Episode:Jesus Faces Death—Brought to Trial (Part 8)

From Symmetry of Soul


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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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Appears Before Pilate, Genuine Pity, Sorrowful Affection

Summary by Andrea

Commentary after Review

Even though there are details in the Urantia Book which may seem inconsequential, they are there for a reason. The revelators fill in the blanks for us. This allows for scholars to re-write the history of, say, Pontius Pilate with more accuracy. We can begin with better initial assumptions because of this gift of revelation.

Truth is not accessible unless enough of the facts are available. However, the facts are not enough. We also need to have our other eye open to the goodness within which can synchronize with the truth lest we be led into error. In addition, small blunders that happen as we attempt to read and engage the Urantia Book can subsequently lead to far-reaching errors in our engagement of the entire revelation.

While it may seem reasonable to say that each sentence in the book can be interpreted in many ways, the fact is that, there are many ways to interpret it, but all of them are in error except one. This does not have to do with opinion. Truth and error and are objective, not subjective.

As we study the life of Jesus it’s important to remember we are not studying some perfected fetish person who we cannot relate to. When we study the life of Jesus we are studying the evolution of his mind. He came here to evolve himself since he was inadequately evolved. His seven bestowals were part of his evolution and we know his last one was here on Urantia. His evolution of mind informs us about the direction our minds need to go.

Paper 185:2 Jesus Appears Before Pilate

When the revelators say “The Sadducees and councilors who had taken it upon themselves to put Jesus out of the way…” they are referring to the fact that they had tucked Jesus back into a room, out of the way, so that he could not throw a wrench into their plan of moving the trial forward. Jesus is allowing himself to be put off into a corner--again, always subservient to the Father’s will.

Pilate is taking great delight in pushing back on the conniving plans of these Sadducees. The whole thing is such a sham that there’s no way to get to any truth regarding the situation. Same is true when we think about where we are in our current state of affairs on this planet. We are simply not conforming with the cosmos and therefore nothing good can come from such a state. Even the greatest of individuals may be powerless to fix things. We live in a system that consists of the super-summative consequence of our collective nature. It’s greater than the sum of all of us.

The only solution is to have individuals with an inner life to bring originality, something new, into the equation. Only that can alter the situation. Then the part can transcend its state and bring into play a new super summative consequence. It takes more than a great champion but still we need great leaders.

Regarding our current emergency we must realize that we are part of a system that is transcendent of the parts. The parts alone cannot fix things. Even Jesus when he came here knew he was evolving and so was the world around him. He would not magically snap his fingers and fix things, or he would have been in rebellion.


In paragraph 4 the terms ill will and ill humor were discussed. They can be thought of as hatred and dislike, respectively. We discussed the importance of identifying dislike in our lives. As harmless as we think that might be, the fact is if we focus on dislike, we can morph it into hate. If we focus on that dislike, we can drag that up into the upper domain and it’s copied into our soul. And our hatred does not destroy others, it destroys us.

When Jesus talked about loving your enemies, he was referring to the importance of using our personality to combat dislike. He was also using the proper definition of love. Not what we usually think of when we think of love as a feeling.

We will always be faced with those that we dislike. But trying to paint over the dislike or fool ourselves in various ways using our feelings is not the answer. We must transcend feelings and search our heart for the real meaning of love and let that turn us around.

With the wise use of our personality, we can extinguish dislike with love. So the remedy is, when you find yourself in a state of dislike for another person, antidote it with some top-down love that helps us see someone in a more objective way. Seek to understand your fellow man and you will eventually love them. We were reminded of the quote in paper 100 section 4, “If you could only know your fellows, you would eventually fall in love with them.”

Towards the end of the section Pilate insists that Jesus be read the charges that were brought against him and so he was led out of the praetorium where they had hidden him away. When the charges were read he made no reply. Pilate was overwhelmed with the unfairness. He felt genuine pity and sorrowful affection for Jesus. And he set his mind to examine him privately.

Notes by Brad

  • Remember: the Internet makes it easy to attempt scholarship with the 5th ER, without the stacks of a massive library. You could read endlessly about history's view of Pontius Pilate.
  • Studying the life of Jesus is a study of the evolution of the mind of Jesus.
    • A massive concept threaded throughout the 5th ER is mind. Including in the biologic evolution papers.
  • What of a great blunder? (Section 1)
    • It will have an error consequence.
    • The big picture is what can be in error.
    • A mistake would imply evil underlying the issue.
    • Because facts were not properly considered, it resulted in error.


  • Putting Jesus "out of the way" in Section 2 is in the literal sense: they didn't want Pilate to even see Jesus.


  • When a system is in error, the outcome will be in error


  • Ill-will and ill-humor
    • Related to hatred and dislike.
    • Ill-humor and dislike are relatively innocuous in and of themselves. Outer life phenomena.
    • But if you build upon them as a foundation, and poison your inner life by letting it roll naturally and focusing on this outer dislike...
      • The more you'll product hatred.
    • Look: dislike is inescapable. But can you avoid using your personality to have ill-will enter?
    • Are you thinking you couldn't possibly love the Sanhedrin? That they're utterly detestable?
      • Then you hate them. And you're not destroying them... you're only harming yourself.
      • Why would you want to destroy yourself?? It may not appear that's what you're doing when you existentialize hated, but really you are doing that.
    • And don't think you can't just paper over your hated with fancy feelings and words. Doing so will only distract you from the hatred that is being nursed in your inner life if you have ill-will.


  • Love comes to us from the top-down. If you fill your inner life with hatred, where does this displaced love go?
    • It inverts into self-love.
      • Hence the "envious" Saducees.