© 1997 James Perry
© 1997 International Urantia Association (IUA)
Adapted from a speech given in August, 1995, at an IUA Conference in Nashville, Tenn., USA
James Perry, M.D. Nth Carolina, USA
To attempt to explain the nature of God is something the whole world is grappling with. As I thought about the task of translating my emotional joy into a presentation that I could share with you, I wondered if perhaps I had bitten off more than I could chew. I thought that it would be helpful to relate something of my own religious experiences and my evolutionary concepts of the divine nature of God before I had a close encounter with The URANTIA Book of the third kind, and afterward, for we are told that it is man’s experiences with the evolutionary religions that make it possible for revealed religion to be made. I think religious sharing helps us to better study and understand revealed religion, and to convert it into living expression. I invite you to join with me as I make a brief excursion into my religious past.
Some of my earliest memories of religious experiences occurred sometime before I started first grade. I remember my mother taking me along with her to prayer meetings. These meetings were held at a neighbor’s house. I don’t remember much of the content of these religious experiences except that it was a meeting that had something to do with God. The lights were turned off and candles were lit. The next memories of my religious experiences occurred sometime after I had learned to read, around the age of eight or nine. As my parents were originally from a rural part of North Carolina where they farmed to make a living, each summer my mother would send me along with my twin brother to spend our summer vacation on our grandfather’s farm.
My grandfather was a very religious person and he prayed an awful lot. I would hear him sometimes during the noon break praying, but I didn’t know what the purpose of his praying was then. I have since been informed that he was praying for rain. I remember that he had several Bibles, one of them a child’s Bible. Because there was not very much for a child of my age to do on this farm, I began reading, reading the only reading material that was available — and that was the children’s Bible.
The most significant thing that I remembered from reading the children’s Bible was a picture of Elijah being taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. I found this picture quite puzzling. Several years later, when I was about 12 years old, my brother and I, along with other relatives, went to a church revival. As best I can remember this was the first revival that I had ever attended. It was here under the influence of preaching and singing that I confessed Jesus Christ as my Savior.
Here is an excerpt from a letter that I wrote to Jesus in 1983, that records the aftermath of that experience:
Dear Jesus,
Father-Brother, I send greetings. I know that You know all my hearts’s desire, and all my thoughts. It has been quite a few years now since I first heard about You. I was very enthuniastic when I first rececied You as my personal savior. I was so happy that summer night of long ago, but when I awoke the next moming, the happiness was gone. That good feeling was no longer there. But still everybody talked about You, and told me how good you were. They were very happy for me. They told me that now that I was saved, I would not thave to burn in the fires of hell forever and ever. I was certainly glad of that. I could not imagine burning in a fire forever and ever, but as I watched the fire burning in the kitchen stove, I knew that I did not want any part of that.
But still my life did not change much, nor did the lives of those around me. I still had the same problems then as before You became my Savior. People still talked about You all the times but as far as I could tell all that talking and praying did not seem to help them very much in changing their material lives, but still I was glad to have escaped the burning fires of hell. There the whole matter rested, until tragedy struck my young life. Death claimed my mother when I was 14 years old, leaving seven children ranging in age from 18 to five year old, and four more that were of a adult age. There were eleven of us.
It was there and then, that I realized that I did not know You very well, or know what You were really all about, as I fled into the darkness of depression, sorrow, and grief, from which I am only now beginning to emerge. For years, I drifted, becoming more and more sorrowful each year, and my pain only deepened as I struggled through the night of my life, trying my best to become happy. It seemed as if the more I sought happiness, the more unhapiness I found.
My father had great difficulty shouldering the responsibility for the family after my mother’s death. She had always been the great moral supporter of the family and he was ill-equipped to deal with the rearing of the remaining children at home without her, and all too often he used alcohol to anesthetize his pain which made a bad situation even worse. My father was an unskilled laborer and did not make very much money, but there was also a beloved aunt who lived with us. She adequately covered the shortfall economically and morally. She tried her very best to compensate for the loss of our mother. My 16 -year-old sister took over the moral training of those below her. It was very difficult for me to forgive my father. It took me a long time. And it was not until I found myself in similar circumstances that I realized that, whatever his shortcomings were, he did the best he could. God in his mercy always takes note of our origin and circumstances.
But I must confess to you that I had grave doubts about the nature of God. I had been taught that God was merciful, that He was good and true, loving and kind. I did not comprehend very much of that nature during those dark years, even going so far as to doubt His very existence and at the very least, to doubt His having any kind of loving relationship with me. Even though it was a fact for everyone to observe that bad things did happen to good people, it was generally believed that if you had enough faith those kinds of things did not happen to you. Brothers and sisters, it is impossible for me to adequately convey the sorrow, the loneliness, the anguish and guilt that I felt during those long dark years that shaped so much of my character and outlook upon life. Up to the point of my mother’s death, I had believed in God and had attended Sunday School regularly. I was even responsible for my mother joining a formal church. I was about 12 years of age then.
After almost giving up on religion and God for many years, since I did not see the relevance of believing in Him, I experienced a new kind of darkness-a life lived without faith. I thought to myself that if God could not or would not protect me from human disasters, then what was the point of believing in Him? But experience eventually forced me to acknowledge that if God did not exist and I could not have a relationship with Him, then life itself was meaningless and without value. And it was this dire assessment that drove me back into the arms of Christianity after a period of pursuing occult mysteries and eastern religious philosophies. I was desperate and decided to take another look at God. I knew that I could not continue as a Christian with the childish belief that I had in Him before. And it was while I was struggling with this dilemma that I recalled that in my collection of so-called occult literature, I had a book that contained the description of the life of Jesus — The URANTIA Book.
I began to read The URANTIA Book, never for a moment suspecting that Jesus was indeed the revelation of the Father’s nature as well as my Savior of years past, which brings us to our topic under discussion: The Nature of God. On UB 0:12.13, the Divine Counselor tells us that our level of understanding of the spiritual values and universe meanings is inadequate, and furthermore, that our language is so impoverished that he encounters almost insurmountable difficulties in trying to expand our cosmic consciousness. But the Divine Counselor also goes on to say that because we are indwelt by a divine spirit and our souls are surrounded by the Spirit of Truth, that it is possible for him to expand our concepts of divine values and meanings because these divine spirits conspire to help us grasp divine values and meanings. In our attempt to comprehend the nature of God, he admonishes us to take as background the religious life of Jesus both before and after attaining full consciousness of divinity, as the actual revelation of the Father’s nature, as we study the ideas about the Father’s nature. He also says that we should relate ourselves to God as spiritual children of a loving spiritual Father.
And now that we have completed this excursion into my religious past, let us focus on the comprehension of the religious life of Jesus, heeding the advice of the Divine Counselor. The Divine Counselor points us to the study of the religious life of Jesus as the most enlightening and spiritually edifying of all revelation of the divine nature UB 2:0.2. We ask the question, “Why?” We shall not waste any time on trying to decide if there might be another way just as good, but with a leap of faith will assume that this pointing by the Divine Counselor toward this divine Son, Jesus, is the best way to comprehend the Father’s nature. Sometimes when the question, “why?” is asked, it leads us to a deeper understanding of a subject, as opposed to trying merely to discover “what?” Let us define religion according to The URANTIA Book. We assume that this definition is the one the Divine Counselor has in mind when he asks us to study the religious life of Jesus. The URANTIA Book, UB 99:5.2, tells us, True religion is to know God as your Father and man as your brother.
So if the religious life of Jesus was the striving and the eventual full achievement of knowing God as his Father and man as his brother, then our efforts must be directed at considering those activities in his life both before and after his full comprehension of divinity that show us his religious life; in doing so we shall achieve a better grasp of the divine nature. Now let’s ask the question why is Jesus the one to reveal the Father’s nature? The Eternal Son is the eternal Word of God. He is wholly like the Father; in fact, the Eternal Son is God the Father personally manifest to the universe of universes. And thus it was and is and forever will be true of the Eternal Son and of all the co-ordinate Creator Sons: “He who has seen the Son has seen the Father.” UB 6:2.2 Michael is a co-ordinate Creator Son, a being who is the personification of the Father’s loving character, not in the infinite sense, but in the absolute sense of his origin, and all of the co-ordinate Creator Sons are perfectly reflective of the Father’s nature.
Now let us move on to the analysis of the definition of true religion, namely, to know man as your brother and God as your Father. Why is it so important and necessary to view all mortals as our brothers? Well, to understand the answer to that question, we must understand the relationship of mortals to one another and to God. That part of us that comprehends God, which knows God, is the soul. We recognize that we are not brothers and sisters from a purely material kinship point of view, since we have different biological mothers and fathers. But the biological part of us is not a son or daughter of God. Only the spiritual aspect of us is a son or daughter of God. Each moral mind, in cooperation with the Thought Adjuster, re-creates itself, and it is this re-creation that is a son or daughter of God, and brother or sister to one another. Since God is the Father of all these reborn creatures, they must be brothers and sisters in the spiritual sense.
So how do we know God as our Father? We know God as our Father through his divine goodness. The value of divine goodness is unmistakably recognized and received by the soul. Such a recognition and reception make such an impression on the soul that it reaches that attitude where God can be nothing else, except a loving Father. Wisdom instructs the soul that the worship of God is true, beautiful and good. The divine love of the Father is so embracing, so encompassing and of such a quality that the soul can find nothing greater for its supreme loyalty. Under such worship such a soul would exclaim, “He touched me, O, He touched me, And O, the joy that floods my soul; Something happened, and now I know He touched me and made me whole!” And it is this truth that constitutes divine worship, the recognition of God as Father. So in knowing God as our Father and man as our brother, we are acknowledging the vertical relationship with God our Father and the horizontal relationship with man our brother. Now we are in a position to examine the elements of Jesus’ religious life, both before and after his full realization of divinity.
Jesus’ religious life began when he received his Thought Adjuster. This was when he made his first wholehearted moral decision and made it possible to begin the effort to know God as his Father and man as his brother. Jesus’ religious life began with him wholeheartedly dedicated to doing the Father’s will. And he began that dedication at a very early age. We are told that he would say his prayers just as he was instructed to by his parents, but then would insist on having “just a little talk with my heavenly father” UB 123:3.6. Jesus prayed to his . heavenly Father seeking to do the Father’s will. Jesus’ prayers during his youth were a model of reverence as exemplified by this quotation: The Master was a pattern of reverence. The prayer of even his youth began, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. ” UB 100:7.16
Let us see if we can discover how Jesus went about knowing God as his Father and man as his brother, and hopefully as a result of this study we will be in a better position to understand the Father’s nature. But how did Jesus learn to view man as his brother? Jesus loved man so much because he placed a high value upon him. He loved his fellow men because he discovered their value, and he did this by discovering their motivation. The URANTIA Book tells us: These high levels of human living are attained in the supreme love of God and in the unselfish love of man. If you love your fellow men, you must have discovered their values. Jesus loved men so much because he placed such a high value upon them. You can best discover values in your associates by discovering their motivation. If some one irritates you, causes feelings of resentment, you should sympathetically seek to discern his viewpoint, his reasons for such objectionable conduct. If once you understand your neighbor, you will become tolerant, and this tolerance will grow into friendship and ripen into love. UB 100:4.4
The revelation of the Father’s nature through the divine Son, Jesus, was a progressive experience that unfolded, subject to the delays of time and to the handicaps of space. Jesus was born into the world as a helpless infant and progressed from that point to an adult of the realm. And his religious life unfolded along those same evolutionary lines. On UB 128:1.8 we are told that: 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 selfrealization 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. And it was this process by which the Father’s nature was gradually revealed until it reached that fullness of perfection.
As Jesus continued to live his mortal life, he continually sought the Father’s will in the recurring moral conflicts of his life. And as he continued in his efforts to discern the divine will, the Thought Adjuster likewise continued its efforts to reveal the divine will to Jesus. We know that Jesus prayed because we are told that he did. On UB 128:1.7: We are told that He lived his mortal life just as all others of the human family may live theirs, “who in the days of the flesh so frequently offered up prayers and supplications, even with strong feelings and tears, to Him who is able to save from all evil, and his prayers were effective because he believed.” But why is faith so essential to achieving the revelation of the Father’s nature? Faith is the passport from the limitations of self to the endless exploration of the Father’s nature, from the incompleteness of self to the glorious completion of divine perfection. Faith in the human soul frees the self from the fear of being a transient reality in the universe. Faith is the way to knowing the Father’s nature, the way to realizing greater and greater quantity of the quality of the relationship with the spiritual Father.
Faith answers the questions, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” because of its validity in all matters pertaining to the personal relationship of the spiritual child to its Father. It empowers the self to overcome all doubts about the validity of the relationship with the Father. And though faith can never prove the fact of sonship, it actually assumes the fact of sonship, and moves on to initiate the process that consummates the relationship. It actually takes the fact of sonship for granted and creates a consciousness in the soul of that presumed fact. We are told that Jesus enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He experienced the ordinary ups and downs of mortal existence, but he never religiously doubted the certainty of God’s watchcare and guidance. His faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine presence, his indwelling Adjuster. His faith was neither traditional nor merely intellectual; it was wholly personal and purely spiritual. UB 196:0.1
As time continued to pass, Jesus continued in his habit of seeking to reveal the Father’s nature in perfection, and that requires parental experience. But we are told that nothing can stand in the way of an individual who is wholeheartedly dedicated to doing the Father’s will. We know that as a part of his mandate, he was not permitted to sire children of his own. So how was this problem resolved? The solution to this problem presented itself in the form of a human tragedy when his human father was suddenly killed. Jesus was just 14 years of age. At this time we are informed …that Jesus had a sizable family of small children left to his watchcare when his father met his accidental death … UB 124:5.2
This assumption of fatherly experience was an essential experience for Jesus. Though it appeared initially that this would delay his religious mission of revealing the Father’s nature, this very experience was necessary in order to reveal the Father’s nature in perfection. And we may all take a lesson from this. If we dedicate our lives to doing the Father’s will, placing our careers in time and eternity in his hands, we may rest with assurance that he has seen the end of our experiences from the beginning and has foreseen every eventuality that could befall us, and that his very plans for our lives have taken these experiences into consideration, and thus these experiences become a necessity for us to fulfill the Father’s mandate: Be you perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect.
As Jesus continued in his prayer life, he learned more about the Father’s will. His prayers ascended from the level of prayer, up through thanksgiving to the high plane of true worship. And through all of this he was guided by his Thought Adjuster and by the Spirit of Truth of which he was and still is the personification. Prayer is so important because it is the mechanism by which we learn how to do the Father’s will. What is the mechanism of prayer whereby the believer ascends up to true worship? The human soul experiences or is destined to experience three stages of prayer, and they are: The will to believe, the will that believes, and the will that is. And in the comprehension of these stages it is best to relate oneself as a child relates himself to his father. This orientation allows for the teacher-student relationship. In this attitude the child can be taught, and is therefore willing to learn.
The will to believe indicates that the soul is cognizant of the need for help, and the belief that the help will be forthcoming. The soul is thus willing to experiment and pray. There is a lot of doubt during this stage, but the will to believe is strong. This will to believe is a stage of growth of the soul and connotes a certain level of soul consciousness, albeit the will to believe does not share the same level of consciousness of the will that believes or the will that is. But there must be a beginning of spiritual consciousness and the will to believe reflects the beginning of that consciousness. The will to believe is only dimly conscious of the needs of other souls, and therefore its requests as they are realized in the conscious mind are selfish in nature. But no matter how ill-advised or ignorant, as long as the petitions are in sincerity, with faith and truth according to understanding, there is nourishment of truth and righteousness that allows for growth, the very soul growth that will eventually overturn the error in prayers.
The will to believe sheds the “eggshell” of its former state. This new state is characterized by direct requests for revelations of divine truth, beauty, and goodness. It recognizes the values of truth, beauty, and goodness concealed in experiences. The prayers are of a nature that requests those experiences that hold these valuable meanings of truth, beauty, and goodness. Belief transcends its former level and becomes faith. It does not doubt the Father’s goodness, but assumes that there is goodness that can be realized in the fullness of time and if not in time, then surely in eternity. The will with such a faith signifies a soul that has been born again. Its battle cry is always, “Not my will, but Your will be done.” It thirsts for truth, and hungers for righteousness. It sees truth in all moral experiences, and strives for the unity of beauty — the appreciation of truth in goodness — in its experiences. Its decisions are approaching the past-future significance, and therefore are not dependent on solely what is going on in the present. Such a one has truly escaped from the pure present, has struck step with the eternal, and has truly taken on eternal significance.
Those with will belief are cognizant of other souls, their prayers become more unselfish, and their requests become more spiritual, and therefore the answers to their prayers are so recognized more often. But even those whose prayers may be so lofty, so pregnant with the ideals and ideas of a future existence, must wait before their prayers are fully answered in time. It is a state whereby the soul comes to identify completely with the divine spirit, and effects a bona fide contract to eternally abide by the Father’s will. The will that believes evolves to the level of thanksgiving. And finally there is the will that is.
A consecrated soul dedicated to doing the Father’s will eternally, is in effect, and in truth, one with the Father. In this state the soul is selfconscious by faith that it is a revelation of the Father’s nature. The will that has achieved the state of true worship has truly faith-recognized the living Father of divine love and mercy, and has become a personification of this divine love and mercy in its soul. The will that is, is constantly planting seeds of love and mercy in the souls of individuals that it comes into contact with. And so it was with the human Jesus who traversed all three levels of prayer as a man among men.
Jesus also emphasized the importance of worship in his life. Worship is necessary, and it is necessary because without it, the sustenance of the very spiritual life withers and dies. Worship renews the creature, renews the values and meanings that are the very essence of the creature’s life. Worship makes the son like the Father, and since the creature is an experiencing one, the process of becoming like the Father is an endless process. Worship is therefore a never-ending process, an interminable process of ever-increasing recognition and consciousness of divine values and meanings.
The divine meanings of worship are experiential and are progressive. As the worship process continues, the depth of the meanings increases. The meanings of the values of worship give the assurances of divine sonship, as the son realizes that the continuous enlargement of these meanings is the reality of the experiencing of the Divine — the Father’s nature. Divine meanings are inherently and intrinsically satisfying and pleasurable. The divine values of divine worship fill the soul with the goodness of God. Worship has value because it is the only way that the creature can experience fellowship with the Father. It allows for the effective expression of the spiritual content of God. Worship is the effective recognition of the Father’s nature by his son. It is the process from the son’s point of view that gives a life of eternal values and meanings.
As Jesus’ religious life continued to unfold, there was that increasing reflection on the outside of the fruits of the spirit, as Jesus ministered to his brothers and sisters. He was displaying the fruits of the spirit. We are taught that the fruits of the spirit …are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. UB 34:6.13 Also, we find that the fruits of the spirit …are the substance of the Supreme as he is realizable in human experience, and the fruits of the spirit are the essence of the highest type of enjoyable and ennobling self-control, even the heights of terrestrial mortal attainment-true self-mastery. UB 143:2.8 And finally, on UB 194:3.1, we are taught that when …man yields the “fruits of the spirit” in his life, he is simply showing forth the traits which the Master manifested in his own earthly life — the divine nature.
During the post-baptismal experience when Jesus became conscious of his full divinity, his religious life was no different in the essentials. While it is true that he had perfected the doing of the Father’s will, he still remained dedicated to doing that will to the bitter end of his mortal existence. Jesus did many wonderful material miracles while on earth, but this was because of his merciful nature and because it was the Father’s will. His greatest manifestation of mercy was during his final moments on the cross when he said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” He could not have done that had he not been fully saturated by divine love and mercy. His whole life was a joyous labor of love and mercy. He always said, “fear not and be of good cheer.”
But eventually the time appeared when Jesus died the mortal death, and his mortal revelation of the Father’s nature ended. Would present mankind and all future mankind be denied this perfect and supernal revelation of the Father’s nature? Would the memory of one who tried to initiate a higher standard of religious living remain just a memory of a man who meant well, but who was destroyed by his enemies? Would Jesus remain just a historical footnote? The answer to all these questions is an unqualified “no,” for when the divine son completed the life in the flesh, this act liberated new spiritual potentials. It now became possible for the spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Truth to live with the souls of all mankind revealing the Father’s nature to all to the fullest extent of their capacity. This Spirit of Truth restates the life of Jesus for each generation of mortals, always seeking to live the spirit of Jesus’ life through each mortal, displaying the Father’s character. This is the way of the revelation of the Father’s nature.
The Spirit of Truth imparts new spiritual prerogatives to the believer. The believer is now equipped with spiritual weapons. They are to go out to conquer the world with unfailing forgiveness, matchless good will, and abounding love. They are equipped to overcome evil with good, to vanquish hate by love, to destroy fear with a courageous and living faith in truth. The Spirit of Truth manifests itself by: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace. The Spirit of Truth endows mortal man with the power to forgive personal injuries, to keep sweet in the midst of the gravest injustice, to remain unmoved in the face of appalling danger, and to challenge the evils of hate and anger by the fearless acts of love and forbearance. UB 194:3.11-12 In this way the Father’s nature is constantly manifested to mankind. Remember, brothers and sisters, …to hear Jesus’ teaching is not equivalent to knowing God, to knowing the divine nature, but to see Jesus is an experience which in itself is a revelation of the Father’s nature to the soul. UB 169:4.12 We must with the Spirit of Truth see Jesus, which is the revelation of the Father’s nature for all ages and for all levels of spirituality from the beginning to the end.
And now, let me say that Jesus lived a really human life beginning from an infant and progressing to an adult, and this life that he lived revealed the Father’s loving character to mankind. His religious life was characterized by prayer, worship, loving unselfish service and a wholehearted dedication to doing the Father’s will — unconsciously revealing the Father’s nature. His life shows us how an infinite, absolute and eternal God lives a mortal life if it were actually possible for Him to do so. He lived constantly in the divine embrace, and experienced the thrill of living a life dedicated to doing the Father’s will. His faith ascended to such heights that it became devoid of fear. He revealed the Father’s nature, a nature of endless love and eternal mercy. And now that he has departed the mortal life, his Spirit of Truth continues to show us how God lives a mortal life. The Spirit ever seeks to manifest the life of Jesus through each child of God His mortal life is the inspiration for an entire universe, so perfectly did he reveal the divine nature.
Salvation is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will immediately begin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in loving service to their fellow creatures. And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace. If professed believers bear not these fruits of the divine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are useless branches on the living vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Father requires of the children of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, therefore, you are not fruitful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your unfruitful branches. Increasingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you progress heavenward in the kingdom of God UB 193:2.2