Episode:Jesus—The Transition Years (Part 3)

From Symmetry of Soul


Religious teachers must always remember that the spiritual sovereignty of God overrides all intervening and intermediate spiritual loyalties. And someday civil rulers will learn that the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men—a rule designed to foster the greatest good to the greatest number of all men and for the greatest length of time.

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Urmia, Sovereignty, Politics

Summary by Kermit

Commentary on Review

We discussed how it is that we might begin to overhaul our preconceived opinions regarding these issues of divine sovereignty, religious peace, and political sovereignty. It was suggested that inner reflection on these truths of the revelation in parallel to the conduct of so-called ordinary life in the outer domain, such that you begin to conceptualize a new world view consonant with revealed truth. And as this recognition grows, begin to implement it into your life’s choices and decisions. This is what is meant by cultivating independent and courageous cosmic thinking, a reflective process harmonizing the three cosmic intuitions, causation, duty, and worship. No small amount of patience is required for incremental success. As wisdom develops in this parallel path, work on bringing the truths of the revelation into relation with the facts of our daily lives.

134:5. Political Sovereignty

The opening paragraph is a disclaimer by our author explaining why the content of the Master’s teaching has been vastly reworked at the same time attempting to depict the import of his teachings as they are applicable to the peculiarly critical stage evolution of political sovereignty in the twentieth century after Christ.

As long as the illusive notions of unlimited national sovereignty persist, war will never end on Urantia. There exists great confusion as to the nature of the two types of relative sovereignty on material worlds—the spiritual freewill of the individual and the collective sovereignty of mankind as a whole. Spiritual freewill is grossly misunderstood because of the widespread ignorance of the meaning and nature of spirit and spiritual. This nescience obscures distinction among material, intellectual, and spiritual matters. And the misapplication of spiritual energies into non-spiritual affairs (and vice versa) courts real danger. It is self-assertion that masquerades as freewill in the material and intellectual realms, and we know whose program that was!

As we’ve mentioned several times, this section on political sovereignty must be understood in the context of the overriding spiritual sovereignty of God as discussed in the previous section. And even in the material realm our civil rulers will someday learn that God’s sovereignty extends to the material, coming down from on high through God the Sevenfold to the rule of the Most Highs in the kingdoms of men. The Most Highs’ rule is a topic of fascination and speculation among all serious students of the revelation. We conjectured as to some of the circumstances and methods whereby this rule might be executed. Revelation references were cited on more details about the Most Highs in Papers (35:6, 43:3 and 114:4). Stop to consider what it means when we are told that the Most Highs’ rule is designed to foster the greatest good, for the greatest number of all men and for the greatest length of time. Thus, for a smaller number of people and for a shorter length of time, we might infer that material circumstances might become very difficult. All of this should lead to the recognition that the LOVE of God and the LAW of God are the same. Reflecting on the fact that Jesus’ mission and ministry was concerned only with spiritual, inner-life issues, we might be tempted to conclude that the outer life is off limits to direct divine action. While we are “free” to reject God’s rule in our inner life, the same is not the case in the outer life. Here’s another challenge to our initial ideas of God and His love, and a call to cultivate discrimination between material and spiritual issues.

Interesting to note that in the entire history of man, only one nation has attempted to implement these enlightened principles of political sovereignty in consonance with the principle of the sovereignty of God. Our national pledge includes the words, “One nation under God” This is the first requisite for a brotherhood of man. And this God, a supreme God, is not an outward theocratic expression of anyone’s inner concept.

We are told that the growth of the organization of political power is good and proper, encompassing larger segments of mankind. Political sovereignty evolves by organization, from the smallest unit, the family up through the intervening stages of clan, tribe to nation and even empire to the final consummation of political growth, the government of all mankind, by all mankind, and for all mankind. What with our previous arc on Marriage and Family, notice the connection between the smallest “political unit”, the family and the government of all mankind. Wars are lessened during this progression, but difficulties abound during the transitions from one stage to another, due to the inertia-resistance to change. However, when nations are few, strong, and powerful, the stage will be set for major wars, world-wide conflicts. Intervening “scaffolding stages” of organization present difficulties because the human loyalties required to establish any particular stage do not change easily and obstruct forward progress to the subsequent stage.

Political sovereignty is created out of the progressive surrender of self-determinism from the family up through the stages previously mentioned. And this has generally proceeded unabated in the East, and in the West down to the time of the end of WWI. Lasting peace will not come to our world until the so-called sovereign nations surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of mankind government—the brotherhood of men. Internationalism as with the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations is a step in the right direction, but not the final solution to the problem of war, as demonstrated by the League’s failure to prevent WWII.

As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both the opportunity and need for mankind government increase. The ensuing potential conflict among the few really sovereign powers resolves through either a life and death struggle for national supremacy or by the voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty in creating a nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.