Adapted from the Urantia Book original paper, here.
Jesus took a full four years to slowly prepare his family and himself for when he had to leave them and be about his Father’s work. This was difficult for everyone in the family.
Love generates love. Love is not a finite source of energy; it’s the essence of our existence. It’s the only source of perpetual energy we have. The more we love, the more love we get in return.
So, given the amount of love Jesus had showered on his family over the years, his departure from them was all the much harder.
The Twenty-Seventh Year (A.D. 21)
Jesus took a trip to Tiberias and the other cities on the Sea of Galilee in January, and he was never again a regular member of his family’s household. After making his way through Magdala and Bethsaida, he ended up in Capernaum to visit his dad’s friend, Zebedee, the boat builder. His sons were fisherman. For some time, Zebedee had been playing with ideas on how to build a better fishing boat, and he asked Jesus to stay there in Capernaum and help with the project. Jesus agreed.
Jesus and Zebedee designed a new style of boat, and they figured out a better way to steam the boards to make it safer for fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus only worked with Zebedee for a year or so helping him to perfect these new boat building techniques. But they were so successful with their design, that within five years all of the boats on the lake had been built in Zebedee’s shop.
Jesus stayed with Zebedee’s family near Bethsaida during this time. After life on his own for long, Jesus enjoyed being able to work with his dad’s old friend. Zebedee’s wife, Salome, and her four daughters all admired Jesus, and he often went out with the boys, James, John, and David to fish. All the while he continued to send home money for the family. Jesus didn’t make it back to Nazareth until October for Martha’s wedding, and after that he didn’t come back for two years, and that was for Simon and Jude’s double wedding.
Jesus said he was a resident of Capernaum when it came time to pay the Roman tax, and he was registered as such the rest of his life. The head of the Roman outpost in Capernaum was a gentile believer in the Jewish faith, and he had built the Jews a synagogue right before Jesus arrived. This gave Jesus a chance to conduct the services there, and some of the people traveling through the area with the caravans remembered him from Nazareth.
The synagogue had a library, and Jesus spent most of his evenings in it studying. One night a week he’d hang with the elders in town, and one night a week with the youth. Jesus was able to get along well with younger people because he was both interested in their lives, and he wasn’t always telling them what to do or not to do. Unless, of course, they asked him to.
In the evenings, after dinner but before he went to the library to study, Jesus would hold kind of a question and answer session with the family and neighbors. He’d talk about things like science and politics and philosophy, and he varied what he taught depending on the people who were there. But the only time he would say that something was absolutely a fact, was when he would talk about our personal relationship with God.
Then once a week, Jesus would hold the same kind of meeting for all of Zebedee’s employees and the other workers in the area. It was this group of admirers that first called Jesus, the Master. Jude would come over sometimes from Magdala to visit with Jesus and to hear him talk at these meetings, and the more Jude was around Jesus the more he looked up to him. And throughout it all, Jesus continued to master his mind and reach higher levels of conscious communication with his Thought Adjuster, God in his mind.
From this year on, Jesus was on the move. He still didn’t know us well enough to begin preaching. First, he needed to travel more, meet more people, and experience more of how we live our lives.
The Twenty-Eighth Year (A.D. 22)
Jesus took a part of the money that Zebedee owed him in wages, and in March left Zebedee’s house in Capernaum to go to Jerusalem. Before leaving, Zebedee’s family agreed to meet Jesus there for the Passover supper. He arranged with John Zebedee to keep sending the wages they owed him to his family in Nazareth. Jesus and John had grown close while Jesus stayed with them, and John gave Jesus his word to watch over Mary and the others.
After Jesus left, John and Zebedee decided to invest Jesus’s wages for him, and use that income to support his family. They did this by buying a small two room house and renting it out. So, without knowing about it, Jesus ended up owning a house in Capernaum.
In Jerusalem, Jesus hung out at the temple listening to the discussions, and on Saturdays he would go out to Bethany to visit. Salome, Zebedee’s wife, had a relative in Jerusalem named Annas, who years before had been the high priest of Jerusalem. Salome had given Jesus a letter of introduction to Annas, and the two of them spent a lot of time visiting the schools and religious teachers in town. Annas was a bit confused by Jesus, and didn’t really know how to help him. It was obvious Jesus didn’t need to be a student in any of the schools, but then again, he couldn’t be a teacher either because he’d never gone to them.
When Passover came along, the Zebedee family showed up and they all had supper at Annas’ large house.
Before the Passover week was over, Jesus met a man and his seventeen-year-old son who had come from India. These two were traveling the world, and making their way to Rome and other areas along the Mediterranean Sea. They were going to be traveling for a couple of years, and they were looking for someone to be both an interpreter for them, and a tutor for the boy. After arranging that his first year’s wages were given to John, Zebedee’s son, for his family in Nazareth, Jesus agreed to join them on this journey to Rome.
Before Jesus left, he told Zebedee that he was going to Rome and that he wouldn’t return for about two years. Jesus also made Zebedee promise not to tell anyone, even his own family, where he was at during this time. And Zebedee never did. So, if it wasn’t for John and Zebedee visiting the family at times and assuring them that everything was fine, they would’ve given Jesus up for dead before he returned. And, John always remembered to take Mary and Ruth a little present on these visits, like Jesus had asked him to do.
The Twenty-Ninth Year (A.D. 23)
On this trip, Jesus was known by some people as the Damascus scribe, and by others as the Jewish tutor. He met many people, but he never told his family or even his apostles about this two-year trip to Rome and other parts of the Mediterranean. His family just assumed he had gone to Alexandria, and when Jesus returned to Nazareth, he let them continue thinking that. Only Zebedee knew where he’d been.
Some things to keep in mind when thinking about Jesus’ life. Jesus was here to better know us, and to reveal to us our heavenly Father. And he had to do this as one of us. There was no need for Jesus to impress us with great accomplishments, and he wasn’t going to overpower us with mental arguments just so that we’d believe him. Furthermore, Michael lived his last incarnation on Earth with us, but not just for us.
These events happened for the benefit of the entire universe now existent, and for all of the worlds that will become inhabited throughout eternity.
By the time he returned to Nazareth, Jesus was almost done educating himself in the many different types of people from around the world. He had met folk rich and poor, those with education and those without, and people with all kinds of spiritual beliefs. He now knew without a doubt that he was a Creator Son. His Thought Adjuster was bringing forth memories of his time with his Paradise Father before he ever started to build our universe. Jesus was slowly remembering the details of his past.
The final pre-human memory that Jesus saw came to him when he was baptized by John in the Jordan River, and it was his last talk with his older brother Immanuel right before he disappeared and was born a babe of the realm.
The Human Jesus
For the rest of the universe watching these events unfold, Jesus’ Mediterranean trip was the most fascinating part of his time on Earth. He wasn’t yet fully conscious of his divine side: He was still the son of man. During this time, he worked with people at a personal level, rather than preaching in public like he did later in life.
At twenty-nine years old, Jesus had almost completed the human side of his spiritual development, and he had done so living a normal life in the flesh. When Jesus received his Thought Adjuster as a child, that portion of God in his mind started to condition him to understand the eternity, universality, and infinity of God his Father. As Jesus became conscious of this help from his Thought Adjuster, he opened himself to the guidance offered. Over time, he improved his personal communication with God inside him, and gradually brought his mind to perfection so it could meld in complete and absolute harmony with God.
This event, when his mortal personality joined with God to create a new eternal soul, happened when he was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Jesus walked among us as an average man, and in the course of his life he intellectually gained the equivalent of the entire sum of our existence as human beings on the material worlds of time and space. He experienced, as we do, the extremes of joy, grief, and sorrow. He laughed, he cried, he cared for us as his family, and he got mad at us and vented his indignation. Jesus experienced the inner urges, impulses, and confusion that we do at any point in our lives.
But there’s more. Jesus also experienced part of his time on Earth as a man in full communication with his Thought Adjuster. During this time, he lived life as it is on other advanced evolutionary worlds settled in life and light, a level few of us reach on Earth. He was a complete human personality in all sense, and he knows us across all levels of mortal existence in our universe.
Jesus both revealed the eternal God to mortal man, and presented himself as a perfected human personality to the Infinite Creator.
While there’s a lot in Jesus’ life for us to learn from, he didn’t live his life to set us a perfect example to copy. In other words, we aren’t supposed to copy Jesus’ life actions, what he actually did. Instead, we’re supposed to learn from how he lived that life by opening himself up to the mercy and guidance of his personal God inside him. Jesus lived his actual life as a man of his time: as he was and where he was. We are to do the same. But regardless of the times or places we find ourselves, we can open ourselves to God’s grace and follow Jesus’ example of the new and living way of the mortal becoming eternal.
Okay, folks, that’s it for Chapter 8, “The Later Adult Life of Jesus.”
Next week’s Chapter 9 is titled, “On the Way to Rome.”
Have a fantastic week out there.
Bob