Episode:The Fourth Epochal Revelation to Urantia (Part 5)

From Symmetry of Soul


The Jews of Jesus’ time were enslaved by their laws and traditions, and their religious leaders contrived to play upon this bondage to array the people against the acceptance of a new gospel. Paul’s cult of Christianity was successful in blending many existing beliefs and philosophies into an acceptable doctrine about the carpenter of Nazareth. The Urantia Book presents new information on the provenance of the New Testament Gospels.

Listen to the broadcast

Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Judaism, Christianity, Gospels

Summary by Kermit

7. Jews and Gentiles

Almost half of the study last week was taken up with a discussion of the decline of the religion of the Jews that led them to being abandoned as the bearers of the light of the bestowal son to the world. With the Jews’ rejection of Jesus and his gospel, this role passed inexorably westward to the European peoples. If a civilization ceases to be the means to God’s end, such a civilization will no longer enjoy the sustaining hand of God the Mother, and another civilization will be found to carry God’s plan forward. In reflecting on the author’s use of the “origin, history, and destiny” paradigm for gaining a true perspective on any reality problem, we are led to see how the Jews had become almost “180 degrees out of phase” with the truth. Thus, were they unable to recognize and receive the divine gift that was the bestowal Son.

We had an illuminating discussion how the Jews’ love for the letter of the law (not the spirit of the law) and the situation whereby the interpretations of the law by the scribes (teachers of the law) came to trump the written law, have come forward to today, particularly in the practice of Islam. Thus, a believer is not encouraged to cultivate his/her inner moral discrimination, but to obey the directions of the “interpreter” of the law. Barrenness indeed! Here we have a truly schizophrenic relationship between a believer and his fetish of a sacred text, whose authority is superseded by the voice of God (coming out of the mouth of the scribe of the hour). God will have a difficult time making progress with such a people. Their internal integrity with the universal harmony of the cosmos is broken by such self-imposed schizophrenia.

It was noted that even with such a high probability that the Jews would not receive their gift of God, Jesus, with full awareness of circumstances never ceased working for their redemption and salvation as a people.

Thus it was a different people who were called upon to carry an advancing theology to the world, a system of teaching embodying the philosophy of the Greeks, the law of the Romans, the morality of the Hebrews, and the gospel of personality sanctity and spiritual liberty formulated by Paul and based on the teachings of Jesus.

Paul’s cult of Christianity showed its morality as a Jewish birthmark. The Greeks contributed clearer concepts of the eternal life. Paul’s doctrines were influenced in theology and philosophy by Jesus’ teachings as well as those of Plato and Philo. Paul’s ethics were also inspired by the Stoics. Jesus’ gospel in Paul’s Christian cult became blended with doctrines of redemption, atonement, and salvation from the mystery religions, philosophic reasoning of the Greeks, and the morality of the Jewish religion.

8. Previous Written Records

The midwayer authors of Jesus’ Life and Teachings describe in general the sources of information they utilized in this work. These sources included access to a lost record of the Apostle Andrew, collaboration with a vast host of celestials who were present during Michael’s bestowal including his now Personalized Adjuster, and the so-called Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In one and one-half pages, the authors set straight almost two thousand years of biblical research, conjecture, speculation, and theories, by giving details concerning the origin and history of these gospels.

Chris furnished very helpful general information concerning the current state of biblical research highlighting how the revelation essentially confirms the correct conclusions among the multitude of possibilities greatly simplifying the entire field of the origins of the scriptures.

It was brought out that many devotees of the 5th ER were first inspired to follow the Master through their introduction to these accounts. And their hunger once stirred, spurred their search further leading them to the revelation.

Acknowledgment at end of Paper 121

This entire paper is the work of the secondary midwayer assigned to the superhuman watchcare of the Apostle Andrew. The last three paragraphs are his acknowledgment of his sources, motives, revelatory constraints, and to some extent methods in making this restatement of Jesus’ life on earth.

He makes it abundantly clear that human sources served as the foundation of this account. Preference has been given to human concepts and thought patterns when they were found to be acceptably expressed. Thought gems and superior concepts from more that two thousand human beings were used, suggesting that these concepts weren’t necessarily all in print. When human sources failed, he resorted to superhuman records (the memory resources of his own order of earth creatures), and even to superplanetary sources when necessary. He also adjusted the verbal expression to better conform to the revelators’ concept of the real meaning and true import of the Master’s life and teachings. He even goes so far to say that his superiors forbade him to resort to extrahuman sources of either information or expression until such time as he could testify that he had failed in his efforts to find the required conceptual expression in purely human sources. He confesses to be more of an editor than original narrator.

This acknowledgment should serve to demystify The Urantia Book and help serious students avoid the pitfall of regarding the revelation as a sacred text.