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Jesus of Nazareth:
Outline for a Study of His Life and Teachings

by Rev. Dr. Meredith J. Sprunger

The Setting of the Seventh Bestowal of Christ Michael

• 1. Paradise Sons and their planetary missions. [20:5.1] (p. 227)
  • a. Creator Sons - the Michaels. Paper 21
    • 1) Creators of local universes
    • 2) Sevenfold bestowal requirements of sovereignty
  • b. Magisterial Sons - the Avonals [20:2.1] (p. 224)
    • 1) Judicial actions as dispensation terminators. [20:3.1] (p. 226)
    • 2) Magisterial missions in which they appear as an adult of the realm and act as teachers and guides. [20:4.1] (p. 226)
    • 3) Bestowal missions in which they are born of woman in one of the races of a planet and serve as Christ Michael served on Urantia in His bestowal mission.
  • c. Trinity Teacher Sons - the Daynals [20:9.1] (p. 231)
    • 1)Teachers of moral enlightenment and spiritual development of all spirit personalities
    • 2) When evolutionary worlds are ready to initiate a spiritual age of Light and Life the Trinity Teacher Sons volunteer for this service.
• 2. Background and preparation for bestowal mission
  • a. On typical planets the background preparation consists of:
    • 1) Teaching of Planetary Prince and his staff
    • 2) The racial, agricultural, scientific, industrial, and philosophic achievements of the Materials Sons.
    • 3) World-wide spiritual enlightenment and economic liberation resulting from Magisterial missions.
  • b. On Urantia the background consisted of:
    • 1) Rebellion of Planetary Prince and default of Adam and Eve.
    • 2) Retardation of planet; "On an average world the post-Adamic dispensation is an age of great invention, energy control, and mechanical development.  This is the era of the appearance of multiform manufacturing and the control of natural forces; it is the golden age of exploration and the final subduing of the planet.  Much of the material progress of a world occurs during this time of the inauguration of the development of the physical sciences, just such an epoch as Urantia is now experiencing.  Your world is a full dispensation and more behind the average planetary schedule.  [52:3.6] (p. 593)
    • 3) We have had no Magisterial mission; "On normal and loyal planets this age opens with the mortal races blended and biologically fit.  There are no race or color problems.  Literally all nations and races are of one blood.  The brotherhood of man flourishes, and the nations are learning to live on earth in peace and tranquility"."During the closing ages of this dispensation, society begins to return to more simplified forms of living.  The complex nature of an advancing civilization is running its course, and mortals are learning to live more naturally and effectively"."The termination of this age, on an ideal world, witnesses the fullness of a great religious awakening, a world-wide spiritual enlightenment."  [52:4.1] (p. 594-5); "The teachings of Jesus are really applicable to a mortal world which has had the preliminary training of the prebestowal Sons with their dispensations of character ennoblement and culture augmentation"."Your world is really out of step in the planetary procession.  Your Master, when on earth, warned His disciples that His advent would not bring the usual reign of peace on Urantia."  [52:5.8] (p. 596-7)
  • c. Bestowals of Christ Michael.  The bestowals of Michael occurred about one hundred and fifty million years apart and covered a period of around one billion years.
    • 1) First bestowal was made as a Melchizedek Son. "By universal consent He has become chief of Melchizedeks, having earned our love and adoration by His matchless wisdom, supreme love, and superb devotion to duty.  He loved us, understood us, and served with us, and forever we are His loyal and devoted fellow Melchizedeks, for this stranger on our world has now eternally become a universe minister of Melchizedek nature."  [119:1.5] (p. 1,310)
    • 2) Second bestowal was made as a Lanonandek Son acting as System Sovereign of rebellious system 11 of constellation 37. "For more than seventeen years of universe time this strange and unknown temporary ruler administered the affairs and wisely adjudicated the difficulties of this confused and demoralized local system.  No System Sovereign was ever more ardently loved or more widespreadly honored and respected."  [119:2.5] (p. 1,311)
    • 3) Third bestowal was made as a Material Son appointed Planetary Prince on planet 217 of system 87 in constellation 61  - a quarantined world of secession and rebellion. "This emergency Material Son effected the repentance and reclamation of the defaulting Planetary Prince and his entire staff and witnessed the restoration of the planet to the loyal service of the Paradise rule as established in the local universes".
      "I regret that I do not have permission to narrate the patience, fortitude, and skill with which this Material Son met the trying situations on this confused planet.  The reclamation of this isolated world is one of the most beautifully touching chapters in the annals of salvation throughout Nebadon." [119:3.5] (p. 1,312-3)
    • 4) Fourth bestowal was made as a supreme seraphim serving as a teaching counselor on twenty-two different worlds.
    • 5) Fifth bestowal was made as an ascending pilgrim (Eventod) of mortal origin on Uversa.
    • 6) Sixth bestowal was made as a morontia mortal in constellation five. "When Michael returned from this morontia bestowal, it was apparent to all of us that our Creator had become a fellow creature, that he Universe Sovereign was also the friend and sympathetic helper of even the lowest form of created intelligence in His realms."  [119:6.4] (p. 1,316)
    • 7) Seventh bestowal was made as Jesus of Nazareth on Urantia.  The announcement that Michael had selected Urantia as the theater of His final bestowal was made shortly after the default of Adam and Eve. "Urantia is the sentimental shrine of all Nebadon, the chief of ten million inhabited worlds, the mortal home of Christ Michael, sovereign of all Nebadon, a Melchizedek minister to the realms, a system savior, an Adamic redeemer, a seraphic fellow, an associate of ascending spirits, a morontia progressor, a Son of Man in the likeness of mortal flesh, and the Planetary Prince of Urantia.  And your record tells the truth when it says that this same Jesus has promised some time to return to the world of His terminal bestowal, the World of the Cross."  [119:8.8] (p. 1,319)

Purpose and Principles of the Seventh Bestowal of Christ Michael

• 1. The purpose of the incarnation of the Creator Son is threefold:
  • a. To reveal the Paradise Trinity to the personalities of His creation.  In His seventh bestowal Jesus gave an unsurpassed revelation of the Universal Father to man.
  • b. To present to the Heavenly Father an ideal representation of the creature and serve as an inspiration to all personalities of that status.  Jesus on Urantia was the perfected and ideal mortal of the universe.
  • c. To "enable such Creators to become wise, sympathetic, just, and understanding sovereigns." [119:0.4] (p. 1,308) "It required almost one billion years of Urantia time to complete the bestowal career of Michael and to effect the final establishment of His supreme authority in the universe of His own creation.  Michael was born a creator, educated an administrator, trained an executive, but He was required to earn His sovereignty by experience."  [119:8.2] (p. 1,318)
• 2. Since spiritual revelation is the basic factor essential to the realization of brotherhood in a confused and blighted planet like Urantia, Christ Michael apparently decided to use Urantia for His final bestowal to show divine concern for the least and the lowest of planets and thereby mightily assist us in our rehabilitation.  The fact that we are not ready to appreciate His unique ministry in full measure also probably explains the appearance of the Urantia Book.
• 3. Jesus was required to become wholly and unreservedly dependent upon the Universal Father for safe conduct and guidance in His mortal career.
• 4. He was counseled by Immanuel to technically terminate the Lucifer rebellion in the System of Satania.  This He was to accomplish as the Son of Man.
• 5. He was counseled to function largely in the role of a teacher. "I counsel you to function largely in the role of a teacher.  Give attention, first, to the liberation and inspiration of man's spiritual nature.  Next, illuminate the darkened human intellect, heal the souls of men, and emancipate their minds from age-old fears.  And then, in accordance with your mortal wisdom, minister to the physical well-being and material comfort of your brothers in the flesh.  Live the ideal religious life for the inspiration and edification of all your universe."  [120:2.5] (p. 1,328)
• 6. He was to avoid all entanglements with the economic structure and political commitments of the planet and not interfere in any way with the normal progressive evolution of the Urantia races.  He was to leave no progeny or writing on the planet and seek to avoid the establishment of an organized cult.
• 7. Jesus decided not to use any of the celestial personalities of the universe or to engage in a miracle ministry unless it should become evident that this was the Father's will.
• 8. He decided that in His own personal life He would abide by the established natural laws.  He would exercise normal watch care over His human safety but would not use superhuman intervention for protection.
• 9. He decided to largely ignore Messianic hopes, Hebrew scriptures, and Jewish expectations in formulating His ministry.
• 10. He decided to trust His Father to work out the details of procedure day by day - in all things He pledged to be subject to the Father's will. "Urantia mortals have varying concepts of the miraculous, but to us who live as citizens of the local universe there are few miracles, and of these by far the most intriguing are the incarnational bestowals of the Paradise Sons.  The appearance in and on your world, by apparently natural processes, of a divine Son, we regard as a miracle - the operation of universal laws beyond our understanding.  Jesus of Nazareth was a miraculous person."  [120:4.5] (p. 1,331)

Concepts of the Kingdom of Heaven and the Religion of Jesus

• 1. "The kingdom of heaven consists in these three essentials:  first recognition of the fact of the sovereignty of God; second, belief in the truth of sonship with God; third, faith in the effectiveness of the supreme human desire to do the will of God - to be like God.  And this is the good news of the gospel:  that by faith every mortal may have all these essentials of salvation." [140:10.9] (p. 1,585-6)
• 2. "The Master made it clear that the kingdom of heaven must begin with, and be centered in, the dual concept of the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the correlated fact of the brotherhood of man."  [170:2.1] (p.1,859) "I admonish you ever to remember that your mission among men is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom - the reality of the father hood of God and the truth of the sonship of man.  Proclaim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the saving gospel.  Your message is not changed by my resurrection experience.  Sonship with God, by faith, is still the saving truth of the gospel of the kingdom.  You are to go forth preaching the love of God and the service of man.  That which the world needs most to know is:  Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize, and daily experience this ennobling truth.  My bestowal should help all men to know that they are children of God, but such knowledge will not suffice if they fail personally to faith-grasp the saving truth that they are the living spirit sons of the eternal Father.  The gospel of the kingdom is concerned with the love of the Father and the service of His children on earth."  [193:0.4] (p. 2,052-3)
• 3. The Master presented five cardinal features of the gospel of the kingdom:
  • a. The pre-eminence of the individual.
  • b. The will as the determining factor in man's experience.
  • c. Spiritual fellowship with God the Father.
  • d. The supreme satisfaction of the loving service of man.
  • e. The transcendency of the spiritual over the material in human personality."  [170:4.3] (p. 1,863)
• 4. Jesus' last word concerning the kingdom of heaven is that it is a fellowship rooted in personal experience with God and one's fellowmen - "The kingdom is within you." "At different times and in varying circumstances it appears that Jesus may have presented numerous concepts of the 'kingdom' in His public teachings, but to His apostles He always taught the kingdom as embracing man's personal experience in relation to his fellows on earth and to the Father in heaven.  Concerning the kingdom, His last word always was, 'The Kingdom is within you.'" [170:1.9] (p. 1,859) "Jesus never tired of telling them that the kingdom of heaven was their personal experience of realizing the higher qualities of spiritual living, that these realities of the spirit experience are progressively translated to new and higher levels of divine certainty and eternal grandeur."  [170:2.14] (p. 1,860)
• 5. The kingdom of heaven is both a present reality and a future hope.  Although Jesus never gave a precise, all-inclusive definition of the kingdom, He enumerated five phases of its manifestation.
  • a. The personal spiritual fellowship with God the Father.
  • b. The social developments of a society motivated by the higher morality and advanced ethics resulting from the reign of God in the hearts of men.
  • c. The reality and ministry of the supermortal brotherhood of invisible spiritual beings, which is active on earth and in heaven.
  • d. The dawn of a new social order, which will come with improved spiritual living - the next age of man.
  • e. The full planetary achievement of the kingdom - the spiritual age of light and life.  [170:4.1] (p. 1,862-3)
• 6. Jesus established a new and living way, which frees man from animal fear and opens a new life of spiritual liberty.  This enlarged life includes seven rich endowments:
  • a. The possession of new courage and augmented spiritual power.  The gospel of the kingdom was to set man free and inspire him to date to hope for eternal life.
  • b. The gospel carried a message of new confidence and true consolation for al men, even for the poor.
  • c. It was in itself a new standard of moral values, a new ethical yardstick wherewith to measure human conduct.  It portrayed the ideal of a resultant new order of human society.
  • d. It taught the pre-eminence of the spiritual compared with material; it glorified spiritual realities and exalted superhuman ideals.
  • e. This new gospel held up spiritual attainment as the true goal of living.  Human life received a new endowment of moral value and divine dignity.
  • f. Jesus taught that eternal realities were the result (reward) of righteous earthly striving.  Man's moral sojourn on earth acquired new meanings consequent upon the recognition of a noble destiny.
  • g. The new gospel affirmed that human salvation is the revelation of a far-reaching divine purpose to be fulfilled and realized in the future destiny of the endless service of the salvaged sons of God."  [170:2.1] (p. 1,859-60)
• 7. Two things are essential to enter the kingdom - sincere faith and a hunger for truth. "Jesus taught that, by faith, the believer enters the kingdom now.  In the various discourses He taught that two things are essential to faith-entrance into the kingdom:
  • a. Faith, sincerity.  To come as a little child, to receive the bestowal of sonship as a gift; to submit to the doing of the Father's will without questioning and in full confidence and genuine trustfulness of the Father's wisdom; to come into the kingdom free from prejudice and preconception; to be open-minded and teachable like an unspoiled child.
  • b. Truth hunger.  The thirst for righteousness, a change of mind, the acquirement of the motive to be like God and to find God."  [170:2.18] (p. 1,861) "The keys of the kingdom of heaven are:  sincerity, more sincerity, and more sincerity.  All men have these keys.  Men use them - advance in spirit status by decisions, by more decisions, and by more decisions.  The highest moral choice is the choice of the highest possible value, and always - in any sphere and in al of them - this is to choose to do the will of God.  If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the humblest citizen of Jerusem or even the least of mortals on Urantia."  [39:4.14] (p. 435-6)
• 8. Jesus gave mankind a new commandment:  "Love one another as I have loved you." "When I give you this new commandment, I do not place any new burden upon your souls; rather do I bring you new joy and make it possible for your to experience new pleasure in knowing the delights of the bestowal of your heart's affection upon your fellow men."  [180:1.2] (p. 1,944)
  
  "I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men.  You are not merely to proclaim the joys of heaven but also to exhibit in your daily experience these spirit realities of the divine life since you already have eternal life, as a gift of God, through faith.Let faith reveal your light to the world; let the revelation of truth open the eyes blinded by tradition; let your loving service effectually destroy the prejudice engendered by ignorance.  By so drawing close to your fellow men in understanding sympathy and with unselfish devotion, you will lead them into a saving knowledge of the Father's love.  The Jews have extolled goodness; the Greeks have exalted beauty; the Hindus preach devotion; the far-away ascetics teach reverence; the Romans demand loyalty; but I require of my disciples life, even a life of loving service for your brothers in the flesh."  [191:5.3] (p. 2,043)
• 9. Jesus stressed balanced personality growth and development.  He taught men to integrate and master their total self.  He deplored man's narrow-minded tendency toward overspecialization, pointing out that even virtues, if carried to extremes, may become vices.  We are to use temperance, consistency, and good judgment in our adjustment to life situations. "Education should be a technique of learning (discovering) the better methods of gratifying our natural and inherited urges, and happiness is the resulting total of these enhanced techniques of emotional satisfactions.  Happiness is little dependent on environment, though please surrounding may greatly contribute thereto."  [140:4.10] (p. 1,573)
  
  "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 a great need for the teaching of moral discipline in the place of so much self-gratification."  [195:10.17] (p. 2,086)
  
  "Strong characters are not derived from not doing wrong but rather from actually doing right.  Unselfishness is the badge of human greatness.  The highest levels of self-realization are attained by worship and service.  The happy and effective person is motivated, not by fear of wrong doing, but by love of right doing." "Without a worthy goal, life becomes aimless and unprofitable, and much unhappiness results.  Jesus' discourse at the ordination of the twelve constitutes a master philosophy of life.  Jesus exhorted His followers to exercise experiential faith.  He admonished them not to depend on mere intellectual assent, credulity, and established authority."  [140:4.9] (p. 1,572)
  
  "Verily, verily, I say to you, he who rules his own life is greater than he who captures a city.  Self-mastery is the measure of man's moral nature and the indicator of his spiritual development." "By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to the rules of living; by the new way you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of your mind, and so you arte endowed with the power of the certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God.The new law of the spirit endows you with the liberty of self-mastery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bondage and the slavery of self-denial."  [143:2.4] (p. 1,609)
• 10. Jesus is the spiritual lens through which men can see the Universal Father.  He is the bridge between man and God and brought man finality of salvation. "The teaching of Jesus constitute the first Urantian religion which so fully embraced a harmonious coordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquility, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival.  The faith of Jesus pointed the way to finality of human salvation, to the ultimate of mortal universe attainment, since it provided for:
  • a. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with God, who is spirit.
  • b. Salvation from intellectual bondage:  man shall know the truth and the truth shall set him free.
  • c. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings and the morontian awareness of the brotherhood of al universe creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values.
  • d. Salvation from incompleteness of self through the attainment of the spirit levels of the universe and through the eventual realization of the harmony of Havona and the perfection of Paradise.
  • e. Salvation from self, deliverance from the limitations of self-consciousness through the attainment of the cosmic levels of the Supreme mind and by coordination with the attainments of all other self-conscious beings.
  • f. Salvation from time, the achievement of eternal life of unending progression in God-recognition and God-service.
  • g. Salvation from the finite, the perfected oneness with Deity in and through the Supreme by which the creature attempts the transcendental discovery of the Ultimate on the postfinaliter levels of the absonite."  [101:6.8] (p. 1,112-3)
• 11. Jesus' teaching disassociated superstition, magic, mythology, and dogmatism from true religion. "The magical and mythological parentage of natural religions and the consummate saving gospel of the religion of Jesus.  Jesus' life and teaching finally divested religion of the superstitions of magic, the illusions of mythology, and the bondage of traditional dogmatism.  But this early magic and mythology very effectively prepared the way for later and superior religion by assuming the existence and reality of supermaterial values and beings."  [103:9.4] (p. 1,141)
• "Jesus repeatedly taught His apostles that no civilization could long survive the loss of the best in its religion.  And He never grew weary of pointing out t the twelve the great danger of accepting religious symbols and ceremonies in the place of religious experience.  His whole earth life was consistently devoted to the mission of thawing out the frozen forms of religion into the liquid liberties of enlightened sonship."  [155:3.8] (p. 1,727-8)
• "Until the races become highly intelligent and more fully civilized, there will persist many of those childlike and superstitious ceremonies which are so characteristic of the evolutionary religions practices of primitive and backward peoples.  Until the human race progresses to the level of a higher and more general recognition of the realities of spiritual experience, large numbers of men and women will continue to show a personal preference for those religions of authority which require only intellectual assent, in contrast to the religion of the spirit, which entails active participation of mind and soul in the faith adventure of grappling with the rigorous realities of progressive human experience."  [155:5.8] (p. 1,729)
• "While the religion of authority may impart a present feeling of settled security, you pay for such a transient satisfaction the price of the loss of your spiritual freedom and religious liberty.  My Father does not require of you as the price of entering the kingdom of heaven that you should force yourself to subscribe to a belief in things which are spiritually repugnant, unholy, and untruthful.  It is not required of you that your own sense of mercy, justice, and truth should be outraged by submission to an outworn system of religious forms and ceremonies.  The religion of the spirit leaves you forever free to follow truth wherever the leadings of the spirit may take you.  And who can judge - perhaps this spirit may have something to impart to this generation which other generations have refused to hear?"
• "Shame on those false religious teachers who would drag hungry souls back into the dim and distant past and there leave them!  And so are these unfortunate persons doomed to become frightened by every new discovery, while they are discomfited by every new revelation of truth.  The prophet who said, 'He will be kept in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on God', was not a mere intellectual believer in authoritative theology.  This truth-knowing human had discovered God; he was not merely talking about God." "I admonish you to give up the practice of always quoting the prophets of old and praising the heroes of Israel, and instead aspire to become living prophets of the Most High and spiritual heroes of the coming kingdom.  To honor the God-knowing leaders of the past may indeed be worthwhile, but why, in so doing, should you sacrifice the supreme experience of human existence:  finding God for yourselves and knowing Him in your own soul?" [155:6.5] (p. 1731)
• 12. The gospel of the kingdom has been temporarily distorted by Pauline theology. "The ideas and ideals of Jesus, embodied in the teaching of the gospel of the kingdom, nearly failed of realization as His followers progressively distorted His pronouncements.  The Master's concept of the kingdom was notably modified by two great tendencies:
  • a. The Jewish believers persisted in regarding His as the Messiah.  They believed that Jesus would very soon return actually to establish the worldwide and more or less material kingdom.
  • b. The gentile Christians began very early to accept the doctrines of Paul, which led increasingly to the general belief that Jesus was the Redeemer of the children of the church, the new and institutional successor of the earlier concept of the purely spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom. "The church, as a social outgrowth of the kingdom, would have been wholly natural and even desirable.  The evil of the church was not its existence, but rather that it almost completely supplanted the Jesus concept of the kingdom.  Paul's institutionalized church became a virtual substitute for the kingdom of heaven, which Jesus had proclaimed. "But doubt not, this same kingdom of heaven which the Master taught exists within the heart of the believer, will yet be proclaimed to this Christian church, even as to all other religions, races, and nations on earth - even to every individual."  [170:5.8] (p. 1,864)
  • "Sooner or later another and greater John the Baptist is due to arise proclaiming 'the kingdom of God is at hand' - meaning a return to the high spiritual concept of Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom is the will of His heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer - and doing all this without in any way referring either to the visible church on earth or to the anticipated second coming of Christ."  [170:5.19] (p. 1,866)

The Results of the Life and Teachings of Jesus

• 1. Christ Michael now reigns as a Master Michael, the Universe Sovereign of Nebadon.  The Spirit of Truth has been poured out on our planet and all normal human beings receive Thought Adjusters.
• 2. The Lucifer rebellion is technically ended.
  • a. Lucifer is a prisoner held on satellite number one of the Father's group of transition spheres of Jerusem.  Satan is now unqualifiedly detained on the Jerusem prison worlds.  Since Pentecost Caligastia and Daligastia are servile before Thought Adjusters and the Spirit of Truth.  They have been relatively impotent since the time of Christ.
  • b. The first steps in hearing the case of the Lucifer rebellion have been taken in the courts of Uversa.
• 3. The revelation which Jesus brought to our planet combined with his Spirit of Truth have freed religion from special priesthoods, institutions, forms, and ceremonies.  This new release of spiritual power has ended the domination of sheer physical power.  [194:3.10] (p. 2,064)  Man now has the spiritual fulcrum to overcome evil with good, to vanquish hate by love, and to destroy fear with living faith.
• 4. The gospel of Jesus has already brought a new order of human society.  The religion of Jesus is the most powerful unifying influence the world has ever known.  [194:3.17] (p. 2,065)
• 5. The spiritual drawing power of Christ Michael combined with the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the guidance of the indwelling Thought Adjusters have brought our world to the brink of one of the greatest advances in our history. "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."  [195:9.2] (p. 2,082) "Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress, and the revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail."  [196:3.30] (p. 2,097)
• 6. The blueprint of this new age in the reign of Christ Michael is summarized in the following personal transformations and planetary adjustments.
  • a. Social fraternity.  We must multiply the social contacts of the world, develop a common language, and foster an international exchange of students, teachers, industrialists, and religious philosophers.
  • b. Intellectual cross-fertilization.  Worldwide communication and travel must bring first hand knowledge of all races and people.  There must be a free exchange of literature and culture among all nations.
  • c. Ethical awakening.  Human intolerance, national pride, and racial jealousy must be unmasked by a greater ethical consciousness, which leads to the spiritual insight necessary to unify mankind.
  • d. Political wisdom.  Only emotional maturity can lead man to the self-control and political techniques essential to the elimination of war.
  • e. Spiritual insight.  The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity.  Brotherhood is rooted in the recognition of the Fatherhood of God. [52:6.2] (p. 597-8)
• 7. The faith of Jesus teaches us that religion - fellowship with God - is the supreme experience of man.  It unifies and integrates all of life. "The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind.  Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness - contact with the divine presence."  [196:3.31] (p. 2,097)

A service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship
Serving the Readership since 1955