Episode:The Fifth Epochal Revelation to Urantia (Part 6)

From Symmetry of Soul


Part IV of The Urantia Book, “The Life and Teachings of Jesus”, was sponsored by a commission of twelve midwayers acting under the supervision of a Melchizedek revelatory director. This Melchizedek of record was assigned by Gabriel, the Bright and Morning Star of Nebadon, to supervise the restatement of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The midwayers were authorized to record their narrative by utilizing the lost manuscript of the Apostle Andrew and their own observations.

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Keywords: Urantia, Revelation, Origin, History, Destiny

Summary by Kermit

Citations for this sixth installment of “The Fifth Epochal Revelation to Urantia” are the title page and end note to Part IV, the preface to Paper 120—The Bestowal of Michael on Urantia, the preface to Paper 121—The Times of Michael’s Bestowal, the editorial comment by the midwayers on Jesus’ teachings at Urmia, and Paper 19:1 on the Trinity Teacher Sons. These readings all served to illustrate how the various authors of the Urantia Papers are the most appropriate beings to undertake their specific assignments.

A sterling example of this is to be found in the authorship of Paper 68—The Dawn of Civilization. The by-line states: "Presented by a Melchizedek sometime stationed on Urantia." We are reminded that twelve Melchizedek observers were assigned to advise the Life Carriers during the half million years from the times of Andon and Fonta and the arrival of the Planetary Prince. Who better to speak authoritatively about the dawn of civilization on Urantia than one of these Melchizedek observers who directly witnessed this period of our history. And the clues we are given to connect these dots would indicate that the authors encourage us to engage the revelation logically and inquisitively.

In the preface to Paper 120—The Bestowal of Michael on Urantia, the Melchizedek author specifically mentions Michael’s life on Urantia in the likeness of mortal flesh, and later in the same paragraph, refers to the importance of incarnation in the Creator Son’s bestowal as a price to be paid to earn full sovereignty of his created universe. Careful reading and cross referencing with other passages leads to conclusion that this Melchizedek is none other than Melchizedek of Salem, our own Machiventa, who was most familiar with the process of incarnation in the likeness of mortal flesh as the emergency son who was himself the third epochal revelation to Urantia.

In the preface to Paper 121—The Times of Michael’s Bestowal, the secondary midwayer of onetime attachment to the Apostle Andrew can be seen to be perfectly suited to place on record the life transactions of Jesus of Nazareth inasmuch as Andrew’s own written record figures so prominently in the compilation of Part IV.

Also of note is the fact that the Master’s care in leaving no written records led Andrew to steadfastly refuse to multiply copies of his record, leading further to a great delay in the writing of the Gospels. In our discussion we speculated as to why Jesus neither forbade nor encouraged Andrew’s record keeping. It was suggested that Jesus was obeying his own revelation mandate in avoiding inserting himself in the purely human activity of chronicling his bestowal.

The final “self-referential” passage we read and discussed was the statement by the midwayers concerning Jesus’ lectures on “The Kingdoms of God and Kingdoms of Men” at Urmia. From this description, it can be seen that considerable controversy surrounded the treatment of this material. The master seraphim of planetary supervision (specifically the angels of the churches and angels of progress) were in disagreement as to the wisdom of including these teachings in the Urantia revelation, what with the current state of the kingdoms of men AND the kingdoms of God being vastly different from the conditions prevailing in the first century. The midwayer authors were never able to formulate a statement of these teachings that was acceptable to both groups of angels. Accordingly, a working group of three secondary midwayers formulated an adaptation of Jesus’ teachings, restating them as they would apply them to present day world conditions, submitted them for editing by the Melchizedek chairman of the revelatory commission, and included the result in Part IV.

With all the controversy surrounding the inclusion of the Urmia lectures, we asked why didn’t the authors of Part IV simply leave this out of the revelation. The answer to this question is given in the literary aside from the midwayers included in Paper 134:5—Political Sovereignty. They herein explain that they departed more widely from the substance of the Master’s teachings at Urmia concerning political sovereignty in order to depict the importance of such teachings as they are applicable to the peculiarly critical stage of the evolution of political sovereignty in the twentieth century after Christ. Could this be part of the “emergency” on our planet today, to which we often refer on this program? Remember, that the 5th ER is here to address the non-spiritual affairs of Urantia today and political sovereignty represents a flash point for the potential collapse of civilization.

The Trinity Teacher Sons

In the section of paper nineteen devoted to the Trinity Teacher Sons the authors give a brief description of the nature and number of these high personalities, deferring further details concerning their activities to another portion of the revelation. Yet they go on to actually provide and example of their method of teaching.

It is here that the Divine Counselor author, explains that while we humans would ordinarily crave to approach the cosmic philosophy portrayed in these revelations by proceeding from the simple and finite to the complex and infinite i.e. bottom-up, that path does not lead to spiritual wisdom. Such a bottom up approach can only reveal man’s origin, and little or nothing about divine destiny.

He goes on to give four errors of reasoning inherent in the bottom-up approach in explanation as to why they employ the technique of approaching man and his planetary problems from the infinite, eternal, and divine Paradise Source and Center of all personality reality and all cosmic existence, i.e. top-down.

For a more detailed comparison of the bottom-up v. top-down approaches listen to the archive of this broadcast.