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Conclusions
In this review we have touched upon the vast difference between the life and times of Jesus as it is portrayed in both the New Testament and Christian writings, and what we may learn from The Urantia Book.
For Christianity, as it is taught in most orthodox churches, Jesus is best known because his crucifixion is taken by Christians to have been the ransom paid to an apparently angry God for the remission of the sins of mankind. Problematically, this same God is also known as the God who is love personified.
For this bizarre situation, a major portion of its bizarreness can be put down to Paul for almost all of his writings were completed and in circulation among the early Christians well before anything else now in the New Testament had been recorded. Important among Paul's writings is 1 Corinthians 11: 23-25:
"For I have received of the Lord that which I have also delivered to you--that the Lord Jesus, the same night on which he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks he broke it saying, 'Take eat, this is my body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me.' And after the same manner he took the cup, and when he had supped, said, 'This cup is God's new covenant, sealed with my blood. Whenever you drink it, do so in memory of me.'"
Termed the "Last Supper" these same words were repeated in the Synoptic Gospels, all three of which were written at a later date than Paul's letters.
The Gospel versions differ somewhat from that of Paul. Matthew (26:27,28) has, "Drink you all of it. For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sin." Mark and Luke omit "for the remission of sin." Repeated throughout Paul's letters we also find that redemption from sin is through the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:14; Hebrews 9:12, 15)
In contrast the Urantia revelation has no mention of "sacrifice" or "blood" in its version of the Last Supper--and it does state emphatically: "Jesus is not about to die as a sacrifice for sin. He is not going to atone for the inborn moral guilt of the human race." (TUB 185:5.7) Even more emphatically it has:
"The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath." (TUB 4: 5.4)
What The Urantia Book says is undoubtedly both logical and true. Yet it remains a fact that few Christians see the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross in payment for the sins of mankind as in any way reflecting adversely on the nature of the God whom they worship as love personified.
The illogicality, indeed absurdity, of this stance just does not enter their heads.
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