Episode:Jesus Culminates His Ministry—Last Free Day on Earth (Part 1)
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.
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Heavenly Sonship, Earthly Citizenship, Gospel of Joy and Liberty
Opening thought: I, with a blind of horror in my head, said, “My Teacher, what are all these cries I hear?”...He said to me: “This state of misery is clutched by those sad [halfhearted] souls whose works in life merited neither praise nor infamy...They’re thrown in among that wretched choir of angels who were [loyal to] themselves alone—neither rebels, nor faithful to the Lord...But let’s say no more about them. Look once, and pass by.” —adapted from Dante’s Inferno, Canto 3
Summary by David
On inner and outer life distinctions
Just before the 20-minute mark we heard the story of some soldiers in the Middle Ages keeping their arms and swords out of the water when being baptized. This was the very struggle the Master faced when attempting to get people to very definitively separate the affairs of the outer life from the facts of the inner life.
Unfortunately, the inability to clearly separate those two results in no little amount of confusion. Many times, this results in the unfortunate way of preventing a purity of consecration in the inner life. Practically speaking, issues must be dealt with, and sometimes those are dealt with using a sword. Naturally we begin thinking that we need to hold that sword back, but it’s not immediately relevant to our consecration to God.
The challenge for the Master was to help his believers separate the two domains. When we fail to do that adequately, it falls to the level of outer works equating righteousness. Righteousness is only in the inner life, and how we perform in our outer lives is in no way relevant to the purity of consecration to the Father in our inner life.
This remains, as it did in the Master's time, to be most confusing for all of us. Perhaps you may consider taking up a daily practice of reminding yourself of the differences, lest we give way to human forgetfulness.
For a million years humans have rationalized our relationships with God in a purely material, external-world context.
The core difficulty in separation between the inner life and the outer life are facts like eating and breathing. These are such deeply driven forces within us that it’s difficult to conclude what a proper relationship to God is, in the midst of that material outer-world life. It’s how we’ve had religionists conclude that the only way to be right in the eyes of the lord is to not breathe, or not eat. We begin to come up with a ritualistic rationalization that the denial of those necessary elements of a material self life somehow gives us favor in the eyes of God.
Listeners benefit to take every opportunity to notice when the revelators are speaking to this difference and challenge ourselves to sort it out one step more than was sorted out in our minds the day before. We must literally push our minds up against the material gravity that doesn’t want us to separate these two concepts. No little amount of effort and struggle against this bonding force of material gravity that wants both concepts glued together into one indistinguishable fact will do. This force seeks to eliminate the upper domain and lower domain as two separate domains of consciousness as well.
Warning, you may encounter some mighty protests of the material self as we begin to wean off of purely material outer life concepts.
Unless you’ve looked at a houseplant and said to yourself “what a life,” we must push back against that material gravity. Onward, and inward.
The yardstick to take measure with is: if we personally have unresolvable facts about the differences between the inner life and the outer life, that’s an indication that the person hasn’t been born again yet. Born of the spirit. Initially we make decisions with our animal origin mind to separate the two. At some point the individual makes that fundamental free will choice to initiate the separation of the two and then the effort and struggle begins.
On choice and decision
At about the 30 minute mark we discussed how the mind cannot separate itself. We must all step above the mind with a spiritual choice. It’s that born again, faith-leap choice to establish a conscious recognition of the differential between the upper domain and the lower domain. Only such a choice brings a consciousness of the upper domain into play. Before that, the upper domain was purely a superconscious domain. The faith-grasp, the initiating first step, is the act of being born again. Until then the conflict between the two domains is inescapable. The two things cannot be separated no matter how much we might wish, or how many decisions we throw at the challenge. Born of the spirit is the entrance thereto.
Decisions are specific elements of the mind. A choice is not in the mind, it’s a frame around the mind that changes the functioning and what kind of decision-forms are possible within that mind. There are no choices that are made in the mind. Only spirit can make a choice. We make mindal decisions, and spiritual choices. Our personality uses spirit above and outside of the mind to reframe the functioning of the mind.
The mind is influenced by the spiritual choices we make (favorably or otherwise) and functions differently than it did before any personality-engaged spiritual influence. Personality management is wielding spirit to reframe your mind to function in a new set of standards. The spiritual choice constrains the mind to function differently. That’s what a real choice is.
That choice allows us to serve two Masters. Until then we’re only serving our biologic master, with no control over how it decides to frame our mind or how it forces our mind to function only in certain modalities. The entirety of our lower domains are framed by our biology and our mind can only function in that framing. Nothing we can do to change that. However when we choose to have another framing that’s contrasting that lower domain that comes down around the top of the mind (the way the biology comes in around the bottom of the mind) we now have two distinct conscious frame works to make decisions from. One tends to yield better fruits if you catch my drift (use the upper domain).
We have a free will choice in setting up the frame, but once we’ve done that the mind follows that framing. It becomes as if that character in the upper domain is just as immutable as the temperament is in the lower domain. There is a conflict that will exist between the framing of the mastering of the mind in the upper domain, and the framing of the mastering of the mind in the lower domain as well, and then we find ourselves smack in the middle of having to serve two masters.
On societal obligations
38:45 into the show we talk about the fact that some may be called by our government to take up the sword and go into battle using that sword. There is no conflict what so ever between what the government is needing us to do, and the Father's way that says that we should not murder. Learn how to properly understand the differential so that we don’t end up with a completely unnecessary blurring of the two. More study of [34:7] tells us that there is no conflict between the two except "in the minds of ignorant, mistaught, or unfortunately over conscientious persons."
Paper 178. Last Day at the Camp
We began reading at 41:25.
1. Discourse on Sonship and Citizenship
Why is the second paragraph of section one restated in modern phraseology? Our authors understand that this message is more relevant to us in today's times than it was back then. In truth, the Master is talking to me, in my circumstances now. Fundamentally we’re challenged to not think about him talking to them at that time in those circumstances, think instead that In truth they’re talking to us in our circumstances right here, and right now. Me. You. Us.
The philosophic-text nature of the 5th ER goes way beyond the narrowness of the entry point of the kingdom of heaven (the religious uplifting of an inner life). When speaking of the kingdom of heaven in relation to you’re bringing everything else in: economics, politics, sociology, and everything in between and beyond in a full spectrum of human activity. You can attempt to philosophically encompass those in a true frame once securely into the kingdom and based on that catalytic fact.
If you start with thinking about the truth of what’s there, avoid thinking in the existential triunity of beauty, truth, goodness. You want to think in the experiential Triunity of fact, truth, goodness. That truth that’s in Triunity with fact. The facts of time change, and change still further from location to location. The more that we’re dealing with those truths that very much involve the facts of time, don’t be surprised when our authors significantly modify the words or even facts in order to maintain the truth when all things are considered for that time location.
Around the 1 hour mark the discussion picks up regarding you shall not render spiritual worship to earthly rulers. Why? Because this is spiritualizing a lower domain issue of relationship with earthly rulers and bringing it up into the upper domain. You never want to exalt anything material from the lower domain, into the upper domain where spirit is misapplied. Render to the lower domain, the things that belong in the lower domain, and render to the upper domain God and your inner life with him.
Paper 196 Section 3 gets brought up at 1:12. The duty to man is your ethical duty, and your duty to God is your religious duty, and third duty is moral, our duty to the cosmos. In 178:1.5 we see there are three sacred obligations each of us have: the duty to man, the duty to God, and the service to the brotherhood of God-knowing believers. When thought about factually, reborn spirit sons, you’re born again in fact, but not yet God-knowing. It's a long journey to be in fact God-knowing, but you’re God-knowing in truth even as a perfecting being.
The third sacred obligation of duty to the brotherhood of God-knowing believers brings up something that’s more than a mere relationship. It has the potential for true relationship in that group. It offers an entire separate domain for consideration. The revelators speak to this back in paper [56:10.13] when they use the words in italics true relations and the quote says “The recognition of true relations implies a mind competent to discriminate between truth and error.” This means we must know truth, we can’t be heathens so we must be born again in order to have the potential for a truth relationship with another person.
The rest of the quote is, “The bestowal Spirit of Truth which invests the human minds of Urantia is unerringly responsive to truth—the living spirit relationship of all things and all beings as they are coordinated in the eternal ascent Godward.” Notice how they’re directing us to notice what truth is here with what comes after the parenthetical. They’re referencing the cosmos and the cosmic duty. If one had that type of moral consecration coordination with the cosmos it’s a true relationship. When two people know the truth, there’s a potential that goes far beyond what we think of a relationship as relates to the world and those two individuals. A true relationship goes from one individual, through the individuality of the whole and into the other individual an entirely different modality, and consequences result in comparison to what we think of now about relationships. Such a relationship is predicated on the moral duty, a transcendent interplay between two spirit born persons.
We take notice of how it says we should manifest the righteous ministry of loving service. This love of loving service has to be real love in the context of a righteous inner life. It’s that righteously framed inner-life love that is then reciprocated outward in service. You do that to believers and unbelievers alike. Nonetheless, the starting point for both is the same, and we have a sacred duty to them just the same. Genuine spirit-born believers interact in a whole other transcendent potentiality in contrast to unbelievers and believers don’t require the extra complexities of translating down and out to interface with unbelievers. Of course, the risk is that in your attempts to do so, you open yourself up to the dangers of compromising with evil or consorting with sin. Wrong turn at Albuquerque.
Thankfully, believers meet us at eye level, plug and play. We're kin. What size batteries does this baby take you ask? Righteousness. Double-D, hard-core righteousness, from all parties involved.
About 1 hour 26 minutes we continue on the subject of righteousness—conformity to the cosmos. Ruthie brings up the 1913 dictionary defining righteous as wise. Wholeness of logic, wholeness of wisdom, wholeness of morality, these are all there in the wholeness of righteousness. The cosmos is levels of wisdom that go upward at no end. Thought provoking concept.
The secularist are directly assaulting the free exercise of religion as the Master said would occur 2000 years ago. Today, it’s more ignorantly and boldly attacked without the least bit of hesitation, or reserve. Because of the authority of religious dictators if you are a believer in this gospel you can expect only trouble, persecution, and even death.
Each of us must not allow anything to divert our devotion to this one duty of proclaiming the gospel of salvation.
Brad's Notes
- We find Jesus trying to make the most of these final hours in the flesh.
- Pay attention to how Jesus is speaking still fully as Jesus the man.
- As a friend, he's encouraging his listeners to use their God-given access as humans to wisdom, insight, and foresight.
- Looking at a houseplant and sighing, "Ah, what a life!"
- Sure, until someone forgets to water you and you're a helpless victim of antecedent causation.
- A funny observation in the summary and noted on the succeeding episode
