To knowingly deprive future generations of the chance to know a God of love who is both our heavenly Father and the Father-God of Jesus of Nazareth--would that be a crime against humanity?

     For that is close to what is happening throughout the world's communities of Christians, virtually all of which are, in terms of congregation numbers, on a downhill slide terminating in a bottomless pit.

     What are the reasons for this slide? One certainly is an out-of-date theology that is incompatible with what our children are taught during their school years--thus open to ridicule. And kids just hate being ridiculed!

    A major stumbling block is the concept that Jesus died for our sins. This theme runs so strongly through a large proportion of the popular hymns of all denominations to the point that it amounts to brain washing.

    Probably very few Christians ever give a thought to the implications this theme has for the actual nature of God. What kind of father would only forgive the sins of his family of children if they crucified his favorite son?

     At the basis of this doctrine we find Paul and St Augustine, both of whom deduced that mankind is plagued by congenital sin, that God chooses who will and who will not be saved even before they are born, and that God has pre-knowledge of who will accept or reject grace when it is offered. For congenital sin, they placed the blame on Adam and his fall.

     Hence if we follow the "saved by the blood of Christ" theme to its origins, to be consistent we have to subscribe to a belief in Adam and Eve as the first man and woman, and their fall from grace, an event that is supposed to have occurred just a few thousands of years ago!

    It is a fact that most practicing Christians know almost nothing  about these doctrines. However, they do love the "saved by the blood of Christ" bit, as they feel it digs them out of some rather deep holes.

     It is also a fact that many Christian priests and ministers no longer hold rigidly to such doctrines but go along with them for the sake of peace among their congregations.   

    These are the doctrines that are so open to attack by those materialist-minded school teachers so keen to demonstrate to their students the modernity and superiority of their thinking.

    Adam and Eve means Genesis, and a creation story that is not only highly vulnerable but virtually indefensible. So while parents are brain washed on salvation through the blood of Christ, their children are being brain washed that religion is unscientific.

    Both concepts are naive, they have no depth of background knowledge, and display both mental laziness and an appalling ignorance of reality.

     But to try to challenge either party to serious thought and discussion means to come up against deeply held prejudice likely to turn discussion into senseless ranting upon highly emotive issues.

     And so the ongoing decline and fall of Christianity perpetuates the decline and fall that started with  the civilizations of Rome, the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and now Western civilization.

    Can we lay the blame for this crime anywhere? I think the answer is no, for both the thinking and the knowledge of most Christians is too shallow to hold them responsible, and those who are knowledgeable are only banging their heads against a brick wall if they try to change what is.

    So where are we Urantians? How is it that nearly fifty years after publication of the Urantia Papers, our new revelation can be sure of only a few thousand more or less dedicated readers? More importantly, why?

     The answer appears to lies squarely with those who were there at the origins of the revelatory saga, and who, despite the protests of their celestial guides, turned the papers into something they were never meant to be--a "by proxy," divinely-dictated revelation, a new God's Bible. Take a look at Clyde Bedell's Concordex and see the thinking of the early Urantia movement accurately reflected. Here we have a God-given revelation with all the answers, the advertising says, a book to revolutionize the world.

    And of course it is and will, but how long will it be before we realize that the way by which its magnificent message has been broadcast to the world at large has failed dismally. Surely experience has now confirmed that the message cannot be sold to Christianity, and probably not to any other religion, if presented as another  God-authenticated  revelation?