Baptism and the Forty Days

136:2.1Je­sus was bap­tized at the very height of John’s preach­ing when Pales­tine was aflame with the ex­pectancy of his mes­sage—“the king­dom of God is at hand”—when all Jewry was en­gaged in se­ri­ous and solemn self-ex­am­i­na­tion. The Jew­ish sense of racial sol­i­dar­ity was very pro­found. The Jews not only be­lieved that the sins of the fa­ther might af­flict his chil­dren, but they firmly be­lieved that the sin of one in­di­vid­ual might curse the na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, not all who sub­mit­ted to John’s bap­tism re­garded them­selves as be­ing guilty of the spe­cific sins which John de­nounced. Many de­vout souls were bap­tized by John for the good of Is­rael. They feared lest some sin of ig­no­rance on their part might de­lay the com­ing of the Mes­siah. They felt them­selves to be­long to a guilty and sin-cursed na­tion, and they pre­sented them­selves for bap­tism that they might by so do­ing man­i­fest fruits of race pen­i­tence. It is there­fore ev­i­dent that Je­sus in no sense re­ceived John’s bap­tism as a rite of re­pen­tance or for the re­mis­sion of sins. In ac­cept­ing bap­tism at the hands of John, Je­sus was only fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of many pi­ous Is­raelites.

136:2.2When Je­sus of Naz­a­reth went down into the Jor­dan to be bap­tized, he was a mor­tal of the realm who had at­tained the pin­na­cle of hu­man evo­lu­tion­ary as­cen­sion in all mat­ters re­lated to the con­quest of mind and to self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the spirit. He stood in the Jor­dan that day a per­fected mor­tal of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space. Per­fect syn­chrony and full com­mu­ni­ca­tion had be­come es­tab­lished be­tween the mor­tal mind of Je­sus and the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster, the di­vine gift of his Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. And just such an Ad­juster in­dwells all nor­mal be­ings liv­ing on Uran­tia since the as­cen­sion of Mi­chael to the head­ship of his uni­verse, ex­cept that Je­sus’ Ad­juster had been pre­vi­ously pre­pared for this spe­cial mis­sion by sim­i­larly in­dwelling an­other super­hu­man in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek.

136:2.3Or­di­nar­ily, when a mor­tal of the realm at­tains such high lev­els of per­son­al­ity per­fec­tion, there oc­cur those pre­lim­i­nary phe­nom­ena of spir­i­tual el­e­va­tion which ter­mi­nate in even­tual fu­sion of the ma­tured soul of the mor­tal with its as­so­ci­ated di­vine Ad­juster. And such a change was ap­par­ently due to take place in the per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth on that very day when he went down into the Jor­dan with his two broth­ers to be bap­tized by John. This cer­e­mony was the fi­nal act of his purely hu­man life on Uran­tia, and many super­hu­man ob­servers ex­pected to wit­ness the fu­sion of the Ad­juster with its in­dwelt mind, but they were all des­tined to suf­fer dis­ap­point­ment. Some­thing new and even greater oc­curred. As John laid his hands upon Je­sus to bap­tize him, the in­dwelling Ad­juster took fi­nal leave of the per­fected hu­man soul of Joshua ben Joseph. And in a few mo­ments this di­vine en­tity re­turned from Di­vin­ing­ton as a Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster and chief of his kind through­out the en­tire lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. Thus did Je­sus ob­serve his own for­mer di­vine spirit de­scend­ing on its re­turn to him in per­son­al­ized form. And he heard this same spirit of Par­a­dise ori­gin now speak, say­ing, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” And John, with Je­sus’ two broth­ers, also heard these words. John’s dis­ci­ples, stand­ing by the wa­ter’s edge, did not hear these words, nei­ther did they see the ap­pari­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster. Only the eyes of Je­sus be­held the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

136:2.4When the re­turned and now ex­alted Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had thus spo­ken, all was si­lence. And while the four of them tar­ried in the wa­ter, Je­sus, look­ing up to the near-by Ad­juster, prayed: “My Fa­ther who reigns in heaven, hal­lowed be your name. Your king­dom come! Your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven.” When he had prayed, the “heav­ens were opened,” and the Son of Man saw the vi­sion, pre­sented by the now Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, of him­self as a Son of God as he was be­fore he came to earth in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, and as he would be when the in­car­nated life should be fin­ished. This heav­enly vi­sion was seen only by Je­sus.

136:2.5It was the voice of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster that John and Je­sus heard, speak­ing in be­half of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, for the Ad­juster is of, and as, the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Through­out the re­main­der of Je­sus’ earth life this Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster was as­so­ci­ated with him in all his labors; Je­sus was in con­stant com­mu­nion with this ex­alted Ad­juster.

136:2.6When Je­sus was bap­tized, he re­pented of no mis­deeds; he made no con­fes­sion of sin. His was the bap­tism of con­se­cra­tion to the per­for­mance of the will of the heav­enly Fa­ther. At his bap­tism he heard the un­mis­tak­able call of his Fa­ther, the fi­nal sum­mons to be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness, and he went away into pri­vate seclu­sion for forty days to think over these man­i­fold prob­lems. In thus re­tir­ing for a sea­son from ac­tive per­son­al­ity con­tact with his earthly as­so­ciates, Je­sus, as he was and on Uran­tia, was fol­low­ing the very pro­ce­dure that ob­tains on the mor­ontia worlds when­ever an as­cend­ing mor­tal fuses with the in­ner pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

136:2.7This day of bap­tism ended the purely hu­man life of Je­sus. The di­vine Son has found his Fa­ther, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has found his in­car­nated Son, and they speak the one to the other.

136:2.8(Je­sus was al­most thirty-one and one-half years old when he was bap­tized. While Luke says that Je­sus was bap­tized in the fif­teenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cae­sar, which would be A.D. 29 since Au­gus­tus died in A.D. 14, it should be re­called that Tiberius was co­em­peror with Au­gus­tus for two and one-half years be­fore the death of Au­gus­tus, hav­ing had coins struck in his honor in Oc­to­ber, A.D. 11. The fif­teenth year of his ac­tual rule was, there­fore, this very year of A.D. 26, that of Je­sus’ bap­tism. And this was also the year that Pon­tius Pi­late be­gan his rule as gov­er­nor of Judea.)