|
Limitations of Revelation
Ann Bendall, Nambour, Australia
I see so many arguments and presentations from we "informed" religionists, we folks who can quote chapter and verse on the terms "revelation" and "evolution," as well as spend heaps of time, energy and money defending, or questioning, whether The Urantia Book is one, or the other, or both.
The book itself states that it is revelation simply by the process involved in its creation. "Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality." (1109) So seeing Divine Counselors, and Melchizedeks, and midwayers, and seraphim, etc., regard themselves as embraced within "celestial agency, group, or personality," (and I tend to agree with them) then, to me, the process in bringing the book to this planet comes within their definition of epochal revelation.
Written in the English language, the book clearly does not conform to literary ethics. It delightfully quotes from its thousand of human sources without referring to the human source in most instances and, in others, not even acknowledging that it is using a human source. The revelatory commission thinks funny! Somehow they feel that all good comes from God, and all truth comes as a result of the work of our Thought Adjuster. To them the human mind is of no relevance and so they breach copyright like it was non-existent to them regarding God as the source of truth, beauty and goodness!
So the fifth epochal revelationary process finished with the production of The Urantia Book, and then evolution took over! Now evolution has been the thorn in the side of every carrier of a revelation. We knowledgeable Urantia Book readers full well know the problems leading to the thwarting of the desires for the four prior epochal revelations, and we are determined that the fifth will not suffer the same fate as its forebears. The reality is that the Fifth Epochal Revelation was a resounding success, we have 2097 pages to prove this. But where do we go with the evolution consequent upon its production? Is it possible that we can, and are, learning from the mistakes of the other four post-epochal-revelation eras?
With the first revelation, the poor Dalmatia teachers had an uphill battle. "The Dalamatia teachers sought to add conscious social selection to the purely natural selection of biologic evolution. They did not derange human society, but they did markedly accelerate its normal and natural evolution. Their motive was progression by evolution and not revolution by revelation. The human race had spent ages in acquiring the little religion and morals it had, and these supermen knew better than to rob mankind of these few advances by the confusion and dismay which always result when enlightened and superior beings undertake to uplift the backward races by over-teaching and overenlightenment." (750)
They were doing a slow but effective job when the whole project was aborted through sin of key figures in the revelatory process.
Later came revelators number two--Adam and Eve--with double the battle of their revelatory forebears, and they stumbled into error after making great headway in a short space of time.
Things were looking pretty grim when Machiventa Melchizedek (revelator number three) decided to don a tunic and go visit a Beduoin tent in the middle of the desert. Melchizedek did a good job, but goodness he really had a holiday whilst sitting in his tent with a tunic bearing an emblem which would have a few devout believers having to collect funds for legal defence if he went around sporting it these days. Just think of the knowledge that guy possesses, and he spent approximately ninety years mainly teaching that there is only one God! I guess he did not want to intellectually overload the intellects of that day! Anyway, he achieved what he aimed for, and kept the idea of one God alive so as to pave the way for Jesus (the fourth epochal revelator), two thousand years later.
Jesus struck the same problem as Melchizedek. Not that we want to criticize his judgment, but if he had waited for a few thousand years perhaps his message would not have got fouled up. And what was his mission and message?
"My mission on earth is the revelation of the Father, and my message the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven?" (1635)
"The Master made it clear that the kingdom of heaven must begin with, and be centred in, the dual concept of the truth of the fatherhood of God and the correlated fact of the brotherhood of man. The acceptance of such a teaching, Jesus declared, would liberate man from the age-long bondage of animal fear and at the same time enrich human living with the following endowments of the new life of spiritual liberty:
1.The possession of new courage and augmented spiritual power. The gospel of the kingdom was to set man free and inspire him to dare to hope for eternal life.
|
|
