© 2016 Suzanne Kelly, Marc Belleau, Olga López, Carolyn Kendall, Bob Ghen
© 2016 International Urantia Association (IUA)
We’re a little late with this first quarterly issue of the Journal for 2016 but here it is choc-a-bloc with some wonderful reading material! This is the online version; we now produce this publication in the usual PDF format as well as in this online format. If you would like to view it in PDF click here.
¶ In This Issue
- Journal Editorial – February 2016 – Suzanne Kelly, USA
- God the Great Supervisor – Marc Belleau, Canada
- Reflections for Teachers and Believers in the Fifth Epochal Revelation – Olga López, Spain
- The Rehabilitation of Urantia – Carolyn Kendall, USA
- On Studying The Foreword to The Urantia Book – Bob Ghen, USA
¶ Journal Editorial – February 2016
Suzanne Kelly, USA
Greetings fellow Journal readers,
In this first edition of the Journal for 2016 we have four intellectual and spiritually challenging essays for the edification of your mind, body and spirit. Our opening essay God the Great Supervisor is by Marc Belleau, Canada. Marc takes on the worldwide held belief that God is responsible for everything man endures and smartly and kindly shows us otherwise. Since we are fully capable of entangling ourselves in tight situations without any external help, do we really need to believe that God sends us additional challenges to top the mistakes we are already making? Marc takes another look at the accidents of time and the consequences of our actions by scrutinizing the wrath and unloving actions of a punisher God vs. that of a true loving Father God. Wisely concluding, Our imperfection and immaturity are amply sufficient to supply us with all the trying times we are to face during our existence. However, we can learn to use our mistakes as multiple springboards toward higher levels of wisdom.
¶ God the Great Supervisor
Marc Belleau, Canada
There is a belief, well spread in many religious movements, stating that the tribulations we experience through the course of our terrestrial life have been sent by God to put us on trial and help us progress in spirituality. Humanity has always attributed to some celestial personalities the account for the extra-ordinary events of life, especially those for which we have no control or explanation. I often heard my grand-mother say, when someone would die, that God needed him on the other side. But let us ask ourselves this simple question: would our celestial father send sickness to one of his children so as to have him gain compassion, or put a powerful man in bankruptcy to have him understand what humility is? Imagine, for example, that a terrestrial father burns the fingers of his child to make him understand that he should not play with fire. No intelligent being would do such a thing and I think it is the same with God. Never does the celestial father voluntarily send calamities to test and aggrandise his creation. God is not a tyrant!
¶ Reflections for Teachers and Believers in the Fifth Epochal Revelation
Olga López, Spain
The fourth epochal revelation—the one brought by our Creator Son to his world under the human identity of Jesus of Nazareth—is very closely related to the next one, the fifth epochal revelation contained in The Urantia Book. That may be why, when we read Part IV of the book, we cannot help feeling the midwayers in charge of the revelation of the life and teachings of Jesus are not just describing the facts of the seventh bestowal of Michael of Nebadon, but also conveying very valuable insights for the success of the fifth epochal revelation.
More precisely, there is a section in Paper 159—The Decapolis Tour—titled “Instruction for Teachers and Believers” that is worth a thorough study. These instructions were a part of a speech that Jesus gave to “guide those who preach truth” and to “activate all who teach the gospel of the kingdom” [UB 159:3.1]
Therefore, I invite you to reflect with me on each one of these paragraphs containing these deep teachings. Probably many other meanings, other thoughts, will come to your minds, and I would love you to share them with me. The most important thing here is to grasp the truth, beauty, and goodness in these teachings, and to convey them in our daily living.
Let’s start with these teachings of Jesus, summarized and stated in modern language:
¶ The Rehabilitation of Urantia
Carolyn Kendall, USA
Bio—Carolyn Kendall was introduced to the Urantia Papers by her father, Clarence Bowman, in 1951, and has been an avid student since. She spends her spare time researching special subjects in The Urantia Book. She attends study groups of the First Society in the Chicago area, including one she hosts.
When a new reader asks why The Urantia Book came down from God or the angels, our response is usually one or more of several reasons: To reveal the true nature of God, the Heavenly Father; to disclose the truth about the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth; to provide a full narrative of the evolution of the universe and our world; to describe the wondrous life in store for us after death; or simply, to save souls. We might add that another worthy purpose of the Urantia Revelation is to inspire human society to embark upon the pathway toward social and spiritual enlightenment and to propel this world toward the planetary stages of light and life.
The Urantia Book was fostered by the same orders of divine beings who bestow themselves upon other worlds like ours that are populated by similar human races. Revelation is a normal part of the divine perfection plan of the Universal Father and Eternal Son. Their plans envision material beings—us—born as animal-origin humans growing up on evolutionary spheres, and advancing through multiple levels of the universe of time and space. We achieve perfection in the spiritual realms of eternity and infinity. God the Father on Paradise provides each of us at an early point in our lives with unique personality and a fragment of the Father himself, a Thought Adjuster. The local universe Master Son and Creative Mother Spirit send to our world their “hovering spirits,” the Spirit of Truth and the Holy Spirit. See [UB 34:5.6]
Another reason our world received revelation in our time is because it is the latest of on-going efforts to rehabilitate this planet after hundreds of thousands of years of chaos and confusion. These diversions from the divine plan were due to rebellion and default of trust by the very beings sent to teach and improve early human races on Urantia.
¶ The Divine Perfection Plans
Does it surprise you to learn that our world, Urantia, is undergoing intensive rehabilitation? Or, that these rehab efforts have been in progress since Adam’s and Eve’s bestowal 37,000 years ago? And that untold numbers of unseen personalities, many of whom are divine, have been dedicated to this sacred mission? (The) divine plan of perfection attainment originated with the Universal Father on Paradise and …embraces three unique, though marvelously correlated, enterprises of universal adventure:
¶ On Studying The Foreword to The Urantia Book
Bob Ghen, USA
During my first several years of study with The Urantia Book, I repeatedly returned to the Foreword to see what I might grasp of its intended, yet daunting meanings. And each time I found my understanding slowly increasing. Until that is, I got to the second page. Here, no matter how intense my intellectual purpose and focus, I was always soundly stymied. Inquiries posed to other readers assured me that I was not alone in my ignorance.
Nevertheless, I continued my studies of the ensuing papers with near rabid fascination. And yet, I was becoming acutely aware of how much meaning I was actually missing. Ironically, I was becoming increasingly familiar with terms, paragraphs, sections, and even whole papers that almost completely escaped me. I simply did not have an intellectual “leg-up” on much of this material; and during those first early years, I never met anyone else who did.
With virtually no understanding of many of the intended meanings of the heady concepts outlined in the Foreword, much of the integrity and continuity of the papers is interrupted by this intellectual vacuum.
Unfortunately, we often fill in these blanks with our personal speculation, which we know going in, always falsifies its object.
Thus, our sincere effort to grasp The Urantia Book teachings becomes contaminated with our own self-created speculation as a result of the mind’s inherent unifying propensity to connect all the dots, to “make sense” of it all. On the other hand, how often have you, as I have, mentally earmarked an incomprehensible sentence or passage with, “I’ll have to get back to that”—simply choosing to leave the blank, blank? When we don’t have a clear grasp of key terms, how will we ever follow the intended meanings of whole passages that contain those terms?
¶ First Things First
The Chief of Divine Councilors (a Paradise origin personality) indited the Foreword. Divine wisdom dictated that it be placed before the first paper of The Urantia Book. We would do well, it seems, to heed the obvious intention of the revelators.