© 1998 Ken Glasziou
© 1998 The Brotherhood of Man Library
“But no revelation short of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space.” (UB 92:4.9)
“Religion is the revelation to man of his divine and eternal destiny.” (UB 195:5.3) So say the revelators. Certainly one of the major tasks for the revelators of The Urantia Papers was to inform Urantians about their “divine and eternal destiny” within the context of a cosmology that includes Paradise, Havona, the seven superuniverses, and the hierarchical structure for the “heavenly hosts.”
If at every moment, both present and future, it were eternally certain that nothing has happened or can happen, not even the most fearful horror invented by the most morbid imagination and translated into fact, which can separate us fro God’s love—here would be reason for joy.
Soren Kierkegarde
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul in Romans 8:37-39
Prior to receipt of the Fifth Epochal Revelation, its predecessor revelations had left us with only the scant information that “in my Father’s house, there are many mansions” plus some subsidiary information that, in our celestial life, we would be “as the angels” hence “neither taken nor given in marriage.” Beyond this, we had no knowledge of the true meaning of concepts such as “eternal life,” “heaven,” “hell,” “Paradise,” nor of the hierarchy of heavenly beings who co-inhabit the central and superuniverses with us.
The Urantia Book takes pain to inform us that revelation to the universes is subject to strict control and restrictions. A seemingly reasonable question that we earthlings might ask is, “Why?” For without some reasonable concept of the reasons for such restrictions, how can we have a true grasp of the “what, why, and wherefore” of the Fifth Epochal Revelation? Furthermore, without such knowledge, how can we hope to understand why the book has been written in such a peculiar manner?
In my mind’s eye (wherever that may be), I can already “see” our Urantia Book fundamentalists spontaneously responding, “What peculiar manner?” However, I would question whether it is possible for anyone not to notice the “strangeness” of this book except that they have failed to ponder long, hard, and diligently upon things not understood. So, please, please, double please, give it serious time and thought!
Why is it important? Well it is coming up to fifty years since the book was first printed and less than about one in every ten thousand persons on the planet could ever have even seen or heard of the book—and probably less than one in a million is likely to have any comprehension of what it is about. Furthermore the older generations of Christians have their feet of clay buried in concrete, refusing to give an inch to new knowledge and concepts, with the result that each succeeding generation is increasingly religionless. That automatically means no realistic purpose to life, no reason for ethics or morals, and nothing to which to dedicate self but self itself—a sure recipe for social chaos and ultimate anarchy.
A point to be considered is that we may be answerable at some future time in our universe careers for having presented The Urantia Book to the world essentially as a divinely-dictated revelation, despite the contrary written exhortations of the revelators themselves. This action effectively gives The Urantia Book a “banned reading” status for most of the rank and file of the Christian world. One reason this is so may be found in Revelations 22:18,19. Look it up!
It is a sad truth that the Urantia Papers never ever had need for the protection of copyright, nor did they ever have any need for the status of “divinely-dictated revelation” to be plastered upon them. The truths in these Papers are magnificently self-authenticating for those with “eyes to see and ears to hear.” They can stand on their own feet and by their own merit. How long will it take for that truth to be understood?
The restrictions imposed upon the revelators by the rules for revelation included that they must not provide us with unearned knowledge, nor are they permitted to anticipate the scientific discoveries that they expect us to make over the next 1000 years. (UB 101:4.2) At first glance these impositions do not appear all that intimidating. But some realistic thinking on the problem will soon reveal the depth of the difficulties so created.
Ganid, I have absolute confidence in my heavenly Father’s overcare; I am consecrated to doing the will of my Father in heaven. I do not believe that real harm can befall me; I do not believe that my lifework can really be jeopardized by anything my enemies might wish to visit upon me, and surely we have no violence to fear from our friends. I am absolutely assured that the entire universe is friendly to me—this all-powerful truth I insist on believing with a wholehearted trust in spite of all appearances to the contrary. (UB 133:1.4)
The partially evolved mental mechanism of mortal man is not overendowed with consistency and wisdom. Man’s conceit often outruns his reason and eludes his logic. (UB 195:7.7)
Imagine that you have been placed in a time machine and the date wound back to the end of the 19th century. You find yourself scheduled to give a talk to a group of erudite citizens, your topic is the “clockwork nature of the universe” and you are familiar with the recent 20th century advances in quantum physics that demonstrate conclusively that the universe is not a clockwork-like machine after all, and that the fundamentals of cause and effect thinking have gone down the drain forever.
You have the same prohibitions as the revelators of the Urantia Papers, you cannot provide people with unearned knowledge. So how could you even hint that the materialistic thinking of this 19th century audience could be wrong—except that you unintentionally provide them with unearned knowledge? Remember you are from the future; your audience will assume your every word has authority.
If we really did have to perform a task similar to that given to the revelators of The Urantia Book, I’m one hundred percent sure we would finish up doing what they have done. That is, we would use the best available current concepts (1930’s concepts for the revelators) that permit us to reveal, with minimal distortion, whatever it is we were commissioned to reveal. And we would be forced to accept the absolute inevitability that in a book as extensive and detailed as The Urantia Book, the inclusion of error would be unavoidable.
Try it and see for yourself. Bill Sadler used an analogy about explaining the workings of the New York stock exchange to a group of Bantu warriors—with nothing you say being interpretable by them as fibs, lies, falsehood, deceit, or being misleading! What a task!
Why is it that the laws of revelation should be so weighted against the revelators revealing anything?
The clue might be found in what the book says about our free will:
“No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will, as it operates within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal. As pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute.” (UB 5:6.8)
There are several similar statements about the absolute sovereignty of human free will. So what is free will?
The Urantia Book tells us that our universe careers will finally be rewarded by our attaining of the presence of the Universal Father and then being ushered into the Corps of Finality—provided we make a freewill decision of total commitment to the “doing of God’s will.”
Alternatively, if we finally reject making the commitment to doing God’s will, we will become as if we had never been. (UB 2:3.4)
How does this situation measure up against the reward and punishment methodology that we commonly use to train animals and even our offspring? Is there a real difference?
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Exodus 21:24,25
The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
Shakespare, «Merchant of Venice»
Let’s consider the animal situation. As an example, we’ll use a horse that habitually tries to bite anyone either grooming it or trying to place a saddle upon its back. We take the horse to a professional trainer and watch to see what happens. This one starts by grooming the animal, at the same time keeping a keen professional eye on the animal’s head. By instinct almost, this trainer knows when the horse is going to try to bite him—and he is ready for it. Even before the horse’s teeth touch his arm, he has given it a sharp tap on the nose, and instantly resumed the grooming as if nothing had happened. A couple of sessions of instantaneous punishment or reward like this, and the horse gives up biting, at least until it inadvertently discovers that a new rider or groom is not familiar with the game.
Used correctly and intelligently, this reward and punishment scenario can achieve marvels with both animals and children, even with adults. How is our entry to or rejection from the Corps of Finality any different? Are we not given a choice between two alternatives, one of which offers a reward while the other brings a punishment? And in this case, the reward and the punishment are extreme, the reward being life, the punishment, a death sentence.
Although not immediately evident, there may be a subtle difference between a true freewill choosing to do the will of God and a choice that is made between alternatives that have the reward or punishment feedback incentive .
What if we decide that we will always seek to do the will of God totally unconditionally—that is, totally independently of whether there is a desirable reward for making the commitment or some form of punishment if we do not?
Surely this totally unconditional commitment can only be made if we have attained a state of mind whereby the doing the will of God becomes natural to us regardless of the need for reward.
And because it is made completely independently of either the hope of reward or the threat of punishment, would that not be an authentic freewill decision ?
Now comes the crunch. Rightly or wrongly, it seems to me that uncertainty is an essential component of any environment in which authentic freewill decisions can find expression.
To start with, for a free will decision to be made, events cannot be predetermined. The Urantia Book cites a number of conditions that introduce varying degrees of unpredictability into whatever will be. And now modern physics has supplied clear-cut empirical evidence that we do not live in a clockwork universe but one in which probability, that is uncertainty, is the norm.
Besides the clockwork universe concept, now thoroughly discredited, there is another kind of “certainty complex” that can run our lives and take away from our making of free will decisions. This was illustrated for me by a friend who had the task of training air traffic controllers in an Islamic country.
He was trying, but failing, to introduce a panic stations frame of mind into his trainees if two incoming commercial airliners, laden with passengers, were inadvertently put upon a collision course. Then one day it happened, everyone went about their duties quietly and efficiently with no signs of panic or unusual hurry. The collision was avoided, though it may not have been so if it had not been noticed until about 30 seconds later.
Discussing this situation with his trainees he discovered that its foundation was a deep trust in whatever happens does so because it is the will of Allah. Hence if Allah willed the crash, they could not prevent it, and if Allah did not will a crash, it would not happen.
It lies not in our power to love or hate, for will in us is over-ruled by fate.
C. Marlowe, “Hero and Leander”
The patient dies while the physician sleeps;
The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;
Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;
Avarice is sporting while infection breeds.
Shakespeare, “The Rape of Lucrece”
For me, Jesus’ complete trust in God, as illustrated by his statement to the Indian boy, “Ganid, I have absolute confidence in my heavenly Father’s overcare; I am consecrated to doing the will of my Father in heaven. I do not believe that real harm can befall me. . . ,” was of a totally different order of certainty. Jesus had faith in God’s overcare but not on the basis of whether whatever happens is predetermined by God’s will. On the contrary, The Urantia Papers are quite adamant that it is our free will decisions that are essential for the spiritualization of our being.
Given a celestial revelation, at our present state of evolutionary advancement it is inevitable that a high proportion of Urantian mortals will turn it into a set of hard and fast rules and regulations to obey. By doing so, the book tells us we become obedient servants, and not freewill sons of God.
So, if in our minds we are certain that God exists and we are also certain that the doing of God’s will is essential for our survival, then our choice is likely to be to comply to the letter, or to reject, a set of rules that substitute as God’s will for us. And our compliance will be made in the shadow of the threat of punishment or the hope of reward.
It is my conclusion that we can be truly free of the reward or punishment incentive, and so in a position to choose the will of the God unconditionally, only if there is room for uncertainty both about God’s existence and the consequences thereof.
If this suggestion is correct, then the revelators could not provide us with a totally self-authenticating revelation. They had to leave room for doubt or else they would violate God’s decree regarding the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will. So is this the reason that The Urantia Book is fraught with difficulties and “strangeness”?
Quotations from the book that are in accord with these thoughts are:
“But for you, my children, and for all others who would follow you into this kingdom, there is set a severe test. Faith alone will pass you through its portals. . . ” (UB 140:1.4)
Here a reminder of Brian Appleyard’s telling remark is warranted, “If we had reason for faith, it would not be faith at all, it would be logic. Faith can only be unreasonable.”
So if the Urantia Papers were errorless, as well as containing prophetic materials, we would be forced to accept it as having divine authority—thus leaving no room for faith. But only faith can pass us through the portals!
Then we have:
“The existence of God can never be proved by scientific experiment or by pure reason. . . ” (UB 1:2.7)
“Revelation is validated only by human experience. . . ” (UB 101:2.8)
“The proof of revelation is this same fact of human experience. . . ” (UB 101:2.1)
“The fact of religion consists wholly in the religious experience of the rational and average human being.” (UB 101:2.1)
My last supporting quote says:
But long before reaching Havona, these ascendant children of time have learned to feast upon uncertainty, to fatten upon disappointment, to enthuse over apparent defeat, to invigorate in the presence of difficulties, to exhibit indomitable courage in the face of immensity, and to exercise unconquerable faith when confronted with the challenge of the inexplicable. Long since, the battle cry of these pilgrims became: “In liaison with God, nothing—absolutely nothing—is impossible. (UB 26:5.3)
It certainly seems that mortal life is meant to be charged with uncertainty. Thus am I able to say:
“Thank you Father, for the errors and the ‘funny’ stuff in The Urantia Book, thank you for those hilarious bits about Adamson and Ratta and their invisible children; thank you for those incredible, impossible, long-ranging passenger birds that carry two people 500 miles non-stop—and talk; thank you for the forty days to Pentecost conundrum; and thank you for the beauty and the grandeur of those Urantia Papers that reflect a level of genius that is light years beyond the talents of mere men. But above all else, I give you thanks Father, for the life of Jesus as it reveals you to me. And lastly, I give thanks for those precious words of Job saying, ‘even though you slay me, yet would I serve you,’ for it is my will, Father, that your will be done in me, no matter what the consequences. My Father, I do so sincerely love you just for being you, and for you allowing me to be me. Once more, thank you. Amen.”
You must go forward from where you find yourselves. (UB 195:10.1)
The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
J.M. Barrie, “The Little White Bird”