God, Man, and Supreme
INTRODUCTION
Inspiration from The Urantia Book
This literary work of mine is the progressive result of over 30-years of dedicated study of some of the world's most exciting works of philosophy and theology. By far, the most inspiring of these studies is contained within an impressive collection of revelatory papers that make up The Urantia Book. Its 196 "papers" comprise over 2000 pages of the most cohesively consistent presentation of philosophy, theology, cosmology, and world history I have ever come upon. These collected papers are purportedly presented to its readers under the collective authority of a widely diversified group of celestial personalities.
The basic theology contained within The Urantia Book (Urantia being the celestial name of our world) is primarily Trinitarian in structure (i.e., it gives observance to the eternal Deity union of the three divine persons of the Trinity - the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit). It is also Jesusonian in inspiration (i.e., it recognizes the divine personality of our Creator Son of God, "maker of heaven and earth," as having incarnated on our world in the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth). The Urantia Book inspired me to write this, my own book, in the effort to share some of the many insights that have presented themselves to me during my studies.
The Urantia Book was given to me as a gift from my mother in 1974 for my twenty-first birthday. This was the year that I had finally made my peace with my loving spiritual Father. In view of my newly accepted spiritual sonship, I asked my newfound Father for only one thing. I asked him if it would be at all possible to be granted some insight as to his real creative purpose and plan, not only for me individually, but also for the whole scheme of things. I added that I was not making this a condition for my faith and allegiance - he had that unconditionally. I asked only whether or not it was his will that I patiently wait until I passed over from this mortal plane of existence into the next resurrected existence for being granted some level of comprehension. Within 6-months of this petition, my mother called me by phone and said that she was mailing me a copy of something called The Urantia Book. My mother had herself just been given the book by a casual acquaintance, and, while familiarizing herself with its contents, realized that in my own active searching I would likely find value in it. I read the book cover to cover within the first four months after receiving it. Needless to say, it has opened my eyes to the wonders of God's creation and this inspiration has changed my life forever.
The revealed theology of The Urantia Book, for me, has not been of just practical utilization - it has elucidated the intellectual content of my faith. It has helped to unveil the essential truths about God that have been inaccessible to my resources of reason alone. It has provided a source of revelation on the ultimate values by which I live and on the divine truths on which I establish my faith.
Our world is in dire need of a spiritual infusion. We are struggling to counterbalance our runaway advances in mechanized technology with evolutionary advances in ethics, morality, and spiritual goodness, but these efforts are sadly lagging behind. There are practices still prevalent in the world that are not only repellent to a God-conscious mind, they are also directly counter to our loving Father's purpose and plan for this world. I believe the "cancer" of world terrorism, especially when it is rationalized as being the will of God, is a particular abomination that mankind must eliminate. We, as a God-conscious and civilized people, must firmly establish that our Father in heaven loves each and every one of his earthly children. This divine love clearly dictates that the loving will of our Paradise Father is violated when the innocents of his worldly flock are slaughtered. This truth is a cornerstone of his loving nature, and it must become an unquestioned cornerstone of our cosmic mindset in order for us to take the next evolutional step towards light and life.
The Urantia Book carries within it inspired conceptual seeds that will inspire our world and help us achieve our spiritual destiny. This is, I believe, the real revelatory objective of this book. The Urantia Book contains within its covers a massive wealth of inspired thinking and expression. The world yearns for universal concepts and elevated frameworks of reality perception that will propel it away from a state of animalistic barbarism and towards a more unified and spiritually productive reality perspective. The Urantia Book provides a massive supply of potent kernels of stimulating thought, and these are all contained within an expository structure of literary context that makes it very relevant for our world and our times. Jesus changed the world mindset of his day with the transforming influence of his living gospel, and this transforming influence is still fully operative in our world today. The Urantia Book is beginning to infuse its influence into our world's spiritually evolving infrastructure.
The Urantia Book is a revelation for our time. I believe that God has entrusted us, the lowest of his personality endowed creatures, with the gift of participating in and contributing to the unfolding of his divine purpose and plan for this world. The Urantia Book is part of this continual unfolding. It is a further revelation of his invested trust in us. The message of this epochal world revelation pours forth from the purified waters of the celestial springs of divine wisdom, and I believe that any and all contact with its excellent savor can only sweeten everything it touches.
Origin and Destiny - God's Purpose and Plan:
The three core sections of my book take us on a path that starts with God, transitions to Man, and finalizes in the Supreme. This organizational pattern of origin, existence, and destiny follows in spirit the same progressive trend set forth throughout the first three (of four total) sections of The Urantia Book (the fourth section takes up over one third of The Urantia Book and covers the life and teachings of Jesus.).
The first five papers
presented in The Urantia Book
begin by revealing God as the Universal Father. They describe his divine nature
and attributes, and they probe the unfathomable depths of his far-reaching
relations to the whole of his universe creation as well as to each and every
personal being contained therein. It is here that we are introduced to God as
the personal source of our very being, as the final consummation of our dreams
and hopes - as our Father in
The Universal Father is the acme of divine personality; he is the origin and destiny of personality throughout all creation. God is both infinite and personal; he is an infinite personality. The Father is truly a personality, notwithstanding that the infinity of his person places him forever beyond the full comprehension of material and finite beings. [UB 1:5:1 (27:3)]
God the Father is the
bestower and the conservator of every personality. And the
The Urantia Book tells us that God the Father has seven major purposes for the grand scale of his universe. Each one of these purposes finds its greatest expression in one of the seven component superuniverse creations that comprise the whole of his grand universe creation. These seven purposes cover a great deal of ground and involve all aspects of God's creation. As the mortal children of the Father, we are directly involved in one of these magnificent purposes.
There are seven major purposes which are being unfolded in the evolution of the seven superuniverses. Each major purpose in superuniverse evolution will find fullest expression in only one of the seven superuniverses, and therefore does each superuniverse have a special function and a unique nature. [UB 15:14:1 (181:7)]
The seven purposes of superuniverse evolution are operative throughout all seven superuniverses, but each supercreation will give fullest expression to only one of these purposes. To understand more about these superuniverse purposes, much that you do not understand would have to be revealed, and even then you would comprehend but little. [UB 15:14:4 (182:3)]
In accordance with the mandates of the Father's purpose providing for "the progressive ascension and perfection attainment of evolutionary mortals," we are the beneficiaries of his "superb survival plan of bringing God down to man and then, by a sublime sort of partnership, carrying man up to God and on to eternity of service and divinity of attainment." [UB 77:9:12 (867:3)]
The Urantia Book broadly reveals the "changeless purpose" and "everlasting plan" of the Father's great undertaking as it "progressively unfolds in the phenomena of the evolving universes with their manifold groups of living beings." [UB 7:0:1 (81:1)] Supporting the Father's ascension plan of perfection attainment for the living creatures of time and space, the spirit of the Eternal Son coordinates with the spirit of the Paradise Father in this grand endeavor. As the third person of Deity, the Infinite Spirit pledges his entire divine ministry sufficient for executing this united and eternal purpose. The Infinite Spirit dedicates all "to the stupendous plan of exalting surviving will creatures to the divine heights of Paradise perfection," ministering to the joint mandates of the all-loving Father and the all-merciful Son for "drawing to themselves all truth-loving souls on all the worlds of time and space." [UB 8:3:5 (93:7)]
The Father and his Son are as one in the formulation and prosecution of this gigantic attainment plan for advancing the material beings of time to the perfection of eternity. This project for the spiritual elevation of the ascendant souls of space is a joint creation of the Father and the Son, and they are, with the co-operation of the Infinite Spirit, engaged in associative execution of their divine purpose. [UB 7:4:2 (85:3)]
The stage of universal space is set for the manifold and never-ending panorama of the creative unfolding of the purpose of the Universal Father through the personality of the Eternal Son and by the execution of the God of Action, the executive agency for the reality performances of the Father-Son creator partnership. [UB 8:1:3 (91:0)]
This amazing plan of God is unfolding in accordance with the eternal purposes of the Universal Father. This divine plan is destined to prevail. The eternally wise and loving purpose of the Universal Father will assuredly triumph.
There is a great and glorious purpose in the march of the universes through space. All of your mortal struggling is not in vain. We are all part of an immense plan, a gigantic enterprise, and it is the vastness of the undertaking that renders it impossible to see very much of it at any one time and during any one life. We are all a part of an eternal project which the Gods are supervising and outworking. The whole marvelous and universal mechanism moves on majestically through space to the music of the meter of the infinite thought and the eternal purpose of the First Great Source and Center. [UB 32:5:1 (364:3)]
There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. And the infinite treasures of such a matchless career are yours for the striving! [UB 32:5:7 (365:3)]
The final papers of the third section of The Urantia Book provide us with a vision of the glorious fulfillment and final destiny of the Father's vast creative enterprise. This vision is manifesting itself in the divine person of the Supreme Being. The Supreme Being is God actualizing in time and space. He is evolutionary God. He is God, not as existential sovereign ruling over his creation from boundless eternity and with infinite power, but rather he is experiential God as he is progressively realized over time and throughout space. The Supreme Being has a beginning in time. In fact, his origin begins with the very inception of time itself. Nevertheless, the evolution of his becoming real and contactable as a person of experiential Deity will coincide with the finalization of the Father's plan to bring his grand creation to a final stage of light and life. This will be the cosmic culmination of the Father's purpose and plan (at least on the Deity level of Supremacy) achieved in time and manifested throughout the space of his grand universe. This is the destiny of the Father's grand creation - the achievement of light and life and the final emergence of the Supreme Being.
By thus ordaining the experience-evolution of the Supreme, the Father has made it possible for finite creatures to exist in the universes and, by experiential progression, sometime to attain the divinity of Supremacy. [UB 115:7:2 (1266:3)]
The emergence of the Supreme Being will signal the final victory of spirit over matter through the mediation of applied mind. He will emerge by virtue of the cumulative free-will decisions and actions of all volitional personalities participating in the grand creation of the Father's universe. The Supreme Being represents the final synthesis of personality and power in a perfectly unified universe. His emergence will glorify the infinite love and wisdom that the Father has progressively revealed to his finite, though perfecting children in time and space.
There is good reason for studying the origin, nature, and destiny of God's purpose and plan in the order that it is presented in The Urantia Book (and in the same order that I follow in my own book.) We are told that there is good reason for initiating any presentation of this revelatory magnitude in this manner. The primal volitional act of creation by the Universal Father establishes destiny. He is the First Source and Center of all reality; he is the origin and destiny of all personal beings throughout the universe of universes; he is the inceptor, realizer, and consummator of his creation; "in him all things consist."
In such a far-flung universe of universes there is always great danger of succumbing to the error of the circumscribed viewpoint, to the evil inherent in a segmentalized conception of reality and divinity.
For example: The human mind would ordinarily crave to approach the cosmic philosophy portrayed in these revelations by proceeding from the simple and the finite to the complex and the infinite, from human origins to divine destinies. But that path does not lead to spiritual wisdom. Such a procedure is the easiest path to a certain form of genetic knowledge, but at best it can only reveal man's origin; it reveals little or nothing about his divine destiny. [UB:19:4,5 (215:1,2)]
The comprehension of the origin, function, and destiny of universe reality affords us as God's children to view more clearly our present status and circumstance. Only the contemplation of divine causes can provide insight into final effects, and this insight will have a profound impact on how we interpret our values, our meanings, and our factual existence.
It is not enough that the ascending mortal should know something of the relations of Deity to the genesis and manifestations of cosmic reality; he should also comprehend something of the relationships existing between himself and the numerous levels of existential and experiential realities, of potential and actual realities. Man's terrestrial orientation, his cosmic insight, and his spiritual directionization are all enhanced by a better comprehension of universe realities and their techniques of interassociation, integration, and unification. [UB 106:0:1 (1162:1)]
The mortal and finite mind of man must think and evaluate within a universe framework to better understand "truth, beauty, and goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose, destiny, time, space, even Deity."[UB 115:1:2 (1260:3)] We must have a starting point, a concept of beginnings, and it is within our innate intellectual ability to form such a universe frame in which "to grasp universe relationships and to understand the meaning values of divinity." [UB 116:2:3 (1269:7)] Without such a conceptual framework, we will "utterly fail to perceive the final and completed evolutionary goal of either personal attainment or cosmic destiny." [UB 19:1:8 (215:5)] Without such a framework, we are prone to "commit the supreme philosophical blunder by oversimplifying cosmic evolutionary (experiential) reality, thus leading to the distortion of facts, to the perversion of truth, and to the misconception of destinies." [UB 19:1:9 (215:6)]
The conceptual revelations presented throughout The Urantia Book harmonize synergistically with living faith - they enhance one's comprehension of God's purpose and plans, not only for us, but for the whole of creation as well. Rather than posing conflicts to one's evolving beliefs, The Urantia Book coordinates and expands developing viewpoints in a way that adds an intellectual depth to an individual's existing spiritual insights. And it is with such an expansion of faith-bolstered cosmic insight that enable us, as ascending sons and daughters of the Universal Father, to better discern facts, to more clearly recognize truth, and to more accurately conceive of final destinies.
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship