tentmaker

• Paul was

89:3.6It was only nat­u­ral that the cult of re­nun­ci­a­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion should have paid at­ten­tion to sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The con­ti­nence cult orig­i­nated as a rit­ual among sol­diers prior to en­gag­ing in bat­tle; in later days it be­came the prac­tice of “saints.” This cult tol­er­ated mar­riage only as an evil lesser than for­ni­ca­tion. Many of the world’s great re­li­gions have been ad­versely in­flu­enced by this an­cient cult, but none more markedly than Chris­tian­ity. The Apos­tle Paul was a devo­tee of this cult, and his per­sonal views are re­flected in the teach­ings which he fas­tened onto Chris­tian the­ol­ogy: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I my­self.” “I say, there­fore, to the un­mar­ried and wid­ows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teach­ings were not a part of Je­sus’ gospel, and his ac­knowl­edg­ment of this is il­lus­trated by his state­ment, “I speak this by per­mis­sion and not by com­mand­ment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his per­sonal opin­ions have long in­flu­enced the teach­ings of a great world re­li­gion. If the ad­vice of the tent­maker-teacher were to be lit­er­ally and uni­ver­sally obeyed, then would the hu­man race come to a sud­den and in­glo­ri­ous end. Fur­ther­more, the in­volve­ment of a re­li­gion with the an­cient con­ti­nence cult leads di­rectly to a war against mar­riage and the home, so­ci­ety’s ver­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion and the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man prog­ress. And it is not to be won­dered at that all such be­liefs fos­tered the for­ma­tion of celi­bate priest­hoods in the many re­li­gions of var­i­ous peo­ples.

• Jesus worked as

132:0.10Many were the times in the years so soon to fol­low that Pe­ter, Paul, and the other Chris­tian teach­ers in Rome heard about this scribe of Da­mas­cus who had pre­ceded them, and who had so ob­vi­ously (and as they sup­posed un­wit­tingly) pre­pared the way for their com­ing with the new gospel. Though Paul never re­ally sur­mised the iden­tity of this scribe of Da­mas­cus, he did, a short time be­fore his death, be­cause of the sim­i­lar­ity of per­sonal de­scrip­tions, reach the con­clu­sion that the “tent­maker of An­ti­och” was also the “scribe of Da­mas­cus.” On one oc­ca­sion, while preach­ing in Rome, Si­mon Pe­ter, on lis­ten­ing to a de­scrip­tion of the Da­mas­cus scribe, sur­mised that this in­di­vid­ual might have been Je­sus but quickly dis­missed the idea, know­ing full well (so he thought) that the Mas­ter had never been in Rome.

• Jesus worked as

134:7.3At An­ti­och the Son of Man lived for over two months, work­ing, ob­serv­ing, study­ing, vis­it­ing, min­is­ter­ing, and all the while learn­ing how man lives, how he thinks, feels, and re­acts to the en­vi­ron­ment of hu­man ex­is­tence. For three weeks of this pe­riod he worked as a tent­maker. He re­mained longer in An­ti­och than at any other place he vis­ited on this trip. Ten years later, when the Apos­tle Paul was preach­ing in An­ti­och and heard his fol­low­ers speak of the doc­trines of the Da­mas­cus scribe, he lit­tle knew that his pupils had heard the voice, and lis­tened to the teach­ings, of the Mas­ter him­self.