Urantia Papers

• method use in writing › revelators instructed to use English
• value of the Urantia Papers › expands cosmic consciousness, spiritual perception

0:0.2It is ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to pre­sent en­larged con­cepts and ad­vanced truth, in our en­deavor to ex­pand cos­mic con­scious­ness and en­hance spir­i­tual per­cep­tion, when we are re­stricted to the use of a cir­cum­scribed lan­guage of the realm. But our man­date ad­mon­ishes us to make ev­ery ef­fort to con­vey our mean­ings by us­ing the word sym­bols of the En­glish tongue. We have been in­structed to in­tro­duce new terms only when the con­cept to be por­trayed finds no ter­mi­nol­ogy in En­glish which can be em­ployed to con­vey such a new con­cept par­tially or even with more or less dis­tor­tion of mean­ing.

0:0.3In the hope of fa­cil­i­tat­ing com­pre­hen­sion and of pre­vent­ing con­fu­sion on the part of ev­ery mor­tal who may pe­ruse these pa­pers, we deem it wise to pre­sent in this ini­tial state­ment an out­line of the mean­ings to be at­tached to nu­mer­ous En­glish words which are to be em­ployed in des­ig­na­tion of De­ity and cer­tain as­so­ci­ated con­cepts of the things, mean­ings, and val­ues of uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

• authors › Orvonton commission
• Foreword is definitive guide only for Part I

0:0.4But in or­der to for­mu­late this Fore­word of def­i­ni­tions and lim­i­ta­tions of ter­mi­nol­ogy, it is nec­es­sary to an­tic­i­pate the us­age of these terms in the sub­se­quent pre­sen­ta­tions. This Fore­word is not, there­fore, a fin­ished state­ment within it­self; it is only a defini­tive guide de­signed to as­sist those who shall read the ac­com­pa­ny­ing pa­pers deal­ing with De­ity and the uni­verse of uni­verses which have been for­mu­lated by an Or­von­ton com­mis­sion sent to Uran­tia for this pur­pose.

• method use in writing › preference given to highest existing human concepts; modern phraseology

0:12.12Suc­ces­sive plan­e­tary rev­e­la­tions of di­vine truth in­vari­ably em­brace the high­est ex­ist­ing con­cepts of spir­i­tual val­ues as a part of the new and en­hanced co-or­di­na­tion of plan­e­tary knowl­edge. Ac­cord­ingly, in mak­ing these pre­sen­ta­tions about God and his uni­verse as­so­ciates, we have se­lected as the ba­sis of these pa­pers more than one thou­sand hu­man con­cepts rep­re­sent­ing the high­est and most ad­vanced plan­e­tary knowl­edge of spir­i­tual val­ues and uni­verse mean­ings. Wherein these hu­man con­cepts, as­sem­bled from the God-know­ing mor­tals of the past and the pres­ent, are in­ad­e­quate to por­tray the truth as we are di­rected to re­veal it, we will un­hesi­tat­ingly sup­ple­ment them, for this pur­pose draw­ing upon our own su­pe­rior knowl­edge of the re­al­ity and di­vin­ity of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties and their tran­scen­dent res­i­den­tial uni­verse.

• authors › acknowledgments by

0:12.13We are fully cog­nizant of the dif­fi­cul­ties of our as­sign­ment; we rec­og­nize the im­pos­si­bil­ity of fully trans­lat­ing the lan­guage of the con­cepts of di­vin­ity and eter­nity into the sym­bols of the lan­guage of the fi­nite con­cepts of the mor­tal mind. But 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. But even more cer­tainly we know that these spir­its of the Di­vine Pres­ence are able to as­sist man in the spir­i­tual ap­pro­pri­a­tion of all truth con­trib­u­tory to the en­hance­ment of the ever-pro­gress­ing re­al­ity of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—God-con­scious­ness.

0:12.14[In­dited by an Or­von­ton Di­vine Coun­selor, Chief of the Corps of Super­uni­verse Per­son­al­i­ties as­signed to por­tray on Uran­tia the truth con­cern­ing the Par­a­dise De­i­ties and the uni­verse of uni­verses.]

• authors › Divine Counselors are highest source on evolutionary worlds

1:7.9[Pre­sented by a Di­vine Coun­selor, a mem­ber of a group of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties as­signed by the An­cients of Days on Uversa, the head­quar­ters of the sev­enth super­uni­verse, to super­vise those por­tions of this forth­com­ing rev­e­la­tion which have to do with af­fairs be­yond the bor­ders of the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. I am com­mis­sioned to spon­sor those pa­pers por­tray­ing the na­ture and at­tri­butes of God be­cause I rep­re­sent the high­est source of in­for­ma­tion avail­able for such a pur­pose on any in­hab­ited world. I have served as a Di­vine Coun­selor in all seven of the super­uni­verses and have long resided at the Par­a­dise cen­ter of all things. Many times have I en­joyed the su­preme plea­sure of a so­journ in the im­me­di­ate per­sonal pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I por­tray the re­al­ity and truth of the Fa­ther’s na­ture and at­tri­butes with un­chal­lenge­able au­thor­ity; I know whereof I speak.]

• effort to describe God would be futile except for Adjusters, Spirit of Truth

2:0.3In all our ef­forts to en­large and spir­i­tu­al­ize the hu­man con­cept of God, we are tremen­dously hand­i­capped by the lim­ited ca­pac­ity of the mor­tal mind. We are also se­ri­ously hand­i­capped in the ex­e­cu­tion of our as­sign­ment by the lim­i­ta­tions of lan­guage and by the pov­erty of ma­te­rial which can be uti­lized for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion or com­par­i­son in our ef­forts to por­tray di­vine val­ues and to pre­sent spir­i­tual mean­ings to the fi­nite, mor­tal mind of man. All our ef­forts to en­large the hu­man con­cept of God would be well-nigh fu­tile ex­cept for the fact that the mor­tal mind is in­dwelt by the be­stowed Ad­juster of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and is per­vaded by the Truth Spirit of the Cre­ator Son. De­pend­ing, there­fore, on the pres­ence of these di­vine spir­its within the heart of man for as­sis­tance in the en­large­ment of the con­cept of God, I cheer­fully un­der­take the ex­e­cu­tion of my man­date to at­tempt the fur­ther por­trayal of the na­ture of God to the mind of man.

• value of the Urantia Papers › reveal truth about God and our Creator Son

4:5.7But the in­hab­i­tants of Uran­tia are to find de­liv­er­ance from these an­cient er­rors and pa­gan su­per­sti­tions re­spect­ing the na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The rev­e­la­tion of the truth about God is ap­pear­ing, and the hu­man race is des­tined to know the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in all that beauty of char­ac­ter and love­li­ness of at­tri­butes so mag­nif­i­cently por­trayed by the Cre­ator Son who so­journed on Uran­tia as the Son of Man and the Son of God.

• limitations of the U.P. › reveal only glimpse of our superuniverse in present universe age

13:0.7The twenty-one Par­a­dise satel­lites serve many pur­poses in both cen­tral and super­uni­verses not dis­closed in these nar­ra­tives. You are able to un­der­stand so lit­tle of the life of these spheres that you can­not hope to gain any­thing like a con­sis­tent view of them, ei­ther as to na­ture or func­tion; thou­sands of ac­tiv­i­ties are there go­ing on which are un­re­vealed to you. These twenty-one spheres em­brace the po­ten­tials of the func­tion of the mas­ter uni­verse. These pa­pers af­ford only a fleet­ing glimpse of cer­tain cir­cum­scribed ac­tiv­i­ties per­tain­ing to the pres­ent uni­verse age of the grand uni­verse—rather, one of the seven sec­tors of the grand uni­verse.

• limitations of the U.P. › reveal only glimpse of our superuniverse in present universe age

15:14.4As Or­von­ton is unique in na­ture and in­di­vid­ual in des­tiny, so also is each of its six as­so­ci­ated super­uni­verses. A great deal that is go­ing on in Or­von­ton is not, how­ever, re­vealed to you, and of these un­re­vealed fea­tures of Or­von­ton life, many are to find most com­plete ex­pres­sion in some other super­uni­verse. 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. This en­tire nar­ra­tive pre­sents only a fleet­ing glimpse of the im­mense cre­ation of which your world and lo­cal sys­tem are a part.

• limitations of the U.P. › only what pertains to mortal ascension is revealed

16:4.7The Seven Mas­ter Spir­its have per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tives who func­tion through­out the grand uni­verse; but since a large ma­jor­ity of these sub­or­di­nate be­ings are not di­rectly con­cerned with the as­cen­dant scheme of mor­tal pro­gres­sion in the path of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion, lit­tle or noth­ing has been re­vealed about them. Much, very much, of the ac­tiv­ity of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its re­mains hid­den from hu­man un­der­stand­ing be­cause in no way does it di­rectly per­tain to your prob­lem of Par­a­dise as­cent.

• method use in writing › arbitrary, meaningless designations avoided

18:4.3These tri­une rulers of the ma­jor sec­tors are pe­cu­liarly per­fect in the mas­tery of ad­min­is­tra­tive de­tails, hence their name—Per­fec­tions of Days. In record­ing the names of these be­ings of the spir­i­tual world, we are con­fronted with the prob­lem of trans­lat­ing into your tongue, and very of­ten it is ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to ren­der a sat­is­fac­tory trans­la­tion. We dis­like to use ar­bi­trary des­ig­na­tions which would be mean­ing­less to you; hence we of­ten find it dif­fi­cult to choose a suit­able name, one which will be clear to you and at the same time be some­what rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the orig­i­nal.

• method use in writing › proceed from highest concepts

19:1.5For 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.

19:1.6Even in the study of man’s bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion on Uran­tia, there are grave ob­jec­tions to the ex­clu­sive his­toric ap­proach to his pres­ent-day sta­tus and his cur­rent prob­lems. 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.

19:1.7When 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:

19:1.81. It may ut­terly fail to per­ceive the fi­nal and com­pleted evo­lu­tion­ary goal of ei­ther per­sonal at­tain­ment or cos­mic des­tiny.

19:1.92. 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.

19:1.103. 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.

19:1.114. 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.

19:1.12There­fore, 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.

• Solitary Messenger and Inspired Trinity Spirits present at inditing

19:5.7The In­spired Spir­its do not ap­par­ently be­long to the evo­lu­tion­ary scheme of the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets or uni­verses, and yet they seem to be al­most ev­ery­where. Even as I am en­gaged in the for­mu­la­tion of this state­ment, my as­so­ci­ated Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger’s per­sonal sen­si­tiv­ity to the pres­ence of this or­der of Spirit in­di­cates that there is with us at this very mo­ment, not over twenty-five feet away, a Spirit of the In­spired or­der and of the third vol­ume of power pres­ence. The third vol­ume of power pres­ence sug­gests to us the prob­a­bil­ity that three In­spired Spir­its are func­tion­ing in li­ai­son.

• Solitary Messenger and Inspired Trinity Spirits present at inditing

23:0.2These spirit mes­sen­gers were per­son­al­ized in a sin­gle cre­ative episode, and their num­ber is sta­tion­ary. Al­though I have one of these ex­traor­di­nary be­ings as­so­ci­ated with me on this pres­ent mis­sion, I do not know how many such per­son­al­i­ties ex­ist in the uni­verse of uni­verses. I only know, from time to time, how many are of reg­istry-rec­ord as func­tion­ing for the time be­ing within the ju­ris­dic­tion of our super­uni­verse. From the last Uversa re­port I ob­serve that there were al­most 7,690 tril­lion Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers then op­er­at­ing within the bound­aries of Or­von­ton; and I con­jec­ture that this is con­sid­er­ably less than one sev­enth of their to­tal num­ber.

• Solitary Messenger and Inspired Trinity Spirits present at inditing

23:2.153. Mes­sen­gers of the Super­uni­verses. The An­cients of Days, those per­son­al­i­ties of Trin­ity ori­gin who pre­side over the des­tinies of the seven super­uni­verses, those trios of di­vine power and ad­min­is­tra­tive wis­dom, are boun­ti­fully sup­plied with Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers. It is only through this or­der of mes­sen­gers that the tri­une rulers of one super­uni­verse can di­rectly and per­son­ally com­mu­ni­cate with the rulers of an­other. Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are the only avail­able type of spirit in­tel­li­gence—aside, pos­si­bly, from the In­spired Trin­ity Spir­its—that can be dis­patched from the head­quar­ters of one super­uni­verse di­rectly to the head­quar­ters of an­other. All other per­son­al­i­ties must make such ex­cur­sions by way of Ha­vona and the ex­ec­u­tive worlds of the Mas­ter Spir­its.

• Solitary Messenger and Inspired Trinity Spirits present at inditing

23:2.247. Rev­e­la­tors of Truth. The Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers re­gard the as­sign­ment to re­veal truth as the high­est trust of their or­der. And they func­tion ever and anon in this ca­pac­ity, from the super­uni­verses to the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets of space. They are fre­quently at­tached to com­mis­sions which are sent to en­large the rev­e­la­tion of truth to the worlds and sys­tems.

• limitations of the U.P. › mandates governing disclosure

31:8.2In the dis­cus­sion of Tran­scen­den­talers we are re­stricted, not only by the lim­i­ta­tions of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion, but also by the terms of the man­date gov­ern­ing these dis­clo­sures con­cern­ing the per­son­al­i­ties of Par­a­dise. These be­ings are in no way con­nected with the mor­tal as­cent to Ha­vona. The vast host of the Par­a­dise Tran­scen­den­talers have noth­ing what­ever to do with the af­fairs of ei­ther Ha­vona or the seven super­uni­verses, be­ing con­cerned only with the super­ad­min­is­tra­tion of the af­fairs of the mas­ter uni­verse.

• method use in writing › arbitrary, meaningless designations avoided

31:8.3You, be­ing a crea­ture, can con­ceive of a Cre­ator, but you can hardly com­pre­hend that there ex­ists an enor­mous and di­ver­si­fied ag­gre­ga­tion of in­tel­li­gent be­ings who are nei­ther Cre­ators nor crea­tures. These Tran­scen­den­talers cre­ate no be­ings, nei­ther were they ever cre­ated. In speak­ing of their ori­gin, in or­der to avoid us­ing a new term—an ar­bi­trary and mean­ing­less des­ig­na­tion—we deem it best to say that Tran­scen­den­talers sim­ply even­tu­ate. The De­ity Ab­so­lute may well have been con­cerned in their ori­gin and may be im­pli­cated in their des­tiny, but these unique be­ings are not now dom­i­nated by the De­ity Ab­so­lute. They are sub­ject to God the Ul­ti­mate, and their pres­ent Par­a­dise so­journ is in ev­ery way Trin­ity super­vised and di­rected.

• limitations of the U.P. › mandates governing disclosure

31:9.2The six­teenth pro­scrip­tion of the man­date au­tho­riz­ing these nar­ra­tives says: “If deemed wise, the ex­is­tence of the Ar­chi­tects of the Mas­ter Uni­verse and their as­so­ciates may be dis­closed, but their ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny may not be fully re­vealed.” We may, how­ever, in­form you that these Mas­ter Ar­chi­tects ex­ist in seven lev­els of the ab­so­nite. These seven groups are clas­si­fied as fol­lows:

• authors › mandated by Ancients of Days

31:10.22These thirty-one pa­pers de­pict­ing the na­ture of De­ity, the re­al­ity of Par­a­dise, the or­ga­ni­za­tion and work­ing of the cen­tral and super­uni­verses, the per­son­al­i­ties of the grand uni­verse, and the high des­tiny of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals, were spon­sored, for­mu­lated, and put into En­glish by a high com­mis­sion con­sist­ing of twenty-four Or­von­ton ad­min­is­tra­tors act­ing in ac­cor­dance with a man­date is­sued by the An­cients of Days of Uversa di­rect­ing that we should do this on Uran­tia, 606 of Sa­ta­nia, in Nor­la­ti­adek of Neb­a­don, in the year A.D. 1934.

• method use in writing › proceed from highest concepts

40:0.10These pre­sen­ta­tions be­gan with a de­scrip­tion of the De­i­ties, and group by group, the nar­ra­tive has de­scended the uni­ver­sal scale of liv­ing be­ings un­til it has reached the low­est or­der of life en­dowed with the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal­ity; and now am I dis­patched from Sal­ving­ton—one­time a mor­tal of ori­gin on an evo­lu­tion­ary world of space—to elab­o­rate and con­tinue the recital of the eter­nal pur­pose of the Gods re­spect­ing the as­cend­ing or­ders of son­ship, more par­tic­u­larly with re­gard to the mor­tal crea­tures of time and space.

• value of the Urantia Papers › eternal adventure should be supreme study

40:7.4These are the mor­tals who have been com­manded by the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.” The Fa­ther has be­stowed him­self upon you, placed his own spirit within you; there­fore does he de­mand ul­ti­mate per­fec­tion of you. The nar­ra­tive of hu­man as­cent from the mor­tal spheres of time to the di­vine realms of eter­nity con­sti­tutes an in­trigu­ing recital not in­cluded in my as­sign­ment, but this su­per­nal ad­ven­ture should be the su­preme study of mor­tal man.

• authors › could not perceive building in which U.P. were translated and recorded
• method use in writing › translation and recording

44:0.16I can­not, with ex­clu­sive spirit vi­sion, per­ceive the build­ing in which this nar­ra­tive is be­ing trans­lated and re­corded. A Di­vine Coun­selor from Uversa who chances to stand by my side per­ceives still less of these purely ma­te­rial cre­ations. We dis­cern how these ma­te­rial struc­tures ap­pear to you by view­ing a spirit coun­ter­part pre­sented to our minds by one of our at­tend­ing en­ergy trans­form­ers. This ma­te­rial build­ing is not ex­actly real to me, a spirit be­ing, but it is, of course, very real and very ser­vice­able to ma­te­rial mor­tals.

44:0.17There are cer­tain types of be­ings who are ca­pa­ble of dis­cern­ing the re­al­ity of the crea­tures of both the spirit and the ma­te­rial worlds. Be­long­ing to this class are the so-called fourth crea­tures of the Ha­vona Servi­tals and the fourth crea­tures of the con­cil­ia­tors. The an­gels of time and space are en­dowed with the abil­ity to dis­cern both spirit and ma­te­rial be­ings as also are the as­cend­ing mor­tals sub­se­quent to de­liv­er­ance from the life in the flesh. Af­ter at­tain­ment of the higher spirit lev­els the as­cend­ers are able to rec­og­nize ma­te­rial, mor­ontia, and spirit re­al­i­ties.

44:0.18There is also here with me a Mighty Mes­sen­ger from Uversa, an as­cen­dant Ad­juster-fused, one­time mor­tal be­ing, and he per­ceives you as you are, and at the same time he vi­su­al­izes the Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger, the super­na­phim, and other ce­les­tial be­ings pres­ent. Never in your long as­cen­dancy will you lose the power to rec­og­nize your as­so­ciates of for­mer ex­is­tences. Al­ways, as you as­cend in­ward in the scale of life, will you re­tain the abil­ity to rec­og­nize and frat­er­nize with the fel­low be­ings of your pre­vi­ous and lower lev­els of ex­pe­ri­ence. Each new trans­la­tion or res­ur­rec­tion will add one more group of spirit be­ings to your vi­sion range with­out in the least de­priv­ing you of the abil­ity to rec­og­nize your friends and fel­lows of for­mer es­tates.

• limitations of the U.P. › limited by planetary quarantine, system isolation

50:6.1The iso­la­tion of Uran­tia ren­ders it im­pos­si­ble to un­der­take the pre­sen­ta­tion of many de­tails of the life and en­vi­ron­ment of your Sa­ta­nia neigh­bors. In these pre­sen­ta­tions we are lim­ited by the plan­e­tary quar­an­tine and by the sys­tem iso­la­tion. We must be guided by these re­stric­tions in all our ef­forts to en­lighten Uran­tia mor­tals, but in so far as is per­mis­si­ble, you have been in­structed in the prog­ress of an av­er­age evo­lu­tion­ary world, and you are able to com­pare such a world’s ca­reer with the pres­ent state of Uran­tia.

• authors › acknowledgments by
• authors › Parts II and III sponsored by Nebadon Revelatory Corps

56:10.22[Pre­sented by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger vis­it­ing on Uran­tia, by re­quest of the Neb­a­don Rev­e­la­tory Corps and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a cer­tain Mel­chiz­e­dek, the vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia.]

56:10.23This pa­per on Uni­ver­sal Unity is the twenty-fifth of a se­ries of pre­sen­ta­tions by var­i­ous au­thors, hav­ing been spon­sored as a group by a com­mis­sion of Neb­a­don per­son­al­i­ties num­ber­ing twelve and act­ing un­der the di­rec­tion of Man­tu­tia Mel­chiz­e­dek. We in­dited these nar­ra­tives and put them in the En­glish lan­guage, by a tech­nique au­tho­rized by our su­pe­ri­ors, in the year 1934 of Uran­tia time.

• method use in writing › early history taken from Jerusem archives

57:0.1In pre­sent­ing ex­cerpts from the ar­chives of Je­ru­sem for the rec­ords of Uran­tia re­spect­ing its an­tecedents and early his­tory, we are di­rected to reckon time in terms of cur­rent us­age—the pres­ent leap-year cal­en­dar of 365¼ days to the year. As a rule, no at­tempt will be made to give ex­act years, though they are of rec­ord. We will use the near­est whole num­bers as the bet­ter method of pre­sent­ing these his­toric facts.

• contact personality for the Urantia Papers › midwayers employed

77:8.83. Con­tact per­son­al­i­ties. In the con­tacts made with the mor­tal be­ings of the ma­te­rial worlds, such as with the sub­ject through whom these com­mu­ni­ca­tions were trans­mit­ted, the mid­way crea­tures are al­ways em­ployed. They are an es­sen­tial fac­tor in such li­aisons of the spir­i­tual and the ma­te­rial lev­els.

• authors › secondary midwayers initiated U.P.

77:8.13Their chief work to­day is that of un­per­ceived per­sonal-li­ai­son as­so­ciates of those men and women who con­sti­tute the plan­e­tary re­serve corps of des­tiny. It was the work of this sec­ondary group, ably sec­onded by cer­tain of the pri­mary corps, that brought about the co-or­di­na­tion of per­son­al­i­ties and cir­cum­stances on Uran­tia which fi­nally in­duced the plan­e­tary ce­les­tial super­vi­sors to ini­ti­ate those pe­ti­tions that re­sulted in the grant­ing of the man­dates mak­ing pos­si­ble the se­ries of rev­e­la­tions of which this pre­sen­ta­tion is a part. But it should be made clear that the mid­way crea­tures are not in­volved in the sor­did per­for­mances tak­ing place un­der the gen­eral des­ig­na­tion of “spir­i­tu­al­ism.” The mid­way­ers at pres­ent on Uran­tia, all of whom are of hon­or­able stand­ing, are not con­nected with the phe­nom­ena of so-called “medi­umship”; and they do not, or­di­nar­ily, per­mit hu­mans to wit­ness their some­times nec­es­sary phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties or other con­tacts with the ma­te­rial world, as they are per­ceived by hu­man senses.

• authors › midwayers contributed story of Jesus’ life

77:9.9The mid­way cul­ture, be­ing the prod­uct of an im­mor­tal plan­e­tary cit­i­zenry, is rel­a­tively im­mune to those tem­po­ral vi­cis­si­tudes which be­set hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. The gen­er­a­tions of men for­get; the corps of mid­way­ers re­mem­bers, and that mem­ory is the trea­sure house of the tra­di­tions of your in­hab­ited world. Thus does the cul­ture of a planet re­main ever pres­ent on that planet, and in proper cir­cum­stances such trea­sured mem­o­ries of past events are made avail­able, even as the story of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus has been given by the mid­way­ers of Uran­tia to their cousins in the flesh.

• authors › book is composite presentation by many beings
• value of the Urantia Papers › is 5th epochal revelation, most recent presentation of truth

92:4.95. The Uran­tia Pa­pers. The pa­pers, of which this is one, con­sti­tute the most re­cent pre­sen­ta­tion of truth to the mor­tals of Uran­tia. These pa­pers dif­fer from all pre­vi­ous rev­e­la­tions, for they are not the work of a sin­gle uni­verse per­son­al­ity but a com­pos­ite pre­sen­ta­tion by many be­ings. But 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.

• limitations of the U.P. › cosmology not inspired

101:4.1Be­cause your world is gen­er­ally ig­no­rant of ori­gins, even of phys­i­cal ori­gins, it has ap­peared to be wise from time to time to pro­vide in­struc­tion in cos­mol­ogy. And al­ways has this made trou­ble for the fu­ture. The laws of rev­e­la­tion ham­per us greatly by their pro­scrip­tion of the im­par­ta­tion of un­earned or pre­ma­ture knowl­edge. Any cos­mol­ogy pre­sented as a part of re­vealed re­li­gion is des­tined to be out­grown in a very short time. Ac­cord­ingly, fu­ture stu­dents of such a rev­e­la­tion are tempted to dis­card any el­e­ment of gen­uine re­li­gious truth it may con­tain be­cause they dis­cover er­rors on the face of the as­so­ci­ated cos­molo­gies therein pre­sented.

• limitations of the U.P. › historical facts accurate, but scientific discoveries not anticipated

101:4.2Man­kind should un­der­stand that we who par­tic­i­pate in the rev­e­la­tion of truth are very rig­or­ously lim­ited by the in­struc­tions of our su­pe­ri­ors. We are not at lib­erty to an­tic­i­pate the sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies of a thou­sand years. Rev­e­la­tors must act in ac­cor­dance with the in­struc­tions which form a part of the rev­e­la­tion man­date. We see no way of over­com­ing this dif­fi­culty, ei­ther now or at any fu­ture time. We full well know that, while the his­toric facts and re­li­gious truths of this se­ries of rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tions will stand on the rec­ords of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our state­ments re­gard­ing the phys­i­cal sci­ences will stand in need of re­vi­sion in con­se­quence of ad­di­tional sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments and new dis­cov­er­ies. These new de­vel­op­ments we even now fore­see, but we are for­bid­den to in­clude such hu­manly undis­cov­ered facts in the rev­e­la­tory rec­ords. Let it be made clear that rev­e­la­tions are not nec­es­sar­ily in­spired. The cos­mol­ogy of these rev­e­la­tions is not in­spired. It is lim­ited by our per­mis­sion for the co-or­di­na­tion and sort­ing of pres­ent-day knowl­edge. While di­vine or spir­i­tual in­sight is a gift, hu­man wis­dom must evolve.

• value of the Urantia Papers › first revelation of Trinity since times of Jesus

104:1.13Not since the times of Je­sus has the fac­tual iden­tity of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity been known on Uran­tia (ex­cept by a few in­di­vid­u­als to whom it was es­pe­cially re­vealed) un­til its pre­sen­ta­tion in these rev­e­la­tory dis­clo­sures. But though the Chris­tian con­cept of the Trin­ity erred in fact, it was prac­ti­cally true with re­spect to spir­i­tual re­la­tion­ships. Only in its philo­sophic im­pli­ca­tions and cos­mo­log­i­cal con­se­quences did this con­cept suf­fer em­bar­rass­ment: It has been dif­fi­cult for many who are cos­mic minded to be­lieve that the Sec­ond Per­son of De­ity, the sec­ond mem­ber of an in­fi­nite Trin­ity, once dwelt on Uran­tia; and while in spirit this is true, in ac­tu­al­ity it is not a fact. The Mi­chael Cre­ators fully em­body the di­vin­ity of the Eter­nal Son, but they are not the ab­so­lute per­son­al­ity.

• contact personality for the Urantia Papers › almost complete indifference to outward Adjuster manifestations

110:5.7The Ad­juster of the hu­man be­ing through whom this com­mu­ni­ca­tion is be­ing made en­joys such a wide scope of ac­tiv­ity chiefly be­cause of this hu­man’s al­most com­plete in­dif­fer­ence to any out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Ad­juster’s in­ner pres­ence; it is in­deed for­tu­nate that he re­mains con­sciously quite un­con­cerned about the en­tire pro­ce­dure. He holds one of the highly ex­pe­ri­enced Ad­justers of his day and gen­er­a­tion, and yet his pas­sive re­ac­tion to, and in­ac­tive con­cern to­ward, the phe­nom­ena as­so­ci­ated with the pres­ence in his mind of this ver­sa­tile Ad­juster is pro­nounced by the guard­ian of des­tiny to be a rare and for­tu­itous re­ac­tion. And all this con­sti­tutes a fa­vor­able co-or­di­na­tion of in­flu­ences, fa­vor­able both to the Ad­juster in the higher sphere of ac­tion and to the hu­man part­ner from the stand­points of health, ef­fi­ciency, and tran­quil­lity.

• contact personality for the Urantia Papers › destiny guardian’s number

113:2.6All ser­a­phim have in­di­vid­ual names, but in the rec­ords of as­sign­ment to world ser­vice they are fre­quently des­ig­nated by their plan­e­tary num­bers. At the uni­verse head­quar­ters they are reg­is­tered by name and num­ber. The des­tiny guard­ian of the hu­man sub­ject used in this con­tac­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion is num­ber 3 of group 17, of com­pany 126, of bat­tal­ion 4, of unit 384, of le­gion 6, of host 37, of the 182,314^th se­raphic army of Neb­a­don. The cur­rent plan­e­tary as­sign­ment num­ber of this ser­a­phim on Uran­tia and to this hu­man sub­ject is 3,641,852.

• contact personality for the Urantia Papers › midwayers employed

114:7.9On many worlds the bet­ter adapted sec­ondary mid­way crea­tures are able to at­tain vary­ing de­grees of con­tact with the Thought Ad­justers of cer­tain fa­vor­ably con­sti­tuted mor­tals through the skill­ful pen­e­tra­tion of the minds of the lat­ters’ in­dwelling. (And it was by just such a for­tu­itous com­bi­na­tion of cos­mic ad­just­ments that these rev­e­la­tions were ma­te­ri­al­ized in the En­glish lan­guage on Uran­tia.) Such po­ten­tial con­tact mor­tals of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are mo­bi­lized in the nu­mer­ous re­serve corps, and it is, to a cer­tain ex­tent, through these small groups of for­ward-look­ing per­son­al­i­ties that spir­i­tual civ­i­liza­tion is ad­vanced and the Most Highs are able to rule in the king­doms of men. The men and women of these re­serve corps of des­tiny thus have var­i­ous de­grees of con­tact with their Ad­justers through the in­ter­ven­ing min­istry of the mid­way crea­tures; but these same mor­tals are lit­tle known to their fel­lows ex­cept in those rare so­cial emer­gen­cies and spir­i­tual ex­i­gen­cies wherein these re­serve per­son­al­i­ties func­tion for the pre­ven­tion of the break­down of evo­lu­tion­ary cul­ture or the ex­tinc­tion of the light of liv­ing truth. On Uran­tia these re­servists of des­tiny have sel­dom been em­bla­zoned on the pages of hu­man his­tory.

• authors › acknowledgments by

121:0.1Act­ing un­der the super­vi­sion of a com­mis­sion of twelve mem­bers of the United Broth­er­hood of Uran­tia Mid­way­ers, con­jointly spon­sored by the pre­sid­ing head of our or­der and the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, I am the sec­ondary mid­wayer of one­time at­tach­ment to the Apos­tle An­drew, and I am au­tho­rized to place on rec­ord the nar­ra­tive of the life trans­ac­tions of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as they were ob­served by my or­der of earth crea­tures, and as they were sub­se­quently par­tially re­corded by the hu­man sub­ject of my tem­po­ral guardian­ship. Know­ing how his Mas­ter so scrupu­lously avoided leav­ing writ­ten rec­ords be­hind him, An­drew stead­fastly re­fused to mul­ti­ply copies of his writ­ten nar­ra­tive. A sim­i­lar at­ti­tude on the part of the other apos­tles of Je­sus greatly de­layed the writ­ing of the Gospels.

• gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John used in Part IV
• method use in writing › preference given to highest existing human concepts; modern phraseology

121:8.1As far as pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with our man­date, we have en­deav­ored to uti­lize and to some ex­tent co-or­di­nate the ex­ist­ing rec­ords hav­ing to do with the life of Je­sus on Uran­tia. Al­though we have en­joyed ac­cess to the lost rec­ord of the Apos­tle An­drew and have ben­e­fited from the col­lab­o­ra­tion of a vast host of ce­les­tial be­ings who were on earth dur­ing the times of Mi­chael’s be­stowal (no­tably his now Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster), it has been our pur­pose also to make use of the so-called Gospels of Mat­thew, Mark, Luke, and John.

• authors › acknowledgments by
• method use in writing › preference given to highest existing human concepts; modern phraseology

121:8.12[Ac­knowl­edg­ment: In car­ry­ing out my com­mis­sion to re­state the teach­ings and retell the do­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, I have drawn freely upon all sources of rec­ord and plan­e­tary in­for­ma­tion. My rul­ing mo­tive has been to pre­pare a rec­ord which will not only be en­light­en­ing to the gen­er­a­tion of men now liv­ing, but which may also be help­ful to all fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. From the vast store of in­for­ma­tion made avail­able to me, I have cho­sen that which is best suited to the ac­com­plish­ment of this pur­pose. As far as pos­si­ble I have de­rived my in­for­ma­tion from purely hu­man sources. Only when such sources failed, have I re­sorted to those rec­ords which are super­hu­man. When ideas and con­cepts of Je­sus’ life and teach­ings have been ac­cept­ably ex­pressed by a hu­man mind, I in­vari­ably gave pref­er­ence to such ap­par­ently hu­man thought pat­terns. Al­though I have sought to ad­just the ver­bal ex­pres­sion the bet­ter to con­form to our con­cept of the real mean­ing and the true im­port of the Mas­ter’s life and teach­ings, as far as pos­si­ble, I have ad­hered to the ac­tual hu­man con­cept and thought pat­tern in all my nar­ra­tives. I well know that those con­cepts which have had ori­gin in the hu­man mind will prove more ac­cept­able and help­ful to all other hu­man minds. When un­able to find the nec­es­sary con­cepts in the hu­man rec­ords or in hu­man ex­pres­sions, I have next re­sorted to the mem­ory re­sources of my own or­der of earth crea­tures, the mid­way­ers. And when that sec­ondary source of in­for­ma­tion proved in­ad­e­quate, I have un­hesi­tat­ingly re­sorted to the super­plan­e­tary sources of in­for­ma­tion.

121:8.13The mem­o­randa which I have col­lected, and from which I have pre­pared this nar­ra­tive of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus—aside from the mem­ory of the rec­ord of the Apos­tle An­drew—em­brace thought gems and su­pe­rior con­cepts of Je­sus’ teach­ings as­sem­bled from more than two thou­sand hu­man be­ings who have lived on earth from the days of Je­sus down to the time of the in­dit­ing of these rev­e­la­tions, more cor­rectly re­state­ments. The rev­e­la­tory per­mis­sion has been uti­lized only when the hu­man rec­ord and hu­man con­cepts failed to sup­ply an ad­e­quate thought pat­tern. My rev­e­la­tory com­mis­sion for­bade me to re­sort to ex­trahu­man sources of ei­ther in­for­ma­tion or ex­pres­sion un­til such a time as I could tes­tify that I had failed in my ef­forts to find the re­quired con­cep­tual ex­pres­sion in purely hu­man sources.

121:8.14While I, with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of my eleven as­so­ciate fel­low mid­way­ers and un­der the super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, have por­trayed this nar­ra­tive in ac­cor­dance with my con­cept of its ef­fec­tive ar­range­ment and in re­sponse to my choice of im­me­di­ate ex­pres­sion, nev­er­the­less, the ma­jor­ity of the ideas and even some of the ef­fec­tive ex­pres­sions which I have thus uti­lized had their ori­gin in the minds of the men of many races who have lived on earth dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing gen­er­a­tions, right on down to those who are still alive at the time of this un­der­tak­ing. In many ways I have served more as a col­lec­tor and ed­i­tor than as an orig­i­nal nar­ra­tor. I have un­hesi­tat­ingly ap­pro­pri­ated those ideas and con­cepts, prefer­ably hu­man, which would en­able me to cre­ate the most ef­fec­tive por­trai­ture of Je­sus’ life, and which would qual­ify me to re­state his match­less teach­ings in the most strik­ingly help­ful and uni­ver­sally up­lift­ing phrase­ol­ogy. In be­half of the Broth­er­hood of the United Mid­way­ers of Uran­tia, I most grate­fully ac­knowl­edge our in­debt­ed­ness to all sources of rec­ord and con­cept which have been here­inafter uti­lized in the fur­ther elab­o­ra­tion of our re­state­ment of Je­sus’ life on earth.]

• method use in writing › present-day calendar used

126:3.1By the mid­dle of this fif­teenth year—and we are reck­on­ing time in ac­cor­dance with the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury cal­en­dar, not by the Jew­ish year—Je­sus had taken a firm grasp upon the man­age­ment of his fam­ily. Be­fore this year had passed, their sav­ings had about dis­ap­peared, and they were face to face with the ne­ces­sity of dis­pos­ing of one of the Naz­a­reth houses which Joseph and his neigh­bor Ja­cob owned in part­ner­ship.

• method use in writing › preference given to highest existing human concepts; modern phraseology

130:1.4(In this nar­ra­tive of the per­sonal work of Je­sus with his fel­low mor­tals on this tour of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, we shall, in ac­cor­dance with our per­mis­sion, freely trans­late his words into mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy cur­rent on Uran­tia at the time of this pre­sen­ta­tion.)

• authors › disagreement regarding Urmia lectures

134:3.8[When we, the mid­way­ers, first pre­pared the sum­mary of Je­sus’ teach­ings at Ur­mia, there arose a dis­agree­ment be­tween the ser­a­phim of the churches and the ser­a­phim of prog­ress as to the wis­dom of in­clud­ing these teach­ings in the Uran­tia Rev­e­la­tion. Con­di­tions of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, pre­vail­ing in both re­li­gion and hu­man gov­ern­ments, are so dif­fer­ent from those pre­vail­ing in Je­sus’ day that it was in­deed dif­fi­cult to adapt the Mas­ter’s teach­ings at Ur­mia to the prob­lems of the king­dom of God and the king­doms of men as these world func­tions are ex­is­tent in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. We were never able to for­mu­late a state­ment of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings which was ac­cept­able to both groups of these ser­a­phim of plan­e­tary gov­ern­ment. Fi­nally, the Mel­chiz­e­dek chair­man of the rev­e­la­tory com­mis­sion ap­pointed a com­mis­sion of three of our num­ber to pre­pare our view of the Mas­ter’s Ur­mia teach­ings as adapted to twen­ti­eth-cen­tury re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal con­di­tions on Uran­tia. Ac­cord­ingly, we three sec­ondary mid­way­ers com­pleted such an adap­ta­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ings, re­stat­ing his pro­nounce­ments as we would ap­ply them to pres­ent-day world con­di­tions, and we now pre­sent these state­ments as they stand af­ter hav­ing been edited by the Mel­chiz­e­dek chair­man of the rev­e­la­tory com­mis­sion.]

• value of the Urantia Papers › hour is striking for rediscovery of real life and teachings of Jesus

170:5.19Sooner or later an­other and greater John the Bap­tist is due to arise pro­claim­ing “the king­dom of God is at hand”—mean­ing a re­turn to the high spir­i­tual con­cept of Je­sus, who pro­claimed that the king­dom is the will of his heav­enly Fa­ther dom­i­nant and tran­scen­dent in the heart of the be­liever—and do­ing all this with­out in any way re­fer­ring ei­ther to the vis­i­ble church on earth or to the an­tic­i­pated sec­ond com­ing of Christ. There must come a re­vival of the ac­tual teach­ings of Je­sus, such a re­state­ment as will undo the work of his early fol­low­ers who went about to cre­ate a so­cio­philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem of be­lief re­gard­ing the fact of Mi­chael’s so­journ on earth. In a short time the teach­ing of this story about Je­sus nearly sup­planted the preach­ing of Je­sus’ gospel of the king­dom. In this way a his­tor­i­cal re­li­gion dis­placed that teach­ing in which Je­sus had blended man’s high­est moral ideas and spir­i­tual ide­als with man’s most sub­lime hope for the fu­ture—eter­nal life. And that was the gospel of the king­dom.

• value of the Urantia Papers › before printing, Master’s teaching misinterpreted

180:2.4But great sor­row later at­tended the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s in­fer­ences re­gard­ing prayer. There would have been lit­tle dif­fi­culty about these teach­ings if his ex­act words had been re­mem­bered and sub­se­quently truth­fully re­corded. But as the rec­ord was made, be­liev­ers even­tu­ally re­garded prayer in Je­sus’ name as a sort of su­preme magic, think­ing that they would re­ceive from the Fa­ther any­thing they asked for. For cen­turies hon­est souls have con­tin­ued to wreck their faith against this stum­bling block. How long will it take the world of be­liev­ers to un­der­stand that prayer is not a pro­cess of get­ting your way but rather a pro­gram of tak­ing God’s way, an ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to rec­og­nize and ex­e­cute the Fa­ther’s will? It is en­tirely true that, when your will has been truly aligned with his, you can ask any­thing con­ceived by that will-union, and it will be granted. And such a will-union is ef­fected by and through Je­sus even as the life of the vine flows into and through the liv­ing branches.

• value of the Urantia Papers › recital of events by those who saw what occurred

189:3.5And this is the recital of the events of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus as viewed by those who saw them as they re­ally oc­curred, free from the lim­i­ta­tions of par­tial and re­stricted hu­man vi­sion.

• method use in writing › proclaim whole truth of gospel, not just part

193:0.4“I ad­mon­ish you ever to re­mem­ber that your mis­sion among men is to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom—the re­al­ity of the fa­ther­hood of God and the truth of the son­ship of man. Pro­claim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the sav­ing gospel. Your mes­sage is not changed by my res­ur­rec­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. Son­ship with God, by faith, is still the sav­ing truth of the gospel of the king­dom. You are to go forth preach­ing the love of God and the ser­vice of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can ac­tu­ally re­al­ize, and daily ex­pe­ri­ence, this en­nobling truth. My be­stowal should help all men to know that they are the chil­dren of God, but such knowl­edge will not suf­fice if they fail per­son­ally to faith-grasp the sav­ing truth that they are the liv­ing spirit sons of the eter­nal Fa­ther. The gospel of the king­dom is con­cerned with the love of the Fa­ther and the ser­vice of his chil­dren on earth.

• value of the Urantia Papers › great hope for Urantia lies in new revelation of Jesus

195:9.2But pa­ganized and so­cial­ized Chris­tian­ity stands in need of new con­tact with the un­com­pro­mised teach­ings of Je­sus; it lan­guishes for lack of a new vi­sion of the Mas­ter’s life on earth. A new and fuller rev­e­la­tion of the re­li­gion of Je­sus is des­tined to con­quer an em­pire of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic sec­u­lar­ism and to over­throw a world sway of mech­a­nis­tic nat­u­ral­ism. Uran­tia is now quiv­er­ing on the very brink of one of its most amaz­ing and en­thralling epochs of so­cial read­just­ment, moral quick­en­ing, and spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment.

• value of the Urantia Papers › hour is striking for rediscovery of real life and teachings of Jesus

195:9.5The mod­ern age will refuse to ac­cept a re­li­gion which is in­con­sis­tent with facts and out of har­mony with its high­est con­cep­tions of truth, beauty, and good­ness. The hour is strik­ing for a re­dis­cov­ery of the true and orig­i­nal foun­da­tions of pres­ent-day dis­torted and com­pro­mised Chris­tian­ity—the real life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

195:9.6Prim­i­tive man lived a life of su­per­sti­tious bond­age to re­li­gious fear. Mod­ern, civ­i­lized men dread the thought of falling un­der the dom­i­nance of strong re­li­gious con­vic­tions. Think­ing man has al­ways feared to be held by a re­li­gion. When a strong and mov­ing re­li­gion threat­ens to dom­i­nate him, he in­vari­ably tries to ra­tio­nal­ize, tra­di­tion­al­ize, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ize it, thereby hop­ing to gain con­trol of it. By such pro­ce­dure, even a re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes man-made and man-dom­i­nated. Mod­ern men and women of in­tel­li­gence evade the re­li­gion of Je­sus be­cause of their fears of what it will do to them—and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does, in­deed, dom­i­nate and trans­form its be­liev­ers, de­mand­ing that men ded­i­cate their lives to seek­ing for a knowl­edge of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven and re­quir­ing that the en­er­gies of liv­ing be con­se­crated to the un­selfish ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man.

195:9.7Self­ish men and women sim­ply will not pay such a price for even the great­est spir­i­tual trea­sure ever of­fered mor­tal man. Only when man has be­come suf­fi­ciently dis­il­lu­sioned by the sor­row­ful dis­ap­point­ments at­ten­dant upon the fool­ish and de­cep­tive pur­suits of self­ish­ness, and sub­se­quent to the dis­cov­ery of the bar­ren­ness of for­mal­ized re­li­gion, will he be dis­posed to turn whole­heart­edly to the gospel of the king­dom, the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

195:9.8The world needs more first­hand re­li­gion. Even Chris­tian­ity—the best of the re­li­gions of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury—is not only a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but it is so largely one which men ex­pe­ri­ence sec­ond­hand. They take their re­li­gion wholly as handed down by their ac­cepted re­li­gious teach­ers. What an awak­en­ing the world would ex­pe­ri­ence if it could only see Je­sus as he re­ally lived on earth and know, first­hand, his life-giv­ing teach­ings! De­scrip­tive words of things beau­ti­ful can­not thrill like the sight thereof, nei­ther can creedal words in­spire men’s souls like the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing the pres­ence of God. But ex­pec­tant faith will ever keep the hope-door of man’s soul open for the en­trance of the eter­nal spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the di­vine val­ues of the worlds be­yond.

• value of the Urantia Papers › great hope for Urantia lies in new revelation of Jesus

195:10.1Chris­tian­ity has in­deed done a great ser­vice for this world, but what is now most needed is Je­sus. The world needs to see Je­sus liv­ing again on earth in the ex­pe­ri­ence of spirit-born mor­tals who ef­fec­tively re­veal the Mas­ter to all men. It is fu­tile to talk about a re­vival of prim­i­tive Chris­tian­ity; you must go for­ward from where you find your­selves. Mod­ern cul­ture must be­come spir­i­tu­ally bap­tized with a new rev­e­la­tion of Je­sus’ life and il­lu­mi­nated with a new un­der­stand­ing of his gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion. And when Je­sus be­comes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to him­self. Je­sus’ dis­ci­ples should be more than con­querors, even over­flow­ing sources of in­spi­ra­tion and en­hanced liv­ing to all men. Re­li­gion is only an ex­alted hu­man­ism un­til it is made di­vine by the dis­cov­ery of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God in per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• value of the Urantia Papers › great hope for Urantia lies in new revelation of Jesus

195:10.16The great hope of Uran­tia lies in the pos­si­bil­ity of a new rev­e­la­tion of Je­sus with a new and en­larged pre­sen­ta­tion of his sav­ing mes­sage which would spir­i­tu­ally unite in lov­ing ser­vice the nu­mer­ous fam­i­lies of his pres­ent-day pro­fessed fol­low­ers.

• value of the Urantia Papers › great hope for Urantia lies in new revelation of Jesus

195:10.18Chris­tian­ity is an ex­tem­po­rized re­li­gion, and there­fore must it op­er­ate in low gear. High-gear spir­i­tual per­for­mances must await the new rev­e­la­tion and the more gen­eral ac­cep­tance of the real re­li­gion of Je­sus. But Chris­tian­ity is a mighty re­li­gion, see­ing that the com­mon­place dis­ci­ples of a cru­ci­fied car­pen­ter set in mo­tion those teach­ings which con­quered the Ro­man world in three hun­dred years and then went on to tri­umph over the bar­bar­ians who over­threw Rome. This same Chris­tian­ity con­quered—ab­sorbed and ex­alted—the whole stream of He­brew the­ol­ogy and Greek phi­los­o­phy. And then, when this Chris­tian re­li­gion be­came co­matose for more than a thou­sand years as a re­sult of an over­dose of mys­ter­ies and pa­gan­ism, it res­ur­rected it­self and vir­tu­ally re­con­quered the whole West­ern world. Chris­tian­ity con­tains enough of Je­sus’ teach­ings to im­mor­tal­ize it.

• value of the Urantia Papers › would present living Jesus to church that bears his name, and to all other religions

196:1.2The time is ripe to wit­ness the fig­u­ra­tive res­ur­rec­tion of the hu­man Je­sus from his burial tomb amidst the the­o­log­i­cal tra­di­tions and the re­li­gious dog­mas of nine­teen cen­turies. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth must not be longer sac­ri­ficed to even the splen­did con­cept of the glo­ri­fied Christ. What a tran­scen­dent ser­vice if, through this rev­e­la­tion, the Son of Man should be re­cov­ered from the tomb of tra­di­tional the­ol­ogy and be pre­sented as the liv­ing Je­sus to the church that bears his name, and to all other re­li­gions! Surely the Chris­tian fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers will not hes­i­tate to make such ad­just­ments of faith and of prac­tices of liv­ing as will en­able it to “fol­low af­ter” the Mas­ter in the dem­on­stra­tion of his real life of re­li­gious de­vo­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and of con­se­cra­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of man. Do pro­fessed Chris­tians fear the ex­po­sure of a self-suf­fi­cient and un­con­se­crated fel­low­ship of so­cial re­spectabil­ity and self­ish eco­nomic mal­ad­just­ment? Does in­sti­tu­tional Chris­tian­ity fear the pos­si­ble jeop­ardy, or even the over­throw, of tra­di­tional ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity if the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee is re­in­stated in the minds and souls of mor­tal men as the ideal of per­sonal re­li­gious liv­ing? In­deed, the so­cial read­just­ments, the eco­nomic trans­for­ma­tions, the moral re­ju­ve­na­tions, and the re­li­gious re­vi­sions of Chris­tian civ­i­liza­tion would be dras­tic and rev­o­lu­tion­ary if the liv­ing re­li­gion of Je­sus should sud­denly sup­plant the the­o­logic re­li­gion about Je­sus.

• value of the Urantia Papers › hour is striking for rediscovery of real life and teachings of Jesus

196:1.3To “fol­low Je­sus” means to per­son­ally share his re­li­gious faith and to en­ter into the spirit of the Mas­ter’s life of un­selfish ser­vice for man. One of the most im­por­tant things in hu­man liv­ing is to find out what Je­sus be­lieved, to dis­cover his ide­als, and to strive for the achieve­ment of his ex­alted life pur­pose. Of all hu­man knowl­edge, that which is of great­est value is to know the re­li­gious life of Je­sus and how he lived it.

196:1.4The com­mon peo­ple heard Je­sus gladly, and they will again re­spond to the pre­sen­ta­tion of his sin­cere hu­man life of con­se­crated re­li­gious mo­ti­va­tion if such truths shall again be pro­claimed to the world. The peo­ple heard him gladly be­cause he was one of them, an un­pre­ten­tious lay­man; the world’s great­est re­li­gious teacher was in­deed a lay­man.