Episode:Jesus in Galilee—Advancing Ministry (Part 8)

From Symmetry of Soul


Said Jesus: “When man recognizes only the works of God, he is led to fear the Supreme; but when man begins to understand and experience the personality and character of the living God, he is led increasingly to love such a good and perfect, universal and eternal Father. And it is just this changing of the relation of man to God that constitutes the mission of the Son of Man on earth.”

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Fear of the Lord, Humility, Sincerity

Summary by Kermit

Commentary on the Review

Our post review discussion involved the distinction between presumption and faith. The assurance of faith risks going to presumption. Historically, mankind has never or rarely understood genuine faith. Perusal of dictionary definitions for faith show that it is conflated with belief. To be sure, genuine faith, the objective validation of the reality of God conferred on all normal minded human beings by virtue of the possession of personality and encircuitment in the Holy Spirit begets belief. However, this validation may be a superconscious phenomenon. All of this coupled with the simple fact that one can believe anything presents us with the difficulty of having to discern between mere belief presumed to be faith and belief derived from the reality response of the third cosmic intuition. Such discernment is one of the distinguishing features between a child of God and an adult of God.

We also touched on the association of the mental poison of anger and the spirit poison of impatience. Finally, we reiterated the imperative of keeping our advocacy positive and avoiding the promulgation of “anti” positions regarding just about anything.

149:6. Fear of the Lord

In one of the evening conferences Philip asked Jesus how to harmonize the teaching of the Scriptures, to fear the Lord, with his instruction to look to the Father in heaven without fear. Jesus proceeds to give a masterly lesson on moving up the levels of meaning from fear to love. We scrutinized the text and noted many things. Jesus’ refers to the worship of the Eternal in contrast with the Father to promote our reflection on the source of reality nature encompassed by the Father. In other instances the authors refer to the Infinite or the Universal with similar purpose. In this particular case the Eternal is used to encourage us to transcend our purely temporal view of God.

Listen carefully to our treatment of paragraph three of this section wherein Jesus notes that mankind’s understanding of “fear of the Lord”, in successive ages has progressed from animal-origin fear up through anguish and dread to awe and reverence, where he finds us. Then he declares his intention to lead us up from reverence through recognition, realization, and appreciation to love. Appreciate the congruence of these levels of meaning in the hourglass analogy with the adjutant mind ministry in the lower domain and the three cosmic intuitions reaching into the upper domain. Note, also the animal-origin fear foundation is wholly natural and not to be despised. But neither are we to remain in such an attitude of fear towards God. The significance and importance of all this is summed up in the final sentence of the paragraph, “And it is just this changing of the relation of man to God that constitutes the mission of the Son of Man on earth, i.e. going up from fear to love.

Jesus continues his teaching, contrasting the power of the Almighty, which naturally engenders fear in the creature with the personal and purposive nature of God which encompasses goodness, beneficence, mercy, and love. All of which leads man to repentance, service, salvation, and intelligent and freehearted worship.

Even so, Jesus acknowledges that for those who sit in darkness, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” With the coming of the light however, the children of God are led to praise the Infinite for what he is rather than fear him for what he does. Even mortal children must begin their relationships with their father, who naturally loves them, in fear of what he can do. Progressing up through the meaning levels these children eventually grow to the appreciative and affectionate regard of love for their earthly fathers. So it is that Jesus came to teach us to love God—the all merciful Father in place of fearing God—the Almighty King.

Jesus even goes so far as to liken the kingdom of heaven to a divine family wherein we become brethren with Jesus in the heavenly estate.

Jesus points out how wrong (evil) ideas of the Father in heaven give rise to false ideas of humility and hypocrisy. He proceeds to illuminate our divine destiny of the attainment of the personal presence of the eternal Father through partnership with his indwelling spirit.

Finally, Jesus warns against ostentatious and false humility pointing to the sincerity and trust in the heavenly Father exhibited by the little child as essential to entering the heavenly kingdom. Jesus soberly gives examples of the duplicity and greed of the Hebrew priests and practitioners with the words of the prophet Jeremiah.

149:7. Returning to Bethsaida

The various preaching groups were instructed to gather at the Zebedee home in Bethsaida where they spent three inspiring and exhilarating days recounting their experiences of the tour before being released for a two week recess. Of the 117 evangelists who participated in this tour, about seventy-five survived the test, ready to be assigned to kingdom service.

Notes by Brad

  • How can we avoid our assurance in the 5th ER from going into presumption?
    • Stay humble, and don't presume that your faith is faith.
    • Stay hungry and thirsty, my friends. How sublime will it be someday when you truly discover faith, no short circuiting?
    • This will remain the case even when you become an adult of God.


  • Impatience and anger are two sides of a similar coin, and both hold us back, mindally speaking.
    • Always remember how much of your sanity derives from the Holy Spirit.
    • Remember that if you lose your patience, you become angry. And then you can "become unglued".
      • "Lost" my patience? Where did I obtain it from? The Holy Spirit. By grace.


  • Don't repress, transcend
    • Set you eyes toward the horizon, seek a better reaction, the better character you desire.
    • But that better character you desire isn't buld by you within yourself. It's grown into you, from above.
      • That's which "circuit" analogies are used so often in the 5th ER.
      • See yourself as synchronizing with a preexisting flow, instead of trying to build it all yourself from scratch (you can't, and trying to do so is self-righteous and prideful, to put it mildly)


  • It's not surprising we are so fearful by nature, and that fear expresses in our early-evolution relationship to God.
    • (and this fear-origin appears in our own lives, because ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny).
    • Fear can be exalted up and up into fancier forms: fear, dread, awe, and reverence. In a bottom-up mode.
    • Words like "Eternal" and "Infinite" (capitalized) are used by the authors to challenge us to seek a proper existential (timeless) relationship to God.
    • Through movies, this author remembers feeling dread and awe at age 9, but something much higher at age 18.
    • Why "irksome"? The root of that work is "weary." A wrathful King-God certainly is irksome.


  • We relish precise language here on SoS. Bring our mind to a focus.
    • You can bring light (illumination, an enlightenment) to a focus; you can't bring emotional heat to a focus.
    • Impatience and anger are examples of problematic emotions that the Enlightenment suggested we should master and manage.



  • Remember that we are started in darkness naturally, so that we can appreciate light.
    • The Father founded us in fear! There is no other way.
    • Do you have the patience to let your fellow humans experience this darkness and be grown out of it?
    • You can't build a better self for them (and neither can they, they must be grown).
    • Can you just focus on setting an example, an maybe banish a little fear from their mind? De-poison their mind, we might say?


  • Would a child of permissive parenting have issues in the future? Humility issues? You bet.


  • Notice that wisdom can be ancient wisdom. If Ecclesiastes says fear the Lord, maybe we can be led up.
    • It's founding wisdom, not the last word in all wisdom. There are infinite levels of wisdom.


  • Outward-facing (showy) humility is false, and wrong.
    • "Look, Father, at my humility!" No. Humility lies within. In the depth of your hearts.


  • When God "abhors" and "disdains," note that these words etymologically point to you being separated from him through your self-righteous actions. It's not him being close to you, wrathfully scolding you.