Urantia Book 47. The life of Jesus of Nazareth, Joshua ben Joseph, Christ Michael, Sovereign God of Nebadon. The second preaching tour of Galilee started on October 3, AD 28 and ended December 30. It was decided that James Zebedee would give the final charge to the evangelists. He said: “Go now forth and do the work as you have been taught, and, later on, when you have shown yourselves competent and faithful, I will ordain you to preach the gospel of the kingdom.” On this tour only James and John traveled with Jesus. The other apostles attached themselves to 10 or 12 evangelists and maintained close contact with them as they carried on their work of teaching and preaching. Whenever a believer was ready to enter the kingdom, an apostle would perform the baptism. This tour was mainly an opportunity of giving the evangelists experience. The sick were always following Jesus from place to place, and they were cured of their illnesses “by a peculiar and unexplained series of healing phenomena.” Jesus healed them unconsciously, and he always told them to “tell no one.” But his fame only increased. When someone was healed, he would say “I perceive that power has gone forth from me.” The UB says this healing is the result of three powerful and associated influences: 1.The strong faith of the person seeking healing and the fact that the healing is sought for spiritual benefit as well as physical healing. 2. The existence of the great sympathy and compassion of the incarnated and mercy-dominated Creator Son of God, who actually possessed in his person almost unlimited and timeless creative healing powers. 3. This God-man was the personified expression of the Father’s will. The explanation of these many cases of healing must be found in a great law, namely, what the Creator Son desires and the eternal Father wills IS. “It therefore becomes a fact of record that Jesus did frequently suffer people to heal themselves in his presence by their powerful, personal faith”(149.0-1.1-8).**** The UB complains that much was put into Christian doctrine that Jesus never preached or taught. Christianity is based almost entirely on Paul’s letters. The NT is saturated with pagan mysticism. The gospels talk about Jesus, not the kingdom of heaven. Greek philosophy and the Persian mysteries were incorporated into the teachings of Christianity. And two great mistakes were made: 1. The effort to connect the gospel teaching directly onto Jewish theology, as illustrated by the Christian doctrine of the atonement–the teaching that Jesus was the sacrificed Son who would satisfy the Father’s stern justice and appease the divine wrath. This was an effort to make the gospel of the kingdom more acceptable to disbelieving Jews. These efforts failed, and they confused and alienated honest souls in later generations. 2. The second great blunder was to organize Christian teaching so completely around the person of Jesus. This has worked to obscure his teaching of the kingdom and love of the Father, and made it difficult for non-Christians to accept his teachings. In his lifetime Jesus gained fame because of his healing, but more people started coming for spiritual reasons. The most revolutionary feature of Jesus’ ministry was his inclusive attitude toward women. He let women preach along side men. Unfortunately, the Church lacked the moral courage to follow Jesus in this area and small minds won out. The people of that day found Jesus entirely free of superstitions and religious prejudice. He dared to teach that the catastrophes of nature, accidents of time and other calamitous happenings are not visitations of divine judgment. He boldly proclaimed the spiritual freedom of the human race, and that humans are the children of God. He boldly substituted clean hearts for clean hands as the mark of true religion, and he put reality in place of tradition. He was not a militant revolutionist; he was a progressive evolutionist. He assumed absolute authority over his apostles, but no one objected. People admired his patience in dealing with backward and troublesome inquirers. Devoted men and women loved him with an almost superhuman affection. And all this is true, even today, as more and more people convert to Christianity. Jesus was loved by the common people, but the Jerusalem religious leaders were alarmed and antagonistic. They were frantic about Abraham’s conversion and the baptism of three of the spies. They had formulated a systematic and dogmatic theology, and Jesus taught in parables, not the law. Many wrong ideas could be taken from these parables; you had to kind of be there. The leaders shut their hearts to the gospel and plotted Jesus destruction. (149.3.1-3).******************************* Jesus did very little preaching on this tour, but he conducted evening classes in towns where they stopped. At one of these classes a young evangelist asked him a question about anger, and the Master said in reply: Anger is the failure of the spirit to control the intellectual and physical nature. It indicates a lack of brotherly love and self-control. Anger depletes the health, debases the mind and handicaps the spirit teacher of the soul. Jesus continued with a series of sayings from Scripture, such as ‘wrath kills the foolish man’ and ‘he who is slow of wrath is of great understanding.’ Jesus also talked about the importance of well-balanced character. A vocation is good to have, but avoid overspecialization, as it produces narrow-mindedness. We can see this today in scientists who refuse to consider the existence of ETs and physicists who refuse to consider the implications of quantum mechanics. Jesus said that any virtue, carried to an extreme, could become a vice. Jesus taught temperance and consistency. Never did he resort to ignoble tactics in meeting the continuous pressure of his enemies, who did not hesitate to employ every sort of false, unfair and unrighteous mode of attack upon him (149.4.1-6).