Episode:Last Ministry of the Master—Jesus' Final Tour (Part 5)

From Symmetry of Soul


The religion of the kingdom is personal, individual; but the fruits, the results, are familial, social. Hence, Jesus desired to substitute for the idea of the kingdom, king, and subjects, the concept of the heavenly family, the heavenly Father, and the liberated sons of God engaged in joyful and voluntary service for their fellow men and in the sublime and intelligent worship of God the Father.

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Faith, Forgiveness, Righteousness

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

Follow up discussion of the revelation’s definition of human experience took us to a consideration of a distinction between human experience (personal) founded upon Holy Spirit encircuitment and its faculties of reflection, and the lower domain sensory stimuli-response reactions typical of animals. Further, the reflective faculties required for experience to be considered human are nonetheless subject to the boundary conditions which have been absorbed from the context of our intellectual, social, political and economic environment and serve as yard sticks of compliance with the mores. SoS frequently refers to these default internalized false authorities as scientific dictation, social usage, and religious dogma which masquerade as the three cosmic intuitions of causation, duty, and worship, which themselves require purposeful cultivation to function truthfully. It is this purposeful cultivation in the form of a questioning self which is a hallmark of being human.

170:2.12 (cont.) Jesus’ Concept of the Kingdom

In place of the kingdom, king, and subjects idea of his program, Jesus favored the concepts of a heavenly family, the heavenly Father, and liberated sons of God serving their fellows and worshiping God the Father. Note the contrast between the first mile of duty is clearly transcended by the second mile of free service. Service compelled externally is replaced by inner cooperative subordination to Deity which impels joyful and loving service.

At the time of this momentous address the apostles had acquired two ideas of the kingdom, the most truthful of which was the idea of a progressing personal spiritual experience in believers’ hearts. The second was the old wineskin of a future sudden apocalyptic worldwide inauguration of God’s rule on earth. Christianity subsequently seized the latter idea and brought it forward to today. Our discussion contrasted the sudden conversion of Paul on the Damascus road with the gradual progressive faith acquirement of Jesus over his whole life as models of establishing the kingdom in the hearts of believers. The sequential stepwise evolutionary path ensures against dangerous attempts to skip over necessary phases of experience in an unwise attempt to reach unearned ends.

Jesus introduced a new version of the double nature of the kingdom. He taught in phase one the inward consecration to doing God’s will leads to spiritual fruits of enhanced ethical and moral conduct in this world. The second phase includes the ascension career of perfectingness in divine attainments on high.

Jesus emphasized that the individual enters the kingdom now! but with the faith and sincerity of a little child and the consciousness of one’s partiality in the need and desire to become like God and to find God (truth hunger).

The Master clarified the origins of sin as the product of a knowing mind dominated by an unsubmissive will. While the inner life is not to be considered in subjugation to God, we are enjoined to be in an attitude of cooperative submission to Deity. It is my will that your will be done.

By the time the John began the making of his gospel record the kingdom idea had bred so much persecution that the many substitutions for it had come into usage, but they did not endure. The kingdom idea began to change into a cult of eternal life with Christianity assuming direction and control of the earthly social and institutional features of so-called religious life.

170:3 In Relation to Righteousness

Jesus encouraged his followers to transcend duty with free service and liberty loving devotion, i.e., second mile service. As we often remark, the key to the door of the kingdom is faith, the faith of a child. And having entered the door, growing to full stature of the sons of God requires progressive steps of righteousness. These four kingdom steps of inner righteousness involve, first, receiving God’s forgiveness by forgiving your fellows. Second, this forgiveness of your fellows results from truly loving them as yourself. Third, this brotherly love is actually the highest ethics. Fourth, the resulting moral conduct, true righteousness becomes the natural result of such love. Listen to the explanation of the physics of this transmutation of absolute Fatherly love on the 6th level of meaning (LoM), downstepped into the Mother’s totality attitude, brotherly love on the 4th LoM.

The natural social service which springs from the inner realization of divine fellowship is not to be considered religion. True religion is antecedent to service (ethics). Jesus did not put ethics in the place of religion. Note the revelation’s criticism of present day Christianity being focused on social justice in place of the cultivation of the inner life, the spirit nucleus, the source of motivation for all true social service. Religion’s job is to exalt the sacredness of the individual in contrast with the community. Genuine religion is individual, personal not collective.

Thus did Jesus strike a deathblow to the old society by ushering in a new dispensation of true social righteousness. But of course this dispensation awaits realization upon the practice of these principles of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, whereupon the approaching age of improved human relations and advancing spiritual attainments may begin to be glimpsed.

Notes by Brad

  • Being truly human is about predicating the foundation of your life on the Holy Spirit and insight, not the sensory world.
    • It isn't human experience until you can truly question what is happening in the lower domain of mind via sensory inputs.
    • One must have a vantage point outsider the thing observed to observe it! The observer is not the thing observed.
    • That outside, higher vantage point must be a relatively fixed reference point.
    • Very naturally, you (or a teenage adolescent) will begin to ask questions about that lower domain of mind and all they've been told.
      • That's a child of God. A fine beginning. Not a place to stay forever.
      • Can you mature past "question everything" and "question authority" to a point where you have something more objective and better to follow, in the upper domain of mind?


  • A courageous human never stops asking questions--"an active and questioning self."
    • Don't let exhaustion overtake you. Don't submit to the established authority. Don't give up.


  • False notions of the kingdom of heaven are possibly the biggest old wineskin of them all.
    • It's exceedingly difficult to understand this, as animal-origin beings, and after all this historical baggage.


  • "Who cares if my service is compulsion or convention! At least it's service!"
    • It makes all the different. This is just being a well-programmed automaton. And a first miles.
    • You will "languish and stumble along in moral darkness."
    • You must choose. It might originate from yourself. You have absolute sovereignty in the inner life.
    • You won't really cause the ocean level to rise if you just gulp in ocean water and spit it out again.
      • That isn't true service, it's just rearranging things.
      • It's "righteousness of slavish works." As if God demands this of you.


  • So many expect the kingdom of heaven to be a fiat, sudden, spectacular arrival.
    • Be it an inner conception of it or some false outer conception of it.
    • But for the most part, "the faith of Jesus" is a slow, gradual process.
    • The universe is 300 trillion years old, give or take, after all.
    • You want to inhabit a fiat universe? Sorry! Already been done by Havona natives.


  • The italicized word now can apply to the inner life.
    • But we so often apply it to the outer life.
      • "What do we want? X! When do we want it? Now!"
      • Unless X is "sincere entrance into the kingdom," this is trouble.


  • Can you enter the kingdom humbly, not pridefully?
    • To avoid dragging false ideas into it?
    • Can you awaken to the need for spiritual progress?
    • Can you recognize you've been operating in a sphere of falsehood? In spiritual poverty?
    • Can you recognize you need truth, rather delusionally thinking you have it? That your political and religious ideas are false?
    • You must hunger for a change of mind, not an affirmation of mind.
  • It's never too late to start. But DO start. Recognize your concept of the inner life has been false.


  • Cooperative subordination is better (for us) than subjection.
    • "It IS my will that your will be done" is better (for us) than "not my will, but your will be done."
    • Jesus said the latter, but he was in a different circumstance that us.


  • Your choice to choose the kingdom of heaven can be fiat.
    • But the subsequent spiritual growth is always gradual.


  • Forgiveness is patient love.
    • Throw out all those old wineskins of the definition of it.


  • The fourth level of meaning is the level of kin-like-ness. Brotherly love.
    • It's the level where you can "love your neighbor as yourself."
    • It is the level of the highest ethics.