submission

• submission

178:3.3“You look down on yon­der city in sor­row, for you have heard my words telling of the end of Je­ru­sa­lem. I have fore­warned you lest you should per­ish in her de­struc­tion and so de­lay the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom. Like­wise do I warn you to take heed lest you need­lessly ex­pose your­selves to peril when they come to take the Son of Man. I must go, but you are to re­main to wit­ness to this gospel when I have gone, even as I di­rected that Laz­a­rus flee from the wrath of man that he might live to make known the glory of God. If it is the Fa­ther’s will that I de­part, noth­ing you may do can frus­trate the di­vine plan. Take heed to your­selves lest they kill you also. Let your souls be valiant in de­fense of the gospel by spirit power but be not mis­led into any fool­ish at­tempt to de­fend the Son of Man. I need no de­fense by the hand of man; the armies of heaven are even now near at hand; but I am de­ter­mined to do the will of my Fa­ther in heaven, and there­fore must we sub­mit to that which is so soon to come upon us.

140:8.3Je­sus made clear to the three the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship and dis­ci­ple­ship. And even then he did not for­bid the ex­er­cise of pru­dence and fore­sight by the twelve. What he preached against was not fore­thought but anx­i­ety, worry. He taught the ac­tive and alert sub­mis­sion to God’s will. In an­swer to many of their ques­tions re­gard­ing fru­gal­ity and thrifti­ness, he sim­ply called at­ten­tion to his life as car­pen­ter, boat­maker, and fish­er­man, and to his care­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion of the twelve. He sought to make it clear that the world is not to be re­garded as an en­emy; that the cir­cum­stances of life con­sti­tute a di­vine dis­pen­sa­tion work­ing along with the chil­dren of God.

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

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.”

182:2.1The apos­tles were greatly shocked when they re­turned to their camp and found Ju­das ab­sent. While the eleven were en­gaged in a heated dis­cus­sion of their traitorous fel­low apos­tle, David Zeb­e­dee and John Mark took Je­sus to one side and re­vealed that they had kept Ju­das un­der ob­ser­va­tion for sev­eral days, and that they knew he in­tended to be­tray him into the hands of his en­e­mies. Je­sus lis­tened to them but only said: “My friends, noth­ing can hap­pen to the Son of Man un­less the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Let not your hearts be trou­bled; all things will work to­gether for the glory of God and the sal­va­tion of men.”

182:2.2The cheer­ful at­ti­tude of Je­sus was wan­ing. As the hour passed, he grew more and more se­ri­ous, even sor­row­ful. The apos­tles, be­ing much ag­i­tated, were loath to re­turn to their tents even when re­quested to do so by the Mas­ter him­self. Re­turn­ing from his talk with David and John, he ad­dressed his last words to all eleven, say­ing: “My friends, go to your rest. Pre­pare your­selves for the work of to­mor­row. Re­mem­ber, we should all sub­mit our­selves to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. My peace I leave with you.” And hav­ing thus spo­ken, he mo­tioned them to their tents, but as they went, he called to Pe­ter, James, and John, say­ing, “I de­sire that you re­main with me for a lit­tle while.”

110:3.2The suc­cess of your Ad­juster in the en­ter­prise of pi­lot­ing you through the mor­tal life and bring­ing about your sur­vival de­pends not so much on the the­o­ries of your be­liefs as upon your de­ci­sions, de­ter­mi­na­tions, and stead­fast faith. All these move­ments of per­son­al­ity growth be­come pow­er­ful in­flu­ences aid­ing in your ad­vance­ment be­cause they help you to co-op­er­ate with the Ad­juster; they as­sist you in ceas­ing to re­sist. Thought Ad­justers suc­ceed or ap­par­ently fail in their ter­res­trial un­der­tak­ings just in so far as mor­tals suc­ceed or fail to co-op­er­ate with the scheme whereby they are to be ad­vanced along the as­cend­ing path of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. The se­cret of sur­vival is wrapped up in the su­preme hu­man de­sire to be God­like and in the as­so­ci­ated will­ing­ness to do and be any and all things which are es­sen­tial to the fi­nal at­tain­ment of that over­mas­ter­ing de­sire.

179:2.1For a few mo­ments af­ter the Mas­ter had gone to his place, not a word was spo­ken. Je­sus looked them all over and, re­liev­ing the ten­sion with a smile, said: “I have greatly de­sired to eat this Pass­over with you. I wanted to eat with you once more be­fore I suf­fered, and re­al­iz­ing that my hour has come, I ar­ranged to have this sup­per with you tonight, for, as con­cerns the mor­row, we are all in the hands of the Fa­ther, whose will I have come to ex­e­cute. I shall not again eat with you un­til you sit down with me in the king­dom which my Fa­ther will give me when I have fin­ished that for which he sent me into this world.”

• Jesus humbled himself, became obedient to death
• Jesus lived life in channel of its natural flowing

128:1.6The Naz­a­reth car­pen­ter now fully un­der­stood the work be­fore him, but he chose to live his hu­man life in the chan­nel of its nat­u­ral flow­ing. And in some of these mat­ters he is in­deed an ex­am­ple to his mor­tal crea­tures, even as it is re­corded: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Je­sus, who, be­ing of the na­ture of God, thought it not strange to be equal with God. But he made him­self to be of lit­tle im­port and, tak­ing upon him­self the form of a crea­ture, was born in the like­ness of man­kind. And be­ing thus fash­ioned as a man, he hum­bled him­self and be­came obe­di­ent to death, even the death of the cross.”

• Jesus humbled himself, became obedient to death

128:1.12Al­ways, even af­ter his emer­gence into the larger life on earth, Je­sus was sub­mis­sively sub­ject to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• Jesus humbled himself, became obedient to death

136:6.4Be­fore his bap­tismal il­lu­mi­na­tion he had lived in per­fect sub­mis­sion to the will and guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther. He em­phat­i­cally de­cided to con­tinue on in just such im­plicit mor­tal de­pen­dence on the Fa­ther’s will. He pur­posed to fol­low the un­nat­u­ral course—he de­cided not to seek self-preser­va­tion. He chose to go on pur­su­ing the pol­icy of re­fus­ing to de­fend him­self. He for­mu­lated his con­clu­sions in the words of Scrip­ture fa­mil­iar to his hu­man mind: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by ev­ery word that pro­ceeds from the mouth of God.” In reach­ing this con­clu­sion in re­gard to the ap­petite of the phys­i­cal na­ture as ex­pressed in hunger for food, the Son of Man made his fi­nal dec­la­ra­tion con­cern­ing all other urges of the flesh and the nat­u­ral im­pulses of hu­man na­ture.

• Jesus humbled himself, became obedient to death

171:4.7Then turn­ing to his apos­tles, Je­sus said: “From olden times the proph­ets have per­ished in Je­ru­sa­lem, and it is only be­fit­ting that the Son of Man should go up to the city of the Fa­ther’s house to be of­fered up as the price of hu­man big­otry and as the re­sult of re­li­gious prej­u­dice and spir­i­tual blind­ness. O Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­ru­sa­lem, which kills the proph­ets and stones the teach­ers of truth! How of­ten would I have gath­ered your chil­dren to­gether even as a hen gath­ers her own brood un­der her wings, but you would not let me do it! Be­hold, your house is about to be left to you des­o­late! You will many times de­sire to see me, but you shall not. You will then seek but not find me.” And when he had spo­ken, he turned to those around him and said: “Nev­er­the­less, let us go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to at­tend the Pass­over and do that which be­comes us in ful­fill­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

• Jesus did not change apostles’ seating at Last Supper

179:1.7They were still en­gaged in voic­ing an­gry re­crim­i­na­tions when the Mas­ter ap­peared in the door­way, where he hes­i­tated a mo­ment as a look of dis­ap­point­ment slowly crept over his face. With­out com­ment he went to his place, and he did not dis­turb their seat­ing ar­range­ment.

• Jesus submitted to humiliation by temple guards

184:4.3Through­out this aw­ful hour Je­sus ut­tered no word. To this gen­tle and sen­si­tive soul of hu­mankind, joined in per­son­al­ity re­la­tion­ship with the God of all this uni­verse, there was no more bit­ter por­tion of his cup of hu­mil­i­a­tion than this ter­ri­ble hour at the mercy of these ig­no­rant and cruel guards and ser­vants, who had been stim­u­lated to abuse him by the ex­am­ple of the mem­bers of this so-called San­hedrist court.

184:4.4The hu­man heart can­not pos­si­bly con­ceive of the shud­der of in­dig­na­tion that swept out over a vast uni­verse as the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences wit­nessed this sight of their beloved Sov­er­eign sub­mit­ting him­self to the will of his ig­no­rant and mis­guided crea­tures on the sin-dark­ened sphere of un­for­tu­nate Uran­tia.

2:5.5Af­ter all, the great­est ev­i­dence of the good­ness of God and the su­preme rea­son for lov­ing him is the in­dwelling gift of the Fa­ther—the Ad­juster who so pa­tiently awaits the hour when you both shall be eter­nally made one. Though you can­not find God by search­ing, if you will sub­mit to the lead­ing of the in­dwelling spirit, you will be unerringly guided, step by step, life by life, through uni­verse upon uni­verse, and age by age, un­til you fi­nally stand in the pres­ence of the Par­a­dise per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

138:7.1Je­sus had planned for a quiet mis­sion­ary cam­paign of five months’ per­sonal work. He did not tell the apos­tles how long this was to last; they worked from week to week. And early on this first day of the week, just as he was about to an­nounce this to his twelve apos­tles, Si­mon Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee, and Ju­das Is­car­iot came to have pri­vate con­verse with him. Tak­ing Je­sus aside, Pe­ter made bold to say: “Mas­ter, we come at the be­hest of our as­so­ciates to in­quire whether the time is not now ripe to en­ter into the king­dom. And will you pro­claim the king­dom at Ca­per­naum, or are we to move on to Je­ru­sa­lem? And when shall we learn, each of us, the po­si­tions we are to oc­cupy with you in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom—” and Pe­ter would have gone on ask­ing fur­ther ques­tions, but Je­sus raised an ad­mon­i­tory hand and stopped him. And beck­on­ing the other apos­tles stand­ing near by to join them, Je­sus said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, how long shall I bear with you! Have I not made it plain to you that my king­dom is not of this world? I have told you many times that I have not come to sit on David’s throne, and now how is it that you are in­quir­ing which place each of you will oc­cupy in the Fa­ther’s king­dom? Can you not per­ceive that I have called you as am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom? Do you not un­der­stand that soon, very soon, you are to rep­re­sent me in the world and in the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom, even as I now rep­re­sent my Fa­ther who is in heaven? Can it be that I have cho­sen you and in­structed you as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, and yet you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture and sig­nif­i­cance of this com­ing king­dom of di­vine pre-em­i­nence in the hearts of men? My friends, hear me once more. Ban­ish from your minds this idea that my king­dom is a rule of power or a reign of glory. In­deed, all power in heaven and on earth will pres­ently be given into my hands, but it is not the Fa­ther’s will that we use this di­vine en­dow­ment to glo­rify our­selves dur­ing this age. In an­other age you shall in­deed sit with me in power and glory, but it be­hooves us now to sub­mit to the will of the Fa­ther and to go forth in hum­ble obe­di­ence to ex­e­cute his bid­ding on earth.”

149:5.3“Much of man’s sor­row is born of the dis­ap­point­ment of his am­bi­tions and the wound­ing of his pride. Al­though men owe a duty to them­selves to make the best of their lives on earth, hav­ing thus sin­cerely ex­erted them­selves, they should cheer­fully ac­cept their lot and ex­er­cise in­ge­nu­ity in mak­ing the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s trou­bles take ori­gin in the fear soil of his own nat­u­ral heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pur­sues.’ ‘The wicked are like the trou­bled sea, for it can­not rest, but its wa­ters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

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.

180:2.2“As the Fa­ther has loved me, so have I loved you. Live in my love even as I live in the Fa­ther’s love. If you do as I have taught you, you shall abide in my love even as I have kept the Fa­ther’s word and ev­er­more abide in his love.”

196:0.5The­ol­ogy may fix, for­mu­late, de­fine, and dog­ma­tize faith, but in the hu­man life of Je­sus faith was per­sonal, liv­ing, orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous, and purely spir­i­tual. This faith was not rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion nor a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief which he held as a sa­cred creed, but rather a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence and a pro­found con­vic­tion which se­curely held him. His faith was so real and all-en­com­pass­ing that it ab­so­lutely swept away any spir­i­tual doubts and ef­fec­tively de­stroyed ev­ery con­flict­ing de­sire. Noth­ing was able to tear him away from the spir­i­tual an­chor­age of this fer­vent, sub­lime, and un­daunted faith. Even in the face of ap­par­ent de­feat or in the throes of dis­ap­point­ment and threat­en­ing de­spair, he calmly stood in the di­vine pres­ence free from fear and fully con­scious of spir­i­tual in­vin­ci­bil­ity. Je­sus en­joyed the in­vig­o­rat­ing as­sur­ance of the pos­ses­sion of un­flinch­ing faith, and in each of life’s try­ing sit­u­a­tions he un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited an un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty to the Fa­ther’s will. And this su­perb faith was un­daunted even by the cruel and crush­ing threat of an ig­no­min­ious death.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

160:3.1The ef­fort to­ward ma­tu­rity ne­ces­si­tates work, and work re­quires en­ergy. Whence the power to ac­com­plish all this? The phys­i­cal things can be taken for granted, but the Mas­ter has well said, “Man can­not live by bread alone.” Granted the pos­ses­sion of a nor­mal body and rea­son­ably good health, we must next look for those lures which will act as a stim­u­lus to call forth man’s slum­ber­ing spir­i­tual forces. Je­sus has taught us that God lives in man; then how can we in­duce man to re­lease these soul-bound pow­ers of di­vin­ity and in­fin­ity? How shall we in­duce men to let go of God that he may spring forth to the re­fresh­ment of our own souls while in tran­sit out­ward and then to serve the pur­pose of en­light­en­ing, up­lift­ing, and bless­ing count­less other souls? How best can I awaken these la­tent pow­ers for good which lie dor­mant in your souls? One thing I am sure of: Emo­tional ex­cite­ment is not the ideal spir­i­tual stim­u­lus. Ex­cite­ment does not aug­ment en­ergy; it rather ex­hausts the pow­ers of both mind and body. Whence then comes the en­ergy to do these great things? Look to your Mas­ter. Even now he is out in the hills tak­ing in power while we are here giv­ing out en­ergy. The se­cret of all this prob­lem is wrapped up in spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, in wor­ship. From the hu­man stand­point it is a ques­tion of com­bined med­i­ta­tion and re­lax­ation. Med­i­ta­tion makes the con­tact of mind with spirit; re­lax­ation de­ter­mines the ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity. And this in­ter­change of strength for weak­ness, cour­age for fear, the will of God for the mind of self, con­sti­tutes wor­ship. At least, that is the way the philoso­pher views it.

49:4.9But mor­tal mind with­out im­mor­tal spirit can­not sur­vive. The mind of man is mor­tal; only the be­stowed spirit is im­mor­tal. Sur­vival is de­pen­dent on spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion by the min­istry of the Ad­juster—on the birth and evo­lu­tion of the im­mor­tal soul; at least, there must not have de­vel­oped an an­tag­o­nism to­wards the Ad­juster’s mis­sion of ef­fect­ing the spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion of the ma­te­rial mind.

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.

171:8.14When they had fin­ished their lunch, and af­ter the mul­ti­tude of fol­low­ers had gone on to­ward Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus, stand­ing there be­fore the apos­tles in the shade of an over­hang­ing rock by the road­side, with cheer­ful dig­nity and a gra­cious majesty pointed his fin­ger west­ward, say­ing: “Come, my breth­ren, let us go on into Je­ru­sa­lem, there to re­ceive that which awaits us; thus shall we ful­fill the will of the heav­enly Fa­ther in all things.”

5:1.12The great God makes di­rect con­tact with mor­tal man and gives a part of his in­fi­nite and eter­nal and in­com­pre­hen­si­ble self to live and dwell within him. God has em­barked upon the eter­nal ad­ven­ture with man. If you yield to the lead­ings of the spir­i­tual forces in you and around you, you can­not fail to at­tain the high des­tiny es­tab­lished by a lov­ing God as the uni­verse goal of his as­cen­dant crea­tures from the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of space.

117:5.2The in­tel­lec­tual, po­ten­tially per­sonal selves of the fi­nite emerge from the Third Source and Cen­ter and achieve fi­nite time-space De­ity syn­the­sis in the Su­preme. When the crea­ture sub­mits to the will of the Cre­ator, he does not sub­merge or sur­ren­der his per­son­al­ity; the in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­ity par­tic­i­pants in the ac­tu­al­iza­tion of the fi­nite God do not lose their vo­li­tional self­hood by so func­tion­ing. Rather are such per­son­al­i­ties pro­gres­sively aug­mented by par­tic­i­pa­tion in this great De­ity ad­ven­ture; by such union with di­vin­ity man ex­alts, en­riches, spir­i­tu­al­izes, and uni­fies his evolv­ing self to the very thresh­old of su­prem­acy.

130:2.2At their inn there also lodged a mer­chant from Mon­go­lia, and since this Far-East­erner talked Greek fairly well, Je­sus had sev­eral long vis­its with him. This man was much im­pressed with Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life and never for­got his words of wis­dom re­gard­ing “the liv­ing of the heav­enly life while on earth by means of daily sub­mis­sion to the will of the heav­enly Fa­ther.” This mer­chant was a Taoist, and he had thereby be­come a strong be­liever in the doc­trine of a uni­ver­sal De­ity. When he re­turned to Mon­go­lia, he be­gan to teach these ad­vanced truths to his neigh­bors and to his busi­ness as­so­ciates, and as a di­rect re­sult of such ac­tiv­i­ties, his el­dest son de­cided to be­come a Taoist priest. This young man ex­erted a great in­flu­ence in be­half of ad­vanced truth through­out his life­time and was fol­lowed by a son and a grand­son who like­wise were de­vot­edly loyal to the doc­trine of the One God—the Su­preme Ruler of Heaven.

133:7.10A hu­man mind, built up solely out of the con­scious­ness of phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions, could never at­tain spir­i­tual lev­els; this kind of ma­te­rial mind would be ut­terly lack­ing in a sense of moral val­ues and would be with­out a guid­ing sense of spir­i­tual dom­i­nance which is so es­sen­tial to achiev­ing har­mo­nious per­son­al­ity unity in time, and which is in­sep­a­ra­ble from per­son­al­ity sur­vival in eter­nity.

135:11.3These dis­ci­ples were amazed at John’s pro­nounce­ment, so much so that they de­parted in si­lence. John was also much ag­i­tated, for he per­ceived that he had ut­tered a prophecy. Never again did he wholly doubt the mis­sion and di­vin­ity of Je­sus. But it was a sore dis­ap­point­ment to John that Je­sus sent him no word, that he came not to see him, and that he ex­er­cised none of his great power to de­liver him from prison. But Je­sus knew all about this. He had great love for John, but be­ing now cog­nizant of his di­vine na­ture and know­ing fully the great things in prepa­ra­tion for John when he de­parted from this world and also know­ing that John’s work on earth was fin­ished, he con­strained him­self not to in­ter­fere in the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of the great preacher-prophet’s ca­reer.

136:4.4These forty days were the oc­ca­sion of the fi­nal con­fer­ence be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine minds, or rather the first real func­tion­ing of these two minds as now made one. The re­sults of this mo­men­tous sea­son of med­i­ta­tion demon­strated con­clu­sively that the di­vine mind has tri­umphantly and spir­i­tu­ally dom­i­nated the hu­man in­tel­lect. The mind of man has be­come the mind of God from this time on, and though the self­hood of the mind of man is ever pres­ent, al­ways does this spir­i­tu­al­ized hu­man mind say, “Not my will but yours be done.”

146:3.5“The Son is nat­u­rally en­dowed with the life of the Fa­ther. Hav­ing been en­dowed with the liv­ing spirit of the Fa­ther, you are there­fore sons of God. You sur­vive your life in the ma­te­rial world of the flesh be­cause you are iden­ti­fied with the Fa­ther’s liv­ing spirit, the gift of eter­nal life. Many, in­deed, had this life be­fore I came forth from the Fa­ther, and many more have re­ceived this spirit be­cause they be­lieved my word; but I de­clare that, when I re­turn to the Fa­ther, he will send his spirit into the hearts of all men.

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.

146:3.7“Ev­ery earth child who fol­lows the lead­ing of this spirit shall even­tu­ally know the will of God, and he who sur­ren­ders to the will of my Fa­ther shall abide for­ever. The way from the earth life to the eter­nal es­tate has not been made plain to you, but there is a way, there al­ways has been, and I have come to make that way new and liv­ing. He who en­ters the king­dom has eter­nal life al­ready—he shall never per­ish. But much of this you will the bet­ter un­der­stand when I shall have re­turned to the Fa­ther and you are able to view your pres­ent ex­pe­ri­ences in ret­ro­spect.”

168:0.11When the mourn­ers saw that Mary had gone to greet Je­sus, they with­drew for a short dis­tance while both Martha and Mary talked with the Mas­ter and re­ceived fur­ther words of com­fort and ex­hor­ta­tion to main­tain strong faith in the Fa­ther and com­plete res­ig­na­tion to the di­vine will.

181:2.11“And now, Si­mon, when you do fi­nally see all of this, and af­ter you have shaken off your de­pres­sion and have gone forth pro­claim­ing this gospel in great power, never for­get that I was with you even through all of your sea­son of dis­cour­age­ment, and that I will go on with you to the very end. You shall al­ways be my apos­tle, and af­ter you be­come will­ing to see by the eye of the spirit and more fully to yield your will to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, then will you re­turn to la­bor as my am­bas­sador, and no one shall take away from you the au­thor­ity which I have con­ferred upon you, be­cause of your slow­ness of com­pre­hend­ing the truths I have taught you. And so, Si­mon, once more I warn you that they who fight with the sword per­ish with the sword, while they who la­bor in the spirit achieve life ev­er­last­ing in the king­dom to come with joy and peace in the king­dom which now is. And when the work given into your hands is fin­ished on earth, you, Si­mon, shall sit down with me in my king­dom over there. You shall re­ally see the king­dom you have longed for, but not in this life. Con­tinue to be­lieve in me and in that which I have re­vealed to you, and you shall re­ceive the gift of eter­nal life.”

186:2.3Je­sus was con­vinced that it was the will of the Fa­ther that he sub­mit him­self to the nat­u­ral and or­di­nary course of hu­man events just as ev­ery other mor­tal crea­ture must, and there­fore he re­fused to em­ploy even his purely hu­man pow­ers of per­sua­sive elo­quence to in­flu­ence the out­come of the machi­na­tions of his so­cially near­sighted and spir­i­tu­ally blinded fel­low mor­tals. Al­though Je­sus lived and died on Uran­tia, his whole hu­man ca­reer, from first to last, was a spec­ta­cle de­signed to in­flu­ence and in­struct the en­tire uni­verse of his cre­ation and un­ceas­ing up­hold­ing.

136:7.2Je­sus knew his fel­low coun­try­men were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would be above nat­u­ral law. Well had he been taught that Scrip­ture: “There shall no evil be­fall you, nei­ther shall any plague come near your dwell­ing. For he shall give his an­gels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Would this sort of pre­sump­tion, this de­fi­ance of his Fa­ther’s laws of grav­ity, be jus­ti­fied in or­der to pro­tect him­self from pos­si­ble harm or, per­chance, to win the con­fi­dence of his mis­taught and dis­tracted peo­ple? But such a course, how­ever grat­i­fy­ing to the sign-seek­ing Jews, would be, not a rev­e­la­tion of his Fa­ther, but a ques­tion­able tri­fling with the es­tab­lished laws of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

136:7.3Un­der­stand­ing all of this and know­ing that the Mas­ter re­fused to work in de­fi­ance of his es­tab­lished laws of na­ture in so far as his per­sonal con­duct was con­cerned, you know of a cer­tainty that he never walked on the wa­ter nor did any­thing else which was an out­rage to his ma­te­rial or­der of ad­min­is­ter­ing the world; al­ways, of course, bear­ing in mind that there had, as yet, been found no way whereby he could be wholly de­liv­ered from the lack of con­trol over the el­e­ment of time in con­nec­tion with those mat­ters put un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

136:8.5Je­sus was fully aware of the short cuts open to one of his pow­ers. He knew many ways in which the at­ten­tion of the na­tion, and the whole world, could be im­me­di­ately fo­cused upon him­self. Soon the Pass­over would be cel­e­brated at Je­ru­sa­lem; the city would be thronged with vis­i­tors. He could as­cend the pin­na­cle of the tem­ple and be­fore the be­wil­dered mul­ti­tude walk out on the air; that would be the kind of a Mes­siah they were look­ing for. But he would sub­se­quently dis­ap­point them since he had not come to re-es­tab­lish David’s throne. And he knew the fu­til­ity of the Cali­gas­tia method of try­ing to get ahead of the nat­u­ral, slow, and sure way of ac­com­plish­ing the di­vine pur­pose. Again the Son of Man bowed obe­di­ently to the Fa­ther’s way, the Fa­ther’s will.

136:8.6Je­sus chose to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of man­kind by nat­u­ral, or­di­nary, dif­fi­cult, and try­ing meth­ods, just such pro­ce­dures as his earth chil­dren must sub­se­quently fol­low in their work of en­larg­ing and ex­tend­ing that heav­enly king­dom. For well did the Son of Man know that it would be “through much tribu­la­tion that many of the chil­dren of all ages would en­ter into the king­dom.” Je­sus was now pass­ing through the great test of civ­i­lized man, to have power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for purely self­ish or per­sonal pur­poses.

182:3.7Ear­lier in the evening it had not seemed so dif­fi­cult to drink the cup, but as the hu­man Je­sus bade farewell to his apos­tles and sent them to their rest, the trial grew more ap­palling. Je­sus ex­pe­ri­enced that nat­u­ral ebb and flow of feel­ing which is com­mon to all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, and just now he was weary from work, ex­hausted from the long hours of stren­u­ous la­bor and painful anx­i­ety con­cern­ing the safety of his apos­tles. While no mor­tal can pre­sume to un­der­stand the thoughts and feel­ings of the in­car­nate Son of God at such a time as this, we know that he en­dured great an­guish and suf­fered un­told sor­row, for the per­spi­ra­tion rolled off his face in great drops. He was at last con­vinced that the Fa­ther in­tended to al­low nat­u­ral events to take their course; he was fully de­ter­mined to em­ploy none of his sov­er­eign power as the su­preme head of a uni­verse to save him­self.

183:1.2The Fa­ther in heaven de­sired the be­stowal Son to fin­ish his earth ca­reer nat­u­rally, just as all mor­tals must fin­ish up their lives on earth and in the flesh. Or­di­nary men and women can­not ex­pect to have their last hours on earth and the super­ven­ing episode of death made easy by a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, Je­sus elected to lay down his life in the flesh in the man­ner which was in keep­ing with the out­work­ing of nat­u­ral events, and he stead­fastly re­fused to ex­tri­cate him­self from the cruel clutches of a wicked con­spir­acy of in­hu­man events which swept on with hor­ri­ble cer­tainty to­ward his un­be­liev­able hu­mil­i­a­tion and ig­no­min­ious death. And ev­ery bit of all this as­tound­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of ha­tred and this un­prece­dented dem­on­stra­tion of cru­elty was the work of evil men and wicked mor­tals. God in heaven did not will it, nei­ther did the arch­en­e­mies of Je­sus dic­tate it, though they did much to in­sure that un­think­ing and evil mor­tals would thus re­ject the be­stowal Son. Even the fa­ther of sin turned his face away from the ex­cru­ci­at­ing hor­ror of the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion.

186:2.2Be­fore the San­hedrist court Je­sus de­clined to make replies to the tes­ti­mony of per­jured wit­nesses. There was but one ques­tion which would al­ways elicit an an­swer, whether asked by friend or foe, and that was the one con­cern­ing the na­ture and di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. When asked if he were the Son of God, he un­fail­ingly made re­ply. He stead­fastly re­fused to speak when in the pres­ence of the cu­ri­ous and wicked Herod. Be­fore Pi­late he spoke only when he thought that Pi­late or some other sin­cere per­son might be helped to a bet­ter knowl­edge of the truth by what he said. Je­sus had taught his apos­tles the use­less­ness of cast­ing their pearls be­fore swine, and he now dared to prac­tice what he had taught. His con­duct at this time ex­em­pli­fied the pa­tient sub­mis­sion of the hu­man na­ture cou­pled with the ma­jes­tic si­lence and solemn dig­nity of the di­vine na­ture. He was al­to­gether will­ing to dis­cuss with Pi­late any ques­tion re­lated to the po­lit­i­cal charges brought against him—any ques­tion which he rec­og­nized as be­long­ing to the gov­er­nor’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

91:9.43. You must sur­ren­der ev­ery wish of mind and ev­ery crav­ing of soul to the trans­form­ing em­brace of spir­i­tual growth. You must have ex­pe­ri­enced an en­hance­ment of mean­ings and an el­e­va­tion of val­ues.

195:9.6Prim­i­tive man lived a life of su­per­sti­tious bond­age to re­li­gious fear. Mod­ern, civ­i­lized men dread the thought of falling un­der the dom­i­nance of strong re­li­gious con­vic­tions. Think­ing man has al­ways feared to be held by a re­li­gion. When a strong and mov­ing re­li­gion threat­ens to dom­i­nate him, he in­vari­ably tries to ra­tio­nal­ize, tra­di­tion­al­ize, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ize it, thereby hop­ing to gain con­trol of it. By such pro­ce­dure, even a re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes man-made and man-dom­i­nated. Mod­ern men and women of in­tel­li­gence evade the re­li­gion of Je­sus be­cause of their fears of what it will do to them—and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does, in­deed, dom­i­nate and trans­form its be­liev­ers, de­mand­ing that men ded­i­cate their lives to seek­ing for a knowl­edge of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven and re­quir­ing that the en­er­gies of liv­ing be con­se­crated to the un­selfish ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man.

102:2.8Again, there are other types of un­sta­ble and poorly dis­ci­plined souls who would use the sen­ti­men­tal ideas of re­li­gion as an av­enue of es­cape from the ir­ri­tat­ing de­mands of liv­ing. When cer­tain vac­il­lat­ing and timid mor­tals at­tempt to es­cape from the in­ces­sant pres­sure of evo­lu­tion­ary life, re­li­gion, as they con­ceive it, seems to pre­sent the near­est refuge, the best av­enue of es­cape. But it is the mis­sion of re­li­gion to pre­pare man for bravely, even hero­ically, fac­ing the vi­cis­si­tudes of life. Re­li­gion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s su­preme en­dow­ment, the one thing which en­ables him to carry on and “en­dure as see­ing Him who is in­vis­i­ble.” Mys­ti­cism, how­ever, is of­ten some­thing of a re­treat from life which is em­braced by those hu­mans who do not rel­ish the more ro­bust ac­tiv­i­ties of liv­ing a re­li­gious life in the open are­nas of hu­man so­ci­ety and com­merce. True re­li­gion must act. Con­duct will be the re­sult of re­li­gion when man ac­tu­ally has it, or rather when re­li­gion is per­mit­ted truly to pos­sess the man. Never will re­li­gion be con­tent with mere think­ing or un­act­ing feel­ing.

1:3.7In the in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of man, mind is joined to mat­ter. Such ma­te­rial-linked minds can­not sur­vive mor­tal death. The tech­nique of sur­vival is em­braced in those ad­just­ments of the hu­man will and those trans­for­ma­tions in the mor­tal mind whereby such a God-con­scious in­tel­lect grad­u­ally be­comes spirit taught and even­tu­ally spirit led. This evo­lu­tion of the hu­man mind from mat­ter as­so­ci­a­tion to spirit union re­sults in the trans­mu­ta­tion of the po­ten­tially spirit phases of the mor­tal mind into the mor­ontia re­al­i­ties of the im­mor­tal soul. Mor­tal mind sub­servient to mat­ter is des­tined to be­come in­creas­ingly ma­te­rial and con­se­quently to suf­fer even­tual per­son­al­ity ex­tinc­tion; mind yielded to spirit is des­tined to be­come in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual and ul­ti­mately to achieve one­ness with the sur­viv­ing and guid­ing di­vine spirit and in this way to at­tain sur­vival and eter­nity of per­son­al­ity ex­is­tence.