© 2002 Ronald Besser
© 2002 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| In Search of the Error So Great | Volume 4, Number 1, 2002 (Summer) — Index | Not what we give...but what we share... |
More than one student of The Urantia Book has wondered if the miracles performed by Jesus contravene his own post-baptismal decisions which purposed not to use superhuman powers in completing his lifework on Urantia. Trying to fathom the Father’s will or the Creator Son’s actions on any level is a weighty process, for it attempts to understand divine minds, Deity personality, spiritual power, and what motivates Deity actions and reactions to circumstances.
In trying to solve the seeming paradox between Jesus’ miracles and the Father’s will, we might ask ourselves the following questions: (1) Were Jesus’ six great decisions UB 136:5-10 a list of actions the Father just concurred with, or were they actions of the divine will, which were supposed to be implemented? (2) Are we defining the Father’s will so narrowly that we misconstrue the far greater insight of the Father?
I believe Jesus’ post-baptismal decisions were completely in line with the Father’s will. I also think we must expand the horizon of our assumptions about the Father’s will. I will answer these questions more fully later, but first, let’s review the midwayere biography of Jesus for in-person observations of these events.
Remember, the midwayer record is ours, but their reference material is not. We have no way to judge how well they synthesized the information they had at hand. But they did have one unimpeachable source no written record can duplicate—their own observations as these events took place. They were eyewitnesses.
“What a Creator Son desires and his Father wills IS. UB 145:3.11 Below is the same statement in full context, which is preceded by the eyewitness midwayer’s comment: “Evidently the Father’s will interposed no objection, for the words of the Master has scarcely been uttered…” (when the celestial personalities began healing the assembled throng).UB 145:3.10
Then:
But of all the beings who were astonished at this sudden and unexpected outbreak of supernatural healing, Jesus was the most surprised. In a moment when his human interests and sympathies were focused upon the scene of suffering and affliction there spread out before him, he neglected to bear in his human mind the admonitory warnings of his Personalized Adjuster regarding the impossibility of limiting the time element of the creator trrerogatives of a Creator Son under certain conditions and in certain circumstances. Jesus desired to see these suf feting mortar made whole if his Father’s will wouk1 not thereby be violated. The Personalized Adjuster of Jesus instantly ruled that such an act of creative energy at that time would not transgress the will of the Paradise Father, and by such a decision—in view of Jesus’ preceding expression of healing desire—the creative act was. What a Creator Son desires and his Father wills IS. Not in all of Jesus’ subsequent earth life did another such en masse physical healing of mortals take place. UB 145:3.11
This miracle is a paradox to the human audience. To unravel some of its internal contradictions, let us examine what the revelation may say about the laws of Deity actions.
First, we are taught that ail things done by God are accomplished in the best way possible and done with somewhat predictable behavior on the part of the Deities. We are also taught that the best way to do something by God may at any time be changed to another way if the circumstance requires it; that God is not a slave to his own process.
This qualification—that the usual action of the divine will has elevated to a superior, alternative action—should alert us to the possibility that we are observing an unexpected reality moment in what otherwise may appear to us as a straightforward cause and effect phenomenon. The midwayers tell us that there was no contravention of Father-will by the miraculous works. Therefore, the healing must he the result of a higher law than the injunction against miracles actually represents. Apparently, we have to know the Deities better to be able to predict how and what they do. We may not be including all the information that we need in order to calculate what will happen.
Secondly, the miracle demonstrates that Jesus was doing nothing more than continuing to use his human mind and subjecting his will to the Father’s will, just as he did through the remainder of his life on Urantia, tip to and including his own death. Jesus felt, thought, and prayed as a mortal during the “healing at sundown,” bowing to the sovereign will of his Paradise Father, just as he always did even to the last days in the flesh.
Remember that this event occurs during the second part of Michael’s bestowal mission on Urantia. Upon his baptism, the first phase of the bestowal was completed. He had successfully led the life of a mortal subject to the Father’s will. The Adjuster detached, to return moments later as a Personalized Adjuster, saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
Now, part two of the bestowal mission is beginning to unfold; therefore, it has elements of mystery for the assembled celestial personalities, the midwayers, and even for Jesus himself. From the perspective of the human Jesus, details regarding the future—even the end of his own bestowal—were not yet evident. However, Jesus did know of the details of his death some time before Gethsemane.
Jesus had decided to use the mortal mind for those decisions concerning his own behavior during the second phase of his bestowal. He could have communicated with Gabriel and other universe personalities if he had wished, but with the Father’s request that he finish the bestowal through the intelligence of the flesh, Michael made no attempt to circumvent the normal insights of his mortal mind. Thus, in this episode of the healing of 683 afflicted mortals, Jesus willingly subjected himself to the same restriction—using the human mind—which eventually led to the tragic ending of his own life.
In discussing the closing hours of Jesus’ life in the flesh, as pertaining to the Father’s will, an eyewitness statement flows from the midwayer’s pen, “The cruel treatment of Jesus . . . must not be confused with the fact that Jesus, in patiently submitting to all this . . . was truly doing the will of the Father in Paradise.” UB 183:1.1 How does the author support his reasons for this statement?
Summarizing, the midwayer says: (1) The Father willed that Jesus should drink the full cup of mortal experience—birth to death; (2) The Father willed that Jesus finish his bestowal naturally; (3) The Father willed no special dispensation to treat the life of Jesus differently from that of a normal mortal’s life, with the attendant human difficulties, which are specific to each of us. UB 183:1.1-2
Had Jesus been in error in his actions relative to his post baptismal plans, he would have subverted the three basic tenets operating as the Father’s will listed above. He need nor have submitted to this death nor put up with the sham trial preceding it if he would have broken faith with the rightness of his own plans of action concerning his proscriptions against miracle making.
Third, and the crux of the matter, is that Jesus technically would not have needed to continue the bestowal after the Thought Adjuster detached in order to achieve the rulership of Nebadon in his own right UB 136:3.5 Jesus completed the requirements to exhaust the possibilities of human potential as Joshua ben Joseph, but to claim the role of Supreme Ruler of Nebadon he had to conclude the bestowal in cooperation with the sevenfold associated wills of the three Paradise Deities, as expressed in the Supreme.
. . . [H]e had embarked upon a program of the revelation of the Supreme which involved co-operative functioning with the diverse wills of the Paradise Deities. Thus his sovereignty, when finally and personally acquired, would actually be all inclusive of the sevenfold will of Deity as it culminates in the Supreme. UB 120:0.7
Forget not that the expression of the Father-Son union is the creative union of Deity that makes possible the deified time-space creation. This is one of the most important parts of Michael’s bestowal background. While Michael incarnated subject to the Father’s will, he is also the Son of the same Father-Son union by whose creativity came the fountainhead of power to produce untold numbers of celestial and mortal beings in Nebadon, via Michael’s expression. It was the Father’s will operating in Jesus’ life on the soil of Israel. However, the antecedent creativity for beings, healing, life creation, and recreation is associated directly in Michael through these ancestral Deity unions. This is a part of the cooperation of the associated Deity wills that comes forward and is operative within Michael as he was expressing Supremacy and his Creator desires on Urantia.
The Urantia Book teaches that the seven wills of Deity are coordinated for Supremacy through the Paradise Trinity and most probably executed by the Infinite Spirit (until God the Supreme assumes this function). As the Father’s will is the coordinating influence on Paradise, so is it also in the time-space manifestation of the various Deity wills. As an example of Deity cooperation, Lazarus could not have risen to new life without the full coordination and cooperation of the Paradise Trinity, whose primal member, the Father, is also the singular will that Jesus was living in his life on Urantia.
The Father is never divided in his attitudes whether he acts for himself or within the Paradise Trinity. He remains consistent in whatever group, mind, or individual action he is involved with. The Father would not frown on Jesus’ miracles in one instance because of Jesus’ personal decisions not to perform them, and in the next moment, cooperate with the Trinity to let them pass. He is not thus changeable.
So why wasn’t it against the Father’s will for Jesus to perform such miracles? I think it becomes obvious that the Father’s will is universal and consistent for all the operations of an all-but-infinite creation. What we think should not be permissible in the eyes of our divine Parent may run counter to what the Father will allow. Yes, it would be an error if Jesus had just been showing off, but this was not the case. The context for each of Jesus’ miracles was grounded in compassion and/or his sincere desire to aid or teach the most important lessons possible.
Realize this: No miracle of healing or physical manifestation in the universe is possible without the cooperation of the Supreme Deity functions and its Trinity antecedents in the universe, of which the Father is the First Source. The feeding of the five thousand, turning water into wine, the en mass public healing—all of these miracles flowed naturally through Michael as ancestral cause by virtue of his simultaneous existence as a Paradise Creator Son.
Think about the goals of Michael’s bestowals as being more than winning the sovereignty of Nebadon. His aim was also to synthesize, through bestowals, the creative sevenfold expression of Supreme Deity as it originally was expressed in the infinite original patterns of the I AM—that very same absolute and infinite Father as heir to I AM whose will Jesus learned to do. Michael, by these actions, thereby put into place those Supreme foundations we use to ascend through Nebadon.
Nebadon is not complete without these Supreme foundations for maturing the light and life future for Urantia, and even for planets yet unformed, to achieve a spiritual golden age. The behavior of Jesus, whether the miracles were unconscious or planned by him, relates directly back to the multiple purposes he was seeking to fulfill. They were almost bigger than he was or more than he could control, in their rightness of action, when once the proper elements were in place.
Consciousness of the Supreme includes God consciousness of the diverse wills of original Deity. Jesus is the only individual to have lived on Urantia who took all these wills into account; his actions and behavior included and demonstrated this sevenfold manifest expression of the Paradise Trinity.
However he managed it, and in spite of appearances, Jesus committed no errors—he lived his life on behalf of the Father’s will. The fact that these miracles happened, that Michael achieved full sovereignty of Nebadon, and that he ascended to Paradise to receive the Father’s approval of the bestowal, demonstrates there was no contravention of the Father’s will during Michael’s short and eventful life on Urantia.
Ron Besser, a student of The Urantia Book for over 23 years, recently retired from the engineering business and plans to devote more time to projects associated with the revelation’s dissemination.
| In Search of the Error So Great | Volume 4, Number 1, 2002 (Summer) — Index | Not what we give...but what we share... |