© 1995 Ann Bendall
© 1995 The Brotherhood of Man Library
I see so many arguments and presentations from we “informed” religionists, we folks who can quote chapter and verse on the terms “revelation” and “evolution,” as well as spend heaps of time, energy and money defending, or questioning, whether The Urantia Book is one, or the other, or both.
The book itself states that it is revelation simply by the process involved in its creation. “Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality.” (UB 101:4.3) So seeing Divine Counselors, and Melchizedeks, and midwayers, and seraphim, etc., regard themselves as embraced within “celestial agency, group, or personality,” (and I tend to agree with them) then, to me, the process in bringing the book to this planet comes within their definition of epochal revelation.
Written in the English language, the book clearly does not conform to literary ethics. It delightfully quotes from its thousand of human sources without referring to the human source in most instances and, in others, not even acknowledging that it is using a human source. The revelatory commission thinks funny! Somehow they feel that all good comes from God, and all truth comes as a result of the work of our Thought Adjuster. To them the human mind is of no relevance and so they breach copyright like it was non-existent to them regarding God as the source of truth, beauty and goodness!
So the fifth epochal revelationary process finished with the production of The Urantia Book, and then evolution took over! Now evolution has been the thorn in the side of every carrier of a revelation. We knowledgeable Urantia Book readers full well know the problems leading to the thwarting of the desires for the four prior epochal revelations, and we are determined that the fifth will not suffer the same fate as its forebears. The reality is that the Fifth Epochal Revelation was a resounding success, we have 2097 pages to prove this. But where do we go with the evolution consequent upon its production? Is it possible that we can, and are, learning from the mistakes of the other four post-epochal-revelation eras?
With the first revelation, the poor Dalmatia teachers had an uphill battle. “The Dalamatia teachers sought to add conscious social selection to the purely natural selection of biologic evolution. They did not derange human society, but they did markedly accelerate its normal and natural evolution. Their motive was progression by evolution and not revolution by revelation. The human race had spent ages in acquiring the little religion and morals it had, and these supermen knew better than to rob mankind of these few advances by the confusion and dismay which always result when enlightened and superior beings undertake to uplift the backward races by over-teaching and overenlightenment.” (UB 66:6.6)
They were doing a slow but effective job when the whole project was aborted through sin of key figures in the revelatory process.
Later came revelators number two—Adam and Eve—with double the battle of their revelatory forebears, and they stumbled into error after making great headway in a short space of time.
Things were looking pretty grim when Machiventa Melchizedek (revelator number three) decided to don a tunic and go visit a Beduoin tent in the middle of the desert. Melchizedek did a good job, but goodness he really had a holiday whilst sitting in his tent with a tunic bearing an emblem which would have a few devout believers having to collect funds for legal defence if he went around sporting it these days. Just think of the knowledge that guy possesses, and he spent approximately ninety years mainly teaching that there is only one God! I guess he did not want to intellectually overload the intellects of that day! Anyway, he achieved what he aimed for, and kept the idea of one God alive so as to pave the way for Jesus (the fourth epochal revelator), two thousand years later.
When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father, the only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forth with, in all consistency, utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God. (UB 188:4.8)
To believe, we need God, a soul, and the Word. Having rejected the Bible as a paper pope, many are left with the Bible as a collection of ill-composed records on a mass of paper.
Abraham Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom.
Jesus struck the same problem as Melchizedek. Not that we want to criticize his judgment, but if he had waited for a few thousand years perhaps his message would not have got fouled up. And what was his mission and message?
“My mission on earth is the revelation of the Father, and my message the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven?” (UB 145:5.6)
The Master made it clear that the kingdom of heaven must begin with, and be centred in, the dual concept of the truth of the fatherhood of God and the correlated fact of the brotherhood of man. The acceptance of such a teaching, Jesus declared, would liberate man from the age-long bondage of animal fear and at the same time enrich human living with the following endowments of the new life of spiritual liberty:
- The possession of new courage and augmented spiritual power. The gospel of the kingdom was to set man free and inspire him to dare to hope for eternal life.
- The gospel carried a message of new confidence and true consolation for all men, even for the poor.
- It was in itself a new standard of moral values, a new ethical yardstick wherewith to measure human conduct. It portrayed the ideal of a resultant new order of human society.
- It taught the pre-eminence of the spiritual compared with the material; it glorified spiritual realities and exalted superhuman ideals.
- This new gospel held up spiritual attainment as the true goal of living. Human life received a new endowment of moral value and divine dignity.
- Jesus taught that eternal realities were the result (reward) of righteous earthly striving. Man’s mortal sojourn on earth acquired new meanings consequent upon the recognition of a noble destiny.
- The new gospel affirmed that human salvation is the revelation of a far-reaching divine purpose to be fulfilled and realized in the future destiny of the endless service of the salvaged sons of God. (UB 170:2.1-8)
Again and again did Jesus beseech that his apostles and disciples incorporate into evolutionary religion his teachings, but they insisted in going against his instructions, preaching instead about his life! “Jesus foresaw that a social organization, or church, would follow the progress of the true spiritual kingdom.” (UB 170:5.13). “The church was an inevitable and useful social result of Jesus’ life and teachings; the tragedy consisted in the fact that this social reaction to the teachings of the kingdom so fully displaced the spiritual concept of the real kingdom as Jesus taught and lived it.” (UB 170:5.10)
And today, “Christianity. . . the product of the combined moral genius of the God-knowing men of any races during many ages. . . has truly been one of the greatest powers for good on earth. . . (and) still contrives to move the minds of reflective men with mighty moral emotions.” (UB 195:10.12) However, “Christianity is seriously confronted with the doom embodied in one of its own slogans: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ The non-Christian world will hardly capitulate to a sect-divided Christendom. The living Jesus is the only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The true church—the Jesus brotherhood—is invisible, spiritual, and is characterised by unity, not necessarily by uniformity. Uniformity is the earmark of the physical world of mechanistic nature. Spiritual unity is the fruit of faith union with the living Jesus. The visible church should refuse longer to handicap the progress of the invisible and spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom of God. And this brotherhood is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations, but it must not be supplanted by them.” (UB 195:10.11)
Have we learnt from the evolutionary offshoots of the fourth revelation? We formed a social organisation, not a church, in the hope of protecting against the problems of the past 2000 years. The reality is that in the eyes of the revelators such structures are one and the same, and hence the strong words of the midwayers apply to us post-fifth revelation evolutionists: “But there is no excuse for the involvement of the church in commerce and politics; such unholy alliances are a flagrant betrayal of the Master.” (UB 195:10.13) And should we as a social group of readers stoop to such ‘unholy alliances’ then: “the genuine lovers of truth will be slow to forget that this powerful institutionalized church has often dared to smother newborn faith and persecute truth bearers who chanced to appear in unorthodox raiment.” (UB 195:10.13). We run the risk of also deterring, “Many earnest persons who would gladly yield loyalty to the Christ of the gospel find it very difficult enthusiastically to support a church which exhibits so little of the spirit of his life and teachings.” (UB 195:10.9).
If we, as a social organisation insist on continuing such ‘unholy alliances’ then we ensure that The Urantia Book’s contents are not utilised to create a new philosophy of living as requested by the Divine counselor (UB 2:7.10), and that the ‘great hope’ of the midwayers (UB 195:10.16) cannot be carried into action.
What were we supposed to do? The apostles were clearly told to preach the good news. What were we told to do? Very clearly: “You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus”.
The religious challenge of this age is to those far-seeing and forward- looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty and divine goodness. (UB 2:7.10)
The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present day professed followers. (UB 195:10.16)