­i­tual re­birth of Je­sus’ broth­er­hood of the king­dom should thrill all who be­lieve in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his com­pan­ions in the flesh.

100:7.18Je­sus was the per­fectly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity. And to­day, as in Gal­i­lee, he con­tin­ues to unify mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence and to co-or­di­nate hu­man en­deav­ors. He uni­fies life, en­no­bles char­ac­ter, and sim­pli­fies ex­pe­ri­ence. He en­ters the hu­man mind to el­e­vate, trans­form, and trans­fig­ure it. It is lit­er­ally true: “If any man has Christ Je­sus within him, he is a new crea­ture; old things are pass­ing away; be­hold, all things are be­com­ing new.”

141:6.4That night Je­sus dis­coursed to the apos­tles on the new life in the king­dom. He said in part: “When you en­ter the king­dom, you are re­born. You can­not teach the deep things of the spirit to those who have been born only of the flesh; first see that men are born of the spirit be­fore you seek to in­struct them in the ad­vanced ways of the spirit. Do not un­der­take to show men the beau­ties of the tem­ple un­til you have first taken them into the tem­ple. In­tro­duce men to God and as the sons of God be­fore you dis­course on the doc­trines of the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of men. Do not strive with men—al­ways be pa­tient. It is not your king­dom; you are only am­bas­sadors. Sim­ply go forth pro­claim­ing: This is the king­dom of heaven—God is your Fa­ther and you are his sons, and this good news, if you whole­heart­edly be­lieve it, is your eter­nal sal­va­tion.”

160:1.14In a con­tin­u­ally chang­ing world, in the midst of an evolv­ing so­cial or­der, it is im­pos­si­ble to main­tain set­tled and es­tab­lished goals of des­tiny. Sta­bil­ity of per­son­al­ity can be ex­pe­ri­enced only by those who have dis­cov­ered and em­braced the liv­ing God as the eter­nal goal of in­fi­nite at­tain­ment. And thus to trans­fer one’s goal from time to eter­nity, from earth to Par­a­dise, from the hu­man to the di­vine, re­quires that man shall be­come re­gen­er­ated, con­verted, be born again; that he shall be­come the re-cre­ated child of the di­vine spirit; that he shall gain en­trance into the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven. All philoso­phies and re­li­gions which fall short of these ide­als are im­ma­ture. The phi­los­o­phy which I teach, linked with the gospel which you preach, rep­re­sents the new re­li­gion of ma­tu­rity, the ideal of all fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. And this is true be­cause our ideal is fi­nal, in­fal­li­ble, eter­nal, uni­ver­sal, ab­so­lute, and in­fi­nite.

• power to overcome all doubt

142:5.3“The Su­preme Spirit shall bear wit­ness with your spir­its that you are truly the chil­dren of God. And if you are the sons of God, then have you been born of the spirit of God; and whoso­ever has been born of the spirit has in him­self the power to over­come all doubt, and this is the vic­tory that over­comes all un­cer­tainty, even your faith.

• love for fellows

142:5.4“Said the Prophet Isa­iah, speak­ing of these times: ‘When the spirit is poured upon us from on high, then shall the work of righ­teous­ness be­come peace, quiet­ness, and as­sur­ance for­ever.’ And for all who truly be­lieve this gospel, I will be­come surety for their re­cep­tion into the eter­nal mer­cies and the ev­er­last­ing life of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. You, then, who hear this mes­sage and be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom are the sons of God, and you have life ev­er­last­ing; and the ev­i­dence to all the world that you have been born of the spirit is that you sin­cerely love one an­other.”

• becoming master of self and its desires

143:2.6“Sal­va­tion is by the re­gen­er­a­tion of the spirit and not by the self-righ­teous deeds of the flesh. You are jus­ti­fied by faith and fel­low­shipped by grace, not by fear and the self-de­nial of the flesh, al­beit the Fa­ther’s chil­dren who have been born of the spirit are ever and al­ways mas­ters of the self and all that per­tains to the de­sires of the flesh. When you know that you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who fol­low in the way of this heav­enly peace are des­tined to be sanc­ti­fied to the eter­nal ser­vice of the ever-ad­vanc­ing sons of the eter­nal God. Hence­forth, it is not a duty but rather your ex­alted priv­i­lege to cleanse your­selves from all evils of mind and body while you seek for per­fec­tion in the love of God.

• becoming master of self and its desires

143:2.8“If, then, my chil­dren, you are born of the spirit, you are for­ever de­liv­ered from the self-con­scious bond­age of a life of self-de­nial and watch­care over the de­sires of the flesh, and you are trans­lated into the joy­ous king­dom of the spirit, whence you spon­ta­neously show forth the fruits of the spirit in your daily lives; and the fruits of the spirit are the essence of the high­est type of en­joy­able and en­nobling self-con­trol, even the heights of ter­res­trial mor­tal at­tain­ment—true self-mas­tery.”

• love for fellows

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.

• becoming truth co-ordinated

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

• salvation

193:1.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life, but this will avail you noth­ing un­less you are first born of the eter­nal spirit, thereby com­ing to pos­sess, by faith, the gift of eter­nal life. If you are the faith sons of my Fa­ther, you shall never die; you shall not per­ish. The gospel of the king­dom has taught you that all men are the sons of God. And this good news con­cern­ing the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his chil­dren on earth must be car­ried to all the world. The time has come when you wor­ship God nei­ther on Ger­izim nor at Je­ru­sa­lem, but where you are, as you are, in spirit and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God to all who be­lieve they are his sons. But be not de­ceived; while sal­va­tion is the free gift of God and is be­stowed upon all who ac­cept it by faith, there fol­lows the ex­pe­ri­ence of bear­ing the fruits of this spirit life as it is lived in the flesh. The ac­cep­tance of the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God im­plies that you also freely ac­cept the as­so­ci­ated truth of the broth­er­hood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more than your neigh­bor, whom the Fa­ther re­quires you to love as your­self. Your brother, be­ing of your own fam­ily, you will not only love with a fam­ily af­fec­tion, but you will also serve as you would serve your­self. And you will thus love and serve your brother be­cause you, be­ing my breth­ren, have been thus loved and served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news to all crea­tures of ev­ery race, tribe, and na­tion. My spirit shall go be­fore you, and I will be with you al­ways.”

• salvation

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

195:9.7Self­ish men and women sim­ply will not pay such a price for even the great­est spir­i­tual trea­sure ever of­fered mor­tal man. Only when man has be­come suf­fi­ciently dis­il­lu­sioned by the sor­row­ful dis­ap­point­ments at­ten­dant upon the fool­ish and de­cep­tive pur­suits of self­ish­ness, and sub­se­quent to the dis­cov­ery of the bar­ren­ness of for­mal­ized re­li­gion, will he be dis­posed to turn whole­heart­edly to the gospel of the king­dom, the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.