More about Secondary Works

Elizabeth Mitchell, Sunshine Coast, Australia


    The first issue of Innerface contained an article from the Sunshine Coast Study Group citing references from The Urantia Book indicating that the revelators had the expectation of secondary works becoming a major means of disseminating its message. One of these eagerly anticipated the time when "the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the churches that bear his name". (2090)

    One of our editors, Ken Glasziou, has joined in with the endeavors of other creators of secondary works who are attempting to get the ball rolling. Ken has written a fictional adventure story in order to portray the progressive evolution in Jesus' mind of his revolutionary concepts concerning the true nature of Yahweh, the traditional God of his people. The story is not aimed at Urantia Book readers but rather at introducing mainstream Christianity to a vital part of the message contained in the book.

    At the time of Jesus, the prevailing Jewish view was about a God who kept his people in line by rewarding righteousness and punishing divergence therefrom. For such as the Pharisees, righteousness had come to mean upholding the 613 rules of the Torah, many of which were concerned with tithing, with rules about keeping the Sabbath, and with what was, and what was not "unclean." Health and wealth were accepted as signs of finding favor with Yahweh. Misfortune was due to the anger of Yahweh, not necessarily due to one's own sins, but possibly the sins of  associates. Yahweh was one who sometimes punished the whole nation for the sins of a single individual. Belief in a life after death was a view not widely held. Yahweh was not so much a God of the individual as a racial God. Such was the conventional wisdom of the social world into which Jesus of Nazareth was born. Unfortunately, it also contaminated the new gospel of the Fourth Epochal Revelation.

    The story of the life of Jesus in Part 4 of The Urantia Book describes the emergence into the consciousness of the child Jesus, a vision of God as a loving heavenly Father with whom he could commune on a personal basis. It tells us that Jesus conceived the central purpose of his earthly life was to do the will of his Father. He saw the Father as being holy, just, and great, true, beautiful, and good, and these attributes of God he saw as being the will of God for him. (2087)

    One modern day theologian has commented that, for Jesus, reality was a gracious and compassionate God. Add to that the concept of a loving Father whose spirit indwells his earthly children and we have a prescription for "recovering the Son of Man from the tomb of traditional theology and presenting the living Jesus to the churches." The manner advocated in The Urantia Book for achieving such an end is to refrain from taking something out of the hearts of those who seek salvation, but rather to labor to put something in. (1592) This requires the positive method of not attacking perceived error but permitting truth to displace error.
"You are not to attack the old ways; you are skillfully to put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old beliefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work." (1932)

    Ken has followed these criteria in his book. To comply with publishers' criteria concerning copyright, he had to avoid using direct quotations that are original to The Urantia Book. Wherever possible, his story uses relevant biblical material that would be familiar to church-going Christians. The central theme of the book is the evolution of  Jesus' concepts about the nature of the heavenly Father, as it unfolds during incidents of his early life. The travels of Jesus as described in this book, parallel, but are not the same as, those described in The Urantia Book. The incidents used to illustrate the theme also differ. They are presented as an effort by Jesus to create a  population  in cities throughout the Mediterranean likely to be receptive to the later missionary endeavors of Paul. The story includes some adventurous escapades with horse thieves and pirates in order to promote reader interest.

   People who have read the book rate it as having a reasonable chance of generating a market among mainstream Christians. However to do this, it is going to need your support. Many who have attempted secondary works have had the same experience as did Ken. About twenty different publishing houses were approached with an outline of the book. Not one would even read the manuscript. Less than half replied at all. For those that did reply, the book plan was too radical for two or three, for others, it might have had more chance if it included some of the hocus pocus of the "New Age." Most stated in a obviously standard reply that their publication plans were already completed for some time into the future.

    In Ken's years as a research scientist, he contributed chapters to several specialist text books that were organized by entrepreneurial editors. Because of this, he knew about a publishing house, Vantage Press,  that undertook subsidized publication of books in the field of science. A current advertisement by Vantage Press in Scientific American stimulated an inquiry about their system. At the present time, getting a book printed is the least difficult one of those steps required to get books into the distribution network, a process that is becoming more and more tied up to the major publishing houses.  It appears that Vantage Press has at least some access to the distribution system and also publishes material of a general nature. Having no other options open, Ken took the plunge and contracted for "subsidized publication" of his book. This means that he pays for most of the risk, to the tune of US$10,875.00.

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