Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 194
BESTOWAL OF THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
1. About one o'clock, as the one hundred and twenty believers were engaged in prayer, they all became aware of a strange presence in the room. At the same time these disciples all became conscious, of a new and profound sense of spiritual joy, security, and confidence. This new consciousness of spiritual strength was immediately followed by a strong urge to go out and publicly proclaim the gospel of the kingdom and the good news that Jesus had risen from the dead. Peter stood up and declared that this must be the coming of the Spirit of Truth which the Master had promised them and proposed that they go to the temple and begin tae proclamation of the good news committed to their hands. And they did just what Peter suggested.
2. These men had been trained and instructed that the gospel which they should preach was the fatherhood of God and the sonship of man, but at just this moment of spiritual ecstasy and personal triumph, the best tidings, the greatest news, these men could think of was the fact of the risen Master... they unintentionally stumbled into the error of substituting some of the facts associated with the gospel for the gospel message itself. Peter unwittingly led off in this mistake, and others followed after him on down to Paul, who created a new religion out of the new version of the good news.
3. The gospel of the kingdom is: the fact of the fatherhood of God, coupled with the resultant truth of the sonship‑brotherhood of men. Christianity, as it developed from that day, is: the fact of God as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, in association with the experience of believer‑fellowship with the risen and glorified Christ.
4. These believers felt themselves suddenly translated into another world, a new existence of joy, power, and glory. The Master had told them the kingdom would come with power, and some of them thought they were beginning to discern what he meant.
5. The apostles had been in hiding for forty days. This day happened to be the Jewish festival of Pentecost, and thousands of visitors from all parts of the world were in Jerusalem... It was about two o'clock when Peter stood up in that very place where his Master had last taught in this temple, and delivered that impassioned appeal which resulted in the winning of more than two thousand souls... The leaders of the Jews were astounded at the boldness of the apostles, but they feared to molest them because of the large numbers who believed their story.
6. Pentecost was the great festival of baptism, the time for fellowshipping the proselytes of the gate, those gentiles who desired to serve Yahweh. It was, therefore, the more easy for large numbers of both the Jews and believing gentiles to submit to baptism on this day. In doing this, they were in no way disconnecting themselves from the Jewish faith. Even for some time after this the believers in Jesus were a sect within Judaism.
7. Jesus... sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is designed to live in man and, for each new generation, to restate the Jesus message so that every new group of mortals to appear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up‑to‑date version of the gospel, just such personal enlightenment and group guidance as will prove to be an effective solvent for man's ever‑new and varied spiritual difficulties.
8. In a certain sense, this Spirit of Truth is the spirit of both the Universal Father and the Creator Son. Do not make the mistake of expecting to become strongly intellectually conscious of the outpoured Spirit of Truth. The spirit never creates a consciousness of himself, only a consciousness of Michael, the Son.. .The proof, therefore, of your fellowship with the Spirit of Truth is not to be found in your consciousness of this spirit but rather in your experience of enhanced fellowship with Michael…Thus it appears that the Spirit of Truth comes really to lead all believers into all truth, into the expanding knowledge of the experience of the living and growing spiritual consciousness of the reality of eternal and ascending sonship with God.
9. Even though the gospel did become greatly distorted, it remains a fact that this new message about Jesus carried along with it many of the fundamental truths and teachings of his earlier gospel of the kingdom. And, sooner or later, these concealed truths of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men will emerge to effectually transform the civilization of all mankind.
10. But these mistakes of the intellect in no way interfered with the believer's great progress in growth in spirit. In less than a month after the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, the apostles made more individual spiritual progress than during their almost four years of personal and loving association with the Master.
11. Neither did this substitution of the fact of the resurrection of Jesus for the saving gospel truth of sonship with God in any way interfere with the rapid spread of their teachings; on the contrary, this overshadowing of Jesus' message by the new teachings about his person and resurrection seemed greatly to facilitate the preaching of the good news.
12. Since the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, man is subject to the teaching and guidance of a threefold spirit endowment: the spirit of the Father, the Thought Adjuster; the spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Truth; the spirit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
13. As man progresses upward in the scale of intelligence and spiritual perception, there eventually come to hover over him and dwell within him the seven higher spirit influences. And these seven spirits of the advancing worlds are:
1. The bestowed spirit of the Universal Father the Thought Adjusters
2. The spirit presence of the Eternal Son—the spirit gravity of the universe of universes and the certain channel of all spirit communion.
3. The spirit presence of the Infinite Spirit—the universal spirit-mind of all creation, the spiritual source of the intellectual kinship of all progressive intelligences.
4. The spirit of the Universal Father and the Creator Son—the Spirit of Truth, generally regarded as the spirit of the Universe Son.
5. The spirit of the Infinite Spirit and the Universe Mother Spirit—the Holy Spirit, generally regarded as the spirit of the Universe Spirit.
6. The mind‑spirit of the Universe Mother Spirit—the seven adjutant mind‑spirits of the local universe.
7. The spirit of the Father, Sons, and Spirits—the new‑name spirit of the ascending morta1s of the realms after the fusion of the mortal spirit‑born soul with the Paradise Thought Adjuster and after the subsequent attainment of the divinity and glorification of the status of the Paradise Corps of the Finality.
14. Many queer and strange teachings became associated with the early narratives of the day of Pentecost. In subsequent times the events of this day, on which the Spirit of Truth, the new teacher, came to dwell with mankind, have become confused with the foolish outbreaks of rampant emotionalism…As the indwelling spirit of the "new teacher," the Master has, since Pentecost, been able to live his life anew in the experience of every truth‑taught believer.
15. Many things which happen in the course of a human life are hard to understand, difficult to reconcile with the idea that this is a universe in which truth prevails and in which righteousness triumphs... It does. And the life and death of Jesus are the eternal proof that the truth of goodness and the faith of the spirit‑led creature will always be vindicated...The religions of pessimistic despair seek to obtain release from the burdens of life; they crave extinction in endless slumber and rest…The religion of Jesus is a new gospel of faith to be proclaimed to struggling humanity. This new religion is founded on faith, hope and love.
16. Jesus met life in all its terrible reality and mastered it—even in death...The religion of Jesus does not seek to escape this life in order to enjoy the waiting bliss of another existence. The religion of Jesus provides the joy and peace of another and spiritual existence to enhance and ennoble the life which men now live in the flesh. If religion is an opiate to the people, it is not the religion of Jesus... The spiritual forward urge is the most powerful driving force present in this world; the truth‑learning believer is the one progressive and aggressive soul on earth.
17. It is forever true, "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." On this day the Spirit of Truth became the personal gift from the Master to every mortal ...At last, true religion is delivered from the custody of priests and all sacred classes and finds its real manifestation in the individual souls of men.
18. The religion of Jesus fosters the highest type of human civilization in that it creates the highest type of spiritual personality and proclaims the sacredness of that person.
19. This day of Pentecost witnessed the great effort of the spirit to liberate the religion of Jesus from its inherited Jewish fetters...No revealed religion can spread to all the world when it makes the serious mistake of becoming permeated with some national culture or associated with established racial, social, or economic practices. The bestowal of the spirit of Truth was independent of all forms, ceremonies, sacred places, and special behavior by those who received the fullness of its manifestation ...For all time, Pentecost disassociates the idea of spiritual experience from the notion of especially favorable environments.
20. Pentecost, with its spiritual endowment, was designed forever to loose the religion of the Master from all dependence upon physical force; the teachers of this new religion are now equipped with spiritual weapons...They are quipped to overcome evil with good, to vanquish hate by love, to destroy fear with a courageous and living faith in truth. Jesus had already taught his followers that his religion was never passive; always were his disciples to be active and positive in their ministry.
21. Urantia has passed through the ravages of great and. destructive wars in its history. All participant in these terrible struggles met with defeat. There was but one victor; there was only one who came out of these embittered struggles with an enhanced reputation—that was Jesus of Nazareth and his gospel of overcoming evil with good. The secret of a better civilization is bound up in the Master's teachings of the brotherhood of man, the good will of love and mutual trust.
22. Pentecost obliterated all religious discrimination founded on racial distinction, cultural differences, social caste, or sex prejudice. No wonder these believers in the new religion would cry out, "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."...Pentecost marked the end of special priesthoods and all belief in sacred families.
23. This experience of losing self and finding the spirit was not one of emotion; it was an act of intelligent self‑surrender and unreserved consecration. Pentecost was the call to spiritual unity among gospel believers...The religion of Jesus is the most powerful unifying' influence the world has ever known... Mankind can be unified only by the spiritual approach, and the Spirit of Truth is a world influence which is universal.
24. Pentecost, then and now, signifies that the Jesus of history has become the divine Son of living experience. The joy of this outpoured spirit, when it is consciously experienced in human life, is a tonic for health, a stimulus for mind, and an unfailing energy for the soul.
25. Christ was about to become the creed of the rapidly forming church. Jesus lives; he died for men; he gave the spirit; he is coming again. Jesus filled all their thoughts and determined all their new concept of God and everything else…they were filled with joy, and they lived such new and unique lives that all men were attracted to their teachings about Jesus. They made the great mistake of using the living arid illustrative commentary on the gospel of the kingdom for that gospel, but even that represented the greatest religion mankind had ever known.
They were not communal by decree but by the desire to share their goods with their fellow believers. They confidently expected that Jesus would return to complete the establishment of the Father's kingdom during their generation...But the final results of this well‑meant experiment in thoughtless brotherly love were disastrous and sorrow‑breeding… Very soon the believers at Antioch were taking up a collection to keep their fellow believers at Jerusalem from starving.
26. In these days they celebrated the Lord's Supper after the manner of its establishment; that is, they assembled for a social meal of good fellowship and partook of' the sacrament at the end of the meal. At first they baptized in the name of Jesus; it was almost twenty years before they began to baptize in "the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Baptism was all that was required for admission into the fellowship of believers. They had no organization as yet; it was simply the Jesus brotherhood.
27. The Sadducees began to put the leaders of the Jesus sect in jail until they were prevailed upon to accept the counsel of one of the leading rabbis, Gamaliel, who advised them: "Refrain from these men and let them alone, for if this counsel or this work is of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them, lest haply you be found even to be fighting against God."
28. And so all went well in Jerusalem until the time of the coming of the Greeks in large numbers from Alexandria. Two of the pupils of Rodan arrived in Jerusalem and made many converts from among the Hellenists. Among their early converts were Stephen and Barnabas. These able Greeks did not so much have the Jewish viewpoint, and they did not so well conform to the Jewish mode of worship and other ceremonial practices. And it was the doings of these Greek believers that terminated the peaceful relations between the Jesus brotherhood and the Pharisees and Sadducees.
29. Stephen and his Greek associate began to preach more as Jesus taught, and this brought them into immediate conflict with the Jewish rulers. In one of Stephen's public sermons, when he reached the objectionable part of the discourse, they dispensed with all formalities of trial and proceeded to stone him to death on the spot. Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Jesus' believers in Jerusalem, thus became the first martyr to the new faith and the specific cause for the formal organization of the early Christian church. This new crisis was met by the recognition that believers could no longer go on as a sect within the Jewish faith. They all agreed that they must separate themselves from unbelievers; and within one month from the death of Stephen the church at Jerusalem had been organized under the leadership of Peter, and James the brother of Jesus had been installed as its titular head.
30. And then broke out the new and relentless persecutions by the Jews, so that the active teachers of the new religion about Jesus, which subsequently at Antioch was called Christianity, went forth to the ends of the empire proclaiming Jesus. In carrying this message, before the time of Paul the leadership was in Greek hands; and these first missionaries, as also the later ones, followed the path of Alexander's march of former days, going by way of Gaza and Tyre to Antioch and then over Asia Minor to Macedonia, then on to Rome and to the uttermost parts of the empire.
Discussion Questions
1. How is the Spirit of Truth restating the message of Jesus in our generation?
2. Is Jesus’ gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brother/sisterhood of all people compatible with all of the religions of the world?
3. Why did the Spirit of Truth result in more spiritual growth in the apostles in one month than in the four years of personal association with Jesus?
4. How does knowledge of the threefold and sevenfold spirit ministry change our view of God’s loving care for us?
5. Is there evidence that “the spiritual forward urge is the most powerful driving force present in our world?”
6. Is religion free from the custody of priests and all sacred classes?
7. If the Spirit of Truth “is a tonic for health, a stimulus for the mind, and an unfailing energy for the soul,” how is this spirit ministry related to the various helping services in our society?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship