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Urantia Book Paper 195 After Pentecost
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART IV: The Life and Teachings
of Jesus : The Bestowal Of Michael On Urantia The Times Of Michael's Bestowal
Birth And Infancy Of Jesus The Early Childhood Of Jesus The Later Childhood Of
Jesus Jesus At Jerusalem The Two Crucial Years The Adolescent Years Jesus'
Early Manhood The Later Adult Life Of Jesus On The Way To Rome The World's
Religions The Sojourn At Rome The Return From Rome The Transition Years John
The Baptist Baptism And The Forty Days Tarrying Time In Galilee Training The
Kingdom's Messengers The Twelve Apostles The Ordination Of The Twelve Beginning
The Public Work The Passover At Jerusalem Going Through Samaria At Gilboa And
In The Decapolis Four Eventful Days At Capernaum First Preaching Tour Of
Galilee The Interlude Visit To Jerusalem Training Evangelists At Bethsaida The
Second Preaching Tour The Third Preaching Tour Tarrying And Teaching By The
Seaside Events Leading Up To The Capernaum Crisis The Crisis At Capernaum Last
Days At Capernaum Fleeing Through Northern Galilee The Sojourn At Tyre And
Sidon At Caesarea-philippi The Mount Of Transfiguration The Decapolis Tour
Rodan Of Alexandria Further Discussions With Rodan At The Feast Of Tabernacles
Ordination Of The Seventy At Magadan At The Feast Of Dedication The Perean
Mission Begins Last Visit To Northern Perea The Visit To Philadelphia The
Resurrection Of Lazarus Last Teaching At Pella The Kingdom Of Heaven On The Way
To Jerusalem Going Into Jerusalem Monday In Jerusalem ... After Pentecost
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Paper 195 After Pentecost
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Introduction
THE results of Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost were such as to decide
the future policies, and to determine the plans, of the majority of the
apostles in their efforts to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. Peter was the
real founder of the Christian church; Paul carried the Christian message to the
gentiles, and the Greek believers carried it to the whole Roman Empire.
Although the tradition-bound and priest-ridden Hebrews, as a people, refused to
accept either Jesus' gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man
or Peter's and Paul's proclamation of the resurrection and ascension of Christ
(subsequent Christianity), the rest of the Roman Empire was found to be
receptive to the evolving Christian teachings. Western civilization was at this
time intellectual, war weary, and thoroughly skeptical of all existing
religions and universe philosophies. The peoples of the Western world, the
beneficiaries of Greek culture, had a revered tradition of a great past. They
could contemplate the inheritance of great accomplishments in philosophy, art,
literature, and political progress. But with all these achievements they had no
soul-satisfying religion. Their spiritual longings remained unsatisfied.
Upon such a stage of human society the teachings of Jesus, embraced in the
Christian message, were suddenly thrust. A new order of living was thus
presented to the hungry hearts of these Western peoples. This situation meant
immediate conflict between the older religious practices and the new
Christianized version of Jesus' message to the world. Such a conflict must
result in either decided victory for the new or for the old or in some degree
of compromise. History shows that the struggle ended in compromise.
Christianity presumed to embrace too much for any one people to assimilate in
one or two generations. It was not a simple spiritual appeal, such as Jesus had
presented to the souls of men; it early struck a decided attitude on religious
rituals, education, magic, medicine, art, literature, law, government, morals,
sex regulation, polygamy, and, in limited degree, even slavery. Christianity
came not merely as a new religion--something all the Roman Empire and all the
Orient were waiting for--but as a new order of human society. And as such a
pretension it quickly precipitated the social-moral clash of the ages. The
ideals of Jesus, as they were reinterpreted by Greek philosophy and socialized
in Christianity, now boldly challenged the traditions of the human race
embodied in the ethics, morality, and religions of Western civilization.
At first, Christianity won as converts only the lower social and economic
strata. But by the beginning of the second century the very best of Greco-Roman
culture was increasingly turning to this new order of Christian belief, this
new concept of the purpose of living and the goal of existence.
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How did this new message of Jewish origin, which had almost failed in the land
of its birth, so quickly and effectively capture the very best minds of the
Roman Empire? The triumph of Christianity over the philosophic religions and
the mystery cults was due to:
1. Organization. Paul was a great organizer and his successors kept up the pace
he set.
2. Christianity was thoroughly Hellenized. It embraced the best in Greek
philosophy as well as the cream of Hebrew theology.
3. But best of all, it contained a new and great ideal, the echo of the life
bestowal of Jesus and the reflection of his message of salvation for all
mankind.
4. The Christian leaders were willing to make such compromises with Mithraism
that the better half of its adherents were won over to the Antioch cult.
5. Likewise did the next and later generations of Christian leaders make such
further compromises with paganism that even the Roman emperor Constantine was
won to the new religion.
But the Christians made a shrewd bargain with the pagans in that they adopted
the ritualistic pageantry of the pagan while compelling the pagan to accept the
Hellenized version of Pauline Christianity. They made a better bargain with the
pagans than they did with the Mithraic cult, but even in that earlier
compromise they came off more than conquerors in that they succeeded in
eliminating the gross immoralities and also numerous other reprehensible
practices of the Persian mystery.
Wisely or unwisely, these early leaders of Christianity deliberately
compromised the ideals of Jesus in an effort to save and further many of his
ideas. And they were eminently successful. But mistake not! these compromised
ideals of the Master are still latent in his gospel, and they will eventually
assert their full power upon the world.
By this paganization of Christianity the old order won many minor victories of
a ritualistic nature, but the Christians gained the ascendancy in that:
1. A new and enormously higher note in human morals was struck.
2. A new and greatly enlarged concept of God was given to the world.
3. The hope of immortality became a part of the assurance of a recognized
4. Jesus of Nazareth was given to man's hungry soul.
Many of the great truths taught by Jesus were almost lost in these early
compromises, but they yet slumber in this religion of paganized Christianity,
which was in turn the Pauline version of the life and teachings of the Son of
Man. And Christianity, even before it was paganized, was first thoroughly
Hellenized. Christianity owes much, very much, to the Greeks. It was a Greek,
from Egypt, who so bravely stood up at Nicaea and so fearlessly challenged this
assembly that it dared not so obscure the concept of the nature of Jesus that
the real truth of his bestowal might have been in danger of being lost to the
world. This Greek's name was Athanasius, and but for the eloquence and the
logic of this believer, the persuasions of Arius would have triumphed.
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1. INFLUENCE OF THE GREEKS
The Hellenization of Christianity started in earnest on that eventful day when
the Apostle Paul stood before the council of the Areopagus in Athens and told
the Athenians about "the Unknown God." There, under the shadow of the
Acropolis, this Roman citizen proclaimed to these Greeks his version of the new
religion which had taken origin in the Jewish land of Galilee. And there was
something strangely alike in Greek philosophy and many of the teachings of
Jesus. They had a common goal--both aimed at the emergence of the individual.
The Greek, at social and political emergence; Jesus, at moral and spiritual
emergence. The Greek taught intellectual liberalism leading to political
freedom; Jesus taught spiritual liberalism leading to religious liberty. These
two ideas put together constituted a new and mighty charter for human freedom;
they presaged man's social, political, and spiritual liberty.
Christianity came into existence and triumphed over all contending religions
primarily because of two things:
1. The Greek mind was willing to borrow new and good ideas even from the Jews.
2. Paul and his successors were willing but shrewd and sagacious compromisers;
they were keen theologic traders.
At the time Paul stood up in Athens preaching "Christ and Him Crucified," the
Greeks were spiritually hungry; they were inquiring, interested, and actually
looking for spiritual truth. Never forget that at first the Romans fought
Christianity, while the Greeks embraced it, and that it was the Greeks who
literally forced the Romans subsequently to accept this new religion, as then
modified, as a part of Greek culture.
The Greek revered beauty, the Jew holiness, but both peoples loved truth. For
centuries the Greek had seriously thought and earnestly debated about all human
problems--social, economic, political, and philosophic--except religion. Few
Greeks had paid much attention to religion; they did not take even their own
religion very seriously. For centuries the Jews had neglected these other
fields of thought while they devoted their minds to religion. They took their
religion very seriously, too seriously. As illuminated by the content of Jesus'
message, the united product of the centuries of the thought of these two
peoples now became the driving power of a new order of human society and, to a
certain extent, of a new order of human religious belief and practice.
The influence of Greek culture had already penetrated the lands of the western
Mediterranean when Alexander spread Hellenistic civilization over the
near-Eastern world. The Greeks did very well with their religion and their
politics as long as they lived in small city-states, but when the Macedonian
king dared to expand Greece into an empire, stretching from the Adriatic to the
Indus, trouble began. The art and philosophy of Greece were fully equal to the
task of imperial expansion, but not so with Greek political administration or
religion. After the city-states of Greece had expanded into empire, their
rather parochial gods seemed a little queer. The Greeks were really searching
for one God, a greater and better God, when the Christianized version of the
older Jewish religion came to them.
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The Hellenistic Empire, as such, could not endure. Its cultural sway continued
on, but it endured only after securing from the West the Roman political genius
for empire administration and after obtaining from the East a religion whose
one God possessed empire dignity.
In the first century after Christ, Hellenistic culture had already attained its
highest levels; its retrogression had begun; learning was advancing but genius
was declining. It was at this very time that the ideas and ideals of Jesus,
which were partially embodied in Christianity, became a part of the salvage of
Greek culture and learning.
Alexander had charged on the East with the cultural gift of the civilization of
Greece; Paul assaulted the West with the Christian version of the gospel of
Jesus. And wherever the Greek culture prevailed throughout the West, there
Hellenized Christianity took root.
The Eastern version of the message of Jesus, notwithstanding that it remained
more true to his teachings, continued to follow the uncompromising attitude of
Abner. It never progressed as did the Hellenized version and was eventually
lost in the Islamic movement.
2. THE ROMAN INFLUENCE
The Romans bodily took over Greek culture, putting representative government in
the place of government by lot. And presently this change favored Christianity
in that Rome brought into the whole Western world a new tolerance for strange
languages, peoples, and even religions.
Much of the early persecution of Christians in Rome was due solely to their
unfortunate use of the term "kingdom" in their preaching. The Romans were
tolerant of any and all religions but very resentful of anything that savored
of political rivalry. And so, when these early persecutions, due so largely to
misunderstanding, died out, the field for religious propaganda was wide open.
The Roman was interested in political administration; he cared little for
either art or religion, but he was unusually tolerant of both.
Oriental law was stern and arbitrary; Greek law was fluid and artistic; Roman
law was dignified and respect-breeding. Roman education bred an unheard-of and
stolid loyalty. The early Romans were politically devoted and sublimely
consecrated individuals. They were honest, zealous, and dedicated to their
ideals, but without a religion worthy of the name. Small wonder that their
Greek teachers were able to persuade them to accept Paul's Christianity.
And these Romans were a great people. They could govern the Occident because
they did govern themselves. Such unparalleled honesty, devotion, and stalwart
self-control was ideal soil for the reception and growth of Christianity.
It was easy for these Greco-Romans to become just as spiritually devoted to an
institutional church as they were politically devoted to the state. The Romans
fought the church only when they feared it as a competitor of the state. Rome,
having little national philosophy or native culture, took over Greek culture
for its own and boldly adopted Christ as its moral philosophy. Christianity
became the moral culture of Rome but hardly its religion in the sense of being
the individual experience in spiritual growth of those who embraced the new
religion in such a wholesale manner. True, indeed, many individuals did
penetrate beneath the surface of all this state religion and found for the
nourishment
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of their souls the real values of the hidden meanings held within the latent
truths of Hellenized and paganized Christianity.
The Stoic and his sturdy appeal to "nature and conscience" had only the better
prepared all Rome to receive Christ, at least in an intellectual sense. The
Roman was by nature and training a lawyer; he revered even the laws of nature.
And now, in Christianity, he discerned in the laws of nature the laws of God. A
people that could produce Cicero and Vergil were ripe for Paul's Hellenized
Christianity.
And so did these Romanized Greeks force both Jews and Christians to
philosophize their religion, to co-ordinate its ideas and systematize its
ideals, to adapt religious practices to the existing current of life. And all
this was enormously helped by translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek
and by the later recording of the New Testament in the Greek tongue.
The Greeks, in contrast with the Jews and many other peoples, had long
provisionally believed in immortality, some sort of survival after death, and
since this was the very heart of Jesus' teaching, it was certain that
Christianity would make a strong appeal to them.
A succession of Greek-cultural and Roman-political victories had consolidated
the Mediterranean lands into one empire, with one language and one culture, and
had made the Western world ready for one God. Judaism provided this God, but
Judaism was not acceptable as a religion to these Romanized Greeks. Philo
helped some to mitigate their objections, but Christianity revealed to them an
even better concept of one God, and they embraced it readily.
3. UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE
After the consolidation of Roman political rule and after the dissemination of
Christianity, the Christians found themselves with one God, a great religious
concept, but without empire. The Greco-Romans found themselves with a great
empire but without a God to serve as the suitable religious concept for empire
worship and spiritual unification. The Christians accepted the empire; the
empire adopted Christianity. The Roman provided a unity of political rule; the
Greek, a unity of culture and learning; Christianity, a unity of religious
thought and practice.
Rome overcame the tradition of nationalism by imperial universalism and for the
first time in history made it possible for different races and nations at least
nominally to accept one religion.
Christianity came into favor in Rome at a time when there was great contention
between the vigorous teachings of the Stoics and the salvation promises of the
mystery cults. Christianity came with refreshing comfort and liberating power
to a spiritually hungry people whose language had no word for "unselfishness."
That which gave greatest power to Christianity was the way its believers lived
lives of service and even the way they died for their faith during the earlier
times of drastic persecution.
The teaching regarding Christ's love for children soon put an end to the
widespread practice of exposing children to death when they were not wanted,
particularly girl babies.
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The early plan of Christian worship was largely taken over from the Jewish
synagogue, modified by the Mithraic ritual; later on, much pagan pageantry was
added. The backbone of the early Christian church consisted of Christianized
Greek proselytes to Judaism.
The second century after Christ was the best time in all the world's history
for a good religion to make progress in the Western world. During the first
century Christianity had prepared itself, by struggle and compromise, to take
root and rapidly spread. Christianity adopted the emperor; later, he adopted
Christianity. This was a great age for the spread of a new religion. There was
religious liberty; travel was universal and thought was untrammeled.
The spiritual impetus of nominally accepting Hellenized Christianity came to
Rome too late to prevent the well-started moral decline or to compensate for
the already well-established and increasing racial deterioration. This new
religion was a cultural necessity for imperial Rome, and it is exceedingly
unfortunate that it did not become a means of spiritual salvation in a larger
sense.
Even a good religion could not save a great empire from the sure results of
lack of individual participation in the affairs of government, from overmuch
paternalism, overtaxation and gross collection abuses, unbalanced trade with
the Levant which drained away the gold, amusement madness, Roman
standardization, the degradation of woman, slavery and race decadence, physical
plagues, and a state church which became institutionalized nearly to the point
of spiritual barrenness.
Conditions, however, were not so bad at Alexandria. The early schools continued
to hold much of Jesus' teachings free from compromise. Pantaenus taught Clement
and then went on to follow Nathaniel in proclaiming Christ in India. While some
of the ideals of Jesus were sacrificed in the building of Christianity, it
should in all fairness be recorded that, by the end of the second century,
practically all the great minds of the Greco-Roman world had become Christian.
The triumph was approaching completion.
And this Roman Empire lasted sufficiently long to insure the survival of
Christianity even after the empire collapsed. But we have often conjectured
what would have happened in Rome and in the world if it had been the gospel of
the kingdom which had been accepted in the place of Greek Christianity.
4. THE EUROPEAN DARK AGES
The church, being an adjunct to society and the ally of politics, was doomed to
share in the intellectual and spiritual decline of the so-called European "dark
ages." During this time, religion became more and more monasticized,
asceticized, and legalized. In a spiritual sense, Christianity was hibernating.
Throughout this period there existed, alongside this slumbering and secularized
religion, a continuous stream of mysticism, a fantastic spiritual experience
bordering on unreality and philosophically akin to pantheism.
During these dark and despairing centuries, religion became virtually
secondhanded again. The individual was almost lost before the overshadowing
authority, tradition, and dictation of the church. A new spiritual menace arose
in the creation of a galaxy of "saints" who were assumed to have special
influence at the divine courts, and who, therefore, if effectively appealed to,
would be able to intercede in man's behalf before the Gods.
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But Christianity was sufficiently socialized and paganized that, while it was
impotent to stay the oncoming dark ages, it was the better prepared to survive
this long period of moral darkness and spiritual stagnation. And it did persist
on through the long night of Western civilization and was still functioning as
a moral influence in the world when the renaissance dawned. The rehabilitation
of Christianity, following the passing of the dark ages, resulted in bringing
into existence numerous sects of the Christian teachings, beliefs suited to
special intellectual, emotional, and spiritual types of human personality. And
many of these special Christian groups, or religious families, still persist at
the time of the making of this presentation.
Christianity exhibits a history of having originated out of the unintended
transformation of the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus. It further
presents the history of having experienced Hellenization, paganization,
secularization, institutionalization, intellectual deterioration, spiritual
decadence, moral hibernation, threatened extinction, later rejuvenation,
fragmentation, and more recent relative rehabilitation. Such a pedigree is
indicative of inherent vitality and the possession of vast recuperative
resources. And this same Christianity is now present in the civilized world of
Occidental peoples and stands face to face with a struggle for existence which
is even more ominous than those eventful crises which have characterized its
past battles for dominance.
Religion is now confronted by the challenge of a new age of scientific minds
and materialistic tendencies. In this gigantic struggle between the secular and
the spiritual, the religion of Jesus will eventually triumph.
5. THE MODERN PROBLEM
The twentieth century has brought new problems for Christianity and all other
religions to solve. The higher a civilization climbs, the more necessitous
becomes the duty to "seek first the realities of heaven" in all of man's
efforts to stabilize society and facilitate the solution of its material
problems.
Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it is dismembered,
segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches the truth
seeker aright only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living spiritual
reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of intervening
art.
Religion is the revelation to man of his divine and eternal destiny. Religion
is a purely personal and spiritual experience and must forever be distinguished
from man's other high forms of thought, such as:
1. Man's logical attitude toward the things of material reality.
2. Man's aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness.
3. Man's ethical recognition of social obligations and political duty.
4. Even man's sense of human morality is not, in and of itself, religious.
Religion is designed to find those values in the universe which call forth
faith, trust, and assurance; religion culminates in worship. Religion discovers
for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the relative
values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had only through
genuine religious experience.
A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities
can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity.
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Do not try to satisfy the curiosity or gratify all the latent adventure surging
within the soul in one short life in the flesh. Be patient ! be not tempted to
indulge in a lawless plunge into cheap and sordid adventure. Harness your
energies and bridle your passions; be calm while you await the majestic
unfolding of an endless career of progressive adventure and thrilling
discovery.
In confusion over man's origin, do not lose sight of his eternal destiny.
Forget not that Jesus loved even little children, and that he forever made
clear the great worth of human personality.
As you view the world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see
are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely
white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of
evil.
When there is so much good truth to publish and proclaim, why should men dwell
so much upon the evil in the world just because it appears to be a fact? The
beauties of the spiritual values of truth are more pleasurable and uplifting
than is the phenomenon of evil.
In religion, Jesus advocated and followed the method of experience, even as
modern science pursues the technique of experiment. We find God through the
leadings of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through
the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the
worship of divine goodness. But of all these values, love is the true guide to
real insight.
6. MATERIALISM
Scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a materialistic
panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of the ages, but
this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it can stand the
demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky about the
spiritual assets of the human race. When the materialistic-secular panic is
over, the religion of Jesus will not be found bankrupt. The spiritual bank of
the kingdom of heaven will be paying out faith, hope, and moral security to all
who draw upon it "in His name."
No matter what the apparent conflict between materialism and the teachings of
Jesus may be, you can rest assured that, in the ages to come, the teachings of
the Master will fully triumph. In reality, true religion cannot become involved
in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned with material
things. Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with, science, while
it supremely concerns itself with the scientist.
The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of wisdom
and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to
pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting.
At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day
of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The higher minds of the
scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in their philosophy, but
the rank and file of the people still lean in that direction as a result of
former teachings. But this age of physical realism is only a passing episode in
man's life on earth. Modern science has left true religion--the teachings of
Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers--untouched. All science has
done is to destroy the childlike illusions of the misinterpretations of life.
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Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as
regards man's life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with
origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical
phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only leads the
scientist straight back to the first great cause--the Universal Father of
Paradise.
The violent swing from an age of miracles to an age of machines has proved
altogether upsetting to man. The cleverness and dexterity of the false
philosophies of mechanism belie their very mechanistic contentions. The
fatalistic agility of the mind of a materialist forever disproves his
assertions that the universe is a blind and purposeless energy phenomenon.
The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the thoughtless
secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with things;
they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual
nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances. One of
the great troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find
time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.
Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely an
arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an
unromantic and mechanistic universe. But whence comes all this vast universe of
mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the
conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men's
souls--it concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal
values.
The materialistic sociologist of today surveys a community, makes a report
thereon, and leaves the people as he found them. Nineteen hundred years ago,
unlearned Galileans surveyed Jesus giving his life as a spiritual contribution
to man's inner experience and then went out and turned the whole Roman Empire
upside down.
But religious leaders are making a great mistake when they try to call modern
man to spiritual battle with the trumpet blasts of the Middle Ages. Religion
must provide itself with new and up-to-date slogans. Neither democracy nor any
other political panacea will take the place of spiritual progress. False
religions may represent an evasion of reality, but Jesus in his gospel
introduced mortal man to the very entrance upon an eternal reality of spiritual
progression.
To say that mind "emerged" from matter explains nothing. If the universe were
merely a mechanism and mind were unapart from matter, we would never have two
differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon. The concepts of truth,
beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine
cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish
goodness.
Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning scientist is at
once supermaterial. Matter knows not truth, neither can it love mercy nor
delight in spiritual realities. Moral convictions based on spiritual
enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as
mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and
higher level.
If men were only machines, they would react more or less uniformly to a
material universe. Individuality, much less personality, would be nonexistent.
The fact of the absolute mechanism of Paradise at the center of the universe of
universes, in the presence of the unqualified volition of the Second Source and
Center, makes forever certain that determiners are not the exclusive law of the
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cosmos. Materialism is there, but it is not exclusive; mechanism is there, but
it is not unqualified; determinism is there, but it is not alone.
The finite universe of matter would eventually become uniform and deterministic
but for the combined presence of mind and spirit. The influence of the cosmic
mind constantly injects spontaneity into even the material worlds.
Freedom or initiative in any realm of existence is directly proportional to the
degree of spiritual influence and cosmic-mind control; that is, in human
experience, the degree of the actuality of doing "the Father's will." And so,
when you once start out to find God, that is the conclusive proof that God has
already found you.
The sincere pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And every
scientific discovery demonstrates the existence of both freedom and uniformity
in the universe. The discoverer was free to make the discovery. The thing
discovered is real and apparently uniform, or else it could not have become
known as a thing.
7. THE VULNERABILITY OF MATERIALISM
How foolish it is for material-minded man to allow such vulnerable theories as
those of a mechanistic universe to deprive him of the vast spiritual resources
of the personal experience of true religion. Facts never quarrel with real
spiritual faith; theories may. Better that science should be devoted to the
destruction of superstition rather than attempting the overthrow of religious
faith--human belief in spiritual realities and divine values.
Science should do for man materially what religion does for him spiritually:
extend the horizon of life and enlarge his personality. True science can have
no lasting quarrel with true religion. The "scientific method" is merely an
intellectual yardstick wherewith to measure material adventures and physical
achievements. But being material and wholly intellectual, it is utterly useless
in the evaluation of spiritual realities and religious experiences.
The inconsistency of the modern mechanist is: If this were merely a material
universe and man only a machine, such a man would be wholly unable to recognize
himself as such a machine, and likewise would such a machine-man be wholly
unconscious of the fact of the existence of such a material universe. The
materialistic dismay and despair of a mechanistic science has failed to
recognize the fact of the spirit-indwelt mind of the scientist whose very
supermaterial insight formulates these mistaken and self-contradictory concepts
of a materialistic universe.
Paradise values of eternity and infinity, of truth, beauty, and goodness, are
concealed within the facts of the phenomena of the universes of time and space.
But it requires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mortal to detect and discern
these spiritual values.
The realities and values of spiritual progress are not a "psychologic
projection"--a mere glorified daydream of the material mind. Such things are
the spiritual forecasts of the indwelling Adjuster, the spirit of God living in
the mind of man. And let not your dabblings with the faintly glimpsed findings
of "relativity" disturb your concepts of the eternity and infinity of God. And
in all your solicitation concerning the necessity for self-expression do not
make the mistake of failing to provide for Adjuster-expression, the
manifestation of your real and better self.
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If this were only a material universe, material man would never be able to
arrive at the concept of the mechanistic character of such an exclusively
material existence. This very mechanistic concept of the universe is in itself
a nonmaterial phenomenon of mind, and all mind is of nonmaterial origin, no
matter how thoroughly it may appear to be materially conditioned and
mechanistically controlled.
The partially evolved mental mechanism of mortal man is not overendowed with
consistency and wisdom. Man's conceit often outruns his reason and eludes his
logic.
The very pessimism of the most pessimistic materialist is, in and of itself,
sufficient proof that the universe of the pessimist is not wholly material.
Both optimism and pessimism are concept reactions in a mind conscious of values
as well as of facts. If the universe were truly what the materialist regards it
to be, man as a human machine would then be devoid of all conscious recognition
of that very fact. Without the consciousness of the concept of values within
the spirit-born mind, the fact of universe materialism and the mechanistic
phenomena of universe operation would be wholly unrecognized by man. One
machine cannot be conscious of the nature or value of another machine.
A mechanistic philosophy of life and the universe cannot be scientific because
science recognizes and deals only with materials and facts. Philosophy is
inevitably superscientific. Man is a material fact of nature, but his life is a
phenomenon which transcends the material levels of nature in that it exhibits
the control attributes of mind and the creative qualities of spirit.
The sincere effort of man to become a mechanist represents the tragic
phenomenon of that man's futile effort to commit intellectual and moral
suicide. But he cannot do it.
If the universe were only material and man only a machine, there would be no
science to embolden the scientist to postulate this mechanization of the
universe. Machines cannot measure, classify, nor evaluate themselves. Such a
scientific piece of work could be executed only by some entity of supermachine
status.
If universe reality is only one vast machine, then man must be outside of the
universe and apart from it in order to recognize such a fact and become
conscious of the insight of such an evaluation.
If man is only a machine, by what technique does this man come to believe or
claim to know that he is only a machine? The experience of self-conscious
evaluation of one's self is never an attribute of a mere machine. A
self-conscious and avowed mechanist is the best possible answer to mechanism.
If materialism were a fact, there could be no self-conscious mechanist. It is
also true that one must first be a moral person before one can perform immoral
acts.
The very claim of materialism implies a supermaterial consciousness of the mind
which presumes to assert such dogmas. A mechanism might deteriorate, but it
could never progress. Machines do not think, create, dream, aspire, idealize,
hunger for truth, or thirst for righteousness. They do not motivate their lives
with the passion to serve other machines and to choose as their goal of eternal
progression the sublime task of finding God and striving to be like him.
Machines are never intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral, or
spiritual.
Art proves that man is not mechanistic, but it does not prove that he is
spiritually immortal. Art is mortal morontia, the intervening field between
man,
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the material, and man, the spiritual. Poetry is an effort to escape from
material realities to spiritual values.
In a high civilization, art humanizes science, while in turn it is
spiritualized by true religion--insight into spiritual and eternal values. Art
represents the human and time-space evaluation of reality. Religion is the
divine embrace of cosmic values and connotes eternal progression in spiritual
ascension and expansion. The art of time is dangerous only when it becomes
blind to the spirit standards of the divine patterns which eternity reflects as
the reality shadows of time. True art is the effective manipulation of the
material things of life; religion is the ennobling transformation of the
material facts of life, and it never ceases in its spiritual evaluation of art.
How foolish to presume that an automaton could conceive a philosophy of
automatism, and how ridiculous that it should presume to form such a concept of
other and fellow automatons!
Any scientific interpretation of the material universe is valueless unless it
provides due recognition for the scientist. No appreciation of art is genuine
unless it accords recognition to the artist. No evaluation of morals is worth
while unless it includes the moralist. No recognition of philosophy is edifying
if it ignores the philosopher, and religion cannot exist without the real
experience of the religionist who, in and through this very experience, is
seeking to find God and to know him. Likewise is the universe of universes
without significance apart from the I AM, the infinite God who made it and
unceasingly manages it.
Mechanists--humanists--tend to drift with the material currents. Idealists and
spiritists dare to use their oars with intelligence and vigor in order to
modify the apparently purely material course of the energy streams.
Science lives by the mathematics of the mind; music expresses the tempo of the
emotions. Religion is the spiritual rhythm of the soul in time-space harmony
with the higher and eternal melody measurements of Infinity. Religious
experience is something in human life which is truly supermathematical.
In language, an alphabet represents the mechanism of materialism, while the
words expressive of the meaning of a thousand thoughts, grand ideas, and noble
ideals--of love and hate, of cowardice and courage--represent the performances
of mind within the scope defined by both material and spiritual law, directed
by the assertion of the will of personality, and limited by the inherent
situational endowment.
The universe is not like the laws, mechanisms, and the uniformities which the
scientist discovers, and which he comes to regard as science, but rather like
the curious, thinking, choosing, creative, combining, and discriminating
scientist who thus observes universe phenomena and classifies the mathematical
facts inherent in the mechanistic phases of the material side of creation.
Neither is the universe like the art of the artist, but rather like the
striving, dreaming, aspiring, and advancing artist who seeks to transcend the
world of material things in an effort to achieve a spiritual goal.
The scientist, not science, perceives the reality of an evolving and advancing
universe of energy and matter. The artist, not art, demonstrates the existence
of the transient morontia world intervening between material existence and
spiritual liberty. The religionist, not religion, proves the existence of the
spirit realities and divine values which are to be encountered in the progress
of eternity.
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8. SECULAR TOTALITARIANISM
But even after materialism and mechanism have been more or less vanquished, the
devastating influence of twentieth-century secularism will still blight the
spiritual experience of millions of unsuspecting souls.
Modern secularism has been fostered by two world-wide influences. The father of
secularism was the narrow-minded and godless attitude of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century so-called science--atheistic science. The mother of modern
secularism was the totalitarian medieval Christian church. Secularism had its
inception as a rising protest against the almost complete domination of Western
civilization by the institutionalized Christian church.
At the time of this revelation, the prevailing intellectual and philosophical
climate of both European and American life is decidedly secular--humanistic.
For three hundred years Western thinking has been progressively secularized.
Religion has become more and more a nominal influence, largely a ritualistic
exercise. The majority of professed Christians of Western civilization are
unwittingly actual secularists.
It required a great power, a mighty influence, to free the thinking and living
of the Western peoples from the withering grasp of a totalitarian
ecclesiastical domination. Secularism did break the bonds of church control,
and now in turn it threatens to establish a new and godless type of mastery
over the hearts and minds of modern man. The tyrannical and dictatorial
political state is the direct offspring of scientific materialism and
philosophic secularism. Secularism no sooner frees man from the domination of
the institutionalized church than it sells him into slavish bondage to the
totalitarian state. Secularism frees man from ecclesiastical slavery only to
betray him into the tyranny of political and economic slavery.
Materialism denies God, secularism simply ignores him; at least that was the
earlier attitude. More recently, secularism has assumed a more militant
attitude, assuming to take the place of the religion whose totalitarian bondage
it onetime resisted. Twentieth-century secularism tends to affirm that man does
not need God. But beware! this godless philosophy of human society will lead
only to unrest, animosity, unhappiness, war, and world-wide disaster.
Secularism can never bring peace to mankind. Nothing can take the place of God
in human society. But mark you well! do not be quick to surrender the
beneficent gains of the secular revolt from ecclesiastical totalitarianism.
Western civilization today enjoys many liberties and satisfactions as a result
of the secular revolt. The great mistake of secularism was this: In revolting
against the almost total control of life by religious authority, and after
attaining the liberation from such ecclesiastical tyranny, the secularists went
on to institute a revolt against God himself, sometimes tacitly and sometimes
openly.
To the secularistic revolt you owe the amazing creativity of American
industrialism and the unprecedented material progress of Western civilization.
And because the secularistic revolt went too far and lost sight of God and true
religion, there also followed the unlooked-for harvest of world wars and
international unsettledness.
It is not necessary to sacrifice faith in God in order to enjoy the blessings
of the modern secularistic revolt: tolerance, social service, democratic
govern-
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ment, and civil liberties. It was not necessary for the secularists to
antagonize true religion in order to promote science and to advance education.
But secularism is not the sole parent of all these recent gains in the
enlargement of living. Behind the gains of the twentieth century are not only
science and secularism but also the unrecognized and unacknowledged spiritual
workings of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
Without God, without religion, scientific secularism can never co-ordinate its
forces, harmonize its divergent and rivalrous interests, races, and
nationalisms. This secularistic human society, notwithstanding its unparalleled
materialistic achievement, is slowly disintegrating. The chief cohesive force
resisting this disintegration of antagonism is nationalism. And nationalism is
the chief barrier to world peace.
The inherent weakness of secularism is that it discards ethics and religion for
politics and power. You simply cannot establish the brotherhood of men while
ignoring or denying the fatherhood of God.
Secular social and political optimism is an illusion. Without God, neither
freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace.
The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and society can
lead only to disaster. During the first third of the twentieth century
Urantians killed more human beings than were killed during the whole of the
Christian dispensation up to that time. And this is only the beginning of the
dire harvest of materialism and secularism; still more terrible destruction is
yet to come.
9. CHRISTIANITY'S PROBLEM
Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of truth
running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a materialistic
and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of the
superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eternal
truth. But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over, the truths
of Jesus' gospel will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and better way.
But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with
the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of
the Master's life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the religion of
Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to
overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now quivering on
the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social
readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.
The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery
cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and
are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism
of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat
are always times of great revelation.
Religion does need new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare to depend
solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings. If Christianity persists in
neglecting its spiritual mission while it continues to busy itself with social
and material problems, the spiritual renaissance must await the coming of these
new teachers of Jesus' religion who will be exclusively devoted to the
spiritual regeneration of men. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly
supply the
top of page - 2083
leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and
political reorganization of the world.
The modern age will refuse to accept a religion which is inconsistent with
facts and out of harmony with its highest conceptions of truth, beauty, and
goodness. The hour is striking for a rediscovery of the true and original
foundations of present-day distorted and compromised Christianity--the real
life and teachings of Jesus.
Primitive 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.
Selfish men and women simply will not pay such a price for even the greatest
spiritual treasure ever offered mortal man. Only when man has become
sufficiently disillusioned by the sorrowful disappointments attendant upon the
foolish and deceptive pursuits of selfishness, and subsequent to the discovery
of the barrenness of formalized religion, will he be disposed to turn
wholeheartedly to the gospel of the kingdom, the religion of Jesus of Nazareth.
The world needs more firsthand religion. Even Christianity--the best of the
religions of the twentieth century--is not only a religion about Jesus, but it
is so largely one which men experience secondhand. They take their religion
wholly as handed down by their accepted religious teachers. What an awakening
the world would experience if it could only see Jesus as he really lived on
earth and know, firsthand, his life-giving teachings! Descriptive words of
things beautiful cannot thrill like the sight thereof, neither can creedal
words inspire men's souls like the experience of knowing the presence of God.
But expectant faith will ever keep the hope-door of man's soul open for the
entrance of the eternal spiritual realities of the divine values of the worlds
beyond.
Christianity has dared to lower its ideals before the challenge of human greed,
war-madness, and the lust for power; but the religion of Jesus stands as the
unsullied and transcendent spiritual summons, calling to the best there is in
man to rise above all these legacies of animal evolution and, by grace, attain
the moral heights of true human destiny.
Christianity is threatened by slow death from formalism, overorganization,
intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends. The modern Christian church is
not such a brotherhood of dynamic believers as Jesus commissioned continuously
to effect the spiritual transformation of successive generations of mankind.
So-called Christianity has become a social and cultural movement as well as a
religious belief and practice. The stream of modern Christianity drains many an
ancient pagan swamp and many a barbarian morass; many olden cultural watersheds
drain into this present-day cultural stream as well as the high Galilean
tablelands which are supposed to be its exclusive source.
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10. THE FUTURE
Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now
most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the
experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all men.
It is futile to talk about a revival of primitive Christianity; you must go
forward from where you find yourselves. Modern culture must become spiritually
baptized with a new revelation of Jesus' life and illuminated with a new
understanding of his gospel of eternal salvation. And when Jesus becomes thus
lifted up, he will draw all men to himself. Jesus' disciples should be more
than conquerors, even overflowing sources of inspiration and enhanced living to
all men. Religion is only an exalted humanism until it is made divine by the
discovery of the reality of the presence of God in personal experience.
The beauty and sublimity, the humanity and divinity, the simplicity and
uniqueness, of Jesus' life on earth present such a striking and appealing
picture of man-saving and God-revealing that the theologians and philosophers
of all time should be effectively restrained from daring to form creeds or
create theological systems of spiritual bondage out of such a transcendental
bestowal of God in the form of man. In Jesus the universe produced a mortal man
in whom the spirit of love triumphed over the material handicaps of time and
overcame the fact of physical origin.
Ever bear in mind--God and men need each other. They are mutually necessary to
the full and final attainment of eternal personality experience in the divine
destiny of universe finality.
"The kingdom of God is within you" was probably the greatest pronouncement
Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving
spirit.
In winning souls for the Master, it is not the first mile of compulsion, duty,
or convention that will transform man and his world, but rather the second mile
of free service and liberty-loving devotion that betokens the Jesusonian
reaching forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep him on under spiritual
guidance toward the higher and divine goal of mortal existence. Christianity
even now willingly goes the first mile, but mankind languishes and stumbles
along in moral darkness because there are so few genuine second-milers--so few
professed followers of Jesus who really live and love as he taught his
disciples to live and love and serve.
The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by
means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus' brotherhood of the kingdom should
thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the days when
they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh.
No social system or political regime which denies the reality of God can
contribute in any constructive and lasting manner to the advancement of human
civilization. But Christianity, as it is subdivided and secularized today,
presents the greatest single obstacle to its further advancement; especially is
this true concerning the Orient.
Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living faith,
growing spirit, and firsthand experience of the faith-comrades of Jesus in the
top of page - 2085
brotherhood of man in the spiritual association of the kingdom of heaven. The
praiseworthy desire to preserve traditions of past achievement often leads to
the defense of outgrown systems of worship. The well-meant desire to foster
ancient thought systems effectually prevents the sponsoring of new and adequate
means and methods designed to satisfy the spiritual longings of the expanding
and advancing minds of modern men. Likewise, the Christian churches of the
twentieth century stand as great, but wholly unconscious, obstacles to the
immediate advance of the real gospel--the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Many earnest persons who would gladly yield loyalty to the Christ of the gospel
find it very difficult enthusiastically to support a church which exhibits so
little of the spirit of his life and teachings, and which they have been
erroneously taught he founded. Jesus did not found the so-called Christian
church, but he has, in every manner consistent with his nature, fostered it as
the best existent exponent of his lifework on earth.
If the Christian church would only dare to espouse the Master's program,
thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such
a spiritual undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all the way through
with this great adventure.
Christianity is seriously confronted with the doom embodied in one of its own
slogans: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The non-Christian world
will hardly capitulate to a sect-divided Christendom. The living Jesus is the
only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The true church--the Jesus
brotherhood--is invisible, spiritual, and is characterized by unity, not
necessarily by uniformity. Uniformity is the earmark of the physical world of
mechanistic nature. Spiritual unity is the fruit of faith union with the living
Jesus. The visible church should refuse longer to handicap the progress of the
invisible and spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom of God. And this brotherhood
is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized
social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations, but it must
not be supplanted by them.
But the Christianity of even the twentieth century must not be despised. It is
the product of the combined moral genius of the God-knowing men of many races
during many ages, and it has truly been one of the greatest powers for good on
earth, and therefore no man should lightly regard it, notwithstanding its
inherent and acquired defects. Christianity still contrives to move the minds
of reflective men with mighty moral emotions.
But there is no excuse for the involvement of the church in commerce and
politics; such unholy alliances are a flagrant betrayal of the Master. And the
genuine lovers of truth will be slow to forget that this powerful
institutionalized church has often dared to smother newborn faith and persecute
truth bearers who chanced to appear in unorthodox raiment.
It is all too true that such a church would not have survived unless there had
been men in the world who preferred such a style of worship. Many spiritually
indolent souls crave an ancient and authoritative religion of ritual and sacred
traditions. Human evolution and spiritual progress are hardly sufficient to
enable all men to dispense with religious authority. And the invisible
brotherhood of the kingdom may well include these family groups of various
social and temperamental classes if they are only willing to become truly
spirit-led sons of God. But in this brotherhood of Jesus there is no place for
sectarian rivalry, group bitterness, nor assertions of moral superiority and
spiritual infallibility.
top of page - 2086
These various groupings of Christians may serve to accommodate numerous
different types of would-be believers among the various peoples of Western
civilization, but such division of Christendom presents a grave weakness when
it attempts to carry the gospel of Jesus to Oriental peoples. These races do
not yet understand that there is a religion of Jesus separate, and somewhat
apart, from Christianity, which has more and more become a religion about
Jesus.
The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus
with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would
spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present-day
professed followers.
Even secular education could help in this great spiritual renaissance if it
would pay more attention to the work of teaching youth how to engage in life
planning and character progression. The purpose of all education should be to
foster and further the supreme purpose of life, the development of a majestic
and well-balanced personality. There is great need for the teaching of moral
discipline in the place of so much self-gratification. Upon such a foundation
religion may contribute its spiritual incentive to the enlargement and
enrichment of mortal life, even to the security and enhancement of life
eternal.
Christianity is an extemporized religion, and therefore must it operate in low
gear. High-gear spiritual performances must await the new revelation and the
more general acceptance of the real religion of Jesus. But Christianity is a
mighty religion, seeing that the commonplace disciples of a crucified carpenter
set in motion those teachings which conquered the Roman world in three hundred
years and then went on to triumph over the barbarians who overthrew Rome. This
same Christianity conquered--absorbed and exalted--the whole stream of Hebrew
theology and Greek philosophy. And then, when this Christian religion became
comatose for more than a thousand years as a result of an overdose of mysteries
and paganism, it resurrected itself and virtually reconquered the whole Western
world. Christianity contains enough of Jesus' teachings to immortalize it.
If Christianity could only grasp more of Jesus' teachings, it could do so much
more in helping modern man to solve his new and increasingly complex problems.
Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become identified in
the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the industrial life,
and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has Christianity
unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the guilt of
tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth
without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power
without conscience, and industry without morality.
The hope of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor the social
systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it humbly bows
itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn anew from Jesus
of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear--the living gospel of
the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART IV: The Life and Teachings
of Jesus : The Bestowal Of Michael On Urantia The Times Of Michael's Bestowal
Birth And Infancy Of Jesus The Early Childhood Of Jesus The Later Childhood Of
Jesus Jesus At Jerusalem The Two Crucial Years The Adolescent Years Jesus'
Early Manhood The Later Adult Life Of Jesus On The Way To Rome The World's
Religions The Sojourn At Rome The Return From Rome The Transition Years John
The Baptist Baptism And The Forty Days Tarrying Time In Galilee Training The
Kingdom's Messengers The Twelve Apostles The Ordination Of The Twelve Beginning
The Public Work The Passover At Jerusalem Going Through Samaria At Gilboa And
In The Decapolis Four Eventful Days At Capernaum First Preaching Tour Of
Galilee The Interlude Visit To Jerusalem Training Evangelists At Bethsaida The
Second Preaching Tour The Third Preaching Tour Tarrying And Teaching By The
Seaside Events Leading Up To The Capernaum Crisis The Crisis At Capernaum Last
Days At Capernaum Fleeing Through Northern Galilee The Sojourn At Tyre And
Sidon At Caesarea-philippi The Mount Of Transfiguration The Decapolis Tour
Rodan Of Alexandria Further Discussions With Rodan At The Feast Of Tabernacles
Ordination Of The Seventy At Magadan At The Feast Of Dedication The Perean
Mission Begins Last Visit To Northern Perea The Visit To Philadelphia The
Resurrection Of Lazarus Last Teaching At Pella The Kingdom Of Heaven On The Way
To Jerusalem Going Into Jerusalem Monday In Jerusalem Tuesday Morning In The
Temple The Last Temple Discourse Tuesday Evening On Mount Olivet Wednesday, The
Rest Day Last Day At The Camp The Last Supper The Farewell Discourse Final
Admonitions And Warnings In Gethsemane The Betrayal And Arrest Of Jesus Before
The Sanhedrin Court The Trial Before Pilate Just Before The Crucifixion The
Crucifixion The Time Of The Tomb The Resurrection Morontia Appearances Of Jesus
Appearances To The Apostles And Other Leaders Appearances In Galilee Final
Appearances And Ascension Bestowal Of The Spirit Of Truth After Pentecost The
Faith Of Jesus
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