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TOPICAL STUDIES from
THE NEW EPOCHAL REVELATION OF TRUTH.
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Bible Section 6 A OUR SONSHIP WITH AND IN GOD; GOD WITHIN US; LIGHT AND GLORY 206 thru 242 Bible 223. I delight to DO Your WILL, O my GOD; YES, Your Law is WITHIN my heart ! Ps 40:8 Urantia Book (Part 5) Paper 154 - Last Days at Capernaum 6. Jesus’ Family Arrives [Paper:section.paragraph (page.para)] 154:6.12 (1723.3) But he [Jesus] did say to David Zebedee as he entered the boat in hasty flight: “Tell my mother and my brothers that I appreciate their coming, and that I intended to see them. Admonish them to find no offense in me but rather to seek for a knowledge of the will of God and for grace and courage to do that will.” Paper 155 - Fleeing Through Northern Galilee 6. The Second Discourse on Religion 155:6.11 (1732.4) [Jesus:] Never forget there is only one adventure which is more satisfying and thrilling than the attempt to discover the will of the living God, and that is the supreme experience of honestly trying to do that divine will. And fail not to remember that the will of God can be done in any earthly occupation. Some callings are not holy and others secular. All things are sacred in the lives of those who are spirit led; that is, subordinated to truth, ennobled by love, dominated by mercy, and restrained by fairness—justice. The spirit which my Father and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but also the spirit of idealistic beauty. Paper 158 - The Mount of Transfiguration 7. Peter’s Protest 158:7.3 (1759.5) In answer to Andrew, Jesus said: “My brethren, it is because you have confessed that I am the Son of God that I am constrained to begin to unfold to you the truth about the end of the bestowal of the Son of Man on earth. You insist on clinging to the belief that I am the Messiah, and you will not abandon the idea that the Messiah must sit upon a throne in Jerusalem; wherefore do I persist in telling you that the Son of Man must presently go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be rejected by the scribes, the elders, and the chief priests, and after all this be killed and raised from the dead. And I speak not a parable to you; I speak the truth to you that you may be prepared for these events when they suddenly come upon us.” And while he was yet speaking, Simon Peter, rushing impetuously toward him, laid his hand upon the Master’s shoulder and said: “Master, be it far from us to contend with you, but I declare that these things shall never happen to you.” 158:7.4 (1760.1) Peter spoke thus because he loved Jesus; but the Master’s human nature recognized in these words of well-meant affection the subtle suggestion of temptation that he change his policy of pursuing to the end his earth bestowal in accordance with the will of his Paradise Father. And it was because he detected the danger of permitting the suggestions of even his affectionate and loyal friends to dissuade him, that he turned upon Peter and the other apostles, saying: “Get you behind me. You savor of the spirit of the adversary, the tempter. When you talk in this manner, you are not on my side but rather on the side of our enemy. In this way do you make your love for me a stumbling block to my doing the Father’s will. Mind not the ways of men but rather the will of God.” Paper 170 - The Kingdom of Heaven 170:2:11 (1860.6) The great effort embodied in this sermon was the attempt to translate the concept of the kingdom of heaven into the ideal of the idea of doing the will of God. Long had the Master taught his followers to pray: “Your kingdom come; your will be done”; and at this time he earnestly sought to induce them to abandon the use of the term kingdom of God in favor of the more practical equivalent, the will of God. 170:2:18 (1860.13) The kingdom of God in this world, the supreme desire to do the will of God, the unselfish love of man which yields the good fruits of improved ethical and moral conduct. 170:2:19 (1861.1) The kingdom of God in heaven, the goal of mortal believers, the estate wherein the love for God is perfected, and wherein the will of God is done more divinely.” 4. Jesus’ Teaching About the Kingdom 170:4.1 (1862.9) Jesus never gave a precise definition of the kingdom. At one time he would discourse on one phase of the kingdom, and at another time he would discuss a different aspect of the brotherhood of God’s reign in the hearts of men. In the course of this Sabbath afternoon’s sermon Jesus noted no less than five phases, or epochs, of the kingdom, and they were: 170:4.2 (1862.10) 1. The personal and inward experience of the spiritual life of the fellowship of the individual believer with God the Father. 170:4.3 (1863.1) 2. The enlarging brotherhood of gospel believers, the social aspects of the enhanced morals and quickened ethics resulting from the reign of God’s spirit in the hearts of individual believers. 170:4.4 (1863.2) 3. The supermortal brotherhood of invisible spiritual beings which prevails on earth and in heaven, the superhuman kingdom of God. 170:4.5 (1863.3) 4. The prospect of the more perfect fulfillment of the will of God, the advance toward the dawn of a new social order in connection with improved spiritual living—the next age of man. 170:4.6 (1863.4) 5. The kingdom in its fullness, the future spiritual age of light and life on earth. 5. Later Ideas of the Kingdom 170:5.11 (1865.1) The kingdom, to the Jews, 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, thereby declaring their wholehearted dedication to the doing of the will of God, thus becoming members of the spiritual brotherhood of man. Paper 181 - Final Admonitions and Warnings 1. Last Words of Comfort 181:1.7 (1954.4) Jesus gives peace to his fellow doers of the will of God but not on the order of the joys and satisfactions of this material world. Unbelieving materialists and fatalists can hope to enjoy only two kinds of peace and soul comfort: Either they must be stoics, with steadfast resolution determined to face the inevitable and to endure the worst; or they must be optimists, ever indulging that hope which springs eternal in the human breast, vainly longing for a peace which never really comes. 181:1.8 (1954.5) A certain amount of both stoicism and optimism are serviceable in living a life on earth, but neither has aught to do with that superb peace which the Son of God bestows upon his brethren in the flesh. The peace which Michael gives his children on earth is that very peace which filled his own soul when he himself lived the mortal life in the flesh and on this very world. The peace of Jesus is the joy and satisfaction of a God-knowing individual who has achieved the triumph of learning fully how to do the will of God while living the mortal life in the flesh. The peace of Jesus’ mind was founded on an absolute human faith in the actuality of the divine Father’s wise and sympathetic overcare. Jesus had trouble on earth, he has even been falsely called the “man of sorrows,” but in and through all of these experiences he enjoyed the comfort of that confidence which ever empowered him to proceed with his life purpose in the full assurance that he was achieving the Father’s will. Paper 194 - Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth 3. What Happened at Pentecost 194:3.19 (2065.7) The coming of the Spirit of Truth purifies the human heart and leads the recipient to formulate a life purpose single to the will of God and the welfare of men. The material spirit of selfishness has been swallowed up in this new spiritual bestowal of selflessness. Pentecost, then and now, signifies that the Jesus of history has become the divine Son of living experience. The joy of this outpoured spirit, when it is consciously experienced in human life, is a tonic for health, a stimulus for mind, and an unfailing energy for the soul. 194:3.20 (2065.8) Prayer did not bring the spirit on the day of Pentecost, but it did have much to do with determining the capacity of receptivity which characterized the individual believers. Prayer does not move the divine heart to liberality of bestowal, but it does so often dig out larger and deeper channels wherein the divine bestowals may flow to the hearts and souls of those who thus remember to maintain unbroken communion with their Maker through sincere prayer and true worship. Paper 196 - The Faith of Jesus 0: Intoduction 196:0.8 (2088.3)The faith of Jesus visualized all spirit values as being found in the kingdom of God; therefore he said, “Seek first the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus saw in the advanced and ideal fellowship of the kingdom the achievement and fulfillment of the “will of God.” The very heart of the prayer which he taught his disciples was, “Your kingdom come; your will be done.” Having thus conceived of the kingdom as comprising the will of God, he devoted himself to the cause of its realization with amazing self-forgetfulness and unbounded enthusiasm. But in all his intense mission and throughout his extraordinary life there never appeared the fury of the fanatic nor the superficial frothiness of the religious egotist. 1. Jesus—The Man 196:1.1 (2090.2)Jesus’ devotion to the Father’s will and the service of man was even more than mortal decision and human determination; it was a wholehearted consecration of himself to such an unreserved bestowal of love. No matter how great the fact of the sovereignty of [Jesus Christ] Michael, you must not take the human Jesus away from men. The Master has ascended on high as a man, as well as God; he belongs to men; men belong to him. How unfortunate that religion itself should be so misinterpreted as to take the human Jesus away from struggling mortals! Let not the discussions of the humanity or the divinity of the Christ obscure the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God; he was the most truly religious man who has ever lived on Urantia. [Earth.] 2. The Religion of Jesus 196:2:6 (2092.4) Jesus founded the religion of personal experience in doing the will of God and serving the human brotherhood; Paul founded a religion in which the glorified Jesus became the object of worship and the brotherhood consisted of fellow believers in the divine Christ. In the bestowal of Jesus these two concepts were potential in his divine-human life, and it is indeed a pity that his followers failed to create a unified religion which might have given proper recognition to both the human and the divine natures of the Master as they were inseparably bound up in his earth life and so gloriously set forth in the original gospel of the kingdom. Bible 225. Who has put Wisdom in the INWARD parts? Job 38:36 Urantia Book FOREWORD V. Personality Realities 0:5.1 (8.1) Personality is a level of deified reality and ranges from the mortal and midwayer level of the higher mind activation of worship and wisdom up through the morontial and spiritual to the attainment of finality of personality status. That is the evolutionary ascent of mortal- and kindred-creature personality, but there are numerous other orders of universe personalities. 0:5.2 (8.2) Reality is subject to universal expansion, personality to infinite diversification, and both are capable of well-nigh unlimited Deity co-ordination and eternal stabilization. While the metamorphic range of nonpersonal reality is definitely limited, we know of no limitations to the progressive evolution of personality realities. 0:5.3 (8.3) On attained experiential levels all personality orders or values are associable and even cocreational. Even God and man can coexist in a unified personality, as is so exquisitely demonstrated in the present status of Christ Michael—Son of Man and Son of God. 0:5.4 (8.4) All subinfinite orders and phases of personality are associative attainables and are potentially cocreational. The prepersonal, the personal, and the superpersonal are all linked together by mutual potential of co-ordinate attainment, progressive achievement, and cocreational capacity. But never does the impersonal directly transmute to the personal. Personality is never spontaneous; it is the gift of the Paradise Father. Personality is superimposed upon energy, and it is associated only with living energy systems; identity can be associated with nonliving energy patterns. 0:5.5 (8.5) The Universal Father is the secret of the reality of personality, the bestowal of personality, and the destiny of personality. The Eternal Son is the absolute personality, the secret of spiritual energy, morontia spirits, and perfected spirits. The Conjoint Actor is the spirit-mind personality, the source of intelligence, reason, and the universal mind. But the Isle of Paradise is nonpersonal and extraspiritual, being the essence of the universal body, the source and center of physical matter, and the absolute master pattern of universal material reality. 0:5.6 (8.6) These qualities of universal reality are manifest in Urantian human experience on the following levels: 0:5.7 (8.7) 1. Body. The material or physical organism of man. The living electrochemical mechanism of animal nature and origin. 0:5.8 (8.8) 2. Mind. The thinking, perceiving, and feeling mechanism of the human organism. The total conscious and unconscious experience. The intelligence associated with the emotional life reaching upward through worship and wisdom to the spirit level. 0:5.9 (8.9) 3. Spirit. The divine spirit that indwells the mind of man—the Thought Adjuster. This immortal spirit is prepersonal—not a personality, though destined to become a part of the personality of the surviving mortal creature. 0:5.10 (8.10) 4. Soul. The soul of man is an experiential acquirement. As a mortal creature chooses to “do the will of the Father in heaven,” so the indwelling spirit becomes the father of a new reality in human experience. The mortal and material mind is the mother of this same emerging reality. The substance of this new reality is neither material nor spiritual—it is morontial. This is the emerging and immortal soul which is destined to survive mortal death and begin the Paradise ascension. 0:5.11 (9.1) Personality. The personality of mortal man is neither body, mind, nor spirit; neither is it the soul. Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing creature experience; and it unifies all other associated factors of individuality. The personality is the unique bestowal which the Universal Father makes upon the living and associated energies of matter, mind, and spirit, and which survives with the survival of the morontial soul. 0:5.12 (9.2) Morontia is a term designating a vast level intervening between the material and the spiritual. It may designate personal or impersonal realities, living or nonliving energies. The warp of morontia is spiritual; its woof is physical. Paper 1 - The Universal Father 4. The Mystery of God 1:4:4 (26.6) We are constantly confronted with this mystery of God; we are nonplused by the increasing unfolding of the endless panorama of the truth of his infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character. Paper 2 - The Nature of God 3. Justice and Righteousness 2:3.2 (36.7) How futile to make puerile appeals to such a God to modify his changeless decrees so that we can avoid the just consequences of the operation of his wise natural laws and righteous spiritual mandates! “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the justice of reaping the harvest of wrongdoing, this divine justice is always tempered with mercy. Infinite wisdom is the eternal arbiter which determines the proportions of justice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given circumstance. The greatest punishment (in reality an inevitable consequence) for wrongdoing and deliberate rebellion against the government of God is loss of existence as an individual subject of that government. The final result of wholehearted sin is annihilation. In the last analysis, such sin-identified individuals have destroyed themselves by becoming wholly unreal through their embrace of iniquity. The factual disappearance of such a creature is, however, always delayed until the ordained order of justice current in that universe has been fully complied with. Paper 19 - The Co-ordinate Trinity-Origin Beings 2. The Perfectors of Wisdom 19:2.1 (215.10) The Perfectors of Wisdom are a specialized creation of the Paradise Trinity designed to personify the wisdom of divinity in the superuniverses. There are exactly seven billion of these beings in existence, and one billion are assigned to each of the seven superuniverses. Paper 39 - The Seraphic Hosts 5. Planetary Helpers 39:5.4 (437.3) 2. The Spirits of Brotherhood. It should be apparent that, when an Adam and Eve arrive on an evolutionary world, the task of achieving racial harmony and social co-operation among its diverse races is one of considerable proportions. Seldom do these races of different colors and varied natures take kindly to the plan of human brotherhood. These primitive men only come to realize the wisdom of peaceful interassociation as a result of ripened human experience and through the faithful ministry of the seraphic spirits of brotherhood. Without the work of these seraphim the efforts of the Material Sons to harmonize and advance the races of an evolving world would be greatly delayed. And had your Adam adhered to the original plan for the advancement of Urantia, by this time these spirits of brotherhood would have worked unbelievable transformations in the human race. In view of the Adamic default, it is indeed remarkable that these seraphic orders have been able to foster and bring to realization even as much of brotherhood as you now have on Urantia. Paper 48 - The Morontia Life 7. Morontia Mota 48:7.1 (556.1) The lower planes of morontia mota join directly with the higher levels of human philosophy. On the first mansion world it is the practice to teach the less advanced students by the parallel technique; that is, in one column are presented the more simple concepts of mota meanings, and in the opposite column citation is made of analogous statements of mortal philosophy. 48:7.2 (556.2) Not long since, while executing an assignment on the first mansion world of Satania, I had occasion to observe this method of teaching; and though I may not undertake to present the mota content of the lesson, I am permitted to record the twenty-eight statements of human philosophy which this morontia instructor was utilizing as illustrative material designed to assist these new mansion world sojourners in their early efforts to grasp the significance and meaning of mota. These illustrations of human philosophy were: 48:7.3 (556.3) 1. A display of specialized skill does not signify possession of spiritual capacity. Cleverness is not a substitute for true character. 48:7.4 (556.4) 2. Few persons live up to the faith which they really have. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul. 48:7.5 (556.5) 3. Inherent capacities cannot be exceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit concept cannot be mechanically forced into the material memory mold. 48:7.6 (556.6) 4. Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace. The majority of impoverished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to believe it. 48:7.7 (556.7) 5. Difficulties may challenge mediocrity and defeat the fearful, but they only stimulate the true children of the Most Highs. 48:7.8 (556.8) 6. To enjoy privilege without abuse, to have liberty without license, to possess power and steadfastly refuse to use it for self-aggrandizement—these are the marks of high civilization. 48:7.9 (556.9) 7. Blind and unforeseen accidents do not occur in the cosmos. Neither do the celestial beings assist the lower being who refuses to act upon his light of truth. 48:7.10 (556.10) 8. Effort does not always produce joy, but there is no happiness without intelligent effort. 48:7.11 (556.11) 9. Action achieves strength; moderation eventuates in charm. 48:7.12 (556.12) 10. Righteousness strikes the harmony chords of truth, and the melody vibrates throughout the cosmos, even to the recognition of the Infinite. 48:7.13 (556.13) 11. The weak indulge in resolutions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the consequences God’s. 48:7.14 (556.14) 12. The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation. 48:7.15 (556.15) 13. Stars are best discerned from the lonely isolation of experiential depths, not from the illuminated and ecstatic mountain tops. 48:7.16 (556.16) 14. Whet the appetites of your associates for truth; give advice only when it is asked for. 48:7.17 (557.1) 15. Affectation is the ridiculous effort of the ignorant to appear wise, the attempt of the barren soul to appear rich. 48:7.18 (557.2) 16. You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in adversity. 48:7.19 (557.3) 17. Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly acquired any virtue until your acts make you worthy of it. 48:7.20 (557.4) 18. Impatience is a spirit poison; anger is like a stone hurled into a hornet’s nest. 48:7.21 (557.5) 19. Anxiety must be abandoned. The disappointments hardest to bear are those which never come. 48:7.22 (557.6) 20. Only a poet can discern poetry in the commonplace prose of routine existence. 48:7.23 (557.7)21. The high mission of any art is, by its illusions, to foreshadow a higher universe reality, to crystallize the emotions of time into the thought of eternity. 48:7.24 (557.8)22. The evolving soul is not made divine by what it does, but by what it strives to do. 48:7.25 (557.9)23. Death added nothing to the intellectual possession or to the spiritual endowment, but it did add to the experiential status the consciousness of survival. 48:7.26 (557.10)24. The destiny of eternity is determined moment by moment by the achievements of the day by day living. The acts of today are the destiny of tomorrow. 48:7.27 (557.11)25. Greatness lies not so much in possessing strength as in making a wise and divine use of such strength. 48:7.28 (557.12)26. Knowledge is possessed only by sharing; it is safeguarded by wisdom and socialized by love. 48:7.29 (557.13)27. Progress demands development of individuality; mediocrity seeks perpetuation in standardization. 48:7.30 (557.14)28. The argumentative defense of any proposition is inversely proportional to the truth contained. 48:7.31 (557.15) Such is the work of the beginners on the first mansion world while the more advanced pupils on the later worlds are mastering the higher levels of cosmic insight and morontia mota. Paper 55 - The Spheres of Light and Life 6. The Individual Mortal 55:6.9 (631.5) If the mortals of distraught Urantia could only view one of these more advanced worlds long settled in light and life, they would nevermore question the wisdom of the evolutionary scheme of creation. Were there no future of eternal creature progression, still the superb evolutionary attainments of the mortal races on such settled worlds of perfected achievement would amply justify man’s creation on the worlds of time and space. NOTE: The next Topical Study # 148, "Christian Bible and The Urantia Book have the same Gospel of Jesus !", Part 124 will be posted here Monday April 28, 2025 at 8:00 PM DST. Spiritual High-Lights of Jesus Christ Spiritual High-Lights of the Fifth Epochal Revelation FIFTH EPOCHAL REVELATION (full text and my added comments)
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