© 1993 Seppo Niskanen
© 1993 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
| The 1993 International Conference For Urantia Book Readers, Montreal, Canada | Vol 14 No 5 Sept 1993 — Index | The Revelations Of Divine Truth Are Not Sealed... |
Seppo Niskanen, Mannerheimintie
The Finnish Urantia Society International Summer Conference, which was held during the second weekend of June 1993 turned into a celebration of the fact that first copies of URANTIA-kirja, the Finnish translation of The URANTIA Book, were out from the printing press, along with El libro de URANTIA, the Spanish translation, and Hakemisto, the Finnish Index.
The Summer Conference of 1993 , which was the ninth such conference in a row, took place at Järvenpää, a town in the neighbourhood of the Finnish capital of Helsinki. The Conference was attended by 120 URANTIA Book readers from Finland and eight readers from the United States. Urantia Foundation was represented by four of the Trustees, headed by Patricia Mundelius, the Foundation President.
In her speech to the Conference, she stated: “We very much enjoyed reading the lead article in ‘Reflection’ describing the years and years of work and the number of people involved in giving birth to the Finnish translation. Your dedication and steadfastness along with your beautiful teamwork have made this happen”.
Seppo Kanerva, the translator of the Finnish URANTIA-kirja, said in his speech: “Two important steps have been taken simultaneously, and so some five and a half million Finnish-speaking people and the some 350 million speakers of Castilian now have access to the fifth epochal revelation, in their native languages”. The translator likewise reminded the Conference of getting ever more and new translations accomplished, and also of the necessity of having The URANTIA Book translated into non-European languages: “We are taught that nothing which human nature has touched can be regarded as infallible. The very moment the fourth epochal revelation was entrusted into human hands, the potential existed to make Michael’s bestowal a white man’s religion” (UB 94:4.10).
In telling us this, the revelator’s want to say: “Do not repeat these same mistakes in your human management of the fifth epochal revelation. Let it not become something of your private enjoyment only, let it not become the treasure of one race, or one nation, or one group. Let it not be transformed from a gospel of and in The URANTIA Book into an institutionalized religion about and around The URANTIA Book, outside which there is no salvation”.
Juhani Leino, the Society President, dwelled upon the need to defend The URANTIA Book, something that some readers seem to regard as needful as much as they consider it needful to print it for every Urantian to read. Said he: "While it is a fact that The URANTIA Book incorporates utterly important information and good tidings to mankind, one may think that the rightful thing to do is to print it, ceaselessly and at an accelerating tempo, for every Urantian to read. It is worthwhile remembering, however, that long before The URANTIA Book was published, there was a fellow in the Levant who truly lived its teachings. What I mean is that The URANTIA Book, as a book, does not help anything or anybody unless one truly lives its message and teachings…
“It may appear heroic if someone defends The URANTIA Book at public panel discussions, in newspaper articles, etc. I, though, am fully convinced that The URANTIA Book needs not that kind of defending. Should someone find himself in a defence situation, he does well to make a self-assessment along these lines: Could it be that I, after all, am a disbeliever and a coward. And when I assume that I am defending the book, in reality, what I am defending is the rightfulness of my faith…”
“The readers of The URANTIA Book, of course feel annoyed when the book is given an assessment on false grounds. If this is the case, maybe this quotation from Mark Twain affords some relief to each of us: ‘Adam was nothing more than human, and that explains everything. He did not eat of the apple because it was an apple, but because it was forbidden. Had it not been forbidden, he’d have eaten the snake”.
It is worthwhile remembering, however, that long before The URANTIA Book was published, there was a fellow in the Levant who truly lived its teachings. What I mean is that The URANTIA Book, as a book, does not help anything or anybody unless one truly lives its message and teachings…
Apart from the celebration of the translations, the Conference divided up into about a dozen discussion groups. These discussion groups made an attempt to define what righteousness truly is; the issue of races and racism was the theme of one group, and so was prayer as a religious experience. One group focussed on matter, mind, and spirit, another on resurrection and life. One group made an endeavour to come into terms with art, another with astronomy in the light of The URANTIA Book. One group devoted itself to the multifaceted problem of world religions; also fears and the inevitabilities of life were analyzed. Even physical pleasures had not been ignored — it was the theme of one of the groups.
The Conference site at Järvenpää, almost next door to the one-time home and museum of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, was unanimously found excellent, and consequently a decision was reached that the Summer Conference of 1994 will be held in the same premises. Hence, there will be another International Conference during the second weekend of June 1994 at the same place. Welcome everybody.
| The 1993 International Conference For Urantia Book Readers, Montreal, Canada | Vol 14 No 5 Sept 1993 — Index | The Revelations Of Divine Truth Are Not Sealed... |