Episode:Evolutionary Religion—Later Evolution (Part 4)

Evolutionary Religion—Later Evolution (Part 4)
Broadcast on	July 3, 2018
Episode #	400
Study of	[Paper 92:4.4-5.7, p. 1007]

No revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements.

Listen to the broadcast

Keywords: Urantia, Religion, Epochal Revelation, Religious Truth, Prophets and Teachers

Note: Kermit was away this week, and in a rare moment we had only 3 co-hosts on the show this evening.

Summary by Kermit

Commentary on the Review

“Evolutionary religion represents circuitous gropings of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory religion is that very truth.” SoS reflected on this final sentence of the previous week’s reading in terms of philosophic direction. Groping for truth in the horizontal plane of philosophic thought and mental-emotional experience yields an association of facts. Truth is transcendent of facts and demands reflectively moving upward at right angles to the plane. The myriad of present day sectarian religious persuasions with their discordant versions of truth testifies to the degree to which mankind has been unsuccessful in identifying and appropriating genuine religious truth. The transition from horizontal groping to vertical reflective thinking requires the courage and independence so often mentioned on our broadcasts, and is not attained without a struggle.

The discussion also revisited the relation of the terms preservation, observation, and conservation in relation to religion. And check out the archive for another treatment of the difference between self-assertion and free will.

92:4.4 The Gift of Revelation (cont.)

Epochal religious revelations have occurred five times in our planetary history. An epochal revelation is characterized as a sweeping presentation of truth initiating a new age or epoch. Our Melchizedek author presents thumbnail descriptions of the five such presentations to our world. Some of these revelations initiated new planetary dispensations, while others were emergency presentations.

1. The Dalamatian Teachings—Note the teachings are the revelation, not the individuals who delivered it. Prince Caligastia and his one hundred corporeal staff labored for more than three hundred thousand years before their work was terminated by rebellion. Only the remnants of the work of Van survived. The concepts of the First Source and Center here presented extended to the System level of universe administration.
2. The Edenic Teachings—Again, the dispensational revelation here consists of the teachings of Adam and Eve, not their personages. The mission of Adam and Eve to biologically upstep the evolutionary races was also terminated prematurely. As a result, only the teachings of the Sethite priests persisted, and while these truths have not entirely been lost to our world we continue to suffer the genetic deficit and associated scientific and technological delay of their default.
3. Melchizedek of Salem—Machiventa Melchizedek embarked on his emergency incarnation (1980 B.C.) to help prepare the world for the bestowal of our Creator Son on his seventh and final mission in the similitude of his universe creatures. The precepts of his teachings were trust in the omnipotent beneficence of God, and faith as the creature’s way of earning God’s favor. His teachings commingled with the evolutionary religions developing into the theologic systems extant at the beginning of the first millennium after Christ.
4. Jesus of Nazareth—This visitation of Christ Michael represents a profound and radical departure from the normal sequence of the presentation of truth to an inhabited world. Building on the Melchizedek teachings of trust and faith, the essence of his teaching was love and service—the loving worship which a creature son voluntarily gives in recognition of, and response to, the loving ministry of God his Father, and the freewill service which such creature sons bestow upon their brethren in the joyous realization that in this service they are likewise serving God the Father. Because of the troublous history of our world, Jesus’s revelation did not extend beyond the universe administrative level of the Constellation and the Most High rulers.
5. The Urantia Papers—Different from all previous epochal revelations, this most recent presentation of truth to the people of our world is a composite presentation by many beings. This non-dispensational emergency revelation includes material inclusive of the entire Master Universe, well beyond the local or superuniverse levels of administration. The revelators remind us that all revelations short of the attainment of the Universal Father are partial and incomplete.

We wonder at the implications of having this revelation, and the supercharged spiritual ministries (the Spirit of Truth and universal bestowal of Thought Adjusters) which came with the 4th ER in light of the Divine Minister’s mandate directing the angelic hosts to work for full disclosure and unlimited opportunity for sin-expression as the quickest technique of achieving the perfect and final cure of the plague of evil and sin occasioned by the Lucifer Rebellion.

92:5. The Great Religious Leaders

Evolutionary religion (bottom up) envisions the gods in the likeness of man. Revelatory religion teaches that men are sons of God made in His image. The admixture of evolutionary and revealed God concepts has produced a blend of olden ideas of the evolutionary cults, sublime ideals of revealed religion, and the personal viewpoints of the great religious leaders of mankind.

It is no mere happenstance that men and women tend to venerate religious leaders even at the expense of their teachings. For the instinctive longing of humans for help from above and beyond was purposefully included in our design to anticipate the appearance of superhuman visitations from on high. That we have been deprived of our Planetary Prince and Material Sons explains this human proclivity for enshrouding our human leaders with characteristics of extraordinary origins and miraculous careers. Yet in spite of the misplaced veneration accorded these teachers they were pivotal personalities by which revealed truth contributed to the advancement of the morality, philosophy, and religion of mankind.

Notes by Brad

• Are you circuituously groping for answers? Try going up. Don't be a flatlander! Look up, go vertically up not horizontally all around.
  • What you quest for is not in the plane.
  • This shiny object you found in the plane? Not truth. Just a fact.
  • If your worldview says "there is no up", we're all just atoms in the void--philosophic materialism--you'll struggle with this.
• This religion tree shows us the profusion of horizontal groping of evolutionary religion. My, oh my.
• At best, you may find a shadow cast down onto the plane from the truth above.
  • And truth and falsehood cast the same shadow shape. Only by going up can you discriminate truth from falsehood.
  • There are an infinite number of falsehoods, and only one true Way.
  • But it's supposed to be like this. Because we are not designed to be created in perfection.
  • Can you be better than an animal, like a cat endlessly chasing the red dot cast onto the plane?
    • An animal cannot ask "why?" This question is a reflective doorway.
• How do you know if something is truth? Quid est veritas?
  • Pick it up. Try to follow it and see if it reduces to an absurdity.
  • But there is no end to this. Can I look before leaping?
  • Yes. Try looking up. And we have ministries to help us, namely the Spirit of Truth. And revealed religion.
  • Moving up from the level of feelings, nothing more than feelings.
  • Insight reveals the difference between truth and falsehood.
  • And this is about transcend, don't repress.

• The transition upward is tough. An adolescence. As the subject plane fades away (from moving up), many get scared and abandon the upward.
  • You must trust. Have faith. A new illumination will be found.
  • You must release your grip on falsehood fully before you can grasp truth. Like swinging on the monkey bars.
• Genuine independence requires courage. And genuine courage discovers independence. One needs the other
  • And once you've gone upward, you may appear rather odd to other people who are still in the subjective plane. Stay courageous once there.

• Conservation, conservator, conservative, etc. These words aren't so unrelated
  • A better understanding is obtained by reflection on the entire triplet: preservation, observation, and conservation
  • Popularly, today a "fundamentalist" religionist is a preservation-ist.
  • Popularly, today an "orthodox" religionist is an observation-ist.

• Concerning Self-assertion versus free will, if you can imagine taking it away, it is not free will!
  • All this mind over matter stuff is just about assertion.
  • Only spirit over mind is the domain of free will. And these are the stories from concentration camps about "they can't take away free will."
  • This is about inner versus outer life. The inner life is the domain of free will. You are sovereign only in your inner life, not the outer life.
  • Your spirit can impose a form on your mind in your inner life, in the spiritualized mind.
  • Be patient. As you mature and gain self-mastery the inner ad outer life will move more in lock step.

• An epochal revelation establishes a sweeping beginning of a new age. A sweeping modification of the religious soil on a planet.
  • It may or may not be a dispensation. The fifth epochal revelation is epochal, but not dispensational.
  • The first two arrive in a fairly formulaic way to a planet. The rest are... harder to predict, especially on our rebellion-torn world.
• There is a hierarchy of Fathers.
  • Revelation #1 revealed System Level. Revelation #2 revealed Constellation level. Then, for our odd little planet, Revelations #3 and #4 stayed at the "Most Highs" constellation level, with more emphasis on the spiritual father concept. And this 5th ER is distinctly different--it explains things beyond this universe age (yes is still meeting us where we're at).
    • Trust and faith come first for you.
    • Only then can come genuine love and service (the 4th ER).
    • Get these out of order and you're service will just be some... duty to a ghost cult or such. Sentimental service. Or even mechanical service.

• Epochal revelation #1 effectively teaches the complexity of a local system (1000 worlds). "Effectively" the universe is that big.
  • And a local system isn't truly that diverse, all told. Genetically similar enough to where they all can be upstepped by a Material Son and Daughter.
  • The absolute fact of the First Source and Center is not taught. The truth flowing through the System Sovereign is revealed.
    • And a 6-year old in a family sees the truth of the Father flowing from their parents.
• Epochal revelation #3 (Melchizedek), oddly enough, is the roots of the tree of all evolutionary religions we know today. Pretty much everything before blended into the evolutionary background. Into vague and mixed up mythologies.
  • This author reports seeing a billboard on I-40 that explained this 3rd epochal revelation in 36-inch font.

• Why are the first two epochal revelations about teachings, not the person? Reflect on the fact that Adam and Eve are biologic uplifters as their principal purpose.
• And then revelation #3 is about the person. His effect on the world more than his teachings (though he certainly had teachings: trust and faith).
  • He embodied trust and faith. And trust is built on the foundation of faith (word ordering here)
    • But to be clear: this foundation of faith is found only if you look up. It's in your superconscious. You must be grown up to it
  • And he was truly incarnated, not merely in corporeal form.
• Revelation #4 also is about the person. His embodiment.

• The Urantia Papers capitalizes "Papers" here. This is the proper designation of the revelation of truth itself.
  • A particular typesetting, book covert, table of contents, 'paper, section, paragraph'? That's The Urantia Book.

• On a normal world, science far outpaces religious concepts for a very long time.
  • To keep that spiritual consciousness from... flying off the rails, to keep a bridle on it. This is the wise and normal way of most worlds
  • Adam and Eve reveal (on a normal world) all the detailed physics, but keep the God concept still very "provincial" relative to the starry heavens.
  • This helps explain the emergency here today on our troubled world. "Unlimited opportunity for sin expression." Genuines destructivity paired with equal measure of genuine creativity.

• Aim higher. Don't set the bar too low. Don't call someone a prophet who is just a fine teacher, or is using mind and foresight well. A prophet is being engaged by a supermaterial being.
• And this thing where we venerate the teacher instead of his teachings? "Jesus-ism" in effect? It's too bad that happens so often, so easily. And that -ism isn't even really about them, it's a mythologized version of them.
  • But it's not bad, in another sense. This is in our nature--to look for a guru (as covered in this series). We're programmed this way, it's biologic.