Rough draft: Original version, here.
Throughout the month of April, Jesus and the apostles spent their nights in Bethany and went into Jerusalem during the day to teach and preach. A couple of nights each week, Jesus would stay over in Jerusalem with a friend named Flavius. This man was a Greek Jew, and many other prominent Jews would come in secret to his house at night to meet and talk with Jesus.
The first day they were all in Jerusalem, Jesus visited his old friend, Annas. This was the relative of Salome (sa’lōmē), Zebedee’s wife, who at one time had been the high priest of Jerusalem. But over the years, Annas had become concerned hearing about Jesus and his teachings, and he was pretty reserved when Jesus showed up at his house to visit. Jesus, of course, immediately sensed this coolness and he decided to leave. But before doing so, he looked at Annas and then told him that fear is man’s primary enslaver, and that pride is his greatest weakness. He then asked Annas if he really wanted to enslave himself to these to destroyers of joy and liberty. But Annas kept silent, and made no reply. So, Jesus left, and he didn’t see him again until the trial when Annas sat with his son-in-law judging the Son of Man.
Teaching in the Temple
Every day, either Jesus or one of the apostles would teach in the temple, and when there were too many people to fit inside the building, they’d set up teaching camps outside.
Their message was simple:
1. The kingdom of heaven is here.
2. Having faith in the fatherhood of God makes you sons of God, and you can then enter the kingdom.
3. The rule for living in the kingdom is complete devotion to God, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
The people were taught that by choosing God’s will they would demonstrate the joys of the Spirit in their lives, and that was the law of the kingdom of heaven.
The large throngs of people who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover were thrilled to hear Jesus’s message.
But the priests and rulers of the Jews were concerned about all the commotion, and they started having talks about how to handle Jesus and his apostles.
This month of teaching to people who had come together from distant lands to celebrate the Passover, was the beginning of the gospel being spread to the outside world as these people took Jesus’ message back to their homes.
God’s Wrath
One of the men attending the Passover was a wealthy Jewish trader from Crete named Jacob. He was confused about some of Jesus’ gospel, and wanted to chat with him. Andrew, in turn, set up a secret meeting with Jesus at Flavius’ house.
When they got together, Jacob started the conversation and said,
“But, rabbi, Moses and the prophets tell us that Yahweh (‘yäwe) is a jealous God, a God of great wrath and fierce anger. The prophets say he hates evildoers and takes vengeance on those who don’t obey his law.
But you and your disciples teach us that God is a kind and compassionate Father who loves everyone so much that he would welcome them into this new kingdom of heaven, which you tell us is so near at hand.”
When Jesus heard this, he told Jacob that he was correct. That that was what the old prophets had taught the people because that was all that they knew about God back then.
Jesus went on, and told Jacob that God, our Father in Paradise, is changeless.
But, our understanding of God changes, and it grew from Moses’ time to that of the prophet Isaiah.
And now, he, Jesus, had come in the flesh to teach people even more, to reveal God the Father in new glory and to show his love and mercy to all men on all worlds.
As the gospel of this kingdom spreads over the world with its message of good will for all men, relations among nations will improve. With time, fathers and their children will love each other more, and thus we’ll better understand the love our Father in heaven has for us.
Jesus told Jacob to remember that a good father not only loves his family as a whole, but he also loves and cares for each person in that family, and without favor.
After Jesus and Jacob had talked for quite a while, Jesus said, “You, Jacob, being a father of many children, know my words are true.”
This set Jacob back, and he asked Jesus who had told him that he was the father of six kids?
To that, Jesus just said it’s enough to know that the Father and the Son see and know all things.
He went on and told Jacob that since he had the experience of loving each of his kids as a mortal father on Earth, he now had to accept the reality of the heavenly Father loving him, not just the family of Abraham, but him, Jacob, the individual and eternal soul.
Furthermore, Jesus explained that when your children are young and you scold them for doing something wrong, they might think that you’re angry and that you’re going to hold what they did against them. They think that because they’re kids, because they’re immature. But when they grow up, it would be crazy for them to still believe that way. Instead, they know that in the past you were guiding them out of love.
It’s the same with humanity, Jesus said. Over the centuries, we’re expected to mature as a race and better understand our relationship with our Father in heaven. We gain nothing from holding on to the old ideas of God that Moses and the prophets taught. Jesus told Jacob that in light of this new knowledge of God, he, Jacob, should be seeing God differently than any of the prophets did in the past. And, that he should rejoice in entering the kingdom and allow God’s love to dominate his life forever.
To this, Jacob answered, saying that he believed and that he wanted Jesus to lead him into the kingdom of heaven.
The Concept of God
Most of the apostles had listened in on Jesus’ talk with Jacob about God, and afterwards they had a lot of questions.
To start with, Jesus scolded them a bit, and he asked them why they didn’t already know the Jewish traditions of Yahweh’s evolution and the old scriptures on God’s doctrine?
He then taught them the past phases in the growth of the Jewish understanding of God.
First, there was the idea Yahweh. This was the primitive god of the Sinai clans. Moses elevated Yahweh to the higher level of Lord God of Israel. Jesus told them that God the Father always accepts the sincere worship of his mortal children, no matter how crude that religion may be or by what name they call him.
Second, was the The Most High. This was the enlarged idea of Deity that Melchizedek (mel’kizədek) gave to Abraham, and that was carried far and wide from Salem. Abraham and his brother had left Ur because there they worshiped the sun, and instead they became believers in Melchizedek’s teaching of El Elyon (‘el el’yȯn)—the Most High God. This was a patched together idea of God that blended older Mesopotamian ideas with Melchizedek’s doctrine of the Most High.
Third came El Shaddai (‘el ‘shädī). This was the Egyptian idea of the God of heaven that the Jews learned about during their captivity in the land of the Nile. Long after Melchizedek, these three concepts of God joined together to form the doctrine of the creator Deity, the Lord God of Israel.
Fourth, was Elohim (elō’hēm). The teachings about the Paradise Trinity have been around since the times of Adam. Jesus asked his apostles to remember that the scriptures begin with, “In the beginning the Gods created the heavens and the earth” He said this indicates that when that was written, the Trinity concept of three Gods in one was already part of the religion of their ancestors.
Fifth, The Supreme Yahweh. By the times of Isaiah, the Jewish beliefs about God had expanded to that of a Universal Creator who was simultaneously all-powerful and all-merciful. This more evolved idea of God replaced all previous beliefs.
And sixth, The Father in heaven. Now, Jesus said, we know God as our Father in heaven. This new teaching provides a religion wherein the believer is a son of God, and that is the good news of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven.
Existing along with the Father are the Son and the Spirit. And the revelation of the nature and ministry of these Paradise Deities will continue to enlarge and brighten though out time.
At all times and during all ages, the true worship of any human being relates to the degree of honor that person gives to the Father in heaven.
Hearing this recounting of the Jewish concept of God shocked the apostles like never before. They were too bewildered to even ask questions.
As they sat quietly in front of Jesus, he continued,
“And you would have known these truths if you had read the scriptures. Did you read in Samuel where it says, ‘And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, so much so that he moved David against them, saying, go number Israel and Judah’?
And this wasn’t wrong because in the days of Samuel the children of Abraham really believed that Yahweh created both good and evil.
But then when a later writer told of these events after the Jews had a higher level of understanding about God, he didn’t dare attribute evil to Yahweh, and instead he wrote, ‘And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel.’
You should be able to see that the scriptures clearly show how the idea of God continued to grow from one generation to another.
And furthermore, when the Jews came out of Egypt in the days before the enlarged revelation of Yahweh, they had ten commandments that served as their law right up to the time when they were camped at Sinai.
These ten commandments were:
1. You shall worship no other god, for the Lord is a jealous God.
2. You shall not make molten gods.
3. You shall not neglect to keep the feast of unleavened bread.
4. Of all the males of men or cattle, the first-born are mine, says the Lord.
5. Six days you may work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.
6. You shall not fail to observe the feast of the first fruits and the feast of the ingathering at the end of the year.
7. You shall not offer the blood of any sacrifice with leavened bread.
8. The sacrifice of the feast of the Passover shall not be left until morning.
9. The first of the first fruits of the ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.
10.You shall not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
And then, Jesus went on, in the middle of the thunder and lightning of Sinai, Moses gave them the newten commandments, which you will agree are more worthy of our growing idea of God.
And Jesus asked them if they hadn’t ever noticed that these commandments were recorded twice in the scriptures?
That in the first case deliverance from Egypt was assigned as the reason for sabbath keeping, while in a later record it was changed to recognize the fact of creation because the Jews then better understood God’s nature?
Furthermore, he said, remember that again in the greater spiritual enlightenment of Isaiah’s day, these ten negative commandments were changed into the great and positive law of love: the injunction to love God supremely and your neighbor as yourself.
And it is this supreme law to love God and your neighbor, that I’m telling you constitutes the whole duty of man.”
When he had finished speaking, no one asked him a question, and they went to sleep for the night.
End Chapter 20.1
Bob
Notes for Videocast Commentary:
He didn’t want his teachings standardized.
He didn’t want believers to be slaves to dogma.
Mission was to show us, though his life, our Father’s love and mercy.
To enter the kingdom requires Faith in the Fatherhood of God
The law of the kingdom, at that specific time, was to love your neighbor as yourself.
The father accepts the sincere worship of any mortal regardless the religion.
And throughout this story we’re told to serve man for the sake of God.
Clarify:
Nothing in this story of Jesus says that you have to believe in Jesus himself, or to be Christian, or to be of any religion, to enter the kingdom of heaven.
The idea of being “born again in Jesus,” or “having accepted Christ as my savior,” has been perverted to mean that believing in Jesus will get you to heaven.
This is not only fundamentally wrong according to what Jesus taught, it’s also the exact type of standardized dogmatic slavery that Jesus warned his apostles against and it fuels religious wars and bigotry.
Placing the messenger before the message, forcing people to believe in Jesus rather than teaching them the Fatherhood of God and the subsequent brotherhood of humanity, leads to religious pride.
And regardless of the religion, when it puts more focus on consolidating power rather than teaching the Fatherhood of God, the definition of who is our neighbor changes from the person next door to only the members of one’s congregation.
And therein lies the problem, people.
When this happens, we violate Jesus’ lessons to see God as every person’s actual Father, and every person as our brother or sister, and hence we fail to serve man, to serve humanity, for the sake of God.
Jesus was specific. The way to God is not through him, but thru learning how he lived his life.
He was the example for us to follow in the context of our lives and in our times and for all people on all worlds and throughout all time, i.e., were not supposed to do what Jesus actually did day-to-day: that would be ridiculous. Instead, we have to negotiate life according to the times in which we are born, and use his lessons for worshiping our Father in heaven and serving our fellow man, as our guide.
When people put faith in God the Father before belief in religious dogma, they can then agree on equality between their religions under that one ultimate God while embracing the subsequent siblinghood of humanity.
And reaching that point, according to the Urantia Revelation, is a requirement for finding peace on Earth.
Okay everyone.
Defend liberty. Protect our children. Serve man for God.
Bobby Kezer, out here.