Episode:Jesus Culminates His Ministry—Final Preaching and Teaching (Part 2)
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.”
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, The Great Commandment, Gospel of Salvation, Jew and Gentile
Opening thought: “Now, what do I have here?” declares the Lord. “My people have been taken away for nothing, and those who rule them mock...And all day long my name is continually blasphemed. Therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I.” Isaiah 52:5-6 (written by the second Isaiah, per [97:7.4])
Note: This was Kermit Anderson's final show as our longtime co-host. He wrote summaries for 86% of our episodes to date, about 470,000 words (or two fifths the size of The Urantia Papers themselves).
Summary by David
This was Kermit’s final episode as permanent co-host of the show. We all look forward to his continued participation, calls into the show, and chat room sharing nuggets of wisdom. But I can’t help but recognize that we should all aspire to have the unquestioning loyalty that these hosts model for us every week. From this loyal listener, I want to share my sincere thanks and gratitude for all your dedication and work. Your labor of love will be studied by sincere students of the revelation for hundreds of years if not longer. Thank you, SOS team, each and every one of you.
The hosts pick up the discussion by highlighting a detail from Kermit’s last summary regarding divine forgiveness. There was an apparent disagreement between James and Peter on the subject. To avoid misinterpretation, students are challenged to properly recognize when the revelators are addressing the core existential nature of the Universal Father. Tones of that are in James’ claim that the Father forgives us even before we ask him. There are many parallel facts about God's nature that are in that same direct existential mode of understanding.
In an experiential environment, students should exercise caution not to overplay that existential nuclear fact. The most important element that is often forgotten is that the Father gives us free will. We cannot lose sight of that as we move from the existential facts innate in the Father to our relationship to those facts as experiential beings.
Each of us is endowed with an absolute gatekeeper from the Father as to whether we receive his existential blessings. That blessing is innately there, knocking at the door, always. So many false interpretations have been made about our relationship with the Father because we take that existential nature and apply it directly to the experiential the way we commonly take an ideal, and directly apply it as if it were an idea. These are the same parallel issues. In this case, the differential between the two is completely in our hands. The Father has no say in whether his existential gifts find the mark and are received by us. Doors don’t open just because someone knocks on them.
The Father broadcasts endlessly, but it’s up to us to choose whether to receive it or not. It’s in this element that Peter gets recognition compared to James. We have to be like the broadcast to receive it, walkie-talkies tuned in to the same channel
- come in, are you there?
- Chhhhhhk over.
If we’re not on the same channel, the broadcast doesn’t stop. However, we can change the channel, and get to the right one, we must sincerely turn it around. That’s where sincere repentance comes into play, as Peter recognized. Be sure to listen to the archive of the show for more enthralling insights discussed on this fundamental and vital distinction.
This discussion naturally leads to righteousness. Righteousness is purely an inner life fact, and in and of itself will produce fruits that flow into the outer life. However, righteousness itself cannot be measured directly by the outer life. Many challenges are presented to the believer including the differences between fact and truth.
Even though these things are not factually related to righteousness, there is an important truth to our lives right now. However, it’s not our external temporal outer life that’s ascending, it’s our internal, eternal inner life that we’ve chosen to wholeheartedly consecrate to God. All of us ridiculously fall short factually, but it’s the truth that saves us, not the facts of our actualization. The truth must be present. If the believer has an unquestioning loyalty, coupled with a wholehearted devotion, then the truth is present. Without those, nothing can save us, because there’s nothing of survival value to save. We must be the truth.
There is a test, it’s just not the factual one that people worry about. Keeping a tally of apparent wrongdoings in our outer lives as if they prevent or secure our salvation. No. Are we unquestionably loyal? Are we humble? Are we sincere – wholeheartedly devoted?
There is a nature and physics to God and a nature and physics to our relationship with God, so there is a physics to our salvation. Having a desire for survival is not enough. We must have desires of survival value. To see that core clearly and identify with it purely is the aim of any hopeful survival candidate.
The Jews have a wonderful twice-daily reconsecration to practice vigilance against natural human forgetfulness and that their devotion must be pure at the core. See Deuteronomy 6:4-15.
Paper 174:4 The Great Commandment
Oft-referenced passages from Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 20 find their way back into our discussions of the three synoptic gospels as a shared point of view. This is right up front at the beginning of this section. The midwayers consistently deliver a beautiful synthesis between the gospels whereas Luke might say one thing, but Matthew doesn’t, or Mark mentions other things that Luke doesn’t, etc. They connect the story in the right time and places for us and connect the dots in a beautiful synthetic flourish.
The master answers a Pharisee's question of which, in his view, is the greatest commandment by saying, "There is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all. That commandment is: Hear O Israel the Lord our God, the lord is one. You should love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first and great commandment, and the second commandment is like the first indeed it springs directly therefrom, and it is, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, all the Hebrew scriptures.
This brought the conversation back to the purity requirement. Halfhearted, or partial is unavailing. The truth is in the Allness. We must consecrate ourselves to the infinite concept, without understanding the specifics yet. It can’t have any basis in our own self. We must surrender the entirety of ourselves to God. That’s how we have desires of survival value. It's in the completion of that faith-submission to the Father's will that gives us physics like God. This results in a real relationship with God, and with eternity.
Another misunderstood concept is the difference between the inner and outer life. We mistakenly micromanage our outer life as if the fulfillment of God’s will can be found there when in truth he couldn’t care less about our outer life. The inescapable imperfections of the outer life are in no way in conflict with the purity of the inner life – See [34:7].
IN this life we don’t have the power to choose to have only one master, but we do have the power to choose whether one Master is dominant over the other. We can choose the eternal master over the temporal one, when we move from material to spiritual, from human to divine, and from time to eternity. When we are born again, that's the step of faith we take. Reference to [102:0]? Check!
Recognition of this tendency should encourage all listeners to begin top down with truth, before micromanaging the facts. Start with the spirit and the mind, and the body will follow.
The bottom line is man needs God because we need him for salvation. We are not self-saving. When we’re exposed to the truth, the immediacy of our acceptance or rejection of that salvation is of the utmost importance. Fear not though, batteries are included. Just make sure to put them in correctly.
There are some very direct truth statements that require precise parsing. The truth has no variability, it’s very black or white in a pure truth modality. It requires some translation into fact, but the challenge is not to turn it into a falsehood by diluting the truth's clarity. Some of us are tempted to love men's glory more than God's glory. Laos Deo – To God be the glory. Purely. Genuine religionists can face the stark clarity of that truth without fear overwhelming us because of that purity of consecration. The facts will work out in time if the purity in truth is there.
As the Master ministered to the Greeks he saw the end of one dispensation, and the beginning of another. This was because the light of this world was passed from the Jewish leaders of that time to the hands of the Gentiles.
The Master puts himself definitively as a fulcrum, between light and darkness, between truth and error, and between life and death. He didn’t come to judge that dispensation, but he offered salvation. There is judgment, we need salvation, and we don’t have it without what he came to offer us. Those who reject the Master and refuse his teachings shall be judged. This summarizer asks, is it me, Master? I’ve been given much, and much is expected of me.
The student should challenge their natural bottom-up tendency to rush towards micromanaging the facts of time and take hold of faith that their inner eternal life is what’s immediately being referenced here. When we have the truth, the facts are irrelevant. Truth is binary. If there’s even the slightest rejection or refusal, we don’t survive. Period. The outer life with all its inertia will eventually be drug along kicking and screaming but it means nothing to one who has a purity of consecration in their inner life.
Do you as a reader see that the truth transcends historical reference? Do you see the truth that’s being presented to you now in your own life? It’s just as consequential to each of us today, as it was then with the Master speaking the truth directly to them in that day and age. Have you a purity of consecration in your inner life? This is the physics required of those who ask the Lord, what must I do to be saved? Purity of consecration, all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength.
From the chat room
- Godspeed, Kermit. Thank you for everything. We'll keep a seat at the table open for you anytime you want to drop by.
- Tonight has been terrific! Thank you very much SoS gang! Be well Kermit, and we hope to see you about. You will be missed as our "Summarizer", certainly big shoes to be filled. I hope you new ventures will be fun and fullfilling to you! Love you Kermit!
- We'll miss you Sir Kermidon
- Love you Kerm, so excited for new opportunities for you, and am incredibly grateful for your friendship, mentoring, and all your contributions with SOS and other works since I've known you. Thank you for everything
- Thank you Sir Kerm ... The end of an era
