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Revelation--the remarkable claims for Jesus' living revelation
His (Jesus') life and teachings were bequeathed the universe as an inspirational and idealistic inheritance suitable for the spiritual guidance and moral instruction of all ages on all worlds. And even today, Jesus' teaching stands apart from all religions, as such, albeit it is the living hope of every one of them.
It was not apparent to the apostles that their Master was engaged in living a life of spiritual inspiration for every person of every age on every world of a far-flung universe. Notwithstanding what Jesus told them from time to time, the apostles did not grasp the idea that he was doing a work on this world but for all other worlds in his vast creation. Jesus lived his earth life on Urantia, not to set a personal example of mortal living for the men and women of this world, but rather to create a high spiritual and inspirational ideal for all mortal beings on all worlds.
The Master was teaching these apostles the essentials of truth for an entire age on earth.
No wonder these apostles did not fully comprehend the Master's words, for he was projecting to them the plan of a new age.
[There follows 500 pages of text in which the authors must fulfill their potentially vainglorious claim to provide "a high spiritual and inspirational ideal for all mortal beings on all worlds," plus "a plan for a new age on earth." And they succeed--a truly remarkable feat if the authors had been human--but not if they were not. It's food for thought.]
Revelation
But 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 always keep in touch with evolution. Always must the religion of revelation be limited by man's capacity of receptivity.
No revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at the risk of weakening the future influence and authority of this, the most recent of the revelations of truth to the mortal races of Urantia.
Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul of man's cosmos.
All finite knowledge and creature understanding are relative. Information and intelligence gleaned from even high sources is only relatively complete, locally accurate, and personally true.
The laws of revelation proscribe the impartation of unearned and premature knowledge. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired.
Salvation
True salvation is the technique of the divinely guided evolution of the mortal mind from matter identification through the realms of the morontia liaison to the high universe status of spiritual correlation.
Science and religion
But logic can never succeed in harmonizing the findings of science and the insights of religion unless both the scientific and the religious aspects of a personality are truth dominated, sincerely desirous of following the truth wherever it may lead regardless of the conclusions which it may reach.
What both developing science and religion need is more searching and fearless self-criticism, a greater awareness of incompleteness in evolutionary status.
In the mortal state nothing can be absolutely proved, both science and religion are predicated on assumptions.
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