© 2001 Ken Glasziou
© 2001 The Brotherhood of Man Library
There can be no doubt that a primary task for the Urantia Papers was to provide us with an appreciation of the full meaning of “the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men” as these concepts were first presented to us by Jesus.
There are now something in the order of two billion people on this planet that have some affiliation with Christianity—a religion acknowledged by the revelators to have kept alive those original concepts of Jesus so that some day they may yet be proclaimed in their full meaning not only to the church that bears his name but to all the world, even to every individual.
On occasions, remarks to this effect have brought inquiries seeking evidence on the whereabouts in the Papers that the revelators express such hopes. Some of that evidence now follows:
All Urantia is waiting for the proclamation of the ennobling message of Michael, unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin. The hour is striking for presenting to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Hinduism, even to the peoples of all faiths, not the gospel about Jesus, but the living, spiritual reality of the gospel of Jesus. (UB 94:12.7)
But doubt not, this same kingdom of heaven which the Master taught exists within the heart of the believer, will yet be proclaimed to this Christian church, even as to all other religions, races, and nations on earth—even to every individual. (UB 170:5.8)
The concept of Jesus is still alive in the advanced religions of the world. Paul’s Christian church is the socialized and humanized shadow of what Jesus intended the kingdom of heaven to be—and what it most certainly will yet become. (UB 170:5.17)
There must come a revival of the actual teachings of Jesus, such a restatement as will undo the work of his early followers who went about to create a sociophilosophical system of belief regarding the fact of Michael’s sojourn on earth. (UB 170:5.19)
Mistake not! there is in the teachings of Jesus an eternal nature which will not permit them forever to remain unfruitful in the hearts of thinking men. The kingdom as Jesus conceived it has to a large extent failed on earth; for the time being, an outward church has taken its place; but you should comprehend that this church is only the larval stage. . . (UB 170:5.21)
Thus does the so-called Christian church become the cocoon in which the kingdom of Jesus’ concept now slumbers. The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still alive and will eventually and certainly come forth from this long submergence, just as surely as the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful unfolding of its less attractive creature of metamorphic development. (UB 170:5.21)
But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of the Master’s life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment. (UB 195:9.2)
The modern age will refuse to accept a religion which is inconsistent with facts and out of harmony with its highest conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness. The hour is striking for a rediscovery of the true and original foundations of present-day distorted and compromised Christianity—the real life and teachings of Jesus. (UB 195:9.5)
Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all men. (UB 195:10.1)
Jesus did not found the so-called Christian church, but he has, in every manner consistent with his nature, fostered it as the best existent exponent of his lifework on earth. (UB 195:10.9)
The living Jesus is the only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The true church—the Jesus brotherhood—is invisible, spiritual, and is characterized 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. (UB 195:10.11)
The Christianity of even the twentieth century must not be despised. It is the product of the combined moral genius of the God-knowing men of many races during many ages, and it has truly been one of the greatest powers for good on earth, and therefore no man should lightly regard it. . . (UB 195:10.12)
If the Christian church would only dare to espouse the Master’s program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all the way through with this great adventure. (UB 195:10.10)
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)
If Christianity could only grasp more of Jesus’ teachings, it could do so much more in helping modern man to solve his new and increasingly complex problems. (UB 195:10.19)
The hope of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor the social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it humbly bows itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn anew from Jesus of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear—the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. (UB 195:10.21)
The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth must not be longer sacrificed to even the splendid concept of the glorified Christ. (UB 196:1.2)
What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! (UB 196:1.2)
Indeed, the social readjustments, the economic transformations, the moral rejuvenations, and the religious revisions of Christian civilization would be drastic and revolutionary if the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the theologic religion about Jesus. (UB 196:1.2)
Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. (UB 196:2.1)
Can we really doubt that a major aim, possibly the primary aim, for the Fifth Epochal Revelation is the spiritualization of the authoritarian Christian church? And the main means is to be the through actual lives of spirit-led followers of Jesus who unconsciously demonstrate the virtue and the practicality of a spirit-led life of service to our brothers and sisters?
To his followers, Jesus said: “Your mission to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-revealing life among you, on the truth that you and all other men are sons of God; and it shall consist in the life which you will live among men—the actual and living experience of loving men and serving them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith reveal your light to the world; let the revelation of truth open the eyes blinded by tradition; let your loving service effectually destroy the prejudice engendered by ignorance. By so drawing close to your fellow men in understanding sympathy and with unselfish devotion, you will lead them into a saving knowledge of the Father’s love. . . I require of my disciples. . . a life of loving service to your brothers in the flesh.” (UB 191:5.3)
We no longer live in country villages where everyone knows everyone else, and what they do from cradle to grave. Most of us live in a bustling metropolis in which beautiful lives lived in total devotion to God may go unheeded, unheralded, and unnoticed.
Few of us have the qualities or the opportunities of a Mother Theresa. To live a life of loving service that may impact upon others, for most of us means our life needs to be lived in association with an organized and recognizable group.
To date, belonging to a Urantia group has meant that we belong to a somewhat intellectual discussion group having dubious spiritual value for the building of our own souls—and none at all as a loving service to the brotherhood of mankind.
Urantians really do need to get organized in service groups if the “through this revelation” hope expressed by the revelators is to bear spiritual fruit.
Dear friend, theory is all grey,
And the golden tree of life is green.
Goethe
And even the most solid of things and the most real, the best-loved and the well-known, are only hand-shadows on the wall. Empty space and points of light.
Jeanette Winterson
They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.
William Shakespeare
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake
Small service is true service while it lasts:
Of humblest friends, bright creature, scorn not one;
The daisy by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
Wordsworth
The thing-in-itself, the will-to-live, exists whole and undivided in every being, even in the tiniest; it is present as completely as in all that ever were, are, and will be, taken together.
Arthur Schopenhauer