Episode:Jesus Faces Death—The Crucifixion (Part 9)

From Symmetry of Soul


Although Jesus did not die the death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mortal man nor to provide some sort of effective approach to an otherwise offended and unforgiving God; notwithstanding that these ideas of atonement and propitiation are erroneous, nonetheless, there are significances attached to the death of Jesus on the cross which should not be overlooked.

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Atonement, Salvation, Love and Service

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

We revisited the discussion of the specifics of the “spirit” which Jesus commended into the hands of the Father at the moment of his death. The midwayers and SoS are of the opinion that his spirit was the soul of the human Jesus built up through his life in the flesh which had fused with his fusion spirit at his baptism. (see [40:10.2]) This soul-fusion spirit, while not an entity,which suggests an independent existence apart from his personality, but shall we say it is a fact associated with the Father Deity nature of Michael, and which became part of the resurrected personality of Jesus.

This poses some difficulty when contemplating his act of commending it into the hands of the Father. Did he detach this soul-fusion spirit from his personality? We explained this after another complex discussion about the various selves (Deity, morontia, material, and Adjuster) and personality of the incarnate Michael. We speak of personality (the cosmic reality) identifying with a self, in present case the morontial self (soul) of Jesus. But because this soul-fusion spirit is not a separate entity and therefore not detachable we think of the commending “act” as a personality release of this part of his nature, allowing it to rest on its Father Deity foundation dormant during the time of the tomb. Be sure to consult the archive for the full discussion.

We also went into further detail about the Nebadon Corps of the Finality. This entire topic illustrates how the revelators deal with the restrictions of their revelation mandate. Without going into exacting detail one of the SoS team has taken great pains to infer information which is not directly disclosed in the text through synthetic juxtaposing of disclosures from different portions of the revelation. Listen again to the archive for the full discussion involving the inferred identity of the unrevealed tenth set of seven primary satellites of Salvington, the worlds of the Nebadon finaliter Corps.

188:4. Meaning of the Death on the Cross

In these final two sections of the final paper in our arc Jesus Faces Death the midwayers set aside the narrative of the story to present a cosmic contextualized big picture of the meaning and lessons from Jesus’ death. We are reminded of the fact that among neighboring inhabited planets Urantia has become known as the “World of the Cross.”

Recall, meaning is the superadditive consequence of the relationship between thing and value. Further, religion is a quest for values.

The first five paragraphs of the section essentially dismiss the primitive foundations of Christianity as erroneous. Terms like atonement and propitiation may sound sophisticated in modern parlance, yet represent the primitive ancient evolutionary origins of all religion. With each paragraph the concepts of original sin, and sacrificial redemption are exposed as false. Sin is redefined as an individual’s conscious and deliberate rebellion against the Father’s will and the Sons’ laws. At the same time they admonish us to not overlook the true significance and real import of the Master’s death—the value.

Lest we think that our primitive and ancient erroneous ideas of God are peculiar to Urantia as a consequence of our planetary history of rebellion and default, consider the Souls of Peace, one of the seven groups of angels composing the ranks of the Planetary Helpers, the fifth of the seven major types of the seraphic hosts, angels ministering within our local universe. They go to all evolutionary inhabited worlds and in [39:5.6] we are told (they) “are instrumental in supplanting the atonement idea by the concept of divine attunement as a philosophy of mortal survival.”

Upon reaching the sixth paragraph we find the value we seek. His bestowal (life and death) more clearly and surely showed the way of salvation for all mortals of all the worlds of the universe of Nebadon. To be clear: the fact of his death in light of the superb manner and matchless spirit in which he met death--and not his resurrection--hold the meaning to which the section title refers.

Jesus’ while not a sacrificer or ransomer can be viewed as a savior. Through living in conformity with the cosmos and concomitant with his teachings Jesus demonstrated the way of saving (eternalizing) the meanings and values of this life through dedication to doing the Father’s will.

The concepts of atonement and sacrificial salvation are essentially based on selfishness. Jesus invites us to take salvation for granted and be more concerned with loving and serving our fellows than securing our own salvation. Even a stern and legalistic monarch God would hardly be satisfied with the puerile and illogical scheme of substituting an innocent sufferer for a guilty offender to obtain justice.

Human salvation is real, based on two realities which may be faith grasped in human experience: the fact of the fatherhood of God and its correlated truth, the brotherhood of man.

Notes by Brad

  • Precision of language! Language is limited, but we do well to be as precise as possible.
    • A fusion spirit is about ascenders, but a "fusion spirit" is not the same.
      • Magisterial sons and other bestowal sons also have a "fusion spirit"
      • Machiventa Melchizedek is an odd case indeed. He has one foot in the Nebadon Corps of the Finality, another in the Paradise Corps of the Finality.
    • Michael's "fusion spirit" is more a phase of Michael's Deity nature than an entity.
      • Our fusion spirits (Thought adjusters) are properly denominated entities, however.
    • Personality is an influence and not an entity.
    • During your mortal life here, your soul is more an entity than a being; it's not a personalized self... yet.


  • Michael's 7 bestowals were essentially done in a "back-filling", reverse order.
    • This 7th one covered the mortal and system-level.
    • The 6th bestowal was constellation level.
    • After the 7th bestowal his nascent soul from the 7th bestowal was infused into him.
      • Today, then, his nature is wholly integrated.
    • These bestowals have cause his deity nature to be permanently modified. His self is different now. Hence the title Master son instead of Creator Son.
      • (but his personality remains unchanged, as personality is changeless)


  • Throughout the 5th ER there are concepts they "beat around" but cannot flesh out directly.
    • The revelatory mandate limits what they can tell us.
      • There are more purposes in the universe than the mortal ascension scheme.
    • Nebadon Corps of the Finality, Nebadon Corps of Completion, etc...


  • The Urantia Book is a 2,097 page of parts. It is not a whole.
    • You must provide the wholeness.
    • And watch out: you can rationalize anything. There are an infinite number of false wholes, and only one true whole.


  • All lists in the 5th ER are patterned.
    • And since the source of pattern in the universe is an infinite being, this is not surprising!
    • "And yet some of the less imaginative of your mortal mechanists insist on viewing material creation and human evolution as an accident." [58:2.3]


  • The meaning of the death on the cross.
    • Not the established rationalization of the death on the cross.
      • The thing is the death on the cross. Christians rationalize this with old wineskins of the ghost cult.
    • Meaning is a superadditive consequence of things and values.
    • Genuine religion is based on values, not things.
      • A religion based on things is a material rationale for a ghost-cult framework.
    • The fact of Jesus' death, juxtapoxed with the value of how he lived it
      • Therein lies the superadditive meaning.
      • Similar to "Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so important as the way in which you do this work." [39:4.13]
    • So we want to find the value.


  • Old ideas about the cross (not the value of his death)
    • Erroneous ideas, not because they are rooted in evil, so much as they are footed in figment: the million-year-old ghost-cult framework.
    • Atonement is what we're all familiar with: Jesus dying for our sins.
    • Every world goes through a phase where they believe in atonement.
      • It's not because of sin, rebellion, and default. God made us this way, it's not a corruption of design.
      • [39:5] reminds us that Planetary Helpers, souls of Peace, are angels specifically there to help a world move beyond atonement, toward attunement.
    • Propitiation is about seeking righteousness through ceremony.
      • Not mere appeasement or placation (a sort of neutral state), but actually trying to actively win positive favor from the god/ghost.
      • "Right—the correct conduct and ceremonies designed to win the spirits actively to one’s interests." [87:5.12]
      • Let's do better! Let's advance from propitiatory righteousness to genuine righteousness.
    • Dying in debt means you aren't saved.
    • Sin being inherited via one's parents, like so much debt.
    • Expiation, atonement, propitiation, etc. are all fancy esoteric theological words that cover over the fact that these are all childish schoolyard notions. The revelators are seeking to help us grow up in the cosmos.
    • The opening paragraph tells us to get out of our old illusion frame of evolutionary religion. Meaning will not be found in illusion; it will be found in reality.


  • Remember that mortal is a word that means death. So living a mortal life involves death by its very nature.


  • Paragraph 1 hits Christianity and evolutionary religion hard. Paragraph 2 hits you hard if you've come to hate the atonement doctrine.
    • This author reports having that problem in his younger life. He should have slowed down and pondered paragraph 2 more than he did perhaps.
    • Throwing out the baby (value) with the bathwater (ghost cult)?
      • That would be a great mistake. It would advance error to the level of evil.


  • Paragraph 6 is where the tone transitions to a positive "here's what his death is" rather than "here is what it is NOT".
    • As it moves toward the positive, the authors invoke the cosmos and conformity with it more and more.
    • How did his death make plain mortal survival? Not his resurrection, but his death?
      • It's related to how he conformed with the cosmos.
    • Jesus is A savior, not "MY" savior.
      • Savior is just the same word as "saver".
      • When you are attuned to the cosmos in the upper domain of your mind, your Thought Adjuster will save a copy.
      • Jesus was a saver--he lived in conformity with the cosmos. You can be your a saver, too.
      • A saver saves "bread for tomorrow," in the metaphorical sense (not in the literal nutrition-epoch sense of the phrase)


  • All of these schemes to try to outsmart some god/ghost should be "utterly abandoned" now that we know better.
    • This author notes the Eruv, a wire strung up to act as a "wall" so an area is all considered one house and you can do work on the Sabbath in it.


  • Remember: God the Father is outside of time. Existential.
    • Future punishment of sin is an experiential issue--not proper to attribute to God the Father.
    • Present separation from God is an EXISTENTIAL issue. We do well to be concerned with that.


  • Something that is philosophic but based on unreality is a false philosophy.
    • Hence how philosophy has a deservedly bad name these days.
    • But there is true philosophy.
    • We naturally dream up false philosophy because of the Holy Spirit.
    • But if you take delight in cultivating... you can posses a true, living philosophy.