The Urantia Book
PAPER 193
FINAL APPEARANCES AND ASCENSION
193:0.1 THE sixteenth morontia manifestation of
Jesus occurred on Friday, May 5, in the courtyard of Nicodemus,
about nine o'clock at night. On this evening the Jerusalem
believers had made their first attempt to get together since the
resurrection. Assembled here at this time were the eleven
apostles, the women's corps and their associates, and about fifty
other leading disciples of the Master, including a number of the
Greeks. This company of believers had been visiting informally for
more than half an hour when, suddenly, the morontia Master
appeared in full view and immediately began to instruct them. Said
Jesus:
193:0.2 "Peace be upon you. This is the most
representative group of believers -- apostles and disciples, both
men and women -- to which I have appeared since the time of my
deliverance from the flesh. I now call you to witness that I told
you beforehand that my sojourn among you must come to an end; I
told you that presently I must return to the Father. And then I
plainly told you how the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews
would deliver me up to be put to death, and that I would rise from
the grave. Why, then, did you allow yourselves to become so
disconcerted by all this when it came to pass? and why were you so
surprised when I rose from the tomb on the third day? You failed
to believe me because you heard my words without comprehending the
meaning thereof.
193:0.3 "And now you should give ear to my words
lest you again make the mistake of hearing my teaching with the
mind while in your hearts you fail to comprehend the meaning. From
the beginning of my sojourn as one of you, I taught you that my
one purpose was to reveal my Father in heaven to his children on
earth. I have lived the God-revealing bestowal that you might
experience the God-knowing career. I have revealed God as your
Father in heaven; I have revealed you as the sons of God on earth.
It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word
this fact becomes an eternal and living truth in your hearts.
When, by living faith, you become divinely God-conscious, you are
then born of the spirit as children of light and life, even the
eternal life wherewith you shall ascend the universe of universes
and attain the experience of finding God the Father on Paradise.
193:0.4 "I admonish you ever to remember that
your mission among men is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom --
the reality of the fatherhood of God and the truth of the sonship
of man. Proclaim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part
of the saving gospel. Your message is not changed by my
resurrection experience. Sonship with God, by faith, is still the
saving truth of the gospel of the kingdom. You are to go forth
preaching the love of God and the service of man. That which the
world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through
faith they can actually realize, and daily experience, this
ennobling truth. My bestowal should help all men to know that they
are the children of God, but such knowledge will not suffice if
they fail personally to faith-grasp the saving truth that they are
the living spirit sons of the eternal Father. The gospel of the
kingdom is concerned with the love of the Father and the service
of his children on earth.
193:0.5 "Among yourselves, here, you share the
knowledge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not
strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up
again; the Father gives such power to his Paradise Sons. You
should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowledge that
the dead of an age entered upon the eternal ascent soon after I
left Joseph's new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how
you can, through loving service, become God-revealing to your
fellow men even as, by loving you and serving you, I have become
God-revealing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man
that you, and all other men, might know that you are all indeed
the sons of God. Therefore, go you now into all the world
preaching this gospel of the kingdom of heaven to all men. Love
all men as I have loved you; serve your fellow mortals as I have
served you. Freely you have received, freely give. Only tarry here
in Jerusalem while I go to the Father, and until I send you the
Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the enlarged truth, and I
will go with you into all the world. I am with you always, and my
peace I leave with you."
193:0.6 When the Master had spoken to them, he
vanished from their sight. It was near daybreak before these
believers dispersed; all night they remained together, earnestly
discussing the Master's admonitions and contemplating all that had
befallen them. James Zebedee and others of the apostles also told
them of their experiences with the morontia Master in Galilee and
recited how he had three times appeared to them.
1. THE APPEARANCE AT SYCHAR
193:1.1 About four o'clock on Sabbath afternoon,
May 13, the Master appeared to Nalda and about seventy-five
Samaritan believers near Jacob's well, at Sychar. The believers
were in the habit of meeting at this place, near where Jesus had
spoken to Nalda concerning the water of life. On this day, just as
they had finished their discussions of the reported resurrection,
Jesus suddenly appeared before them, saying:
193:1.2 "Peace be upon you. You rejoice to know
that I am the resurrection and the life, but this will avail you
nothing unless you are first born of the eternal spirit, thereby
coming to possess, by faith, the gift of eternal life. If you are
the faith sons of my Father, you shall never die; you shall not
perish. The gospel of the kingdom has taught you that all men are
the sons of God. And this good news concerning the love of the
heavenly Father for his children on earth must be carried to all
the world. The time has come when you worship God neither on
Gerizim nor at Jerusalem, but where you are, as you are, in spirit
and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Salvation is
the gift of God to all who believe they are his sons. But be not
deceived; while salvation is the free gift of God and is bestowed
upon all who accept it by faith, there follows the experience of
bearing the fruits of this spirit life as it is lived in the
flesh. The acceptance of the doctrine of the fatherhood of God
implies that you also freely accept the associated truth of the
brotherhood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more
than your neighbor, whom the Father requires you to love as
yourself. Your brother, being of your own family, you will not
only love with a family affection, but you will also serve as you
would serve yourself. And you will thus love and serve your
brother because you, being my brethren, have been thus loved and
served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news
to all creatures of every race, tribe, and nation. My spirit shall
go before you, and I will be with you always."
193:1.3 These Samaritans were greatly astonished
at this appearance of the Master, and they hastened off to the
near-by towns and villages, where they published abroad the news
that they had seen Jesus, and that he had talked to them. And this
was the seventeenth morontia appearance of the Master.
2. THE PHOENICIAN APPEARANCE
193:2.1 The Master's eighteenth morontia
appearance was at Tyre, on Tuesday, May 16, at a little before
nine o'clock in the evening. Again he appeared at the close of a
meeting of believers, as they were about to disperse, saying:
193:2.2 "Peace be upon you. You rejoice to know
that the Son of Man has risen from the dead because you thereby
know that you and your brethren shall also survive mortal death.
But such survival is dependent on your having been previously born
of the spirit of truth-seeking and God-finding. The bread of life
and the water thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth
and thirst for righteousness -- for God. The fact that the dead
rise is not the gospel of the kingdom. These great truths and
these universe facts are all related to this gospel in that they
are a part of the result of believing the good news and are
embraced in the subsequent experience of those who, by faith,
become, in deed and in truth, the everlasting sons of the eternal
God. My Father sent me into the world to proclaim this salvation
of sonship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this
salvation of sonship. Salvation is the free gift of God, but those
who are born of the spirit will immediately begin to show forth
the fruits of the spirit in loving service to their fellow
creatures. And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded
in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving
service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness,
enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful
ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring
peace. If professed believers bear not these fruits of the divine
spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not
in them; they are useless branches on the living vine, and they
soon will be taken away. My Father requires of the children of
faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, therefore, you are not
fruitful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your
unfruitful branches. Increasingly, must you yield the fruits of
the spirit as you progress heavenward in the kingdom of God.
You may enter the kingdom as a child,
but the Father requires that you grow up, by grace, to the full
stature of spiritual adulthood. And when you go abroad to tell all
nations the good news of this gospel, I will go before you, and my
Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with
you."
193:2.3 And then the Master disappeared from
their sight. The next day there went out from Tyre those who
carried this story to Sidon and even to Antioch and Damascus.
Jesus had been with these believers when he was in the flesh, and
they were quick to recognize him when he began to teach them.
While his friends could not readily recognize his morontia form
when made visible, they were never slow to identify his
personality when he spoke to them.
3. LAST APPEARANCE IN JERUSALEM
193:3.1 Early Thursday morning, May 18, Jesus
made his last appearance on earth as a morontia personality. As
the eleven apostles were about to sit down to breakfast in the
upper chamber of Mary Mark's home, Jesus appeared to them and
said:
193:3.2 "Peace be upon you. I have asked you to
tarry here in Jerusalem until I ascend to the Father, even until I
send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon
all flesh, and who shall endow you with power from on high." Simon
Zelotes interrupted Jesus, asking, "Then, Master, will you restore
the kingdom, and will we see the glory of God manifested on
earth?" When Jesus had listened to Simon's question, he answered:
"Simon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jewish Messiah
and the material kingdom. But you will receive spiritual power
after the spirit has descended upon you, and you will presently go
into all the world preaching this gospel of the kingdom. As the
Father sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that
you would love and trust one another. Judas is no more with you
because his love grew cold, and because he refused to trust you,
his loyal brethren. Have you not read in the Scripture where it is
written: `It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to
himself'? And also where it says: `He who would have friends must
show himself friendly'? And did I not even send you out to teach,
two and two, that you might not become lonely and fall into the
mischief and miseries of isolation? You also well know that, when
I was in the flesh, I did not permit myself to be alone for long
periods. From the very beginning of our associations I always had
two or three of you constantly by my side or else very near at
hand even when I communed with the Father. Trust, therefore, and
confide in one another. And this is all the more needful since I
am this day going to leave you alone in the world. The hour has
come; I am about to go to the Father."
193:3.3 When he had spoken, he beckoned for them
to come with him, and he led them out on the Mount of Olives,
where he bade them farewell preparatory to departing from Urantia.
This was a solemn journey to Olivet. Not a word was spoken by any
of them from the time they left the upper chamber until Jesus
paused with them on the Mount of Olives.
4. CAUSES OF JUDAS'S DOWNFALL
193:4.1 It was in the first part of the Master's
farewell message to his apostles that he alluded to the loss of
Judas and held up the tragic fate of their traitorous fellow
worker as a solemn warning against the dangers of social and
fraternal isolation. It may be helpful to believers, in this and
in future ages, briefly to review the causes of Judas's downfall
in the light of the Master's remarks and in view of the
accumulated enlightenment of succeeding centuries.
193:4.2 As we look back upon this tragedy, we
conceive that Judas went wrong, primarily, because he was very
markedly an isolated personality, a personality shut in and away
from ordinary social contacts. He persistently refused to confide
in, or freely fraternize with, his fellow apostles. But his being
an isolated type of personality would not, in and of itself, have
wrought such mischief for Judas had it not been that he also
failed to increase in love and grow in spiritual grace. And then,
as if to make a bad matter worse, he persistently harbored grudges
and fostered such psychologic enemies as revenge and the
generalized craving to "get even" with somebody for all his
disappointments.
193:4.3 This unfortunate combination of
individual peculiarities and mental tendencies conspired to
destroy a well-intentioned man who failed to subdue these evils by
love, faith, and trust. That Judas need not have gone wrong is
well proved by the cases of Thomas and Nathaniel, both of whom
were cursed with this same sort of suspicion and overdevelopment
of the individualistic tendency. Even Andrew and Matthew had many
leanings in this direction; but all these men grew to love Jesus
and their fellow apostles more, and not less, as time passed. They
grew in grace and in a knowledge of the truth. They became
increasingly more trustful of their brethren and slowly developed
the ability to confide in their fellows. Judas persistently
refused to confide in his brethren. When he was impelled, by the
accumulation of his emotional conflicts, to seek relief in
self-expression, he invariably sought the advice and received the
unwise consolation of his unspiritual relatives or those chance
acquaintances who were either indifferent, or actually hostile, to
the welfare and progress of the spiritual realities of the
heavenly kingdom, of which he was one of the twelve consecrated
ambassadors on earth.
193:4.4 Judas met defeat in his battles of the
earth struggle because of the following factors of personal
tendencies and character weakness:
193:4.5 1. He was an isolated type of human
being. He was highly individualistic and chose to grow into a
confirmed "shut-in" and unsociable sort of person.
193:4.6 2. As a child, life had been made too
easy for him. He bitterly resented thwarting. He always expected
to win; he was a very poor loser.
193:4.7 3. He never acquired a philosophic
technique for meeting disappointment. Instead of accepting
disappointments as a regular and commonplace feature of human
existence, he unfailingly resorted to the practice of blaming
someone in particular, or his associates as a group, for all his
personal difficulties and disappointments.
193:4.8 4. He was given to holding grudges; he
was always entertaining the idea of revenge.
193:4.9 5. He did not like to face facts
frankly; he was dishonest in his attitude toward life situations.
193:4.10 6. He disliked to discuss his personal
problems with his immediate associates; he refused to talk over
his difficulties with his real friends and those who truly loved
him. In all the years of their association he never once went to
the Master with a purely personal problem.
193:4.11 7. He never learned that the real
rewards for noble living are, after all, spiritual prizes, which
are not always distributed during this one short life in the
flesh.
193:4.12 As a result of his persistent isolation
of personality, his griefs multiplied, his sorrows increased, his
anxieties augmented, and his despair deepened almost beyond
endurance.
193:4.13 While this self-centered and
ultraindividualistic apostle had many psychic, emotional, and
spiritual troubles, his main difficulties were: In personality, he
was isolated. In mind, he was suspicious and vengeful. In
temperament, he was surly and vindictive. Emotionally, he was
loveless and unforgiving. Socially, he was unconfiding and almost
wholly self-contained. In spirit, he became arrogant and selfishly
ambitious. In life, he ignored those who loved him, and in death,
he was friendless.
193:4.14 These, then, are the factors of mind
and influences of evil which, taken altogether, explain why a
well-meaning and otherwise onetime sincere believer in Jesus, even
after several years of intimate association with his transforming
personality, forsook his fellows, repudiated a sacred cause,
renounced his holy calling, and betrayed his divine Master.
5. THE MASTER'S ASCENSION
193:5.1 It was almost half past seven o'clock
this Thursday morning, May 18, when Jesus arrived on the western
slope of Mount Olivet with his eleven silent and somewhat
bewildered apostles. From this location, about two thirds the way
up the mountain, they could look out over Jerusalem and down upon
Gethsemane. Jesus now prepared to say his last farewell to the
apostles before he took leave of Urantia. As he stood there before
them, without being directed they knelt about him in a circle, and
the Master said:
193:5.2 "I bade you tarry in Jerusalem until you
were endowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave
of you; I am about to ascend to my Father, and soon, very soon,
will we send into this world of my sojourn the Spirit of Truth;
and when he has come, you shall begin the new proclamation of the
gospel of the kingdom, first in Jerusalem and then to the
uttermost parts of the world. Love men with the love wherewith I
have loved you and serve your fellow mortals even as I have served
you. By the spirit fruits of your lives impel souls to believe the
truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are brethren.
Remember all I have taught you and the life I have lived among
you. My love overshadows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and
my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell."
193:5.3 When the morontia Master had thus
spoken, he vanished from their sight. This so-called ascension of
Jesus was in no way different from his other disappearances from
mortal vision during the forty days of his morontia career on
Urantia.
193:5.4 The Master went to Edentia by way of
Jerusem, where the Most Highs, under the observation of the
Paradise Son, released Jesus of Nazareth from the morontia state
and, through the spirit channels of ascension, returned him to the
status of Paradise sonship and supreme sovereignty on Salvington.
193:5.5 It was about seven forty-five this
morning when the morontia Jesus disappeared from the observation
of his eleven apostles to begin the ascent to the right hand of
his Father, there to receive formal confirmation of his completed
sovereignty of the universe of Nebadon.
6. PETER CALLS A MEETING
193:6.1 Acting upon the instruction of Peter,
John Mark and others went forth to call the leading disciples
together at the home of Mary Mark. By ten thirty, one hundred and
twenty of the foremost disciples of Jesus living in Jerusalem had
forgathered to hear the report of the farewell message of the
Master and to learn of his ascension. Among this company was Mary
the mother of Jesus. She had returned to Jerusalem with John
Zebedee when the apostles came back from their recent sojourn in
Galilee. Soon after Pentecost she returned to the home of Salome
at Bethsaida. James the brother of Jesus was also present at this
meeting, the first conference of the Master's disciples to be
called after the termination of his planetary career.
193:6.2 Simon Peter took it upon himself to
speak for his fellow apostles and made a thrilling report of the
last meeting of the eleven with their Master and most touchingly
portrayed the Master's final farewell and his ascension
disappearance. It was a meeting the like of which had never before
occurred on this world. This part of the meeting lasted not quite
one hour. Peter then explained that they had decided to choose a
successor to Judas Iscariot, and that a recess would be granted to
enable the apostles to decide between the two men who had been
suggested for this position, Matthias and Justus.
193:6.3 The eleven apostles then went
downstairs, where they agreed to cast lots in order to determine
which of these men should become an apostle to serve in Judas's
place. The lot fell on Matthias, and he was declared to be the new
apostle. He was duly inducted into his office and then appointed
treasurer. But Matthias had little part in the subsequent
activities of the apostles.
193:6.4 Soon after Pentecost the twins returned
to their homes in Galilee. Simon Zelotes was in retirement for
some time before he went forth preaching the gospel. Thomas
worried for a shorter period and then resumed his teaching.
Nathaniel differed increasingly with Peter regarding preaching
about Jesus in the place of proclaiming the former gospel of the
kingdom. This disagreement became so acute by the middle of the
following month that Nathaniel withdrew, going to Philadelphia to
visit Abner and Lazarus; and after tarrying there for more than a
year, he went on into the lands beyond Mesopotamia preaching the
gospel as he understood it.
193:6.5 This left but six of the original twelve
apostles to become actors on the stage of the early proclamation
of the gospel in Jerusalem: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip,
and Matthew.
193:6.6 Just about noon the apostles returned to
their brethren in the upper chamber and announced that Matthias
had been chosen as the new apostle. And then Peter called all of
the believers to engage in prayer, prayer that they might be
prepared to receive the gift of the spirit which the Master had
promised to send.
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