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A description of some of the "laws of revelation" is provided in Paper 101, including the "proscription of unearned knowledge." However there appears to be only one or two hints as to how they might have gone about "ignoring the great men," whilst encouraging those who might elect to try to live their lives as Jesus lived his.
One curiosity of the presentation of the Urantia Papers is that the mandate for revelation that refers to the proscription of unearned knowledge does not appear until after the half way mark.
In any normal publication in which such an important qualification places restrictions on what can be discussed, one would expect to find this restriction mentioned at the beginning and in a preface or introduction.
The word "cosmology" is used in the Papers (received in the mid-1930's) in its traditional manner as a branch of metaphysics (the study of ultimate reality), and includes philosophy, theology, religion and science with no firm line of demarcation separating the history and the facts of a particular topic.
Thus when we read, mid-way through the book (p.1109), that "any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time," and we also become aware of some of the Papers' problematic discrepancies, we are entitled to wonder whether perhaps we are being confronted with a twentieth century way of "ignoring the great men."
There is, of course, no possible way to obtain correct answers to such questions--which again poses more matters on which to ponder. Is this deliberate on the part of the revelators?
Why would the revelators of the Urantia Papers want to ignore our great men? One reason could be that many might be more inclined to draw attention to the Papers through addresses, articles, books and other forms of public presentation than by any actual living out of Jesus' revelation in their own lives.
Opinions presented in public tend to harden into hypotheses that must be defended, causing them to solidify, via self-righteousness, into rightness, and thus lead opinionated authors to God-playing.
But perhaps another reason for ignoring the great men is that some "in authority" would be tempted to formalize the life and teachings of Jesus into sets and sub-sets of instructions to be followed meticulously--instead of leaving Jesus-followers to work out their own individual pathway with their divine helpers, the Spirit of Truth and their Thought Adjuster.
"The Master sought to impress upon all teachers of the gospel of the kingdom that their only business was to reveal God to the individual man as his Father--to lead this individual man to become son-conscious; then to present this same man to God as his faith son. Both of these essential revelations are accomplished in Jesus. He became, indeed, the 'way, the truth, and the life.' The religion of Jesus was based wholly on the living of his bestowal life. When Jesus departed from this world, he left behind no books, laws, or other forms of human organization affecting the religious life of the individual." (1593)
This last quotation indicates that instruction manuals are inappropriate, that Jesus' religion was his bestowal life, and that human organizations should have no part in the actual directing of the personal religious life of the individual.
Of one thing we may be sure. Neither the content of these Papers nor the unusual way in which they were presented was either accidental or due to carelessness. What we have was deliberate, chosen to meet our specific need and in the light of prior experience with multitudes of similar human societies on the planets throughout a vast creation. Some light as to why may perhaps be concealed in statements of this nature:
"Jesus laid great emphasis upon what he called the two truths of first import in the teachings of the kingdom, and they are: the attainment of salvation by faith, and faith alone, associated with the revolutionary teaching of the attainment of human liberty through the sincere recognition of truth, 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'" (1593)
There is no way to embark upon the eternal universe career that leads to attainment of the Universal Father other than to make a faith decision to dedicate our will back to its origin. This can only be by an individual's independent decision.
And there is no other way to make a faith decision except from a position of uncertainty. A revelation that destroyed our uncertainty would also destroy our ability to make that faith decision.
With the beginning of the third millennium, a new and exciting era appears ready to open. This era will be one in which there may be enough dedicated followers of our Creator-Son making the faith decision that commits them to attempt to actually live out Jesus' revelation of the nature of the Father in their own daily living.
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