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The Urantia Book and Secondary Works
Ken Glasziou, Maleny, Australia
"The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul." (43)
Now that The Urantia Book has gone into the public domain, more readers may feel impelled to participate in fulfilling the challenge made to us by the Divine Counselor who wrote those words. There can be no doubt that the "enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness" refers to The Urantia Book itself. But note that it is not the book itself that is to fulfil the challenge. Rather it is the content of the book that is to be woven into new and appealing philosophies of living and presented in ways that are meaningful to a range of God's children from differing backgrounds, religions, and cultures.
A prime target is the membership of the various Christian churches. Few church-going Christians are yet ready for a new revelation. But many are definitely ready for the unadulterated message that Jesus already gave us in the Fourth Epochal Revelation.. The principal hindrance to the advancement of Christianity is an incorrect concept of the true nature of God. One modern Christian theologian presented a deeply meaningful statement when he wrote, "for Jesus, reality was a gracious and compassionate God." The word "reality" implies all that is. All that exists bears the imprint of the nature of God. Nothing real can exist that does not reflect that nature. The word "compassionate" as used in the Bible is derived from Hebrew meaning "wombish." A gracious and compassionate God is one who is "nourishing," one who bestows his love freely and unconditionally. If reality is a gracious and compassionate God, then anything that is inconsistent with the nature of God cannot be real. For convenience, let's give such concepts a label--I call them Self-acting Error-correcting Concepts--SEC's for short. The Urantia Book states:
"When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father (an SEC), the only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forthwith, in all consistency, utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God as an offended monarch, a stern and all-powerful ruler whose chief delight is to detect his subjects in wrongdoing and to see that they are adequately punished, unless some being almost equal to himself should volunteer to suffer for them, to die as a substitute and in their stead." (2017)
These are strong words, at present, far too strong for the vast majority of Christians reared in the concept that Jesus, on the cross, took their sins upon himself, thereby redeeming them from the justice of a perfectly righteous God. The concept of the necessity of a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins goes way back--long before Christianity and long before the children of Abraham incorporated the idea into their Scriptures. This idea has enormous power for those who are overburdened with the acute awareness of their own guilt. It will take a long time to remove it from the common consciousness of mankind. The least likely method to make a successful attack on this deeply embedded belief is frontal assault. But it can be slowly moderated and replaced:
"Simon, Simon, how many times have I instructed you to refrain from all efforts to take something out of the hearts of those who seek salvation? How often have I told you to labor only to put something into these hungry souls? Lead men into the kingdom, and the great and living truths of the kingdom (SEC's) will presently drive out all serious error. When you have presented to mortal man the good news that God is his Father, you can the easier persuade him that he is in reality a son of God. And having done that, you have brought the light of salvation to the one who sits in darkness. Simon, when the Son of Man came first to you, did he come denouncing Moses and the prophets and proclaiming a new and better way of life? No. I came not to take away that which you had from your forefathers but to show you the perfected vision of that which your fathers saw only in part. Go then, Simon, teaching and preaching the kingdom, and when you have a man safely and securely within the kingdom, then is the time, when such a one shall come to you with inquiries, to impart instruction having to do with the progressive advancement of the soul within the divine kingdom." (1592)
What was the kingdom that Jesus instructed his disciples to teach? "Simply go forth proclaiming: This is the kingdom of heaven--God is your Father and you are his sons, and this good news, if you wholeheartedly believe it, is your eternal salvation." (1592) Christians know that. Their number one problem is wrapped up in a confused doctrine about the justice, the righteousness, and the judgement of a perfect God. Generally they are not aware that the love and mercy of God as a Father transcends his righteousness as a judge (another SEC). When Christianity absorbs that concept, it will become what it ought to have been.
"The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth must not be longer sacrificed to even the splendid concept
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