Adapted from the Urantia Book original paper here
John had primed the people for the coming of a Messiah, and they were anxiously awaiting their savior when Jesus started his public work. But Jesus and John were very different in their approach. Where John was eager and earnest, Jesus was calm and happy: he was almost never in a hurry. Jesus comforted the people and was an example for them, while John was seldom comforting or an example for them to follow. John preached the kingdom of heaven, but he really didn’t embody it. In other words, joining with God is a joyful loving experience that shines forth from the people who do God’s will, yet John hardly displayed the happiness that results from entering the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said John was the greatest of the prophets of the old order, but he also said that those who entered the kingdom of heaven through the great light of the new way were themselves greater than John. John’s message was based in fear: Repent! flee from the wrath to come. When Jesus began to preach, he also said to repent, but that admonition was always followed by the gospel, the good tidings of the joy and liberty of the new kingdom.
Concepts of the Expected Messiah
In general, the Jews saw their national history as starting with Abraham, and ending sometime in the future when the Messiah comes and starts the kingdom of God on Earth. In the time of John and Jesus, the idea of the Messiah had evolved into him being the perfected Israelite: one who, as the servant of the lord, was a prophet, priest, and king all in one.
The Jews believed that like Moses, who had delivered their fathers from Egyptian bondage by using miracles, the Messiah would end the Roman era with even greater displays of power and marvels of racial triumph. The rabbis had almost five hundred passages from the Scriptures which, even though they contradicted one another, they said prophicized this coming Messiah.
The problem, though, was that the Jews were looking for their own salvation, not the world’s. They believed they were God’s chosen people, and they wanted to restore their national glory over all other nations. These weren’t spiritual concepts based in the kingdom of heaven, but rather earthly human desires arising from men’s egos and pride: Jews lost the essential understanding of the personality of the coming Messiah. There was no way Jesus could satisfy the Jew’s expectations for the Messiah because they were all materialistic in nature. Their minds were not prepared to see Jesus coming to start a new era offering mercy and salvation to all nations.
None of the Jewish ideas of the coming Messiah described him as being a union between the two natures, human and divine. He was either divine, or a perfected superhuman, but not both combined into one personality because it wasn’t until Jesus, our Creator Son made flesh among us, that this fact was first shown to humanity.
The Baptism of Jesus
When Jesus submitted himself to John for baptism, it wasn’t because he was repenting or so John could cleanse him of any sins. He was simply fitting in with the rest of the devout Jews who were mostly coming to get baptized as a “just in case” measure – as in, just in case they were wrong and had sinned without knowing it. The Jews believed that person’s sins could be passed on to their children, and that they could curse the nation. So, when John started to tell people to repent before the wrath of God, they took it seriously and got baptized even if they didn’t think they had done anything wrong.
When Jesus went down into the Jordan to be baptized, he had mastered the mortal goal of perfecting identification with his Thought Adjuster, the actual spirit entity of God inside him. He was in all ways now a perfected mortal of the evolutionary worlds of time and space. When this happens normally, our matured personality fuses with our divine Adjuster and a new eternal soul is born. But with Jesus, a new event occurred. The moment that John laid his hand on Jesus to baptize him, Jesus’ Thought Adjuster left his soul and went to Divinington returning just a few moments later as a Personalized Adjuster and chief of his kind throughout the entire local universe of Nebadon. Jesus’ Adjuster returning to his soul was the spirit apparition that Jesus, John, James, and Jude saw above Jesus’ head when he was baptized, and that said “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
After Jesus’ Personalized Adjuster had spoken, all was silent. Then Jesus, looking up to the near-by Adjuster, prayed: “My Father who reigns in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come! Your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven.”
When Jesus prayed the heavens opened, and the Son of Man saw the vision, presented by the now Personalized Adjuster, of him as a Son of God like he was before he came to Earth, and like he would be after he leaves. Of the four of them in the water, only Jesus saw this heavenly vision.
Jesus was almost thirty-one and a half years old when he was baptized. While Luke says that Jesus was baptized in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, which would be A.D. 29 since Augustus died in A.D. 14, it should be recalled that Tiberius was co-emperor with Augustus for two and a half years before the death of Augustus, having had coins struck in his honor in October, A. D. 11. The fifteenth year of his actual rule was, therefore, this very year of A.D. 26, that of Jesus’ baptism. This was also the year that Pontius Pilate began his rule as governor of Judea.
The Forty Days
When Jesus defeated the Urantia pretender, Caligastia, the former prince of our world, he, Jesus of Nazareth, became the Planetary Prince of Urantia. Because of this, he went into the hills for forty days to figure out how he was going to announce this new kingdom of God in the hearts of men. Jesus wasn’t in seclusion to fast or punish himself for some sin, and his message forever destroyed those types of ideas about pleasing God. Jesus was now fully remembered everything about his former existence as our creator before being incarnated on Earth as Joshua ben Joseph. In other words, Jesus was hanging out in the hills just because he needed time to think, mediate, and get away from people.
When Jesus reached the hills, he started looking for a place to use as a shelter and in the process ran into his universe chief executive, Gabriel, the Bright and Morning Star of Nebadon. This was their first meeting since Michael left Salvington and went to Edentia to prepare before incarnating on Earth. Gabriel, under the orders of Immanuel and on the authority of the Uversa Ancients of Days, told Jesus that his mission on Earth, at least the part where he has ended the Lucifer rebellion and earned his right to rule, was almost over. Jesus had now been informed, from the highest authority of the local and superuniverse, that his bestowal work was finished in so far as it related to his personal status. He had been assured of all of this from th Paradise Deities in the vision he saw when he was baptized.
While talking with Gabriel, the Constellation Father of Edentia appeared to them, and said:
“The records are completed. The sovereignty of Michael number 611,121 over his universe of Nebadon rests in completion at the right hand of the Universal Father. I bring to you the bestowal release of Immanuel, your sponsor-brother for the Urantia incarnation. You are at liberty now or at any subsequent time, in the manner of your own choosing, to terminate your incarnation bestowal, ascend to the right hand of your Father, receive your sovereignty, and assume your well-earned unconditional rulership of all Nebadon. I also testify to the completion of the records of the superuniverse, by authorization of the Ancients of Days, having to do with the termination of all sin-rebellion in your universe and endowing you with full and unlimited authority to deal with any and all such possible upheavals in the future. Technically, your work on Urantia and in the flesh of the mortal creature is finished. Your course from now on is a matter of your own choosing.”
When the Most High Father of Edentia had left, Jesus talked with Gabriel for a long time about the welfare of the universe. He sent greetings to Immanuel, and gave him his assurance that, in the work that he was about to undertake on Urantia, he would always keep in mind the counsel Immanuel had given him before incarnating on Earth.
Plans for Public Work
Out in the hills, Jesus made his plans. While his mission was taking place on Earth, he was doing it for all of the inhabited worlds in our universe, Nebadon. First, Jesus decided to wait until John had finished his work or was thrown in prison. Then, Jesus reviewed all of the instructions Immanuel had given him before his incarnation, especially the advice on how he interacted with the people, and that he wasn’t supposed to leave any permanent writing on the planet. Accordingly, from that point on Jesus only wrote in the sand, and the next time he was in Nazareth, he destroyed all of the writings he’d left hanging on the walls in his house and workshop. Jesus also thought a lot about Immanuel’s advice for his economic, social, and political attitude toward the world.
During these forty days, Jesus lived in an ancient rock cavern near a village sometimes called Beit Adis. He got his water from the small spring which came from the side of the hill near this rock shelter. Jesus wasn’t fasting during this forty days’ isolation. The longest time he went without food were the first two days when he was so deep in thought that he forgot all about eating. These forty days in the mountain wilderness weren’t a period of great temptation, but rather the time when the Master made his great decisions – those plans that would best serve this world, while also helping all of the other rebellion-isolated spheres in Satania.
Gabriel reminded Jesus that there were two ways he could approach the world if he decided to continue his mission. The first, was his own way. In other words, doing the most pleasant and profitable things for the immediate needs of this world. The second, was his father’s way, which was to exemplify the ideal human life as visualized by the Paradise Deities. Jesus was torn between two opposing courses of conduct. On the one hand, he entertained a strong desire for his people, and the whole world, to believe in him and to accept his new spiritual kingdom. On the other hand, he wanted to live and work in a way of which his father would approve – doing his work for all of the other worlds that are also in need, and in the process continue to reveal the Father’s divine loving character. But it was suggested to Jesus that it would make his Paradise brother, Immanuel, happy if Jesus finished his mission like he’d begun it, always subject to the Father’s will. This, Jesus vowed to do, and he was true to his resolve right up the bitter end.
Okay, folks, that’s it for Son of Man: Urantia, Chapter 15, part 1, “Baptism and the Forty Days.”
In next week’s episode we continue with Chapter 15, part 2, “Baptism and the Forty Days.”
Have a fantastic week out there.
Bob