voices

• Jesus’ voice was musical, fascinating, authoritative

125:5.1Je­sus’ third day with the scribes and teach­ers in the tem­ple wit­nessed the gath­er­ing of many spec­ta­tors who, hav­ing heard of this youth from Gal­i­lee, came to en­joy the ex­pe­ri­ence of see­ing a lad con­fuse the wise men of the law. Si­mon also came down from Beth­any to see what the boy was up to. Through­out this day Joseph and Mary con­tin­ued their anx­ious search for Je­sus, even go­ing sev­eral times into the tem­ple but never think­ing to scru­ti­nize the sev­eral dis­cus­sion groups, al­though they once came al­most within hear­ing dis­tance of his fas­ci­nat­ing voice.

• Jesus’ voice was musical, fascinating, authoritative

127:1.2This year he at­tained his full phys­i­cal growth. He was a vir­ile and comely youth. He be­came in­creas­ingly sober and se­ri­ous, but he was kind and sym­pa­thetic. His eye was kind but search­ing; his smile was al­ways en­gag­ing and re­as­sur­ing. His voice was mu­si­cal but au­thor­i­ta­tive; his greet­ing cor­dial but un­af­fected. Al­ways, even in the most com­mon­place of con­tacts, there seemed to be in ev­i­dence the touch of a two­fold na­ture, the hu­man and the di­vine. Ever he dis­played this com­bi­na­tion of the sym­pa­thiz­ing friend and the au­thor­i­ta­tive teacher. And these per­son­al­ity traits be­gan early to be­come man­i­fest, even in these ado­les­cent years.

• Jesus’ voice was musical, fascinating, authoritative

154:6.5It was just an­other of those in­stances in which his earth fam­ily could not com­pre­hend that he must be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness. And so Mary and his broth­ers were deeply hurt when, not­with­stand­ing that he paused in his speak­ing to re­ceive the mes­sage, in­stead of his rush­ing out to greet them, they heard his mu­si­cal voice speak with in­creased vol­ume: “Say to my mother and my broth­ers that they should have no fear for me. The Fa­ther who sent me into the world will not for­sake me; nei­ther shall any harm come upon my fam­ily. Bid them be of good cour­age and put their trust in the Fa­ther of the king­dom. But, af­ter all, who is my mother and who are my broth­ers?” And stretch­ing forth his hands to­ward all of his dis­ci­ples as­sem­bled in the room, he said: “I have no mother; I have no broth­ers. Be­hold my mother and be­hold my breth­ren! For whoso­ever does the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven, the same is my mother, my brother, and my sis­ter.”

• Jesus’ voice was musical, fascinating, authoritative

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

• Jesus’ voice was musical, fascinating, authoritative

183:3.5As the guards ral­lied from their first fal­ter­ing at the sight of Je­sus and at the sound of his un­usual voice, and as the apos­tles and dis­ci­ples drew nearer, Ju­das stepped up to Je­sus and, plac­ing a kiss upon his brow, said, “Hail, Mas­ter and Teacher.” And as Ju­das thus em­braced his Mas­ter, Je­sus said, “Friend, is it not enough to do this! Would you even be­tray the Son of Man with a kiss?”

• Jesus’ voice was musical, fascinating, authoritative

190:2.3In the mean­time, as they looked for James and be­fore they found him, while he stood there in the gar­den near the tomb, he be­came aware of a near-by pres­ence, as if some­one had touched him on the shoul­der; and when he turned to look, he be­held the grad­ual ap­pear­ance of a strange form by his side. He was too much amazed to speak and too fright­ened to flee. And then the strange form spoke, say­ing: “James, I come to call you to the ser­vice of the king­dom. Join earnest hands with your breth­ren and fol­low af­ter me.” When James heard his name spo­ken, he knew that it was his el­dest brother, Je­sus, who had ad­dressed him. They all had more or less dif­fi­culty in rec­og­niz­ing the mor­ontia form of the Mas­ter, but few of them had any trou­ble rec­og­niz­ing his voice or oth­er­wise iden­ti­fy­ing his charm­ing per­son­al­ity when he once be­gan to com­mu­ni­cate with them.

• Jesus did not indulge in hearing religious v.

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.