Baptism and the Forty Days

136:4.1Day by day, up in the hills, Je­sus for­mu­lated the plans for the re­main­der of his Uran­tia be­stowal. He first de­cided not to teach con­tem­po­ra­ne­ously with John. He planned to re­main in com­par­a­tive re­tire­ment un­til the work of John achieved its pur­pose, or un­til John was sud­denly stopped by im­pris­on­ment. Je­sus well knew that John’s fear­less and tact­less preach­ing would pres­ently arouse the fears and en­mity of the civil rulers. In view of John’s pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion, Je­sus be­gan def­i­nitely to plan his pro­gram of pub­lic labors in be­half of his peo­ple and the world, in be­half of ev­ery in­hab­ited world through­out his vast uni­verse. Mi­chael’s mor­tal be­stowal was on Uran­tia but for all worlds of Neb­a­don.

136:4.2The first thing Je­sus did, af­ter think­ing through the gen­eral plan of co-or­di­nat­ing his pro­gram with John’s move­ment, was to re­view in his mind the in­struc­tions of Im­manuel. Care­fully he thought over the ad­vice given him con­cern­ing his meth­ods of la­bor, and that he was to leave no per­ma­nent writ­ing on the planet. Never again did Je­sus write on any­thing ex­cept sand. On his next visit to Naz­a­reth, much to the sor­row of his brother Joseph, Je­sus de­stroyed all of his writ­ing that was pre­served on the boards about the car­pen­ter shop, and which hung upon the walls of the old home. And Je­sus pon­dered well over Im­manuel’s ad­vice per­tain­ing to his eco­nomic, so­cial, and po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tude to­ward the world as he should find it.

136:4.3Je­sus did not fast dur­ing this forty days’ iso­la­tion. The longest pe­riod he went with­out food was his first two days in the hills when he was so en­grossed with his think­ing that he for­got all about eat­ing. But on the third day he went in search of food. Nei­ther was he tempted dur­ing this time by any evil spir­its or rebel per­son­al­i­ties of sta­tion on this world or from any other world.

136:4.4These forty days were the oc­ca­sion of the fi­nal con­fer­ence be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine minds, or rather the first real func­tion­ing of these two minds as now made one. The re­sults of this mo­men­tous sea­son of med­i­ta­tion demon­strated con­clu­sively that the di­vine mind has tri­umphantly and spir­i­tu­ally dom­i­nated the hu­man in­tel­lect. The mind of man has be­come the mind of God from this time on, and though the self­hood of the mind of man is ever pres­ent, al­ways does this spir­i­tu­al­ized hu­man mind say, “Not my will but yours be done.”

136:4.5The trans­ac­tions of this event­ful time were not the fan­tas­tic vi­sions of a starved and weak­ened mind, nei­ther were they the con­fused and puerile sym­bol­isms which af­ter­ward gained rec­ord as the “temp­ta­tions of Je­sus in the wilder­ness.” Rather was this a sea­son for think­ing over the whole event­ful and var­ied ca­reer of the Uran­tia be­stowal and for the care­ful lay­ing of those plans for fur­ther min­istry which would best serve this world while also con­tribut­ing some­thing to the bet­ter­ment of all other re­bel­lion-iso­lated spheres. Je­sus thought over the whole span of hu­man life on Uran­tia, from the days of An­don and Fonta, down through Adam’s de­fault, and on to the min­istry of the Mel­chiz­e­dek of Salem.

136:4.6Ga­briel had re­minded Je­sus that there were two ways in which he might man­i­fest him­self to the world in case he should choose to tarry on Uran­tia for a time. And it was made clear to Je­sus that his choice in this mat­ter would have noth­ing to do with ei­ther his uni­verse sov­er­eignty or the ter­mi­na­tion of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. These two ways of world min­istry were:

136:4.71. His own way—the way that might seem most pleas­ant and prof­itable from the stand­point of the im­me­di­ate needs of this world and the pres­ent ed­i­fi­ca­tion of his own uni­verse.

136:4.82. The Fa­ther’s way—the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of a farsee­ing ideal of crea­ture life vi­su­al­ized by the high per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

136:4.9It was thus made clear to Je­sus that there were two ways in which he could or­der the re­main­der of his earth life. Each of these ways had some­thing to be said in its fa­vor as it might be re­garded in the light of the im­me­di­ate sit­u­a­tion. The Son of Man clearly saw that his choice be­tween these two modes of con­duct would have noth­ing to do with his re­cep­tion of uni­verse sov­er­eignty; that was a mat­ter al­ready set­tled and sealed on the rec­ords of the uni­verse of uni­verses and only awaited his de­mand in per­son. But it was in­di­cated to Je­sus that it would af­ford his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel, great sat­is­fac­tion if he, Je­sus, should see fit to fin­ish up his earth ca­reer of in­car­na­tion as he had so nobly be­gun it, al­ways sub­ject to the Fa­ther’s will. On the third day of this iso­la­tion Je­sus prom­ised him­self he would go back to the world to fin­ish his earth ca­reer, and that in a sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing any two ways he would al­ways choose the Fa­ther’s will. And he lived out the re­main­der of his earth life al­ways true to that re­solve. Even to the bit­ter end he in­vari­ably sub­or­di­nated his sov­er­eign will to that of his heav­enly Fa­ther.

136:4.10The forty days in the moun­tain wilder­ness were not a pe­riod of great temp­ta­tion but rather the pe­riod of the Mas­ter’s great de­ci­sions. Dur­ing these days of lone com­mu­nion with him­self and his Fa­ther’s im­me­di­ate pres­ence—the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster (he no longer had a per­sonal se­raphic guard­ian)—he ar­rived, one by one, at the great de­ci­sions which were to con­trol his poli­cies and con­duct for the re­main­der of his earth ca­reer. Sub­se­quently the tra­di­tion of a great temp­ta­tion be­came at­tached to this pe­riod of iso­la­tion through con­fu­sion with the frag­men­tary nar­ra­tives of the Mount Her­mon strug­gles, and fur­ther be­cause it was the cus­tom to have all great proph­ets and hu­man lead­ers be­gin their pub­lic ca­reers by un­der­go­ing these sup­posed sea­sons of fast­ing and prayer. It had al­ways been Je­sus’ prac­tice, when fac­ing any new or se­ri­ous de­ci­sions, to with­draw for com­mu­nion with his own spirit that he might seek to know the will of God.

136:4.11In all this plan­ning for the re­main­der of his earth life, Je­sus was al­ways torn in his hu­man heart by two op­pos­ing courses of con­duct:

136:4.121. He en­ter­tained a strong de­sire to win his peo­ple—and the whole world—to be­lieve in him and to ac­cept his new spir­i­tual king­dom. And he well knew their ideas con­cern­ing the com­ing Mes­siah.

136:4.132. To live and work as he knew his Fa­ther would ap­prove, to con­duct his work in be­half of other worlds in need, and to con­tinue, in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, to re­veal the Fa­ther and show forth his di­vine char­ac­ter of love.

136:4.14Through­out these event­ful days Je­sus lived in an an­cient rock cav­ern, a shel­ter in the side of the hills near a vil­lage some­time called Beit Adis. He drank from the small spring which came from the side of the hill near this rock shel­ter.