Episode:Evolutionary Religion—Later Evolution (Part 5)

From Symmetry of Soul


There have been hundreds upon hundreds of religious leaders in the million-year human history of our world. Through many ebbs and flows of the tide of religious truth and spiritual faith, each renaissance of religion has been identified with the life and teachings of some religious leader. And the future will doubtless be characterized by the appearance of still further teachers of religious truth.

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Keywords: Urantia, Religion, Prophets and Teachers, Monotheism, World Religions

Summary by Kermit

Commentary on the Review

Our pre-reading commentary included reflections on the ER’s to Urantia and distinctions among those revelations characterized as a body of teachings e.g., Dalamatian teachings, and Edenic teachings in distinction with those ERs consisting of individual persons i.e., Melchizedek of Salem and Jesus of Nazareth. Further discussion consisted of a somewhat detailed examination of the meanings involved in the revelators’ choice of word order in characterizing the cardinal precepts of the teachings of the 3rd ER (Melchizedek) as trust and faith, and the essence of the teachings of the 4th ER (Jesus) as love and service. Check out the archive here and note the significance of recognizing the foundational word in a word pair, i.e. the second of the pair, in appreciating the deeper meanings conveyed by the revelators.

92:5.8 The Great Religious Leaders (cont.)

The revelation recognizes hundreds upon hundreds of religious leaders in Urantia’s one million year human history, from Onagar (the first truth teacher) to Guru Nanak. Our author presents seven major religious epochs since the days of Adam and Eve.

The Sethite period extended from around 15,000 B.C. to around 2500 B.C. The Sethite priests’ influence persisted among the Greeks, Sumerians, and Hindus even to the present day Brahmans. The Sethites never entirely lost the Trinity concept. The Melchizedek missionaries (c. 2000 B.C.) proclaimed the trust and faith teachings which became the foundations for later Urantian religions. Following the Melchizedek missionaries came the post Melchizedek era of Amenemope, Ikhnaton, and the outstanding genius of this period Moses (c. 1500 B.C.). Moses’ monotheistic teachings while somewhat adulterated by his successors were not lost. He was the most successful single individual to induce large numbers of people to adopt his advanced beliefs. The sixth century before Christ witnessed the appearance of many truth teachers in one of the greatest centuries of religious awakening in Urantia’s history. The list of the teachers of this era reads as a veritable who’s who of the world’s religious leaders, teachers and philosophers. The illustrious list includes Gautama, Confucius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jainist teachers. The first century after Christ saw the teachings and writings of Paul of Tarsus, and Philo of Alexandria exert a dominant influence in Christianity’s evolution accompanied by the corresponding loss of a depiction of Jesus the man. The sixth century after Christ marks the arrival of Mohammed and the introduction of Islam. Finally, the fifteenth century after Christ saw the unity of institutionalized Christianity fractured in the Occident and in the Orient the teachings of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism amalgamated by Guru Nanak into Sikhism.

Interesting to note that with Urantia’s double deficit of the Lucifer Rebellion and Adamic default plus the irregularity of Michael’s seventh bestowal, our world remains without recognized, visible, authoritative celestial leadership to whom the people of Urantia can look for guidance and direction. Urantia’s religious progress is characterized by punctuated infusions of divine downreach with a corresponding quickening of religious and spiritual activity followed by decline and disintegration. We can be assured that teachers proclaiming the religious truths of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man will continue to appear. And our author expresses the hope that the efforts of these truthbearers will be directed more toward the augmentation of the religious brotherhood of spiritual worship among the diverse religionists of our planet instead of the reinforcement of their sectarian differences.

92:6. The Composite Religions

This section begins with an overview of some of the primitive peoples and beliefs extant in the twentieth century having persisted since the distant times of the ghost cult. Passages as these in the revelation present significant challenge to contemporary correctness of thought regarding the concept of equality.

Here we find a chronological list of eleven religions of twentieth century Urantia, beginning with Hinduism and ending with Sikhism. This big picture overview sketches out in very broad strokes the planetary geographical distribution of these religions. The Hebraic, Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic are highlighted as the great international and interracial faiths of today. The Hebrew religion can be seen as a direct philosophic link between polytheism and monotheism. Likewise it is the evolutionary link between evolutionary and revelatory religion. Their designation as a “chosen people” is not without some basis as we are told; “at one time the hope of survival of Occidental civilization lay in the sublime concepts of goodness and the advanced Hellenic concepts of beauty.”

A note on the chronology of Urantian religious history we are given in the 5th ER: The revelators provide numerous facts, dates, and references for the astute student to reflect upon in comparison with longstanding versions of history to clarify our picture of the past.

Notes by Brad

  • Why not more about Melchizedek in the Old Testament? His name was deliberately scrubbed by old scribes, to glorify Abraham.
    • But the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament picks him up again.
  • The difference between service and loving service. The former comes first, the latter arrives only after you get to know your fellows (fall in love with them)
  • Faith and trust versus trust and faith. Yes, there is a difference--that's how subtle and sophisticated the writing is here.
    • Trust and faith is about a basic form of faith, present in us all by grace.
    • Faith and trust is about advanced (nearly unknown high levels of) faith.


  • Arguably, our one job as an individual is to achieve true faith.
    • You cannot really start self mastery until you get faith figured out.
    • "Hey folks, stop fixating on all these shiny objects and moving around such as so in your primitive rituals. Faith is within, in the inner life." --M. Melchizedek, ...broadly


  • Sagacity, defined: combined insight and foresight.
    • And wisdom is built on sagacity.


  • The 6th century B.C. was a quickening of the Holy Spirit. Although PLato didn't live in the 6th century, his thoughts were a sort of culmination of this quickening.
    • And this wasn't "orders from the hierarchy of parts", from the Father. All of those "parts" were looking around saying, "Whoa, where is this come from." (well, paraphrasing)


  • So much rationalizing. "If you can't even get to reasonable, how can you possibly get to logical?!"