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Revelation--problems and purpose
We have seen that the Forum was established on a question and answer basis, the Forum putting questions to the revelators and later receiving a Paper in response to the questions it posed. Ultimately these same Papers became the basis for Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Urantia Papers that have since been printed, along with Part 4, as The Urantia Book. In learning about the origins of these Papers we get a deeper appreciation of the peculiarities of the content--peculiarities that may appear to range from the sublime to the ridiculous. However the sublime in these Papers can be so sublime that their very sublimity forces the conclusion that the ridiculous must be deliberate. And it must have a rational purpose. Important for our understanding is the following from the revelators:
"If revelation is to exalt and upstep the religions of evolution, then must such divine visitations portray teachings which are not too far removed from the thought and reactions of the age in which they are presented. Thus must and does revelation keep in touch with evolution. Always must the religion of revelation be limited by man's capacity for receptivity." (1007)
This statement demands our attention, it demands giving thought to the kind of problems and difficulties to be faced by all celestial or divine beings who are commissioned to provide revelation to us finite evolutionary mortal beings whose spiritual receptivity and intellectual capacity is only meagerly above the animal level.
The Papers inform us the purpose of such revelation is biased towards preparing us for a career in eternity. It is not to ease our pathway through this earthly life. And only those earthly experiences that have spiritual meaning and value have the capability of surviving with our souls into the next stage of our eternal adventure.
Revelation is for the future. It is not given in order to enlighten us about past and present history nor about the material facts of the physical universe. Therefore our attention must focus squarely upon deriving from revelation whatever can increase our God-consciousness, decrease our animal-like self-centeredness, enhance our spirituality, and promote our longing for the goodness and love of God.
Contemplation of the problems that faced the revelators, and doing so from their point of view, provides us with a quite different slant about the truth-value of revelation at a pragmatic, material, and finite level. For the Urantia revelators, there was an inalienable guiding principle. Regardless of the difficulties encountered, at all times they would do their utmost to be at one with the will of the God who is Universal Father to us all, as well as their utmost so to relate themselves to us that we receive the highest possible cosmic good as the result of their contact with us. Our "cosmic good" refers not to immediate good but our good over all eternity.
If we accept in good faith that this is so, then we will approach the Urantia revelation seeking from it not a revelation about history, science, or philosophy, but one in which the merit of any part is purely on the basis of its spiritual meaning and value. In doing so we ignore all thought of who wrote it or their status. We seek only truth--truth that must be decided by each individual in conjunction with their indwelling Father-Spirit. There is no other way to decide what is truth. Truth is always and inalienably between self and the God-Within. For the individual, there is no other authority.
Whereas the Forum was intimately and vitally concerned with the content of Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Urantia Papers, it had no part in determining the content of Part 4, "The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth."
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