Tyre

• Tyre

134:7.1When Je­sus re­turned from the jour­ney to the Caspian Sea, he knew that his world trav­els were about fin­ished. He made only one more trip out­side of Pales­tine, and that was into Syria. Af­ter a brief visit to Ca­per­naum, he went to Naz­a­reth, stop­ping over a few days to visit. In the mid­dle of April he left Naz­a­reth for Tyre. From there he jour­neyed on north, tar­ry­ing for a few days at Sidon, but his des­ti­na­tion was An­ti­och.

• Tyre

140:7.2For weeks and weeks small groups of earnest truth seek­ers, to­gether with cu­ri­ous spec­ta­tors, had been com­ing to Beth­saida to see Je­sus. Al­ready word about him had spread over the coun­try­side; in­quir­ing groups had come from cities as far away as Tyre, Sidon, Da­mas­cus, Cae­sarea, and Je­ru­sa­lem. Here­to­fore, Je­sus had greeted these peo­ple and taught them con­cern­ing the king­dom, but the Mas­ter now turned this work over to the twelve. An­drew would se­lect one of the apos­tles and as­sign him to a group of vis­i­tors, and some­times all twelve of them were so en­gaged.

156:4.1From July 11 to July 24 they taught in Tyre. Each of the apos­tles took with him one of the evan­ge­lists, and thus two and two they taught and preached in all parts of Tyre and its en­vi­rons. The poly­glot pop­u­la­tion of this busy sea­port heard them gladly, and many were bap­tized into the out­ward fel­low­ship of the king­dom. Je­sus main­tained his head­quar­ters at the home of a Jew named Joseph, a be­liever, who lived three or four miles south of Tyre, not far from the tomb of Hi­ram who had been king of the city-state of Tyre dur­ing the times of David and Sol­o­mon.

156:4.2Daily, for this pe­riod of two weeks, the apos­tles and evan­ge­lists en­tered Tyre by way of Alexan­der’s mole to con­duct small meet­ings, and each night most of them would re­turn to the en­camp­ment at Joseph’s house south of the city. Ev­ery day be­liev­ers came out from the city to talk with Je­sus at his rest­ing place. The Mas­ter spoke in Tyre only once, on the af­ter­noon of July 20, when he taught the be­liev­ers con­cern­ing the Fa­ther’s love for all man­kind and about the mis­sion of the Son to re­veal the Fa­ther to all races of men. There was such an in­ter­est in the gospel of the king­dom among these gen­tiles that, on this oc­ca­sion, the doors of the Melka­rth tem­ple were opened to him, and it is in­ter­est­ing to re­cord that in sub­se­quent years a Chris­tian church was built on the very site of this an­cient tem­ple.

156:4.3Many of the lead­ers in the man­u­fac­ture of Tyr­ian pur­ple, the dye that made Tyre and Sidon fa­mous the world over, and which con­tributed so much to their world-wide com­merce and con­se­quent en­rich­ment, be­lieved in the king­dom. When, shortly there­after, the sup­ply of the sea an­i­mals which were the source of this dye be­gan to di­min­ish, these dye mak­ers went forth in search of new habi­tats of these shell­fish. And thus mi­grat­ing to the ends of the earth, they car­ried with them the mes­sage of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man—the gospel of the king­dom.

156:5.1On this Wednes­day af­ter­noon, in the course of his ad­dress, Je­sus first told his fol­low­ers the story of the white lily which rears its pure and snowy head high into the sun­shine while its roots are grounded in the slime and muck of the dark­ened soil be­neath. “Like­wise,” said he, “mor­tal man, while he has his roots of ori­gin and be­ing in the an­i­mal soil of hu­man na­ture, can by faith raise his spir­i­tual na­ture up into the sun­light of heav­enly truth and ac­tu­ally bear the no­ble fruits of the spirit.”

156:5.2It was dur­ing this same ser­mon that Je­sus made use of his first and only para­ble hav­ing to do with his own trade—car­pen­try. In the course of his ad­mo­ni­tion to “Build well the foun­da­tions for the growth of a no­ble char­ac­ter of spir­i­tual en­dow­ments,” he said: “In or­der to yield the fruits of the spirit, you must be born of the spirit. You must be taught by the spirit and be led by the spirit if you would live the spirit-filled life among your fel­lows. But do not make the mis­take of the fool­ish car­pen­ter who wastes valu­able time squar­ing, mea­sur­ing, and smooth­ing his worm-eaten and in­wardly rot­ting tim­ber and then, when he has thus be­stowed all of his la­bor upon the un­sound beam, must re­ject it as un­fit to en­ter into the foun­da­tions of the build­ing which he would con­struct to with­stand the as­saults of time and storm. Let ev­ery man make sure that the in­tel­lec­tual and moral foun­da­tions of char­ac­ter are such as will ad­e­quately sup­port the super­struc­ture of the en­larg­ing and en­nobling spir­i­tual na­ture, which is thus to trans­form the mor­tal mind and then, in as­so­ci­a­tion with that re-cre­ated mind, is to achieve the evolve­ment of the soul of im­mor­tal des­tiny. Your spirit na­ture—the jointly cre­ated soul—is a liv­ing growth, but the mind and morals of the in­di­vid­ual are the soil from which these higher man­i­fes­ta­tions of hu­man de­vel­op­ment and di­vine des­tiny must spring. The soil of the evolv­ing soul is hu­man and ma­te­rial, but the des­tiny of this com­bined crea­ture of mind and spirit is spir­i­tual and di­vine.”

156:5.3On the evening of this same day Na­than­iel asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, why do we pray that God will lead us not into temp­ta­tion when we well know from your rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther that he never does such things?” Je­sus an­swered Na­than­iel:

156:5.4“It is not strange that you ask such ques­tions see­ing that you are be­gin­ning to know the Fa­ther as I know him, and not as the early He­brew proph­ets so dimly saw him. You well know how our fore­fa­thers were dis­posed to see God in al­most ev­ery­thing that hap­pened. They looked for the hand of God in all nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences and in ev­ery un­usual episode of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. They con­nected God with both good and evil. They thought he soft­ened the heart of Moses and hard­ened the heart of Pharaoh. When man had a strong urge to do some­thing, good or evil, he was in the habit of ac­count­ing for these un­usual emo­tions by re­mark­ing: ‘The Lord spoke to me say­ing, do thus and so, or go here and there.’ Ac­cord­ingly, since men so of­ten and so vi­o­lently ran into temp­ta­tion, it be­came the habit of our fore­fa­thers to be­lieve that God led them thither for test­ing, pun­ish­ing, or strength­en­ing. But you, in­deed, now know bet­ter. You know that men are all too of­ten led into temp­ta­tion by the urge of their own self­ish­ness and by the im­pulses of their an­i­mal na­tures. When you are in this way tempted, I ad­mon­ish you that, while you rec­og­nize temp­ta­tion hon­estly and sin­cerely for just what it is, you in­tel­li­gently redi­rect the en­er­gies of spirit, mind, and body, which are seek­ing ex­pres­sion, into higher chan­nels and to­ward more ide­al­is­tic goals. In this way may you trans­form your temp­ta­tions into the high­est types of up­lift­ing mor­tal min­istry while you al­most wholly avoid these waste­ful and weak­en­ing con­flicts be­tween the an­i­mal and spir­i­tual na­tures.

156:5.5“But let me warn you against the folly of un­der­tak­ing to sur­mount temp­ta­tion by the ef­fort of sup­plant­ing one de­sire by an­other and sup­pos­edly su­pe­rior de­sire through the mere force of the hu­man will. If you would be truly tri­umphant over the temp­ta­tions of the lesser and lower na­ture, you must come to that place of spir­i­tual ad­van­tage where you have re­ally and truly de­vel­oped an ac­tual in­ter­est in, and love for, those higher and more ide­al­is­tic forms of con­duct which your mind is de­sirous of sub­sti­tut­ing for these lower and less ide­al­is­tic habits of be­hav­ior that you rec­og­nize as temp­ta­tion. You will in this way be de­liv­ered through spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion rather than be in­creas­ingly over­bur­dened with the de­cep­tive sup­pres­sion of mor­tal de­sires. The old and the in­fe­rior will be for­got­ten in the love for the new and the su­pe­rior. Beauty is al­ways tri­umphant over ug­li­ness in the hearts of all who are il­lu­mi­nated by the love of truth. There is mighty power in the ex­pul­sive en­ergy of a new and sin­cere spir­i­tual af­fec­tion. And again I say to you, be not over­come by evil but rather over­come evil with good.”

156:5.6Long into the night the apos­tles and evan­ge­lists con­tin­ued to ask ques­tions, and from the many an­swers we would pre­sent the fol­low­ing thoughts, re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy:

156:5.7Force­ful am­bi­tion, in­tel­li­gent judg­ment, and sea­soned wis­dom are the es­sen­tials of ma­te­rial suc­cess. Lead­er­ship is de­pen­dent on nat­u­ral abil­ity, dis­cre­tion, will power, and de­ter­mi­na­tion. Spir­i­tual des­tiny is de­pen­dent on faith, love, and de­vo­tion to truth—hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness—the whole­hearted de­sire to find God and to be like him.

156:5.8Do not be­come dis­cour­aged by the dis­cov­ery that you are hu­man. Hu­man na­ture may tend to­ward evil, but it is not in­her­ently sin­ful. Be not down­cast by your fail­ure wholly to for­get some of your re­gret­table ex­pe­ri­ences. The mis­takes which you fail to for­get in time will be for­got­ten in eter­nity. Lighten your bur­dens of soul by speed­ily ac­quir­ing a long-dis­tance view of your des­tiny, a uni­verse ex­pan­sion of your ca­reer.

156:5.9Make not the mis­take of es­ti­mat­ing the soul’s worth by the im­per­fec­tions of the mind or by the ap­petites of the body. Judge not the soul nor eval­u­ate its des­tiny by the stan­dard of a sin­gle un­for­tu­nate hu­man episode. Your spir­i­tual des­tiny is con­di­tioned only by your spir­i­tual long­ings and pur­poses.

156:5.10Re­li­gion is the ex­clu­sively spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul of the God-know­ing man, but moral power and spir­i­tual en­ergy are mighty forces which may be uti­lized in deal­ing with dif­fi­cult so­cial sit­u­a­tions and in solv­ing in­tri­cate eco­nomic prob­lems. These moral and spir­i­tual en­dow­ments make all lev­els of hu­man liv­ing richer and more mean­ing­ful.

156:5.11You are des­tined to live a nar­row and mean life if you learn to love only those who love you. Hu­man love may in­deed be re­cip­ro­cal, but di­vine love is out­go­ing in all its sat­is­fac­tion-seek­ing. The less of love in any crea­ture’s na­ture, the greater the love need, and the more does di­vine love seek to sat­isfy such need. Love is never self-seek­ing, and it can­not be self-be­stowed. Di­vine love can­not be self-con­tained; it must be un­selfishly be­stowed.

156:5.12King­dom be­liev­ers should pos­sess an im­plicit faith, a whole-souled be­lief, in the cer­tain tri­umph of righ­teous­ness. King­dom builders must be un­doubt­ing of the truth of the gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion. Be­liev­ers must in­creas­ingly learn how to step aside from the rush of life—es­cape the ha­rass­ments of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence—while they re­fresh the soul, in­spire the mind, and re­new the spirit by wor­ship­ful com­mu­nion.

156:5.13God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als are not dis­cour­aged by mis­for­tune or down­cast by dis­ap­point­ment. Be­liev­ers are im­mune to the de­pres­sion con­se­quent upon purely ma­te­rial up­heavals; spirit liv­ers are not per­turbed by the episodes of the ma­te­rial world. Can­di­dates for eter­nal life are prac­ti­tion­ers of an in­vig­o­rat­ing and con­struc­tive tech­nique for meet­ing all of the vi­cis­si­tudes and ha­rass­ments of mor­tal liv­ing. Ev­ery day a true be­liever lives, he finds it eas­ier to do the right thing.

156:5.14Spir­i­tual liv­ing might­ily in­creases true self-re­spect. But self-re­spect is not self-ad­mi­ra­tion. Self-re­spect is al­ways co-or­di­nate with the love and ser­vice of one’s fel­lows. It is not pos­si­ble to re­spect your­self more than you love your neigh­bor; the one is the mea­sure of the ca­pac­ity for the other.

156:5.15As the days pass, ev­ery true be­liever be­comes more skill­ful in al­lur­ing his fel­lows into the love of eter­nal truth. Are you more re­source­ful in re­veal­ing good­ness to hu­man­ity to­day than you were yes­ter­day? Are you a bet­ter righ­teous­ness rec­om­mender this year than you were last year? Are you be­com­ing in­creas­ingly artis­tic in your tech­nique of lead­ing hun­gry souls into the spir­i­tual king­dom?

156:5.16Are your ide­als suf­fi­ciently high to in­sure your eter­nal sal­va­tion while your ideas are so prac­ti­cal as to ren­der you a use­ful cit­i­zen to func­tion on earth in as­so­ci­a­tion with your mor­tal fel­lows? In the spirit, your cit­i­zen­ship is in heaven; in the flesh, you are still cit­i­zens of the earth king­doms. Ren­der to the Cae­sars the things which are ma­te­rial and to God those which are spir­i­tual.

156:5.17The mea­sure of the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of the evolv­ing soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the mea­sure of your hu­man strength of char­ac­ter is your abil­ity to re­sist the hold­ing of grudges and your ca­pac­ity to with­stand brood­ing in the face of deep sor­row. De­feat is the true mir­ror in which you may hon­estly view your real self.

156:5.18As you grow older in years and more ex­pe­ri­enced in the af­fairs of the king­dom, are you be­com­ing more tact­ful in deal­ing with trou­ble­some mor­tals and more tol­er­ant in liv­ing with stub­born as­so­ciates? Tact is the ful­crum of so­cial lever­age, and tol­er­ance is the ear­mark of a great soul. If you pos­sess these rare and charm­ing gifts, as the days pass you will be­come more alert and ex­pert in your wor­thy ef­forts to avoid all un­nec­es­sary so­cial mis­un­der­stand­ings. Such wise souls are able to avoid much of the trou­ble which is cer­tain to be the por­tion of all who suf­fer from lack of emo­tional ad­just­ment, those who refuse to grow up, and those who refuse to grow old grace­fully.

156:5.19Avoid dis­hon­esty and un­fair­ness in all your ef­forts to preach truth and pro­claim the gospel. Seek no un­earned rec­og­ni­tion and crave no un­de­served sym­pa­thy. Love, freely re­ceive from both di­vine and hu­man sources re­gard­less of your deserts, and love freely in re­turn. But in all other things re­lated to honor and adu­la­tion seek only that which hon­estly be­longs to you.

156:5.20The God-con­scious mor­tal is cer­tain of sal­va­tion; he is un­afraid of life; he is hon­est and con­sis­tent. He knows how bravely to en­dure un­avoid­able suf­fer­ing; he is un­com­plain­ing when faced by in­es­cap­able hard­ship.

156:5.21The true be­liever does not grow weary in well-do­ing just be­cause he is thwarted. Dif­fi­culty whets the ar­dor of the truth lover, while ob­sta­cles only chal­lenge the ex­er­tions of the un­daunted king­dom builder.

156:5.22And many other things Je­sus taught them be­fore they made ready to de­part from Tyre.

156:5.23The day be­fore Je­sus left Tyre for the re­turn to the re­gion of the Sea of Gal­i­lee, he called his as­so­ciates to­gether and di­rected the twelve evan­ge­lists to go back by a route dif­fer­ent from that which he and the twelve apos­tles were to take. And af­ter the evan­ge­lists here left Je­sus, they were never again so in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with him.

• Tyre

194:4.13And then broke out the new and re­lent­less per­se­cu­tions by the Jews, so that the ac­tive teach­ers of the new re­li­gion about Je­sus, which sub­se­quently at An­ti­och was called Chris­tian­ity, went forth to the ends of the em­pire pro­claim­ing Je­sus. In car­ry­ing this mes­sage, be­fore the time of Paul the lead­er­ship was in Greek hands; and these first mis­sion­ar­ies, as also the later ones, fol­lowed the path of Alexan­der’s march of for­mer days, go­ing by way of Gaza and Tyre to An­ti­och and then over Asia Mi­nor to Mace­do­nia, then on to Rome and to the ut­ter­most parts of the em­pire.

193:2.1The Mas­ter’s eigh­teenth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance was at Tyre, on Tues­day, May 16, at a lit­tle be­fore nine o’clock in the evening. Again he ap­peared at the close of a meet­ing of be­liev­ers, as they were about to dis­perse, say­ing:

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.”

193:2.3And then the Mas­ter dis­ap­peared from their sight. The next day there went out from Tyre those who car­ried this story to Sidon and even to An­ti­och and Da­mas­cus. Je­sus had been with these be­liev­ers when he was in the flesh, and they were quick to rec­og­nize him when he be­gan to teach them. While his friends could not read­ily rec­og­nize his mor­ontia form when made vis­i­ble, they were never slow to iden­tify his per­son­al­ity when he spoke to them.

149:1.9Many oth­ers sought heal­ing for wholly self­ish pur­poses. A rich widow of Tyre, with her ret­inue, came seek­ing to be healed of her in­fir­mi­ties, which were many; and as she fol­lowed Je­sus about through Gal­i­lee, she con­tin­ued to of­fer more and more money, as if the power of God were some­thing to be pur­chased by the high­est bid­der. But never would she be­come in­ter­ested in the gospel of the king­dom; it was only the cure of her phys­i­cal ail­ments that she sought.

163:6.5Then, speak­ing to all the dis­ci­ples, he said: “You have heard how many cities and vil­lages have re­ceived the good news of the king­dom, and how my min­is­ters and teach­ers have been re­ceived by both the Jew and the gen­tile. And blessed in­deed are these com­mu­ni­ties which have elected to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. But woe upon the light-re­ject­ing in­hab­i­tants of Cho­ra­zin, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, and Ca­per­naum, the cities which did not well re­ceive these mes­sen­gers. I de­clare that, if the mighty works done in these places had been done in Tyre and Sidon, the peo­ple of these so-called hea­then cities would have long since re­pented in sack­cloth and ashes. It shall in­deed be more tol­er­a­ble for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judg­ment.”