Testimony of a Jesusonian
  
 

The Fifth Urantia Revelation:
Heralding the New Age on Urantia

     During my adolescence and young adulthood I experienced an, at times, half-hearted, or otherwise subconscious search for spiritual fulfillment.  My hesitance was due to my instinctual disinclination to compromise my intellectual integrity by the embracing of a religion which seemed to present the veneration of God as an obligation, and God, himself, as a coercive and demanding Deity who had the prerogative to damn me to 'hell' if I should falter in abiding by his 'rules.'  Even though I sincerely strove to remain loyal to an inner sense of righteousness, others, and eventually I also, interpreted my inability (and, from the standpoint of others, my unwillingness) to espouse the puerile doctrines, and to embrace the strange and scary ritualistic antics of fundamental Christianity (mother's side) or the austere and impersonal incantations of Catholicism (father's side), as my own personal misfortune.

     Moreover, I became accustomed to believing, through the influences of my upbringing, that God would not bother himself with me until I should accept the Christian precepts and ascribe to the doctrinal 'line,' and that God then faulted me for procrastinating.  This conclusion concerning God's attitude was easy for me to accept because my own personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions had been totally ignored by my parents throughout my childhood.  My natural inclination to honestly reconcile myself to the search for God was short-circuited by my conception of God as being aloof and far-off, unconcerned with me personally, and finally, even unwilling to be attentive.  My perception found basis in a belief, common among young people and serving to distance God and man, that God faulted me for my growing, deep-seated resentment toward parents and family over emotional injuries consistently perpetrated upon me as a child and that went totally ignored by everyone, and seemingly even by God.

     I early became suspicious of pastors and religionists who maintained that God required that one should unquestioningly embrace a particular church, and a set of beliefs, that I should cower before their unquestionable authority.  Yet, my psychology had already been subliminally impacted with the destructive conviction that God was a fearsome disciplinarian and rigid authoritarian.  I became suspicious of those for whom being a 'religionist' meant forever sacrificing sincere yearnings for all things beautiful and for the heart's fondest desires while being in perpetual penitence and in constant self-deprecation.  Yet I early absorbed the subliminal message that the things I held as beautiful and fun were sinful and damning.  I came to accept that a religionist was a person who wildly flung himself about in front of the pews and in the aisles uttering all manner of gibberish; one who seemed to utterly lose himself in some mysterious and exclusive supernatural phenomenon reserved only for the 'elect' whose souls God had already pre-selected in eternity-past.

     Since I did not exhibit any degree of such 'religious' proclivities, I came to believe that I was inherently unacceptable to God and that my "name" must not be pre-written in the "Book of Life."  I therefore concluded that it was foreordained that God would not ever find me to be sufficiently sincere, or otherwise acceptable sonship-material, and would never acknowledge any attempt on my part at being sincerely desirous of being 'one in his fold.'

     It was while I was in my early twenties, after many intense experiences which were laden with my sublimated feelings of being lost, unworthy and unacceptable to God, of being hopelessly separated from him, when I was led into circumstances which I believe were orchestrated by angels.  My experiences increasingly seemed to encourage my choosing to conceive of God as being so radically better, and far more approachable, than I had ever been "taught."  I began to observe the simple, sincere faith in others whose deeply peaceful, sublimely joyous lives seemed vitalized with an inner assurance of his uncondemning watchcare, absolute goodness, and unqualified love for every individual.

     As I gradually dared to take up the courage to believe that God is actually perfect, that He is good, and that He is actually intimately concerned with what happens in not just my personal life but also in the personal life of each and every person on earth, I became inspired to admit to, and to eventually surrender to him my repressed and quiet desperation.  As I allowed for the paradigm shift in my mind, I allowed faith to take hold of my heart as I permitted myself to express latent psychic grief while in the safe environs of loving people.  My constant and sincere yearning, my  "hoping against hope" in humility to believe that I might be found acceptable by God, my sincere hunger and thirst for righteousness, served as fertile soil for the reception of the seed of truth about his infinitely loving nature and matchless character; a seed which my faith, as the attitude of my soul, had caused to germinate into actual experience.  I had begun to actually experience sharing my inner life, my mind's thoughts, with a personal and intimate God, a divinely-mature, living Spirit Personality.

     Once having wholeheartedly embarked upon this new journey of spiritual discovery fueled by faith, I was experiencing a new awareness from within:  a consciousness of a subtle, but definably personable presence who became increasingly discernible as He whispered to my mind and heart, and confirmed within my soul, that I was in the divine Personality-presence who is the source of all reality.  I came to actually experience, personally, the "full impact of the divine quality of the infinite love of God," whose distinct Spirit-presence became acutely apparent to me.  I know now that my faith had opened the door to the Holy Spirit's facilitating an illumination in my mind's eye, an awakening to the Spirit Father's Personality-presence within the higher reaches of my mind.  This baptism of the Holy Spirit found confirmation in and through my profound awareness of my soul's fraternization with the Truth-Spirit of Jesus.

     My faith, and faith alone, had wrought the personal experience of spiritual illumination, of being "baptized in the Holy Spirit."  I became acutely aware that I had always been a son of the Universal God, the Spirit Father of every individual.  I now realized that not only had I always had his attention, as does each and every one of us, but that such 'attention' conferred upon each human is UNDIVIDED and undiscriminating on any basis.  I discovered that He had always known all about me; my thoughts, feelings and opinions, and had always had tender compassion for all of my emotional injuries.  I was utterly floored that, before I had even thought of asking, He had already forgiven me for all things, even for my having harbored such great resentment toward parents and family.  I discovered that He is eternally the source of all that is good and beautiful and true.

     As I progressed by grace in comprehending the reality of the spiritual realm with the stereoscopic lens of my mind's eye, with spiritually-illumined ("anointed") understanding that found confirmation with Jesus' Spirit of Truth, I began to see how many Christian teachings were inconsistent with the true nature of God as I had now begun to experience him spiritually.  I became emboldened to totally disavow many writings in "Scripture."  I was becoming extremely agitated by the discoveries I was making about the misperceptions, misunderstandings, and misconstruing that so many Christian "leaders" and 'evangelists' have been perpetuating.  I embarked upon a search for writings about, literary confirmations of, the true nature and perfect character of the living God.

     The following is a summary of what I have discovered to be the truth about God, first through my personal experience with God and independent of the limitations inherent in earthly sources, e.g. any books, religions, churches, pastors, etc., and then subsequently as confirmed by the Spirit of God within as I read The URANTIA Book:

  Sincere faith is the key that unlocks the door of consciousness of the presence of the living God in the human mind.  I, personally, could only have sincerely allowed for faith to become the attitude of my soul, to take hold in my inner life, if I could believe that there never was, nor could there ever be, anything in or about God to fear or by which to be intimidated.  Man or woman embarks upon the road to the personal realization of the gift of son/daughtership with the Spirit Father of all humankind when and as such a person sincerely chooses the act of accepting simple, childlike (but not childish) trusting faith in the absolute goodness of God.  "Man might fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a good God."  One becomes baptized with the Holy Spirit when one makes the wholehearted commitment to the progressive actualization of the unqualified love of the infinite God in one's personal life.

  The 'way' by which to "find" God is:

1)  by believing that God is your infinitely loving Father as He is of every individual and that He thereby loves each of us *first;* that He is so good that He makes each human who comes into the world his son or daughter as his *free* gift by virtue of his sending of himself, his Divine Spirit, to dwell within the higher reaches of the mind of every human;

2)  by voluntarily embracing the natural and joyous response from within the human heart to commit to the doing of the divine will, to love God with all one's heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love and to be of unselfish service to all our fellows as God unqualifiedly loves each of us.

  God sends his Spirit to live and work within the mind of every boy and girl who comes into the world, and from within the mind, God nurtures the growth of the soul.

  God is changeless.  His attitude of forgiveness is inherent in his nature and is from everlasting to everlasting.

  God is limitless in compassion, and plenteous in mercy.  He is infinitely good.

  God is perfect, and although He is more than just a personality, He is a perfect Father PERSONALITY.  His inner Spirit-presence in the higher reaches of every normal mind is what being "made in his image" really means.  Our Father knows the spiritual needs of each one of his near-innumerable mortal sons and daughters of all generations, even on all the inhabited worlds, because He actually lives within each and every one.  Each may choose to allow Him to adjust one's thoughts to his own, that He may make each of us more and more like Him.

  Jesus really is the Creator Son of this entire universe.  "Jesus" is merely an earth-name humanly associated with the incarnation on our world of this Divine Creator-Son of our one universe, who has his source in the First and Second Persons of the eternal Paradise Trinity.  The Creator Sons are also eternal, without beginning and without ending, and hail from eternal Paradise.  These Creators of the universes of time and space are of the Paradise order of sonship called, "Michael."  Some scriptural references to an archangel by that name are in actuality references to our universe Creator Son.  Our universe Creator is the Creator-Father of a vast host of heavenly creatures having origin in this universe level, from Gabriel, the Bright and Morning Star to several orders of spiritual sonship such as the Melchizedek order, and more.

  As we pass through the many heavenly mansions after mortal death, we will become acquainted with Christ Michael's creature-creation as we traverse the universe and progress spiritually toward perfection of personality motivation.  Our heavenly destiny is that we will one day become perfectly attuned with the Father's will, and will pass beyond the borders of this one, tiny universe, after sojourning for a time in the personal presence of Michael, to continue on our journey into the greater universe of universes, and eventually into the Central Universe and to the shores of the Paradise abode of the eternal God, the Universal Father.

  The supreme destiny of humankind, indeed the purpose of life itself, is that we should evolve spiritually into the majestic heights -- the ennoblement of personality, and the refinement of character -- that Jesus has set for us, that we may, in so doing, contribute to the eventual completion of the evolution of the Supreme Being into perfection, even as all the evolving creature-creation as well as the many types of divine and eternal beings within the entire cosmos of time and space are all mobilized to facilitate the eventual realization of the Supreme Being.

  Jesus' incarnation was for the dual purpose of experiencing the mortal life (revealing the spiritual potentials of man to God) while simultaneously revealing the perfection of God to man.  It is in the way in which He LIVED his life as well as by the spiritual manner with which He met his death that Jesus revealed the infinite love and merciful compassion of the Heavenly Father for even all of his erring children, the unworthy members of his flock.  Jesus revealed the Heavenly Father to be the Good Shepherd who will leave the flock to go out in search of the lost sheep.  The Father's will is that NONE should perish.

  Jesus did not reveal a God who was ever, or could ever be slighted, offended, or in need of appeasement.  Jesus was crucified on the cross, but NOT as an "ultimate" intercessory blood sacrifice to the Father, or to ransom mankind from the clutches of the invisible, apostate, one-time Prince of this world.  See: "The Real Meaning of the Death on the Cross" through a link at the bottom of my The Gospel Truth webpage.

  There was never a time when our Father, himself, DID NOT love all humankind with an infinite love.

  There was never a time when this infinitely understanding Father had 'marked' the children of men for the sins of their ancestors.  There was never an indebtedness that mankind had come to 'owe' God, that an innocent sufferer should supposedly have to submit himself in the place of guilty offenders and, in their stead, satisfy a fictitious requirement of divine propitiation, so that God could supposedly undergo an attitude-adjustment and finally be able to regard man as salvageable and as his potential sons and daughters.

  Sin is not transmitted from parent to child, or inherited from the Adam and Eve couple.  Sin is the conscious and deliberate act of wrongdoing, transgression of the Father's will and of the Son's universe laws, by an individual free-will creature.  Sin is ultimately suicidal, since its repeated indulgence (iniquity) renders the sinner cosmically unreal.  If the Ancients of Days deem the iniquitous one irretrievably unwilling to accept the constant proffer of divine mercy, they will at some point after mortal death render the individual as if he/she had never been.  In contrast to sin, evil (error) is reflective of maladjustment to universe realities; it is the shadow of relative and progressive levels of goodness.

  Jesus did, indeed, appear on the third day in resurrected form, but such intentional appearances after his resurrection was not to demonstrate a conquering of the supposed chains of death that theretofore had bound men's souls to a supposed mid-zone purgatory, but rather to reveal once and for all that mortal death is and always has been the portal for the surviving soul's emergence into the heavenly existence, the first of hundreds of progressively spiritual existences in the universe, whether such emergence after mortal death should occur on the third day or at the end of a dispensation.

  Jesus' achievement of fully and perfectly revealing the Father's will to all universe personalities while living among us constituted the seventh and final phase of his universe-revelation of the variously-combined wills of the three Persons of the Paradise Trinity, constituted his completed experiential mastery of full sovereignty of his self-made universe, and contributes to the eventual realization of The Supreme Being of all the realms of time and space.  Additionally, his completed seven-phase bestowal mission in the likenesses of seven differing universe creatures of his own making brought a technical end to the Lucifer Rebellion within our tiny System, and forever prevents any such future 'insurrection' anywhere in this entire universe.

     Jesus came to reveal that all men and women ARE, and have always been, the sons and daughters of the heavenly Father, as his FREE gift, and that by LIVING faith, each "may come to realize and daily experience this ennobling truth."  The injunction from the living God and hailing from his Paradise abode, 'Be you perfect, even as I am perfect,' "is no vain, unattainable fantasy." "Mortals cannot hope to become perfect in the infinite sense" while yet human.  Yet while starting out in the flesh, spiritual perfection *is* our Paradise goal in eternity.  As humans, we may achieve those spiritual potentials which Jesus has already set for mortal man, and we may begin that journey, now, as we are.  Though age beyond age of heavenly progression is required to attain oneness with the perfect Father in Paradise, we are all privileged with the opportunity to begin *now* to strive for the perfection of God, to "follow after" Jesus, in loving service and in the rendering of unselfish ministry to our fellows on earth, to actually *do* our Father's will, loving our fellows as God loves each of us, to become more and more like him .  Jesus revealed God as the friend of man, even the infinitely-loving heavenly Father of every individual.

     For twenty centuries this REAL gospel *OF* Jesus has been contaminated with and perverted by the pagan and superstitious traditions of the transference of sins and of intercessory blood sacrifice for the appeasement of an offended Lord and to avert his fictitious divine wrath.  Moreover, our Master's genuine gospel has long been subverted by the shameful and misleading sophistry, disguised as divinely-ordained doctrine, that one must do something for, or give something to God in order to secure from him one's sonship status.  Our heavenly Father does *not* even require that one believe that Jesus is, in fact, the Creator Son, the "Christ," in order to confer sonship status.  All may choose to live a life dedicated to the progressive communion and wholehearted cooperation with the indwelling Spirit of God.  All such Spirit-led mortals throughout the ages, sons and daughters of God from every culture and religion who sincerely love God as the Universal Father and seek to do his will, are worthy to God and render themselves survivable into heaven.

     By the declaration, "No one gets to the Father but through me," Jesus affirmed that He, himself, is the very source of our creature-existence; that we are sustained by his universe power while we may choose to be personally guided by the Paradise Father's indwelling Spirit; that the spiritual circuitry of himself (the Spirit of Truth), conjointly with those spiritual circuitries (e.g. the Holy Spirit) and ministering agencies (e.g. angels) of the Co-Creative Universe Mother Spirit, facilitate the sincere seeker's "finding" the Father through the genuine spiritual experience of God as ONE indivisible Spirit, and all this whether or not one believes as fact that Jesus was, indeed, the incarnation of the universe Creator; that, beyond this mortal life, we must pass through the entire universe progression-scheme that He, himself, created for us as we journey toward the Paradise Father; and that we are destined to sojourn in his personal presence in his Universe Headquarters as we stand ready to graduate beyond the borders of this universe on our way to someday becoming spiritually perfected to stand in the personal presence of the Paradise Father of all.

    Neither belief in the infallibility of the Bible nor that of any book, nor belief that Jesus is the Universe Creator who incarnated among us, is a pre-requisite for son/daughtership status, for a genuine, personal, sustained, and progressive spiritual relationship with the Spirit Father, or for the mortal soul's entry into heaven.  Those who believe Jesus to be the universe Sovereign may discover the majesty of the Father as amplified through the miraculous Truth-Spirit of the Son, but those who do not know of Jesus or believe that it is He who is the 'Christ,' the universe Creator who incarnated among us and revealed his oneness with the Father, also can discern the Spirit Father with the aid of the Son's Truth-Spirit even though they may not know the Son in the same fullness as those who do know him as such.  This is true precisely *because* Jesus and the Father *ARE* ONE, and neither Jesus nor the heavenly Father is "a respecter of persons."  Neither Jesus nor the heavenly Father discriminates on the basis of human belief systems, sexual orientation, or on any other basis.  It is by one's innermost motives, one's sincere faith-attitude, and one's consequent commitment to the doing of the Father's will, that the soul of man is known and is saved by the Father through the Son.  Jesus would NEVER withhold from the sincere seeker the personal discovery of sonship with the Universal Father in heaven until such time as the seeker should believe that He is, in fact, the Christ, the universe Creator, the Son of God and the Son of Man, or that any writing is the "Word of God" and infallible.  

"Jesus does not require his disciples to believe in him but rather to believe with him, believe in the reality of the love of God and in full confidence accept the security of the assurance of sonship with the heavenly Father.  The Master desires that all his followers should fully share his transcendent faith.  Jesus most touchingly challenged his followers, not only to believe what he believed, but also to believe as he believed.  This is the full significance of his one supreme requirement, "Follow me." P. 2089, par. 3.

     The intelligent grasp of universe meanings and cosmic values, the progressive adjustment of the human personality to cosmic reality, is either facilitated or hampered depending upon the accuracy of one's personal conception of the character, nature, and attributes of God.  The maturity of any religion, then, is measured by its grasp of the concept of the perfection of God as the personal Father of every individual.

     The time is now when the truth about God is being broadcast throughout the entire world.  Through the lives of the increasing numbers of the Spirit-borne Children of Light in every succeeding generation, the Spirit of the living Jesus will not fail to be made manifest "to even the paganized religion which extols his name."

     And the time will come when this God-man will indeed personally return as He promised.  Although NO ONE may presume to say when that day will come, "one thing is for certain: when He does return, all the world will likely know about it."

"But 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." (P. 2082) --The URANTIA Book

"Christianity 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."

"The beauty and sublimity, the humanity and divinity, the simplicity and uniqueness, of Jesus' life on earth present such a striking and appealing picture of man-saving and God-revealing that the theologians and philosophers of all time should be effectively restrained from daring to form creeds or create theological systems of spiritual bondage out of such a transcendental bestowal of God in the form of man. In Jesus the universe produced a mortal man in whom the spirit of love triumphed over the material handicaps of time and overcame the fact of physical origin."

"Ever bear in mind--God and men need each other. They are mutually necessary to the full and final attainment of eternal personality experience in the divine destiny of universe finality."

"The kingdom of God is within you" was probably the greatest pronouncement Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving spirit."

"In winning souls for the Master, it is not the first mile of compulsion, duty, or convention that will transform man and his world, but rather the second mile of free service and liberty-loving devotion that betokens the Jesusonian reaching forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep him on under spiritual guidance toward the higher and divine goal of mortal existence. Christianity even now willingly goes the first mile, but mankind languishes and stumbles along in moral darkness because there are so few genuine second-milers--so few professed followers of Jesus who really live and love as he taught his disciples to live and love and serve."

"The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus' brotherhood of the kingdom should thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh."

"No social system or political regime which denies the reality of God can contribute in any constructive and lasting manner to the advancement of human civilization. But Christianity, as it is subdivided and secularized today, presents the greatest single obstacle to its further advancement; especially is this true concerning the Orient."

"Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living faith, growing spirit, and firsthand experience of the faith-comrades of Jesus in the brotherhood of man in the spiritual association of the kingdom of heaven. The praiseworthy desire to preserve traditions of past achievement often leads to the defense of outgrown systems of worship. The well-meant desire to foster ancient thought systems effectually prevents the sponsoring of new and adequate means and methods designed to satisfy the spiritual longings of the expanding and advancing minds of modern men. Likewise, the Christian churches of the twentieth century stand as great, but wholly unconscious, obstacles to the immediate advance of the real gospel--the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth."

"Many earnest persons who would gladly yield loyalty to the Christ of the gospel find it very difficult enthusiastically to support a church which exhibits so little of the spirit of his life and teachings, and which they have been erroneously taught he founded. Jesus did not found the so-called Christian church, but he has, in every manner consistent with his nature, fostered it as the best existent exponent of his lifework on earth."

"If the Christian church would only dare to espouse the Master's program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all the way through with this great adventure."

"Christianity is seriously confronted with the doom embodied in one of its own slogans: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The non-Christian world will hardly capitulate to a sect-divided Christendom. The living Jesus is the only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The true church--the Jesus brotherhood--is invisible, spiritual, and is characterized by unity, not necessarily by uniformity. Uniformity is the earmark of the physical world of mechanistic nature. Spiritual unity is the fruit of faith union with the living Jesus. The visible church should refuse longer to handicap the progress of the invisible and spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom of God. And this brotherhood is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations, but it must not be supplanted by them."

"But the Christianity of even the twentieth century must not be despised. It is the product of the combined moral genius of the God-knowing men of many races during many ages, and it has truly been one of the greatest powers for good on earth, and therefore no man should lightly regard it, notwithstanding its inherent and acquired defects. Christianity still contrives to move the minds of reflective men with mighty moral emotions."

"But there is no excuse for the involvement of the church in commerce and politics; such unholy alliances are a flagrant betrayal of the Master. And the genuine lovers of truth will be slow to forget that this powerful institutionalized church has often dared to smother newborn faith and persecute truth bearers who chanced to appear in unorthodox raiment."

"It is all too true that such a church would not have survived unless there had been men in the world who preferred such a style of worship. Many spiritually indolent souls crave an ancient and authoritative religion of ritual and sacred traditions. Human evolution and spiritual progress are hardly sufficient to enable all men to dispense with religious authority. And the invisible brotherhood of the kingdom may well include these family groups of various social and temperamental classes if they are only willing to become truly spirit-led sons of God. But in this brotherhood of Jesus there is no place for sectarian rivalry, group bitterness, nor assertions of moral superiority and spiritual infallibility."

"These various groupings of Christians may serve to accommodate numerous different types of would-be believers among the various peoples of Western civilization, but such division of Christendom presents a grave weakness when it attempts to carry the gospel of Jesus to Oriental peoples. These races do not yet understand that there is a religion of Jesus separate, and somewhat apart, from Christianity, which has more and more become a religion about Jesus."

"The 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."

"Even secular education could help in this great spiritual renaissance if it would pay more attention to the work of teaching youth how to engage in life planning and character progression. The purpose of all education should be to foster and further the supreme purpose of life, the development of a majestic and well-balanced personality. There is great need for the teaching of moral discipline in the place of so much self-gratification. Upon such a foundation religion may contribute its spiritual incentive to the enlargement and enrichment of mortal life, even to the security and enhancement of life eternal."

"Christianity 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."

"If Christianity could only grasp more of Jesus' teachings, it could do so much more in helping modern man to solve his new and increasingly complex problems."

"Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become identified in the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the industrial life, and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has Christianity unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without conscience, and industry without morality."

"The hope of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor the social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it humbly bows itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn anew from Jesus of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear--the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man."

(The above excerpts are from P. 2084-85, The URANTIA Book, and all preceding quotations are from The URANTIA Book.)

     Sincerely,

     Ramon

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