Son of Man

95:4.1In due time there grew up in Egypt a teacher called by many the “son of man” and by oth­ers Amen­emope. This seer ex­alted con­science to its high­est pin­na­cle of ar­bitra­ment be­tween right and wrong, taught pun­ish­ment for sin, and pro­claimed sal­va­tion through call­ing upon the so­lar de­ity.

120:2.2“2. Apart from your earth mis­sion and your uni­verse rev­e­la­tion, but in­ci­den­tal to both, I coun­sel that you as­sume, af­ter you are suf­fi­ciently self-con­scious of your di­vine iden­tity, the ad­di­tional task of tech­ni­cally ter­mi­nat­ing the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion in the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia, and that you do all this as the Son of Man; thus, as a mor­tal crea­ture of the realm, in weak­ness made pow­er­ful by faith-sub­mis­sion to the will of your Fa­ther, I sug­gest that you gra­ciously achieve all you have re­peat­edly de­clined ar­bi­trar­ily to ac­com­plish by power and might when you were so en­dowed at the time of the in­cep­tion of this sin­ful and un­jus­ti­fied re­bel­lion. I would re­gard it as a fit­ting cli­max of your mor­tal be­stowal if you should re­turn to us as the Son of Man, Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia, as well as the Son of God, su­preme sov­er­eign of your uni­verse. As a mor­tal man, the low­est type of in­tel­li­gent crea­ture in Neb­a­don, meet and ad­ju­di­cate the blas­phe­mous pre­ten­sions of Cali­gas­tia and Lu­cifer and, in your as­sumed hum­ble es­tate, for­ever end the shame­ful mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of these fallen chil­dren of light. Hav­ing stead­fastly de­clined to dis­credit these rebels through the ex­er­cise of your cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives, now it would be fit­ting that you should, in the like­ness of the low­est crea­tures of your cre­ation, wrest do­min­ion from the hands of these fallen Sons; and so would your whole lo­cal uni­verse in all fair­ness clearly and for­ever rec­og­nize the jus­tice of your do­ing in the role of mor­tal flesh those things which mercy ad­mon­ished you not to do by the power of ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity. And hav­ing thus by your be­stowal es­tab­lished the pos­si­bil­ity of the sov­er­eignty of the Su­preme in Neb­a­don, you will in ef­fect have brought to a close the un­ad­ju­di­cated af­fairs of all pre­ced­ing in­sur­rec­tions, not­with­stand­ing the greater or lesser time lag in­volved in the re­al­iza­tion of this achieve­ment. By this act the pend­ing dis­sen­sions of your uni­verse will be in sub­stance liq­ui­dated. And with the sub­se­quent en­dow­ment of su­preme sov­er­eignty over your uni­verse, sim­i­lar chal­lenges to your au­thor­ity can never re­cur in any part of your great per­sonal cre­ation.

120:3.11“In your stead I now reign. I as­sume ju­ris­dic­tion of all Neb­a­don as act­ing sov­er­eign dur­ing the in­terim of your sev­enth and mor­tal be­stowal on Uran­tia. And to you, Ga­briel, I com­mit the safe­keep­ing of the Son of Man about-to-be un­til he shall pres­ently and in power and glory be re­turned to me as the Son of Man and the Son of God. And, Ga­briel, I am your sov­er­eign un­til Mi­chael thus re­turns.”

• is still Son of Man

0:5.3On at­tained ex­pe­ri­en­tial lev­els all per­son­al­ity or­ders or val­ues are as­so­cia­ble and even co­cre­a­tional. Even God and man can co­ex­ist in a uni­fied per­son­al­ity, as is so ex­qui­sitely demon­strated in the pres­ent sta­tus of Christ Mi­chael—Son of Man and Son of God.

• is still Son of Man

2:1.7And all this ne­ces­si­tates such ar­range­ments for con­tact and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his man­i­fold crea­tures as have been or­dained, first, in the per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise Sons of God, who, al­though per­fect in di­vin­ity, also of­ten par­take of the na­ture of the very flesh and blood of the plan­e­tary races, be­com­ing one of you and one with you; thus, as it were, God be­comes man, as oc­curred in the be­stowal of Mi­chael, who was called in­ter­change­ably the Son of God and the Son of Man. And sec­ond, there are the per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit, the var­i­ous or­ders of the se­raphic hosts and other ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences who draw near to the ma­te­rial be­ings of lowly ori­gin and in so many ways min­is­ter to them and serve them. And third, there are the im­per­sonal Mys­tery Mon­i­tors, Thought Ad­justers, the ac­tual gift of the great God him­self sent to in­dwell such as the hu­mans of Uran­tia, sent with­out an­nounce­ment and with­out ex­pla­na­tion. In end­less pro­fu­sion they de­scend from the heights of glory to grace and in­dwell the hum­ble minds of those mor­tals who pos­sess the ca­pac­ity for God-con­scious­ness or the po­ten­tial there­for.

• sojourned on Urantia as

4:5.7But the in­hab­i­tants of Uran­tia are to find de­liv­er­ance from these an­cient er­rors and pa­gan su­per­sti­tions re­spect­ing the na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The rev­e­la­tion of the truth about God is ap­pear­ing, and the hu­man race is des­tined to know the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in all that beauty of char­ac­ter and love­li­ness of at­tri­butes so mag­nif­i­cently por­trayed by the Cre­ator Son who so­journed on Uran­tia as the Son of Man and the Son of God.

• sojourned on Urantia as

7:7.6More of the char­ac­ter and mer­ci­ful na­ture of the Eter­nal Son of mercy you should com­pre­hend as you med­i­tate on the rev­e­la­tion of these di­vine at­tri­butes which was made in lov­ing ser­vice by your own Cre­ator Son, one­time Son of Man on earth, now the ex­alted sov­er­eign of your lo­cal uni­verse—the Son of Man and the Son of God.

• Son of God became Son of Man

13:1.8The se­crets of Sonar­ing­ton in­clude the se­cret of the in­car­na­tion of the di­vine Sons. When a Son of God be­comes a Son of Man, is lit­er­ally born of woman, as oc­curred on your world nine­teen hun­dred years ago, it is a uni­ver­sal mys­tery. It is oc­cur­ring right along through­out the uni­verses, and it is a Sonar­ing­ton se­cret of di­vine son­ship. The Ad­justers are a mys­tery of God the Fa­ther. The in­car­na­tion of the di­vine Sons is a mys­tery of God the Son; it is a se­cret locked up in the sev­enth sec­tor of Sonar­ing­ton, a realm pen­e­trated by none save those who have per­son­ally passed through this unique ex­pe­ri­ence. Only those phases of in­car­na­tion hav­ing to do with your as­cen­sion ca­reer have been brought to your no­tice. There are many other phases of the mys­tery of the in­car­na­tion of the Par­a­dise Sons of un­re­vealed types on mis­sions of uni­verse ser­vice which are undis­closed to you. And there are still other Sonar­ing­ton mys­ter­ies.

• influenced by passage from Enoch
• rejected depiction by Prophet Daniel

126:3.6In the course of this year Je­sus found a pas­sage in the so-called Book of Enoch which in­flu­enced him in the later adop­tion of the term “Son of Man” as a des­ig­na­tion for his be­stowal mis­sion on Uran­tia. He had thor­oughly con­sid­ered the idea of the Jew­ish Mes­siah and was firmly con­vinced that he was not to be that Mes­siah. He longed to help his fa­ther’s peo­ple, but he never ex­pected to lead Jew­ish armies in over­throw­ing the for­eign dom­i­na­tion of Pales­tine. He knew he would never sit on the throne of David at Je­ru­sa­lem. Nei­ther did he be­lieve that his mis­sion was that of a spir­i­tual de­liv­erer or moral teacher solely to the Jew­ish peo­ple. In no sense, there­fore, could his life mis­sion be the ful­fill­ment of the in­tense long­ings and sup­posed Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the He­brew scrip­tures; at least, not as the Jews un­der­stood these pre­dic­tions of the proph­ets. Like­wise he was cer­tain he was never to ap­pear as the Son of Man de­picted by the Prophet Daniel.

126:3.7But when the time came for him to go forth as a world teacher, what would he call him­self? What claim should he make con­cern­ing his mis­sion? By what name would he be called by the peo­ple who would be­come be­liev­ers in his teach­ings?

126:3.8While turn­ing all these prob­lems over in his mind, he found in the syn­a­gogue li­brary at Naz­a­reth, among the apoc­a­lyp­tic books which he had been study­ing, this man­u­script called “The Book of Enoch”; and though he was cer­tain that it had not been writ­ten by Enoch of old, it proved very in­trigu­ing to him, and he read and reread it many times. There was one pas­sage which par­tic­u­larly im­pressed him, a pas­sage in which this term “Son of Man” ap­peared. The writer of this so-called Book of Enoch went on to tell about this Son of Man, de­scrib­ing the work he would do on earth and ex­plain­ing that this Son of Man, be­fore com­ing down on this earth to bring sal­va­tion to man­kind, had walked through the courts of heav­enly glory with his Fa­ther, the Fa­ther of all; and that he had turned his back upon all this grandeur and glory to come down on earth to pro­claim sal­va­tion to needy mor­tals. As Je­sus would read these pas­sages (well un­der­stand­ing that much of the East­ern mys­ti­cism which had be­come ad­mixed with these teach­ings was er­ro­neous), he re­sponded in his heart and rec­og­nized in his mind that of all the Mes­sianic pre­dic­tions of the He­brew scrip­tures and of all the the­o­ries about the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, none was so near the truth as this story tucked away in this only par­tially ac­cred­ited Book of Enoch; and he then and there de­cided to adopt as his in­au­gu­ral ti­tle “the Son of Man.” And this he did when he sub­se­quently be­gan his pub­lic work. Je­sus had an unerring abil­ity for the rec­og­ni­tion of truth, and truth he never hes­i­tated to em­brace, no mat­ter from what source it ap­peared to em­anate.

• always referred to himself as Son of Man

128:1.2Joshua ben Joseph knew full well that he was a man, a mor­tal man, born of woman. This is shown in the se­lec­tion of his first ti­tle, the Son of Man. He was truly a par­taker of flesh and blood, and even now, as he pre­sides in sov­er­eign au­thor­ity over the des­tinies of a uni­verse, he still bears among his nu­mer­ous well-earned ti­tles that of Son of Man. It is lit­er­ally true that the cre­ative Word—the Cre­ator Son—of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther was “made flesh and dwelt as a man of the realm on Uran­tia.” He la­bored, grew weary, rested, and slept. He hun­gered and sat­is­fied such crav­ings with food; he thirsted and quenched his thirst with wa­ter. He ex­pe­ri­enced the full gamut of hu­man feel­ings and emo­tions; he was “in all things tested, even as you are,” and he suf­fered and died.

• always referred to himself as Son of Man

128:1.8Of his hu­man na­ture he was never in doubt; it was self-ev­i­dent and al­ways pres­ent in his con­scious­ness. But of his di­vine na­ture there was al­ways room for doubt and con­jec­ture, at least this was true right up to the event of his bap­tism. The self-re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity was a slow and, from the hu­man stand­point, a nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion­ary rev­e­la­tion. This rev­e­la­tion and self-re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity be­gan in Je­ru­sa­lem when he was not quite thir­teen years old with the first super­nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence of his hu­man ex­is­tence; and this ex­pe­ri­ence of ef­fect­ing the self-re­al­iza­tion of his di­vine na­ture was com­pleted at the time of his sec­ond super­nat­u­ral ex­pe­ri­ence while in the flesh, the episode at­ten­dant upon his bap­tism by John in the Jor­dan, which event marked the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic ca­reer of min­istry and teach­ing.

• always referred to himself as Son of Man

129:4.1To the on­look­ing ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences of the lo­cal uni­verse, this Med­i­ter­ra­nean trip was the most en­thralling of all Je­sus’ earth ex­pe­ri­ences, at least of all his ca­reer right up to the event of his cru­ci­fix­ion and mor­tal death. This was the fas­ci­nat­ing pe­riod of his per­sonal min­istry in con­trast with the soon-fol­low­ing epoch of pub­lic min­istry. This unique episode was all the more en­gross­ing be­cause he was at this time still the car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth, the boat­builder of Ca­per­naum, the scribe of Da­mas­cus; he was still the Son of Man. He had not yet achieved the com­plete mas­tery of his hu­man mind; the Ad­juster had not fully mas­tered and coun­ter­parted the mor­tal iden­tity. He was still a man among men.

129:4.2The purely hu­man re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—the per­sonal spir­i­tual growth—of the Son of Man well-nigh reached the apex of at­tain­ment dur­ing this, the twenty-ninth year. This ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment was a con­sis­tently grad­ual growth from the mo­ment of the ar­rival of his Thought Ad­juster un­til the day of the com­ple­tion and con­fir­ma­tion of that nat­u­ral and nor­mal hu­man re­la­tion­ship be­tween the ma­te­rial mind of man and the mind-en­dow­ment of the spirit—the phe­nom­e­non of the mak­ing of these two minds one, the ex­pe­ri­ence which the Son of Man at­tained in com­ple­tion and fi­nal­ity, as an in­car­nated mor­tal of the realm, on the day of his bap­tism in the Jor­dan.

• asked to meet enemies as

134:8.6Near the end of the moun­tain so­journ Je­sus asked his Fa­ther if he might be per­mit­ted to hold con­fer­ence with his Sa­ta­nia en­e­mies as the Son of Man, as Joshua ben Joseph. This re­quest was granted. Dur­ing the last week on Mount Her­mon the great temp­ta­tion, the uni­verse trial, oc­curred. Sa­tan (rep­re­sent­ing Lu­cifer) and the re­bel­lious Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, were pres­ent with Je­sus and were made fully vis­i­ble to him. And this “temp­ta­tion,” this fi­nal trial of hu­man loy­alty in the face of the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of rebel per­son­al­i­ties, had not to do with food, tem­ple pin­na­cles, or pre­sump­tu­ous acts. It had not to do with the king­doms of this world but with the sov­er­eignty of a mighty and glo­ri­ous uni­verse. The sym­bol­ism of your rec­ords was in­tended for the back­ward ages of the world’s child­like thought. And sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions should un­der­stand what a great strug­gle the Son of Man passed through that event­ful day on Mount Her­mon.

• sought to complete bestowal mission as

157:5.2Je­sus had sought to live his life on earth and com­plete his be­stowal mis­sion as the Son of Man. His fol­low­ers were dis­posed to re­gard him as the ex­pected Mes­siah. Know­ing that he could never ful­fill their Mes­sianic ex­pec­ta­tions, he en­deav­ored to ef­fect such a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of their con­cept of the Mes­siah as would en­able him par­tially to meet their ex­pec­ta­tions. But he now rec­og­nized that such a plan could hardly be car­ried through suc­cess­fully. He there­fore elected boldly to dis­close the third plan—openly to an­nounce his di­vin­ity, ac­knowl­edge the truth­ful­ness of Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion, and di­rectly pro­claim to the twelve that he was a Son of God.

• sought to complete bestowal mission as

157:6.6Je­sus had sin­cerely en­deav­ored to lead his fol­low­ers into the spir­i­tual king­dom as a teacher, then as a teacher-healer, but they would not have it so. He well knew that his earth mis­sion could not pos­si­bly ful­fill the Mes­sianic ex­pec­ta­tions of the Jew­ish peo­ple; the olden proph­ets had por­trayed a Mes­siah which he could never be. He sought to es­tab­lish the Fa­ther’s king­dom as the Son of Man, but his fol­low­ers would not go for­ward in the ad­ven­ture. Je­sus, see­ing this, then elected to meet his be­liev­ers part way and in so do­ing pre­pared openly to as­sume the role of the be­stowal Son of God.

• always referred to himself as Son of Man

169:4.1Je­sus al­ways had trou­ble try­ing to ex­plain to the apos­tles that, while they pro­claimed the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God, the Fa­ther in heaven was not a king. At the time Je­sus lived on earth and taught in the flesh, the peo­ple of Uran­tia knew mostly of kings and em­per­ors in the gov­ern­ments of the na­tions, and the Jews had long con­tem­plated the com­ing of the king­dom of God. For these and other rea­sons, the Mas­ter thought best to des­ig­nate the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of man as the king­dom of heaven and the spirit head of this broth­er­hood as the Fa­ther in heaven. Never did Je­sus re­fer to his Fa­ther as a king. In his in­ti­mate talks with the apos­tles he al­ways re­ferred to him­self as the Son of Man and as their el­der brother. He de­picted all his fol­low­ers as ser­vants of man­kind and mes­sen­gers of the gospel of the king­dom.

135:5.7Who would this Mes­siah be? Again the Jew­ish teach­ers dif­fered. The older ones clung to the doc­trine of the son of David. The newer taught that, since the new king­dom was a heav­enly king­dom, the new ruler might also be a di­vine per­son­al­ity, one who had long sat at God’s right hand in heaven. And strange as it may ap­pear, those who thus con­ceived of the ruler of the new king­dom looked upon him not as a hu­man Mes­siah, not as a mere man, but as “the Son of Man”—a Son of God—a heav­enly Prince, long held in wait­ing thus to as­sume the ruler­ship of the earth made new. Such was the re­li­gious back­ground of the Jew­ish world when John went forth pro­claim­ing: “Re­pent, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand!”

136:1.1The Jews en­ter­tained many ideas about the ex­pected de­liv­erer, and each of these dif­fer­ent schools of Mes­sianic teach­ing was able to point to state­ments in the He­brew scrip­tures as proof of their con­tentions. In a gen­eral way, the Jews re­garded their na­tional his­tory as be­gin­ning with Abra­ham and cul­mi­nat­ing in the Mes­siah and the new age of the king­dom of God. In ear­lier times they had en­vis­aged this de­liv­erer as “the ser­vant of the Lord,” then as “the Son of Man,” while lat­terly some even went so far as to re­fer to the Mes­siah as the “Son of God.” But no mat­ter whether he was called the “seed of Abra­ham” or “the son of David,” all were agreed that he was to be the Mes­siah, the “anointed one.” Thus did the con­cept evolve from the “ser­vant of the Lord” to the “son of David,” “Son of Man,” and “Son of God.”