Episode:Jesus Culminates His Ministry—Final Preaching and Teaching (Part 3)
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.”
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Last Temple Discourse, Last Offer of Salvation, Woe Upon You
Opening thought: Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
Closing thought: Jesus ends his temple discourse with the word "desolate." Yet he also tells us, "Fear not." We can face these fact without fear.
Note: Justin Armstrong and David Tucker filled in this week.
Summary by David
Commentary after review
When making a personal connection with others, we must tailor our approach to each situation. When we study the Master's diverse teaching style, we discover various modes of approach. We must know our audience. When we take that first step, there are so many things that assist us in our efforts.
After Pentecost, each of us with normal minds can engage with reality spherically instead of our natural linear approach. There's a wholehearted consecration, a mode of living, that isn’t as simplistic in nature as say entrance into the Kingdom. However, it’s the task that an aspiring adolescent of God valiantly pursues.
Why is it so easy to assume that once we get into the kingdom we’re done and that’s all we need? When this summarizer first discovered the Love of God, I thought this was the end, I’ve found everything, and it wasn’t until meeting enough challenges and experiencing enough tribulation that I was humbled into recognition that the love of God was only the beginning. Some require the Fear of the Lord as their first step. However, no matter how we come into recognition of knowledge about God, none of us can discover the truth of God apart from righteousness, and the law of God.
Each of us is given by grace the ability to reach out spherically, but that sphere is not necessarily a sphere of truth. It can just as easily and immediately be a sphere of falsehood. There is a way that seems right to a man... because the spherical nature of it is what makes it seem right. Righteousness is spherical. How can we tell them apart? We can’t tell them apart by subjective feeling which is where most of us languish in futile yearning, but rather it’s through the objective insights that we are capable of discriminating. Certainly, each of us owes a great deal of gratitude to the Holy Spirit for her endowments of the three cosmic intuitions and those blessings.
It's in those insights we can discriminate and recognize that they’re exact opposites while subjectively they feel the same. Set a guard upon your subjective feelings and interpretations.
In the attitude of faith submission and humility those faculties can aid us in our efforts to reflection and objectively recognize. We have available to us potentially a fourth cosmic insight (to add to the three in the holy spirit ministry). The Spirit of Truth—We can directly discriminate between truth and falsehood but it’s as if it’s not there if we haven’t taken delight in cultivating. The truth doesn’t bust through walls like the Kool-Aid man and force us into truth. We must be a receiver of the Spirit of Truth, we must be wholehearted and willing participants.
Each of us must have some definitive, tangible, and contrasting starting point. Probably different for everyone, but when we find that on-ramp to the discriminations, can we have the courage to ask ourselves what might be truth, and what must be falsehood?
Without the knowledge that falsehood can perfectly imitate righteousness because of its wholeness, to a wholly subjective mind, we would never challenge it. We’ll be in that long line of sad to record’s who just accept it and get lost in subjective feelings and bliss out in God's love. Be sure to listen to the archive for more recognition and insights discussed of how deceitful that spherical nature is and the how many “good” ships strand themselves on the rocks of falsehood within sight to the narrow entrance of safe harbors.
Paper 175 The Last Temple Discourse
Judas's unfortunate absence caused him to miss the first half of the Masters discourse regarding mercy. Hearing the last half of the discourse only gave him a very lopsided overall sense of it, let alone missing the tender looks of the Master upon him as he delivered the discourse. As the Master looks his hearers in the eyes, he conveys the message of fear not to them. It's in his loving expressions, and tender glances that so much was realized in their hearts.
The challenge presented to Urantia Book students is to not merely let this discourse be another talk for other people and time. No. All of the Masters' discourses should always beckon the response, "Is it me, Master? Is this discourse speaking to me personally, here, and now?" Yes, yes, it is. It’s easy to dismiss this as another speech to “those” people over there. Have the courage to reflect upon your own life, and your own self to search for these areas in need of a complete overhaul of what you think you know. A wonderful practice is to ask yourself of every paragraph you read in the Urantia Book, "What is the settled idea, long-standing prejudice, or preconceived opinion I'm holding onto about this paragraph?" Then take up the courage to allow the revelation to make it anew within you.
This is the Masters last appeal to anyone who is apart from the path of righteousness. This is his last appeal to anyone who may be unwittingly or otherwise on the path to sin and death. Those ways that seem right to a man. The Master speaks to any unwitting actual secularist, in any age, in any location. Have you a hunger for truth and thirst for righteousness? Then behold the God-created person in Jesus of Nazareth, not merely an animal-origin creature that was only born.
175:1. The Discourse
The first sentence we read discusses the faith requirement as the fundamental nuclear fact. We immediately see that many will not submit themselves to the Fathers will. They may believe in God’s promises, but they will not submit and follow his instructions. They’ve seen the light, and by faith have entered the kingdom of heaven. No elaborate or sophisticated entrance requirements are needed, but there must be that wholehearted purity by submitting to the Father’s will.
The Old Testament is filled with numerous examples of common people being led astray. This emphasizes the dire need for integral leadership, and we’re nowhere close to the era of light and life. The revelators remind us of our tendency to look upon these writings as for another people's day and time. They let us know they’re talking to everyone here, and everywhere. In this life perforce we serve two masters and the one material master has a modality with a gravitational pull on each of our animal origin selves. Have you set a guard upon your animal origin self with all of its subjective feelings and clamoring?
By rejecting God's truth and heaven's light, we align ourselves on the side of error and darkness (error and evil). Again, we’re reminded of the binary nuclear fact of truth. Truth or falsehood. There is nothing between those opposing facts. We are told by the Master that there cannot be peace between the two. If we are at peace with error, we know not the truth. We are heathens and we rage. If we are at peace with evil, we know not goodness. He’s pointing out the literal physics of these facts. Have you a guard upon what you’re at peace with?
The Master speaks of this again in [136:8.8]. He refuses to compromise with evil, much less consort with sin. To be at peace with evil is to compromise with evil, and to be at peace with sin is to consort with sin. Our Master triumphantly puts loyalty to the Fathers will above every other earthly and temporal consideration. If we hold out on even one thing by putting anything in the Fathers place, all of our efforts are unavailing. It’s all or nothing in our inner lives. The outer life is unpurifiable. Any attempts to do so are futile.
The Master and his apostles conformed in their outer lives, but in his inner life there was not one iota of consent. It is pure, it stands apart and above all error, evil, and darkness. To do so is to embrace the faith of our Master. Real faith, unquestioning and wholehearted.
The Master reminds us, it's not too late for anyone, for everyone. Prophet after prophet, generation after generation, mercy and patience are abundant and undiminishing. There was something special between those men then and us now. They had the creator of our universe in the likeness of mortal flesh before their eyes, but the Master is with each of us, even now, and we can make that same humble recognition to search the entirety of our own inner lives to uncover what must vacate and be surrendered so that the Father alone can occupy thereby securing our salvation for eternity right now.
The only reason we have the ability to repent, is because we possess a God-given standing above the mind. If all we were was a mindal self with nothing above it (notably our personality) repentance would be impossible. Again, we need God for salvation. The Master came to offer salvation, and we easily lose sight of that fact.
The solemn warning to us here and now is that if we reject the 5th epochal revelation of God to man, the kingdom of heaven shall be given to other peoples who will receive it with joy and gladness and follow its instructions in the name of the Father who sent us. We shall lose our position in the world as the standard bearers of truth and the custodians of the divine law. There is no truth in God's love apart from his Divine Law. Have you a love of God that says those laws and old discourses were for other peoples and times? Does your God exist for you outside of your feelings about him? "Set a guard upon my heart, O Lord, so that I should become the custodian of your divine law and receive it gladly."
To know goodness, not merely what we think is good, but to actually know goodness but refuse to do it? That is a sin. Wicked. Such a harsh reality to face, sobering for this summarizer indeed. Our defenses come up right away to say, "That’s not the God I know and love!" However, this has nothing to do with the Universal Father, it has to do entirely with the Paradise Trinity. Cooperative subordination to the divine law is required by each and every one of us. If this is not our basis, everything will be taken from us.
Human forgetfulness coupled with an ever-increasing array of external distractions only emphasizes the necessity for daily reconsecration. It’s so easy to lose focus. We can choose for our inner lives to never have the slightest defocus, and that choice is effectively absolute therein. Choose you this day!
In the book of Matthew, there are seven woes upon yous, and in the Urantia Book we’re given ten. Be sure to listen to the synthesized facts that bring to light the truths under the surface in the archives of the show and perhaps there are a few important woes for each of us to hear. I’m grateful to the Holy Spirit for helping me.
