Symmetry of Soul: Recent Episodes
Symmetry of Soul
Each Tuesday, a broadcast focused on science, religion, and philosophy, based on the unifying concepts of The Urantia Book. Broadcasts begin 9:00 PM ET(worldtimezone.com for local start time). Co-hosted by Dr. Chris Halvorson, Andrea Barnes, Kermit Anderson, and Brad Garner. Artwork compliments of www.rassouli.com.
There are many good and sufficient reasons for the plan of evolving either three or six colored races on the worlds of space. Urantia mortals may not be in a position fully to appreciate all of these reasons; however, for example, consider that homogeneity of the human race is not desirable until the peoples of an evolving world attain comparatively high levels of spiritual development. The reading encompassed Paper 64:6.17-35, p. 724
Five hundred thousand years ago, among the Badonan tribes of the northwestern highlands of India, there was a new and strange occurrence. A man and woman living in the northeastern part of the then inhabited highland region began ''suddenly'' to produce a family of unusually intelligent children. This was the ''Sangik family'', the ancestors of all of the six colored races of Urantia. The reading encompassed Paper 64:5.1-6.16, p. 722
Besides the Foxhall peoples in the west, another struggling center of culture persisted in the east. This group was located in the foothills of the northwestern Indian highlands among the tribes of Badonan, a great-great-grandson of Andon. Their campaign for the extermination of inferiors brought about an improved stock, appearing on the stage of action as an apparently new people—the ''Neanderthal race''. The reading encompassed Paper 64:3-4, p. 720
The human race is almost one million years old, and the first half of its story roughly corresponds to the pre-Planetary Prince days of Urantia. The latter half of the history of mankind begins at the time of the arrival of the Planetary Prince and the appearance of the six colored races and roughly corresponds to the period commonly regarded as the Old Stone Age, that is, the Paleolithic. The reading encompassed Paper 64:0-2, p. 718
As the Andonic dispersion extended, the cultural and spiritual status of the clans retrogressed for nearly ten thousand years until the days of Onagar, who assumed the leadership of these tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in the worship of the “Breath Giver to men and animals.” Onagar was born in 981,390 B.C., and he lived to be sixty-nine years of age. The reading encompassed Paper 63:6-7, p. 715
Primitive man—the Andonites—had black eyes and a swarthy complexion, something of a cross between yellow and red. Melanin is a coloring substance which is found in the skins of all human beings. It is the original Andonic skin pigment. The Andonites were the first creatures to use the skins of animals as a protection against cold; they had little more hair on their bodies than present-day humans. The reading encompassed Paper 63:4-5, p. 713
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In many respects, Andon and Fonta were the most remarkable pair of human beings that have ever lived on the face of the earth. This wonderful pair, the actual parents of all mankind, were in every way superior to many of their immediate descendants. And especially was their quality of mind far above that of the later descendants who stooped to mate with their retarded cousins of the simian tribes. The reading encompassed Paper 63:1-3, p. 711
It is just 993,498 years ago (from the year A.D. 2024) that Urantia was formally recognized as a planet of human habitation in the local universe of Nebadon. Biologic evolution had once again achieved the human levels of will dignity; man had arrived on planet 606 of the local system of Satania. And hence there was an immediate and new order of mobilization of the seven adjutant mind-spirits. The reading encompassed Paper 62:6-63:0, p. 709
From the year A.D. 2024 back to the birth of the first true human beings is just 993,509 years. These first two humans—the twins—were a great trial to their Primates parents. They were so curious and adventurous that they nearly lost their lives on numerous occasions before they were eight years old. As it was, they were rather well scarred up by the time they reached full maturity at twelve years of age. The reading encompassed Paper 62:4.4-5.11, p. 707
Modern man and the simians did spring from the same tribe and species but not from the same parents. Man’s ancestors are descended from the superior strains of this mid-mammal tribe, whereas the modern simians (excepting certain pre-existent types of lemurs, gibbons, apes, and other monkeylike creatures) are the descendants of the most inferior couple of this mid-mammal group.We begin the reading in Paper 62, Section 3.
About one million years ago the immediate ancestors of mankind made their appearance by three successive and sudden mutations stemming from early stock of the lemur type of placental mammal. The ancestry of the human species was not directly related to the pre-existent tribes of gibbons and apes then living in Eurasia and northern Africa, whose progeny have survived to the present time.We begin the reading in Paper 62.
Throughout the glacial period other activities were in progress, but the action of the ice overshadowed all other phenomena in the northern latitudes. In the face of this challenge, 500,000 years ago, during the fifth advance of the ice, a new development accelerated the course of human evolution. Suddenly and in one generation the six colored races mutated from the aboriginal human stock.We begin the reading in Paper 61, Section 7.
Snow began to fall on the once highly elevated northeastern part of North America, and it continued to fall until it had attained a depth of 20,000 feet. Two million years ago the first North American glacier started its southern advance. The ice age was then in the making, and this glacier consumed nearly one million years in its advance from, and retreat back toward, the northern pressure centers.We begin the reading in Paper 61, Section 5.
During the almost two years of his Mediterranean journey, Jesus made great advances in his human task of mastering the material and mortal mind, and his indwelling Adjuster made great progress in the ascension and spiritual conquest of this same human intellect. By the end of the tour, Jesus virtually knew—with all human certainty—that he was a Son of God, a Creator Son of the Universal Father.We begin the reading in Paper 129, Section 3.
By apparent chance, Jesus met a wealthy traveler and his son, a young man about seventeen years of age. These travelers hailed from India, and being on their way to visit Rome and various other points on the Mediterranean, they had arranged to arrive in Jerusalem during the Passover, hoping to find someone whom they could engage as interpreter for both and tutor for the son. We begin the reading in Paper 129, Section 1, Paragraph 7.
By the end of A.D. 20, the Son of Man had made every preparation for detaching himself permanently from the Nazareth home; and this was not easy for him to do. Jesus naturally loved his people; he loved his family, and this natural affection had been tremendously augmented by his extraordinary devotion to them. The more fully we bestow ourselves upon our fellows, the more we come to love them.We begin the reading in Paper 128, Section 7, Paragraph 7.
The children were always welcome at the repair shop. Jesus provided sand, blocks, and stones by the side of the shop, and bevies of youngsters flocked there to amuse themselves. When they tired of their play, the more intrepid ones would peek into the shop, and if its keeper were not busy, they would make bold to go in and say, “Uncle Joshua, come out and tell us a big story.”We begin the reading in Paper 128, Section 6.
Throughout his ministry to mankind, Jesus sought to not bring any undue influence to bear upon his family or others which would lead them to believe in him against their honest convictions. He always refused to take undue or unfair advantage of the human mind. He did not want men to believe in him unless their hearts were responsive to the spiritual realities revealed in his teachings.We begin the reading in Paper 128, Section 4.
Jesus’ twenty-second year of life was one of several years during which his brothers and sisters were facing the trials and tribulations peculiar to the problems and readjustments of adolescence. Jesus then had brothers and sisters ranging in ages from seven to eighteen, and he was kept busy helping them to adjust themselves to the new awakenings of their intellectual and emotional lives.We begin the reading in Paper 128, Section 1, Paragraph 14.
As Jesus of Nazareth entered upon the early years of his adult life, he had lived, and continued to live, a normal and average human life on earth. Of his human nature he was never in doubt; it was self-evident and always present in his consciousness. But of his divine nature there was always room for doubt and conjecture, at least this was true right up to the event of his baptism.We begin the reading in Paper 128.
As he approached his twentieth birthday, Jesus depended more and more upon the ultimate guidance of his heavenly Father, while he assumed the fatherly role of guiding and directing the children of his earth family. He was becoming experienced in the skillful wresting of victory from the very jaws of defeat; he was learning how to transform the difficulties of time into the triumphs of eternity.We begin the reading in Paper 127, Section 6.
Rebecca lived for only one purpose—to await the hour when Jesus, to her, the greatest man who ever lived would begin his career as a teacher of living truth. And she followed him devotedly through his eventful years of public labor, being present that day when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem; and she stood by the side of Mary on that fateful and tragic afternoon when the Son of Man hung upon the cross.We begin the reading in Paper 127, Section 4.
On Saturday afternoon, December 3, A.D. 12, death for the second time struck at the Nazareth family. Little Amos, their baby brother, died after a week’s illness with a high fever. After passing through this time of sorrow with her first-born son as her only support, Mary at last and in the fullest sense recognized Jesus as the real head of the family; and he was truly a worthy head. We begin the reading in Paper 127, Section 2, Paragraph 11.
By the age of sixteen Jesus had acquired the full growth of his human intellect, not the full experience of human thinking but the fullness of capacity for such intellectual development. He possessed a keen and analytical mind, a kind and sympathetic disposition, a somewhat fluctuating but aggressive temperament, all of which were becoming organized into a strong, striking, and attractive personality.We begin the reading in Paper 127, Section 1.
With the close of this fifteenth year Jesus completed the traversal of that dangerous and difficult period in human existence, that time of transition between the more complacent years of childhood and the consciousness of approaching manhood with its increased responsibilities and opportunities for the acquirement of advanced experience in the development of a noble character.We begin the reading in Paper 126, Section 5.
The adolescent Jesus’ profound periods of meditation, his frequent journeys to the hilltop for prayer, and the many strange ideas which he advanced from time to time, thoroughly alarmed his mother. Sometimes she thought the lad was beside himself, and then she would steady her fears, remembering that he was, after all, a child of promise and in some manner different from other youths.We begin the reading in Paper 126, Section 3, Paragraph 7.
It was during the calendar year of his fifteenth birthday that Jesus first formulated the prayer which he subsequently taught to his apostles, and which to many has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” Also during that year, Jesus found a passage in the so-called Book of Enoch which influenced him in the later adoption of the term “Son of Man” as a designation for his bestowal mission on Urantia.We begin the reading in Paper 126, Section 2, Paragraph 2.
Of all Jesus’ earth-life experiences, the fourteenth and fifteenth years were the most crucial. These two years, after he began to be self-conscious of divinity and destiny, and before he achieved a large measure of communication with his indwelling Adjuster, were the most trying of his eventful life on Urantia. It is this period of two years which should be called the great test, the real temptation.We begin the reading in Paper 126.
Jesus, leaving Jerusalem with his parents, paused on the brow of Olivet; he raised his staff aloft and, quivering from head to foot under the surging of intense emotion, said: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, and the people thereof, what slaves you are—subservient to the Roman yoke and victims of your own traditions—but I will return to cleanse yonder temple and deliver my people from this bondage!”We begin the reading in Paper 125, Section 6.
In a very amazing way Jesus participated in the temple discussions but always in a manner consistent with his youth. Sometimes his pointed questions were somewhat embarrassing to the learned teachers of the Jewish law, but he evinced such a spirit of candid fairness, coupled with an evident hunger for knowledge, that the majority of the temple teachers were disposed to treat him with every consideration.We begin the reading in Paper 125, Section 4.
Again and again, during the Passover week, his parents would find Jesus sitting off by himself with his youthful head in his hands, profoundly thinking. They had never seen him behave like this, and not knowing how much he was confused in mind and troubled in spirit by the experience through which he was passing, they were sorely perplexed; they did not know what to do and longed to be back in Nazareth.We begin the reading in Paper 125, Section 2
Jesus remonstrated with his father: “The heavenly Father cannot love his children less than you love me. And I well know, no matter what unwise thing I might do, you would never pour out wrath upon me nor vent anger against me. If you, my earthly father, possess such human reflections of the Divine, how much more must the heavenly Father be filled with goodness and overflowing with mercy.”We begin the reading in Paper 125.
At no time in his life did Jesus ever experience such a purely human thrill as that which at this time so completely enthralled him as he stood there on this April afternoon on the Mount of Olives, drinking in his first view of Jerusalem. And in after years, on this same spot he stood and wept over the city which was about to reject another prophet, the last and the greatest of her heavenly teachers.We begin the reading in Paper 124, Section 6.
LIVE WEB PLAYER NOT WORKING -- Call (424) 258-9249 to listen liveJesus never shirked the responsibility of making the necessary daily adjustments between the realms of loyalty to one’s personal convictions and duty toward one’s family, and he achieved the satisfaction of effecting an increasingly harmonious blending of personal convictions and family obligations into a masterful concept of group solidarity based upon loyalty, fairness, tolerance, and love.We begin the reading in Paper 124, Section 4.
During the tenth year of his life, Jesus began to show a marked preference for the company of older persons. He delighted in talking over things cultural, educational, social, economic, political, and religious with older minds, and his depth of reasoning and keenness of observation so charmed his adult associates that they were always more than willing to visit with him.We begin the reading in Paper 124, Section 2, Paragraph 4.
As regards graven images, Joseph felt impelled to rule that the rabbinical interpretation of the second commandment should prevail. And so Jesus no more drew or modeled the likeness of anything from that day as long as he lived in his father’s house. But he was unconvinced of the wrong of what he had done, and to give up such a favorite pastime constituted one of the great trials of his young life.We begin the reading in Paper 124.
During Jesus’ eighth year of life, while he continued to make enviable progress at school, all did not run smoothly for either parents or teachers. He persisted in asking many embarrassing questions concerning both science and religion, particularly regarding geography and astronomy. He was especially insistent on finding out why there was a dry season and a rainy season in Palestine.We begin the reading in Paper 123, Section 5, Paragraph 9.
Material accidents, commonplace occurrences of a physical nature, are not arbitrarily interfered with by celestial personalities. Under ordinary circumstances only midway creatures can intervene in material conditions to safeguard the persons of men and women of destiny, and even in special situations these beings can so act only in obedience to the specific mandates of their superiors.We begin the reading in Paper 123, Section 4.
The first great shock of Jesus’ young life occurred when he was not quite six years old. It had seemed to the lad that his father—at least his father and mother together—knew everything. Imagine, therefore, the surprise and disillusionment of this inquiring child, when he asked his father the cause of a mild earthquake which had just occurred, to hear Joseph say, “My son, I really do not know.”We begin the reading in Paper 123, Section 2, Paragraph 3.
Joseph and Mary finally took leave of Alexandria in August, 4 B.C.; and Jesus was about three years and two months old at the time of their return to Nazareth. He had stood all these travels very well and was in excellent health and full of childish glee and excitement at having premises of his own to run about in and to enjoy. But he greatly missed the association of his Alexandrian playmates.We begin the reading in Paper 123.
With the arrival of the first Adjuster on an inhabited world the guardian seraphim also make their appearance; they are indispensable to terrestrial escape. Throughout the life-lapse period of the sleeping survivors of a nonindividual order of survival, the spiritual values and eternal realities of their newly evolved and immortal souls are held as a sacred trust by the group guardian angels.We begin the reading in Paper 49, Section 6.
The one physical uniformity of mortals is the brain and nervous system; nevertheless, there are three basic organizations of the brain mechanism: the one-, the two-, and the three-brained types. Urantians are of the two-brained type, somewhat more imaginative, adventurous, and philosophical than the one-brained mortals but somewhat less spiritual, ethical, and worshipful than the three-brained orders.We begin the reading in Paper 49, Section 5, Item 13.
Mortal mind without immortal spirit cannot survive. The mind of man is mortal; only the bestowed spirit is immortal. Survival is dependent on spiritualization by the ministry of the Adjuster—on the birth and evolution of the immortal soul; at least, there must not have developed an antagonism towards the Adjuster’s mission of effecting the spiritual transformation of the material mind.We begin the reading in Paper 49, Section 4.
The majority of inhabited planets are peopled with the breathing type of intelligent beings. But there are also radically modified orders of mortals who are able to live on worlds with little or no air. Of the Orvonton inhabited worlds this type amounts to less than seven per cent. In Nebadon this percentage is less than three. In all Satania there are only nine such worlds of the nonbreathers.We begin the reading in Paper 49, Section 2, Item 15.
All mortal-inhabited worlds are evolutionary in origin and nature. These spheres are the spawning ground, the evolutionary cradle, of the mortal races of time and space. Each unit of the ascendant life is a veritable training school for the stage of existence just ahead; and this is true of every stage of man’s progressive Paradise ascent, including the initial mortal experience in the flesh.We begin the reading in Paper 49.
Sagia are the only creatures in all the universe of Nebadon who experience any sort of reincarnation. They are only reactive to the first five of the adjutant mind-spirits; they are not responsive to the spirits of worship and wisdom. But the five-adjutant mind equivalates to a totality or sixth reality level, and it is this factor which persists as an experiential identity.We begin the reading in Paper 46, Section 5, Item 27.
Each of the Jerusem nonnative residential reservations consists of seven concentric and successively elevated circles. They are all constructed along the same lines but are of different sizes and are fashioned of differing materials. They are all surrounded by far-reaching enclosures, which mount up to form extensive promenades entirely encompassing every group of seven concentric circles.We begin the reading in Paper 46, Section 5.
Jerusem is indeed a foretaste of paradisiacal glory and grandeur. However, this first world of detention in the Paradise journey is far more material than spiritual. Relative to higher architectural worlds, the system capitals are unique in that they are the only worlds which exhibit well-nigh perfectly all three phases of universe existence: the material, the morontial, and the spiritual.We begin the reading in Paper 46, Section 2, Paragraph 5.
Jerusem, the headquarters of Satania, is an average capital of a local system. Two hundred thousand years after the rebellion, Satania is being administered most efficiently; and as the ages pass, the results of disharmony are being slowly but surely eradicated. Order and good will are being restored, and the conditions on Jerusem are more and more approaching the heavenly status of our traditions.We begin the reading in Paper 46.
This probation nursery of Satania is maintained by certain morontia personalities on the finaliters’ world, one half of the planet being devoted to this work of child rearing. Here are received and reassembled certain children of surviving mortals, such as those offspring who perished on the evolutionary worlds before the acquirement of individual status on the universe records.We begin the reading in Paper 45, Section 6, Paragraph 7.
The Material Sons and Daughters, together with their children, present an engaging spectacle which never fails to arouse the curiosity and intrigue the attention of all ascending mortals. After finally attaining Jerusem citizenship, mortal survivors spend much of their leisure on the system capital observing and studying the life habits and conduct of these superior semiphysical sex creatures.We begin the reading in Paper 45, Section 5.
The four and twenty counselors are Christ Michael’s personal agents on Jerusem, and they have authority to represent the Master Son in all matters concerning the roll calls of Satania and in many other phases of the scheme of mortal ascension on the isolated worlds of the system. They are the designated agents for executing the special requests of Gabriel and the unusual mandates of Michael.We begin the reading in Paper 45, Section 4.
The chief executive of a local system of inhabited worlds is a primary Lanonandek Son, the System Sovereign. In our local universe these sovereigns are intrusted with large executive responsibilities, unusually wide powers of personal discretion in the direction of system affairs. But in all the history of Nebadon these untrammeled executives have exhibited disloyalty only three times.We begin the reading in Paper 45, Section 2
The administrative center of Satania consists of a cluster of made-to-order, architectural spheres, fifty-seven in number—Jerusem itself, the seven major satellites, and the forty-nine subsatellites. The seven major worlds swinging around Jerusem are generally known as the transitional culture spheres. The seven mansion worlds are the seven subsatellites of transition world number one.We begin the reading in Paper 45.
Jesus' new sacrament of the supper of remembrance, when it is partaken of by those who are Son-believing and God-knowing, does not need to have associated with its symbolism any of man's puerile misinterpretations regarding the meaning of the divine presence, for upon all such occasions the Master is really present. The remembrance supper is the believer's symbolic rendezvous with Michael.We begin the reading in Paper 179, Section 4.
Jesus questioned his apostles, saying: "Do you really understand what I have done to you? You call me Master, and you say well, for so I am. If, then, the Master has washed your feet, why was it that you were unwilling to wash one another’s feet? What lesson should you learn from this parable in which the Master so willingly does that service which his brethren were unwilling to do for one another?"We begin the reading in Paper 179, Section 2.
Said Jesus to the twelve before they entered Jerusalem together for the last time: "You should know that in my Father’s universe and in mine are many abodes, and that there awaits the children of light the revelation of cities whose builder is God and worlds whose habit of life is righteousness and joy in the truth. But first must you gird yourselves and complete the work which you have begun with me."We begin the reading in Paper 178, Section 3.
Throughout the vicissitudes of life, as followers of Jesus’ gospel, remember always to love one another. Do not strive with men, even with unbelievers. Show mercy even to those who despitefully abuse you. Show yourselves to be loyal citizens, upright artisans, praiseworthy neighbors, devoted kinsmen, understanding parents, and sincere believers in the brotherhood of the Father’s kingdom.We begin the reading in Paper 178, Section 1, Paragraph 14.
The kingdoms of this world, being material, may often find it necessary to employ physical force in the execution of their laws and for the maintenance of order. In the kingdom of heaven true believers should not resort to the employment of physical force. The kingdom of heaven, being a spiritual brotherhood of the spirit-born sons of God, may be promulgated only by the power of the spirit.
We begin the reading in Paper 178.
As a truth-loving soul, you must not allow yourself to be deceived by those who appear to likewise believe. Many may listen to the truth and believe it superficially with their minds, but few will permit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with living roots. Those who know only in the mind, having not experienced truth in the heart, cannot be depended upon for support when real trouble comes.We begin the reading in Paper 177, Section 3.
Alone with the young man, John Mark, Jesus explained: “Love, John, is the supreme reality of the universe when bestowed by all-wise beings, but it is a dangerous and oftentimes semiselfish trait as it is manifested in the experience of mortal parents. When you get married and have children of your own to rear, make sure that your love is admonished by wisdom and guided by intelligence.”
We begin the reading in Paper 177, Section 2.
Jesus promised to do two things after he had ascended to the Father, and after all power in heaven and on earth had been placed in his hands. He promised, first, to send into the world, and in his stead, another teacher, the Spirit of Truth; and this he did on the day of Pentecost. Second, he most certainly promised his followers that he would sometime personally return to this world.
We begin the reading in Paper 176, Section 4.
Jesus said: “Make no mistake! your survival faith is a living faith, and it increasingly manifests the fruits of that divine spirit which first inspired it in the human heart. That you have once accepted sonship in the heavenly kingdom will not save you in the face of the knowing and persistent rejection of those truths which have to do with the progressive spiritual fruit-bearing of the sons of God in the flesh.”
We begin the reading in Paper 176, Section 3.
Jesus said: "The times of the reappearing of the Son of Man are known only in the councils of Paradise. However, you should understand that, when this gospel of the kingdom shall have been proclaimed to all the world for the salvation of all peoples, and when the fullness of the age has come to pass, the Father will send you another dispensational bestowal, or else the Son of Man will return to adjudge the age."
We begin the reading in Paper 176.
The fact that the spiritual leaders and the religious teachers of the Jewish nation onetime rejected the teachings of Jesus and conspired to bring about his cruel death, does not in any manner affect the status of any individual Jew in his standing before God. And it should not cause those who profess to be followers of the Christ to be prejudiced against the Jew as a fellow mortal.
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
The reading starts in Paper 175, Section 2.
Jesus preached, saying: “In every manner consistent with doing my Father’s will, I and my apostles have persistently sought peace; but the leaders of Israel will not have it. By rejecting the truth of God and the light of heaven, they are aligning themselves on the side of error and darkness. There cannot be peace between light and darkness, between life and death, between truth and error.”
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
The reading starts in Paper 175.
Said Jesus: “If the Jews choose to reject me and to refuse my teachings, I will not sit in judgment on them, for I came not to judge the world but to offer it salvation. Nevertheless, they who reject me and refuse to receive my teaching shall be brought to judgment in due season by my Father and those whom he has appointed to sit in judgment on such as reject the gift of mercy and the truths of salvation.”
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
The reading starts in Paper 174, Section 4.
Jesus taught, saying: “Your inability or unwillingness to forgive your fellows is the measure of your immaturity, your failure to attain adult sympathy, understanding, and love. You hold grudges and nurse vengefulness in direct proportion to your ignorance of the inner nature and true longings of your children and your fellow beings. Love is the outworking of the divine and inner urge of life.”
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
The reading starts in Paper 174.
It was the genius of the Master for dealing with his adversaries that made them so afraid of him, and incensed them to bring about his death. But the people were not slow to discern the dishonesty and insincerity in the questions asked by the Jewish rulers. Even the common folk could not fail to distinguish between the moral majesty of the Master and the designing hypocrisy of his enemies.
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
The reading starts in Paper 173, Section 2, Paragraph 6.
After the cleansing of the temple, the chief priests and the scribes were nonplused. They did not know how to accomplish Jesus’ death, for they greatly feared the multitudes, who were then so outspoken in their approval of his overthrow of the profane profiteers. And all that day, a day of quiet and peace in the temple courts, the people heard Jesus’ teaching and literally hung on his words.
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
The reading starts in Paper 173.
No twelve human beings ever experienced such diverse and inexplicable emotions as now surged through the minds and souls of these ambassadors of the kingdom. These sturdy Galileans were confused and disconcerted; they did not know what to expect next; they were too surprised to be much afraid. They knew nothing of the Master’s plans for the next day, and they asked no questions.
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
The reading starts in Paper 172, Section 5.
Jesus lamented: “O Jerusalem, if you had only known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which belong to your peace, and which you could so freely have had! But now are these glories about to be hid from your eyes. You are about to reject the Son of Peace and turn your backs upon the gospel of salvation. You are about to reject the gift of God, and all men will reject you.”[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 172, Section 3.
Although the common folks of the villages of Bethany and Bethphage thought Jesus was now going into Jerusalem, in utter defiance of the Sanhedrin’s decree of death, to proclaim himself king of the Jews, the Bethany family—Lazarus, Martha, and Mary—more fully realized that the Master was not that kind of a king; they dimly felt that this might be his last visit to Jerusalem and Bethany.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 172.
The First, Second, and Third Persons of Deity are equal to each other, and they are one. “The Lord our God is one God.” There is perfection of purpose and oneness of execution in the divine Trinity of eternal Deities. The Father, the Son, and the Conjoint Actor are truly and divinely one. Of a truth it is written: “I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God.”[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
Beings have attributes; but as Deity, the Paradise Trinity may more properly be regarded as having functions—such as justice administration, totality attitudes, co-ordinate action, and cosmic overcontrol. These functions are not simply the sum of the Father’s apparent endowment of divinity plus those specialized attributes that are unique in the personal existence of the Son and the Spirit.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
Eternal Deity is perfectly unified; nevertheless there are three perfectly individualized persons of Deity. The Paradise Trinity makes possible the simultaneous expression of all the diversity of the character traits and infinite powers of the First Source and Center and his eternal co-ordinates and of all the divine unity of the universe functions of undivided Deity. [NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 10, Section 3.
Reality is unthinkable without the Trinity. The Paradise Trinity effectively provides for the full expression and perfect revelation of the eternal nature of Deity. The Trinity is Deity unity, and this unity rests eternally upon the absolute foundations of the divine oneness of the three original and co-ordinate and coexistent personalities, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. [NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 10.
The Infinite Spirit possesses full power to transmit many of his powers and prerogatives to his co-ordinate and subordinate personalities and agencies. In his munificence, he is represented in the grand universe by a vast array of ministering spirits, messengers, teachers, adjudicators, helpers, and advisers, together with supervisors of certain circuits of physical, morontial, and spiritual nature.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 9, Section 8.
Much as the Universal Father draws all personality to himself, and as the Eternal Son attracts all spiritual reality, so does the Conjoint Actor exercise a drawing power on all minds; he unqualifiedly dominates and controls the universal mind circuit. All true and genuine intellectual values, all divine thoughts and perfect ideas, are unerringly drawn into this absolute circuit of mind.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 9, Section 6.
The absolute mind is the mind of the infinite Third Person of Deity; it is inseparable from the personality of God the Spirit. Mind, in functioning beings, is not separated from energy or spirit, or both. Mind is not inherent in energy; energy is receptive and responsive to mind; mind can be superimposed upon energy, but consciousness is not inherent in the purely material level. [NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 9, Section 4.
The Conjoint Creator is not energy nor the source of energy nor the destiny of energy; he is the manipulator of energy. The Conjoint Creator is action—motion, change, modification, co-ordination, stabilization, and equilibrium. The energies subject to the direct or indirect control of Paradise are by nature responsive to the acts of the Third Source and Center and his manifold agencies.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 9, Section 2.
The Spirit is supremely competent to minister love and to overshadow justice with mercy. God the Spirit possesses all the supernal kindness and merciful affection of the Original and Eternal Son. The universe of our origin is being forged out between the anvil of justice and the hammer of suffering; but those who wield the hammer are the children of mercy, the spirit offspring of the Infinite Spirit.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 9.
There are many spiritual influences, and they are all as one. Even the work of the Thought Adjusters, though independent of all other influences, unvaryingly coincides with the spirit ministry of the combined influences of the Infinite Spirit and a local universe Mother Spirit. In our minds and upon our souls they function as one spirit, notwithstanding their diverse origins.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 8, Section 4, Paragraph 4.
Though in every way sharing the perfection, the righteousness, and the love of the Universal Father, the Infinite Spirit inclines towards the mercy attributes of the Eternal Son, thus becoming the mercy minister of the Paradise Deities to the grand universe. Ever and always, the Spirit is a mercy minister; for, as the divine Sons reveal the love of God, so the divine Spirit depicts the mercy of God.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 8, Section 2.
Through the supreme desire of both the Thought-God and the Word-God for a universal and infinite agent of mutual expression and combined action, one is face to face with the eternity origin of the Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of Deity. In their oneness, God the Father and God the Son conjointly conceive an identical and infinite action, personalizing this absolute thought-plan as the God of Action.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 8.
The Eternal Son not only has at all times perfect knowledge concerning the status, thoughts, and manifold activities of all orders of Paradise sonship, but he also has perfection of knowledge at all times regarding everything of spiritual value which exists in the hearts of all creatures in the primary central creation of eternity and in the secondary time creations of the co-ordinate Creator Sons.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 7, Section 6.
The Eternal Son is the personal trustee, the divine custodian, of the Father’s universal plan of creature ascension. Having promulgated the universal mandate, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect,” the Father intrusted the execution of this tremendous undertaking to the Eternal Son; and the Eternal Son shares the fostering of this supernal enterprise with his divine co-ordinate, the Infinite Spirit.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 7, Section 4.
In the local universe ascent the mortals of time look to the Creator Son as the personal representative of the Eternal Son. But when they begin the ascent of the superuniverse training regime, the pilgrims of time increasingly detect the supernal presence of the inspiring spirit of the Eternal Son, and they are able to profit by the intake of this ministry of spiritual energization.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 7, Section 2.
As the upholder of spirit realities, the Second Source and Center is the eternal counterpoise of the Paradise Source and Center, which so magnificently upholds all things material. Thus is the First Source and Center forever revealed in the material beauty of the exquisite patterns of the central Isle of Paradise and in the spiritual values of the supernal personality of the Eternal Son.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 7.
The Eternal Son is a grand and glorious personality. Concerning identity, nature, and other attributes of personality, the Eternal Son is the full equal, the perfect complement, and the eternal counterpart of the Universal Father. In the same sense that God is the Universal Father, the Son is the Universal Mother. And all of us, high and low, constitute their universal family.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 6, Section 7.
To avoid confusing error, ever remember: The Eternal Son is the personal portrayal of the spirit Father to all creation. The Son is personal and nothing but personal in the Deity sense; such a divine and absolute personality cannot be disintegrated or fragmentized. God the Father and God the Spirit are truly personal, but they are also everything else in addition to being such Deity personalities.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 6, Section 4, Paragraph 7.
God, the Universal Father, is love; the Son is mercy. Mercy is applied love, the Father’s love in action in the person of his Eternal Son. The Eternal Son is the great mercy minister to all creation. Mercy is the essence of the Son’s spiritual character. The mandates of the Eternal Son, as they go forth over the spirit circuits of the Second Source and Center, are keyed in tones of mercy.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 6, Section 2.
The Eternal Son is the spiritual personalization of the Paradise Father’s universal and infinite concept of divine reality, unqualified spirit, and absolute personality. He is the living and divine Word. And this Eternal Son is residential at the center of all things, in association with, and immediately enshrouding the personal presence of, the Eternal and Universal Father.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 6.
Jesus crushed their spirits. No sooner would the Master do something to cheer the souls and gladden the hearts of his apostles, than he seemed immediately to dash their hopes in pieces and utterly to demolish the foundations of their courage and enthusiasm. As these bewildered fishermen looked into each other’s eyes, there was but one thought: “We cannot understand him. What does all this mean?”[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 145, Section 4.
In view of Jesus’ desire to see the throng of suffering mortals made whole if his Father’s will would not thereby be violated, the Personalized Adjuster of Jesus instantly ruled that such an act of creative energy at that time would not transgress the will of the Paradise Father; and by such a decision, the creative act was. What a Creator Son desires and his Father wills IS.[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]The reading starts in Paper 145, Section 2, Paragraph 12.
When Jesus heard the report from the disciples of John the Baptist, he dismissed the multitude and, calling John’s and his twenty-four apostles together, said: “John is dead. Herod has beheaded him. Tonight go into joint council and arrange your affairs accordingly. There shall be delay no longer. The hour has come to proclaim the kingdom openly and with power. Tomorrow we go into Galilee.”
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The reading starts in Paper 144, Section 9.
Jesus declared to the masses: “Of John it was written: ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face; he shall prepare the way before you.’ Verily, verily, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is but small in the kingdom of heaven is greater because he has been born of the spirit and knows that he has become a son of God.”
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The reading starts in Paper 144, Section 6.
Prayer is the breath of the spirit life in the midst of the material civilization of the races of mankind. Worship is salvation for the pleasure-seeking generations of mortals. As prayer may be likened to recharging the spiritual batteries of the soul, so worship may be compared to the act of tuning in the soul to catch the universe broadcasts of the infinite spirit of the Universal Father.
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Jesus taught the twelve: “Prayer is entirely a personal and spontaneous expression of the attitude of the soul toward the spirit; prayer should be the communion of sonship and the expression of fellowship. The ideal prayer is a form of spiritual communion which leads to intelligent worship. True praying is the sincere attitude of reaching heavenward for the attainment of your ideals.”
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Jesus taught many great truths, such as: Prayer is self-reminding—sublime thinking; worship is self-forgetting—superthinking. Worship is effortless attention, true and ideal soul rest, a form of restful spiritual exertion. Worship is the act of a part identifying itself with the Whole; the finite with the Infinite; the son with the Father; time in the act of striking step with eternity.
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Said Jesus to his apostles: “My brethren, you must all learn the value of rest and the efficacy of relaxation. You must realize that the best method of solving some entangled problems is to forsake them for a time. Then when you go back fresh from your rest or worship, you are able to attack your troubles with a clearer head and a steadier hand, not to mention a more resolute heart.”
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Of religious courage, Jesus said: “The courage of the flesh is the lowest form of bravery. It is easy to die in the line of physical battle when your courage is strengthened by the presence of your fighting comrades, but it requires a higher and more profound form of human courage and devotion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth enshrined in your mortal heart.”
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Jesus lived his earth life to the full satisfaction of the Father, and his incarnation in the flesh enabled him fully to comprehend man. Jesus was the perfection of man; he attained just such perfection as all true believers are destined to attain in him and through him. Jesus revealed a God of perfection to man and presented in himself the perfected son of the realms to God the Father.
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Preaching in the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus proclaimed: "The Supreme Spirit shall bear witness with your spirits that you are truly the children of God. And if you are the sons of God, then have you been born of the spirit of God; and whosoever has been born of the spirit has in himself the power to overcome all doubt, and this is the victory that overcomes all uncertainty, even your faith."
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Illuminating the evolution of the Jewish concept of Deity, Jesus said: “Our Father in Paradise is changeless. But the concept of his nature has enlarged and grown from the days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the generation of the prophet Isaiah. And now have I come in the flesh to reveal the Father in new glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds.”
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In a talk with Peter, James, and John, Jesus laid great emphasis upon what he called the two truths of first import in the teachings of the kingdom, and they are: the attainment of salvation by faith, and faith alone, associated with the revolutionary teaching of the attainment of human liberty through the sincere recognition of truth, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
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Jesus said: “You can experience spirit unity in the joy of your united dedication to the wholehearted doing of the will of my Father in heaven. You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in order spiritually to be alike. Spiritual unity is derived from the consciousness that each of you is indwelt, and increasingly dominated, by the spirit gift of the heavenly Father.”
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The reading starts in Paper 141, Section 4.
Said the Master: "I declare that the kingdom of heaven is the realization and acknowledgment of God’s rule within the hearts of men. True, there is a King in this kingdom, and that King is my Father and your Father. We are indeed his loyal subjects, but far transcending that fact is the transforming truth that we are his sons. In my life this truth is to become manifest to all."
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Jesus consecrated his apostles, saying: "Go into all the world and preach the glad tidings of the kingdom. Freely you have received, freely give." While in forewarning, he also said: "Some of you will be put to death, and before you establish the kingdom on earth, you will be hated by many peoples because of this gospel; but fear not; I will be with you, and my spirit shall go before you."
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The reading starts in Paper 140, Section 9.
If Jesus were ministering today, he would be a great disappointment to the majority of good men and women for the simple reason that he would not take sides in present-day political, social, or economic disputes. He would remain grandly aloof while teaching you how to perfect your inner spiritual life so as to render you manyfold more competent to attack the solution of your purely human problems.
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Jesus well knew that his apostles were not fully assimilating his teachings. He decided to give some special instruction to Peter, James, and John, hoping they would be able to clarify the ideas of their associates. Accordingly, Jesus went out from the shore in a boat with them to talk over the affairs of the kingdom—a four hours’ teaching conference, embracing scores of questions and answers.
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Jesus admonished his apostles: "Do not make the mistake of thinking that I have come to set aside the law and the prophets. I come not to transgress the law but rather to write these new commandments on the tablets of your hearts. If you would enter the kingdom, you must have a righteousness that consists in love, mercy, and truth—the sincere desire to do the will of my Father in heaven."
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Jesus did not expect his followers to achieve an impossible manifestation of brotherly love, but he did expect them to so strive to be like God—to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect—that they could begin to look upon man as God looks upon his creatures and therefore could begin to love men as God loves them—to show forth the beginnings of a fatherly affection.
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Jesus instructed the twelve: "Discern the truth clearly; live the righteous life fearlessly; and so shall you be my apostles and my Father’s ambassadors. If you would guide others into the kingdom, you must yourselves walk in the clear light of living truth. In all the business of the kingdom I exhort you to show just judgment and keen wisdom. Present not that which is holy to dogs."
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The reading starts in Paper 140, Section 3, Paragraph 12.
Just before noon on Sunday, January 12, A.D. 27, Jesus called the apostles together for their ordination as public preachers of the gospel of the kingdom. At last the long-waited-for hour had come! They were thrilled to be going apart with the Master to participate in some sort of solemn ceremony of personal consecration and collective dedication to the sacred work of representing their Master.
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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 Iscariot really was a great executive, a farseeing and able financier. The apostles loved Judas; he was really one of them. None of the twelve ever criticized Judas.
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The other apostles held Jesus in reverence because of some special and outstanding trait of his replete personality, but Thomas revered his Master because of his superbly balanced character. It was this matchless symmetry of personality that so charmed Thomas. He probably enjoyed the highest intellectual understanding and personality appreciation of Jesus of any of the twelve.
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The presence of Matthew among the twelve was the means of keeping the doors of the kingdom wide open to hosts of downhearted and outcast souls who had regarded themselves as long since without the bounds of religious consolation. Outcast and despairing men and women flocked to hear Jesus, and he never turned one away. It was the Master’s forgiving disposition which Matthew most appreciated.
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Those characteristics of Jesus which John Zebedee most appreciated were the Master’s love and unselfishness; these traits made such an impression on him that his whole subsequent life became dominated by the sentiment of love and brotherly devotion. He talked about love and wrote about love. This "son of thunder" became the "apostle of love", instructing: "My little children, love one another."
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The outstanding feature of James Zebedee’s personality was his ability to see all sides of a proposition. Of all the twelve, he came the nearest to grasping the real import and significance of Jesus’ teaching. He, too, was slow at first to comprehend the Master’s meaning, but ere they had finished their training, he had acquired a superior concept of Jesus’ message, the gospel of the kingdom.
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The twelve apostles represented many different types of human temperament, and they had not been made alike by schooling. But do not make the mistake of regarding these men as being altogether ignorant and unlearned. All of them, except the Alpheus twins, were graduates of the synagogue schools, having been thoroughly trained in the Hebrew scriptures and in much of the current knowledge of that day.
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Jesus made plain to his apostles the difference between the repentance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith—the new birth—which he required as the price of admission to the kingdom. He taught them to preach the forgiveness of sin through faith in God without penance or sacrifice, and that the Father in heaven loves all his children with the same eternal love.
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Said Jesus: "My kingdom and the gospel related thereto shall be the burden of your message. Be not sidetracked into preaching about me and about my teachings. Proclaim the gospel of the kingdom and portray my revelation of the Father in heaven but do not be misled into the bypaths of creating legends and building up a cult having to do with beliefs and teachings about my beliefs and teachings."
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Jesus directed the six to go forth, two and two, to teach the glad tidings of the kingdom. He purposed to make their first tour entirely one of personal work. No initial public preaching was something of a disappointment to the apostles, still they saw, at least in part, Jesus’ reason for thus beginning the proclamation of the kingdom, and they started out in good heart and with confident enthusiasm.
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Said Jesus: "Be not deceived by those who come saying here is the kingdom or there is the kingdom, for my Father’s kingdom concerns not things visible and material. And this kingdom is even now among you, for where the spirit of God teaches and leads the soul of man, there in reality is the kingdom of heaven. And this kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit."
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To James, Jude, and his apostles, Jesus said: "My kingdom is not to come with noise and glamor, but rather must it come through the great change which my Father will have wrought in your hearts and in the hearts of those who shall be called to join you in the councils of the kingdom. But do not entertain false hope; the world will stumble at my words. Be patient, be gentle. Be ever obedient to the Father’s will."
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Of all persons present at the marriage feast of Cana, Jesus was the most surprised. Others had expected him to work a wonder, but that was just what he had purposed not to do. Mary and the six apostles were greatly rejoiced at the supposed miracle which they thought Jesus had intentionally performed, but Jesus was sorely perplexed and retired for a season to the housetop that he might think it all over.
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In the presence of the first four apostles, Philip led Nathaniel to Jesus, who, looking benignly into the face of the sincere doubter, said: "Behold a genuine Israelite, in whom there is no deceit. Follow me." And Nathaniel, turning to Philip, said: "You are right. He is indeed a master of men. I will also follow, if I am worthy." And Jesus nodded to Nathaniel, again saying, "Follow me."
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We can hardly imagine what would have happened on our world had the God-man, Jesus, in potential possession of all power in heaven and on earth, once decided to unfurl the banner of his local-universe sovereignty, to marshal his wonder-working battalions in militant array! But he would not compromise. He would not serve evil that the worship of God might presumably be derived therefrom.
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Jesus chose to establish the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of mankind by natural, ordinary, difficult, and trying methods, just such procedures as his earth children must subsequently follow in their work of enlarging and extending that heavenly kingdom. Jesus was now passing through the great test of civilized man, to have power and steadfastly refuse to use it for purely selfish or personal purposes.
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Above and beyond selfish satisfaction and sensuous gratification, there are higher values in mortal existence—intellectual mastery and spiritual achievement—which far transcend the necessary gratification of man’s purely physical appetites and urges. Man’s natural endowment of talent and ability should be chiefly devoted to the development and ennoblement of his higher powers of mind and spirit.
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The 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 arrived, one by one, at the great decisions which were to control his policies and conduct for the remainder of his earth career.
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After his baptism Jesus entered upon the forty days of adjusting himself to the changed relationships of the world and the universe occasioned by the personalization of his Adjuster. This was a season for thinking over the whole career of his Urantia bestowal, and planning for his ensuing public ministry. Jesus also thought over the whole span of human life on Urantia, starting from the days of Andon and Fonta.
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When Jesus was baptized, he repented of no misdeeds; he made no confession of sin. His was the baptism of consecration to the performance of the will of the heavenly Father. At his baptism he heard the unmistakable call of his Father, the final summons to be about his Father’s business, and he went away into private seclusion for forty days to think over these manifold problems.
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Said Jesus to John‘s disciples: "Tell John that I have not forgotten but to suffer me also this, for it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness. Tell him what you have seen and heard—that the poor have good tidings preached to them—and, finally, tell the beloved herald of my earth mission that he shall be abundantly blessed in the age to come if he finds no occasion to doubt and stumble over me."
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Extolling Jesus, John proclaimed: "For this cause came I out of the wilderness to preach repentance and to baptize with water, proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And now comes one who shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And I beheld the divine spirit descending upon this man, and I heard the voice of God declare, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.'"
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John came from the herdsmen, like Amos. He was dressed like Elijah of old, and he thundered his admonitions and poured forth his warnings in the "spirit and power of Elijah". It is not surprising that this strange preacher created a mighty stir throughout all Palestine as the travelers who were crossing the river carried abroad the news of his preaching and baptizing along the Jordan.
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It was the influence of the Prophet Elijah that caused John to adopt his methods of direct and blunt assault upon the sins and vices of his contemporaries. John was not illiterate, he did well know the Jewish sacred writings, but he was hardly cultured. He was a clear thinker, a powerful speaker, and a fiery denunciator. He was hardly an example to his age, but he was an eloquent rebuke.
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John the Baptist was born March 25, 7 B.C., in accordance with the promise that Gabriel made to his mother, Elizabeth, in June of the previous year. For five months Elizabeth kept secret Gabriel’s visitation; and when she told her husband, Zacharias, he was greatly troubled and fully believed her narrative only after he had an unusual dream about six weeks before the birth of John.
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The chief pursuit throughout the era of light and life is the quest for a better understanding and a fuller realization of the comprehensible elements of Deity—truth, beauty, and goodness. This represents man’s effort to discern God in mind, matter, and spirit. And as the mortal pursues this quest, he finds himself increasingly absorbed in the experiential study of philosophy, cosmology, and divinity.
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The Unqualified Absolute and the Deity Absolute are unified in the Universal Absolute. The Absolutes are co-ordinated in the Ultimate, conditioned in the Supreme, and time-space modified in God the Sevenfold. On subinfinite levels there are three Absolutes, but in infinity they appear to be one. On Paradise there are three personalizations of Deity, but in the Trinity they are one.
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The steady progress of evolution in the time-space universes is accompanied by ever-enlarging revelations of Deity to all intelligent creatures. The attainment of the height of evolutionary progress on a world, in a system, constellation, universe, superuniverse, or in the grand universe signalizes corresponding enlargements of deity function to and in these progressive units of creation.
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Personality inherently reaches out to unify all constituent realities. Such unifying creativity of all creature personality is a birthmark of its high and exclusive source and is further evidential of its unbroken contact with this same source through the personality circuit, by means of which the personality of the creature maintains direct and sustaining contact with the Father of all personality on Paradise.
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God is unity. Deity is universally coordinated. The universe of universes is one vast integrated mechanism which is absolutely controlled by one infinite mind. The physical, intellectual, and spiritual domains of universal creation are divinely correlated. There is a divine and single purpose exhibited in all of the manifold manifestations of universal creative energy.
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A superuniverse is settled in light and life when all of its component local universes are thus perfected. But what will happen when the grand universe (the seven superuniverses as dependent on Havona) becomes entirely settled in light and life? That event will undoubtedly be the most profound occurrence in the annals of eternity since the appearance of the central universe of perfection.
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When a local universe becomes settled in light and life, it soon swings into the established superuniverse circuits, and the Ancients of Days proclaim the establishment of the supreme council of unlimited authority. This new governing body of Supreme Trinity Personalities is chiefly concerned with the new problems and the new conditions arising out of the advanced status of light and life.
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As worlds advance in the settled status of light and life, society becomes increasingly peaceful. The individual, while no less independent and devoted to his family, has become more altruistic and fraternal. On our sin-darkened world, and as we are, we can have little appreciation of the advanced status and progressive nature of the enlightened races of these perfected worlds.
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The advanced stages of a world settled in light and life represent the acme of evolutionary material development. Mortal creatures living on a sin-stricken, evil-dominated, self-seeking, isolated world, such as Urantia, can hardly conceive of the physical perfection, the intellectual attainment, and the spiritual development which characterize these advanced epochs of evolution on a sinless sphere.
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In the successive stages of settled existence the inhabited worlds make marvelous progress under the wise and sympathetic administration of the volunteer Corps of the Finality, ascenders of Paradise attainment who have come back to minister to their brethren in the flesh. And upon the formal inauguration of the planetary ministry of these finaliters, the majority of the celestial hosts withdraw.
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Each of these successive ages represents advancing achievements in all phases of planetary attainment. In the initial age of light the revelation of truth was enlarged to embrace the workings of the universe of universes, while the Deity study of the second age is the attempt to master the protean concept of the nature, mission, ministry, associations, origin, and destiny of the Creator Sons.
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Natural, physical death is not a mortal inevitability. The majority of advanced evolutionary beings, citizens on worlds existing in the final era of light and life, do not die; they are translated directly from the life in the flesh to the morontia existence. These God-knowing mortals are removed from their material associations by the spiritual fires of consuming grandeur and ascending glory.
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The age of light and life is the final evolutionary attainment of a world of time and space. And this era of light and life, inaugurated by the Trinity Teacher Sons at the conclusion of their final planetary mission, continues indefinitely on the inhabited worlds. However, there are seven stages in the unfoldment of the era of light and life—on each evolutionary world, and in the grand universe.
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The Trinity Teacher Sons come in groups to the spiritualizing worlds. A planetary Teacher Son is assisted and supported by seventy primary Sons, twelve secondary Sons, and three of the highest and most experienced of the supreme order of Daynals. This corps will remain for some time on the world, long enough to effect the transition from the evolutionary ages to the era of light and life.
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The bestowal Son is the Prince of Peace. He arrives with the message, "Peace on earth and good will among men." However, Jesus warned his disciples that his advent would not bring the usual reign of peace. He distinctly told them that there would be "wars and rumors of wars", and that nation would rise against nation. At another time he said, "Think not that I have come to bring peace upon earth."
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The reading starts in Paper 52, Section 5, Paragraph 8.
When the worlds have become ripe for spiritualization, the bestowal Son arrives. These Sons always belong to the Magisterial or Avonal order except in that case, once in each local universe, when the Creator Son prepares for his terminal bestowal on some evolutionary world, as occurred when Michael of Nebadon appeared on Urantia to bestow himself upon our mortal races.
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On an average world the post-Adamic dispensation is an age of great invention, energy control, and mechanical development. This is the era of the control of natural forces; it is the golden age of exploration and the final subduing of the planet. Much of the material progress of a world occurs during this time of the Material Sons’ inauguration of the development of the physical sciences.
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On average worlds, during the latter part of the Planetary Prince’s rule, national life begins to replace tribal organization or rather to be superimposed upon the existing tribal groupings. But the great social achievement of the prince’s epoch is the emergence of family life. The idea of chiefly tribal human relationships gradually gives way to the dual concept of national life and family life.
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The progress of civilization is hardly alike on any two planets. The details of the unfoldment of mortal evolution are very different on numerous dissimilar worlds. Notwithstanding these many diversifications of planetary development along physical, intellectual, and social lines, all evolutionary spheres progress in certain well-defined directions, passing through seven developmental epochs.
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From the inception of life on an evolutionary planet to the time of its final flowering in the era of light and life, there appear upon the stage of world action at least seven epochs of human life. These successive ages are determined by the planetary missions of the divine Sons, and on an average inhabited world these epochs appear in an order aligned with the progress of civilization.
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Jesus was a charming listener. He never engaged in the meddlesome probing of the souls of his associates. As he comforted hungry minds and ministered to thirsty souls, the recipients of his mercy did not so much feel that they were confessing to him as that they were conferring with him. They had unbounded confidence in him because they saw he had so much faith in them.
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Jesus spread good cheer everywhere he went. He was full of grace and truth. His associates never ceased to wonder at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth. Goodness always compels respect, but when it is devoid of grace, it often repels affection. Goodness is universally attractive only when it is gracious. Goodness is effective only when it is attractive.
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Then turning to his apostles, Jesus said: "From olden times the prophets have perished in Jerusalem, and it is only befitting that the Son of Man should go up to the city of the Father’s house to be offered up as the price of human bigotry and as the result of religious prejudice and spiritual blindness. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones the teachers of truth!"
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On counting the cost of discipleship, Jesus said: "From now on you will not be able to follow after us, listening to the teaching and beholding the works; you will be required to face bitter persecutions and to bear witness for this gospel in the face of crushing disappointment. If you are unwilling to renounce all that you are and to dedicate all that you have, then are you unworthy to be my disciple."
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The Master fully realized that certain social results would appear in the world as a consequence of the spread of his gospel of the kingdom of heaven; but he intended that all such desirable social manifestations should appear as unconscious and inevitable outgrowths, or natural fruits, of the inner personal experience of the individual believers of the spiritual brotherhood of man.
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You should not become discouraged by the apparently slow progress of Jesus’ doctrine of the kingdom of heaven. Remember that the order of progressive evolution is subjected to sudden and unexpected periodical changes in both the material and the spiritual worlds. The bestowal of Jesus as an incarnated Son was just such a strange and unexpected event in the spiritual life of the world.
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The religion of the kingdom is personal, individual; but the fruits, the results, are familial, social. Hence, Jesus desired to substitute for the idea of the kingdom, king, and subjects, the concept of the heavenly family, the heavenly Father, and the liberated sons of God engaged in joyful and voluntary service for their fellow men and in the sublime and intelligent worship of God the Father.
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At different times and in varying circumstances it appears that Jesus may have presented numerous concepts of the "kingdom" in his public teachings, but to his apostles he always taught the kingdom as embracing man’s personal experience in relation to his fellows on earth and to the Father in heaven. Concerning the kingdom, his last word always was, "The kingdom is within you."
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The Master designated the spiritual brotherhood of man as the kingdom of heaven and the spirit head of this brotherhood as the Father in heaven. Never did Jesus refer to his Father as a king. In his intimate talks with the apostles he always referred to himself as the Son of Man and as their elder brother. He depicted all his followers as servants of mankind and messengers of the gospel of the kingdom.
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Clarifying his parable of the shrewd steward, Jesus affirmed: "He who is faithful in little will also be faithful in much, while he who is unrighteous in little will also be unrighteous in much. If you have not shown foresight and integrity in the affairs of this world, how can you hope to be faithful and prudent when you are trusted with the stewardship of the true riches of the heavenly kingdom?"
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Late on Monday evening, March 6, A.D. 30, Jesus and the ten apostles arrived at the Pella camp, where Peter and Andrew awaited their return. Word regarding the resurrection of Lazarus had reached the encampment two days before the Master’s arrival, and the entire assembly was agog. Not since the feeding of the five thousand had anything occurred which so aroused the imagination of the people.
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When a prayer is apparently unanswered, the delay often betokens a better answer, although one which is for some good reason greatly delayed. No sincere prayer is denied an answer except when the superior viewpoint of the spiritual world has devised a better answer, an answer which meets the petition of the spirit of man as contrasted with the prayer of the mere mind of man.
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.] The reading starts in Paper 168, Paragraph 4.
The vast celestial host was all astir in unified action. In just twelve seconds of earth time the hitherto lifeless form of Lazarus began to move and presently sat up on the edge of the stone shelf whereon it had rested. His body was bound about with grave cloths, and his face was covered with a napkin. And as he stood up before them—alive—Jesus said, "Loose him and let him go."
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The reading starts in Paper 168, Section 2.
After Jesus had spent a few moments in comforting Martha and Mary—apart from the crowd of mourners, some sincere and some merely pretenders—he asked them, "Where have you laid him?" Then Martha said, "Come and see." And as the Master followed on in silence with the two sorrowing sisters, he wept. When the friendly Jews who followed after them saw his tears, one of them said, "Behold how he loved him."
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The angelic hosts are a separate order of created beings; they are entirely different from the material order of mortal creatures. Angels are not the glorified spirits of mortal men who have gone on to progress through the mansions on high. The angels are the spirit servants in heaven, and they are neither all-wise nor all-powerful. But all of the loyal angels are truly pure and holy.
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The Father gives salvation to the children of men, and this salvation is a free gift to all who have the faith to receive sonship in the divine family. There is nothing man can do to earn this salvation. Works of self-righteousness cannot buy the favor of God, and much praying in public will not atone for lack of living faith in the heart. God looks into your souls, not at your outward service.
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Knowing that his friend Lazarus was dead, and fearing not the Jewish leaders at Jerusalem, Jesus said to his apostles: "Let us prepare at once to go into Judea again. I would do one more mighty work for these Jews; I would give them one more chance to believe, even on their own terms—conditions of outward glory and the visible manifestation of the power of the Father and the love of the Son."
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Jesus and his apostles were much rejoiced over the progress of the gospel at Philadelphia and among the near-by villages. Excepting the cleansing of the ten lepers, thus far there had been no miracles on this Perean mission. This was a period when the gospel was proclaimed with power, without miracles, and most of the time without the personal presence of Jesus or even of his apostles.
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Jesus said: "All too long have your fathers believed that prosperity was the token of divine approval; that adversity was the proof of God’s displeasure. I declare that such beliefs are superstitions. The Father’s human children have equal capacity for the reception of material blessings; therefore does he bestow things physical upon the children of men without discrimination."
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The followers of Jesus, even the apostles, were unable fully to comprehend his teaching as to the necessity for using spiritual force for the purpose of breaking through all material resistance and for surmounting every earthly obstacle which might chance to stand in the way of grasping the all-important spiritual values of the new life in the spirit as the liberated sons of God.
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Said Jesus to his apostles: "In the time of testing, a man’s soul is revealed; trial discloses what really is in the heart. Remember, much has been given to you; therefore will much be required of you. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and I am on watch until this is accomplished. You preach peace on earth, but my mission will not bring peace in the material affairs of men—not for a time, at least."
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Jesus did not teach nor countenance improvidence, idleness, indifference to providing the physical necessities for one’s family, or dependence upon alms. But he did teach that the material and temporal must be subordinated to the welfare of the soul and the progress of the spiritual nature in the kingdom of heaven. He said, "What shall it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul?"
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Said Jesus: "My friends, when they seek to destroy the Son of Man, be not afraid of them. Fear not those who, although they may be able to kill the body, after that have no more power over you. I admonish you to fear none, in heaven or on earth, but to rejoice in the knowledge of Him who has power to deliver you from all unrighteousness and to present you blameless before the judgment seat of a universe."
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The Perean mission spanned almost three months and was the final period of the development of the higher spiritual aspects of the gospel of the kingdom, and there was, accordingly, an absence of miracle working. No other part of Palestine was so thoroughly worked by the apostles and disciples of Jesus, and in no other region did the better classes of citizens so generally accept the Master’s teaching.
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The seven Corps of the Finality represent the divinity response of the grand universe to the future needs of the undeveloped potentials in the outer universes of future-eternal activities. And the seven probably signify the present activity of the Ultimate Trinity engaged in mustering the forces of the finite and the absonite in preparation for these inconceivable developments of outer space.
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The Architects of the Master Universe are the governing corps of the Paradise Transcendentalers. This governing corps numbers 28,011 personalities possessing master minds, superb spirits, and supernal absonites. The presiding officer of this magnificent group, the senior Master Architect, is the co-ordinating head of all Paradise intelligences below the level of Deity.
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The mortal finaliters have fully complied with the injunction of the ages, "Be you perfect." Such beings have attained the present limit of spirit progression but not finality of ultimate spirit status. They have achieved the present limit of creature perfection but not finality of creature service. They have experienced the fullness of Deity worship but not finality of experiential Deity attainment.
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The Corps of Mortal Finaliters maintain their own headquarters on Paradise, in the superuniverses, in the local universes, and on all the divisional capitals; and their oath of allegiance is only to the Paradise Trinity. They are the accumulating tried and true souls of time and space—the evolutionary salt of the universe—and they are forever proof against evil and secure against sin.
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Michael was born a creator, educated an administrator, trained an executive, but he was required to earn his sovereignty by experience. And thus has our little world become known throughout all Nebadon as the arena wherein Michael completed the experience which is required of every Paradise Creator Son before he is given unlimited control and direction of the universe of his own making.
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The first appearance of Michael incarnated in the role of one stage of mortal evolution was an event which thrilled and enthralled all the universe of his creation. He appeared on the superuniverse headquarters as a fully developed and perfectly trained spirit mortal and, as such, continued his career up to the occasion of the advancement of a group of ascending mortals to the central universe.
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The bestowals of Michael as a Melchizedek Son, then as a Lanonandek Son, and next as a Material Son are all equally mysterious and beyond explanation. In each instance he appeared suddenly and as a fully developed individual of the bestowal group. The mystery of such incarnations will never be known except to those who have access to the pertinent secret records on Sonarington.
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The attribute of bestowal is inherent in the Paradise Sons of the Universal Father. In their desire to come close to the life experiences of their subordinate living creatures, the various orders of the Paradise Sons are reflecting the divine nature of their Paradise parents. Our local universe of Nebadon is now ruled by a Creator Son who has completed his service of seven creature bestowals.
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In the beginnings on an evolutionary world the natural occurrences of the material order and the personal desires of human beings often appear to be antagonistic. Much that takes place on an evolving world is rather hard for mortal man to understand—natural law is so often apparently cruel, heartless, and indifferent to all that is true, beautiful, and good in human comprehension.
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Providential intervention with regard to any being is indicative of the importance of the function of that being as concerns the evolutionary growth of some total; such total may be the total race, the total nation, the total planet, or even a higher total. It is the importance of the function of the creature that occasions providential intervention, not the importance of the creature as a person.
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Mechanisms do not absolutely dominate the total creation of the universe of universes; mechanisms are the products of mind, creative mind acting on and in cosmic potentials. Mechanisms are the fixed crystallizations of Creator thought, and they ever function true to the volitional concept that gave them origin. But the purposiveness of any mechanism is in its origin, not in its function.
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When material culture advances overfast, civilization contains within itself the seeds of retrogression; and unless buttressed by the swift augmentation of experiential wisdom, such human societies will recede from high but premature levels of attainment, and the "dark ages" of the interregnum of wisdom will bear witness to the inexorable restoration of the imbalance between self-liberty and self-control.
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If personality has the prerogative of exercising volitional choice of reality identification, and if this is a true and free choice, then must evolving personality also have the possible choice of becoming self-confusing, self-disrupting, and self-destroying. The possibility of cosmic self-destruction cannot be avoided if the evolving personality is to be truly free in the exercise of finite will.
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There is but one uncaused Cause in the whole universe; God is truly omnipotent. But he is not omnificent: he does not personally do all that is done. To advocate the omnificence of primal Deity would be equal to disenfranchising well-nigh a million Creator Sons of Paradise, not to mention the innumerable hosts of various other orders of concurring creative assistants.
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Many of the theologic difficulties and the metaphysical dilemmas of mortal man are due to man’s mislocation of Deity personality and consequent assignment of infinite and absolute attributes to subordinate Divinity and to evolutionary Deity. You must not forget that, while there is indeed a true First Cause, there are also a host of co-ordinate and subordinate causes, both associate and secondary causes.
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Truth is inconcussible—forever exempt from all transient vicissitudes, albeit never dead and formal, always vibrant and adaptable—radiantly alive. But when truth becomes linked with fact, then both time and space condition its meanings and correlate its values. Such realities of truth wedded to fact become concepts and are accordingly relegated to the domain of relative cosmic realities.
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The time unit of maturity is proportioned so to reveal the co-ordinate relationship of past-present-future that the self begins to gain insight into the wholeness of events, begins to view the landscape of time from the panoramic perspective of broadened horizons, begins perhaps to suspect the nonbeginning, nonending eternal continuum, the fragments of which are called time.
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The Supreme and the Ultimate constitute the basic association of subabsolute and derived Deity. It is helpful to man’s cosmic orientation to attain all possible comprehension of Deity’s relation to the cosmos. While absolute Deity is eternal in nature, the Gods are related to time as an experience in eternity. In the evolutionary universes eternity is temporal everlastingness—the everlasting now.
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When ascenders are admitted to the Mortal Finaliter Corps of Paradise, they take an oath of allegiance to the Paradise Trinity. Subsequently, as the finaliter companies function throughout the evolving universes, they are solely amenable to the mandates of Paradise origin until a local universe is settled in light and life, only then acknowledging the jurisdictional authority of its new government.
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As a finite being, you will personally find the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, but not the Supreme; nevertheless, the Paradise ascent and subsequent universe career will gradually create in your consciousness the recognition of the universe presence and the cosmic action of the God of all experience. The fruits of the spirit are the substance of the Supreme as he is realizable in human experience.
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The soul of an evolving mortal is really the son of the Adjuster action of the Universal Father and the child of the cosmic reaction of the Universal Mother. The mother influence dominates the human personality throughout the local universe childhood of the growing soul. And as a finaliter, the mother inheritance of the Supreme seeks full finite synchrony with the Adjuster inheritance of the Father.
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Man does not unite with the Supreme, the cosmic oversoul, and submerge his personal identity; but the universe repercussions of the experience of all men do thus form a part of the divine experiencing of the Supreme. "The act is ours, the consequences God’s." The progressing personality leaves a trail of actualized reality as it passes through the ascending levels of the universes.
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Will you fail the God of time, who is so dependent upon the decisions of the finite mind? will you fail the Supreme personality of the universes by the slothfulness of animalistic retrogression? will you fail the great brother of all creatures, who is so dependent on each creature? can you allow yourself to pass into the realm of the unrealized when before you lies the enchanting vista of the universe career?
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Mortal man is more than figuratively made in the image of God. From a physical standpoint this statement is hardly true, but with reference to certain universe potentialities it is an actual fact. Man, a volitional personality, becomes creative in liaison with an Adjuster, in the presence of the finite potentialities of the Supreme, and the result is the flowering of an immortal soul.
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The Supreme is God-in-time; his is the secret of creature growth in time; his also is the conquest of the incomplete present and the consummation of the perfecting future. And the final fruits of all finite growth are: power controlled through mind by spirit by virtue of the unifying and creative presence of personality. The culminating consequence of all this growth is the Supreme Being.
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God the Supreme, the Supreme Being, is the beauty of physical harmony, the truth of intellectual meaning, and the goodness of spiritual value. He is the sweetness of true success and the joy of everlasting achievement. He is the oversoul of the grand universe, the consciousness of the finite cosmos, the completion of finite reality, and the personification of Creator-creature experience.
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In a human being the mechanism of physical life is responsive, in part, to the dictates of (personal) mind. This very mind may, in turn, become dominated by the leadings of purposive spirit, and the result of such evolutionary development is the production of a new child of the Supreme, a new personal unification of the several kinds of cosmic reality—living matter, mind, spirit, and personality.
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The struggle for perfection pertains not only to the intellectual and the spiritual levels but also to the physical level of energy and mass. The settlement of the seven superuniverses in light and life presupposes their attainment of physical stability. And it is conjectured that the final attainment of material equilibrium will signify the completed evolution of the physical control of the Almighty.
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Coordinated in the Sevenfold with the Master Spirits of the superuniverses are the triune rulers of these supercreations—the Ancients of Days. These personifications of Trinity justice-judgment in time and space are the field fulcrums for the mobilizing almighty power of the Supreme, serving as the sevenfold focal points for the evolution of trinitarian sovereignty in the domains of time and space.
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The mind circuits emanating from the hierarchy of intelligence focuses represent the cosmic arena of creature choice. Mind is the flexible reality which creatures and Creators can so readily manipulate; it is the vital link connecting matter and spirit. The mind bestowal of the Third Source and Center unifies the spirit person of God the Supreme with the experiential power of the evolutionary Almighty.
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God the Supreme is not the Paradise Trinity, neither is he any one or all of those superuniverse Creators whose functional activities actually synthesize his evolving almighty power. God the Supreme, while of origin in the Trinity, becomes manifest to evolutionary creatures as a personality of power only through the co-ordinated functions of the first three levels of God the Sevenfold.
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Growth is the earmark of experiential Deity, and experiential growth implies creature-Creator partnership—God and man in association. The experience of every evolving creature personality is a phase of the experience of the Almighty Supreme. The intelligent subjugation of every physical segment of the superuniverses is a part of the growing control, the evolution, of the Almighty Supreme.
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The Supreme Being cannot be fully appreciated without taking into consideration source, function, and destiny: relationship to the originating Trinity, the universe of activity, and the Trinity Ultimate of immediate destiny. He is the indispensable focalizer, summarizer, and encompasser of evolutionary experience, effectively unifying the results of this mode of reality perception in his Deity nature.
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The Supreme not only grows as the Creators and creatures of the evolving universes attain to Godlikeness, but this finite Deity also experiences growth as a result of the creature and Creator mastery of the finite possibilities of the grand universe. The motion of the Supreme is twofold: intensively toward Paradise and Deity and extensively toward the limitlessness of the Absolutes of potential.
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Any consideration of the origins of God the Supreme must begin with the Paradise Trinity, for the Trinity is original Deity while the Supreme is derived Deity. Any consideration of the growth of the Supreme must give consideration to the existential triodities, for they encompass all absolute actuality and all infinite potentiality (in conjunction with the First Source and Center).
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In the association of the Deity, Universal, and Unqualified Absolutes, potentiality is absolute while actuality is emergent; in the association of the Second, Third, and Paradise Sources and Centers, actuality is absolute while potentiality is emergent; in the originality of the First Source and Center, we cannot say that either actuality or potentiality is either existent or emergent—the Father is.
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There is no language in the past, present, or future of our world, Urantia, adequate to express the reality of infinity or the infinity of reality. Man, a finite creature in an infinite cosmos, must content himself with distorted reflections and attenuated conceptions of that limitless, boundless, never-beginning, never-ending existence the comprehension of which is really beyond his ability.
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Finite creatures, high and low, may propound theories, and have done so, as to the necessity of the finite in the cosmic economy, but in the last analysis it exists because God so willed. The universe cannot be explained, neither can a finite creature offer a rational reason for his own individual existence without appealing to the prior acts and pre-existent volition of ancestral beings, Creators or procreators.
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The Father is man’s highest Deity concept of God, but God is much, much more than a Father. Man must think in a mortal universe frame, but that does not mean that he cannot envision other and higher frames within which thought can take place. With God the Father, sonship is the great relationship. With God the Supreme, achievement is the prerequisite to status—one must do something as well as be something.
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On millions of inhabited worlds in our local universe, tens of trillions of evolving creatures who may have been tempted to give up the moral struggle and abandon the good fight of faith, have taken one more look at Jesus on the cross and then have forged on ahead, inspired by the sight of God’s laying down his incarnate life in devotion to the unselfish service of man.
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The reading starts in Paper 188, Section 5.
Although Jesus did not die the death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mortal man nor to provide some sort of effective approach to an otherwise offended and unforgiving God; notwithstanding that these ideas of atonement and propitiation are erroneous, nonetheless, there are significances attached to the death of Jesus on the cross which should not be overlooked.
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During the Sabbath day, all Jerusalem discussed the death of Jesus on the cross. There were almost one and one-half million Jews present in Jerusalem at this time, hailing from all parts of the Roman Empire and from Mesopotamia. This was the beginning of the Passover week, and all these pilgrims would be in the city to learn of the resurrection of Jesus and to carry the report back to their homes.
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At about half past four o’clock the burial procession of Jesus of Nazareth started from Golgotha for Joseph of Arimathea’s new family tomb across the way. The body was wrapped in a linen sheet as the four men carried it, followed by the faithful women watchers from Galilee. The mortals who bore the material body of Jesus to the tomb were: Joseph, Nicodemus, John, and the Roman centurion.
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It was just before three o’clock when Jesus, with a loud voice, cried out, "It is finished! Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." And when he had thus spoken, he bowed his head and gave up the life struggle. When the Roman centurion saw how Jesus died, he smote his breast and said: "This was indeed a righteous man; truly he must have been a Son of God." And from that hour he began to believe in Jesus.
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Jesus’ only words, as they nailed him to the crossbeam, were, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He could not have so mercifully and lovingly interceded for his executioners if such thoughts of affectionate devotion had not been the mainspring of all his life of unselfish service. The ideas, motives, and longings of a lifetime are openly revealed in a crisis.
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As the death procession passed along the narrow streets of Jerusalem, many of the tenderhearted Jewish women who had heard Jesus’ words of good cheer and compassion, and who knew of his life of loving ministry, could not refrain from weeping when they saw him being led forth to such an ignoble death. As he passed by, many of these women bewailed and lamented; some even dared to follow along by his side.
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At the time of the Master’s baptism he had already completed the technique of the required experience on earth and in the flesh which was necessary for the completion of his seventh and last universe bestowal. All the life he lived thereafter, and even the manner of his death, was a purely personal ministry on his part for the welfare and uplifting of his mortal creatures on this world and on other worlds.
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Jesus had acquired that type of human character which could preserve its composure and assert its dignity in the face of continued and gratuitous insult. He could not be intimidated. Jesus revealed to all beings the manner in which God can become manifest in the life of the creature when such a creature truly chooses to do the will of the Father, thus becoming an active son of the living God.
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As Judas left the Sanhedrin chamber, he removed the thirty pieces of silver from the bag and threw them broadcast over the temple floor. When the betrayer left the temple, he was almost beside himself. Judas was now passing through the experience of the realization of the true nature of sin. All the glamor, fascination, and intoxication of wrongdoing had vanished. He was forsaken and alone.
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Pilate made one last appeal to the pity of the clamoring Jews. Being afraid to defy this misled mob who cried for the blood of Jesus, he ordered the Jewish guards and the Roman soldiers to take Jesus and scourge him. Then, after being subjected to this wicked ordeal, Pilate led forth this bleeding and lacerated prisoner and, presenting him before the mixed multitude, said: "Behold the man!"
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Pilate addressed himself to the solution of the problem which confronted him, by asking the assembly of Jewish rulers and the pardon-seeking crowd, "What shall I do with him who is called the king of the Jews?" And they all shouted with one accord, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" The unanimity of this demand from the mixed multitude startled and alarmed Pilate, the unjust and fear-ridden judge.
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Said Jesus to Pilate: "My kingdom is the family of the faith sons of my Father who is in heaven. For this purpose was I born into this world, even that I should show my Father to all men and bear witness to the truth of God. And even now do I declare to you that every one who loves the truth hears my voice." Then said Pilate, half in ridicule and half in sincerity, "Truth, what is truth—who knows?"
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The written charges against Jesus were handed to Pilate, stating: "We find in the Sanhedrist tribunal that this man is an evildoer and a disturber of our nation in that he is guilty of: (1) perverting our nation and stirring up our people to rebellion, (2) forbidding the people to pay tribute to Caesar, and (3) calling himself the king of the Jews and teaching the founding of a new kingdom."
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Shortly after six o’clock on Friday morning, April 7, A.D. 30, Jesus was brought before Pilate, the Roman procurator who governed Judea, Samaria, and Idumea under the immediate supervision of the legatus of Syria. The Master was taken into the presence of the Roman governor by the temple guards, bound, and was accompanied by about fifty of his accusers, including Judas Iscariot and the high priest, Caiaphas.
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Our study begins with Paper 184.
Alone with Jesus in the audience chamber of Caiaphas' palace, the servants and the temple guards mocked him, spit upon him, and cruelly buffeted him. They went on for one full hour, reviling and mistreating this unresisting man of Galilee. These are the moments of the Master's greatest victories in all his long and eventful career as maker, upholder, and savior of a vast and far-flung universe.
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A special trial court of some thirty Sanhedrists was convened in the palace of the high priest, Caiaphas. And Jesus was brought before this court clothed in his usual garments and with his hands bound together behind his back. The entire court was startled and somewhat confused by his majestic appearance. Never had they gazed upon such a prisoner nor witnessed such composure in a man on trial for his life.
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Not until the cock crowed did it occur to Peter that he had denied his Master. Not until Jesus looked upon him, did he realize that he had failed to live up to his privileges as an ambassador of the kingdom. And he never fully believed that he could be forgiven until he met his Master after the resurrection and saw that he was received just as before the experiences of the tragic night of the denials.
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Annas, the most powerful single individual in all Jewry, was reluctant to participate in the murder of a good man and had reasoned that Jesus might choose to leave the country rather than to suffer death. But when Annas stood before the stalwart and determined Galilean, he knew at once that it would be useless to make such proposals. Jesus was even more majestic and well poised than Annas remembered him.
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Jesus made one last effort to save Judas from actually betraying him in that, before the traitor could reach him, he stepped to one side and addressed the foremost soldier, saying, "Whom do you seek?" The captain of the Romans answered, "Jesus of Nazareth." Then Jesus stepped up immediately in front of the officer and, standing there in the calm majesty of the God of all this creation, said, "I am he."
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There is great danger of misunderstanding the meaning of numerous sayings and many events associated with the termination of the Master’s career in the flesh. The Father in heaven desired the bestowal Son to finish his earth career naturally. Ordinary men and women cannot expect to have their last hours on earth and the supervening episode of death made easy by a special dispensation.
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Jesus was isolated from his family in the flesh; one of his chosen associates was betraying him. His father Joseph’s people had rejected him and thereby sealed their doom as a people with a special mission on earth. His soul was tortured by baffled love and rejected mercy. It was just one of those awful human moments when everything seems to bear down with crushing cruelty and terrible agony.
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Our study begins with Paper 182. (Paper 182:3, p. 1968)
The cheerful attitude of Jesus was waning. As the hour passed, he grew more and more serious, even sorrowful. Nonetheless, Jesus addressed the concerns of David Zebedee and John Mark, saying: "My friends, nothing can happen to the Son of Man unless the Father in heaven so wills. Let not your hearts be troubled; all things will work together for the glory of God and the salvation of men.”
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Last Hour With Friends, Final Farewells, Enemies Approach
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Our study begins with Paper 182. (Paper 182:2, p. 1966)
Jesus prayed: "Father, my hour has come; now glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. I know that you have given me full authority over all living creatures in my realm, and I will give eternal life to all who will become faith sons of God. And this is eternal life, that my creatures should know you as the only true God and Father of all, and that they should believe in him whom you sent into the world."
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Our study begins with Paper 182.
To the apostles Jesus said: "Be not dismayed that you fail to grasp the full meaning of the gospel. You are but finite, mortal men, and that which I have taught you is infinite, divine, and eternal. Be patient and of good courage since you have the eternal ages before you in which to continue your progressive attainment of the experience of becoming perfect, even as your Father in Paradise is perfect."
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Concerning leadership, Jesus said: "In my universe and in my Father's universe of universes, our brethren-sons are dealt with as individuals in all their spiritual relations, but in all group relationships we unfailingly provide for definite leadership. Our kingdom is a realm of order, and where two or more will creatures act in co-operation, there is always provided the authority of leadership."
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The peace of Jesus is the joy and satisfaction of a God-knowing individual who has achieved the triumph of learning fully how to do the will of God while living the mortal life in the flesh. The peace of Jesus’ mind was founded on an absolute human faith in the actuality of the divine Father’s wise and sympathetic overcare. The Master knew all that was to befall him, and he was unafraid.
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Said Jesus: "I have warned you that a man’s foes may be those of his own household. Although the gospel of the kingdom never fails to bring great peace to the soul of the individual believer, it will not bring peace on earth until man is willing to believe my teaching wholeheartedly and to establish the practice of doing the Father’s will as the chief purpose in living the mortal life."
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The new helper which Jesus promised to send into the hearts of believers is the Spirit of Truth, and it has poured out upon all flesh ever since that Pentecost. This divine endowment is not the letter or law of truth, neither is it to function as the form or expression of truth. The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels.
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Said Jesus: "If the world shall hate you, you should recall that it hated me even before it hated you. If you were of this world, then would the world love its own, but because you are not, the world refuses to love you. You are in this world, but your lives are not to be worldlike. I have chosen you out of the world to represent the spirit of another world even to this world from which you have been chosen."
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Jesus addressed his apostles, saying: "The time has now come for the Son of Man to be glorified, and the Father shall be glorified in me. My friends, I am to be with you only a little longer..., for I am going to a place to which you cannot, at this time, come. But when you have finished your work on earth as I have now finished mine, you shall then come to me even as I now prepare to go to my Father."
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The bestowal of personality is the exclusive function of the Universal Father, the personalization of the living energy systems which he endows with the attributes of relative creative consciousness and the freewill control thereof. There is no personality apart from God the Father, and no personality exists except for God the Father. There is a kinship of divine spontaneity in all personality.
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The fact-seeking scientist conceives of God as the First Cause, a God of force. While the emotional artist sees God as the ideal of beauty, a God of aesthetics. The reasoning philosopher is sometimes inclined to posit a God of universal unity, even a pantheistic Deity. But the religionist of faith believes in a God who fosters survival, the Father in heaven, the God of love.
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God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man’s eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings, human and superhuman.
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The divine presence cannot be discovered anywhere in nature or even in the lives of God-knowing mortals so fully and so certainly as in your attempted communion with the indwelling Mystery Monitor, the Paradise Thought Adjuster. What a mistake to dream of God far off in the skies when the spirit of the Universal Father lives within your own mind! God lives in every one of his spirit-born sons.
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Our Father is not in hiding; he is not in arbitrary seclusion. He has mobilized the resources of divine wisdom in a never-ending effort to reveal himself to the children of his universal domains. There is an infinite grandeur and an inexpressible generosity connected with the majesty of his love which causes him to yearn for the association of every created being who can comprehend, love, or approach him.
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In all his personal relations with the creature personalities of the universes, the First Source and Center is always and consistently a loving Father. God is a Father in the highest sense of the term. He is eternally motivated by the perfect idealism of divine love, and that tender nature finds its strongest expression and greatest satisfaction in loving and being loved.
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Nature is the perfection of Paradise divided by the incompletion, evil, and sin of the unfinished universes. This quotient is thus expressive of both the perfect and the partial, of both the eternal and the temporal. Continuing evolution modifies nature by augmenting the content of Paradise perfection and by diminishing the content of the evil, error, and disharmony of relative reality.
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Our study begins at Paper 4, Section 2.
There is a providence of divine outworking on your world, but it is not the childish, arbitrary, and material ministry many mortals have conceived it to be. The providence of God consists in the interlocking activities of the celestial beings and the divine spirits who, in accordance with cosmic law, unceasingly labor for the honor of God and for the spiritual advancement of his universe children.
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The sovereignty of God is unlimited; it is the fundamental fact of all creation. The universe is not an accident, neither is it self-existent. The universe is a work of creation and is therefore wholly subject to the will of the Creator. The will of God is divine truth, living love; therefore are the perfecting creations of the evolutionary universes characterized by goodness and potential evil.
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The uncertainties of life and the vicissitudes of existence do not in any manner contradict the concept of the universal sovereignty of God over his well-nigh limitless creation. You may falter in your concept of his primacy, but you should not fail to accept him as securely and everlastingly enthroned at the Paradise center of all things and as the beneficent Father of all intelligent beings.
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Our study begins at Paper 3, Section 5.
The 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. The divine mind is conscious of, and conversant with, the thought of all creation. His knowledge of events is universal and perfect. God is possessed of unlimited power to know all things.
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To you the creature, many of the acts of the all-powerful Creator seem to be arbitrary, detached, and not infrequently heartless and cruel. But I assure you that this is not true. God’s doings are all purposeful, intelligent, wise, kind, and eternally considerate of the best good—but not always of an individual being; rather, they are for the welfare and best good of all concerned.
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God is everywhere present; the Universal Father rules the circle of eternity. This ability to be everywhere present, and at the same time, constitutes his omnipresence. God alone can be in two places, in numberless places, at the same time. The Universal Father is all the time present in all parts and in all hearts of his far-flung creation. It is literally true that God is all and in all.
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The discernment of supreme beauty is the discovery and integration of reality: The discernment of the divine goodness in the eternal truth, that is ultimate beauty. Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly co-ordinated and unified in God, who is love.
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As you ponder the loving nature of God, there is only one reasonable and natural personality reaction thereto: You will increasingly love your Maker; you will yield to God an affection analogous to that given by a child to an earthly parent; for, as a father, a real father, a true father, loves his children, so the Universal Father loves and forever seeks the welfare of his created sons and daughters.
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The reactions of a changeless God, in the execution of his eternal purpose, may seem to vary in accordance with the changing attitude and the shifting minds of his created intelligences; that is, they may apparently and superficially vary; but underneath the surface and beneath all outward manifestations, there is still present the changeless purpose, the everlasting plan, of the eternal God.
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The nature of God can be studied in a revelation of supreme ideas, the divine character can be envisaged as a portrayal of supernal ideals, but the most enlightening and spiritually edifying of all revelations of the divine nature is to be found in the comprehension of the religious life of Jesus of Nazareth, both before and after his attainment of full consciousness of divinity.
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To assume that the universe can be known, that it is intelligible, is to assume that the universe is mind made and personality managed. Man’s mind can only perceive the mind phenomena of other minds, be they human or superhuman. If man’s personality can experience the universe, there is a divine mind and an actual personality somewhere concealed in that universe.
Do not permit the magnitude of God, his infinity, either to obscure or eclipse his personality. The Universal Father is the acme of divine personality; he is the origin and destiny of personality throughout all creation. The Father is truly a personality, notwithstanding that the infinity of his person places him forever beyond the full comprehension of material and finite beings.
The infinity of the perfection of God is such that it eternally constitutes him mystery. And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The fact that a fragment of God can sojourn with a creature of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries.
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God is a transcendent reality, not merely man’s traditional concept of supreme values. God is not simply the supreme desire of man, the mortal quest objectified. God may be any or all of these concepts in the minds of men, but he is more. He is a saving person and a loving Father to all who enjoy spiritual peace on earth, and who crave to experience personality survival in death.
The Universal Father is the God of all creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. First think of God as a creator, then as a controller, and lastly as an infinite upholder. The myriads of planetary systems were all made to be eventually inhabited by many different types of intelligent creatures, beings who could know God, receive the divine affection, and love him in return.
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You can come out from among those of your fellows who choose to remain satisfied with a religion of mind, who crave security and prefer conformity. You can elect to exchange your feelings of authoritative certainty for the assurances of the spirit of adventurous and progressive faith. You can dare to reject the authority of the traditions of record which are now regarded as the word of God.
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Our study this week begins at Paper 155, Section 6.
Until the races become highly intelligent and more fully civilized, there will persist many of those childlike and superstitious ceremonies which are so characteristic of the evolutionary religious practices of primitive and backward peoples. The acceptance of the traditional religions of authority presents the easy way out for man’s urge to seek satisfaction for the longings of his spiritual nature.
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Jesus repeatedly taught his apostles that no civilization could long survive the loss of the best in its religion. And he never grew weary of pointing out the great danger of accepting religious symbols and ceremonies in the place of religious experience. His whole earth life was consistently devoted to the mission of thawing out the frozen forms of religion into the liquid liberties of enlightened sonship.
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You are hardly worthy of the kingdom when your service consists so largely in an attitude of regretting the past, whining over the present, and vainly hoping for the future. Why do the heathen rage? Because they know not the truth. Why do you languish in futile yearning? Because you obey not the truth. Cease your useless yearning and go forth bravely doing that which concerns the establishment of the kingdom.
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It is forever true that all who may think they are misunderstood or not appreciated have in Jesus a sympathizing friend and an understanding counselor. He had warned his apostles that a man’s foes may be they of his own household, but he had hardly realized how near this prediction would come to apply to his own experience. Jesus did not forsake his earth family to do his Father’s work—they forsook him.
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Many intelligent and well-meaning mortals have long maintained that modern civilization could not have been built upon the teachings of Jesus—and they are partially right. But all such doubters forget that a much better civilization could have been built upon his teachings, and sometime will be. This world has never seriously tried to carry out the actual teachings of Jesus on a large scale.
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The more or less composite and compromising transition stage, between the materialistic concepts of the kingdom held by the Master’s followers and those more idealistic and spiritual concepts taught by Jesus, definitely ended in the wake of the epochal sermon. From then on there was a more open proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom in its larger scope and in its far-flung spiritual implications.
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As a solemn warning, Jesus declared: "Verily, verily, I say to you, all your sins shall be forgiven, even all of your blasphemies, but whosoever shall blaspheme against God with deliberation and wicked intention shall never obtain forgiveness. Since such persistent workers of iniquity will never seek nor receive forgiveness, they are guilty of the sin of eternally rejecting divine forgiveness."
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Said Jesus to the assembled congregation: "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. Today, many of you stand at the parting of the ways." Jesus spoke out with less reserve because he knew the hour had come when he could do nothing more to prevent an open rupture of relations with the religious leaders.
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Our study this week begins at Paper 153.2
This crisis in Jesus’ earth life, which began with the feeding of the five thousand and ended three days later with the Sabbath sermon in the Capernaum synagogue, was the outward turning of the tide of popular fame and acclaim. However, the crisis in the lives of the apostles began with this sermon in the synagogue and continued for a whole year, ending only with the Master’s trial and crucifixion.
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Our study this week begins at Paper 153.
The twelve began to realize more fully that Jesus was not going to sit on David’s throne. They saw more fully that spiritual truth was not to be advanced by material wonders. They vaguely discerned and dimly foresaw the approaching times of spiritual sifting and cruel adversity. These twelve men were slowly awaking to the realization of the real nature of their task as ambassadors of the kingdom.
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Our study this week begins at Paper 152, Section 5
Jesus took up the five barley loaves in his hands, and after he had given thanks, he broke the bread and gave to his apostles, who passed it on to their associates, who in turn carried it to the multitude. Jesus in like manner broke and distributed the two dried fishes. And this multitude of about five thousand men, women, and children did eat and were filled—with twelve basketfuls to spare.
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Our study this week begins at Paper 152, Section 2
Jesus’ apostles, let alone the common people, could not understand the nature and attributes of this God-man. Neither has any subsequent generation been able to evaluate what took place on earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Never before Jesus was on earth, nor since, has it been possible so directly and graphically to secure the results attendant upon a strong and living faith.
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Our study this week begins at Paper 152.
After several days of teaching by the seaside, Jesus said to his apostles: "I am weary of the throngs; let us cross over to the other side that we may rest for a day." But Jesus did not obtain the rest he was looking for. Instead they were met with a tempest at sea, a man with a troubled mind, yet more throngs of people, and only one night of rest. Said Jesus: "Let us return to our place."
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Jesus employed the parable as a method of public teaching because it proceeds from the things which are known to the discernment of the unknown. It also provides for a simultaneous appeal to vastly different levels of mind and spirit. The parable stimulates the imagination, challenges the discrimination, and provokes critical thinking; it promotes sympathy without arousing antagonism.
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In the wake of the third preaching tour, Jesus began to employ the parable method of teaching the throngs that so frequently gathered about him. The parable of the sower was one of the first of a long series of such parables which he taught the multitudes. And when the apostles, and those who were with them, first heard Jesus teach the people in this indirect manner, they were greatly perplexed.
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When Jesus visited Nazareth for the first time since the beginning of his public ministry, the Master found himself in the midst of, not a welcome homecoming, but a decidedly hostile and hypercritical atmosphere. The inhabitants of Nazareth had indeed heard of Jesus’ fame, but the majority of the citizens were angry because he had done none of his great works in the city of his youth.
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Entrance into the Father’s kingdom—salvation—is wholly free, but progress—growth in grace—is essential to continuance therein. Acceptance by faith on your part makes you a partaker of the divine nature, a son or a daughter of God. By faith you are justified; by faith are you saved; and by this same faith are you eternally advanced in the way of progressive and divine perfection.
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In the times of Jesus the appearance of a bright and supposedly new star was regarded as a token indicating that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star having then recently been observed, Andrew asked Jesus if these beliefs were well founded. In the long answer to Andrew’s question the Master entered upon a thoroughgoing and memorable discussion of the whole subject of human superstition.
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Of all the daring things which Jesus did in connection with his earth career, the most amazing was his sudden announcement: “On the morrow we will set apart ten women for the ministering work of the kingdom.” It was most astounding in that day, when women were not even allowed on the main floor of the synagogue, to behold them being recognized as authorized teachers of the new gospel of the kingdom.
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Said Jesus: “When man recognizes only the works of God, he is led to fear the Supreme; but when man begins to understand and experience the personality and character of the living God, he is led increasingly to love such a good and perfect, universal and eternal Father. And it is just this changing of the relation of man to God that constitutes the mission of the Son of Man on earth.”
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Said Jesus: “Anger is a material manifestation which represents, in a general way, the measure of the failure of the spiritual nature to gain control of the combined intellectual and physical natures. Anger indicates your lack of tolerant brotherly love plus your lack of self-respect and self-control. Anger depletes the health, debases the mind, and handicaps the spirit teacher of man’s soul.”
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Multitudes of both friends and foes would follow Jesus for weeks, just to hear his gracious words and behold his simple life. Devoted men and women loved Jesus with a well-nigh superhuman affection. And the better they knew him the more they loved him. And all this is still true; even today and in all future ages, the more man comes to know this God-man, the more he will love and follow after him.
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On the second preaching tour Jesus did not deliberately perform any so-called miracles of healing. However, there began to appear about this time—and continued throughout the remainder of Jesus’ life on earth—a peculiar and unexplained series of healing phenomena. In the course of this three months’ tour more than one hundred men, women, and children were beneficiaries of this unconscious healing by Jesus.
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The last week of the sojourn at Bethsaida, the Jerusalem spies became much divided in their attitude toward Jesus and his teachings. Three of these Pharisees were tremendously impressed by what they had seen and heard. Meanwhile, at Jerusalem, Abraham, a young and influential member of the Sanhedrin, publicly espoused the teachings of Jesus and was baptized in the pool of Siloam by Abner.
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The Father does not purposely afflict his children. The imperfections and handicaps of evil are inherent; the penalties of sin are inevitable; the destroying consequences of iniquity are inexorable. Man should not blame God for those afflictions which are the natural result of the life which he chooses to live; neither should man complain of those experiences which are a part of life as it is lived on this world.
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By nature, before the rebirth of the spirit, mortal man is subject to inherent evil tendencies, but such natural imperfections of behavior are neither sin nor iniquity. Mortal man is just beginning his long ascent to the perfection of the Father in Paradise. In fact, any being who is imperfect or partial in natural endowment is potentially evil, but such beings are in no sense sinful, much less iniquitous.
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Each forenoon at Bethsaida the apostles all did their share in training new evangelists of the gospel, and both teachers and pupils taught the people during the afternoons. After the evening meal, five nights a week, the apostles conducted question classes for the benefit of the evangelists. Once a week Jesus presided at this question hour, answering the holdover questions from previous sessions.
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Said Jesus: “Some of you may not stand high in actual levels of soul and spirit, but you are making daily progress on the living way opened up, through faith, to God. There are tremendous possibilities in each of you for the future. Better by far to have a small but living and growing faith than to be possessed of a great intellect with its dead stores of worldly wisdom and spiritual unbelief.”
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As a child of God with a true and living connection to the Universal Father, the important thing about your progress toward his ideals is not the rapidity of that progress but rather its certainty. Your actual achievement is not so important as the fact that the direction of your progress is Godward. What you are becoming day by day is of infinitely more importance than what you are today.
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Nothing Jesus had said to the apostles up to this time had ever more astonished them than what he said one evening in Lazarus’s garden. Jesus taught them concerning the differing levels of meaning attached to the interpretation of the golden rule, the admonition to “do to others that which you desire others to do to you”. And they continued to discuss the Master’s words long after he had retired.
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While at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, Jesus said: “If you could all be healed of your physical afflictions, you would indeed marvel, but it is even greater that you should be cleansed of all spiritual disease and find yourselves healed of all moral infirmities. You are all God’s children; you are the sons of the heavenly Father. The bonds of time may seem to afflict you, but the God of eternity loves you.”
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At Endor Jesus escaped for a few days from the clamoring multitudes in quest of physical healing. During their sojourn at this place the Master recounted for the instruction of the apostles the story of King Saul and the witch of Endor. Jesus explained to his apostles that the spirits of departed human beings do not come back to the world of their origin to communicate with their living fellows.
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There prevailed in the minds of most of the apostles the idea that their failure to meet with success when they visited some Galilean towns was due to Jesus’ insistence that they refrain, in their teaching and preaching, from referring to him as a healer. How they wished he would in some manner so manifest his power as to attract the attention of the people! But the Master was unmoved by their earnest urging.
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True and genuine inward certainty does not in the least fear outward analysis, nor does truth resent honest criticism. You should never forget that intolerance is the mask covering up the entertainment of secret doubts as to the trueness of one’s belief. No man is at any time disturbed by his neighbor’s attitude when he has perfect confidence in the truth of that which he wholeheartedly believes.
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Many resort to prayer only when in trouble. True, you do well to pray when harassed, but you should also be mindful to speak as a son to your Father even when all goes well with your soul. Let your real petitions always be in secret. Do not let men hear your personal prayers. Prayers of thanksgiving are appropriate for groups of worshipers, but the prayer of the soul is a personal matter.
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The sincerity of any prayer is the assurance of its being heard; the spiritual wisdom and universe consistency of any petition is the determiner of the time, manner, and degree of the answer. A wise father does not literally answer the foolish prayers of his ignorant and inexperienced children, albeit the children may derive much pleasure and real soul satisfaction from the making of such absurd petitions.
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The first public preaching tour of Galilee began on Sunday, January 18, A.D. 28, and continued for about two months, ending with the return to Capernaum on March 17. On this tour Jesus and the twelve apostles, assisted by the former apostles of John the Baptist, preached the gospel and baptized believers. This was the first time Jesus permitted his associates to preach without restraint.
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It is always difficult to induce evolutionary minds suddenly to accept advanced revealed truth. Man is an evolutionary creature and in the main must get his religion by evolutionary techniques. Even after an epochal revelation, all new evolutionary religions are merely advancing expressions of the old beliefs, new adaptations and adjustments. The old does not cease to exist; it is merged with the new.
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There have been hundreds upon hundreds of religious leaders in the million-year human history of our world. Through many ebbs and flows of the tide of religious truth and spiritual faith, each renaissance of religion has been identified with the life and teachings of some religious leader. And the future will doubtless be characterized by the appearance of still further teachers of religious truth.
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No revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements.
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Evolutionary religion makes no provision for change or revision. The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision always be forced upon it. But only two influences can modify and uplift the dogmas of natural religion: the pressure of the slowly advancing mores and the periodic illumination of epochal revelation.
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Religion clings to the mores; that which “was” is ancient and supposedly sacred. And religion has at one time or another sanctioned all sorts of contrary and inconsistent behavior, has at some time approved of practically all that is now regarded as immoral or sinful. Therefore, conscience, untaught by experience and unaided by reason, never has been, and never can be, a safe and unerring guide to human conduct.
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Man possessed a religion of natural origin as a part of his evolutionary experience long before any systematic revelations were made on Urantia. But this religion of natural origin was, in itself, the product of man’s superanimal endowments of mind ministry and spirit ministry. And the co-ordinate functioning of such is quite sufficient to initiate and prosecute the growth of evolutionary religion.
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The essence of the ritual is the perfection of its performance; among savages it must be practiced with exact precision. Man’s slowly evolving mind early came to believe that the technique of ritual was the decisive factor in its efficacy. Therefore, it was inevitable that the shamans should sooner or later evolve into a priesthood trained to direct the meticulous practice of the ritual.
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In many ways and by devious methods the olden shamans established their reputations as voices of God and custodians of providence. But all through the long ages of evolutionary history, many true teachers have appeared to denounce and expose shamanism. And they will ever continue to appear to challenge the shamans or priests of any age who oppose general education and attempt to thwart scientific progress.
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As the religious concepts of primitive man evolved, the spirit world was eventually regarded as being unresponsive to the ordinary mortal. Only the exceptional among humans could catch the ear of the gods; only the extraordinary man or woman would be heard by the spirits. Thus did mankind come to believe that a medicine man, a shaman, or a priest must intervene between the religionist and the object of worship.
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The custom of sacrifice eventually became associated with the idea of the covenant. At last, the gods were conceived of as entering into real agreements with man; and this was a major step in the stabilization of religion. Law, covenants, took the place of luck, fear, and superstition. In time, the early ideas of ransom, redemption, and covenants evolved into the later-day sacramental services.
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No race has been entirely free from the practice of human sacrifice in some form and at some time. Among many peoples it was long a prevalent practice for fathers, at times of great emotional stress, to sacrifice their first-born sons. There once existed a world-wide and profound belief that it was necessary to offer a human sacrifice when anything extraordinary or unusual happened.
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Cannibalism was once well-nigh universal among the evolving races. While cannibalism is traditionally horrible to modern civilization, it was a part of the social and religious structure of primitive society. Cannibalism grew up through the urge of necessity and persisted because of the slavery of superstition and ignorance. It was a social, economic, religious, and military custom.
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Early in the evolution of religion, there existed two conceptions of sacrifice: the idea of gift sacrifice, which connoted the attitude of thanksgiving; and the idea of debt sacrifice, which embraced the notion of redemption. But in either case, primitive man gauged the value of his sacrifice by the pain which he suffered; no offering was contemplated which was not productive of pain.
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The idea of confession and forgiveness early appeared in primitive religion. Then followed all the meaningless schemes of ritualistic purification. Renunciation came as the next step in religious evolution, penance being the negative form of this ofttimes foolish ritual. But all this taught the savage self-control, and that was a worth-while advancement in social evolution.
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Primitive man regarded himself as being in debt to the spirits, as standing in need of redemption. As time passed, this concept developed into the doctrine of sin and salvation. The soul was looked upon as coming into the world under forfeit—original sin. And the whole subsequent sacrificial system grew up around myriad ideas of sins of commission, later supplemented with sundry sins of omission.
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Ancient magic was the cocoon of modern science, indispensable in its time but now no longer useful. White and black smiths were feared as practitioners of white and black magic, a belief fostered by the dual spiritism of religion. But as religion evolved, prayer gradually displaced magic as the associate of sacrifice. Today, Urantia is in the twilight zone of this intellectual evolution.
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Mankind is progressing from magic to science, not by meditation and reason, but rather through long experience. Man is gradually and painfully backing into the truth—beginning in error, progressing in error, and finally attaining the threshold of truth. Only with the arrival of the scientific method has he faced forward.
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The Israelites never gave up the peculiar Canaanite belief in the stone altar. They truly believed that the spirit of their God dwelt in such altars, which were in reality fetishes. The practice of opening a sacred book to let the eye chance upon a passage, the following of which may determine important life decisions or projects, is nothing more nor less than arrant fetishism.
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As the fetish cult evolved, it incorporated all of the primitive ideas of ghosts, souls, spirits, and demon possession. Primitive men made almost everything extraordinary into a fetish. Many looked upon geniuses as fetish personalities—more than human, divine, even infallible. Thus did chiefs, kings, priests, prophets, and church rulers eventually wield great power and exercise unbounded authority.
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Regardless of the drawbacks and handicaps, every new revelation of truth has given rise to a new cult. Modern man must find some adequate symbolism for his new and expanding ideas, ideals, and loyalties. This enhanced symbol must arise out of religious living, spiritual experience; a surviving cult must provide supreme goals and be the outgrowth of applied love.
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Under the spirit cult, life was at best a gamble, the result of spirit control. From age to age and from generation to generation, men have sought to improve this superghost doctrine, but no generation has ever yet dared to wholly reject it. The whole cult was a scheme designed to placate, satisfy, and buy off the spirits through disguised bribery.
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Ghost fear was the fountainhead of all world religion. But as the cult expanded, a dual spiritism evolved—good and bad spirits. And the concept of good and evil as cosmic co-ordinates remains alive in human philosophy; most of the world’s religions still carry this cultural birthmark of the long-gone days of the emerging ghost cults.
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It was a great advance in civilization when inheritance replaced the burning and burying of property; ancient funeral wastes were enormous. Modern man is not supposed to fear ghosts, but custom is strong, and much terrestrial wealth is still consumed on funeral rituals and death ceremonies.
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Man has had a long and bitter struggle with the ghost cult, living in abject slavery to ghost-spirit fear. Early religious rites were designed to avoid, expel, or coerce ghosts. But with the birth of this very fear mankind started on the upgrade of religious evolution, and we will eventually arrive at the concept of a true Deity—a real God.
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Primitive man slowly evolved religion out of his innate worship urge and his misconception of chance. And when the concept of right and wrong at last evolved, there began that long waste of human effort upon tombs, temples, sacrifices, and priesthoods. It was a terrible price to pay; but it was worth all it cost, for therein human ethics was born! Evolution may be slow, but it is unerringly effective.
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Primitive men thought that the soul was associated with the breath; the shadow came, later on, to be feared and revered equally with the breath. Those who held the doctrine of four souls believed that one soul lived in the breath, one in the head, one in the hair, and one in the heart. Man’s only religion up to the times of revelation originated in illusion and ignorance.
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The dream origin of the belief in a future existence explains the tendency always to imagine unseen things in the terms of things seen. The primitive doctrine of survival after death was not necessarily a belief in immortality. Instead, beings who could not conceive of infinity and eternity thought of recurring incarnations.
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Man naturally tends to believe that which he deems best for him, that which is in his immediate or remote interest; self-interest largely obscures logic. The difference between the minds of savage and civilized men is more one of content than of nature, of degree rather than of quality.
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The evolution of religion from the preceding and primitive worship urge is not dependent on revelation. Religion of a primitive type was a natural biologic consequence of the psychologic inertia of evolving animal minds after such minds had once entertained concepts of the supernatural.
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Early man regarded all unusual persons as superhuman, and he so feared such beings as to hold them in reverential awe; to some degree he literally worshiped them. But when the worship urge is admonished and directed by wisdom—meditative and experiential thinking—it then begins to develop into the phenomenon of real religion.
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Many of the earliest forms of nature veneration became blended with the later evolving techniques of worship. Mankind has venerated earth, air, water, and fire, even worshiping fire as a deity itself. In religion, symbolism may be either good or bad just to the extent that the symbol does or does not displace the original worshipful idea.
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Primitive religion had a biologic origin, a natural evolutionary development. It was wholly intellectual—aside from moral associations and apart from all spiritual influences—and was entirely predicated on associational circumstances. When religion once evolved beyond nature worship, it acquired roots of spirit origin but was nevertheless always conditioned by the social environment.
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The human mind early begins to manifest qualities which are supermaterial; the truly reflective human intellect is not altogether bound by the limits of time. The supremely happy and efficiently unified mind is the one wholly dedicated to the doing of the will of the Father in heaven.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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True philosophy grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate quantitative and qualitative observations. When both science and religion become less dogmatic and more tolerant of criticism, then will philosophy begin to achieve unity in the intelligent comprehension of the universe. The real universe is friendly to every child of the eternal God.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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To a Greek contractor and builder Jesus said: “My friend, as you build the material structures of men, grow a spiritual character in the similitude of the divine spirit within your soul. Ever remember, there is a city whose foundations are righteousness and truth, and whose builder and maker is God.”
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Our study this week begins at Paper 133, Section 4.
Said Jesus: "My brother, always remember that man has no rightful authority over woman unless the woman has willingly and voluntarily given him such authority. The loving care and consideration which a man is willing to bestow upon his wife and their children are the measure of that man’s attainment of the higher levels of creative and spiritual self-consciousness."
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Mankind can appropriately be divided into many classes in accordance with differing qualifications, as they may be viewed physically, mentally, socially, vocationally, or morally, but as these different classes of mortals appear before the judgment bar of God, they stand on an equal footing; God is truly no respecter of persons.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Said Jesus to the Indian: “Your Buddha was much better than your Buddhism. Buddha was a great man, even a prophet, but his experience was tragic. He tried to live and teach as a messenger of God, but without God. He knew God in spirit but failed clearly to discover him in mind; he failed to envision God as a spiritual Father.”
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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A rich man asked Jesus what he would do with wealth if he had it. Jesus answered: "I would bestow material wealth for the enhancement of material life, even as I would minister knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual service for the enrichment of the intellectual life, the ennoblement of the social life, and the advancement of the spiritual life."
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Always the message of Jesus was: the fact of the heavenly Father’s love and the truth of his mercy, coupled with the good news that man is a faith-son of this same God of love. Invariably would he tell distressed mortals about the love of God and impart the news that they were the children of this loving Father in heaven.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always more than knowledge. Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth, in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts; wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Goodness is living, relative, always progressing, invariably a personal experience, and everlastingly correlated with the discernment of truth and beauty. But until you attain Paradise levels, goodness will always be more of a quest than a possession, more of a goal than an experience of attainment.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Jesus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valuable experiences of his six months’ sojourn in that city were his contacts with, and influences upon, the religious leaders of the empire’s capital. He enhanced their discernment of truth and thus prepared them for the recognition of similar truths in the teachings of the early Christian missionaries.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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As man ascends, the event procession of time is discerned more and more in its wholeness. Also, space is not empty; and the only thing man knows which can even partially transcend space is mind. These enlarging cosmic conceptions are due to augmentations of both the depth of insight and the scope of consciousness of an advancing spirit personality.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Everything must await the coming of its time. You are born into the world, but no amount of anxiety and no manifestation of impatience will help you to grow up. You must, in all such matters, wait upon time. Time alone will ripen the green fruit upon the tree. Season follows season and sundown follows sunrise only with the passing of time.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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The eye of the material mind perceives a world of factual knowledge; the eye of the spiritualized intellect discerns a world of true values. These two views, synchronized and harmonized, reveal the world of reality, wherein wisdom interprets the phenomena of the universe in terms of progressive personal experience.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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A one-eyed person can never hope to visualize depth of perspective. Neither can single-eyed material scientists nor single-eyed spiritual mystics correctly visualize and adequately comprehend the true depths of universe reality. All true values of creature experience are concealed in depth of recognition.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Yahweh is the God developed from the revelations of Melchizedek and the covenant of Abraham. The Jews were the offspring of Abraham, and their religion eventually portrayed a clearer recognition of the Lord God of Israel as the Universal Father in heaven than any other world religion.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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There is no adventure in the course of mortal existence more enthralling than to enjoy the exhilaration of becoming the material life partner with spiritual energy and divine truth in one of their triumphant struggles with error and evil. It is a marvelous and transforming experience to become the living channel of spiritual light to the mortal who sits in spiritual darkness.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
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Jesus toured the Roman world for nearly two years, teaching and fraternizing with his fellow mortals. Jesus was a truth giver; he was the truth for that generation on Urantia. As the great truth giver encountered each great truth seeker, the result was a great and liberating enlightenment born of the experience of new truth.
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." —John 21:25
[NOTE: Archive page of symmetryofsoul.org includes referenced 'Sections' previously studied in The Urantia Book. Broadcast begins each Tuesday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (02:00 GMT). Check worldtimezone.com for local time.]
Our study this week begins at Paper 130.
Genuine religious experience far transcends the philosophic objectification of idealistic desire; it actually takes salvation for granted and concerns itself only with learning and doing the will of the Father in Paradise. The earmarks of such a religion are: faith in a supreme Deity, hope of eternal survival, and love, especially of one’s fellows.
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In the mortal state, nothing can be absolutely proved; both science and religion are predicated on assumptions. Science starts out by assuming the reality of three things: matter, motion, and life. Likewise, religion starts out with the assumption of the validity of three things: mind, spirit, and the universe—the Supreme Being.
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Logic can never succeed in harmonizing the findings of science and the insights of religion unless both the scientific and the religious aspects of a personality are truth dominated, sincerely desirous of following the truth wherever it may lead regardless of the conclusions which it may reach.
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The highest attainable philosophy of mortal man must be logically based on the reason of science, the faith of religion, and the truth insight afforded by revelation. Science must always be grounded in reason; religion is forever dependent on faith; and revelation is indispensable to the construction of a logical philosophy of the universe.
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Neither science nor religion, standing alone, can hope to gain an adequate understanding of universal truths and relationships without the guidance of human philosophy and the illumination of divine revelation. Revelation authoritatively clarifies the muddle of evolutionary metaphysics.
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Man, in his spiritual domain, does have a free will. Mortal man is neither a helpless slave of the inflexible sovereignty of an all-powerful God nor the victim of the hopeless fatality of a mechanistic cosmic determinism. Man is most truly the architect of his own eternal destiny.
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God the Father deals with man his child on the basis, not of actual virtue or worthiness, but in recognition of the child’s motivation. The relationship is one of parent-child association and is actuated by divine love. Jesus swept away all of the ceremonials of sacrifice and atonement.
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The characteristic difference between a social occasion and a religious gathering is that in contrast with the secular the religious is pervaded by the atmosphere of communion. In this way human association generates a feeling of fellowship with the divine, and this is the beginning of group worship.
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The evolutionary soil in the mind of man, in which the seed of revealed religion germinates, is the moral nature that so early gives origin to a social consciousness. When a moral being chooses to be unselfish when confronted by the urge to be selfish, that is primitive religious experience.
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The religious tendencies of the human races are innate; they are universally manifested and have an apparently natural origin. The unity of religious experience among a social or racial group derives from the identical nature of the God fragment indwelling the individual.
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Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences.
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God is the first truth and the last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him, while all facts exist relative to him. God is absolute truth. The vast gulf between the experience of the truth of God and ignorance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith.
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Religion is more than emotionalized morality. Religion is to morality as love is to duty, as sonship is to servitude, as essence is to substance. Morality discloses an almighty Controller, a Deity to be served; religion discloses an all-loving Father, a God to be worshiped and loved.
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Prayer is indeed a part of religious experience, but it has been wrongly emphasized by modern religions, much to the neglect of the more essential communion of worship. Prayer may enrich the life, but worship illuminates destiny.
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Science sorts men; religion loves men, even as yourself; wisdom does justice to differing men; but revelation glorifies man and discloses his capacity for partnership with God. Real religion leads to increased social service.
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There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality. True religion is alive, and true religion must act. A growing religious experience entails incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service.
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To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident, doomed to eternal oblivion and soul extinction. But such is not man’s end and eternal destiny; all this darkness and despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of a humble child of God.
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Revelation unfailingly enlarges the ethical horizon of evolved religion and expands the moral obligations of all prior revelations. And true religion is that sublime and profound conviction within the soul which challenges man to believe in his highest ethical and moral concepts.
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It requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the exploration of unknown realms of intellectual living. Philosophy transforms that primitive religion which was largely a fairy tale of conscience into a living experience in the ascending values of cosmic reality.
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The co-ordination of idea-decisions, logical ideals, and divine truth constitutes the possession of a righteous character. Through the appropriation of the faith of Jesus, which pointed the way to ultimate salvation, mortal man can foretaste in time the realities of eternity.
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Revelatory religion provides the assurance of faith plus the truth of a living experience in the realities of revelation. The postmortal phase of revealed religion adds the experience of survival plus the urge to attain spirit perfection, and the assurance of truth increasingly replaces the assurance of faith.
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Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved. Part of the universe plan is that, sooner or later, evolutionary religion is destined to receive the spiritual expansion of revelation. And revealed religion lays increasing emphasis on loving, the golden rule.
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Mankind should understand that revelations are very rigorously limited by permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge. However, the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come.
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Religion can never be observed, much less understood, from the outside. Your only assurance of a personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief in, and experience with, things spiritual. No argument about the personality or reality of God is necessary—or could ever be truly convincing.
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Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. Science yields knowledge; religion yields happiness; philosophy yields unity; revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this triune approach to universal reality.
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Religion is the ancestor of the advanced ethics and morals of progressive social evolution. Always is religion the inspiration of man’s evolving nature. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that “true light which lights every man who comes into the world.”
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Our study this week begins at Paper 101.
The unfailing kindness of Jesus touched the hearts of men, but his stalwart strength of character amazed his followers. Jesus was truly unafraid. The unique feature of the Master’s personality was its symmetry, its exquisite and balanced unification.
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True religion is a wholehearted devotion to some reality which the religionist deems to be of supreme value to himself and for all mankind; it is a living love, a life of service. The striving for the attainment of supermortal ideals is always characterized by increasing patience, forbearance, fortitude, and tolerance.
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There is great danger when visions, extraordinary dreams, and other so-called mystic experiences are regarded as divine communications to the human mind. The better approach to possible contact with the indwelling spirit would be through living faith and sincere worship, wholehearted and unselfish prayer.
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High levels of human living are attained in the supreme love of God and in the unselfish love of man. Jesus loved men so much because he placed such a high value upon them. If once you understand your neighbor, you will become tolerant, and this tolerance will grow into friendship and ripen into love.
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The great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of LOVE. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.
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The goal of human self-realization should be spiritual, not material. The only realities worth striving for are divine, spiritual, and eternal. Spirit-born individuals are so remotivated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fondest ambitions perish and their keenest hopes crash.
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Religion cannot be bestowed, received, loaned, learned, or lost. It is a personal experience which grows proportionally to the growing quest for final values. The factors of religious growth may be intentional, but the growth itself is unvaryingly unconscious.
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The experience of dynamic religious living transforms the mediocre individual into a personality of idealistic power. Love supplies the soil for religious growth—an objective lure in the place of subjective gratification—yet it yields the supreme subjective satisfaction.
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Someday religionists will get together and actually effect co-operation on the basis of unity of ideals and purposes rather than attempting to do so on the basis of psychological opinions and theological beliefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify religionists.
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Man’s greatest spiritual jeopardy consists in partial progress, the predicament of unfinished growth: forsaking the evolutionary religions of fear without immediately grasping the revelatory religion of love. Today, amid unprecedented scientific achievement and mechanical development, there is spiritual stagnation and philosophic chaos.
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Religion is genuine and worth while if it fosters in the individual an experience in which the sovereignty of truth, beauty, and goodness prevails, for such is the true spiritual concept of supreme reality. And through love and worship this becomes meaningful as fellowship with man and sonship with God.
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Genuine religion renders the religionist socially fragrant and creates insights into human fellowship. Human friendship and divine religion are mutually helpful and significantly illuminating if the growth in each is equalized and harmonized. Religion must not be standardized, stereotyped, or formalized.
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The attainment of a high cultural civilization demands, first, the ideal type of citizen and, then, ideal and adequate social mechanisms wherewith such a citizenry may control the economic and political institutions of such an advanced human society.
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Institutional religion is now caught in the stalemate of a vicious circle. It cannot reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself, and it cannot reconstruct itself until society has been radically reconstructed. Only the real religion of personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in the present crisis of civilization.
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Religion in the twenty-first century is of necessity called upon to face adjustment to extensive and continuing social reconstruction, but it must act as the cosmic salt which preserves the cultural savor of civilization. True religion achieves its highest social ministry when it has least connection with the secular institutions of society.
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The maintenance of world-wide civilization is dependent on human beings learning how to live together in peace and fraternity. In civilization much, very much, depends on an enthusiastic and effective load-pulling spirit. And such teamwork—social co-operation—is dependent on wise and vigorous leadership.
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The continent richest in natural deposits and the most advanced mechanical equipment will make little progress if the intelligence of its people is on the decline. Knowledge can be had by education, but wisdom, which is indispensable to true culture, can be secured only through experience and by men and women who are innately intelligent.
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Biologic evolution has proceeded ever upward, but much of cultural evolution went out from the Euphrates valley in successively weakened waves to enrich the civilizations of Asia, Europe, and eventually the world. Now, this civilization must be maintained and fostered, for there exist no new sources of culture.
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Cultural society is no great and beneficent club of inherited privilege into which all men are born with free membership and entire equality. Rather is it an exalted and ever-advancing guild of earth workers, admitting to its ranks only the nobility of those toilers who strive to make the world a better place for future generations.
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