Episode:Last Ministry of the Master—Jesus' Final Tour (Part 3)

From Symmetry of Soul


The Master designated the spiritual brotherhood of man as the kingdom of heaven and the spirit head of this brotherhood as the Father in heaven. Never did Jesus refer to his Father as a king. In his intimate talks with the apostles he always referred to himself as the Son of Man and as their elder brother. He depicted all his followers as servants of mankind and messengers of the gospel of the kingdom.

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Kingdom of God, Deity of the Father, God Is Spirit

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

SoS emphasized the danger to one’s spiritual progress in attempting to serve God and Mammon. Service to the real God is likewise hampered when erroneous ideas of God (the so-called God of the ghost cult) occupy the seats of discrimination in the inner life. Avoiding the pursuit and love of the material while retaining standards of scientific dictation, social usage, and religious dogma for yardsticks of discrimination in the upper domain of mind is hardly a solution to the dangers of divided loyalties to God and Mammon. The Master’s promise that his Father will ever respond to the faintest flicker of faith, plus the revelation of the Mansion world regime of deficiency ministry should disabuse us of the anxious urgency to accomplish conscious cosmic synchrony with the real God before death. The 5th ER presents the biologic origins of primitive religion apart from all spiritual influences. Each individual must retrace the evolutionary path of the human race, from primitive religion to child of God (4th ER), to cosmic citizenship as an adult of God. Primitive and childish religious ideation, once serviceable to early advancing civilization is becoming a handicap to progressing civilization in the face of the ever-increasing rate of change of the social, political, and economic conditions of life on Urantia.

169:4 The Father and His Kingdom

The first challenge we encounter is the seeming contradiction between the section title and the fact that Jesus never referred to his Father as a king. We are immediately required to attempt to abstract a quality of “kingdomness” apart from thinking in terms of a literal kingdom. Kingdom dwellers are designated as servants of and messengers to mankind, not subjects of a king. Harkening back to Jesus’ initiation of his public teaching he describes the kingdom in terms of an inner life of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, wherein the individual is sovereign. He further described the kingdom as the spiritual brotherhood of man with the Father as the spirit head, referring to himself as the Son of Man and elder brother.

Jesus did not present a systematic lesson about the personality and attributes of the Father in heaven. Note this is found in the first five papers of the 5th ER. Jesus also never tried to prove God’s existence; he assumed his followers were all believers.

Remembering our SoS lessons on Deity and Reality, we notice Jesus does not speak of the Universal Father, but always refers to him as the Father or his Father. The Father is not a reality object but a facet of deity in relation to our reality. With the more precise terminology of the 5th ER it is evident that Jesus’ pronouncements that he who has seen him has seen the Father, and he and the Father are one only make sense when the Creator Son (personalized Deity) is viewed as a downstepped reality avatar of Father-Son Deity. Our relationship with God is best envisioned as an inner functioning of spiritualized mind in synchrony with the functioning of Deity. The creature as a reality object can hardly be thought of as engaging the reality of the Universal Father on Paradise. And this mind-deity synchrony is enabled by Mother Deity. Jesus also declared God is Spirit. In this expression we can think more truthfully of the reality object of our Thought Adjuster as both a spirit fragment and Deity fragment.

Jesus’ revelation of the infinite Father is only possible through the focalizing faculty of the Mother as grasped in the deity-likeness of the Master’s life, by insight. Jesus is not to be known from his teachings, but from his life.

Jesus referred to Deity by only two names, God (personalized Deity) and Father (a facet of Deity). With the exception of his declaration God is Spirit, he only referred to Deity in terms of his personal relationship with the First Source and Center. The Creator Son is a reality predicated on Father-Son Deity but transcendent of their existential natures in terms of his experiential nature enabled through the Mother-Son’s access to the experiential domain. He regretted the circumstances which forced his hand in choosing the term “kingdom” for his bestowal.

When using the term God Jesus was designating the idea of Deity. God embodies the indefinable infinite concept of the Father. He used Father to designate the experience of knowing God as an initiator and directionizer.

Jesus never claimed to be the manifestation of the Universal Father in the flesh. Think of him as a manifestation of a facet of Deity, a reality avatar of the functioning of Deity.

While Jesus did represent himself as a son of Elohim (trinity), but limited his revelation to the character of the Father, teaching that the other persons of Elohim were “all together like the Father.”

Seeing Jesus is a revelation of Father, but the seeing is not material sight but insight in the inner life i.e. revelation of the Father to the soul. Jesus’ teachings are the guideposts of the outer life, which if followed bespeak an inner fellowship with God through the unnatural unnatural positive response to a negative stimulus of a genuine religionist (fruits of the spirit).

We know the eternal infinite God as a Father and worship him as God universes, the infinite Creator of all existences.

Notes by Brad

  • Serving Mammon in the inner life is deeply problematic.
    • Something that replaces God. Sure
    • But what about serving the ghost-cult God? Is that not equally problematic? Does that leave any room for the real God?
  • Three flavors of false gods in the upper domain in the hourglass analogy of mind:
    • Scientific dictation: atheistic false science
    • Social usage: politics as religion
    • Religious dogma: the ghost cult God
      • Remember: primitive religion had a biological origin...apart from all spiritual influences. Man creates his primitive religion out of fear and through his illusions.
  • If your concept of God is a material scheme, the real God can't really know you.
    • God is your spiritual father, not your material father. "I never knew you," would say God about you at the end of this short mortal life.
    • You love this ghost cult God, you say? But he isn't the real God, so this false love has crowded out love of the real God.


  • And so, love of mammon is problematic, but so is love of any false god (including a ghost cult god)
    • Can you aspire to grow up, to genuinely "put childish things behind you?"
    • A ghost-cult God may be a genuine, good beginning. But it isn't good for all time. It can become bad, a disruptive influence.
    • You must develop, you must progress.
      • What once served as a beginning may indeed have been good, but if you existentialize it, it becomes bad.
      • For example, can you have the courage to look at political thoughts that once served you well but now are bad?
    • Everything is evolutionary, from the cosmos, to the Earth, to you (in microcosm).
      • The cosmos is like this. It is one evolutionary system.
      • Remember, these days even our external world is rapidly changing. These days you especially not ought not think in absolutist, existential terms.


  • Being a serious student
    • Can you see a section on the kingdom of heaven and recognize the value of going back to [137:8] to see Jesus' first words on the kingdom?
    • It's no big trick. Just know the table of contents of The Urantia Book.
    • Can you aspire to study in a synthetic mode?


  • Kingdom-ness as an abstraction--can you do this?
    • A kingdom with no literal king!
    • If you cannot abstract the concept of kingdom-ness, you hardly can interpret [Paper 170] correctly.
    • Recall [137:8] where Jesus laid out his concepts of the kingdom of heaven.
    • This kingdom is established within you, by grace, by encircuitment in the Holy Spirit.
    • We are servants of mankind, not the subjects of a king.
      • Most people simply cannot think this way It is not natural.
      • But the United States was founded by people who could conceive of themselves as transcendent of being subjects of a king. Unless all other nations.
    • The kingdom of heaven (within) is a kingdom without a king
      • ...um, unless you unfortunately decide you yourself are a substitute for God. You're sovereign in there.


  • Find the Father in your inner life
    • Not in the illusions in your quests in the outer life. Inner life! Inner life!
    • "He who has seen me has seen the Father"--but not with your material eyes! This is about insight.


  • The Father is used to designate a concept we can grasp in this life: an initiating influence from outside (eternity).
    • This is something you can know: the initiating of your mind.
    • And having been initiated, I can purpose my life, can directionize it. I can know this.
    • By contrast, I cannot know the infinite attributes of God.


  • The fact of God's existence is a trivial, obvious fact to a human. That human knows there is God.
    • But to a fancy animal, it's very difficult to even believe in God.


  • Jesus talked about deity (the Father), not some reality object (the Universal Father)
    • Can you see Jesus' divinity (his deity-likeness) instead of depending on his teachings?
    • Jesus' teachings may be a good start, a foundation. But the divinity in Jesus' life is for those who seek to progress beyond childhood.


  • Jesus is a reality avatar of Father-Son type Deity.
    • And is thus transcendent of those two parts. The two parts are purely existential, yet Jesus is experiential.
    • Jesus was a revelation of the Father (Deity), not a copy of the reality object designated the Universal Father.


  • "Jesus never gave his apostles a systematic lesson concerning the personality and attributes of the Father in heaven."
    • Indeed, no. That lesson is the first 5 papers of The Urantia Book.