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been organized under the leadership of Peter, and James the brother of Jesus had been installed as its titular head." (2068)
And, as "Stephen yielded up his life as the price of his attack upon the Jewish temple and its traditional practices, there stood by one named Saul, a citizen of Tarsus. And when Saul saw how this Greek could die for his faith, there were aroused in his heart those emotions which eventually led him to espouse the cause for which Stephen died; later on he became the aggressive and indomitable Paul, the philosopher, if not the sole founder, of the Christian religion."(1411)
A chance encounter on a Thursday afternoon by two holiday-makers; a Greek philosopher seeking truth, and finding an associate of Abner on mission to his home town; fifteen years of emotional and spiritual maturity; a set of environmental circumstances; a death witnessed by a by-stander from Tarsus, and thus was born the best of Urantian religions, the Christian church, which "is only the larval stage of the thwarted spiritual kingdom, which will carry it through this material age and over into a more spiritual dispensation where the Master's teachings may enjoy a fuller opportunity for development. Thus does the so-called Christian church become the cocoon in which the kingdom of Jesus' concept now slumbers. The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still alive and will eventually and certainly come forth from this long submergence, just as surely as the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful unfolding of its less attractive creature of metamorphic development."(1866)
And all of the essential events, to outward appearances, were a set of fortuitous coincidences, certainly not consciously planned by any of the individuals involved, and hence was one of the most successful of stages set for the rapid evolution of religion on Urantia!.
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