Baptism and the Forty Days

136:9.1Hav­ing set­tled such ques­tions of pol­icy as per­tained to his in­di­vid­ual re­la­tions to nat­u­ral law and spir­i­tual power, he turned his at­ten­tion to the choice of meth­ods to be em­ployed in the procla­ma­tion and es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God. John had al­ready be­gun this work; how might he con­tinue the mes­sage? How should he take over John’s mis­sion? How should he or­ga­nize his fol­low­ers for ef­fec­tive ef­fort and in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tion? Je­sus was now reach­ing the fi­nal de­ci­sion which would for­bid that he fur­ther re­gard him­self as the Jew­ish Mes­siah, at least as the Mes­siah was pop­u­larly con­ceived in that day.

136:9.2The Jews en­vis­aged a de­liv­erer who would come in mirac­u­lous power to cast down Is­rael’s en­e­mies and es­tab­lish the Jews as world rulers, free from want and op­pres­sion. Je­sus knew that this hope would never be re­al­ized. He knew that the king­dom of heaven had to do with the over­throw of evil in the hearts of men, and that it was purely a mat­ter of spir­i­tual con­cern. He thought out the ad­vis­abil­ity of in­au­gu­rat­ing the spir­i­tual king­dom with a bril­liant and daz­zling dis­play of power—and such a course would have been per­mis­si­ble and wholly within the ju­ris­dic­tion of Mi­chael—but he fully de­cided against such a plan. He would not com­pro­mise with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­niques of Cali­gas­tia. He had won the world in po­ten­tial by sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will, and he pro­posed to fin­ish his work as he had be­gun it, and as the Son of Man.

136:9.3You can hardly imag­ine what would have hap­pened on Uran­tia had this God-man, now in po­ten­tial pos­ses­sion of all power in heaven and on earth, once de­cided to un­furl the ban­ner of sov­er­eignty, to mar­shal his won­der-work­ing bat­tal­ions in mil­i­tant ar­ray! But he would not com­pro­mise. He would not serve evil that the wor­ship of God might pre­sum­ably be de­rived there­from. He would abide by the Fa­ther’s will. He would pro­claim to an on­look­ing uni­verse, “You shall wor­ship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

136:9.4As the days passed, with ever-in­creas­ing clear­ness Je­sus per­ceived what kind of a truth-re­vealer he was to be­come. He dis­cerned that God’s way was not go­ing to be the easy way. He be­gan to re­al­ize that the cup of the re­main­der of his hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence might pos­si­bly be bit­ter, but he de­cided to drink it.

136:9.5Even his hu­man mind is say­ing good-bye to the throne of David. Step by step this hu­man mind fol­lows in the path of the di­vine. The hu­man mind still asks ques­tions but un­fail­ingly ac­cepts the di­vine an­swers as fi­nal rul­ings in this com­bined life of liv­ing as a man in the world while all the time sub­mit­ting un­qual­i­fiedly to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal and di­vine will.

136:9.6Rome was mis­tress of the West­ern world. The Son of Man, now in iso­la­tion and achiev­ing these mo­men­tous de­ci­sions, with the hosts of heaven at his com­mand, rep­re­sented the last chance of the Jews to at­tain world do­min­ion; but this earth­born Jew, who pos­sessed such tremen­dous wis­dom and power, de­clined to use his uni­verse en­dow­ments ei­ther for the ag­gran­dize­ment of him­self or for the en­throne­ment of his peo­ple. He saw, as it were, “the king­doms of this world,” and he pos­sessed the power to take them. The Most Highs of Eden­tia had re­signed all these pow­ers into his hands, but he did not want them. The king­doms of earth were pal­try things to in­ter­est the Cre­ator and Ruler of a uni­verse. He had only one ob­jec­tive, the fur­ther rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, the rule of the heav­enly Fa­ther in the hearts of man­kind.

136:9.7The idea of bat­tle, con­tention, and slaugh­ter was re­pug­nant to Je­sus; he would have none of it. He would ap­pear on earth as the Prince of Peace to re­veal a God of love. Be­fore his bap­tism he had again re­fused the of­fer of the Zealots to lead them in re­bel­lion against the Ro­man op­pres­sors. And now he made his fi­nal de­ci­sion re­gard­ing those Scrip­tures which his mother had taught him, such as: “The Lord has said to me, ‘You are my Son; this day have I be­got­ten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the hea­then for your in­her­i­tance and the ut­ter­most parts of the earth for your pos­ses­sion. You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall dash them in pieces like a pot­ter’s ves­sel.’”

136:9.8Je­sus of Naz­a­reth reached the con­clu­sion that such ut­ter­ances did not re­fer to him. At last, and fi­nally, the hu­man mind of the Son of Man made a clean sweep of all these Mes­sianic dif­fi­cul­ties and con­tra­dic­tions—He­brew scrip­tures, pa­ren­tal train­ing, chazan teach­ing, Jew­ish ex­pec­ta­tions, and hu­man am­bi­tious long­ings; once and for all he de­cided upon his course. He would re­turn to Gal­i­lee and qui­etly be­gin the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom and trust his Fa­ther (the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster) to work out the de­tails of pro­ce­dure day by day.

136:9.9By these de­ci­sions Je­sus set a wor­thy ex­am­ple for ev­ery per­son on ev­ery world through­out a vast uni­verse when he re­fused to ap­ply ma­te­rial tests to prove spir­i­tual prob­lems, when he re­fused pre­sump­tu­ously to defy nat­u­ral laws. And he set an in­spir­ing ex­am­ple of uni­verse loy­alty and moral no­bil­ity when he re­fused to grasp tem­po­ral power as the pre­lude to spir­i­tual glory.

136:9.10If the Son of Man had any doubts about his mis­sion and its na­ture when he went up in the hills af­ter his bap­tism, he had none when he came back to his fel­lows fol­low­ing the forty days of iso­la­tion and de­ci­sions.

136:9.11Je­sus has for­mu­lated a pro­gram for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. He will not cater to the phys­i­cal grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the peo­ple. He will not deal out bread to the mul­ti­tudes as he has so re­cently seen it be­ing done in Rome. He will not at­tract at­ten­tion to him­self by won­der-work­ing, even though the Jews are ex­pect­ing just that sort of a de­liv­erer. Nei­ther will he seek to win ac­cep­tance of a spir­i­tual mes­sage by a show of po­lit­i­cal au­thor­ity or tem­po­ral power.

136:9.12In re­ject­ing these meth­ods of en­hanc­ing the com­ing king­dom in the eyes of the ex­pec­tant Jews, Je­sus made sure that these same Jews would cer­tainly and fi­nally re­ject all of his claims to au­thor­ity and di­vin­ity. Know­ing all this, Je­sus long sought to pre­vent his early fol­low­ers al­lud­ing to him as the Mes­siah.

136:9.13Through­out his pub­lic min­istry he was con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of deal­ing with three con­stantly re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions: the clamor to be fed, the in­sis­tence on mir­a­cles, and the fi­nal re­quest that he al­low his fol­low­ers to make him king. But Je­sus never de­parted from the de­ci­sions which he made dur­ing these days of his iso­la­tion in the Perean hills.