© 2024 Jan Herca
© 2024 Urantia Association of Spain
| Luz y Vida — January 2025 — Editorial | Luz y Vida — January 2025 | Urantia Questionnaire: Julio J. Miranda |
“Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of truth running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a materialistic and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of the superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eternal truth. But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over, the truths of Jesus’ gospel will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and better way.” (UB 195:9.1)
This paragraph has always been inspiring to me since I first read it thirty years ago. It has been in front of me for a long time, on a note pinned to a corkboard, as a reminder. And I chose this paragraph as the introductory quote for a novel I have written. I always believed that its author was Mantutia, the director of the revealing commission, perhaps because it is located in a document of The Urantia Book that tells things about the future, and I felt that only a Melchizedek could have such profound vision about the times to come.
Be that as it may, what attracts me most about this paragraph is that it is extremely hopeful, and at the same time it makes a very clear recommendation about how we should consider contemporary Christianity. It is all condensed there in just a few lines.
It goes without saying, any reader will agree with me on this, that the Fifth Revelation is not taking the same time as the other four revelations that marked an era. All of them were the result of an emblematic character or an emblematic couple, beings who were all treated with admiration and devotion and who left a deep mark on their followers. In just a few centuries, the world changed abruptly thanks to the effects of these revelations. Caligastia, Adam and Eve, Maquiventa and Michael of Nebadon were the personification of each of these revelations. The success of their visits was dazzling. One must consider that from the death of Jesus until the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire only three and a half centuries passed.
If we look back at our present, almost a century since the Fifth Revelation began to take shape, and three-quarters since it was made public, we are overcome by a certain feeling of frustration. All our efforts to spread this new proclamation of spiritual truth do not seem to be bearing the immediate fruits that the spreaders of previous revelations produced.
That is why I find this paragraph so edifying and reassuring. Perhaps one of the things we often overlook is that we tend to think of our time, the 21st century, as the best time of all time. It is true that we live in the age of inventions, communications and material advances. But in terms of spiritual thought and religious life, the paragraph already makes it clear that our time is not even close to the best. If we go to the opposite extreme of this part IV of the book, right at the beginning, the narrator tells us: “[The time of Jesus was a period] of revival of spiritual thought and religious life such as had not been known in all of its previous history since Adam, nor has it been repeated in any subsequent age.” UB 121:1.1
That is why that cry of “Be patient!” makes more sense than ever. The Fifth Revelation has probably been given to us in advance at a time of special deterioration with the purpose of laying the foundations of a community of believers who begin to believe in the veracity of the message and not in the sublime personality of the messenger. Believers who make the gospel, that true core that still underlies Christianity, the center of their efforts. Believers who do not simply despise the old because they have received an immense breath of fresh air. Believers who know how to transport the good truths that have always been there along safe channels, and lead them to the firm port of future times, where our heirs, with full confidence, will triumph where we only acted as boatmen.
¶ References
- Index of the magazine “Luz y Vida” of the Association of Spain
- This article from the magazine “Luz y Vida Online”
| Luz y Vida — January 2025 — Editorial | Luz y Vida — January 2025 | Urantia Questionnaire: Julio J. Miranda |