|
readers would be so impressed by the receipt of a revelation from a celestial source that, almost certainly, they would be impelled to grant it "divinely dictated" status. But a thorough study of the Papers reveals that such authoritarianism is not the way of our Universal Father. His way is the absolute sovereignty of our free will and the free choice of our ultimate destiny. The revelators may have been attempting to avoid a repetition of the problems that arose through the assignment of divine infallibility to the Bible. Their method of avoidance appears to have been the provision of a universe frame (1260) containing much error but at the same time telling us they were doing precisely that. The "forty day" error was their final attempt to avoid the disaster of a "divine dictation" label. Perhaps also it was the final safeguard.
Hopes of the revelators
One of the hopes of the revelators is expressed in these words:
"You should comprehend that this (Christian) church 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)
There are other similar expressions of the hope of the revelators that the Urantia Papers would assist to usher in a new era of comprehension of the Master's revelatory life. But The Urantia Book has been afforded an untouchable status among many Christians. They want nothing to do with another "divinely-dictated" revelation such as still confronts them with the fundamentalist view of biblical infallibility.
To obtain for the Urantia Papers the attention they so richly merit and to permit them to fulfil the hopes of their revelators, we have to present them in a way that avoids the stigma of "absolute truth," a label the revelators themselves deny. Until this is done, the Papers will continue to remain virtually unread and therefore ineffective.
It is of no help to point to the getting close to one million Urantia Book sales throughout the world. The truth is that most of those books are just as unread as the Bible, a book that claims the record for best seller status for all time.
The Urantia revelation--what was its purpose
Surely the real purpose of the Urantia revelation was always the restoration of the truth of the Fourth Epochal Revelation. All else in the Papers is background to improve the universe frame into which we "fit" the meaning of Jesus' revelation and the purpose of our own lives. Currently Jesus' revelation has been made to "fit" into ancient Jewish aspirations and traditions.
The Papers inform us that Jesus' whole life was a revelation of the nature of God as it is comprehensible to mortal man. In fulfilling his task, Jesus chose to portray the "Father" aspect of the First Source and Center as the archetype of love, compassion, mercy, and righteousness. God, the Father of Jesus, is also the epitome of "good" for only God is good--and so Jesus revealed in his life, the quintessence of "goodness."
A problem we now have is how to restore the real meaning of the Fourth Epochal Revelation. It should be obvious to all that this cannot be accomplished by force, coercion, or even overpowering intellectual argument. We Urantia Book readers are expected to live the revelation as Jesus lived it. For that, the Papers give us a detailed account of Jesus' life and its meaning--from which we can perceive that we are required to become consciously God-centered in contrast to being both consciously and unconsciously self-centered. Nothing else will do. Nothing else will work.
That so little progress has been made by so many is at least partially due to their being book-centered and mistaking that for the real task. It is just so simple to remain self-centered even while being book-centered. Achieving God-centeredness is a task uniquely individualistic. It would probably be impossible for most of us in the absence of assistance from the Spirit of Truth.
On inner transformation
What is required is an inner transformation and re-centering that involves death of self followed by rebirth. "For whosoever would save his life selfishly, shall lose it, but whosoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
The losing of life is metaphorical for an internal process by which we "die to the world and the self" in order to become reborn. The central process of that metaphoric death is our re-centering in God. It is a process that requires faith--a faith defined by:
|
|
