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Greetings Urantians

I am new here and I am so pleased to have come upon a site where I can converse with other Urantia Book readers. The Urantia Book is the best thing that could ever have happened to me...

I always had this tremendous love for Father God and I also experience His love that leaves me standing in awe at times and I could never completely fully relate to God in the bible though I love Him so much, I gave it my all, I devoured the bible day and night, but to an extend that I have exhausted its content and realized that I need more (not to mention I was also always confused), but where can I find more of Him, then the bible? I was utterly and entirely depressed by the idea that the bible is all, I couldn't understand how can a Almighty God, the Alpha and the Omega fit into a book in any case? "Can the bible truley be all?" - I asked myself with my hands in my hair! Then I started getting angry and demanded more.

I always felt something was missing and that I started feeling that the God in my heart is somewhat not the God in the bible. I kept this to myself only telling my husband (he understands me), for I didn't want to be bible bashed by my friends that are so zealously defending their “gospel” . But I was so hungry for the Father that I grew to know, Who abides in my heart, I longed for something more of that... And so I started searching and searching till I met a friend, who introduced me to the Urantia Book. Now, all I want to do is lock myself in a room and read it all day long; I didn’t realize that I was SO hungry for the truth until I started reading. I want to say thank you to Father God, thank you for leading me to this book.

Thank you for your time on reading my letter.

~TruthFinder~

“I Build Houses”

I am convinced that continuing, modern-day revelation represents profound, yet naturally-evolved answers to mankind’s questions about God, and about our place in the universe. Let me begin my explanation with a parable of mine.

One day, a 3-year-old boy asks his daddy what he does. The dad promptly, and sincerely, answers: “I build houses.” The little one walks away satisfied.

When the 7-year-old boy again asks his daddy what he does, the father explains that he is the boss of a company that builds houses for people. Once again, the boy walks away satisfied.

When the 13-year-old boy asks his dad what he does, the father explains that he has a construction company that plans and develops communities of new houses, and then actually builds those new communities. He further explains, in his answer, that he has entire sub-contracting companies he oversees, who do much of the specialized work in furthering his new-community construction. After a good half-hour discussion, the young teenager walks away, satisfied. In fact, the boy can actually aspire to become what his father is, possibly for the very first time.

When the 18-year-old young man has graduated from High School, and asks his father what he does, the man-to-man discussion lasts far into the night. The young man hears about entrepreneurship, “Environmental Impact,” governmental regulations & oversight, international acquisition of building materials, professional trade unions, architecture, civil & electrical engineering, personnel management, and so much more. They frankly discuss various Universities and courses of study for the young man. The scope and detail of the discussion is limited in many respects, but is still magnificently rich. The son falls asleep satisfied, and awakes the next morning infused with purpose, vigor, and direction.

When the 26-year-old Professional Engineer asks his father what he does, his father admits that he spends much time planning for the day when his son can assume joint leadership of the Company he started so long ago. After graduating with a Civil Engineering degree, and with the 4 years apprenticeship in his father’s company under his belt, the son now understands just how much he has yet to learn; but he looks forward with satisfaction to that day when he can, in fact, become a joint partner with his father.

He also looks forward to the day he answers his own son’s questions. When his newborn son can someday ask: “Daddy, what do you do?” he’ll answer: “I build houses.” And that’ll be just right!

Our place in the universe and in our Heavenly Father’s kingdom is something like that little boy asking his daddy what he does. We are, as yet, so immature and inexperienced in the goings-on of the huge, rich cosmos that we cannot possibly grasp very much more than the basics. For sure, we are no longer the nomadic, technologically ignorant peoples of 6 or 7 thousand years ago. Nor are we, any longer, the somewhat more civilized, world-wise citizens of the Roman Empire, either. Today, we are a people in the midst of technological innovations and scientific understandings that far transcend the concepts of peoples ten or twenty centuries past (let alone those of 6 or 7 thousand years ago!). We have progressed to the point where we are intellectually ready for so very much more of the story – but we are most likely STILL not quite ready for the whole, complete story.

Never fear, for we are family; and when we are ready for more, our loving Heavenly Father will surely provide. We are told, after all: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” [Luke 12:32]

Jesus knew 2000 years ago that the time had come when the closely-disciplined little ones, his Father’s earthly children, could be given more information – hence the “New Testament” of the Bible. His “Good News” was strikingly different from what the men and women of his culture had heard before. Countless majorities embraced it; while the few, established authorities who felt threatened by the apparent upsetting of the social & theological applecart, sought to suppress and destroy the new & different – and even the messenger, too.

The thing is, had they analyzed it more, and actually sought to understand the message Jesus preached, they could have recognized the natural evolution of the message was appropriate to their own natural evolution socially, culturally, theologically, and even psychologically. The difference between what Moses proclaimed and what Jesus proclaimed was nothing more than those additional, profound truths a wise, loving Heavenly Father knew that his children were ready for – and he provided them through Jesus Christ.

The father of the 3-year-old boy didn’t lie to his son; he simply provided the son with information to the uttermost limits of his young son’s capacity to understand.

The father might never have actually swung a hammer, or personally sawn a beam, but that does not mean that his statement; “I build houses” was wrong. In fact, that statement, in its simplicity, invited investigation and nurtured growth. Right on from the very start, the wise father freely gave his son all the information he was able to handle. The difference between the information – revelation, if you will – that the father shared with the 7-year old boy is that there is a hierarchy of labor & organization concerning house building, and his daddy is the guy in charge. The father did so when it was right for the son; and did so in a way that fostered the son’s healthy development and sincere motivations for a wonderful future as a full-partner with his father, in his father’s life’s work.

By answering so freely, the father also established and reinforced the son’s absolute right to come to the father for any answer, at any time. The father established a personal, intimate relationship of love and trust. Continuing revelation perfectly accomplished, the son eventually embraced the father’s vision; and joined with his father in the “family business.”

We are the little flock Jesus spoke to. We are the children of the Eternal Mansion Builder. We are able to petition God for answers, through our prayers. Just as the child of the house builder, we may expect to receive answers “…to the uttermost limits…” of our understanding. We should expect to receive answers when it is right, and in a way that fosters our healthy development and reinforces our sincere motivations. Those answers from our Heavenly Father, great or small, are the nucleus of continuing, modern revelation.

As such, continuing, modern revelation clearly builds upon the answers of the past. It appropriately rests upon the foundations of previous revelations, and utilizes the scaffolding of simplified, circumscribed understandings to erect more correct, more permanent spiritual edifices within individuals and cultures. Scaffolding must, of necessity, be adjusted, increased, moved, and eventually removed during construction – one can’t complete some structures by merely building on one side, for instance! Neither does a fully functional, completed structure even need scaffolding any longer; therefore the scaffolding is cast aside and discarded. No matter how necessary, even critical, scaffolding may be before and during construction of any permanent structure, there is very often no trace of the scaffolding to be found after the structure is completed and placed into its intended service.

Such is true, I suspect, of many of the supposedly sacred and inviolate religious dogma, rituals, and doctrines – especially those modified or eliminated through continuing, modern revelation.

Continuing, modern-day revelation naturally corrects some minor misconceptions, which inevitably grow in the mind of immature, ignorant children; even as it gives, perhaps for the first time, the information necessary for the genuine aspirations of the children toward “the family business.” It neither invalidates, nor replaces religion. It, instead, wondrously superimposes upon the properly prepared mortal mind a heavenly panorama of grace, growth, and accomplishment.

Harold Sherrod, Jr
Las Vegas, Nevada
December 2006

Growing up from jump street I only saw God and Jesus as my friend and God as a loving Father in Heaven....and later when i was instructed on the Atonement Doctrine and how Jesus was sacrificed to appease an angry God...that I got angry and mentally that is when I left the church...Oh to my delight and confirmation when I read the words of the Urantia Book...such joy, such peace.

Dear Alina, Bradly, Pike, Meredith, Rick, Bonita, and Rev Dr Red,

Missed the memo from yesterday posts. I shall begin here with Alina's last post to tell her how much I love her quote UB p.162.5. Well positioned in the continuing thread. Thank you for your intelligent commentary.

Bradly: What a well thought out post you have made to all with love. Thank you.

Pike: I have been reading here since 2007. I have been reading almost every day. I read in silence for years now. I discovered one day while posting that I knew nothing about TUB worth expressing to long time readers. I began to read, read, read. Recently I felt a bit more capable as I complete my 10th read. Still not up to speed with Bonita, Alina, Bradly, Meredith, Rick, or you. Peace!

Meredith: We KNOW each other so no need to respond.

Bonita and (mr) Red: I had no idea you were trying to communicate with me. That is the memo I missed. In answer to you both:

A conversation face to face is my best way to communicate. I can "talk water up hill." Just ask anyone of my friends and family. Often I talk so fast and switch topics faster that family, even my dear husband, lose the thread. Typing was difficult on the old non electric typewriter because I would leave out words all the time. My brain runs faster than my typing. But my last excuse to you is writing is not my strong suit. Getting complex ideas from the brain to the paper by way of typing results often in being misunderstood.

Cults? "UAI forever" (never joined UAI until the $20 went when I joined the new Urantia Forum) I do not even know what they do. I do know what the Foundation does. I do know that. After that bit of knowledge, I claim idiocy. I know nothing.

However I was born 6th generation into a cult calling itself a church. For 20 years of my adult life I lived to the wire its teachings because it is also my culture. It is mine and my husbands (also 6th generation). My husband had spent his entire life in this church. I was just baptized at 8 years old but raised to make my own choices. In 1996 we left this church and that was not an easy thing to do. We were persecuted beyond belief. My husband was tried by a kangaroo court, judged, found guilty of nothing, and punished by even some of his family members. The fact that this cult calls this "an act of love" is terrible. But he had already found TUB, 10 years before, and there, he found the truth. Me, too!

I would imagine that I have not written this very well, but please try to follow my thoughts as they are sincere in their intent. No one believes more in the individual choices "to find the kingdom of heaven within" than I.

Peace be with you,

Carolyn

While we may celebrate this most thrilling of all planetary moments in another season, the world celebrates our Lord and Creator Son's final bestowal this time of year and all who love Jesus are joined together in this celebration of His birth among us. I too am embarrased by the commercialism and fantasy to take advantage of this special time....however, many, even perhaps most, of the believers in Christ on Urantia do remember the reason for the season and are drawn to hope and love and family and community and join in common prayer for our fellows who feast on despair and presents instead. Let us be joyful and triumphant and kind and forgiving one to another as we reflect on Him and our future by His example and grace. Peace to all.

^{(1351.5) 122:8.1} All that night Mary was restless so that neither of them slept much. By the break of day the pangs of childbirth were well in evidence, and at noon, August 21, 7 B.C., with the help and kind ministrations of women fellow travelers, Mary was delivered of a male child. Jesus of Nazareth was born into the world, was wrapped in the clothes which Mary had brought along for such a possible contingency, and laid in a near-by manger.


The Incarnation — Making Two One


(1331.1) ^120:4.1 And so certain unworthy children of Michael, who had accused their Creator-father of selfishly seeking rulership and indulged the insinuation that the Creator Son was arbitrarily and autocratically upheld in power by virtue of the unreasoning loyalty of a deluded universe of subservient creatures, were to be silenced forever and left confounded and disillusioned by the life of self-forgetful service which the Son of God now entered upon as the Son of Man — all the while subject to “the will of the Paradise Father.”

(1331.2) ^120:4.2 But make no mistake; Christ Michael, while truly a dual-origin being, was not a double personality. He was not God in association with man but, rather, God incarnate in man. And he was always just that combined being. The only progressive factor in such a nonunderstandable relationship was the progressive self-conscious realization and recognition (by the human mind) of this fact of being God and man.

(1331.3) ^120:4.3 Christ Michael did not progressively become God. God did not, at some vital moment in the earth life of Jesus, become man. Jesus was God and man — always and even forevermore. And this God and this man were, and now are, one, even as the Paradise Trinity of three beings is in reality one Deity.

(1331.4) ^120:4.4 Never lose sight of the fact that the supreme spiritual purpose of the Michael bestowal was to enhance the revelation of God.

(1331.5) ^120:4.5 Urantia mortals have varying concepts of the miraculous, but to us who live as citizens of the local universe there are few miracles, and of these by far the most intriguing are the incarnational bestowals of the Paradise Sons. The appearance in and on your world, by apparently natural processes, of a divine Son, we regard as a miracle — the operation of universal laws beyond our understanding. Jesus of Nazareth was a miraculous person.

(1331.6) ^120:4.6 In and through all this extraordinary experience, God the Father chose to manifest himself as he always does — in the usual way — in the normal, natural, and dependable way of divine acting.


(1622.23) ^144:5.24

Our perfect and righteous heavenly Father,

This day guide and direct our journey.

Sanctify our steps and co-ordinate our thoughts.

Ever lead us in the ways of eternal progress.

Fill us with wisdom to the fullness of power

And vitalize us with your infinite energy.

Inspire us with the divine consciousness of

The presence and guidance of the seraphic hosts.

Guide us ever upward in the pathway of light;

Justify us fully in the day of the great judgment.

Make us like yourself in eternal glory

And receive us into your endless service on high.

To Be Very Honest , For Many Years , reading and striveing to understand
these Quotes , Ive Often Been Confused over What Exactly These Quotes Mean ,
BY'' If your own mind does not serve you well, you can exchange it for the mind of Jesus of Nazareth''

This is not something to understand with the intellect. You have to think of the Spirit of Truth as a person because it requires a relationship. Why a relationship? Because Jesus, the Spirit of Truth, is knocking on the door to the soul and the soul is a relationship (111:2.7). We are told that the Spirit of Truth sojourns with the soul, conspiring with the Father to help us comprehend spirit values.

p17:02 We know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings.

The Jesus mind exchange is a bridge between the material mind and the soul, where his Father has contact. That's why he calls himself the living vine. The Spirit of Truth is interested in getting us to know the Father and how the Father thinks, which is why he said that everything that the Father has is now his and he can reveal it to us. He does this as the living bridge of revelation. The Spirit of Truth interprets, translates and brings to the surface what the Adjuster is attempting to do for us in the deep mind. The Spirit of Truth helps the material mind grasp the truth the Adjuster is providing.

p1952:00 Everything which the Father has in this domain is now mine; wherefore did I say that this new teacher would take of that which is mine and reveal it to you.

Obviously, the question then is, how do I establish a relationship with the Spirit of Truth? Each person will have to answer this in his own personal way. For me it was simple. I started talking to Jesus when I was 4 years old after my sister was born and I could no longer get the "only child" attention I craved. He was my imaginary friend, what TUB calls an alter ego. It just grew from there, exactly like TUB says it will. I got enchanted with Jesus from children's bible books that were lying around my house. He seemed like the perfect person to trust at the time, and he was and still is.

Its all about starting a personal dialogue with the one person who walked this earth and knows everything there is to know about being human and who also knows about the struggle of going from human thinking to divine thinking. I call it a chat with my dear Lord, my loving Master, the one who gives me his undivided attention as if I were his "only child". Some call it prayer, others call it communion, some call it fellowship, and others might call it meditation. It doesn't matter what you call it, you just have to do it. But do it like a child would do it, not like a giant already grown-up intellect would do it.

Concentrate on the relationship and let the fruit just grow on its own. It will spill over into your life, you will share it, you will enrich the world, you will serve God and you will know that his will is done.

P.S. Ooops! Just realized I didn't need to answer your post Coop since you moved on already! No matter. Thanks for the question.

Hi Howard509,

Does anyone see this tension between the Jesus section's simple emphasis on the Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man and the rest of the Urantia Book's highly complex and elaborate belief system?

Before the revelators could reveal their revelation about what and why we are, they had to sketch out a frame in which thought adjusters and personality make sense. For me, the UB is simply a description of the way things are, as seen from some other higher frame. There's no need to let the view confuse or distract us from the important things. Remember, "the Universal Father, as a Father... "

As far as the Universal Father is concerned--as a Father--the universes are virtually nonexistent; he deals with personalities; he is the Father of personalities." (164.1) 15:0.1

For me, this is the fifth epochal revelation: the revelation about our relationship with the spiritual realities conspiring to see us launched safely from this finite/womb, able to engage Dad's reality a non-trivial way. Part 4 simply adds some beautiful motivation: we too can live abundantly.

So no, I see no tension.

Nigel

Welcome TruthFinder!

Lots to read here on so many topics. Hope you enjoy your visits. The UB is endlessly fascinating to me even after many, many years of study.


All the best,
Meredith

All the effort put into this forum is not lost. All of us have gained much from our conversations and experience.

No worth-while experience ever happens in vain; no true meaning or real value ever perishes. P.1200 - §1

In friendship,
Meredith

Absonite...if I may suggest, I doubt there is much disagreement between your view and Alina's, except vernacular. Alina is daring in her caring in her contributions here as a second language and it helps to focus on her relevant and descriptive quotes she always provides to help us contextualize her thoughts and words. Next, it would amaze you, perhaps, if you would try reconstructing or rearanging verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. and see how meanings can be inflected or misconstrued. I think her chosen text speaks certainly enough and does not deny everyones' ability to conceive the Father...albeit inadequately, incompletely, falsely, etc. but not as He is. Just my take on this. I can assure you Alina has an ever growing concept of Father and shares it here freely.

One of the main, or most important of the causes of growth without progress, is the distortion under which mortals live:

(1118.1) 102:0.1 TO THE unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternaloblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.

(1118.2) 102:0.2 But such is not man’s end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God’s children on earth.

(1118.3) 102:0.3 This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity.

Hello All!

Growth and progress.

According to UB growth does not always indicate progress. But what is the difference?
I believe that growth can be uneven, can be disproportionate, in which case there would be no real
progress. no?
So, What should we do to make our growth becomes real progress? both in the intellectual, material, social, scientific, mental, spiritual?
What are the factors that influence and what should we do to encourage both individual and collective progress?
For me, here is the core of all viscitudes seriously affecting life on Urantia.
Ideally. growth with progress.

How do you see?

Some quotes as guide:

Growth of the part and the whole

(1268.6) 116:1.1 The experience of every evolving creature personality is a phase of the experience of the Almighty Supreme. The intelligent subjugation of every physical segment of the superuniverses is a part of the growing control of the Almighty Supreme. The creative synthesis of power and personality is a part of the creative urge of the Supreme Mind and is the very essence of the evolutionary growth of unity in the Supreme Being.

(1275.6) 116:6.6 And as it is with the parts, so it is with the whole; the spirit person of Supremacy requires the evolutionary power of the Almighty to achieve completion of Deity and to attain destiny of Trinity association. The effort is made by the personalities of time and space, but the culmination and consummation of this effort is the act of the Almighty Supreme. And while the growth of the whole is thus a totalizing of the collective growth of the parts, it equally follows that the evolution of the parts is a segmented reflection of the purposive growth of the whole.

(54.5) 4:1.2 Can you not advance in your concept of God’s dealing with man to that level where you recognize that the watchword of the universe is progress? Through long ages the human race has struggled to reach its present position. Throughout all these millenniums Providence has been working out the plan of progressive evolution. The two thoughts are not opposed in practice, only in man’s mistaken concepts. Divine providence is never arrayed in opposition to true human progress, either temporal or spiritual. Providence is always consistent with the unchanging and perfect nature of the supreme Lawmaker.

Cultural progress

(578.2) 50:6.2 The development of civilization on Urantia has not differed so greatly from that of other worlds which have sustained the misfortune of spiritual isolation. But when compared with the loyal worlds of the universe, your planet seems most confused and greatly retarded in all phases of intellectual progress and spiritual attainment.

(578.3) 50:6.3 Because of your planetary misfortunes, Urantians are prevented from understanding very much about the culture of normal worlds. But you should not envisage the evolutionary worlds, even the most ideal, as spheres whereon life is a flowery bed of ease. The initial life of the mortal races is always attended by struggle. Effort and decision are an essential part of the acquirement of survival values.

(578.4) 50:6.4 Culture presupposes quality of mind; culture cannot be enhanced unless mind is elevated. Superior intellect will seek a noble culture and find some way to attain such a goal. Inferior minds will spurn the highest culture even when presented to them ready-made. Much depends, also, upon the successive missions of the divine Sons and upon the extent to which enlightenment is received by the ages of their respective dispensations.

Scientific progress

(1457.3) 132:1.4 The materialistic scientist and the extreme idealist are destined always to be at loggerheads. This is not true of those scientists and idealists who are in possession of a common standard of high moral values and spiritual test levels. In every age scientists and religionists must recognize that they are on trial before the bar of human need. They must eschew all warfare between themselves while they strive valiantly to justify their continued survival by enhanced devotion to the service of human progress. If the so-called science or religion of any age is false, then must it either purify its activities or pass away before the emergence of a material science or spiritual religion of a truer and more worthy order.

Religious Growth

(1094.3) 100:1.1 While religion produces growth of meanings and enhancement of values, evil always results when purely personal evaluations are elevated to the levels of absolutes. A child evaluates experience in accordance with the content of pleasure; maturity is proportional to the substitution of higher meanings for personal pleasure, even loyalties to the highest concepts of diversified life situations and cosmic relations.

(1094.4) 100:1.2 Some persons are too busy to grow and are therefore in grave danger of spiritual fixation. Provision must be made for growth of meanings at differing ages, in
successive cultures, and in the passing stages of advance.

(1087.6) 99:2.3 Religionists must function in society, in industry, and in politics as individuals, not as groups, parties, or institutions. A religious group which presumes to function as such, apart from religious activities, immediately becomes a political party, an economic organization, or a social institution. Religious collectivism must confine its efforts to the furtherance of religious causes.

Thanks in advance!

Alina
***

People need to know what it is first before becoming attracted to it. There should be Urantia Books in every major bookstore and study groups wherever there are study groups for other books like A Course in Miracles. I see no reason why a Unity Church, for example, shouldn't have a Urantia Book study group.

I agree with Rick Warren on this point; attraction works better BECAUSE... Attraction is a multi-sensory response to the display of actions, attitudes, faiths, and demeanor. I believe that the value of the Urantia Book is in the permanent changes in my behavior, in my attitudes, my faiths, and my aspirations. I have been a teacher of adults for many years, and I know what I'm saying.

When I am stopped by folks whom I have known for long times, and asked; "Why are you so happy, confident, cheerful, positive, certain, steady, unafraid, (or whatever)..." it is the golden opportunity to share what has been the source of such outward displays. I am asked, by other teachers in my church, (among others); "...how do you know...?" or "...where can I learn..." or some similar questions. I am ready with an answer up to the capacity of the questioner, and I freely share. I have not been accused of preaching false doctrine or of apostasy, nor have I upset my brother or sister seeker of truth or spirituality. I try to give suck to babes; feed milk to the tender & weak; and only offer meat to those prepared to eat!

I discovered the Urantia Book in a retail bookstore; and I have placed TUB in libraries. I always seek out the book in whatever library I am in, just to note its condition (is it like-new, or is it well used, for instance). I have cultivated a few folks who are beginning to study with me, and it is a grand thing to see their eyes light up when they suddenly "get it" concerning some one or another topic.

These experiences have happened because of a personal attraction to someone (me, in this case) who is living life confidently and joyfully because of what has been learned by reading TUB and putting it into practice. I am nowhere as "deep" or "well-versed" in this book as many others; but that simply does not matter! We who seek God are progressing, and progression is changing us, and constant change, even in the face of adversity, is life! I am confident I have ALREADY survived, so I live joyfully in the kingdom, and my growing spirituality is "fragrant" to others - which is attracting to them; and I point them ultimately to God.

Jesus changed the whole course of human history on this little sphere, and is changing humanity on ten million spheres - and he left not one written word! The Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth was most effectively spread word-of-mouth, and shared by living it. So too, are the Urantia Book's teachings going to be spread by those who live them and have joy & confidence in the face of doom, despair, and calamity.

As I said, this is my thinking, and why I have confidence, joy, and direction in my life.

Jesus said, "It is not so important that you should know about the fact of God as that you should increasingly grow in the ability to feel the presence of God." (155:6.12) Jesus did not say, "It is not so important that you should know about the fact of God as that you should increasingly grow in the ability to interpret your dreams and hear God's voice."

TUB also tells us that Jesus is our example for developing a relationship with our Adjusters. We are told that he was able to develop that relationship to its fullest possible limit. And we are also told that we are fully capable of following his example. How did he do it? How did he accomplished this amazing feat, what was his secret? How did he live consciously in the presence of God? Well, certainly not by interpreting dreams or listening for voices, but through prayer and worship. He never once spoke of his dreams or put himself in a trance with hopes of hearing voices. Not once.

p2088:5, 196:0.10 The secret of his unparalleled religious life was this consciousness of the presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere worship -- unbroken communion with God -- and not by leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices.

In both dreams and trances the subconscious mind dominates. The Adjuster lives in the superconscious mind. How do you reach the borderlands of the superconscious? Despite thousands and thousands of years of mystical teaching from all the various religions, the truth is that it is NOT reached by dreams and trances. The superconscious mind is approached through intelligent prayer and sincere worship, both of which are forms of the highest and most spiritualized type of thinking. Only the pure mind can hear God's voice. And by pure, I mean perfect intent, perfect desire, perfect humility and perfect sincerity.

p1104:06 The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. "Without holiness no man may see the Lord." All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as they function amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving sons of God.

Instead of worrying about dreams and hearing voices, work towards developing spiritual insight. Perfect your minds.

Hi Rick:

Thanks for the info. I did not know about the two Spanish versions. If I can get Mom to read El Libro De Urantia, I know she will love it. She is very religious in a traditional sense but also very open minded. Then my Aunt will be next. Then about 30 octogenarians in their ballroom dance class will soon learn of the book. How is that for a strategy for disseminating TUB. As a physician, I do my best to spread the spirit of TUB and on occasion I find an opening for introducing some of my patients to the Book. A cute story to tell is that one time I felt compelled to write a prescription for a patient in need that simply stated, "GOD". She smiled, hugged me and asked me how I knew. She returned for followup a few months later asking for a refill ! I reminded her that the script was refillable to infinity.

Regards, Louis

Howard, like you, I love the Jesus papers. Without Jesus my life would be nothing. But I think you're making the typical error of thinking, one that TUB warns us about:

19:1.5 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.

Spiritual wisdom requires that you begin to get a glimpse of the fact that you are a universe citizen and start to understand the organization of your universe home. TUB was given to us as a prelude to being welcomed into the greater universe with every expectation of the lifting of quarantines which will bring us even greater freedoms and responsibilities. We must understand our universe from the top down. But if you're not ready for that, if you prefer to keep to the fourth revelation, there is absolutely no harm at all in thinking that way. TUB is for the more adventurous of mind and for those who want to know more about Jesus' origin and our divine destiny with him. TUB shows us the bigger picture, the goal, the next step . . . for those with enough courage to take it.

19:1.6-12 The true perspective of any reality problem—human or divine, terrestrial or cosmic—can be had only by the full and unprejudiced study and correlation of three phases of universe reality: origin, history, and destiny. The proper understanding of these three experiential realities affords the basis for a wise estimate of the current status.

When the human mind undertakes to follow the philosophic technique of starting from the lower to approach the higher, whether in biology or theology, it is always in danger of committing four errors of reasoning:
1. It may utterly fail to perceive the final and completed evolutionary goal of either personal attainment or cosmic destiny.
2. It may 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.
3. The study of causation is the perusal of history. But the knowledge of how a being becomes does not necessarily provide an intelligent understanding of the present status and true character of such a being.
4. History alone fails adequately to reveal future development—destiny. Finite origins are helpful, but only divine causes reveal final effects. Eternal ends are not shown in time beginnings. The present can be truly interpreted only in the light of the correlated past and future.

Therefore, because of these and for still other reasons, do we employ the technique of approaching man and his planetary problems by embarkation on the time-space journey from the infinite, eternal, and divine Paradise Source and Center of all personality reality and all cosmic existence.

101:6.8 The teachings of Jesus constituted the first Urantian religion which so fully embraced a harmonious co-ordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquillity, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival. The faith of Jesus pointed the way to finality of human salvation, to the ultimate of mortal universe attainment, since it provided for:

1. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with God, who is spirit.
2. Salvation from intellectual bondage: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.
3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings and the morontian awareness of the brotherhood of all universe creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values.
4. Salvation from incompleteness of self through the attainment of the spirit levels of the universe and through the eventual realization of the harmony of Havona and the perfection of Paradise.
5. Salvation from self, deliverance from the limitations of self-consciousness through the attainment of the cosmic levels of the Supreme mind and by co-ordination with the attainments of all other self-conscious beings.
6. Salvation from time, the achievement of an eternal life of unending progression in God-recognition and God-service.
7. <a href="http://www.truthbook...1836">Salvation from the finite, the perfected oneness with Deity in and through the Supreme by which the creature attempts the transcendental discovery of the Ultimate on the postfinaliter levels of the absonite.

^101:6.16 Such a sevenfold salvation is the equivalent of the completeness and perfection of the realization of the ultimate experience of the Universal Father. And all this, in potential, is contained within the reality of the faith of the human experience of religion. And it can be so contained since the faith of Jesus was nourished by, and was revelatory of, even realities beyond the ultimate; the faith of Jesus approached the status of a universe absolute in so far as such is possible of manifestation in the evolving cosmos of time and space.
^101:6.17 Through the appropriation of the faith of Jesus, mortal man can foretaste in time the realities of eternity. Jesus made the discovery, in human experience, of the Final Father, and his brothers in the flesh of mortal life can follow him along this same experience of Father discovery. They can even attain, as they are, the same satisfaction in this experience with the Father as did Jesus as he was. New potentials were actualized in the universe of Nebadon consequent upon the terminal bestowal of Michael, and one of these was the new illumination of the path of eternity that leads to the Father of all, and which can be traversed even by the mortals of material flesh and blood in the initial life on the planets of space. Jesus was and is the new and living way whereby man can come into the divine inheritance which the Father has decreed shall be his for but the asking. In Jesus there is abundantly demonstrated both the beginnings and endings of the faith experience of humanity, even of divine humanity.


Then , WHY Through the Ages And Even Now Today
DO So Many Still Hate Jesus , Deny Him and His Teachings
Twist or Misunderstand His Teachings , Even Deny He Ever Existed,

Or When You Mention His Name ... Even Laugh ?

NAMASTE

Faith Son
Coop

Loving this. While researching more specifics on this, I wanted to suggest that there is a primary factor within all the elements listed for growth to further progress the whole. And that is motivation of individual AND social behaviour, far too much behaviour based on simple fear and anxiety. Humans are motivated exponentially more by fear than by hope of gain (and neither is a high motivation) and this is perpetuated by most of the elements listed - government, commerce, industry (think military industrial complex and pharmaceuticals for example), religion, and our "culture" is created by a media driven frenzy to fit in, be bizarre, be cool, etc. and glamorizes false gods and priorities. Fear in the individual is a great burden and slows or can even prevent progress in the spirit but it is apparent that our institutions promote and profit from fear. Such fearmongering is fundamentally preventing our growth, regardless of progress in other ways and areas.

One of the biggest casualties of fear, and another contributor to retardation is lack of cooperation and trust between the various elements. Science and religion remain embroiled in this polarized view of even basic physics and the creation. Consider a six oar row boat or a six horse tandem team and consider further the potentials of each element working as a coordinated, cooperative, and trusting team - and the multitude of "progress" comedies and horrors without such. Fraternity is taught to be a critical ingredient in this recipe of elements and fraternity cannot come in a world seeped in fear and driven daily by its ruthless whip. To me this is the crux of the matter or fulcrum point upon which rests great leverage and potential. Imagine what our world might be like in even two generations of less and less fear and more and more fraternity, eh?

Thanks Alina....been thinking on this and talking to my wife about. Had to let you know I am enjoying.

I think part of the paradigm that we face on this world is that in our own minds we are convinced that we are victims of our past. We are constantly replaying past tragedies in our minds which we feel victim too. We also tend to use our spiritual gifts to locate errors in the world. We are constantly looking for mistakes. So much of our problems are curable just by realizing that we are not victims. We are not victims to a natural death, and we are not victims of our past. We can choose otherwise. We can choose to live otherwise.

1725.4) ^155:1.3 If you desire to enter the kingdom, why do you not take it by spiritual assault even as the heathen take a city they lay siege to? You are hardly worthy of the kingdom when your service consists so largely in an attitude of regretting the past, whining over the present, and vainly hoping for the future. Why do the heathen rage? Because they know not the truth. Why do you languish in futile yearning? Because you obey not the truth. Cease your useless yearning and go forth bravely doing that which concerns the establishment of the kingdom.

This message was given to those who believe in the teachings, and yet find themselves whining. Obviously I think we can all relate to this. But I think the message that Jesus gives is that even as you are a small tadpole you can literally overcome anxieties, fears and worries by obeying the truth. Even as little 7th circler tadpoles you can do this. As a 7th circler we can obey the truth and this allows us to have a relationship to eternity even as 7th circlers.

We can't let the world tell us that its impossible to not know and obey the truth. Jesus is saying that you can, know truth, obey truth, and be liberated by truth. We know that if begin to form a relationship to these teachings that our mind will begin to use those intuitions in which "it is sad to record that few humans are using". Which will give us that objective viewpoint where we can be absolutely sure.

Glory Road

Oh how long I have wandered...

Thrashing through the brush and weeds,

Looking for the way from here to there to anywhere

Not Here.

Taking any trail found....

No matter where it might lead,

Every little copse and spring discovered

Here?

Looking for what I do not have....

But need and long for with whole heart,

Moving forward...I hope

There?

Suddenly I trip and fall...

Over a giant blue book not there a moment ago,

I land face first stunned

On the Glory Road!

What's this I cry out?

Where did this super highway come from,

Look at all the traffic,

Believers all laughing arm in arm

Skipping up the widening thoroughfare

Toward towering peaks

Floating above the clouds.

Peace and tranquility replace confusion and despair!

God's call and direction

So obvious now.

What of the others still lost I inquire?

Worry not says a Voice

For every little trail in the wilderness

Brings all my children to

THE GLORY ROAD

Peace.