Episode:Last Ministry of the Master—Jesus' Final Tour (Part 4)

From Symmetry of Soul


At different times and in varying circumstances it appears that Jesus may have presented numerous concepts of the "kingdom" in his public teachings, but to his apostles he always taught the kingdom as embracing man’s personal experience in relation to his fellows on earth and to the Father in heaven. Concerning the kingdom, his last word always was, "The kingdom is within you."

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Kingdom of God, The Will of God, Christian Confusion

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

The post-review discussion further explored the principle embodied in the phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”; the idea that the developmental stages of an individual creature parallel the developmental stages of the collective. Originally applied to biological development and evolution, SoS extends its micro-macro application to individual mindal progress and collective social evolution. For example priestcraft is an inevitable stage of religious development on every inhabited evolutionary world regardless of historical particulars. So too does each individual experience a phase wherein he/she regards some other individual as an intermediate connection with God. Jesus himself passed through this moment in achieving his God consciousness and self-awareness. Steps in the hierarchy of growth may not be skipped without danger or disaster, a la Lucifer.

An aspect of Urantia’s emergency prompting the gift of the 5th ER consists in the abundance of nihilistic and secular influences operating to short-circuit this process.

The holistic process of progressing supremacy depends on the maturation of the parts (we creatures) ever-increasingly embodying the nature of the whole—conformity with the cosmos.

Paper 170 The Kingdom of Heaven

This paper builds on the final section of the previous paper. The term “heaven” should have been sufficient to distinguish the Master’s program from that of an earthly kingdom, but alas it was not, due to the deep-rooted idea of earthly kingdoms dominating the outer lives of the people of that day. Add to this state of affairs, the paucity of reflective thinking (hence insight) among his hearers. They were simply too dominated by subjective thinking characterized by the first and second levels of meaning to be able to engage in more sophisticated discrimination requiring the insights of the three cosmic intuitions.

Listen to the archive for the discussion of the physics of the mindal outworking of creature desires into plans of action:

  • beginning with good or bad motives,
  • moved forward through wise judgement (or not), and
  • leading to true or false intention.

Pitfalls herein give credence to the aphorism, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This exposition of the Master on the Kingdom of Heaven goes well beyond the oft’ encountered re-presentations by the midwayers in modern phraseology of particular addresses at a specific time and place in his ministry. In addition to the contents of this last of his sermons at Pella, it includes his statements from previous occasions as well as remarks made on the same evening to only the apostles. This midwayer presentation even includes their commentary on the outworking of the kingdom idea as it relates to the later Christian church.

170:1 Concepts of the Kingdom of Heaven

This summary will not attempt to distill and enumerate the diverse concepts of the kingdom presented by the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, or as these concepts were combined into their apocalyptic concept of the Messiah and his inauguration of an age of Jewish triumph, or even as the various conceptions and misconceptions which have come down to us through the intervening centuries of the Christian era.

Jesus made public reference to some of these many aspects of the kingdom in his adherence to making his bestowal evolutional. We are reminded that elsewhere in the revelation we are taught that revelation always keeps in touch with evolution and is ever limited by man’s capacity of receptivity. Jesus was therefore essentially forced to acknowledge publicly many different kingdom concepts. We note that Jesus resorted to apocalyptic writings in his self-designation as the Son of Man, found in the book of Enoch. Christian and Jewish apocalyptic authors have developed competing schemes of the so-called end times, which inhabit the confusing current day religio-philosophic thought stream. Consider Matthew chapter 24, wherein we find an apocalyptic insertion which has Jesus making utterances about such end times in connection with the kingdom.

Notwithstanding the numerous kingdom concepts Jesus presented publicly, to his apostles he always spoke of the kingdom as embracing man’s personal experience in relation to his fellows on earth and to the Father in heaven, his last word always was, “The kingdom is within you.” Note the 5th ER’s description of what is human experience as an interplay between an active and questioning self and any other active and external reality, to wit a transaction founded on the inner-life.

170:2 Jesus’ Concept of the Kingdom

For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven began with and was centered in the truth of the fatherhood of God and the correlated fact of the brotherhood of man. Listen to the discussion of the nuanced wording of the passage in the revelation for a glimpse into the depth of precision of the midwayer use of language

The midwayers enumerate seven endowments of the new life of spiritual liberty attendant upon acceptance of the above dual concept of the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. Neither the Baptist nor the apostles were able to grasp the real meaning of his teachings. New Testament distortion of the teachings e.g., Matthew 24 was colored by the belief in the Master’s imminent return even though Jesus made no such association.

His great effort in the sermon was an attempt to translate the concept of the kingdom of heaven into the ideal of the idea of doing the will of God, which we are told elsewhere in the revelation is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God.

Notes by Brad

  • It's one evolutionary system
    • Your conception of things in your mindal self is in parallel to the historical evolution of the group, throughout social evolution.
    • You cannot be magically, by fiat, evolve past all those steps.
    • Think you can skip all those things? Actually, Lucifer said that!
    • This author remembers being obsessed with ghost fear around ages 8 to 10... via popular movies like Ghostbusters and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
    • We need an external environment that can help move us through these stages. Otherwise it's a civilizational emergency.
    • The more a planet evolves, the less you have to pass through the substance of these. But you'll still pass through the 'essence of these stages.
    • You may not go through it extensively in fact, but you go through it in truth.
    • To be mature, you must go through all that which precedes being mature.
    • To be a more mature part, you must embody more of the whole.
    • Even a Creator Son cannot skip this--Michael had to do 7 bestowals to acquire experience.
  • Teamwork is only possible across people of vastly different developmental stages by grace.
    • Try building a team from people who don't believe facts exist. People who have overruled their genuine common sense reaction.
  • It's not real unless it's experienced.


  • Despite calling it a kingdom of heaven, this didn't disabuse people of the day (or even today) considering it an earthly kingdom.
    • Material inertia? Well sure.
    • But moreover, Jesus needed people to use reflective thinking. No one in his day really was doing that.
    • It was sad to record... so little reflective thinking was going on.
    • Can you do better in reading Paper 170 than Jesus apostles? Proceed carefully and reflectively.
    • Can you not just read this paper, but courageously and independently validate it using your God-given gift of encircuitment in the Holy Spirit?


  • Being a serious student
    • Noticing a reference to John the Baptist's concept of the Kingdom of God... and going back to [Paper 135] to see what John the Baptist was saying about it.


  • Jesus is being evolutionary
    • Despite all the problems with the word kingdom, all the problematic concepts of it, he used the term.
    • He would be in rebellion if he didn't engage the world evolutionarily.


  • This author can be honest and say he thinks eagerly about earthly kingdoms, too.
    • "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" is powerful imagery.
    • And yet Americans are called on to think, better than any before on Earth, "the kingdom is within."


  • What is "personal experience in relation to [one's] fellows on earth?" Is it the same as animal-origin experience?
    • No. If it involves sense organs it's not personal experience.
    • A personal experience is had by insight, not by sight.
    • The kingdom of heaven is within.
    • See [102:4], "what is human experience?"
      • The lower domain of the hourglass analogy of mind may be an active self, but it is not a questioning self.


  • The ideal of the idea is an intriguing turn of phrase.
    • Sounds like a "creature willingness" to share the inner life with God.
    • We know a lot about material ideas, but little about spiritual ideals.
    • Can you consecrate yourself to God, not to your neighbor Bob whom you're trying to impress?
    • Can you look past getting brownie points here on Earth?