Rough Draft
By the end of June, A.D. 27, the tension with the Sanhedrin was enough that Jesus decided to take the crew north into Samaria. They stored their gear at Lazarus’ house in Bethany, and after a couple of days made their way to the Arimathea and Thamna, where they spent a couple of weeks teaching the Jews and Samaritans living in the area. Jesus and the twelve were well received by the people, and the apostles, with the exception of Judas Iscariot, managed to drop their prejudice against the Samaritans.
For the first half of August, the crew based their work out of two Greek cities, Archelais (ärkə’lāəs) and Phasaelis (fə’sāəlis). This was their first time preaching to groups of people that weren’t mostly Jewish. Almost everyone listening to them preach in these cities was Greek, Roman, and Syrian and this was a very different experience for the crew. They were met with new objections to their message, and found new problems in how to deliver it.
Preaching at Archelais
One evening, Philip asked a question that was typical of the problems the apostles were coming up against when preaching to the people. Philip told Jesus that the Greeks and Romans were making fun of their message, saying that it’s only fit for weaklings and slaves. He said they tell us that the heathens have a better religion because it builds strong and aggressive men. That your gospel would make all men feeble pacifists that would be wiped off the face of the Earth, even though they agreed that your teaching is the ideal way to live. So, they don’t take us seriously. They say men can’t live like you want them to, and that your gospel isn’t for this world.
Thomas, Nathaniel, Simon Zelotes, and Matthew all piped in and said they were having similar problems. How do we answer these objections to your gospel, they all wanted to know?
After listening to his apostles, Jesus said, “I’ve come to Earth to do the will of my Father, and to reveal his loving character to all mankind. That, my apostles, is my mission. And I will do this even if my teachings are misunderstood by the Jews or gentiles today, or in the future.
But don’t overlook the fact that even divine love has its restraints and requires discipline. Out of love, a father often has to restrain the foolish acts of his children even if they don’t understand the love behind his discipline. I’m telling you now, that in fact, my Father does rule a universe of universes with love.
Love is the greatest of all spirit realities. Truth liberates when it’s revealed, but love is the supreme relationship. And no matter how badly the people today screw up managing the world, in a coming age, my gospel will rule this world. The ultimate goal of human progress is to worship God as Father, and to bring forth the brotherhood of humanity on Earth.
Furthermore, who said anything about my gospel being only for slaves and weaklings? Do you, my chosen apostles, look like weaklings? Did John look like a weakling? Do you see me enslaved by fear?
It’s true that we’re preaching to the poor and the oppressed of this age, and that’s because in the past the religions of this world left them out. But my Father is no respecter of persons, regardless if they are rich or poor. Besides, it’s the poor people today who are the first one’s that are heeding our call to repent, and who are first accepting their sonship with God.
My apostles, the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached to all men, Jew and gentile, Greek and Roman, rich and poor, free and bond and equally to young and old, male and female. But just because my Father is a God of love and delights in practicing mercy, don’t fool yourselves into thinking that serving in the kingdom will be easy.
The ascent, the journey, to Paradise is the greatest, the most supreme, adventure of all time, it is the rugged achievement of eternal life. And serving the kingdom of heaven on Earth will call for all the courage that you and your coworkers can muster.
Many of you will be killed for your loyalty to this gospel of the kingdom. It’s easy to die in the line of physical battle when your courage is strengthened by the presence of your fighting comrades. But it requires a higher and deeper type of human courage and devotion to, when all alone, lay down your life for the truth enshrined in your mortal heart.
Today, the unbelievers might mock you in preaching a gospel of nonresistance and with living lives of nonviolence, but you are the first volunteers of a long line of sincere believers in the gospel of the kingdom who will astonish all mankind by their heroic devotion to these teachings.
No armies in history have ever displayed more courage and bravery than you and your loyal successors will when you go out into the world proclaiming the good news—the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.
The courage of the flesh is the lowest form of bravery. Mind bravery is a higher type of human courage, but the highest and greatest form of courage is uncompromising loyalty to profound spiritual realities. That is the type of courage behind the heroism of a God-knowing man. And you are all God-knowing men, because you are, in truth, the friends of the Son of Man.”
It was evident that Jesus felt strongly about his message that night, and this was one of the most passionate and emotional talks that he ever had with the twelve apostles.
The effect of his words was immediate. From that day on, the apostles grew in positive aggression and courageous dominance when they preached the new gospel of the kingdom. They also backed off on preaching about negative virtues and passive teachings associated with Jesus’ gospel.
The Lesson on Self-Mastery
Jesus had perfected self-control. He didn’t return insult for insult or threaten those who harmed him: instead, he simply submitted himself to God’s judgement.
At one of their evening talks, Andrew asked Jesus some questions about John’s instructions on self-denial and how those lessons were different from Jesus’s teachings of self-control. He wanted to know what they, the apostles, were supposed to do.
Jesus told them that John had taught his disciples as he had been taught. That to be righteous according to the laws of his fathers, a person had to follow a religion of self-denial and self-examination. But he, Jesus, was there to give us a new religion with a new way of life, one of self-control and self-forgetfulness: a new way of life as taught to him by his Father in heaven.
It’s the truth, Jesus said, when I tell you that a man who rules himself is greater than a person who captures a city. Self-mastery is the measure of a man’s moral nature, and it’s the indicator of his spiritual development. In the old days, you were taught to fast and pray, but those laws are now past.
Now, you are new creatures reborn of the spirit, and I’m teaching you to believe and rejoice, and how things will be made new again. And by your love for one another, you’ll show the world that you’ve passed from bondage to freedom, and from death into eternal life.
The old ways taught you to suppress, obey, and conform to certain rules to live a good life. But in the new way of life that I’m bringing, you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth.
In other words, you are first strengthened in your soul by the spiritual renewing of your mind, and this empowers you with the certainty that you will eventually, and joyfully, embrace the perfect will of God.
Jesus told them to not forget that it’s your faith in God that ensures your entrance to the kingdom. Thus, by your faith and the spirit’s transformation of your mind, you, in reality, become a temple of God because an actual entity, or spirit, of God is living in your mind.
In other words, if the spirit of God is living in you, then you are no longer slaves to the flesh but rather free and liberated sons of the spirit. My new law of the spirit empowers you with the freedom to master yourself, instead of the old laws that enslaved you in fear and self-denial.
A lot of times, when people do wrong, they blame the devil when in actuality it was just them getting led astray by their own tendencies. The Prophet Jeremiah told you a long time ago that the human heart was more deceitful than anything else, and that sometimes it’s even down-right wicked.
It’s really easy for people to deceive themselves, to become afraid of foolish things, addicted to sex and drugs, and find themselves envious, malicious, and vengeful. Entering the kingdom of heaven, being saved by God’s grace, comes from rejuvenating your spirit, not by anything that you actually do in this world. Your faith is the justification for you to receive God’s grace, not your fear or denying yourself pleasure. But, that said, God’s children are still masters of themselves and controlling their desires.
When you know that it’s your faith in God that brings you into the kingdom of God, then you have real peace with God and are blessed to eternal service with the advancing sons of God. At this point in your journey, it’s not a duty to try and perfect your mind and body to better serve God, it’s a privilege.
Your sonship is grounded in your faith, and you have no need to fear. Joy comes from trusting God’s word, and not doubting his love and mercy. It is God’s goodness that leads men to repent.
In other words, the secret to mastering yourself is linked to your faith that a spirit of God is inside of you, and that that spirit gift from God always works through love.
This is the essence of self-mastery, and the way to becoming a liberated son of God where you spontaneously show the fruits of the spirit in your daily lives. And those fruits are the essence of true mortal self-mastery.
Okay everybody, that’s it for the first part of Chapter 22, “Going into Samaria.”
Before we get into the commentary –
Folk, I’m out here in the wilderness hollering for help.
We’re doing the best we can down here, but we’re not making it.
So, if you’re getting something out of this project and haven’t already helped out, I’m asking you to do so now.
There are a couple of ways.
One, you can buy a lot of copies of Son of Man: Urantia, Vol.1, for $2.98 each. These are navigable PDF books (324 pages worth) that you can email to your friends as gifts.
Or, if you’d rather, you can donate through the PayPal donation button.
Both links are above.
Both of these ways send the money straight to me. In other words, a $20 donation this morning will put $20 of grub on the table tonight.
And that, for whatever reason, is where we’re at.
Alright.
Moving on to the Commentary.
Now we’re hearing the objections from Greeks, Romans, and Syrians against Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God. They feel that it’s only for weaklings and slaves, and it makes men pacifists who would be wiped off of the face of the Earth. They agreed that Jesus’ teachings were an ideal way of life, but said that men couldn’t live up to it, and that wasn’t meant for this world. The religions of the heathens, they said, were better because they built strong and aggressive men.
Jesus came back saying he had one job here – the will of his father, and revealing to us his love and mercy. And that he was going to do that whether or not the people then, or in the future, understood him. He went on to say that, in fact, love is the greatest spiritual power and that, in fact, God rules the kingdom of heaven with love. And that no matter how badly the people then, or in the future, messed-up in their running of the world, that eventually the Earth, also, would be ruled by love.
And that, he said, was the ultimate goal for humanity: worshiping God as father and embracing the brotherhood of humanity, which arises from the fact that we are all the family of humanity united though the spirit of the one and only God in our minds.
But he went on to say, this path wouldn’t be easy. Jesus told the apostles that following his teachings would take all of the courage they had. He said many of them would be killed, but that in their lives they would show the world more courage by remaining faithful to their devotion to God than all of the armies throughout history had shown us in physical combat.
This is where we hear the famous saying about how a man who can control himself has more power than a man who captures a city.
Jesus tied this level of courageous devotion to the personal development, or self-mastery, we need to achieve in becoming perfect with God. He taught us that self-mastery is gained through self-control and self-forgetfulness, which leads us to being a liberated son of God; not from self-denial and following rules to not do this or not do that, which keeps us slaves to the laws of the flesh.
Again, we’re being taught that everything revolves around the fact that each of us has an actual spirit of God living with us in our minds. It’s our belief in this spirit of God, which is absolute love, that first transforms us, and then it is that transformation that leads us to wantto do the will of God, rather than being in a spot where we feel we have a duty to do the will of God.
And since this spirit of God is in fact the supreme power of love, then when we are cooperating with this Thought Adjuster, are actions in turn will also be based in love. And those loving actions are what others see. Those loving actions are the fruits of the spirit spoken of, and they are how people will know that we are actually of the kingdom of God.
Understanding our relationship with our Thought Adjuster in our mind is the key to personal development, ending procrastination, and achieving our best in this first of many lives. It’s the process of moving things we feel we should be doing, into a category of stuff we not only want to do, but we strive to do.
In other words, and this comes from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s material, almost all of us have at least one thing in our lives that if we did, or didn’t do, right now today, would dramatically change our lives now and in the future.
At least for me, this comes down to something like, I know I should do that one thing whatever it is and I want to do it because I should do it but I really don’t want to do it so I don’t. At least not right now. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. And on and on.
But, the more I focus on my faith that we all have a spirit of the same God in us, that our mutual God is one of love and mercy, and that his desire is for us to serve humanity for his sake, the more I’m seeing a gradual shift in how I approach personal development.
Lying to, or fooling ourselves, or having endless debates in our minds where we go back and forth in our commitments is easy when we think that it’s just us hanging out upstairs in our mind.
But the more we realize that we aren’t alone up there, that in fact our every thought and action really is known to God because he’s sitting right there watching us, then the more we really strive to do that that brings us into perfection with our Father.
Bob