Episode:Jesus Culminates His Ministry—O Jerusalem! (Part 3)
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.
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Sadness, Uncertainty, Faith
Opening thought: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile...The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God...Do all these evildoers know nothing? Psalms 14
Closing thought: All these little spheres of self-darkness the apostles exhibiting here? That you also possess? Faith is your salvation. God can help you do better. Believe God’s promises and follow his instructions.
Summary by Brad
On living life as if God doesn't exist
The Old Testament is filled with lessons about how it's unwise to live your life as if God doesn't exist. It doesn't go well. Has these ever been a time easier than today to live as if God doesn't exist? We swim in waters filled with the supposedly sophisticated notion that God-fearing and God-believing is all primitive and superstitious stuff. How has atheism become so fashionable? How could materialism or secularism have any credence in any age? Well, the fancier and more prideful man gets, the less it appears he needs God. But there is a way that seems right to a man... but the end thereof is death.
It's one thing for one's devotion to godless ideals to be unconscious as a material drift. But increasingly these days it's another thing entirely to see sophisticated minds deliberately, consciously, willfully choosing godless ideals knowing full well what they're doing. If such wickedness is given free rein in society, it doesn't go well. Truths that Jesus revealed 2,000 years ago are the only reason a phenomenon like the United States could possibly even exist today: "Behind the gains of the twentieth century are...the unrecognized and unacknowledged spiritual workings of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth." [195:8.9]
God is real. There is no reality apart from God; only by the grace of God can anyone maintain this illusion for any length of time. Only a truly human mind can identify with God; even a tiny logical sphere around a faint flicker of faith is enough. In this visual analogy, faith is that nucleus, logic is the sphere, and various lines of reasoning are the radii within that sphere.
172:5 The Apostles’ Attitude
Notice the title of this section. It's a singular attitude for 12 apostles: confused and disconcerted. They lacked any coherent sense of place (all was confused, melted together) or any coherent sense of direction (all of them were knocked off their line of expectation, the literalness of the word disconcerted). Despite the "diverse" specifics with their individual reactions, collectively they're in one philosophic space: they cannot bring their minds to a focus. Some may be slightly better than others, but none could cope with a situation so at odds with their preconceived opinions, settled ideas, and long-standing prejudices.
Also notice the emotions surging not only through their minds (lower domain in our hourglass analogy) but also emotions surging through their souls (upper domain). Emotions surging in the upper domain means they've been spiritualized. That's a big problem! Set a guard on your inner life. Don't let fervent emotions get spiritualized and inject evil into your inner life. If emotions of the outer life pollute your upper domain of mind, their inherent self-centeredness will disrupt that cosmos-based unity of your inner life and replace it with self-based unity, which is evil.
Andrew. We see Andrew being tempered by materially pragmatic concerns. Compared to the other apostles, he was less affected. That sounds pretty decent, right? Well, no. His inner life was affected, as he "was troubled with serious doubts," a disruption of the inner life by doubt—first-stage evil. Note the mis- prefix in misgivings; the revelators consistently use that mis- prefix to indicate evil. It was wrong for Andrew to give to his inner life what he gave to his inner life.
Andrew was the best judger of men and an able administrator, and we see that here. Notice his concern about other apostles being "led away by their emotions." If the other apostles being led away were an outer-life concern, it not that big of a big problem; the outer life has a lot of inertia. But in the inner life? Emotions in there? The inner life is like a frictionless domain and you can be led away as far as you will. The more spiritualized the domain, the less the friction.
Simon Peter. Observe how many dis- prefixes appear in this description, a linguistic indicator of being set apart or broken in two. Disastrous? Set apart from the cosmos. Disappointed? Knocked off from pursuing a path to a particular destination point he had in mind. He's another apostle who has had his own self-centered expectations for the day, and then Jesus comes in like a wrecking ball knocking him of his line of expectations. Simon, the brilliant orator-preacher, by the day's end was so set apart from his own subjective, self-based expectations that he entered psychological darkness.
James Zebedee. Observe how James, by the day's end experienced the same emptiness of self as Simon Peter, but James perceived it as more of an uncertainty than a sadness. And even though James was a balanced thinker who could be fearful and elated at the same time, these kinds of conflicting emotions are distressing—they tear the experiencer asunder inside and they are indeed a loss of temper (something James struggled with).
John Zebedee's mind could think in symbol-rich abstractions, so he was "somewhere near understanding" the connection between Jesus' riding into Jerusalem and the promise of the Prince of Peace in Zechariah 9. Nevertheless, John remains one of the "sons of thunder" like his brother James, so you can rest assured he was "confused and disconcerted" like all the others.
Philip, the common-man prosaic thinker among the apostles is "tempted to doubt" the whole kingdom idea, but his "personal faith in the Master" was strong. Like Andrew, he is tempered by a strong dose of material pragmatism. But unlike Andrew, Philip was only "tempted to doubt" instead of actually having doubts. Philip is not sad or uncertain by the end of the day; it appears his faith is an antidote to those low emotional states so many others reached. So what do we see as the cure for sadness and uncertainty? Believing God's promises and following His instructions.
Nathaniel is being served well by both reason and faith here. He was less perturbed and more poised than most of the apostles (but still confused and disconcerted like all of them). Nathaniel, a well-educated and philosophically inclined fellow, and he seemed to be succeeding at availing himself of the three cosmic intuitions as well as insight and foresight. This helps remind us why Jesus explained things to Nathaniel the other apostles could not understand (e.g., [159:4])
Matthew Levi seemed to have insight like Nathaniel, recalling the Zechariah scripture just as John Zebedee did. However, Matthew was not able to abstract and separate the Prince of Peace component from all the rest of the Zechariah passage, so he became depressed when some spectacular show of power did not occur. But then Matthew woke up more or less recovered the next morning. He was businessman with those shortsighted, materialistic leanings. But that animal-origin nature can serve us well—it doesn't stay down in the dumps for too long.
Thomas Didymus also used the reason of a proto-scientific mind the same was Nathaniel did. See in Thomas how reason and faith are working hand-in-hand, side-side-side. It worked well enough for him to even gain some good humor about the whole situation by day's end. Can you take delight in cultivating some reason to go along with your faith?
Simon Zelotes and his ardent nationalism had hoped he would be in supreme command of military forces by sundown. His failure to distinguish the kingdoms of men from the kingdom of heaven caused him crushing depression. Do you continually worry about the kingdoms of men? You probably do. Can you strive to do better than Simon Zelotes? Can you remember that the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men?
Alpheus twins. Despite their simple-minded elation this day, they were still confused. They still imagined Jesus as a material, temporal king. Always remember there's a reason the Alpheus twins are a part of the twelve. Can you recognize within your own nature the part of you that's like them? It's almost a quixotic sensibility.
Judas Iscariot. Pay attention to how our authors don't paint Judas as some dark, iniquitous person. Is he doing well here? Of course not—he's in a "disagreeable ferment." He is corrupting his inner life with selfish emotions. Notice the word "blended" suggesting everything within him is becoming a false, unholy unity centered around himself. So "it only remained for him to find some plausible excuse," reminding us of the cliche, "Where there's a will, there's a way."
So, bearing all this in mind: Can you do better? When you reach a point of utter absurdity, confusion, sadness, depression... can you have the courage to go back to your initial assumptions and toss aside the ones that clearly did not serve you well? Reconsider something fundamental? Or are you going to double down, or just go catatonic? [184:2.12]
Notes by Brad
- This author confesses he was unfortunately miseducated in his youth to distrust religionists. Even to this day he is distrustful of offering plates in churches, assuming the pastor is a corrupt shaman waiting to buy a private jet airplane.
- Can such a miseducation be recovered from? It remains to be seen.
- Jesus didn't only come to bring the message that God is a God of love. He also came to bring the gospel of salvation. You must be saved.
- If you know the 5th ER is an epochal revelation, then you also should know we are ever closer to the reason just such an emergency revelation is here.
- The midwayers often use conventional expressions Christians would find familiar, such as "the triumphal entry."
- But don't count on them retaining the traditional significance. "The so-called triumphal entry" (emphasis added)
- Andrew "had serious doubts." Philip was "tempted to doubt." As students of the 5th ER, we must face facts: there will always be a "common man" part of us that cannot do anything but doubt or be tempted to doubt the claims of revelation.
- Yes! There's an animal-origin part of us that can't believe. It can only doubt.
- What we are called to do it continually overrule that by faith. To be unnatural.
