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Out of Date? On Facing Reality!
"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 (pre-1934) knowledge. While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human wisdom must evolve." (1109)
Let it be made clear. We were warned. But, somehow or other, Urantia Book fundamentalists have been able to twist the mandate remarks of the revelators so that they hear what they want so desperately to hear--a revelation that provides the certainty for which so many have longed. However, that is a certainty which was specifically forbidden to the revelators.
'Salvation is the reward of faith; faith, simple child-like faith is the key; faith is the price you pay for entrance; by faith are you saved; faith alone will pass you through its portals; attainment of salvation is by faith, and by faith alone; the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith.'
In vain did the revelators rattle the door handle. And just as was their expectation, the cosmology they gave us is now well and truly out of date. So much so that to claim divine revelation for The Urantia Book (with its concomitant corollory that it must also be infallible) is to do to our precious revelation exactly as those fanatical biblical fundamentalists do to the Bible when they stick tooth and nail to a 6000-year old creation--thus making a laughing stock of themselves and their religion.
The revelators informed us that a cosmology was being provided to give us a framework--a backdrop--against which we could understand our universe career. It only needed to be roughly true. In fact it did not need to be true at all, so long as it portrayed a comprehensible backdrop that was relevant.
That was back in the mid-1930's. Since that time, more progress has been made among the general community towards a scientific understanding of the "world as a whole"--its cosmology--than in the previous 2000 years.
In the mid-1930's, there was absolutely no way the revelators could have come even close to revealing what we now know about our universe--except that they totally disregarded their mandate.
And if they had done so, they would have been enlisting with Lucifer's mob.
What is done is done. We now have to live with it. What can we do with a revelation that preaches a cosmology that even high school kids know is false? And tertiary students reject as rubbish?
Only the truth can heal the wounds. We have no choice but to admit our pig-headedness then look for ways and means to repair the damage. It seems obvious that the revelators expected what was actually done. Hence they must consider the situation is reversible, for do they not tell us, "the revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail."
One way might be that a new edition of the book commences with an explanation bringing notice to the terms of the mandate. It could also refer to the multitude of human sources. (1343) The term "cosmology." as used in the book, needs to be understood as a metaphysical term that deals with the world as a whole--not simply with its current meaning as "astrophysics only."
However such suggestions may fail. It may even be necessary that younger, more enlightened readers will have to await suitable circumstances for the opportunity to take appropriate remedial action.
By then the copyright may also have expired and it will be possible to print the revelation with an updated cosmology, correctly explained as being a framework for understanding our world picture and our universe careers. Oh, happy day!
But none of this may work. Over and over the statement is repeated in the book that our mission to the world must consist in the life that we live--the actual living experience of loving men and serving them, as Jesus loved and served us.
Along with the fundamentalism of the early Urantia movement, there flowed an undercurrent of confidence that it was the book itself, rather than the truths it propounded, which would lead us to "light and life."
But, for certain, there was no plethora of outstanding visible signs among the Urantia movement members by which an external world could credibly bear witness to lives having
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