© 1982 Emma L. Christensen
© 1982 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
This issue of The URANTIAN Journal of URANTIA Brotherhood is dedicated to the memory of Emma L. Christensen. As our way of remembering Christy, we have included many of the speeches and talks she gave during her many years of unselfish service and devotion to the work of this fifth epochal revelation of our Father to this planet. Her words speak with clarity and resonance of her hope that each student of The URANTIA Book would rise to the fullness of commitment to God, and the experience of sonship, is a “Soldier of the Circles.” Christy graduated to the mansion worlds on May 2. 1982.
The Editors
GREETINGS TO YOU — the delegates, alternates, councilors, and all Urantians — who are privileged to attend this first meeting of the Triennial Delegate Assembly. This is an historical occasion. What we do and say here will long be a matter of record in the archives of URANTIA Brotherhood, and I doubt not that future generations will look back with longing to this year 1964 and wish they could have been with us, just as we sometimes look back to the times of Jesus on earth and wish we could have walked with him through Galilee, could have sat under the trees with him, listening first-hand to his supernal teachings. Our coming together here today will be an experience we will long cherish, and I hope we will meet the challenges which it presents with courage, devotion, and above all, with unity of purpose.
It has been an honor to have had the privilege of serving as President of URANTIA Brotherhood for the past one and one-half years. And I wish to extend my sincere thanks to the other officers and administrators who have served with me during this period. I must here make special mention of the splendid work performed by the Program Committee for this Assembly — Alvin Kulieke, Marian Rowley, and Edith Cook — as well as the services of our fine secretary, Mrs. Anna Rawson. They have given unstintingly of their time in the preparation of the many details incident to this Assembly.
It is my pleasure to greet the delegates, alternates, councilors, and all the good Urantia friends who are privileged to attend the second Triennial Delegate Assembly. Three years ago, on August 20, 1964, we held the first meeting of the Assembly. That was an historical occasion. This is none the less auspicious and I hope that we have grown in grace and wisdom these past three years.
We know we are amateurs and we all feel very inadequate for the task of propagandizing the revelation of God and his universe which has been given to us in The URANTIA Book. No doubt the apostles of Jesus felt inadequate to go forth into the world preaching the kingdom of God as Jesus had bidden them to do. But they went out and turned the whole world upside down. Two thousand years later we are still quoting them. Like the apostles, we have been called to a great work. We have been called to offer a new light to a distracted world. We are the salt of the URANTIA revelation, the first light to illuminate the path of deliverance from the chaos, confusion, and darkness of the present planetary dilemma.
We Urantians, as we traverse life day by day, may often have been concerned with our progress in bringing the Kingdom of God into our hearts and into the hearts of our fellow man. We may have been concerned with whether we are promoting the living gospel of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man wisely, and well. But if we do question our service, then we must, in fact, be questioning the roots of that service which are loyalty and love. We must learn to make necessary daily adjustment between our personal convictions and our duty toward family and associates. We must achieve the satisfaction of effecting an increasingly harmonious blending of personal convictions and family obligations into a masterful concept of group solidarity based upon loyalty, fairness, tolerance, and love as Jesus did so magnificently.
“What is loyalty? It is the fruit of an intelligent appreciation of universe brotherhood; one could not take so much and give nothing. As you ascend the personality scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be filial, and then may you be free; but not until you are a finaliter, not until you have attained perfection of loyalty, can you self-realize finality of liberty.” (UB 39:4.11) And this perfection of loyalty is the first manner in which we attain perfection, indeed the only way we have gained perfection at the time we are mustered into the Corps of Finality.
Greetings to the Soldiers of the Circles! This designation has been applied to us because we are the men and women who have been called to take the first steps in offering a new light to a frustrated church and a distracted world. We are the first light in nearly 2,000 years to illuminate the path of deliverance from the chaos, confusion, and darkness of the present planetary dilemma.
But we are not soldiers bearing arms. We bear the good news of man’s sonship with God — our Heavenly Father. W are entrusted with a great and unique responsibility — the custody, safeguarding, and dissemination of The URANTIA Book. The carrying out of this responsibility will require of all those who would take it up: self-discipline, dedication, and extraordinary efforts at co-operation. So may we all be valiant Soldiers of the Circles, wholeheartedly enlisted in the ranks of those mortals who shall go forward in the battle for truth against error under the unfaltering leadership of the mighty seraphic corps,
“If you will only love one another as I am loving you, you shall be my friends, and I will ever speak to you of that which the Father reveals to me.” (UB 180:1.3)
Jesus to the apostles in the Farewell Discourse