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In 1952 we took a pastorate at Grace Church in Culver, Indiana. I found that my spiritual insights and growth took on a new dimension. After several years of working out sermons and papers formulating my own spiritual experience and emphasizing the religion of Jesus rather than the religion about Jesus, I realized that a new spiritual approach was needed in mainline Christian theology. I tentatively outlined a couple of books that needed to be written, but I shied away from the discipline required to write these books. After some time of trying to avoid commitment to this project, I realized that in loyalty to this inner leading a decision had to be made.
To seek the will of God in making this decision I spent hours under the stars in our back yard in Culver. It seemed clear to me that a new theological-spiritual orientation was needed in understanding our Christian faith, and that God was leading me to move in this direction. I finally expressed my willingness to make the commitment to undertake this project. Not long after I made this decision, The Urantia Book was placed in my hands. I promised the friend who gave it to me, Judge Louis Hammerschmidt, that I would evaluate it. Its table of contents turned me off; I thought it would be a waste of time to read it. After months of procrastination, I started reading in its Life and Teachings of Jesus. I did not find what I expected to find. It confirmed and greatly enhanced the New Testament story. Often I read with tears streaming down my cheeks. When I finished reading the book, I realized that the basic ideas I had decided to write about were here presented much better than I could possibly formulate them. I had the pervasive sense that my whole life had been prepared for this new vision of spiritual reality: The Fifth Epochal Revelation. The rest of my life has been a postscript and postlude to this climaxing experience of my spiritual pilgrimage.
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