Global Change Teachings for the New Millennium

Presented by Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase

to members and guests of Global Community Communications Church at a World-Wide Sunday Service

Teaching by Niann Emerson Chase:

War and Conflict

How many of you become sick at heart and really discouraged you read the newspaper or different news magazines, watch the news on television or listen to it on the radio, or just in your daily travels when you look upon the world and realize the terrible dilemmas that are challenging humankind? These dilemmas are challenging humans on every level. How many of you at times become sick at heart and feel a sense of sadness and grief over the state of the world? How many of you get disgusted with yourselves when you become aware of those times when you have contributed to that dilemma?

Think of the situations where you are right now experiencing conflict and a lack of unity. Is that situation with another individual; is it with an organization; or is it with the entire world? Do you still feel like you have to take on the whole world and that you are in conflict with the entire world? Or is that conflictive situation, rather than being external, more internalized with the lack of unity being within you? Are you struggling with God? Do you feel turmoil and conflict with yourself as if you’re in battle, not with God, but with yourself? Do you experience what seems like an unending conflict between your own personal desires and what you think you should be doing? Are you confused because you don’t even know what you should be doing, but you know that what you are doing you shouldn’t be doing? That’s war. That’s war within self.

War can be on a very small personal level or on a big, more expansive level. Most observant and educated people are aware that the United States, our own government, has participated in creating the horrors of biological and chemical warfare that concerns all intelligent and compassionate persons. The rhetoric surrounding the United States government’s so-called concern over Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons is ironic, since the United States government introduced this type of horrible warfare to the world. It appears that our government is in conflict with itself and its “public” policies.

Some of the synonyms of war and conflict are: hostility, clash, fight, battle, combat, contend, and struggle. We’ve all experienced these situations—whether they are with other human beings or with an institution or with the world or just within ourselves, whether they be an actual physical combat with another human being or organization or with our own physical bodies. Some of us have made decisions where we actually combat our own bodies and our body’s God-given abilities to heal. Sometimes these conflicts are with the “hounds of heaven.” The Spirit of God and other living spiritual forces are rapping at us, “hounding” us, continually calling us to move on. “Come on, move on,” giving us a push to progress out of our own smallnesses and our own errors. In reality, any inner conflict that we have is in some manner a battle with God, because it’s a lack of unity with Him, and it’s a lack of unity with the personality circuitry that He has bestowed upon each one of us.

Divine Pattern of Coordination and Unity

Each one of us has a unique personality bestowal. It is innate within every single human being to crave and to desire peace and unity with the world in general. There is within each human being the desire to have a unity and a peace with the culture that the individual lives in and with the people in our lives and, of course, with ourselves. It’s a gift from God; we all have it in common, no matter what culture, what race, or what universe we are from, it is a part of us. It is an aspect of our personality circuitry that every single ascending mortal has. On this planet, Lucifer’s manifesto of rebellion with divine pattern has destroyed that unification on all levels of universe reality—the physical, the mindal (included in the mindal is the emotional) and the spiritual levels. Throughout the entire URANTIA Book is the message of unity rather than uniformity. Divine pattern of unity permeates the center of the master universe—Paradise—with the three Deities: the Universal Father, the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. That divine pattern of unification flows from the nucleus of the master universe (Paradise) through the central universe of Havona into the seven superuniverses of time and space and from the superuniverses into the local universes, into the constellations and the systems and down to every planet. And that pattern of unity flows in circuitry throughout all personalities, celestial and human. It’s there, it’s within our grasp, and it’s within our reach, if we are willing to basically “come right with God.”

Again, that unity and that unification is manifested on all levels. It’s manifested on the physical level, and it’s manifested on the mindal level and on the spiritual level, whether you see it in the process of creation or in the evolution of that creation. That unity and coordination is present on a macrocosmic level as well as on a microscopic level. An astronomer and a physicist look through the telescope and out into the heavens, and they are confronted by the unexplainable evidence of order and intelligence. They see it in the systems; they see it in the constellations in the universes. A chemist or a physicist can peer into the microscope and be amazed by the same kind of order and unification within the atoms and the molecules and the cells that they look at. They’re looking at the physical level of reality, and some of them are wise enough to realize that the beauty and order is not just on the physical level of reality, that the seeming intelligence behind the coordination and order is connected with the mindal level of reality.

Most human beings on Urantia (Earth) react with their natural world in a devastating relationship. Most human beings on Urantia interact with each other with a terrible and destructive dissonance. Most human beings on Urantia relate to their own selves in an appalling self-destruction. No wonder we get sick at heart; no wonder we can become overwhelmed and discouraged with life in general!

Yesterday, in watching a segment of the history of rock and roll with the Bright and Morning Star Band, we focused on punk and hip-hop music. I sadly observed that the majority of the bands were composed of angry and disillusioned people who were lost within themselves, and they were lost in their music. Their stage presence, their dress, and their personal essences reflected this lostness. The various musicians displayed a sense of “orphanness.” In an unfriendly society and a corrupt culture, they were full of dissonance themselves, as was their music. They certainly didn’t reflect divine pattern, peace, or unity. The scary thing is that these bands attract thousands and thousands and thousands of people who relate to that same sense of orphanness, brokenness, and lack of unity. Some of the bands even have names that indicate their state of mind, for example, “Clash,” and “Beasty Boys.”

We’re told in The URANTIA Book that the mansion worlds are designed to take all that “beastliness” out of us. The mansion worlds are designed to take every remnant of the animal and the beast out of us, as well as all those lower human clashes that happen within us as a result of living on a material world. Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER) tells us that the Starseed and Urantian Schools of Melchizedek and the community of Aquarian Concepts are designated and designed to function as the mansion worlds now function. (In the future the Sacred Homes in the various sectors across the planet are even to function at constellation levels.) So for those of us involved here in this accelerated mode of ascension, we are united in a union of souls because we are working together to move out of our own clashes and our beastliness of lower mind levels. We want to move into higher spiritized minds.

Unity vs Uniformity

The URANTIA Book indicates that revelatory religion brings people together in unity rather than in uniformity. What is uniformity and what is unity? The words sound so similar. Some of the synonyms for uniformity are: alike, equal, identical, unvarying, undeviating, unchanging and unaltered. Fifth Epochal Revelation (FER) states that within divine pattern the one billion worlds in the central universe of Havona are very unified, and yet each one is different and unique in its perfection. The personality bestowal that comes directly from the First Source and Center of all, from the Universal Father, is unique with every single person. And when I say person, I don’t mean just the billions and billions of ascending mortals; I mean all of the celestial personalities too who also have personality bestowal directly from the Universal Father. Each one is unique. We’re talking about billions of individual expressions of uniqueness. Yet, within this divine pattern of diversity of personality and function and expression is unity and unification. The synonyms for unity are: oneness, wholeness, unification, consolidation, amalgamation, fusion, synthesis, merger, joining, association, federation, confederation, affiliation, league, alliance, union, partnership, accord, peace, harmony, cooperation, friendship, understanding, goodwill, fellowship, compatibility, rapport, and likemindedness. Almost every single one of those words have something to do with associating with someone else. Almost every single one of those words that are synonyms with unity have to do with not being alone but in interacting with other personalities.

Levels of Understanding

We are aware that people and groups come together in unity because of likemindedness. They share the same goals and values. Gangs, Mafia type groups, and terrorists come together in unity of loyalty to each other and a sense of family. Other groups come together in unity to feed and house refugees or to introduce and implement laws that protect the innocent from oppression and exploitation. Both types of groups are unified in dedication to a cause and loyalty to each other, but their motives are different. One type of group operates from a base of rebellion and selfishness, the other from a foundation of divine pattern and selflessness. Both types of groups come together in likemindedness, but their minds are at different levels.

I’m going to use the levels of understanding and mindedness that Jesus taught about on pages 1650 and 1651 of The URANTIA Book. The music, art, dress, language, lifestyle, ceremonies, and rituals of any group reflect what level of mindedness those united individuals are coming from.

The groups that are gangs and terrorists and mafia-ish operate from the lowest level of understanding, the level of the flesh. Their understanding of reality comes from a consciousness of materialism. They still have much of the beastliness in them, and they make decisions from a level of obtaining physical comfort, being safe in a material world, and getting ungodly dio power over others. It’s all based on material wealth and power. If there is a sense of loyalty and “family” obligations in these groups, it usually is purely selfish and possessive, but if there is any sympathy and pity for other group members within the hearts of the individuals of these groups, then they may also possibly occasionally operate from the next level higher than that of the of the flesh, the level of feelings. The types of groups that come together to feed and house the hungry or bring about changes in the political system for the benefit of the oppressed and the exploited are operating from the higher levels—from the levels of mind, brotherly/sisterly love, and a sense of morality.

Religious groups who come together in unity can operate at various levels of mindedness, depending again upon the degree of evolutionary religion and/or revelatory religion they have. Evolutionary religion is religion that is created by human beings attempting to explain what divinity is and who God is. There can be much revelation within an evolutionary religion, but most evolutionary religions also have much error in them because they’re coming from a place of a human mind that’s very limited in its understanding of divinity and cosmology. Revelatory religion is divinity bringing the truth to the human beings, thus The URANTIA Book and Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER) is the revelation that is available today. It is the fifth epochal revelation (FER), and it’s for the entire planet.

Take the ritual, ceremony, and music of a religion for example. In some evolutionary religions, music and ritual is focused upon getting the physical things needed for survival—food, rain for gardens, fertility, money, the power to defeat an enemy in war, and so on. Those religions come from the mind of the flesh. Those are the earliest religions that evolved as a result of the need to simply survive. With early, primitive peoples, life was only about physical survival in a brutal and dangerous world, and every waking moment was spent on staying alive. Unfortunately today there are still people on Urantia (Earth) whose existence is tied up in simply keeping alive, and it is understandable that their religion is based on this level of understanding. Some people in the sophisticated, materialistic world of Western civilization are struggling to find spirituality and more meaning, purpose, and depth for their lives and may regress into an evolutionary religion that has ritual and ceremony based on just getting basic physical needs met. The reason for this type of “regression” is that in order to come out of the dehumanizing, high tech culture of Western civilization, some individuals need to go back to their roots, to their connections and genetics with animals, plants, and earth. Some people need to experience the beauty and magic of religious ritual that is not in denial of humans’ interdependence with the natural world and our tenuous hold on life.

Some of the prosperity teachings in the more “advanced” Western civilization actually originate from these earlier religions that were based on physical survival. Even though the followers of these teachings on prosperity are educated and sophisticated, the religion they are adhering to is still based upon the lowest level of understanding, the level of the flesh, which in these modern times in a modern culture is a purely selfish and lustful interpretation of reality. Materialism today is at that level, and though we humans are material creatures and have material needs, we are destined to evolve into higher levels of understanding and acting after our material needs are met. Unfortunately most people caught in base materialistic thinking have all of their basic needs met and are operating from motives of selfish greed rather than from necessity and real need.

In some evolutionary religions, music and ceremony are focused on feeling good about self, healing from some emotional trauma so that individuals can get on with their lives of self-indulgence, getting others to love you and so on. That type of religion or spirituality is coming mostly from the level of feelings. Religions based on sympathy and pity for family and friends are one level higher than that of the flesh; they are at the level of feelings. Many of the New Age teachings are at those first two lower levels, including some of the prosperity teachings that are so popular. Materialism stems from those two levels of understanding, getting your physical desires and ego wants met.

Within religion that is on the mindal and intellectual level, there is more of a possibility for revelation to take hold to some degree. Of course the previous two levels of material concerns and emotional considerations are part of these higher levels of understanding; they are just put in a more realistic perspective within divine mind. Then music and ritual at this level is designed to bring the emotions and perceptions of reality up into the human mind, not just emoting, but actually thinking about your emotions. Dr. Landau has said, “Bring those emotions into your cortex.” When you do that, you can use logic and intelligence in dealing with situations and begin to respond rather than react. Knowledge of spiritual truths are values; high values and beauty are appreciated in the religions that operate on that level of mind.

The level of brotherly/sisterly love indicates that “heart” has connected in some way, compassion is present. Revelatory religion can be manifested to an even higher degree at the level of brotherly/sisterly love because people are moving into a higher human mind that can become more spiritized. Expanded understanding of God as a loving and merciful God can happen, and religion can become even more active in service to others. A religion that has ascended to the level of morality brings people together who understand the justice and righteousness of God as well as His loving mercy. Individuals at this level can begin to feel an expanded sense of personal responsibility for the error in themselves and also in the world, wanting to bring about changes, wanting to bring more justice to the world. So, their level of action has broader ramifications for the progression of the people of the planet.

The spiritual level brings people together who are seeking continuous revelation. Paladin introduced the concept that truth is like a rubberband. It can stay small or it can stretch and get expansive. Religion that is at the spiritual level results in people coming together in unity who want continuous revelation. Here at the First Planetary Sacred Home we’re united in a union of souls, not just a union geographically or a union of minds, though that’s all happening too. Though there is a union of hearts, a union of emotions, the real “glue” is the union of souls which is a spiritual creation of eternal value. At this spiritual level, it is a union of souls and it indicates that we aim to become continually more spiritized in our minds.

The lower the level of mind consciousness, the more tendency there is to become uniform in feeling, thinking and doing. That uniformity is out of divine pattern. For there is diversity and coordination within divine pattern. Most of us have observed people and groups of people who operate from the lower levels of understanding, and often they seem like clones. When you look at their faces and their bodies, they obviously are different. But just their movement, the way they express themselves, the way they dress, everything about them seems so uniform, like clones. That’s what happens in the lower levels of mind. At the highest level of mind, we want to come into that closer and closer union with God, and when we do that as individuals, we begin to move out of the conflicts with the world and with others and with ourselves. The conflict, that feeling of clash becomes less and less within us. Thus our language, our music, the way we dress, and how we relate to each other changes, and we become more at peace; the “peace that passes all understanding” that Jesus talked about becomes more and more a part of us.

A divine counselor states on page 31 of The URANTIA Book that humans “do not achieve that union with God as a drop of water might find unity with the ocean. [Humans] attain divine union by progressive reciprocal spiritual communion, by personality intercourse with the personal God, by increasingly attaining the divine nature through wholehearted and intelligent conformity to the divine will.” [Emphasis by underlining mine.] In other words, nobody can wave a magic wand over you, and suddenly you have that instant union with God. It’s a continual thing that happens; it’s a progressive thing, and it’s a wholehearted choice moment by moment on each individual’s part.
Teaching by Gabriel of Urantia

Conforming to Uniformity Rather Than Allowing for Diversity

How can the people of two different planets be unified yet uniquely different? How can people of different cultures find unity? Basically there is only one true religion, and that’s the religion of absolute truth. Niánn mentioned that in Havona there are one billion perfect worlds yet each one is uniquely different. What makes these worlds perfect? What makes the worlds different? How can so many worlds, one billion, be perfect yet very different from one another? Down here on Urantia (Earth), which is a fallen world, we are at a kindergarten level of ascension, and so we can only surmise upon this cosmic fact of near Paradise realities. Havona is near Paradise. It isn’t Paradise but it’s as close to Paradise as you might want to get within each of those billion worlds as we ascend to the more perfect worlds of Paradise, each one of them also different. The varieties of perfection, the unity of the omnipotent God and those differences!

Here on this planet we all try to find our place in ourselves. Remember that this is a fallen world. When we are teenagers we begin to have tremendous peer pressure to join the gang, so to speak. For some of us that “gang” is an intellectual group. For others it’s smoking cigarettes or drinking beer or taking drugs or dressing a certain way. For some it’s guns and weapons and joining street gangs. Some pick up certain ways of talking.

Religious traditions tell us not to eat meat on Fridays, to wear certain clothes, to have long hair, to have short hair, or to have no hair at all, to eat certain foods or to refrain from certain foods. Some regard one day as more sacred than another. The list of “dos” and “don’ts” does indeed go on and on and on in different religions. People live and die in those traditions which basically aren’t of eternal relevance, or within the personality circuitry of God, as taught in Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER) and The URANTIA Book.

The URANTIA Book has 149 different references to unity. On page two it says, “Deity is characterized by the quality of unity, actual or potential, on all supermaterial levels of reality, and this unifying quality is best comprehended by creatures as divinity.”

What is holiness? What is divinity in us? I have visited and lived in a lot of different cities in this country. It seemed that God had me live in different cities for three to six months just to get the pulse or the beat of the cities. During that time I was on a spiritual journey and experienced the different “isms” in Christianity: Church of God, Church of God in Christ, Original Glorious Church of God in Christ, Original Glorious Glory Church of God in Christ, the Original Glorious Church of God in Christ, and so on. Each one is different from the other just a little bit in some doctrine, and some even have a mode of dress that differentiates them from the other sects.

When I was in West Virginia, a friend of mine with an injured leg and I were walking down the street together. We met an acquaintance who prayed over the leg, and it seemed to be healed. The “healer” was a brother in the Original Glorious Church of God in Christ, and that church believes that you have to be baptized in the name of Jesus or you’re not saved. So he asked my buddy after he did heal him, “You baptized in the name of Jesus?” And my buddy said “Hm, in the name of Jesus, uh, no.” The brother said, “Well, uh, you’ve got to get saved; you’re not even saved.” (God does use people who are in error, and I believe that He did use that young man, in spite of his fundamentalism.) My buddy felt obligated so he said “Yeah, I want to be baptized in the name of Jesus.” The young man asked me next, “Are you baptized in the name of Jesus?” I said, “No, I’ve been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit and the Father but never Jesus.” He said, “Oh thank God you’re going to be saved!” And I said, “Oh, great, I’ll go.” So both of us went with him. He made one phone call, and within an hour there were about one-hundred parishioners at this church, all wearing white robes and singing “Hallelujah! Glory to God.” They live for this one moment. They filled up the baptismal downstairs in the basement and put a white robe on my buddy and me. He went in first, and when he came up out of the water, he wasn’t singing in tongues. (This church believes that after being baptized in the name of Jesus, if you’re not singing in tongues, you’re not saved yet.) So after they half drowned him I think he got it and finally started singing in tongues. Well, when they dunked me I made sure I came up singing in tongues right away. I didn’t feel any more “saved” than I had been before, and I realized that but I felt obligated to this man.

Then I went back to the ministry that I was working in, the Church of God, which believed in being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. So the next morning the head minister called me down to his office and said, “Tony, I understand that you got baptized last night in the Original Glorious Church of God in Christ.” I said “Yeah, I did.” He was an ex-military man, the head of the church, and a very strong black man and leader. He said, “What made you do that, boy?” I said, “Well, it was Sunday afternoon and I really didn’t have anything else to do.” He said “I’ll beat your butt. You can’t be doing that. Don’t you know that you defied the truth?” I replied, “Well, he just healed my buddy and it was Sunday afternoon and I never got baptized in the name of Jesus and it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” He said, “You’re being transferred to North Carolina in the morning.” And he did transfer me to North Carolina. That is an example of how caught up in their belief in doctrine people can get. There are these small doctrinal differences between all of these churches in the South that cause great division among the people.

Relativity within Absolutes, Unity without Uniformity

On page four of The URANTIA Book it says that the “Supreme Being is personally experiencing the achievement of Deity unity as the evolving and experiential God of the evolutionary creatures of time and space.” Now those of us who are aware of the vastness of the superuniverses and the trillions of inhabited worlds that are exist know that there is tremendous diversity in the worlds and in their peoples and cultures. Just in one superuniverse there is the potential of one hundred thousand local universes, and in one local universe there is the potential of ten million inhabited worlds. That’s a lot of variation just in one universe. So the Supreme Being is experiencing the differences of those millions upon millions of evolving inhabited worlds. Right now in the universe of Nebadon there’s over three and a half million inhabited worlds, and in some of the older more advanced universes there’s the full ten million. Yet the Supreme Being has to experience all the different variations, and the ministry of God has to try somehow to help unify mortals on each planet and help bring all of those planets into the first stages of light and life and higher.

In The URANTIA Book we are told:

The truth and maturity of any religion is directly proportional to its concept of the infinite personality of God and to its grasp of the absolute unity of Deity. The idea of a personal Deity becomes, then, the measure of religious maturity after religion has first formulated the concept of the unity of God. (ibid., 23:07)God is to science a cause, to philosophy an idea, to religion a person, even the loving heavenly Father. God is to the scientist a primal force, to the philosopher a hypothesis of unity, to the religionist a living spiritual experience. Man’s inadequate concept of the personality of the universal Father can be improved only by man’s spiritual progress in the universe and will become truly adequate only when the pilgrims of time and space finally attain the divine embrace of the living God of Paradise. (ibid., 30:01)

We cannot fully understand how God can be primal, changeless, all-powerful, and perfect, and at the same time be surrounded by an ever-changing and apparently law-limited universe, an evolving universe of relative imperfections. But we can know such a truth in our own personal experience since we all maintain identity of personality and unity of will in spite of the constant changing of both ourselves and our environment. (ibid., 31:04)

We in Divine Administration understand that there is relativity, and we understand that there is absoluteness. We also understand that there’s not absoluteness in relativity but relativity within absoluteness. There is chaos within order. So somehow we have to go through our ascension realizing the relativity of circumstantial reality and that everything sometimes is not so black or white. But sometimes it is absolutely black, and sometimes it is absolutely white. Wisdom to know the difference, that’s what makes us who we are and what we are; that’s how we relate to others. That’s how we can somehow, someday walk up to a three-eyed, no-nosed mortal on two legs and say “What’s up bro?” and he says back, “What’s up bro?” without shooting each other with ray guns.

The higher concepts of universe personality imply: identity; self-consciousness, self-will, and possibility for self-revelation. And these characteristics further imply fellowship with other and equal personalities, such as exists in the personality associations of the Paradise Deities. And the absolute unity of these associations is so perfect that divinity becomes known by indivisibility, by oneness. “The Lord God is one.” Indivisibility of personality does not interfere with God’s bestowing his spirit to live in the hearts of mortal men. Indivisibility of a human father’s personality does not prevent the reproduction of mortal sons and daughters. (ibid., 31:06)

God can pass from simplicity to complexity, from identity to variation, from quiescence to motion, from infinity to finitude, from the divine to the human and from unity to duality and triunity. Thus God can modify the manifestations of His absoluteness because divine immutability does not imply immobility. God has His will; He is will.

Regarding uniformity:

And all this steadfastness of conduct and uniformity of action is personal, conscious, and highly volitional, for the great God is not a helpless slave to his own perfection and infinity. God is not a self-acting automatic force; he is not a slavish law-bound power. God is neither a mathematical equation nor a chemical formula. He is a free-will and primal personality. He is the Universal Father, a being surcharged with personality and the Universal fount of all creature personality. (ibid., 138:01)All these religions have arisen as a result of man’s variable intellectual response to his identical spiritual leading. They can never hope to attain a uniformity of creeds, dogmas, and rituals—these are intellectual; but they can, and some day will, realize a unity in true worship of the Father of all, for this is spiritual, and it is forever true, in the spirit all men are equal. (ibid., 1012:05)

The unity of religious experience among a social or racial group derives from the identical nature of the God fragment indwelling the individual. It is this divine in man that gives origin to his unselfish interest in the welfare of other men. But since personality is unique - no two mortals being alike - it inevitably follows that no two human beings can similarly interpret the leadings and urges of the spirit of divinity which lives within their minds. A group of mortals can experience spiritual unity, but they can never attain philosophic uniformity. And this diversity of the interpretation of religious thought and experience is shown by the fact that twentieth-century theologians and philosophers have formulated upward of five hundred different definitions of religion. In reality, every human being defines religion in the terms of his own experiential interpretation of the divine impulses emanating from the God spirit that indwells him, and therefore must such an interpretation be unique and wholly different from the religious philosophy of all other human beings. (1129:07)

Let me read to you this last one from The URANTIA Book:

Christianity is seriously confronted with the doom embodied in one of its own slogans: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. The non-Christian world will hardly capitulate to a sect-divided Christendom. The living Jesus is the only hope of a possible unification of Christianity. The true church—the Jesus brotherhood—is invisible, spiritual, and is characterized by unity, not necessarily by uniformity. Uniformity is the earmark of the physical world of mechanistic nature. Spiritual unity is the fruit of faith union with the living Jesus. The visible church should refuse longer to handicap the progress of the invisible and spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom of God. And this brotherhood is destined to become a living organism in contrast to an institutionalized social organization. It may well utilize such social organizations but it must not be supplanted by them. (ibid., 2085:03)

I have a problem with being called a Christian today in the terms of understanding what a Christian is. When you watch television or see the Christians killing each other in different countries, for example, in Ireland, we understand all the ramifications of conforming to traditions and doctrines that demand uniformity rather than diversity in religious experience. The word “Christian” to me has lost its meaning. God forbid that the word “Christian” is associated today with people who would use terrorism to get make their point. The word “Christian” doesn’t mean what it did in the first century.

The Great Challenge

We have a great challenge ahead of us, we change agents of the twenty-first century, a tremendous challenge. How we are going to unite the peoples of the world by bringing continuing epochal revelation when people are so used to being Methodists and Protestants and Catholics and Baptists, let alone Christians, Buddhists, Moslems, Jews, Hindus and other fundamentalists? Each one of those identities in the Christian world has a connotation, has a character, has a lifestyle, has a worship, has a “whatever” attached to it. Some believe it’s part of the great American freedom to have all this variety and separatism. Yet, all over the world nationalism only does one thing; it separates us from each other. Where we had one Mother Russia, now we have twenty or thirty different countries all fighting among each other. That’s what happens with nationalism. We do indeed need a one-world religion and a world-wide Divine Administration that allows for cultural differences and diversity in personal religious experiences and yet implements a unity among all of those variances.

What is that going to be however? What is that one God; who is that one God? Well, that is what epochal revelation is about. That is why The URANTIA Book and Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER) are here. Unfortunately, even some of those in the Urantia movement who have the book may only have the book and not really have God the way He wants them to. My brother the Buddhist, my brother the Jew, my brother the Hindu, my brother the Moslem have a part of the real God, and maybe they have God more than some of those who are very knowledgeable in The URANTIA Book. But if the Buddhist, the Jew, the Hindu, and the Moslem had The URANTIA Book, they could have more of God. If they could be given the book, they could have the totality of all that God wants to give them. If they wanted to remain a Buddhist with The URANTIA Book, they couldn’t really, for embracing and living that epochal revelation would take them beyond the confines of being a Buddhist. Embracing and living the book and being a Jew is not being a Jew. Having the book and being a Hindu or a Moslem is not being a Hindu or Moslem. The same principle goes for having the epochal revelation and remaining a Christian. So often we hear, “Don’t give me that book; it isn’t part of my religion.” What a challenge we have! God doesn’t live in a book; He lives in our hearts and minds. But the book can give us a bigger understanding of God and His nature so that we can be more open to receiving His love, ministry, and wisdom and thus become real change agents that do make a big difference in the world. God can be found and walked with and heard from in many, many ways without The URANTIA Book or Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER), but the major world religions and those other ways have not brought this planet into even the pre-stages of light and life. And now is the time for the shift before this plant self-destructs!

I once saw a minister, a visiting pastor, take the Bible and throw it down in the isle in a church service in front of a couple hundred parishioners. It shocked everybody; I mean everybody was shocked. “How dare he defame the Bible like that?” He said, “If that’s your God, then you don’t have it.” I think we all learned a lesson there. I know I did.

That’s how I feel about The URANTIA Book. Hey, that’s not my God. Sometimes I don’t even bring it on Sunday morning. Is carrying it around going to make me more holy? Carrying the Bible or any “sacred” book is not going to make you holy. Yet if we can properly interpret the epochal revelation within The URANTIA Book, it becomes an aid to expand our evolving soul. It is an aid to expand our superconsiousness. It is an aid to understand the cosmos and the master universe. It’s an aid. We can be more eternal. And that is what epochal revelation is for. It takes us out of the neighborhood; it takes us out of the temple of the Catholics, of the Jews, of the Hindus, and it brings us in to Paradise. It gives us a cosmic perspective. God does not just live in the temple. We are the temple, and we are connected to a master universe that is eternal and huge, very huge.

When we start thinking that our little God over here is better than your God over there, we are in trouble. We are in big trouble. How do we begin to share expanded epochal revelation and still be on equal terms with our brothers and sisters? Because right away someone will say, “Well, you think you’re better than me because you study The URANTIA Book.” “You think you’re better because you study Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER).” “You are a separatist.” We in Divine Administration are anything but separatists. Some people like to say, “You’re that little separatist group down there in Sedona.” We’ve got books out; we’ve got music out; we’ve got the performing arts; we’ve got the artwork; we’ve got the schools and home study courses; we’re trying to reach the world with the messages of epochal revelation. By no means are we trying to be separated. We’re trying to be out there as much as possible. We want to get out there, and we want to bring expanded truth to others. We don’t feel that we’re any better than anyone else. On the contrary, the more knowledge that you have and understand, the more you begin to feel very small yourself in relationship to the totality of all the knowledge there is to know about God—very small. As a matter of fact, you can read parts of The URANTIA Book, and read the same paragraph over and over and over again, saying to yourself, “What is that talking about?” None of us understand all of the information in epochal revelation right off the bat. You have to grow in consciousness. Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER) says understanding is reached concept upon concept, precept upon precept, until the totality of putting those thoughts together brings comprehension of what that paragraph was saying about God. So it’s not that easy. You can’t just simplify God. You can’t just say ‘the Great Spirit’. Oh it is much, much more than that. Much, much more. You can say the Great Spirit, but you also have to bring in God the Absolute, God the Unqualified Absolute, God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and on and on and on and on. What about all of that? How do you bring that to people without scaring the heck out of them? How do you learn it yourself?—Step by step, by humility.

Indeed, we do have a tremendous challenge ahead of us. The recipe for this great challenge is love, with a lot of patience, flavored with tidbits of wisdom and heavy on the perseverance. Thank you.

September 6, 1998