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This article was originally written as an appeal to members of the International Urantia Association and The Fellowship to consider how their behavior (regarding their respective viewpoints) was enhancing or negating the building of the kingdom of heaven. However, the teachings reviewed here can be contemplated by all readers as we strive to grow intellectually and spiritually. As human beings we need to grow in our decision-making and discernment, while embodying the fruits of the spirit that are discussed by Jesus on page 2054.3

"The bread of life and the water thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righteousness--for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the kingdom. These great truths and these universe facts are all related to this gospel in that they are a part of the result of believing the good news and are embraced in the subsequent experience of those who, by faith, become, in deed and in truth, the everlasting sons of the eternal God. My Father sent me into the world to proclaim this salvation of sonship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this salvation of sonship. Salvation is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will immediately begin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in loving service to their fellow creatures.

And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace. If professed believers bear not these fruits of the divine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are useless branches on the living vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Father requires of the children of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, therefore, you are not fruitful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your unfruitful branches. Increasingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you progress heavenward in the kingdom of God. You may enter the kingdom as a child, but the Father requires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spiritual adulthood. And when you go abroad to tell all nations the good news of this gospel, I will go before you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you."

What are we Urantia BOOK readers doing to facilitate the building of this kingdom? Can Jesus provide us with some guidance? Jesus tells us in paper 170, "The Master made it clear that the kingdom of Heaven must begin with, and be centered in, the dual concept of the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the correlated fact of the Brotherhood of Man." (1859:11) He tells us then if we accept this teaching we can be liberated from animal fears and enriched with the following endowments. I think most readers accept this teaching, but do we allow ourselves to be enriched by these seven endowments? They are:

1. The possession of new courage and augmented spiritual power. The gospel of the kingdom was to set man free and inspire him to dare to hope for eternal life.

2. The gospel carried a message of new confidence and true consolation for all men, even for the poor.

3. It was in itself a new standard of moral values, a new ethical yardstick wherewith to measure human conduct. It portrayed the ideal of a resultant new order of human society.

4. It taught the pre-eminence of the spiritual compared with the material; it glorified spiritual realities and exalted superhuman ideals.

5. The new gospel held up spiritual attainment as the true goal of living. Human life received a new endowment of moral value and divine dignity.

6. Jesus taught that eternal realities were the result (reward) of righteous earthly striving. Man's mortal sojourn on earth acquired new meanings consequent upon the recognition of a noble destiny.

7. The new gospel affirmed that human salvation is the revelation of a far-reaching divine purpose to be fulfilled and realized in the future destiny of the enless service of the salvaged sons of God. (1859.12)

We can read and intellectually understand these endowments. But how can we experientially "know" them? Living the kingdom now does not mean being a "softie" on issues we believe in - it means maintaining a dignified, tolerant, understanding persona, while having the courage to calmly speak the truth and having complete faith in the fact that God's will will prevail and getting on with the Father's buisness of living the teachings.

Jesus taught that, "...by faith, the believer enters the kingdom now." (1861.2) He also taught that two things are essential to faith-entrance into the kingdom.

1. Faith sincerity. To come as a little child, to receive the bestowal of sonship as a gift; to submit to the doing of the Father's will without questioning and in the full confidence and genuine trustfulness of the Father's wisdom; to come into the kingdom free from prejudice and preconception; to be open-minded and teachable like an unspoiled child.

2. Truth hunger. The thirst for righteousness, a change of mind, the acquirement of the motive to be like God and to find God. (1861.3)

The book tells us that Jesus taught that sin is not the child of a defective nature but rather the offspring of a knowing mind dominated by an unsubmissive will. (1861.3) Jesus wanted to impress his apostles and disciples that they must acquire, by faith, a righteousness which would exceed the righteousness of slavish works such as those that some of the scribes and Pharisees paraded so vaingloriously before the world in this time. What does Jesus teach us about the progressive steps to this righteousness? First, we must have faith to open the door to the kingdom; then, there are the progressive steps of righteousness which every believing child must ascend in order to grow up to the full stature of the robust sons of God. Forgiveness is the act of God which accepts our faith as the price of admission.

"And the reception of the forgiveness of God by a kingdom believer involves a definite and actual experience and consists in the following four steps, the kingdom steps of inner righteousness.

1. God's forgiveness is made actually available and is personally experienced byman just in so far as he forgives his fellows.

2. Man will not truly forgive his fellows unless he loves them as himself.

3. To thus love your neighbor as yourself is the highest ethics.

4. Moral conduct, true righteousness, becomes, then the natural result of such love." (1862.1)

Furthermore, it is not our place to make judgments upon others, that is God's prerogative.

"The righteousness of any act must be measured by the motive; the highest forms of good are thererfore unconscious. Jesus was never concerned with morals or ethics as such. He was wholly concerned with the inward and spiritual fellowship with God the Father which so certainly and directly manifests itself as outward and loving service for man. He taught that the religion of the kingdom is a genuine personal experience which no man can contain within himself; that the consciousness of being a member of the family of believers leads inevitably to the practice of the precepts of the family conduct, the service of one's brothers and sisters in the effort to enhance and enlarge the brotherhood." (1862.6)

On page 1863.12 the book warns us not to make the fatal mistake, when we look for the age manifestation of the kingdom, to fail to effect its establishment within our own souls. Are we more successful if we love those brethren who we have disagreed with, or is it better to stay angry, attack, be mistrustful, and intolerant? We are the receivers of teachings that mean a great deal to us. Can we get by the past and move to a new era for Urantia BOOK readers? An age that accepts the fact that mistakes were and are being made by a few people, but where we realize that the most important lesson for us all is to live the teachings of the book?

We have an opportunity to move forward, to build the kingdom of heaven within our hearts today. It will take prayer, willingness and love. We can do it, especially with our Father's support. And I do believe we all have his love and support. If we really trust God then we should have no fear of loving and forgiving each other. God is the personality that can judge us - he alone. We may feel that we are here to protect and fight against those we disagree with. We are here to learn to live God's will, which means to live the truth while being full of love. If we look to Jesus for examples, he loved those who hated him, he forgave those who trespassed against him, he even loved those who killed his body because he knew the power of love and forgiveness. Is each one of us practicing the power of forgiveness enough in our life? I think that we can infuse a lot more love into our communication with those we disagree with - to help to build the kingdom within our hearts.

"You should never forget that intolerance is the mask covering up the entertainment of secret doubts as to the trueness of one's belief." (1866.3)

"Always we may have diversity of intellectual comprehensionand interpretation even varying degrees of socialization, but lack of spiritual brotherhood is both inexcusable and reprehensible." (1866.3)

"The weak indulge in resolutions, but the strong act. Life is but a day's work - do it well. The act is ours; the consequences God's. (556.13)