© 2016 Mark Kurtz
© 2016 International Urantia Association (IUA)
| How to Participate in Jesus’ Gospel Movement | Journal — November 2016 — Index | Reporting Conference Experiences |
Used for the Alabama Urantia Online Study Group; January 10, 2016
The Urantia Book informs us that man is a Paradise origin idea.
“Let us make mortal man in our image,” [UB 6:5.7]
is attributed to the First and Second Sources. Condescension details for man were formulated.
The Father and the Eternal Son created the first down step with the original Michael Creator Son. The original Michael participates in creating more Michael Sons including Michael of Nebadon. Michael partnered with a Paradise daughter of the Infinite Spirit and they fully cooperated in their “man plan” while creating a local universe. They completed architectural spheres and then made ready to create man, perhaps according to a flexible “Trinity Master Man Plan.” Life Carriers implanted life, which eventually resulted in human beings. The Father’s Paradise Plan was advancing on Urantia.
The Paradise Father set a vital requirement for Michael to live as His created sons. This requirement included human life experience. Gabriel headed the Salvington commission tasked to find suitable parents to establish a suitable home. Consider the high probability the Father and Paradise Sons are aware of all human genetic history. Gabriel surely had vetted all genetic links. He then selected Joseph and Mary to be the parental couple. We may assume his decision was based on the then best available physical and temperamental features.
Urantia Book students are aware of Urantia planetary history, which includes many difficulties. Peter set new difficulties in motion during his Pentecost sermon and others concentrated on a new doctrine featuring the Risen Lord. Jesus’ humanity was mostly put aside. Until now, Urantians have been mostly unaware of Jesus’ detailed heroic, brave, and courageous human life. He lived a marvelous model of and for man.
The Midwayers urge us in Paper 196 to recover the human Jesus from nineteen centuries of dogma. They want us to present him to all Urantians!
What do you guess could be their basis for urging us to look at the human Jesus?
Imagine the extensive down reach connectivity and profundity between the original Paradise Man Plan and Jesus’ life? Could we now more clearly see the divine quality the Father and Eternal Son ultimately expect to reveal for mortals throughout all creation?
You are invited to share the Jesus friend to all as you are led.
¶ The Human Jesus; Inheriting and Earning Master Teacher Qualities
(Workshop at the Joint Conference of Urantia Association of the United States (UAUS) and The Urantia Book Fellowship)
What could be learned from a thorough search of The Urantia Book to aid our understanding of why Jesus became a Master Teacher? A personal search for satisfaction is recommended! Could we benefit from learning how he taught?
Three major contributing factors influencing his preparation for teaching are highlighted in my PowerPoint-speech of the same title:
- Paradise endowment;
- Genetic foundation; and
- His personal efforts to study and learn mankind, including our religious and secular history.
These three factors may be more thoroughly researched in the book for a personal confirmation according to your understanding. I recommend such a study.
Focusing on the human Jesus is needed for many reasons including superb guidance for improved worldwide civil and social human relations. There is enduring spiritual improvement for each person to choose faith in the Father as he demonstrated. Details from his life substantiate the fact he lived with the then governments in authority and did not clash with them unless they interfered with or pretended to displace the Father’s spiritual authority. With this in mind, here are questions for consideration:
- What could be personal advantages and benefits from learning Jesus’ human qualities?
- What does it mean to follow Jesus? Give this careful and prayerful thought.
“To “follow Jesus” means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master’s life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it.” UB 196:1.3 emphasis added
- What could be Michael’s (Jesus’) plans for upgrading Urantian human relationships?
Addressing these questions a person may call upon him in prayer and trust his Spirit of Truth. Let the Father lead with his will in your life.
Join with others of your choosing to discuss the questions and others you may have while considering the magnanimous human model Jesus gifted to Urantians.
¶ A Partial Listing of a Word Search on “Human Jesus”:
More clearly John recognized that, notwithstanding all of his divine endowments, after all, he was human. Jesus lived as a man among men and understood, loved, and knew how to manage men. In his personal life he was so human, and yet so faultless. And he was always unselfish. [141:7.14] emphasis added
The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the “will of the Father in heaven.” Jesus’ God was at one and the same time “The Holy One of Israel” and “The living and loving Father in heaven.” The concept of God as a Father was not original with Jesus, but he exalted and elevated the idea into a sublime experience by achieving a new revelation of God and by proclaiming that every mortal creature is a child of this Father of love, a son of God. UB 196:0.2 emphasis added
Jesus’ devotion to the Father’s will and the service of man was even more than mortal decision and human determination; it was a wholehearted consecration of himself to such an unreserved bestowal of love. No matter how great the fact of the sovereignty of Michael, you must not take the human Jesus away from men. The Master has ascended on high as a man, as well as God; he belongs to men; men belong to him. How unfortunate that religion itself should be so misinterpreted as to take the human Jesus away from struggling mortals! Let not the discussions of the humanity or the divinity of the Christ obscure the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God; he was the most truly religious man who has ever lived on Urantia. UB 196:1.1 emphasis added
The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth must not be longer sacrificed to even the splendid concept of the glorified Christ. What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! Surely the Christian fellowship of believers will not hesitate to make such adjustments of faith and of practices of living as will enable it to “follow after” the Master in the demonstration of his real life of religious devotion to the doing of his Father’s will and of consecration to the unselfish service of man. Do professed Christians fear the exposure of a self-sufficient and unconsecrated fellowship of social respectability and selfish economic maladjustment? Does institutional Christianity fear the possible jeopardy, or even the overthrow, of traditional ecclesiastical authority if the Jesus of Galilee is reinstated in the minds and souls of mortal men as the ideal of personal religious living? Indeed, the social readjustments, the economic transformations, the moral rejuvenations, and the religious revisions of Christian civilization would be drastic and revolutionary if the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the theologic religion about Jesus. UB 196:1.2 emphasis added
Jesus’ life in the flesh portrays a transcendent religious growth from the early ideas of primitive awe and human reverence up through years of personal spiritual communion until he finally arrived at that advanced and exalted status of the consciousness of his oneness with the Father. And thus, in one short life, did Jesus traverse that experience of religious spiritual progression which man begins on earth and ordinarily achieves only at the conclusion of his long sojourn in the spirit training schools of the successive levels of the pre-Paradise career. Jesus progressed from a purely human consciousness of the faith certainties of personal religious experience to the sublime spiritual heights of the positive realization of his divine nature and to the consciousness of his close association with the Universal Father in the management of a universe. He progressed from the humble status of mortal dependence, which prompted him spontaneously to say to the one who called him Good Teacher, “Why do you call me good? None is good but God,” to that sublime consciousness of achieved divinity which led him to exclaim, “Which one of you convicts me of sin?” And this progressing ascent from the human to the divine was an exclusively mortal achievement. And when he had thus attained divinity, he was still the same human Jesus the Son of Man as well as the Son of God. UB 196:2.2 emphasis added
But the greatest mistake was made in that, while the human Jesus was recognized as having a religion, the divine Jesus (Christ) almost overnight became a religion. Paul’s Christianity made sure of the adoration of the divine Christ, but it almost wholly lost sight of the struggling and valiant human Jesus of Galilee, who, by the valor of his personal religious faith and the heroism of his indwelling Adjuster, ascended from the lowly levels of humanity to become one with divinity, thus becoming the new and living way whereby all mortals may so ascend from humanity to divinity. Mortals in all stages of spirituality and on all worlds may find in the personal life of Jesus that which will strengthen and inspire them as they progress from the lowest spirit levels up to the highest divine values, from the beginning to the end of all personal religious experience. UB 196:2.4 emphasis added
Note that the Midwayer Commission in Part IV infers changes in personal religion to affect Jesus’ teachings in our lives. It is his personal religion we are to discover and to perpetuate personally and socially.
A thorough reading of Paper 194, Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth is suggested. Particularly take note of Section 3 What Happened at Pentecost, paragraph 12:
Pentecost endowed mortal man with the power to forgive personal injuries, to keep sweet in the midst of the gravest injustice, to remain unmoved in the face of appalling danger, and to challenge the evils of hate and anger by the fearless acts of love and forbearance. Urantia has passed through the ravages of great and destructive wars in its history. All participants in these terrible struggles met with defeat. There was but one victor; there was only one who came out of these embittered struggles with an enhanced reputation — that was Jesus of Nazareth and his gospel of overcoming evil with good. The secret of a better civilization is bound up in the Master’s teachings of the brotherhood of man, the good will of love and mutual trust. UB 194:3.12 emphasis added
This last sentence is a huge clue of why Jesus remained on earth to teach and lead and why his religion is for all humankind. He knew there was (currently is) a long-range plan to upgrade mortals to high spiritual awareness and life quality. There is more to learn.
The Master needs people to upgrade civil quality throughout the world. Everywhere we turn we see suffering from human behavior not in harmony with Jesus life example. The list is long: wars, stealing, deception, power greed, wife beatings, prostitution, child abuse, profound hunger, deep poverty, turf wars, bad behavior on campuses, in government and highway driving. Our world needs each of us to promote and demonstrate bravery for Jesus’ teachings and his exemplary social model. Only his plans for this planet will prevail, as we know he is loyal to the Paradise Father’s larger plans for Creation,
Living as though we want to follow him may not be easy, but knowing he lived a model human life showing we can endure is a charm of encouragement for each of us. Let us try our best to attract people to his ways.
The Master’s tenth appearance was at Philadelphia:
“Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Father in heaven, and that there is but one gospel of the kingdom — the good news of the gift of eternal life which men receive by faith. As you rejoice in your loyalty to the gospel, pray the Father of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and greater love for your brethren. You are to love all men as I have loved you; you are to serve all men as I have served you. With understanding sympathy and brotherly affection, fellowship all your brethren who are dedicated to the proclamation of the good news, whether they be Jew or gentile, Greek or Roman, Persian or Ethiopian. John proclaimed the kingdom in advance; you have preached the gospel in power; the Greeks already teach the good news; and I am soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my brethren, who have so unselfishly dedicated their lives to the enlightenment of their fellows who sit in spiritual darkness. You are all the children of light; therefore stumble not into the misunderstanding entanglements of mortal suspicion and human intolerance. If you are ennobled, by the grace of faith, to love unbelievers, should you not also equally love those who are your fellow believers in the far-spreading household of faith? Remember, as you love one another, all men will know that you are my disciples.” UB 191:4.3 emphasis added
¶ References
| How to Participate in Jesus’ Gospel Movement | Journal — November 2016 — Index | Reporting Conference Experiences |