Episode:Jesus the Tutor—Journey to Rome (Part 1)
Jesus toured the Roman world for nearly two years, teaching and fraternizing with his fellow mortals. Jesus was a truth giver; he was the truth for that generation on Urantia. As the great truth giver encountered each great truth seeker, the result was a great and liberating enlightenment born of the experience of new truth.
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Duty, Good and Evil, Truth and Error
Summary by Kermit
Commentary on Review
We shared some final thoughts on the recently completed Religion in Depth arc. The salient feature of focus had to do with genuine religion being an inner life phenomenon with eternity as an anchoring referent. We emphasized that this inner religious life is more than a feeling-centered experience about the outer life. Genuine personal spiritual experiences are subject to the uplifting influence of spirit gravity. The feelings that accompany initial valid religious experiences, while being deeply moving, carry a risk of fixating a child of God on the feeling level of meaning thus short circuiting the influence of spirit gravity.
Introduction to Jesus the Tutor arc
To set the stage for this new arc we noted that in Paper 129 the midwayers complete their year by year chronology of Jesus’ life including details of Jesus’ preparation for this trip. Taking only Zebedee into his confidence he made arrangements for his family’s economic security during his absence. We are also here introduced to Jesus’ apparently chance meeting the wealthy Indian Gonod and his seventeen year old son Ganid. The authors’ use the term “apparent chance” to signify that the onlooking midwayers and celestials were unable to discern any Father-like divine intervention in the outworking of the circumstances of their meeting, leading us to conjecture here that Providence played a role.
The SoS team views this study of Jesus’ Mediterranean trip as a natural follow-up to the religion papers where we can observe the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it as a man among men who has attained the third psychic circle of mortal potentiality, something to which we loyal tadpoles can aspire.
130:0 On the Way to Rome
The authors present us with the chronological beginning and end points along with a detailed itinerary of Jesus’ Mediterranean journey. In examining his route we note that he visited the major centers of commerce in the Occident and Levant in keeping with Gonod’s business activities. Also of note is that so many of these locations coincide with the later travels of Paul in his efforts to establish what eventually became Christianity. Throughout the narrative of these travels the midwayers give intriguing facts concerning pivotal contacts Jesus made which later facilitated Paul’s work of spreading the “good news.”
Using some of the insights from our recent study of religion we see that Jesus manifests a full and balanced mastery with the things, meanings, and values of threefold functional reality, the triunity. His exploits on this trip reflect a personal holistic interest in the full spectrum of life as it is lived on this world, and were not confined to merely life’s religious dimension. Remember that among his tasks as a bestowal son is to attain first psychic circle status, thereby becoming a personal living philosophy synchronized with the cosmos (the whole). We note that in his circle conquest Jesus demonstrates movement beyond the initiating spark of the Father and wishful thinking, modeling the life of one who willingly goes beyond the first mile of duty to the second mile of love and service of his fellows. And he does this as a fully developed human being not as the Son of God.
130:1. At Joppa—Discourse on Jonah
In Joppa Jesus met and became warm friends with Gadiah, a Philistine interpreter in the employ of Simon, a wealthy leather merchant and business associate of Gonod. Jesus’ discussions with Gadiah illustrate what can happen when a great truth seeker (Gadiah) encounters a great truth giver (Jesus). Jesus’ masterly response to Gadiah’s question about whether or not the Bible story of Jonah and the whale actually happened, spoke truths of eternity rather than addressing facts of time. Jesus’ truths had a liberating and lasting influence on Gadiah. In their final visit, Jesus was able to satisfy Gadiah’s quandary concerning the infinite goodness of God in coexistence with the sorrows of evil. In their discussion we see Jesus employ a philosophic context for clarifying the nature of error, evil, and truth, and disabusing Gadiah of the belief that God creates both good AND evil.
We are further disabused of the temptation to treat these narratives as a sacred text when the authors disclose their method of freely translating Jesus’ word into modern phraseology current at the time of the revelation’s presentation.
To illustrate something of the far reaching influence of Jesus’ personal ministry on this journey we read an excerpt from the New Testament book of Acts, chapter 9 in which we find reference to the doings of Peter in and around Joppa, which we are told intersect with Gadiah who was influential in his employer Simon, a tanner, embracing Christianity.
Notes by Brad
- Jesus on this Mediterranean tour is showing us someone beginning to be definitively objective--evidence suggests he has attained the 3rd psychic circle.
- The 3rd psychic circle is something of a horizon for us. We can't imagine what's beyond it.
- Watch for how he was loyal, humble, sincere, patient, and just as he went on this voyage.
- Reminder: Dates here are the Julian calendar, not our present-day Gregorian calendar. The leap-year system is different, among other things. For the most part it's a 2 day difference.
- Charax was on the Persian Gulf in Jesus' time. Today it's far inland. A lot of sediment has been deposited.
- A renaissance man—very much Jesus in these years—is "re nascent", essentially born again. That phrase isn't so much about a period of time known as The Renaissance.
- Jesus was the truth--they're writing that about Jesus the man, not Jesus as God. This is about being a 3rd circler.
- To be a 3rd circler, one's mind must have a smoothness of flow to it. There are rocks and sharp edges in the streambed, given there to us by genetics.
- You can set your sight on the goal of being like Jesus the man. You can set that goal right now.
- Have faith, not just belief. With the faith of Jesus, you will be grown. You can do this. Faith is a wholehearted and definitive choice.
- Belief is not faith. Faith is transcendent.
- Jesus' take on the story of Jonah is from the top-down. It speaks not about time, but eternity.
- Stories like Jonah (including many great movies) endure because they have unconscious truths woven into them.
- Gadiah's question about good and evil in the world is almost always the #1 frequently asked question people have these days. We can appreciate that he asked it in a higher and more philosophic form here, not the typical "why does God allow hunger and disease" material-comfort form so prevalent these days.
