Address of Welcome to the Summer Study Session
of the Urantia Brotherhood School
by E.L. Christensen
August 2nd, 1968
A cordial welcome to the 1968 summer session of the Urantia Brotherhood School. We are glad to see so many out-of-towners as it is always a pleasant experience to meet face to face those who have heretofore been only a signature to a letter. And, of course, greeting old and cherished friends is one of the supernal pleasures of life on this world.
I am sure we will all receive help and inspiration from our association together here today and tomorrow. Lasting friendships will be formed. On Page 1,285 of The Urantia Book is a statement, which I treasure:
“Personality and relationships between personalities are never scaffolding; mortal memory of personality relationships has cosmic value and will persist. On the mansion worlds you will know and be known, and more, you will remember, and be remembered, by your onetime associates of the short but intriguing life on this world.”
We mortals can hardly comprehend the full meaning of the planetary significance of the Urantia revelation. This is a momentous transaction! But, I somehow believe that devout Urantians of one hundred years and of five hundred years in the future will look back upon the event of October 1955 as marking the advent of a new dispensation of religion on this world. Many of us will no doubt live and die without fully realizing that we are participating in the birth of a new religion on Urantia.
The Urantia Revelation sheds much light upon the path of national life as well as upon religious experience and personal conduct. You may be sure that the celestial overseers are now marshalling their reserves of mortal selectmen for the impending attack upon the world’s stalemate of international confusion and spiritual lethargy. These selectmen of this time of crisis are concerned with scores of vital enterprises which have to do with the rehabilitation of the world following the ending of the present chaos and confusion. And of all the corps of mortal selectmen none is charged with a more solemn obligation than our group.
The most urgent need of our world today is a spiritual renaissance. And as individual Urantians we each have our part to act in this far-reaching and significant project. As a group we are entrusted with a great and unique responsibility – the dissemination of the teachings of the Urantia Book. I think it was FDR who said: “There is no problem, great or small, which will not melt before the burning fire of spiritual transformation.” We have been taught: “In partnership with God, nothing – absolutely nothing – is impossible.” (P. 291)
If there is, as I believe, an inner kingdom of spirit, a kingdom of love and fellowship, then it is a fact that a tiny being like one of us can impress and influence the divine heart. We can make our personal contribution to the will of the universe by and through the Supreme Being but we can do it only by wanting what everybody can share and by seeking blessings, which have a universal implication. If we want to receive God we must first bring ourselves to Him. I quote from Page 22: “The affectionate dedication of the human will to the doing of the Father’s will is man’s choicest gift to God; in fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes man’s only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father.”
God comes to meet and to heighten the life of anyone who stretches up toward him in appreciation, and there is joy above as well as below.
The vague impulse to reach beyond our isolated and solitary serf gives place to an actual experience of relationship with a personal Father and this experience may become, and often does become, the loftiest and most joyous activity of life. Vague and formless, in some degree, this communion would be, I think, apart from the personal manifestation of God in Jesus. As soon as God is known as Father, as suffering with us and loving us even in our imperfections, this communion grows defined and becomes actual in social fellowship and in service to our brothers.
The Master’s teachings will sometime prevail; the brotherhood of man will some day begin. Jesus says: “No matter what blunders your fellow men make in their world management of today, in an age to come the gospel which I declare to you will rule this very world.” (P. 1,608)
May we become valiant soldiers of the circles, wholeheartedly enlisted in the solid ranks of those mortals who shall go forth in the coming battle of truth against error under the unfaltering leadership of the mighty seraphim of progress.
Some years ago I talked to this group about what I called a thoroughfare, an illuminated thoroughfare, from Urantia to Paradise. Until we had the Urantia revelation this was but a dimly lit, ill-marked highway, and I think most of us felt a little hesitant to start a long trip upon it. However, the Urantia Book has changed all of this. Now we find the thoroughfare newly paved with God’s promises of life eternal and brightly illuminated with Jesus’ familiar call, “Follow me.” The urge to prepare ourselves to start up the road now becomes the passion of our lives. We are confident that we will find the crossroads and bifurcations clearly marked with the words, “This is the Way.” and this invitation will ever beckon us onward and inward in the long and fascinating struggle for the attainment of higher values and true universe meanings.
The Urantia revelation tells us that there is a grand and glorious purpose in the march of the universes through space but more meaningful to us is the fact that there is also a grand and glorious purpose in the mortal ascension of a Urantian from his home planet to the Corps of the Finality. We are on this path. Our transcendent goal is to find the eternal God, and to obey His supreme mandate, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.”
Some day we too will hear, as did Michael, that electrifying voice say: “This is my beloved Son.”
Today and tomorrow our teacher-guides will take us on a step-by-step journey along the highway, which the Urantia Book has so beautifully illuminated.
The goal of eternity lies before us! The race for perfection is on! (P. 365)
Alvin will start us today on this matchless adventure.
E. L. Christensen
Vice President