Episode:Jesus in Galilee—Building to the Climax (Part 9)

From Symmetry of Soul


Jesus took up the five barley loaves in his hands, and after he had given thanks, he broke the bread and gave to his apostles, who passed it on to their associates, who in turn carried it to the multitude. Jesus in like manner broke and distributed the two dried fishes. And this multitude of about five thousand men, women, and children did eat and were filled—with twelve basketfuls to spare.

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Supernatural Ministration, King-Making Episode, Disillusionment

Note: Ann filled in for Brad, who was far away.

Summary by Kermit

Commentary on the Review

We further considered Jesus’ healing of Veronica of Caesarea-Philippi, whose strong and living faith laid hold of the Master’s creator nature and presence to cure her chronic physical affliction. The midwayers provide details throughout Part IV which serve to clarify, correct, and corroborate many of the biblical versions of Jesus’ public ministry, as they do here in establishing her name and residence. We briefly compared and contrasted some of Jesus’ other miracles and wonders, noting that in Veronica’s case, no intermediate beings were required to effect her cure, while in others of his creator interventions, the actual engagement and rearrangement of matter was accomplished by a wide range of beings who always attend Creator Son’s on their bestowals as mortals of the realm.

152:2. The Feeding of the Five Thousand

Picking up our story we find Jesus continually besieged by the multitudes who seek him for his miraculous demonstrations of healing. Now he is about to add free food to his allure.

The Master still in quest of rest with the apostles declared a week’s furlough from teaching and preaching, that his followers might join friends or return home in preparation for the journey to Jerusalem for the Passover. Less than half of the disciples left while the multitude continued to grow. Jesus and the twelve attempted, to no avail, to escape the crowd by slipping away to a park south of Bethsaida-Julias. The crowd by this time had grown to more than three thousand and was increasing with each passing hour. Food supplies were growing short for the multitude as well as for the Master’s party. Add to this the rising sentiment of the crowd and even some of the evangelists and apostles to proclaim Jesus king. Thus was the table set for the Master to perform his first and only nature miracle as a result of his conscious preplanning.

Jesus took this confluence of circumstances to address the ever growing problem of the public’s as well as the followers’, disciples’, evangelists’, and apostles’ failure to grasp the spiritual nature of the Kingdom of Heaven, instead fixating on the material wonders of his ministry. Jesus first puts the situation of the hungry multitude before his apostles, expressing his reluctance to send them away. He asks Andrew and the apostolic steward Philip, “can you not feed them?” The nonplused apostles inventoried their stores and had only five loaves of bread and two dried fishes. Jesus then appears to consult the cosmos, suggested by the “faraway look in his eyes.” He then, taking charge of the situation and proceeds to instruct the apostles and evangelists in organizing of the multitude and distributing enough food to feed the entire assembly of five thousand to the full with twelve basketfuls of food fragments to spare. We discussed the need to challenge ourselves in our attempt to visualize this miracle to not imagine a magical materialization of bread and fishes. That being said, we are left with simple wonderment at what we might have seen of the actual multiplication of the loaves and the fishes.

We also spent some time examining the alignment of the apostles regarding the scheme to proclaim Jesus king, inasmuch as the twelve were divided in their opinion of such a plan, four in favor, four opposed, and four noncommittal.

152:3. The King-Making Episode

In response to this stupendous wonder, the circulating sentiment to proclaim Jesus king required no further encouragement. This spectacular supplying of food coincided with the long held idea of the Messiah as a material deliverer. The notion that the power to feed carried with it the power to rule is till operative in the group psyche today as evinced by the strategies of politicians today promising free food and free healthcare.

Following the resounding shout “Make him king!”, Jesus proceeds to reject their call to kingship and reprove them for their failure to recognize his kingdom as a spiritual brotherhood. He sends them away with the command to “let the Father of lights be enthroned in the heart of each of you as the spirit Ruler of all things.” He then sends away the apostles to return to Zebedee’s at Bethsaida. The multitude left stunned and disheartened. Many believers turned back no longer to follow him from that day. The twelve were speechless.

We marveled at Jesus’ masterful adaptation to the circumstances of the moment to deliver the disillusionment necessary for his chosen to experience in this demonstration, the futility of performing material wonders in the attempt to proclaim a spiritual kingdom.

152:4. Simon Peter’s Night Vision

In keeping with Jesus’ efforts to strip his apostles of their illusions regarding his real nature and the nature of his Kingdom, the midwayers now explicate another of the favorite episodes of Jesus’ wonderworking found in the gospel writings. Note the details of this event as well as the content of Simon Peter’s consciousness provided by the midwayers. From this it should be clear that details of the inner workings of our minds are open to the agencies beings of the far-flung universe.

Remarkably, Peter always considered this experience to be real. We speculated as to the advisability of putting the 5th ER into the hands of those current day followers of Jesus whose faith is built around such biblical accounts.