© 1977 Ron Schweitzer
© 1977 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
Recently, a Urantia Book student captured my attention when he asked, “How do I live a revelation?” The inquiry immobilized the group; one could perceive all sorts of non-answers gathering to attack the question nobody heard. The inquirer was asked to repeat his question, possibly with some elaboration. It came with strong vocal emphasis and active phrasing: “How do I live a revelation? I hold in my hands an epochal revelation 2097 pages long. I want to do something more than read it, I feel a responsibility to live it.” What a marvelous statement! Happily, no one proffered a “here’s the way it is — this is what you do” answer, or any of those neat and tidy sayings that slam the door of discussion.
I considered the question-statement for several day; afterward before I began to perceive its thrust, and then only after l asked the question of myself. Indeed, how do I live it? Here I am in an extraordinary state of dynamic upheaval — an epochal revelation has locked horns with an inert mortal of the realm; irresistible force meets immovable object to the 10th power! I started the search for a future answer by asking another question; “How do I want to live, temporally and eternally?” Now that the floodgates of choice were opened, the sandbags came out-my reflex reaction to a plethora of choice.
A good friend once remarked, “I like what this book has to say about our relationship with the Universal Father-it takes away the middle man!” Verily, it does. The responsibility for making a choice no longer rests with the local shaman, the village elder or the planets in trine; there is no sage to hold liable if things go wrong. It becomes my duty to myself to show some “ertia” and choose. For the benefit of my eternal welfare, I have the inalienable right to make that choice — it is part of my cosmic bill of rights.
Such words as “revelation” and “responsibility” become highly personal and more compelling with informed cosmic perspective. Any revelation, epochal or auto (past, present or yet to be), is only one of the strongly forged links in the chain of that benevolent universal conspiracy that exists for our benefit, that is everlastingly at work for us. Revelation separated from its purpose too easily becomes a spiritual object d’art to be admired from a distance for the beauty and accuracy of its truth. Translated into personal action-choice, it can become the catalyst that propels an animal origin being into a permanent cosmic citizen. I have not been capriciously abandoned by a king-judge God; rather, have I been embraced by a loving father who has amply provided for my journey to his eternal home. He desires that I be with him — he will not force me; I must choose.
It has been said that choice is the path to the garden where value dwells. Eternal values are stable-they are constant; they are the same now as they were in the days of Christ Michael or Melchizedek or Adam and Eve — only the tangible evolutionary circumstances are different. I must live in the world as I find it with a spiritual eye to the eternal horizons, the yet to be. The intense distractions of this still-evolving “World of the Cross” clamor for attention. My indwelling eternal compass will not fail in directionalizing me if I will heed its readings and not be guided solely by visible landmarks.
I have commenced the journey of finding my own answer to how a revelation is lived, This is the path I take today; tomorrow, a new path to seek another value — same compass.
— Ron Schweitzer