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The Jesus MeetUp
"What Is Jesus' True Religion?"
Week #45
Jesus' True Religion Public Presentation
The Jesus MeetUp What Is Jesus' True Religion? Week #45
[Consider inviting new friends of friends/family to come to your presentation and invite a Question and Answer time to follow at the end.]
What is the kingdom of God?
170:4-14 The Master on this occasion placed emphasis on the following five points as representing the cardinal features of the gospel of the kingdom:
1. The pre-eminence of the individual.
2. The will as the determining factor in man’s experience.
3. Spiritual fellowship with God the Father.
4. The supreme satisfactions of the loving service of man.
5. The transcendency of the spiritual over the material in human personality.
This world has never seriously or sincerely or honestly tried out these dynamic ideas and divine 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 subjected to sudden and unexpected periodical changes in both the material and the spiritual worlds. The bestowal of Jesus as an incarnated Son was just such a strange and unexpected event in the spiritual life of the world. Neither make the fatal mistake, in looking for the age manifestation of the kingdom, of failing to effect its establishment within your own souls.
Who is the kingdom of God?
134:4.2 The kingdom of heaven, the divine government, is founded on the fact of divine sovereignty — God is spirit. Since God is spirit, this kingdom is spiritual. The kingdom of heaven is neither material nor merely intellectual; it is a spiritual relationship between God and man.
When is the kingdom of God?
Do you want help in/for your life? Why would you wait?
165:5.3 Let me assure you, once and for all, that, if you dedicate your lives to the work of the kingdom, all your real needs shall be supplied. Seek the greater thing, and the lesser will be found therein; ask for the heavenly, and the earthly shall be included. The shadow is certain to follow the substance.
Where is the kingdom of God?
157:4.5 Jesus, still standing, then said to the twelve: "You are my chosen ambassadors, but I know that, in the circumstances, you could not entertain this belief as a result of mere human knowledge. This is a revelation of the spirit of my Father to your inmost souls. And when, therefore, you make this confession by the insight of the spirit of my Father which dwells within you, I am led to declare that upon this foundation will I build the brotherhood of the kingdom of heaven. Upon this rock of spiritual reality will I build the living temple of spiritual fellowship in the eternal realities of my Father's kingdom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not prevail against this human fraternity of the divine spirit.
How do we experience this kingdom of God?
170:5.19 Sooner or later another and greater John the Baptist is due to arise proclaiming “the kingdom of God is at hand” — meaning a return to the high spiritual concept of Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom is the will of his heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer — and doing all this without in any way referring either to the visible church on earth or to the anticipated second coming of Christ.
Why should we take time to contemplate this kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of?
141:6.4 “When you enter the kingdom, you are reborn.”
Just because we have the intellectual assent [knowledge] that God exists and dwells within our hearts and minds does not equate to ENTERING the kingdom of God. One is concept/theory. The other is authentic personal spiritual connection with God Himself by way of our pursuit of It!
We embrace 2 rules:
Rule 1: The individual child of God utilizes their own free will choice accompanied with child-like faith to pursue personal spiritual attainment of their indwelling Paradise Father fragment in order to not just find God, but to KNOW God. [See the ‘To Attain Him’ section in God Discovered.] Everything begins to change from this point forward.
Rule 2: Socialize this with one’s fellows. [See our Jesus MeetUp full program for small group/home church ministry.]
Jesus’ True Religion is simply “friendship with God”.
“The kingdom of God is at hand” = it is here and now! It has always been here.
159:3.9 In preaching the gospel of the kingdom, you are simply teaching friendship with God. And this fellowship will appeal alike to men and women in that both will find that which most truly satisfies their characteristic longings and ideals.
Above - these are the things that we are.
Below - these are the things that we are not.
Faith needs no proof by way of ‘works’.
189:5.9 The salvation of God for the mortals of Urantia would have been just as effective and unerringly certain if Jesus had not been put to death by the cruel hands of ignorant mortals. If the Master had been favorably received by the mortals of earth and had departed from Urantia by the voluntary relinquishment of his life in the flesh, the fact of the love of God and the mercy of the Son — the fact of sonship with God — would have in no wise been affected. You mortals are the sons of God, and only one thing is required to make such a truth factual in your personal experience, and that is your spirit-born faith.
Blood sacrifices to appease an angry God is wasteful and non-reality living.
139:9.3 Both of them were present at the solemn services of the day of atonement. John was much impressed by the ceremonies of this day of all days in the Jewish religious ritual, but Jesus remained a thoughtful and silent spectator. To the Son of Man this performance was pitiful and pathetic. He viewed it all as misrepresentative of the character and attributes of his Father in heaven. He looked upon the doings of this day as a travesty upon the facts of divine justice and the truths of infinite mercy. He burned to give vent to the declaration of the real truth about his Father's loving character and merciful conduct in the universe, but his faithful Monitor admonished him that his hour had not yet come. But that night, at Bethany, Jesus did drop numerous remarks which greatly disturbed John; and John never fully understood the real significance of what Jesus said in their hearing that evening.
God is not angry or vengeful. God has always been completely forgiving and merciful.
142:2.4 Then Jesus went on to say: "When your children are very young and immature, and when you must chastise them, they may reflect that their father is angry and filled with resentful wrath. Their immaturity cannot penetrate beyond the punishment to discern the father's farseeing and corrective affection. But when these same children become grown-up men and women, would it not be folly for them to cling to these earlier and misconceived notions regarding their father? As men and women they should now discern their father's love in all these early disciplines. And should not mankind, as the centuries pass, come the better to understand the true nature and loving character of the Father in heaven? What profit have you from successive generations of spiritual illumination if you persist in viewing God as Moses and the prophets saw him? I say to you, Jacob, under the bright light of this hour you should see the Father as none of those who have gone before ever beheld him. And thus seeing him, you should rejoice to enter the kingdom wherein such a merciful Father rules, and you should seek to have his will of love dominate your life henceforth."
There is no Hell. This is illogical.
86:4.8 Almost every group had a different idea regarding the destiny of the ghost soul. The Greeks believed that weak men must have weak souls; so they invented Hades [Hell] as a fit place for the reception of such anemic souls; these unrobust specimens were also supposed to have shorter shadows. The early Andites thought their ghosts returned to the ancestral homelands. The Chinese and Egyptians once believed that soul and body remained together. Among the Egyptians this led to careful tomb construction and efforts at body preservation. Even modern peoples seek to arrest the decay of the dead. The Hebrews conceived that a phantom replica of the individual went down to Sheol; it could not return to the land of the living. They did make that important advance in the doctrine of the evolution of the soul.
The Bible is meagerly Jesusonian. We use The Urantia Book with Jesus’ true life and teachings.
196:2.1 Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of Pentecost, Peter unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and glorified Christ. The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into Christianity, a religion embodying his own theologic views and portraying his own personal experience with the Jesus of the Damascus road [see Week #18]. The gospel of the kingdom is founded on the personal religious experience of the Jesus of Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal religious experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is devoted, not to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life of Jesus, but to a discussion of Paul's religious experience and to a portrayal of his personal religious convictions. The only notable exceptions to this statement, aside from certain parts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of Hebrews and the Epistle of James. Even Peter, in his writing, only once reverted to the personal religious life of his Master. The New Testament is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian.
To Jesus’ True Religion teachings destined to change our world forever towards Light and Life.
Questions to discuss:
1. What is the kingdom of God?
2. What does Jesus say we must do to experience the kingdom of God? How do we do this?
3. How does the kingdom provide us ‘truth’ for our daily living? Why?
[Now might be good time for your visitors to engage in a Questions and Answers time. Employ heightened care, patience and kindness.]
Now is a good time to say The Lord’s Prayer together as one loving group. Consider writing a prayer request and giving it to your leader.
Next week we discuss God = Reality in Week # 46
Be prepared to not only welcome new converts, but schedule your own personal time to visit with them further SOON. MAKE TIME FOR THEM! And next, be sure that they can enter into a Jesus MeetUp [preferable Weeks 2 – 4 if at all possible. Do not make the spiritually irresponsible mistake of preaching the kingdom without plans for assisting your fellow’s growth. Remember: Everything we do is recorded by our seraphim.]
