© 2001 The Brotherhood of Man Library
It would appear so. There are just so many statements in the Papers that appear to express the hopes of the revelators that some kind of renewal movement will take the churches back to the original teachings of Jesus. The first line or so of some of these follows:
Man is quite insane. He wouldn’t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.
Michel de Montaigne
While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Leonardo da Vinci
One thing for sure is that we will not achieve anything positive by criticizing Christianity for their errors and extolling the superiority of the Urantia Book teachings. Those that think so need only study the incident of Simon Zelotes’ failure with Teherma, the Persian, (UB 141:6.1) to appreciate the superiority of Jesus’ positive approach of allowing truth to do its own work rather than criticizing errors as a means of procuring spiritual advancement.
We can perhaps learn what we must do from a description on UB 144:6.3, of how Jesus handled problems that arose between his apostles and the followers of John the Baptist, led by Abner.
Points of difference had arisen concerning many issues—such as the nature of formal prayer, baptismal rites, repentance, etc, etc. Both sides tried to get Jesus to either take charge of the debating sessions or else to adjudicate on who was right. Jesus reply to all such attempts was along the lines of:
“I am concerned only with your personal and purely religious problems. I am the representative of the Father to the individual, not to the group.”
«If you have a personal difficulty in your relations with God, come to me and I will hear you and counsel you in the solution of your problem.»
“But when you enter upon the coordination of divergent human interpretations of religious questions and upon the socialization of religion, you are destined to solve all such problems by your own decisions.” (UB 144:6.3)
Many times in the Urantia Papers we are informed that we have a mission to perform, “which shall consist in the life you will live among men.”
The life that we must live among men is one of emulating Jesus, in so far as he was revealing the nature of the Father to mankind.
Jesus stated that he was the representative of the Father to the individual and concerned only with our personal relationships with the Father. He deliberately excluded all group matters and all matters relating to the socialization of religion.
Surely then, any mission we may have of emulating Jesus’ revelation in our own lives must accord with these same limitations, a concern expressing itself as for the individual, and their personal relationship with the Father.
Virtually all the problems of Christianity would, in time, be overcome if individual Christians could relearn a truth that was well known among first century Christians—that the mind of each of us is indwelt by both the spirits of the Father and the Spirit of Truth (Jesus) where they may act as our spiritual mentors and our spiritual guides. Every moment of our daily lives should be dominated by our awareness of that relationship, a purely personal one between each of us and Divinity.
Mortal life is but the time shadow of things spiritual and eternal that are in a state of becoming.
“Man goes forth searching for a friend while that very friend lives within his own heart.”
To help Christians relearn this truth may be the only possible means of achieving that for which the revelators hope—the awakening of Christianity from the cocoon in which it now slumbers. But even such a restricted aim will still need to be conducted in a way in which we are “as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”
There will be a myriad of ways and means to awaken individual Christians to the knowledge that God is not remote and “up there somewhere,” but is actually resident in the mind of each individual, is our “best friend,” and is contactable on a personal basis.
But in many instances, and possibly most, it would be counterproductive to refer Christians to the Urantia Papers. The necessary information is already contained in more than twenty New Testament verses. A selection follows:
John 14:16-17. I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him: but you know him; for he dwells with you, and shall be in you.
John 14:20 At that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
John 14:23. If a man loves me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.
John 15:26—The Helper will come, the Spirit that reveals the truth about God and who comes from the Father.
Luke 17:21. For the kingdom of God is within you.
Matthew 10:20. For it is not you that speaks, but the Spirit of your Father which speaks in you.
John 4:12. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Romans 8:14-16. Those who are led by God’s spirit are God’s sons. For the spirit that God has given you does not make you sinners and cause you to be afraid; instead the spirit makes you God’s children and by the spirit’s power we cry out to God, Abba, Father.
1 Cor. 3:16. Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
2 Cor. 13:5. Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know you not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you,
Galatians 4:6. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
The letters of Paul were the first written material which was widely available to the early Christians. Paul was obviously aware of both the indwelling of the Father-Spirit and of the spirit of Jesus. John’s letters were also available before his gospel was written and carried the same strong message about the indwelling spirit of Divinity as did Paul’s.
Early Christianity was mainly a minor sub-sect of the Jewish religion. Jewish children in those times were educated in the synagogue schools and illiteracy among practicing Jews was uncommon.
This situation changed as the gospel spread among the gentiles who, initially, were dominantly from the lower and slave classes where illiteracy was endemic. Taken together with the necessary growth of an educated priesthood, it is almost inevitable that a paternalistic priesthood should develop and assume an intercessory role between the individual and God.
Widespread literacy on a national basis is a very recent phenomenon, too recent to have eliminated the role of minister and priest as a surrogate “father of the flock.” Perhaps the long delay in the arrival of the Urantia Papers awaited the coming of widespread literacy.
Whatever the correct history may be, the fact is there are now well over a billion Christians waiting to relearn what was known to the early Jewish Christians—that we are indwelt by the spirit of the Father. No intermediaries are necessary. Our relationship with God is individual and personal.
Experience has shown that a class of young children responds well to the question, “Where can you find God?” And also to the concept that the spirit of God dwells in their minds. Showing them evidence from the New Testament may also help.
The Gospel of John has long been widely distributed in pocketbook form, it contains all the necessary evidence of God’s indwelling, yet the number of Christians who are aware of this is minuscule.
It has been estimated that much less than one in ten thousand literate people are even capable of reading a two thousand page book like The Urantia Book. If people cannot discover the message of the indwelling of God’s spirit from a tiny, easily understood book like the Gospel of John, what chance is there that any significant number will ever learn it from The Urantia Book?
Our task is to spread Jesus’ message, not necessarily to spread a book.
Religion is a revelation to man’s soul dealing with spiritual realities that the mind alone could never fully discover.
No kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.
Charles Montesqueiu