© 1995 Ken Glasziou
© 1995 The Brotherhood of Man Library
“The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul.” (UB 2:7.10)
Now that The Urantia Book has gone into the public domain, more readers may feel impelled to participate in fulfilling the challenge made to us by the Divine Counselor who wrote those words. There can be no doubt that the “enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness” refers to The Urantia Book itself. But note that it is not the book itself that is to fulfil the challenge. Rather it is the content of the book that is to be woven into new and appealing philosophies of living and presented in ways that are meaningful to a range of God’s children from differing backgrounds, religions, and cultures.
Your smallest good deed is better than your grandest intention.
You can preach a better sermon with your life than you can with your lips.
Goldsmith
A prime target is the membership of the various Christian churches. Few church-going Christians are yet ready for a new revelation. But many are definitely ready for the unadulterated message that Jesus already gave us in the Fourth Epochal Revelation. The principal hindrance to the advancement of Christianity is an incorrect concept of the true nature of God. One modern Christian theologian presented a deeply meaningful statement when he wrote, “for Jesus, reality was a gracious and compassionate God.” The word “reality” implies all that is. All that exists bears the imprint of the nature of God. Nothing real can exist that does not reflect that nature. The word “compassionate” as used in the Bible is derived from Hebrew meaning “wombish.” A gracious and compassionate God is one who is “nourishing,” one who bestows his love freely and unconditionally. If reality is a gracious and compassionate God, then anything that is inconsistent with the nature of God cannot be real. For convenience, let’s give such concepts a label—I call them Self-acting Error-correcting Concepts—SEC’s for short. The Urantia Book states:
“When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father (an SEC), the only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forthwith, in all consistency, utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God as an offended monarch, a stern and all-powerful ruler whose chief delight is to detect his subjects in wrongdoing and to see that they are adequately punished, unless some being almost equal to himself should volunteer to suffer for them, to die as a substitute and in their stead.” (UB 188:4.8)
These are strong words, at present, far too strong for the vast majority of Christians reared in the concept that Jesus, on the cross, took their sins upon himself, thereby redeeming them from the justice of a perfectly righteous God. The concept of the necessity of a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins goes way back—long before Christianity and long before the children of Abraham incorporated the idea into their Scriptures. This idea has enormous power for those who are overburdened with the acute awareness of their own guilt. It will take a long time to remove it from the common consciousness of mankind. The least likely method to make a successful attack on this deeply embedded belief is frontal assault. But it can be slowly moderated and replaced:
“Simon, Simon, how many times have I instructed you to refrain from all efforts to take something out of the hearts of those who seek salvation? How often have I told you to labor only to put something into these hungry souls? Lead men into the kingdom, and the great and living truths of the kingdom (SEC’s) will presently drive out all serious error. When you have presented to mortal man the good news that God is his Father, you can the easier persuade him that he is in reality a son of God. And having done that, you have brought the light of salvation to the one who sits in darkness. Simon, when the Son of Man came first to you, did he come denouncing Moses and the prophets and proclaiming a new and better way of life? No. I came not to take away that which you had from your forefathers but to show you the perfected vision of that which your fathers saw only in part. Go then, Simon, teaching and preaching the kingdom, and when you have a man safely and securely within the kingdom, then is the time, when such a one shall come to you with inquiries, to impart instruction having to do with the progressive advancement of the soul within the divine kingdom.” (UB 141:6.2)
What was the kingdom that Jesus instructed his disciples to teach? “Simply go forth proclaiming: This is the kingdom of heaven—God is your Father and you are his sons, and this good news, if you wholeheartedly believe it, is your eternal salvation.” (UB 141:6.4) Christians know that. Their number one problem is wrapped up in a confused doctrine about the justice, the righteousness, and the judgement of a perfect God. Generally they are not aware that the love and mercy of God as a Father transcends his righteousness as a judge (another SEC). When Christianity absorbs that concept, it will become what it ought to have been.
“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. 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)
Among the most powerful sayings of Jesus that are self-acting error-correcting concepts, (SEC’s), are those that contrast the behavior of good earthly parents with what could be expected from a heavenly Father who is gracious, merciful, loving, and compassionate. These simple words come from the gospel of Luke: “If a son shall ask for bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg will he give him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him?”
Would a good earthly father demand the sacrifice of one of his innocent children to pay for the sins of his other children? The Urantia Book makes us aware of what we must do to bring to life, the reality of Jesus’ Fourth Epochal Revelation. But we need to do this by using the life and sayings of Jesus, as revealed in the gospel stories. Just as Jesus told the Pharisees that it was unnecessary for them to believe in him, but only that they should believe in the one who sent him, so it is both unnecessary and counter-productive to attempt to force The Urantia Book upon the churches. As yet they do not need it—they only need the instruction that is already in the biblical gospels. First the Fourth Epochal Revelation needs to be re-established. After that will come the time for the expanding truths of the Fifth. The task of John the Baptist was to prepare the way for Jesus and the Fourth Epochal Revelation. Prepare Ye the Way is a necessary precursor for introducing The Urantia Book to Christianity.
One of the means to do this is through secondary works. I have written two books, the first entitled “Christ or Chaos. The Evolution of a Revelation.” It is already in print, published by Vantage Press, Inc. New York. It covers the life of Jesus prior to his baptism, much as is found in The Urantia Book, but written in a style that attempts to capture the interest of readers through the time-proven cliff-hanger formula. The second book is entitled, “Christ or Chaos. Abba Revealed.” It, too, uses the cliff-hanger formula through a series of plots by which Annas and Caiaphas attempt to get rid of Jesus. It culminates with the crucifixion. A third book could be written to show how the young church eventually lost the plot, and buried Jesus’ revelation of his God of love—and the way back.
Those who now wish to embark on taking on the challenge of the Divine Counselor through the written word are going to face the same obstacles as I have. The market for new books is in vast over-supply. Publishers do not want to know you. They do not want your manuscripts, in fact will not accept them. First you must write a letter outlining the plan for your book. Send them a manuscript and you will get it back unread—no matter whether it is worthy of a Nobel peace prize. In fact you will get most of your submissions back with a formal refusal letter, but only if you have had the forethought to include a stamped, addressed envelope. Otherwise you can expect no reply. These refusals will come from some junior clerk who has not bothered to read your submission. Then, even if you can get the book printed, you have to get it into the retail stores, and on the bookshelves. Australia’s largest book retailer refuses to handle any more religious books. My publisher approached more than thirty book distributors in Australia to handle my book—without success. The quality of the work was not the problem. They are simply flooded with books and have no time to read more. Eventually my wife managed to line up a distributor and things are now moving.
For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
for the want of a rider the battle was lost,
for the want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horse-shoe nail.Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1758
COURT DRAMA. On the Necessity to be concise.
District Attorney: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, vnuld he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station?
Lawyer for the defendant: Objection! That question should be taken out and shot.
All Urantia Book readers who want to use the written word to spread the message of the book will face this problem. What can be done about it? Assume you have managed to get a book printed and the books are now stacked in a warehouse waiting to be read. How do you get them to the retailer? The world-wide trend is towards a small number of large publishing houses tying up the system so that they print, distribute, and retail books that they themselves control. These publishers are scarcely approachable by unknown authors. Thinking of CD-ROM’s? I read recently that it now takes an average of $500,000 to successfully produce and market one.
Getting a book printed is not a problem if you can pay for it. But getting it distributed is another matter. Nowadays most retailers put a high value on shelf space. They do not want to allocate space to an unknown book by an unknown author. They want books on the shelf that achieve rapid turnover. Here is one area that Urantia Book readers can do something. There are enough of us to help establish demand. Go to retailers and ask for a secondary work. If it is listed, there is no problem. If not, you can tell them the name of the book, author, publisher, and hopefully, a distributor. Then they can get it in. Recommend the book to your friends. Give it away as a birthday or Christmas present, anything to help get demand going. This has a snowballing effect, but it wont happen until someone makes a snowball. Do it for my book—you will be helping to spread that essential message on the true nature of God and you will be helping to build a fund to promote secondary works because all of my author’s royalties go to a trust fund to assist in promoting The Urantia Book’s message. You will also help us to learn what it is we must do to get access to the distribution system.
My publisher is Vantage Press Inc., an old established firm that, in its early days, dealt in printing academic works that had no chance of building a large demand. It used a subsidy system whereby authors contributed to the printing costs and hoped later to gain at least partial reimbursement through book sales. It still operates in this way—which is one reason why they will talk to you, and will read your manuscript. Whether it can survive in the future is hard to say. They have to cope with the trend by which the big publishing houses tie up the distribution system. But for the present they are one means. Readers need to tell us if they know about other means to get our secondary works into press and circulation.
I believe that the greatest potential for spreading the essential message about the true nature of God is via children’s books. Children are teachable. Adults generally are not. So if you have a talent, the challenge is there. I ask readers to get out there and order “Christ or Chaos” from your retailer, then give it to a church-going friend. Sandy and Christel Garrick, long time readers of The Urantia Book, believe it is the kind of work that is required and are translating it into Swedish. Also, an elder of the Presbyterian Church (not a Urantia Book reader) 'phoned from 1000 miles away to find out where he could buy copies for his family. It will cost you US$13.95, and it will be adding US$5.58 to the trust fund to help others. Write to us at Innerface if you have questions, ideas, or proposals about secondary works. And remember what our grandmothers used to say, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”
COURT DRAMA: Beginning with the Fundamentals.
THE COURT: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present information and prejudice from your minds, if you have any.