The Reign of God in Great Power

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  • #13504
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant
    Mara wrote:  Perhaps he is referring to the bestowal of Thought Adjusters to every normal minded moral person – ever since the day of Pentecost.

    The quote says, speaking to the twelve: ” . . . some of you will not die until you have seen the reign of God come in great power.”

    None of them died before Pentecost except Judas.  It seems to me if it was going to happen at Pentecost he would have said, “most of you will see the reign of God come in great power,” and leave the death thing out of it.  It sounds like he’s talking about something further in the future and hinting that some of the twelve would die before it happened.   So . . . with that line of thinking, I dismissed the coming of the Spirit of Truth (or Adjusters) on and after Pentecost as an answer to my question.  I just don’t know if he’s talking about God’s reign within each apostle’s soul, or something to do with the spread of the gospel in a general way.  Still don’t know for sure what he meant.

    #13506
    Mara
    Mara
    Participant

    I was thinking in terms of the increased spiritual capacity of receptivity to the preaching of the Apostles at that time and before some of them died.  92:4:1  Thought Adjusters and the Spirit of Truth combined. 194:2:3  to the benefit of the spread of the gospel.  Weren’t the Apostles surprised at how responsive the people were to their teachings?

    #13514
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    emanny3003
    Blocked

    Weren’t the Apostles surprised at how responsive the people were to their teachings?

    Yes Mara. The Spirits are of no use to the individual alone. No man is an island. The power comes when brothers recognize the Spirits in each other. Therein lies the power.

    #13524
    Mara
    Mara
    Participant
    emanny3003 wrote:  The power comes when brothers recognize the Spirits in each other. Therein lies the power.
    On any level of existence God cannot exceed the conceptual capacity of the beings who live on such a level.
    56:6:3   The materialminded creatures of the evolutionary worlds of the seven superuniverses can comprehend Deity unity only as it is evolving in this power-personality synthesis of the Supreme Being. On any level of existence God cannot exceed the conceptual capacity of the beings who live on such a level. Mortal man must, through the recognition of truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the worship of goodness, evolve the recognition of a God of love and then progress through ascending deity levels to the comprehension of the Supreme. Deity, having been thus grasped as unified in power, can then be personalized in spirit to creature understanding and attainment.
    But never fear, if such understanding and attainment are truly desired, it shall come to pass.
    #13534
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    emanny3003
    Blocked

    Mortal man must, through the recognition of truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the worship of goodness, evolve the recognition of a God of love and then progress through ascending deity levels to the comprehension of the Supreme.(56:6.3)

    Recognition means “to know again”. To know the Spirit is not enough, it must also be recognized in your brother. The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be entered alone.

    #13545
    Mara
    Mara
    Participant
    155:6:17   “Now, mistake not, my Father will ever respond to the faintest flicker of faith. He takes note of the physical and superstitious emotions of the primitive man. And with those honest but fearful souls whose faith is so weak that it amounts to little more than an intellectual conformity to a passive attitude of assent to religions of authority, the Father is ever alert to honor and foster even all such feeble attempts to reach out for him. But you who have been called out of darkness into the light are expected to believe with a whole heart; your faith shall dominate the combined attitudes of body, mind, and spirit.”
    #13549
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    The brotherhood of man is entirely dependent upon the recognition of the Fatherhood of God.  The recognition of sonship with the Father comes before the recognition of the sonship of brotherhood.  God cannot reign with power in the individual or the group unless each person accepts sonship with the Father first.  If you can’t or won’t recognize yourself a son of God, then you also can’t recognize your brothers and sisters who have the same Father.  It’s simple.

    16:9.14 You become conscious of man as your creature brother because you are already conscious of God as your Creator Father. Fatherhood is the relationship out of which we reason ourselves into the recognition of brotherhood.

    52:6.7 The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God.

    134:4.1 The brotherhood of men is founded on the fatherhood of God.

    194:04 The gospel of the kingdom is: the fact of the fatherhood of God, coupled with the resultant truth of the sonship-brotherhood of men.

    195:8.11 You simply cannot establish the brotherhood of men while ignoring or denying the fatherhood of God.

     

    #13555
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    I was thinking in terms of the increased spiritual capacity of receptivity to the preaching of the Apostles at that time and before some of them died.

    That’s another good angle, the capacity of receptivity.  The capacity of receptivity is a quantity issue, rather than a quality issue.  I think the reign of God is basically a quality issue, but in terms of actually experiencing its power, perhaps that is a quantity issue (3:4.6).  Each dispensation of revelation enlarges the capacity for receptivity (52:2.3).  Perhaps Jesus means that his dispensation will bring greater capacity to experience the gospel.  It may begin as a small, nearly invisible seed, but grow into a large tree.  Many of his apostles would not die before seeing the seed grow at least into a sapling.

    #13574
    Avatar
    emanny3003
    Blocked

    52:6.7 The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God.

    To recognize is to ‘know again’. This means we must have known it at one time and forgotten it.

    You cannot receive the Kingdom unless it is as a child of faith. We lose our faith as we approach adulthood and must remember again, recognized what we once knew as an innocent child.

    #13580
    Avatar
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Bonita wrote: 52:6.7 The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God.

    To recognize is to ‘know again’. This means we must have known it at one time and forgotten it.

    You cannot receive the Kingdom unless it is as a child of faith. We lose our faith as we approach adulthood and must remember again, recognized what we once knew as an innocent child.

    It would seem that you didn’t look up the whole UB quote, in this case, because the implied reference segmented, would have presented the full presentation as:

    (598.2) 52:6.7 5. Spiritual insight. The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man on Urantia is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity. The only technique for accelerating the natural trend of social evolution is that of applying spiritual pressure from above, thus augmenting moral insight while enhancing the soul capacity of every mortal to understand and love every other mortal. Mutual understanding and fraternal love are transcendent civilizers and mighty factors in the world-wide realization of the brotherhood of man.

    Based on the whole quote, I ask, do you “recognize” what is the “brotherhood of man”, or was the abridgment, more interesting to your “Spiritual insight.”?

    #13585
    Avatar
    emanny3003
    Blocked

    Based on the whole quote, I ask, do you “recognize” what is the “brotherhood of man”, or was the abridgment, more interesting to your “Spiritual insight.”?

    I do not need to look at any quote to know truth. You know not of MY spiritual insight but I can tell you that it takes but an ‘instant’ to realize God the Father. The brotherhood of man is realized in the same instant. Time is not a factor. Ask our Father if time factors into his Fatherhood.

    #13622
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    I think there’s more to say about the capacity for receptivity.  The UB mentions the fact that the celestials are sad to report that every generation shows fewer and fewer people capable of functioning with self-acting Adjusters.  Adjusters become self-acting when a person enters the third psychic circle.  That means that we have more and more of the lower circlers on this planet and many of those who do have self-acting Adjusters are not functioning safely.  I wonder what that means.  Do you think they go mad in some way?  If it’s alarming to celestials, I think we should be alarmed by it too.

    110:4.6 For many thousands of years, so the records of Jerusem show, in each generation there have lived fewer and fewer beings who could function safely with selfacting Adjusters. This is an alarming picture, and the supervising personalities of Satania look with favor upon the proposals of some of your more immediate planetary supervisors who advocate the inauguration of measures designed to foster and conserve the higher spiritual types of the Urantia races.

    #13653
    Avatar
    emanny3003
    Blocked

    This reply has been reported for inappropriate content.

    That means that we have more and more of the lower circlers on this planet and many of those who do have self-acting Adjusters are not functioning safely.  I wonder what that means.  Do you think they go mad in some way?  If it’s alarming to celestials, I think we should be alarmed by it too.

    Sound the alarm, please. But stay away from the water hose. Water melts hypocrites.

    #13705
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    I think what the quote is telling us is that humans have varying capacities for receptivity.  Some have great capacity, others very little, and the celestials are attempting to foster those with the potential for more capacity.  I can’t imagine how they are doing that, but it probably is not mine to know.

    I do think that regardless of what we are born with, there is always the potential to enlarge one’s capacity for receptivity.  When Jesus told the twelve that some of them would witness the reign of God in great power, it’s possible he was referring to this enlargement of capacity of receptivity.

    The removal of fear allows the mind to relax both literally and figuratively.  A relaxation of the stiffness of beliefs about God instilled upon the minds of people can be liberating and thus powerful.  A relaxed mind, one free from fear and prejudice,  has the potential to increase its capacity of receptivity.

    #13706
    Mara
    Mara
    Participant

    A person must experience truth-hunger.

    132:7:2   “Ganid, the man was not hungry for truth. He was not dissatisfied with himself. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not open to receive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the harvest of salvation; he must be allowed more time for the trials and difficulties of life to prepare him for the reception of wisdom and higher learning. Or, if we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Father in heaven, and thus would he become so attracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be constrained to inquire about our Father. You cannot reveal God to those who do not seek for him; you cannot lead unwilling souls into the joys of salvation. Man must become hungry for truth as a result of the experiences of living, or he must desire to know God as the result of contact with the lives of those who are acquainted with the divine Father before another human being can act as the means of leading such a fellow mortal to the Father in heaven. If we know God, our real business on earth is so to live as to permit the Father to reveal himself in our lives, and thus will all God-seeking persons see the Father and ask for our help in finding out more about the God who in this manner finds expression in our lives.”
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