The Purpose and Limitations of the 5th Epochal Revelation.


      On arriving on Urantia for the 3rd Epochal Revelation, its purveyor announced, "I am Melchizedek, priest of El Elyon, the Most High, the one and only God." His mandate--to keep alive the truth of the one God and prepare the way for the bestowal of Michael. (1018)

     The purpose of the
4th Epochal Revelation is given to us in many places in The Urantia Book (1635,  1675) the supreme purpose being, "never lose sight of the fact that the supreme spiritual purpose of the Michael bestowal was to enhance the revelation of God." (1331)

     We are left in no doubt on how this is to be accomplished, "
The nature of God can best be understood by the revelation of the Father which Michael of Nebadon unfolded in his manifold teachings and in his superb mortal life in the flesh." (33)

     No matter how effective we think the 4th Epochal Revelation may have been, the fact remains that the record available to us in the New Testament is both meagre and flawed. According to a recent study of the three synoptic gospels and the gospel of Thomas, it is doubtful if more than about fifteen percent of the material attributed to Jesus is his actual word--an amount that would be contained in less than ten pages of
The Urantia Book. In contrast, the book devotes almost one third of its 2000 pages to the life and teachings of Jesus. Several hundred more pages provide further information that enhances the revelation of the Father. It requires no great feat of logic to postulate that a major purpose of The Urantia Book is to complete the missions of the 3rd and 4th Epochal Revelations.

     All the successful generals of history were keenly aware that to choose a wrong strategy or to divert from the primary aim of a mission is likely to abort its main purpose. So one thing we readers must decide for ourselves is how we, as individuals, might figure in fulfilling the main purpose of the book.

     At Pentecost, the mission of spreading Jesus' teachings about the Father was bestowed upon a handful of his followers. During the next fifty years they were so successful that the mighty Roman Empire actually felt itself threatened by this ragtail band of Jesus' disciples. Few of them were literate. In any case, they had no written records of the life or teachings of Jesus. How then did they accomplish their task? Perhaps the secret is contained in one of  the earliest recorded remarks about them, "
See these Christians, how they love one another!"

     To what strategy did the early Christians owe their success? At the last supper, Jesus gave his apostles a new commandment: "
Love one another as I have loved you. And by this will all men know that you are my disciples." (1944) Jesus elaborated on this instruction in his farewell discourse--summed briefly as: "Herein is the Father glorified: that the vine has many living branches, and that every branch bears much fruit. And when the world sees these fruit-bearing branches--my friends who love one another, even as I have loved them--all men will know that you are truly my disciples." (1945) Essentially Jesus told his followers that the message to be spread was his revelation of the nature of the Father and that it would be in and by their lives that this would be achieved.

    One of the main hindrances to the spreading of the message of the 3rd and 4th Epochal Revelations was attitudinal. A false strategy lies in the concept that it is a static codification of teachings that needs to be spread rather than the living truth about the nature of God. No matter how long we have been readers of the book, no matter how many times we have read its content, no matter how well we can quote from the book, if people do not perceive that our lives and our purpose in living has been radically changed from our old ways to the new and singular purpose of displaying God's love in our own lives, then the book tells us that
we are as useless branches on the living vine, fit only for pruning. (2054)

     There are many different ways that we might perceive the role
The Urantia Book should have in the task "of changing the relation of man to God that constitutes the mission of the Son of Man on earth." (1675). One is that the book, by itself, will do the work. Forty years of experience indicates that this will not be so. So what alternatives are there?

     When we first get the book, since its source is from extra-terrestrial beings, many of us soon embrace it as totally divine revelation. And just as the Bible, the Koran, and other 'holy' books have been endowed with divine authority by their adherents, so has the divine dictation theory been applied to
The Urantia Book in varying degree. That it is revelatory, most readers agree. That it is totally revelatory, the book itself denies. The book contains a considerable amount of what it calls cosmology and it tells us that statements with reference to cosmology are never inspired, with the consequence that the discovery of error therein may lead to the discarding of genuine religious truth. (1109)

     Human history demonstrates that fundamentalist attitudes will inevitably develop about any book taken to be divinely authoritarian. It is indeed unfortunate that so many mortals feel the need for total certainty, a creed to believe without question, a set of rules to follow rigorously. Jesus described such people as: "
those timid, fearful, and hesitant individuals who will prefer thus to secure their religious consolations, even though, in so casting their lot with the religions of authority, they compromise the sovereignty of personality, debase the

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