Ch. 49, The Kingdom of Heaven
“Son of Man: Urantia,” 2nd edition
The Kingdom of Heaven
Jesus taught his last sermon at Pella on March 11th. This lesson was notable in that it was a complete discussion of the kingdom of heaven. Although the word heaven should have been enough to separate the idea from any connection to earthly kingdoms, it was not. The idea of an earthly king was too entrenched in Jewish culture for it be replaced in one generation, so at first Jesus did not oppose this long-cherished idea. This afternoon Jesus discussed the kingdom from every angle and made clear the many different ways that the term had been used. In this accounting of Jesus’ lesson we expand on what he said by adding numerous statements that Jesus had made in earlier talks, and by including some of the things he said only to the apostles during their evening discussion later this day. We also speak about the later results of the kingdom idea as it relates to the subsequent Christian church.
Concepts of the Kingdom of Heaven
In the Hebrew scriptures there were two ideas of the kingdom of heaven: as a present reality and as a future hope that comes to fullness when the Messiah appears. This is what John the Baptist taught, and from the beginning Jesus and the apostles also taught both of these ideas. Two other beliefs about the kingdom that should be borne in mind were the later Jewish idea of a global supernatural kingdom resulting from miraculous events, and the Persian beliefs of the kingdom resulting from the triumph of good over evil at the end of the world.
A short time before Jesus came to Earth the Jews had confused and combined all of these ideas into their beliefs about the end of the world—that time when all of the people worship Yahweh and when the Jews would rule during the new age of God’s supreme reign on Earth. When Jesus chose to use this idea of the kingdom of heaven he took the best of both the Jewish and Persian religions.
As it has been known throughout the Christian era, the kingdom of heaven has embraced four distinct groups of ideas: those of the Jews; those of the Persians; Jesus’ idea of personal experience—the kingdom of heaven inside of you, and then the many confused ideas that Christianity has tried to force on the world.
During his many public teachings Jesus gave the people various concepts about the kingdom, but with his apostles he always stated that the kingdom of heaven is the personal experience of knowing the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity: with them his final word was always, “The kingdom is in you.”
The meaning of the term “kingdom of heaven” has been confused for centuries because of three events: Jesus and the apostles recasting the kingdom through its progressive phases; Christianity moving from a Jewish to a gentile base, and Christianity becoming a religion organized around Jesus the man and more about him than about his life and teachings.
Jesus’ Idea of the Kingdom
Jesus was clear when he stated that the kingdom of heaven must be centered on the fact of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity. By accepting this teaching humanity would be liberated from its age-long bondage to animal fear, and at the same time be enriched with the following seven gifts of new life and spiritual liberty: first, new courage and increased spiritual power because the gospel sets people free and lets them dare to hope for eternal life; second, new confidence and true comfort for all people, even for the poor; third, a new standard, a new ethical yardstick of moral values that can be used to measure human conduct and give us the ideal for a new order of human society; fourth, understanding the superiority of the spiritual over the material by glorifying spiritual realities and uplifting superhuman ideals; fifth, a new gospel focused on spiritual progression being the true goal of living and bringing forth a new level of morality and divine dignity for humanity; sixth, the understanding that eternal realities are the result, the reward, of honorable efforts on Earth and that a person’s mortal life takes on new meaning when it is recognized as a noble destiny, and seventh, a new gospel that confirms that human salvation is knowing the divine purpose in the destiny of the salvaged sons of God.
These lofty concepts were not embraced in the simple and confused kingdom teachings of John the Baptist. But the apostles were still unable to understand all that Jesus taught. The later distortion of his teachings in the New Testament resulted from the authors believing that Jesus was only going to be gone from the Earth for a short while; that he would soon return to establish the kingdom in power and glory—the same beliefs they had before he was killed. But Jesus did not connect the establishment of the kingdom with his return to this world. That centuries have passed with no sign of the coming of the “New Age” is in no way out of harmony with Jesus’ teaching.
Jesus attempted to translate the idea of the kingdom of heaven into the ideal of doing God’s will. Jesus had taught his apostles to pray “Your kingdom come; your will be done.” Now he did what he could to get them to put away the term kingdom of God in favor of its more practical twin, the will of God, but he did not have much luck. Jesus wanted to replace the idea of king, kingdom, and subjects for the idea of heavenly Father, heavenly family, and the liberated sons of God doing joyful and voluntary service for humanity in the beautiful and intelligent worship of God the Father.
Up to this time the apostles had a dual understanding of the kingdom. First, as a personal experience in the hearts of true believers, and second, as a question of racial or world phenomena: that the kingdom was something coming in the future, something to anticipate. While they saw the coming of the kingdom in the hearts of humanity as a gradual process, like the germination of the mustard seed, they believed that in the worldly sense the coming would be both sudden and spectacular. But Jesus never tired impressing on his apostles that the kingdom of heaven was their personal experience realizing the higher qualities of spiritual living, and that these realities of spiritual experience are progressively transformed into new and higher levels of divine certainty and eternal grandeur.
During this afternoon sermon Jesus taught a distinctly new idea of the dual nature of the kingdom as the kingdom of God in this world: the supreme desire to do the will of God and the unselfish love of humanity that yields improved moral conduct, and the kingdom of God in heaven: the goal of mortal believers and the place where the love for God is perfected and where the will of God is more divinely achieved.
Jesus taught that by faith the believer enters the kingdom now, and that two things are essential to enter the kingdom. First, faith and sincerity: to come to the kingdom like an unspoiled child: to receive sonship as a gift, to be open-minded and teachable, to trust and have confidence in the Father’s wisdom, to submit to doing the Father’s will without questioning, and to come into the kingdom free from prejudice and preconceived ideas. Second, Hunger for the truth: the thirst for righteousness: acquiring the desire to find God and to be like God.
Jesus did not teach that sin is the child of a defective human nature, but rather the result of a knowing mind dominated by an un-submissive will. Regarding sin, Jesus taught that God has forgiven, but to make such forgiveness available to us we have to forgive others. When you forgive your brother you create the capacity in your own soul to receive the reality of God’s forgiveness for your own sins.
By the time the Apostle John began to write the story of Jesus’ life and teachings, the early Christians had experienced so much trouble with the idea of the kingdom of God and it had brought them so much persecution that they stopped using the term. John spoke much about the eternal life: Jesus often spoke of it as the kingdom of life. He also frequently referred to the kingdom of God in you. Jesus once spoke of such an experience as being family fellowship with God the Father. He tried to substitute many terms for the kingdom, but always without success. Among others that Jesus used were: the Father’s fold, the Father’s will, the Father’s service, the friends of God, the children of God, the family of God, the fellowship of believers, the brotherhood of humanity, the liberated sons of God, and the fellowship of the faithful.
In Relation to Righteousness
Jesus tried to impress on his followers that they must acquire a righteousness, a level of decency, that would exceed the mindless works that the scribes and Pharisees paraded around and boasted to the world. He taught that faith—the simple childlike belief in God the Father—was the key to the door of the kingdom. Jesus also taught that having once entered the door there are progressive steps of righteousness that every believing child must ascend to grow into the full stature of a robust son of God.
It is through contemplating how we receive God’s forgiveness that the way to righteousness in the kingdom is revealed. Faith is the price you pay for entrance into the family of God, but forgiveness is the act of God that accepts your faith as the price of admission. Receiving God’s forgiveness consists of realizing the four kingdom steps of inner righteousness: God’s forgiveness is available to people to the same extent that they forgive others; people will not truly forgive others unless they love them as they love themselves; to love your neighbor as yourself is the highest ethic, and moral conduct, true righteousness, is then the natural result of such love.
It is evident that the true inner religion of the kingdom increasingly tends to show itself in practical social service. Jesus taught a living religion that encouraged its believers to engage in loving service. But Jesus did not put ethics in the place of religion: he taught religion as the cause and ethics as the result.
The virtue of any act must be measured by the motive; hence, the highest forms of good are unconscious. Jesus was never concerned with morals or ethics as such. He was wholly concerned with that inward and spiritual fellowship with God that so directly shows itself as outward loving service for humanity. He taught that the religion of the kingdom is a genuine personal experience that people cannot contain in themselves; that knowing we are a member of the family of believers inevitably leads to practicing the rules of family conduct—service to one’s siblings in the effort to enhance and enlarge the brotherhood of humanity.
The religion of the kingdom is personal: individual; the fruits are social and familial. Jesus never failed to praise the sacredness of the individual as compared with the community. But he also recognized that people develop their character by unselfish service; that they unfold their moral nature in loving relationships with their friends.
By teaching that the kingdom is inside the person—by uplifting the individual—Jesus struck the deathblow to the old society by ushering in the new time of true social righteousness. This world has little known this new order of society because it has refused to practice the principles of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. When this kingdom of spiritual superiority does come to the Earth it will be shown not merely in better social and material conditions, but rather enriched spiritual values that characterize the approaching age of improved human relations and advancing spiritual attainments.
Jesus’ Teaching about the Kingdom
Jesus never gave a precise definition of the kingdom. Instead, he discussed various aspects of the brotherhood in the hearts of humanity. In the course of this Saturday afternoon’s sermon Jesus noted no less than five phases of the kingdom. First, the personal experience: the spiritual life of an individual’s fellowship with God the Father. Second, the enlarging brotherhood of believers in the gospel: the social aspects of enhanced morals resulting from the reign of God’s spirit in the hearts of believers; third, the super-mortal brotherhood of invisible spiritual beings that reigns on Earth and in heaven: the superhuman kingdom of God. Fourth, the hope of God’s will being more perfectly fulfilled: progression toward the dawn of a new social order with improved spiritual living—the next age of humanity, and fifth, the kingdom in its fullness: the future spiritual age of life and light on Earth.
We must always examine Jesus’ teaching to determine which of these five phases of the kingdom he is referring to when he uses the term. By gradually changing people’s will and thus affecting human decisions, Michael and his associates are gradually but certainly changing the entire course of human evolution—social and otherwise.
Jesus took this occasion to emphasize the following five cardinal features of the gospel of the kingdom. First, the pre-eminence of the individual. Second the will as the determining factor in a person’s experience. Third, spiritual fellowship with God the Father. Fourth, the supreme satisfaction of loving service to humanity, and fifth, the transcendency of the spiritual over the material in human personality.
This world has never sincerely tried these divine and dynamic ideals of Jesus’ doctrine of the kingdom of heaven. But you should not become discouraged by the apparently slow progress of the kingdom idea on Urantia. Remember that the order of progressive evolution is subject to sudden and unexpected periodical changes in both the material and spiritual worlds. The gift of Jesus as an incarnated Son was exactly that type of strange and unexpected event in the spiritual life of the Earth. Neither make the fatal mistake of when looking for the age of the kingdom to show itself, you fail to bring it into your own souls.
Although Jesus promised on several occasions to return to Urantia at some time, and he referred to one phase of the kingdom as coming in the future with hints that it might seem like part of a world crisis, it should be noted that he never linked these two ideas together. From all we know these promises may or may not refer to the same event. But Jesus’ apostles and disciples did link these two teachings together. When the kingdom failed to materialize as they expected, they recalled Jesus’ teaching about a future kingdom along with his promise to return. They then jumped to the conclusion that these promises referred to the same identical event, and because of that they lived in hope of his immediate second coming to establish the kingdom with power and glory. Later generations of Christians have lived with the same inspiring but disappointing hope.
Later Ideas of the Kingdom
Having summarized Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of heaven we are permitted to tell you about certain later ideas that became attached to the kingdom, and to prophesize how it may evolve in a coming age.
Throughout the first centuries of the Christian propaganda the idea of the kingdom of heaven was tremendously influenced by the then rapidly spreading thoughts of Greek idealism: the idea of the natural world being the shadow of the spiritual world, and the temporal as the time shadow of the eternal. But the critical step that moved Jesus’ teachings from the Jews to the gentiles was when the Messiah of the kingdom became the Redeemer of the church, a social and religious organization that grew out of Paul and his successor’s activities and that was based on Jesus’ teachings as they were added to by the ideas of Philo and the Persian doctrines of good and evil.
The ideas and ideals of Jesus embodied in the teaching of the gospel of the kingdom nearly failed to be realized as his followers progressively distorted what he had said. Jesus’ idea of the kingdom was modified by two major tendencies. First, the Jewish believers persisted in regarding him as the Messiah. They believed that Jesus would soon return to establish the world-wide and more-or-less material kingdom, and second, the gentile Christians accepted Paul’s doctrines that Jesus was the Redeemer of the children of the church, the new and institutional successor of the earlier idea of the purely spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom.
The church as a social outgrowth of the kingdom would have been wholly natural and even desirable. The evil of the church was not its existence, but rather that it almost completely replaced Jesus’ concept of the kingdom: Paul’s institutionalized church became a virtual substitute for the kingdom of heaven that Jesus had announced.
But doubt not! This same kingdom of heaven that Jesus taught exists in the hearts of believers and will be announced yet to this Christian church; even to all other nations, cultures, religions, and every individual.
The kingdom of Jesus’ teaching—the spiritual ideal of individual righteousness and the idea of humanity’s divine fellowship with God—became gradually submerged into the mystic conception of Jesus as the Creator-Redeemer and spiritual head of a socialized religious community. A formal church became the substitute for the individually spirit-led brotherhood of the kingdom.
The church was an inevitable, and useful, social result of Jesus’ life and teachings. The tragedy was that this social reaction to the teachings of the kingdom so fully replaced the spiritual concept of the real kingdom as Jesus taught and lived it.
To the Jews the kingdom was the Israelite community; to the gentiles it became the Christian church. To Jesus, the kingdom was the sum of those individuals who had confessed their faith in the fatherhood of God and thereby declared their wholehearted dedication to the will of God, thus becoming members of the spiritual brotherhood of humanity. Jesus realized that certain social results would appear in the world as a result of the spread of the gospel. But he intended that all such desirable social changes should appear as unconscious and inevitable outgrowths of this inner personal experience of individual believers, this purely spiritual fellowship and communion with the divine spirit that indwells and activates all such people.
Jesus expected that a social organization would follow the progress of the true spiritual kingdom, and that is why he never objected to the apostles practicing John’s rite of baptism. He taught that the truth-loving soul—the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, for God—is admitted by faith into the spiritual kingdom, while at the same time the apostles taught that such a believer is admitted to the social organization of disciples by the outward rite of baptism.
The apostles recognized their failure to manifest Jesus’ ideal as an actual spiritual reality that was right then in people’s hearts and that showed itself through the spirit’s guidance in their lives. In an attempt to save Jesus’ teachings they substituted them for a visible social organization. But to maintain consistency and to recognize the Master’s teaching about the fact of the kingdom, they had to set its actual arrival off until the future. Just as soon as the church was well established the new leaders taught that the kingdom was going to appear at the culmination of the Christian age—specifically, at the second coming of Christ—instead of being present right then in the hearts of humanity.
The kingdom of heaven became the concept of an age, the belief of a future visitation, and the ideal of the final redemption of the saints of the Most High. The early Christians, and all too many of the later ones, generally lost sight of the Father-son idea embodied in Jesus’ teaching of the kingdom, while they substituted it with the well-organized social fellowship of the church. The church became more of a social brotherhood, and replaced Jesus’ ideal of a spiritual brotherhood.
Jesus’ ideal largely failed. But on the foundation of the Master’s life and teachings, supplemented with Greek and Persian concepts of eternal life and enhanced by Philo’s doctrine of the temporal compared with the spiritual, Paul went forth to build one of the most progressive human societies that has ever existed on Earth.
The idea of Jesus is still alive in the advanced religions of the world. Paul’s Christian church is the humanized and socialized shadow of what Jesus intended the kingdom to be, and what it most certainly will yet become. Paul and others transferred the issues of eternal life from the individual to the church. Christ thus became the head of the church, rather than each person’s older brother in the Father’s family. The person’s relationship with Jesus was changed into membership in the church, and by doing so they destroyed Jesus’ main idea of the divine kingdom being in people’s hearts. In a short time the teaching of this story about Jesus nearly replaced the preaching of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom: the blend of humanity’s highest moral and spiritual ideas encompassed in people’s most inspiring hope for the future: eternal life. That was the gospel of the kingdom.
For centuries the Christian church has worked under enormous embarrassment because it dared to claim those mysterious powers and privileges of the kingdom, powers and privileges that can be exercised and experienced only between Jesus and his spiritual siblings. It is apparent that membership in the church does not necessarily mean fellowship in the kingdom: one is spiritual, the other mainly social. Sooner or later a greater John the Baptist will appear announcing the kingdom of God is at hand, meaning a return to the high spiritual concept of the kingdom being the will of the heavenly Father dominating and transcending the believer’s heart. This person will do this without in any way referring either to the visible church on Earth, or to Jesus’ anticipated second coming. There must come a revival of Jesus’ actual teachings that does away with the socio-philosophical belief system based on the fact of Michael’s stay on Earth.
Jesus’ gospel became so multi-faceted that in a few centuries students studying his teachings broke into many sects. This deplorable breaking up of Christian believers resulted from them failing to see in Jesus’ teachings the divine oneness of his perfect life. But someday those who believe Jesus’ teachings will not be spiritually divided before the unbelievers. We can always have diversity of understanding, intellectual interpretation, and even varying degrees of socialization but a lack of spiritual siblinghood is both inexcusable and reprehensible.
Mistake not! There is in Jesus’ teachings an eternal nature that will not permit them to forever remain unfruitful in thinking people’s hearts. The kingdom as Jesus imagined has to a large extent failed on Earth; for the time being an outward church has taken its place. Understand that this church is only the larval stage of the frustrated spiritual kingdom: it has become the cocoon where Jesus’ ideas now rest. The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still alive, and it will eventually break free from being hidden so long just like the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful metamorphosis of its less attractive stages of development.