way

97:7.5No prophet or re­li­gious teacher from Ma­chi­venta to the time of Je­sus at­tained the high con­cept of God that Isa­iah the sec­ond pro­claimed dur­ing these days of the cap­tiv­ity. It was no small, an­thro­po­mor­phic, man-made God that this spir­i­tual leader pro­claimed. “Be­hold he takes up the isles as a very lit­tle thing.” “And as the heav­ens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

52:5.4The be­stowal Son lives and dies for the spir­i­tual up­lift of the mor­tal races of a world. He es­tab­lishes the “new and liv­ing way”; his life is an in­car­na­tion of Par­a­dise truth in mor­tal flesh, that very truth—even the Spirit of Truth—in the knowl­edge of which men shall be free.

52:5.5On Uran­tia the es­tab­lish­ment of this “new and liv­ing way” was a mat­ter of fact as well as of truth. The iso­la­tion of Uran­tia in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had sus­pended the pro­ce­dure whereby mor­tals can pass, upon death, di­rectly to the shores of the man­sion worlds. Be­fore the days of Christ Mi­chael on Uran­tia all souls slept on un­til the dis­pen­sa­tional or spe­cial mil­len­nial res­ur­rec­tions. Even Moses was not per­mit­ted to go over to the other side un­til the oc­ca­sion of a spe­cial res­ur­rec­tion, the fallen Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, con­test­ing such a de­liv­er­ance. But ever since the day of Pen­te­cost, Uran­tia mor­tals again may pro­ceed di­rectly to the mor­ontia spheres.

131:2.10“‘Come now, let us rea­son to­gether,’ says the Lord, ‘Though your sins be as scar­let, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crim­son, they shall be as wool.’ But there is no peace for the wicked; it is your own sins which have with­held the good things from you. God is the health of my coun­te­nance and the joy of my soul. The eter­nal God is my strength; he is our dwell­ing place, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms. The Lord is near to those who are bro­ken­hearted; he saves all who have a child­like spirit. Many are the af­flic­tions of the righ­teous man, but the Lord de­liv­ers him out of them all. Com­mit your way to the Lord—trust him—and he will bring it to pass. He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.

3:3.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the only per­son­al­ity in all the uni­verse who does ac­tu­ally know the num­ber of the stars and plan­ets of space. All the worlds of ev­ery uni­verse are con­stantly within the con­scious­ness of God. He also says: “I have surely seen the af­flic­tion of my peo­ple, I have heard their cry, and I know their sor­rows.” For “the Lord looks from heaven; he be­holds all the sons of men; from the place of his habi­ta­tion he looks upon all the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” Ev­ery crea­ture child may truly say: “He knows the way I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” “God knows our down­sit­tings and our up­ris­ings; he un­der­stands our thoughts afar off and is ac­quainted with all our ways.” “All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” And it should be a real com­fort to ev­ery hu­man be­ing to un­der­stand that “he knows your frame; he re­mem­bers that you are dust.” Je­sus, speak­ing of the liv­ing God, said, “Your Fa­ther knows what you have need of even be­fore you ask him.”

136:9.4As the days passed, with ever-in­creas­ing clear­ness Je­sus per­ceived what kind of a truth-re­vealer he was to be­come. He dis­cerned that God’s way was not go­ing to be the easy way. He be­gan to re­al­ize that the cup of the re­main­der of his hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence might pos­si­bly be bit­ter, but he de­cided to drink it.

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

136:4.6Ga­briel had re­minded Je­sus that there were two ways in which he might man­i­fest him­self to the world in case he should choose to tarry on Uran­tia for a time. And it was made clear to Je­sus that his choice in this mat­ter would have noth­ing to do with ei­ther his uni­verse sov­er­eignty or the ter­mi­na­tion of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. These two ways of world min­istry were:

136:4.71. His own way—the way that might seem most pleas­ant and prof­itable from the stand­point of the im­me­di­ate needs of this world and the pres­ent ed­i­fi­ca­tion of his own uni­verse.

136:4.82. The Fa­ther’s way—the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of a farsee­ing ideal of crea­ture life vi­su­al­ized by the high per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

136:4.9It was thus made clear to Je­sus that there were two ways in which he could or­der the re­main­der of his earth life. Each of these ways had some­thing to be said in its fa­vor as it might be re­garded in the light of the im­me­di­ate sit­u­a­tion. The Son of Man clearly saw that his choice be­tween these two modes of con­duct would have noth­ing to do with his re­cep­tion of uni­verse sov­er­eignty; that was a mat­ter al­ready set­tled and sealed on the rec­ords of the uni­verse of uni­verses and only awaited his de­mand in per­son. But it was in­di­cated to Je­sus that it would af­ford his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel, great sat­is­fac­tion if he, Je­sus, should see fit to fin­ish up his earth ca­reer of in­car­na­tion as he had so nobly be­gun it, al­ways sub­ject to the Fa­ther’s will. On the third day of this iso­la­tion Je­sus prom­ised him­self he would go back to the world to fin­ish his earth ca­reer, and that in a sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing any two ways he would al­ways choose the Fa­ther’s will. And he lived out the re­main­der of his earth life al­ways true to that re­solve. Even to the bit­ter end he in­vari­ably sub­or­di­nated his sov­er­eign will to that of his heav­enly Fa­ther.

136:4.10The forty days in the moun­tain wilder­ness were not a pe­riod of great temp­ta­tion but rather the pe­riod of the Mas­ter’s great de­ci­sions. Dur­ing these days of lone com­mu­nion with him­self and his Fa­ther’s im­me­di­ate pres­ence—the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster (he no longer had a per­sonal se­raphic guard­ian)—he ar­rived, one by one, at the great de­ci­sions which were to con­trol his poli­cies and con­duct for the re­main­der of his earth ca­reer. Sub­se­quently the tra­di­tion of a great temp­ta­tion be­came at­tached to this pe­riod of iso­la­tion through con­fu­sion with the frag­men­tary nar­ra­tives of the Mount Her­mon strug­gles, and fur­ther be­cause it was the cus­tom to have all great proph­ets and hu­man lead­ers be­gin their pub­lic ca­reers by un­der­go­ing these sup­posed sea­sons of fast­ing and prayer. It had al­ways been Je­sus’ prac­tice, when fac­ing any new or se­ri­ous de­ci­sions, to with­draw for com­mu­nion with his own spirit that he might seek to know the will of God.

136:4.11In all this plan­ning for the re­main­der of his earth life, Je­sus was al­ways torn in his hu­man heart by two op­pos­ing courses of con­duct:

136:4.121. He en­ter­tained a strong de­sire to win his peo­ple—and the whole world—to be­lieve in him and to ac­cept his new spir­i­tual king­dom. And he well knew their ideas con­cern­ing the com­ing Mes­siah.

136:4.132. To live and work as he knew his Fa­ther would ap­prove, to con­duct his work in be­half of other worlds in need, and to con­tinue, in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, to re­veal the Fa­ther and show forth his di­vine char­ac­ter of love.

101:3.3It is this same spirit per­son­al­ity, in prim­i­tive and em­bry­onic form, the Ad­juster pos­ses­sion of which sur­vives the nat­u­ral death in the flesh. This com­pos­ite en­tity of spirit ori­gin in as­so­ci­a­tion with hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is en­abled, by means of the liv­ing way pro­vided by the di­vine Sons, to sur­vive (in Ad­juster cus­tody) the dis­so­lu­tion of the ma­te­rial self of mind and mat­ter when such a tran­sient part­ner­ship of the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual is di­vorced by the ces­sa­tion of vi­tal mo­tion.

101:6.17Through the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of the faith of Je­sus, mor­tal man can fore­taste in time the re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Je­sus made the dis­cov­ery, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, of the Fi­nal Fa­ther, and his broth­ers in the flesh of mor­tal life can fol­low him along this same ex­pe­ri­ence of Fa­ther dis­cov­ery. They can even at­tain, as they are, the same sat­is­fac­tion in this ex­pe­ri­ence with the Fa­ther as did Je­sus as he was. New po­ten­tials were ac­tu­al­ized in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don con­se­quent upon the ter­mi­nal be­stowal of Mi­chael, and one of these was the new il­lu­mi­na­tion of the path of eter­nity that leads to the Fa­ther of all, and which can be tra­versed even by the mor­tals of ma­te­rial flesh and blood in the ini­tial life on the plan­ets of space. Je­sus was and is the new and liv­ing way whereby man can come into the di­vine in­her­i­tance which the Fa­ther has de­creed shall be his for but the ask­ing. In Je­sus there is abun­dantly demon­strated both the be­gin­nings and end­ings of the faith ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man­ity, even of di­vine hu­man­ity.

117:3.3Said Je­sus: “I am the liv­ing way,” and so he is the liv­ing way from the ma­te­rial level of self-con­scious­ness to the spir­i­tual level of God-con­scious­ness. And even as he is this liv­ing way of as­cen­sion from the self to God, so is the Su­preme the liv­ing way from fi­nite con­scious­ness to tran­scen­dence of con­scious­ness, even to the in­sight of ab­sonity.

129:4.7And this was his true and su­preme pur­pose. He did not come down to live on Uran­tia as the per­fect and de­tailed ex­am­ple for any child or adult, any man or woman, in that age or any other. True it is, in­deed, that in his full, rich, beau­ti­ful, and no­ble life we may all find much that is ex­qui­sitely ex­em­plary, di­vinely in­spir­ing, but this is be­cause he lived a true and gen­uinely hu­man life. Je­sus did not live his life on earth in or­der to set an ex­am­ple for all other hu­man be­ings to copy. He lived this life in the flesh by the same mercy min­istry that you all may live your lives on earth; and as he lived his mor­tal life in his day and as he was, so did he thereby set the ex­am­ple for all of us thus to live our lives in our day and as we are. You may not as­pire to live his life, but you can re­solve to live your lives even as, and by the same means that, he lived his. Je­sus may not be the tech­ni­cal and de­tailed ex­am­ple for all the mor­tals of all ages on all the realms of this lo­cal uni­verse, but he is ev­er­last­ingly the in­spi­ra­tion and guide of all Par­a­dise pil­grims from the worlds of ini­tial as­cen­sion up through a uni­verse of uni­verses and on through Ha­vona to Par­a­dise. Je­sus is the new and liv­ing way from man to God, from the par­tial to the per­fect, from the earthly to the heav­enly, from time to eter­nity.

136:6.11Je­sus thus re­vealed to the crea­tures of his uni­verse the tech­nique of the new and bet­ter way, the higher moral val­ues of liv­ing and the deeper spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions of evo­lu­tion­ary hu­man ex­is­tence on the worlds of space.

141:7.4The Mas­ter sought to im­press upon all teach­ers of the gospel of the king­dom that their only busi­ness was to re­veal God to the in­di­vid­ual man as his Fa­ther—to lead this in­di­vid­ual man to be­come son-con­scious; then to pre­sent this same man to God as his faith son. Both of these es­sen­tial rev­e­la­tions are ac­com­plished in Je­sus. He be­came, in­deed, “the way, the truth, and the life.” The re­li­gion of Je­sus was wholly based on the liv­ing of his be­stowal life on earth. When Je­sus de­parted from this world, he left be­hind no books, laws, or other forms of hu­man or­ga­ni­za­tion af­fect­ing the re­li­gious life of the in­di­vid­ual.

180:3.7When Je­sus heard Thomas, he an­swered: “Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man goes to the Fa­ther ex­cept through me. All who find the Fa­ther, first find me. If you know me, you know the way to the Fa­ther. And you do know me, for you have lived with me and you now see me.”

182:1.20I am the way, the truth, and the life.

196:2.4But the great­est mis­take was made in that, while the hu­man Je­sus was rec­og­nized as hav­ing a re­li­gion, the di­vine Je­sus (Christ) al­most overnight be­came a re­li­gion. Paul’s Chris­tian­ity made sure of the ado­ra­tion of the di­vine Christ, but it al­most wholly lost sight of the strug­gling and valiant hu­man Je­sus of Gal­i­lee, who, by the valor of his per­sonal re­li­gious faith and the hero­ism of his in­dwelling Ad­juster, as­cended from the lowly lev­els of hu­man­ity to be­come one with di­vin­ity, thus be­com­ing the new and liv­ing way whereby all mor­tals may so as­cend from hu­man­ity to di­vin­ity. Mor­tals in all stages of spir­i­tu­al­ity and on all worlds may find in the per­sonal life of Je­sus that which will strengthen and in­spire them as they pro­gress from the low­est spirit lev­els up to the high­est di­vine val­ues, from the be­gin­ning to the end of all per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

97:7.7And it com­forted the Jew­ish cap­tives, as it has thou­sands upon thou­sands ever since, to hear such words as: “Thus says the Lord, ‘I have cre­ated you, I have re­deemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine.’” “When you pass through the wa­ters, I will be with you since you are pre­cious in my sight.” “Can a woman for­get her suck­ling child that she should not have com­pas­sion on her son? Yes, she may for­get, yet will I not for­get my chil­dren, for be­hold I have graven them upon the palms of my hands; I have even cov­ered them with the shadow of my hands.” “Let the wicked for­sake his ways and the un­righ­teous man his thoughts, and let him re­turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abun­dantly par­don.”

131:2.11“Love your neigh­bor as your­self; bear a grudge against no man. What­so­ever you hate do to no man. Love your brother, for the Lord has said: ‘I will love my chil­dren freely.’ The path of the just is as a shin­ing light which shines more and more un­til the per­fect day. They who are wise shall shine as the bright­ness of the fir­ma­ment and they who turn many to righ­teous­ness as the stars for­ever and ever. Let the wicked for­sake his evil way and the un­righ­teous man his re­bel­lious thoughts. Says the Lord: ‘Let them re­turn to me, and I will have mercy on them; I will abun­dantly par­don.’

153:1.2Je­sus com­pre­hended that he faced the im­me­di­ate dec­la­ra­tion of avowed and open war­fare by his in­creas­ing en­e­mies, and he elected boldly to as­sume the of­fen­sive. At the feed­ing of the five thou­sand he had chal­lenged their ideas of the ma­te­rial Mes­siah; now he chose again openly to at­tack their con­cept of the Jew­ish de­liv­erer. This cri­sis, which be­gan with the feed­ing of the five thou­sand, and which ter­mi­nated with this Sab­bath af­ter­noon ser­mon, was the out­ward turn­ing of the tide of pop­u­lar fame and ac­claim. Hence­forth, the work of the king­dom was to be in­creas­ingly con­cerned with the more im­por­tant task of win­ning last­ing spir­i­tual con­verts for the truly re­li­gious broth­er­hood of man­kind. This ser­mon marks the cri­sis in the tran­si­tion from the pe­riod of dis­cus­sion, con­tro­versy, and de­ci­sion to that of open war­fare and fi­nal ac­cep­tance or fi­nal re­jec­tion.

153:1.3The Mas­ter well knew that many of his fol­low­ers were slowly but surely prepar­ing their minds fi­nally to re­ject him. He like­wise knew that many of his dis­ci­ples were slowly but cer­tainly pass­ing through that train­ing of mind and that dis­ci­pline of soul which would en­able them to tri­umph over doubt and coura­geously to as­sert their full-fledged faith in the gospel of the king­dom. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how men pre­pare them­selves for the de­ci­sions of a cri­sis and the per­for­mance of sud­den deeds of coura­geous choos­ing by the slow pro­cess of the re­it­er­ated choos­ing be­tween the re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions of good and evil. He sub­jected his cho­sen mes­sen­gers to re­peated re­hearsals in dis­ap­point­ment and pro­vided them with fre­quent and test­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for choos­ing be­tween the right and the wrong way of meet­ing spir­i­tual tri­als. He knew he could de­pend on his fol­low­ers, when they met the fi­nal test, to make their vi­tal de­ci­sions in ac­cor­dance with prior and ha­bit­ual men­tal at­ti­tudes and spirit re­ac­tions.

153:2.5“What new sign is it that you seek at my hands? I de­clare that you al­ready have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to en­able you to make your de­ci­sion. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to many who sit be­fore me this day, you are con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of choos­ing which way you will go; and I say to you, as Joshua said to your fore­fa­thers, ‘choose you this day whom you will serve.’ To­day, many of you stand at the part­ing of the ways.

153:4.4“Many of you have this day come to the part­ing of the ways; you have come to a be­gin­ning of the mak­ing of the in­ev­i­ta­ble choice be­tween the will of the Fa­ther and the self-cho­sen ways of dark­ness. And as you now choose, so shall you even­tu­ally be. You must ei­ther make the tree good and its fruit good, or else will the tree be­come cor­rupt and its fruit cor­rupt. I de­clare that in my Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom the tree is known by its fruits. But some of you who are as vipers, how can you, hav­ing al­ready cho­sen evil, bring forth good fruits? Af­ter all, out of the abun­dance of the evil in your hearts your mouths speak.”

143:2.4“By the old way you seek to sup­press, obey, and con­form to the rules of liv­ing; by the new way you are first trans­formed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strength­ened in your in­ner soul by the con­stant spir­i­tual re­new­ing of your mind, and so are you en­dowed with the power of the cer­tain and joy­ous per­for­mance of the gra­cious, ac­cept­able, and per­fect will of God. For­get not—it is your per­sonal faith in the ex­ceed­ingly great and pre­cious promises of God that en­sures your be­com­ing par­tak­ers of the di­vine na­ture. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s trans­for­ma­tion, you be­come in re­al­ity the tem­ples of God, and his spirit ac­tu­ally dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bond­slaves of the flesh but free and lib­er­ated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit en­dows you with the lib­erty of self-mas­tery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bond­age and the slav­ery of self-de­nial.

178:1.16And for­get not: We have made no di­rect at­tack upon the per­sons or upon the au­thor­ity of those who sit in Moses’ seat; we only of­fered them the new light, which they have so vig­or­ously re­jected. We have as­sailed them only by the de­nun­ci­a­tion of their spir­i­tual dis­loy­alty to the very truths which they pro­fess to teach and safe­guard. We clashed with these es­tab­lished lead­ers and rec­og­nized rulers only when they threw them­selves di­rectly in the way of the preach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom to the sons of men. And even now, it is not we who as­sail them, but they who seek our de­struc­tion. Do not for­get that you are com­mis­sioned to go forth preach­ing only the good news. You are not to at­tack the old ways; you are skill­fully to put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old be­liefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work. Let con­tro­versy come only when they who de­spise the truth force it upon you. But when the will­ful un­be­liever at­tacks you, do not hes­i­tate to stand in vig­or­ous de­fense of the truth which has saved and sanc­ti­fied you.

7:5.1The Eter­nal Son with­out reser­va­tion joined with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in broad­cast­ing that tremen­dous in­junc­tion to all cre­ation: “Be you per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in Ha­vona is per­fect.” And ever since, that in­vi­ta­tion-com­mand has mo­ti­vated all the sur­vival plans and the be­stowal projects of the Eter­nal Son and his vast fam­ily of co-or­di­nate and as­so­ci­ated Sons. And in these very be­stowals the Sons of God have be­come to all evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures “the way, the truth, and the life.”

34:7.8Hav­ing started out on the way of life ev­er­last­ing, hav­ing ac­cepted the as­sign­ment and re­ceived your or­ders to ad­vance, do not fear the dan­gers of hu­man for­get­ful­ness and mor­tal in­con­stancy, do not be trou­bled with doubts of fail­ure or by per­plex­ing con­fu­sion, do not fal­ter and ques­tion your sta­tus and stand­ing, for in ev­ery dark hour, at ev­ery cross­road in the for­ward strug­gle, the Spirit of Truth will al­ways speak, say­ing, “This is the way.”

97:5.2Isa­iah went on to preach the eter­nal na­ture of God, his in­fi­nite wis­dom, his un­chang­ing per­fec­tion of re­li­a­bil­ity. He rep­re­sented the God of Is­rael as say­ing: “Judg­ment also will I lay to the line and righ­teous­ness to the plum­met.” “The Lord will give you rest from your sor­row and from your fear and from the hard bond­age wherein man has been made to serve.” “And your ears shall hear a word be­hind you, say­ing, ‘this is the way, walk in it.’” “Be­hold God is my sal­va­tion; I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord is my strength and my song.” “‘Come now and let us rea­son to­gether,’ says the Lord, ‘though your sins be as scar­let, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like the crim­son, they shall be as wool.’”

139:12.5Ju­das was a good busi­ness man. It re­quired tact, abil­ity, and pa­tience, as well as painstak­ing de­vo­tion, to man­age the fi­nan­cial af­fairs of such an ide­al­ist as Je­sus, to say noth­ing of wrestling with the hel­ter-skel­ter busi­ness meth­ods of some of his apos­tles. Ju­das re­ally was a great ex­ec­u­tive, a farsee­ing and able fi­nancier. And he was a stick­ler for or­ga­ni­za­tion. None of the twelve ever crit­i­cized Ju­das. As far as they could see, Ju­das Is­car­iot was a match­less trea­surer, a learned man, a loyal (though some­times crit­i­cal) apos­tle, and in ev­ery sense of the word a great suc­cess. The apos­tles loved Ju­das; he was re­ally one of them. He must have be­lieved in Je­sus, but we doubt whether he re­ally loved the Mas­ter with a whole heart. The case of Ju­das il­lus­trates the truth­ful­ness of that say­ing: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death.” It is al­to­gether pos­si­ble to fall vic­tim to the peace­ful de­cep­tion of pleas­ant ad­just­ment to the paths of sin and death. Be as­sured that Ju­das was al­ways fi­nan­cially loyal to his Mas­ter and his fel­low apos­tles. Money could never have been the mo­tive for his be­trayal of the Mas­ter.

166:3.3“You also have an­other say­ing among you, and one that con­tains much truth: That the way which leads to eter­nal life is straight and nar­row, that the door which leads thereto is like­wise nar­row so that, of those who seek sal­va­tion, few can find en­trance through this door. You also have a teach­ing that the way which leads to de­struc­tion is broad, that the en­trance thereto is wide, and that there are many who choose to go this way. And this proverb is not with­out its mean­ing. But I de­clare that sal­va­tion is first a mat­ter of your per­sonal choos­ing. Even if the door to the way of life is nar­row, it is wide enough to ad­mit all who sin­cerely seek to en­ter, for I am that door. And the Son will never refuse en­trance to any child of the uni­verse who, by faith, seeks to find the Fa­ther through the Son.

166:3.6This was in­deed a new and strange ver­sion of the old and fa­mil­iar proverb of the straight and nar­row way.