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

(Also available in the book, Global Change Teachings for the New Millennium, Series One)

Introduction by Gabriel of Urantia

The title of this teaching is called: “Answers to Planetary Concerns,” and it is about concerns of the citizens of this planet, people just like you and I who struggle to exist, try to raise their children and live a “normal” life, if you can live a normal life today. Everyone tries, but for most people life seems to be dominated by the problems that exist in trying to feed our children, clothe them, and put a roof over our heads. It is not just the concern of the poor in this country; it is of concern to the poor people all over the world.

There are many signs indicating that our planet is in trouble: global warming, extreme weather conditions, the growing gap in the ozone layer, diminishing natural resources—but the worst problem on our planet continues to be the religious and political separation that divides people and all nations. The majority of the people of the world believe in God but disagree on the laws of God interpreted by humans. People write laws and say, “Thus sayeth the Lord.” “Thus sayeth, Allah.” “Thus sayeth Jesus.” “Thus sayeth Buddha.” Whoever disagrees with these man-made laws form their own religions and denominations. Our planet has five major religions and thousands upon thousands of religious subgroups, so the unity of the citizens of the planet is at best a compromise of surface compliance. There is no real brotherhood or sisterhood based upon the Fatherhood of God.

The crop circles in England and other parts of the world are signs for all people of this world. We believe these crop messages are created by living spiritual forces that are resident on this planet—beings called “midwayers.” These are beings who are interdimensional, between human and angelic reality, and they have been here for hundreds of thousands of years. They are just now being allowed to give signs of their existence on this planet. The local universe sovereign, Christ Michael, Jesus, is allowing them to give these signs because our planet is in trouble. Many of these signs indicate the fact that there is a Trinity, that there is a cosmic eternity, that there is a Mother/Father, yin/yang aspect of God. Some of these signs indicate that some souls were born in other universes. One hundred and seventy million of them all over the world came to this planet at different times, and England was at one time a center of the repersonalization of these souls. The Pleiades is in a neighboring universe called Avalon which is written about in The Cosmic Family volumes. Lo and behold, ancient Glastonbury is called Avalon. Where did that name come from? It came from another universe. Many of the ancient stories are not myths. There was a real King Arthur. There was a real Camelot. There was a real City of Hope, his dream. The dream of the knights of the round table was real. It was a dream of the New Jerusalem to come. It was a dream for a holy city. The Glastonbury-Avalon connection is one of the reasons why the midwayers are doing a lot of crop circles in England, because the Celtic peoples played a very prominent role in the bringing forth of revelation to this planet.

These same midwayers are responsible for the coming of the Fifth Epochal Revelation and the Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation, which I, Niánn, and many of us here have the honor of helping to bring through to this world. This epochal revelation began in 1911. This is a prominent date because the adjudication by the Bright and Morning Star began in 1911, and some groups recognize that period as being of great significance.

The URANTIA Book was not published until 1955, so there are not a lot of people who have read The URANTIA Book worldwide. It is not like the Bible, which is thousands of years old. The new revelation is relatively recent to this planet. Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation, beginning with The Cosmic Family, Volume I, was just published in 1993, and so very few people have read this revelation.

Unless there is true brother/sistserhood and unity on this planet called Urantia (Earth), which The URANTIA Book is named after, this planet will self-destruct. There are many signs right now that our planet is in trouble. The following are questions that people have sent to us from all over the world that we will attempt to answer; Niánn will start with the questions.

Teaching by Niánn Emerson Chase

Too Good to Be True?

Unfortunately on this planet today, so many people do struggle with suffering. It is hard for them to believe that something could be good because they have had so many disappointments themselves. They have become disappointed in their leaders and the establishments that they have put their trust and faith in. Here, at the First Planetary Sacred Home, it is not all Paradise; it is not all perfect of course, because we are imperfect beings, but we come here to a new society, and to a certain extent we are building the kingdom of heaven here. It gets better every day, but we first have to start building it within ourselves. Many, many people who have not experienced what we are experiencing here, moment-to-moment on a daily basis, will think that this is too good to be true. But for us who have stayed for all the ups and downs and the richness that is happening here, the longer we are here, the more we realize how wonderful it is, which makes me think of an analogy.

We all like food. We all enjoy eating, and we especially enjoy eating with people who we love and care about, sitting down to a great feast, having good conversation, laughing, and spending some time sharing that meal. Well, here, Christ Michael, who did walk this planet as Jesus, has laid before us a wonderful feast. Nevertheless, what happens to many of us here and to many people outside of this community who may possibly come here briefly to visit us, is that we partake momentarily of that feast, we sit down at this wonderful banquet, and all of a sudden we get back into an old thought pattern, or an old way of looking at things or an old belief system that Michael is asking us to get out of because it blocks our progress and our ascension. So we get up from the table, we run to the garbage can and dig around for an old piece of bread or something that we ate last week. We leave the beautiful feast of wonderful, fresh food to go back to some old stale thing. Here is a banquet before us, and we run back into our old order of things, an old way of doing things because it is a habit, or because we are not quite sure what is ahead of us in the future. We get security conscious. “Well, at least I am comfortable in my misery, so I’ll stay here,” or “I am addicted to this way of doing things,” or “I like being stagnant,” or “I like being on a plateau, at least I know I am going to wake up miserable,” or “If I start climbing it takes work, and I am not quite sure what is over that next cliff that I climb up. When I peek up over there, what is going to be there?” So, I think that is a good analogy for all of us. We here can relate to that, and it happens so often with almost all human beings. It is part of human nature.

What Is the Foundation of Aquarian Concepts?

Yes, what is happening here is wonderful, and it is wonderful for our children. We invest a lot in our children’s program here because we have a vision of the future, and we have a hope for the future. Part of that is because of what our foundations are built upon. They are built upon Christ Michael. The song that you heard sung by the choir, “Michael,” was in honor of Christ Michael of Nebadon, our Universe Sovereign. He indeed is the Son of God, and He did bestow himself as a human being on this planet approximately two thousand years ago, Jesus. But Jesus is the only divine being that has ever bestowed upon this planet, and we acknowledge that, so we have that in common with those who are Christians, for they too, know that Jesus walked as the Son of Man and the Son of God. We refer to Him as Christ Michael. Our foundations are built on the most recent epochal revelation, The URANTIA Book, which is the Fifth Epochal Revelation to the planet, and on the Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation, The Cosmic Family volumes.

What these revelations are doing is giving us more expanded information, and so our whole basis, every facet of our work here at Aquarian Concepts, is based on the fulcrum of The URANTIA Book and the revelation that continues to come through us. Right now we are receiving information through Gabriel of Urantia in the fourth volume of The Cosmic Family, and it will continue. It is not going to stop; it is going to keep continuing, and building. And that is what is so wonderful. What is so important is that we have an increased appreciation of who Jesus is, an increased and expanded knowledge. He is cosmic, and He is not just the Father of us but the Father of many creatures—celestial creatures and spirit creatures as well as material creatures.

A Virgin Birth?

People have asked us, “Well, if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then do you believe that He came through His mother, Mary, through the virgin birth?” No. According to The URANTIA Book, Mary was married to Joseph, and Joseph and Mary lived as most men and women do who are husband and wife. In fact, Jesus had eight brothers and sisters. So, what happened there with the idea of the virgin birth was that many of the people in those days had a hard time grasping that Jesus could be the Son of God and be this wonderful, wonderful man that they knew, be resurrected and be born just like every other person is born; so they explained it by saying, “Well, there is no way He was born like every other person was born.” Thus this myth arose of the virgin birth, but just because He came through a biological mother and father as all of us humans have come through does not detract from the mystery and the wonder of Jesus being not only the Son of Man but indeed the Son of God and divine.

Did Jesus Die for Our Sins?

People have asked, “Well then, if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and you don’t believe that he came through the virgin birth, what do you think about the cross? Did He die for our sins?” I would like to share with you what The URANTIA Book has to say about that. On page 60 in the third paragraph, a Divine Counselor, which is a spirit being from Paradise level, tells us:

The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.

Strong words. Jesus did die on the cross. He was crucified, so what is the meaning of that for those who understand to a certain extent who Jesus is?

The cross is that high symbol of sacred service, the devotion of one’s life to the welfare and salvation of one’s fellows. The cross is not a symbol of the sacrifice of the innocent Son of God in the place of guilty sinners and in order to appease the wrath of an offended God, but it does stand forever, on earth and throughout a vast universe, as a sacred symbol of the good bestowing themselves upon the evil and thereby saving them by this very devotion of love. The cross does stand as the token of the highest form of unselfish service, the supreme devotion of the full bestowal of a righteous life in the service of wholehearted ministry, even in death, the death of the cross. And the very sight of this great symbol of the bestowal life of Jesus truly inspires all of us to want to go and do likewise. . . . Make sure that you see in the cross the final manifestation of the love and devotion of Jesus to his life mission of bestowal upon the mortal races of his vast universe. See in the death of the Son of Man the climax of the unfolding of the Father’s divine love for his sons of the mortal spheres. The cross thus portrays the devotion of willing affection and the bestowal of voluntary salvation upon those who are willing to receive such gifts and devotion. There was nothing in the cross which the Father required—only that which Jesus so willingly gave, and which he refused to avoid.. . . We know that the death on the cross was not to effect man’s reconciliation to God but to stimulate man’s realization of the Father’s eternal love and his Son’s unending mercy, and to broadcast these universal truths to a whole universe. (ibid., 2019)

There are whole sections in that part of The URANTIA Book that expand on the teaching of the cross and the meaning of why Jesus chose to allow these people, His enemies, to crucify Him and to so cruelly kill Him when He could have prevented it. The beauty about epochal revelation is that it expands our faith. Our relationship with the Universal Father through Michael of Nebadon must be ever growing. It must be progressive; it must be evolutionary; it cannot stay still and stagnant, for that is not divine pattern and that is not life. You biologists who study life and the evolution of life know that life does not stay still, that it is constantly changing, constantly moving forward, constantly evolving. That is what we are to do also, we humans, we ascending sons and daughters of the Universal Father, God. We are to be constantly moving forward, constantly challenging what we know, expanding and growing, never ever getting too comfortable in crystallized belief systems. The problem with most institutionalized religions today is that they become comfortable in belief systems that are a combination of revelation and superstition. Evolutionary religion, as The URANTIA Book calls it, is simply a matter of human beings explaining their limited understanding of what divinity is, what God is. Revelatory religion is God saying, “Here I am, let me explain who I am,” and He does that through many, many personalities in many ways.

Did Jesus Resurrect?

People have asked us if we believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Yes. The URANTIA Book tells us that after the crucifixion, Jesus’ material body did die; it went through the process that any human material body would go through, but in an accelerated manner, and then He did come back in what is called the “morontia form,” which means a semi-spirit form. It is the next higher body, and He did come back and appear in that form nineteen different times to groups of believers and apostles to minister to them. The message of that resurrection for all of us is that for every human being who dies on this planet, they have an opportunity also to be resurrected just as Jesus was resurrected. That is what salvation is about.

What Does Salvation Mean?

The word salvation has many, many meanings. One facet is, if you choose to participate in the plan that God has for every single one of His creatures, if you choose to move with Him, then you too can experience that salvation from self and be resurrected and move on, for life does not end in death. It is just a change. But being freewill creatures, God will not go against our free wills. Unfortunately, there are material personalities like evolutionary mortals, as well as celestial spirit personalities, who choose not to go that way. The URANTIA Book, on page 67 in the third paragraph says, “The religion of Jesus is salvation from self, deliverance from the evils of creature isolation in time and in eternity.”

For many people today, part of the pain of the world and the pain of being an individual is that they feel isolated. They feel as orphans, alone, not loved by any human being, not even loved by God, and they are wrapped up in self, their own self-made identity. They struggle in their own selfishness, self-absorption, blindness, and just lack of really knowing reality, and basically walking in error and illusion. Until a person comes to the point where they realize who they really are—an ascending child of God, that they are loved and actually have a fragment of that Universal Father of All, that First Source and Center within them that many have referred to as the spirit of God, actually walking around with them living within—they cannot find themselves. Until you are saved from your own stupid little self with all your yammering and selfishness and move into who you really are, your connection with God in the circuitry of the personality that God has bestowed upon you, you are not saved. You have to be saved from yourself in order to really find yourself.

The first step in salvation then would be finding God, walking out of your silly little self with all of your personal agendas and beginning the wonderful adventure of discovering who you really are, and the unfoldment of the real you. The more you love God and receive His love, the more you will not only appreciate yourself, realistically seeing all of your limitations as well as your potentialities, your beauties, and your gifts, but you then also cannot help but love others. You become God-oriented, other-oriented, rather than self-oriented, and in reaching out to others you are saved from yourself; and when you begin to move into that, you want to move into doing the perfect will of God in your life, for you have a personal relationship with Him.

Salvation also means that when you do move on in death, you don’t really die. You move on as Jesus did. You move on into the morontia form, which will eventually become a spirit form, as you evolve and ascend and spiritually grow and expand. That is salvation from real death, and it is salvation from floundering and lostness moving into true life rather than just being in existence. It is life that goes on and on forever, always unfolding and expanding. And it is doing the will of God no matter where you are, whether in material form on an evolutionary world like we are right now, or in a semi-spirit or spirit form in your ascension process. Wherever you are you are moving in the will of God at your level of understanding, and that is what is important. That is what salvation means to us, so it has many, many meanings.

Is There A Spiritual Hierarchy in the Kingdom of God?

We do believe in a spiritual hierarchy. According to The URANTIA Book, that hierarchy begins at Paradise level, and it extends clear down to evolutionary worlds of which our planet, Urantia, is one with evolutionary mortals. The first and foremost being to whom everyone answers is the First Source and Center of All, the Universal Father. He delegates Himself; He spreads Himself out through many creatures and in many ways and manifestations of which The URANTIA Book reveals much to us. He bestows Himself through other personalities as well as through Himself when He gives a fragment of Himself that we have within us that works with us if we will cooperate. If we are not aware that He is there though, how can we cooperate with Him? There is a hierarchy, and on page 51 of The URANTIA Book, in the first paragraph, a Divine Counselor, a spirit personality of Paradise origin, tells us that the Universal Father rules through His Sons, one of them being a Creator Son who Christ Michael, Jesus, is. He rules through His Sons, and on down through the universe organization there is an unbroken chain of rulers ending with the Planetary Princes who direct the destinies of the evolutionary spheres of the Father’s vast domains.

Why Epochal Revelation?

Our planet, Urantia, is one of those evolutionary spheres. Just from that short piece it indicates that there are other evolutionary spheres too, but that the Father is present here; so indeed there is a spiritual hierarchy, and it is manifested also in human form. There are many, many religious leaders on this planet. They come in all shapes and sizes and from all different types of sects. They come from all the major religions, and many, many of them are sincere and at their level of understanding are doing wonderful, wonderful things. As we all know, there are also those who are not so sincere and who are using their influence for their own benefit and the exploitation of others. But the important thing today is that if anyone wants to become a religious leader, a spiritual leader that God can use in the highest way, they must move on into the most recent epochal revelation, the Fifth Epochal Revelation and the Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation. They must ascend in their own level of understanding of who God, the Universal Father, is, who Jesus is, and why our world is in the pain that it is in. They must ascend in their own understanding of the history of our planet, not just reading it from the history books written by human beings. We need a little help, and in The URANTIA Book we are given the history of this planet from the celestial spirit perspective, so it gives us a bigger, more expanded picture.

I like to use the analogy of a maze. I think that every single one of us can understand a little rat running around in a maze, because we too have felt as though we were in a maze at times. We go this way, then we run into something, bump our heads. We go that way, we bump our heads, and we are given so many choices that we just feel like we are going crazy. We are trying desperately to find the answer, but we can only see so far ahead of us in our finiteness, in our humanness, in what we know and understand. We can only see so far. We can’t see over the walls, so we don’t know which way to go. Now imagine a celestial spirit up above looking down upon us in our mazes; they can see exactly what path to take, which way to go. These living forces are available for us and here to say, “We are here if you will just listen. You take this route here, not all of these, yoo hoo!” They are trying to get our attention in every way they can, and we are in this maze. It is important, and that is what revelation is for us. The revelation that we have today can help take our minds out of that maze so that we too can have an expanded vision. We can literally be up above and look down and say, “I understand why this is happening. This is not the route to take. Even though this has been the established route for many people, it is obviously not the way to go.” So, religious leaders, spiritual teachers who want to have that expanded vision must move their minds into that epochal revelation, must educate themselves further as to why the planet is in the state it is.

Separation of Church and State?

People have asked us too about the separation of church and state, which our country is based upon. Yes, at this point, on this planet in time and space, there definitely should be a separation of church and state, and there has to be until the majority of people on a planet have that epochal revelation and are out of that maze and above it, and have that expanded vision, that wisdom, that spiritual insight which comes first and foremost with a personal relationship with God the Father. You first have to have that personal relationship with the Universal Father. If you just have the revelation without that heart connection, you are not going to make it. You have to have the heart connection. When the majority of people in a country have that consciousness, when they have evolved to that, then church and state do not need to be separated. But right now, they need to for the people who are in the secular governments do not have the understanding of God’s divine laws.

The purpose of churches is to uplift those individuals who want to be uplifted, to expand their minds. Ideally, as the evolution and the progress of a people move forward in a country or on a planet, the more people whose minds are expanded and are pulled out of that maze, they then begin to permeate the government at every level. They become involved because they can bring truth and uplift that government. Ideally, in the history of the evolution of humankind on a planet, as the consciousness of the people evolves spiritually, it parallels the political and social progression of civilization, and then you get to the point where everything is unified, there are no compartments; there isn’t any separation. For in true divine pattern, everything is unified. But at this moment in time and space on this fallen planet, everything is compartmentalized. It is not unified, and so we need that separation of church and state which is part of the process.

In the evolution of most normal planets, you have progress of people on a spiritual level that parallels the scientific progress and the political and all those other areas. On this planet that hasn’t happened. People have progressed scientifically, but they haven’t paralleled scientific progress with spiritual progress. People are behind in spiritual progress. They are out of divine pattern. They do not really understand God’s divine laws, and thus we have these disastrous results of industrialization and scientific progress, but at the expense of our civilization and the pollution of our planet. If those scientists and those people who are in positions of making those major decisions of running a business or running a country were spiritually evolved and understood the laws of God, they would not make decisions that are not ethical. Right now though, they make decisions that are not ethical. They do not have a vision of how this is going to impact the people of this world ten years from now, a generation from now, seven generations from now. There is a reason why that has happened and why there is a discrepancy between the spiritual consciousness of the masses on the planet and the other consciousness, and Gabriel is going to be explaining some of that.

Teaching by Gabriel of Urantia

Destiny Reservists?

People ask us, “How can we help?” People write to us from all over the world, “What can we do about the problems of the planet? What can the average citizen do? How can we get involved?” Well, some of those citizens are not so average in the sense of their latent abilities and their talents. Machiventa Melchizedek, the present Planetary Prince behind the scenes, who is a Melchizedek Son, says in The Cosmic Family, Volume I:

The cosmic reservists have been on this planet before, and only a minority of them have met their destiny in accordance with the divine plan and have helped in the spiritual renaissances in the history of Urantia to bring about change and aided in its evolution. In this era they are asked to join to do it again. Those who have proven themselves in times past must again prove themselves and meet their destiny purpose. Christ Michael, who was the Creator Son when He was on this planet as Jesus, Son of Man, had to discover who He was over a period of time. He also walked into His destiny with greater power upon the realization of Himself, not only as the Son of Man but as the Son of God, and the Creator Son of the universe He created called Nebadon. Those individuals of the cosmic reserve corps must also do the same. They must realize who they are from all over the world.

Many of them written about in the revelation of The Cosmic Family, Volume I are giving their talents to a world system that is doomed to failure. They are controlled by corporate entities that are based on one premise and one premise only—greed, making money. The corporate entities are not concerned about your children; they are concerned about their children. They are not concerned about you; they are concerned about themselves. They don’t care if you become “famous” or successful in your field, or how much money they pay you as long as they make more money and are more successful. There is no justice and equality. There is no actualization of destiny purpose for the majority of the people of this planet who merely exist and hardly dare even to dream. They are afraid to have visions, are afraid to take steps to implement the dreams within their heart of hearts. Many of their dreams become only hobbies; hobbies that they can only empathize with for two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon or a Sunday morning rather than devoting all of their lives to their true innate ability that God wants them to develop, which is their true destiny. But the system is set up by Caligastia, the fallen Planetary Prince, to keep them from meeting their true destiny, so the majority of the world lives only in a mode of sheer survival.

Our purpose is to awaken, first the Urantian and cosmic destiny reservists, those souls who have a special destiny to meet to become servers of humankind, to help change this planet. The Jehovah’s Witnesses call them the one hundred and forty-four thousand as referred to in the book of Revelation in the Bible. We know that there are more than a hundred and forty-four thousand starseed on the planet (approximately four hundred million) and more coming in all the time. They have a hard time getting along in this world in their education, and in the school systems of this world they are called “slow learners” when actually many of them are geniuses. They are put into special groups because they can’t do it in the time schedule that the educational system has set up because most of the information they study is trite, worn out by repetitious over-use, and stale. Because they do not want to deal with it, they are considered outcasts and rebels, and many of these starseed are brilliant people, but they don’t get an opportunity to prove it. As a matter of fact, they are pushed out of the system because they can’t do it the way the system tells them to do it, and they end up on drugs and trying to escape the false reality that the third dimension says is the true reality.

Can The World’s Problems Be Solved?

Do we think that the present conditions of this world can be reversed? Yes, we think they can. However, the greatest painter can paint a wonderful masterpiece but unless people can understand the consciousness of that masterpiece, it is just another piece of art. A great musician can write volumes of tremendously beautiful songs, but unless those songs are understood by a higher consciousness, they would rather listen to the immature pop stars. So, the consciousness of the world has to be raised. People have to look beyond the present institutional realities of religions and see something higher. Doing that takes courage. Many people don’t even know that they are supposed to have that kind of courage or that kind of faith. It is easier to follow the established and accepted leaders of the various institutionalized religions.

True change in society takes change in individuals. You have to be willing to deal with your own smallnesses. You have to be willing to deal with your own evil, sin, and iniquitous behavior if you have any. You have to be willing to own up to it, and it takes strong leaders to say, “Look, you are doing this wrong, and you need to change.” If they tell you that, you might get mad at them, and you are not going to tithe to them anymore. You are not going to be giving them that million dollars you promised to give to them the next time you make a motion picture. And so you think you can just do anything you want because God loves you and the grace of God forgives you. That is a bunch of baloney. You cannot continue in immorality. You cannot continue in lies and falsehood and jealousies and envy and resentment. You cannot continue in greed. You cannot continue in any form of ugliness that is not the character of God and expect to change this planet, for the only thing that you do is to perpetuate the lie. You continue to go out and buy the videos that destroy the minds of your children, and continue to call the basketball players, the movie stars, and the rock stars, heroes.

Who are the true heroes? Maybe they are the teachers who teach your children. Maybe they are the true ministers and priests who would sacrifice anything just to bring you one step closer to God. Maybe these are the ones who are the true heroes on this planet, but you don’t hear about them, do you? Who do you hear about? You hear about a seven-foot guy who can walk up to a basketball, throw it in without even jumping, but they jump to make it look good. Listen, I am five-foot-six, and I have played basketball with tall people, and believe me, it is much more difficult to play basketball when you are five-foot-six than when you are seven-foot-two. They are just showmen, and you want to pay them several million dollars a year because they are great athletes. Ladies and gentlemen, your minds are boggled with nonsense. You want to pay rock stars millions and millions of dollars when they do not even look human anymore. You idolize them. How can this world change when such nonsense continues to exist? You must rearrange your lower thoughts into a higher consciousness. You must begin to understand who your true spiritual leaders are. Find them and treasure them wherever they are. True spiritual leaders should be held in the highest esteem, not necessarily in salaries, for on many higher worlds there would be no salaries. Wouldn’t it be nice to be in a world where there is no money? That is the direction that we are heading, not in the New World Order of the system of greed, but in the Divine New Order, the system of Divine Administration. Now there is a big difference there.

Private Ownership of Land?

We are asked, “Do you believe in private ownership of land?” Not the way it is practiced in most places on the planet. The earth is the Lord’s. The earth is God’s, and we are stewards of the land. We have a responsibility to caretake any acre that we may live on or any lot that we may live on. Then if you lived in a perfect world, wouldn’t it be nice if you were able to go somewhere else for a while and have another little area and another and another and another and another and another? It is so hard to understand what it would be like if we lived in a near-perfect world. I myself, would like to go to the tropics and be on a beach for a while, and then go to the mountains and experience the snow, and then go here and experience that, and then go there. Only the rich can do that on this planet, and only those who don’t care about anything else, who don’t care about responsibilities to the people of this planet. They can do whatever they want to do. They can have houses in different places all over the world and do what they want. However, we common folk can’t do that. Until we have that kind of equality worldwide, then we will continue to be in a kind of a caste system all over the world, although we don’t call it that here in America. At least in Hinduism, if you are born a Brahmin, you stay one. If you are born poor, you stay poor, and you basically understand that. In America it is supposed to be different, and in the free world it is supposed to be different, but gradually and slowly our rights all over the world in free Western civilization are being taken away and the separation between the rich and the poor continues to grow ever more pronounced.

The Native Americans, if left alone, would never have put up fences. You fly over America and Western civilization and you know it is the white man’s land because you see all those fences and separations. Native Americans didn’t live like that. They didn’t build any fences. The land was the Great Spirit’s. In a divine administration there can be caretakers of plots, there can be caretakers of acres, there can be temporary homes where we live and raise our children. We can move on and someone else can move into it. You can’t do that in the third dimension, in this world we live in now. There are a whole lot of wonderful things that can happen if we truly lived within divine administration.

Niánn Emerson Chase

Equality of Men and Women?

The URANTIA Book has a lot to say about this, but I want to share a couple of situations in Jesus’ life and how He dealt with this because He had a tremendous impact on women’s rights. Given the circumstances, the time that He lived and the culture that He lived in, He had to live within the framework of that culture, but He worked really hard at trying to uplift people’s ideas of the place and role of women in the world and their relationship with God, with families and men, and with the religious institutions. Jesus lived in a Jewish world, in a Jewish family, and so the framework that most of the people that He worked with, and the apostles and many of His believers and His family worked in, was the framework of Judaism.

When Jesus was twelve years old, for the first time He went to Jerusalem with His family, and He was so excited because He was going to go to the temple, and He was looking forward to that. When He got there, He was extremely disappointed with a variety of things at the temple. One of them was the selling of animals for sacrifice, and He spoke very strongly against that. He did convince His parents later that they should not buy animals for sacrifice for the Passover. That type of thing was really not a law of God; that was more of a law of human beings coming from evolutionary religion rather than revelatory religion. Jesus Himself was the Fourth Epochal Revelation to the planet. But the thing that really got a charge out of Him is when they started to go into the temple for services and Mary, His mother said, “Well, I’ll see you, Joseph and Joshua, afterwards. And Jesus said, “Well where are you going, aren’t you coming in with us?” “Oh, I can’t go in here, this is only where the men go. I have to go where the women go.” The women went in a little side area. They were not allowed in the sanctuary part of the temple. Well, Jesus got very upset and said, “What? I’m not going in there, you belong with us; Mother, you come in with us. That is how God would have it. You belong by our side in the sanctuary.” And Joseph was saying, “Son, you are getting out of hand; let’s quiet down; you are making a scene. There are people looking at us; just go along with the flow, play the game, kid, let your mother go.” So Jesus did allow His mother to go or He would have created a real problem. But at twelve years old He was appalled at that rule, and He went into a long dissertation with His parents afterwards about it. “My Father . . .” (when He spoke to His family of His Father He was speaking of the Universal Father) “My Father would not have this. This is not His law. This is the religion’s law, the evolutionary religion’s law. This is not revelation, but here, let me give you the revelation of how God thinks of women. My mother is just as equal in His eyes as you are, Dad, and she belongs in that sanctuary worshipping right alongside us.” He talked a lot about that. Years later His apostles were embarrassed and would get upset, and He shook their foundations when He would talk to them about women’s spiritual equality. They would say, “You know, Master, You really need to keep it down. This is not the way we do things here.” “You have got to keep these women in their place,” and on and on. But He would keep talking to them about it.

Jesus did have the twelve apostles who were men, but He also had the Women’s Apostolic Corps. So He had an initial corps of women leaders too, but given the situation, the framework of the time in which He lived, He could not put those women in public positions like He could the male apostles or they would have been stoned to death. He would have endangered them. But they worked on the sidelines in that ministry going from home to home, ministering to the women, ministering to the people in the homes in a quiet manner, not thrown up on a podium in front of everyone, because that would not have been appropriate, and they probably wouldn’t have survived. Plus, in those days it was not safe for a woman to go out in public by herself or with a group of women unescorted in the way He could send His apostles out to teach. But He did have that Women’s Apostolic Corps, and later a large evangelistic corps of women which continued to grow and expand as more and more women who were leaders came into following His beliefs.

I just wanted to read a couple of generalities about men and women in “The History of Urantia” section of The URANTIA Book.

Woman is man’s equal partner in race reproduction, hence just as important in the unfolding of racial evolution; therefore has evolution increasingly worked toward the realization of women’s rights. But women’s rights are by no means men’s rights. Woman cannot thrive on man’s rights any more than man can prosper on women’s rights. Each sex has it is own distinctive sphere of existence, together with its own rights within that sphere. If woman aspires literally to enjoy all of man’s rights, then, sooner or later pitiless and emotionless competition will certainly replace that chivalry and special consideration which many women now enjoy, and which they have so recently won from men. Each sex will always have its own special sphere, albeit they will ever and anon overlap. (ibid., 938:01)

Most people realize that not only biologically, but psychically men and women do differ. They are not alike but they are complementary, and if each sex can recognize their sphere of influence, their sphere of power, their sphere of rights, then they can complement each other instead of competing with each other and trying to vie for positions. Then they can walk side by side.

In the First Epochal Revelation of Urantia five hundred thousand years ago, Caligastia came to inaugurate a divine administration. He was a celestial spirit being, so the people on the planet couldn’t see him, but he was the Planetary Prince of the Divine Government, the Divine Administration of this planet. This again is in “The History of Urantia” papers in The URANTIA Book. He came with one hundred supermortals; fifty women and fifty men. Now, the people of this planet, who were primitive at the time, could see them, and these supermortals worked in pairs, male and female side by side. When the Material Son and Daughter known as Adam and Eve came to this planet (the Second Epochal Revelation) they came as a pair. And the people again were still fairly primitive and had not evolved to the point that they should have, mainly because of the rebellion that happened two hundred thousand years ago. (Our Planetary Prince, Caligastia, went into rebellion, and thus our planet has not evolved in the way it should have and as other normal planets have. We are not a normal planet.) Anyway, what surprised the primitive people is that Adam and Eve served side by side, and they both were brilliant. They both were administrators, and Eve was a mother and had lots of children, and yet she was able to do this and serve by his side. But they each were effective in their own sphere of influence, and they knew what that was. They understood that and complemented each other beautifully. That is what has been lost and what needs to be happening again. Here in the Starseed and Urantian Schools of Melchizedek, we do have teachings on that and what that means in relation to working with each other. Here in the eldership positions we have men and women, and ideally, that is the way it should be, a man and woman working together because they each bring in their own perspective. One is more encircuited with the Universe Father, and one is more encircuited with the Universe Mother Spirit, though both have both of the circuitries. Men, if they are in divine pattern, are a little more encircuited with the Universe Father, and women a little more with the Universe Mother, and they each have their own wisdom in each situation. When they come together to share that, then you have a bigger perspective, and people then can make decisions from a higher place. When the two minds come together, it is more complete. Thus the idea of the yin and yang coming together and meeting. Again there is that unification, not uniformity.

Gabriel of Urantia

Reincarnation?

Do we believe in reincarnation? No, we don’t. We believe in repersonalization, which is much different, very technical in cosmic difference. I can’t go into the ascension plan of Nebadon here, nor can I go into teaching the ascension plan of the one hundred thousand universes in our superuniverse of Orvonton, but each universe has a different ascension plan within a pattern, and some are similar, some are not. In the universe of Nebadon it is appointed that when you die, when your physical body gives way, your spirit/soul ascends through the mansion worlds. On some planets, you don’t come back to your planet of origin unless you get to the sixth or seventh mansion world, and then there is a reason that you are sent back. Some have called these ones “Masters” in the past when they did come back because they are very spiritually evolved. In other universes you do repersonalize in the womb of a human mother as a continuing soul on lower evolutionary worlds that are not mansion worlds. Some of the worlds are worlds of light and life, much higher than this world; Urantia (Earth) is a fallen world. The normal process of the universe of Nebadon is not repersonalization. Because of the Lucifer rebellion, as all who have studied Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation full well know, there are approximately one hundred and seventy million starseed over the age of eighteen years old on this planet right now who are from other universes. Their souls are from other universes. Their point of origin is another universe. The first time they were born was in another universe. The first time that they had a human mommy and daddy was in another universe. This sphere in time and space called Urantia in Nebadon, this electron that is orbiting around our sun ninety million miles away is only one electron among trillions and trillions of other electrons that orbit around Havona and Central Paradise.

We are very different here on this decimal planet, decimal in the sense that one of every ten planets is meant to be an experimental planet in the first place, plus the fact that we had two defaults; the default of our Planetary Prince, Caligastia, and the default of the Material Son and Daughter, Adam and Eve, which caused this planet to go into hyperinsanity you might say, and it has been in hyperinsanity ever since the fall. The starseed from other universes have come over and over again to try to bring higher spiritual truth and to bring higher genetics back into the human race. We don’t teach reincarnation as the Hindus do or as Buddhists would. We teach repersonalization. It is a cosmic concept that is highly technical, but what it boils down to is that there are souls who are born in the womb of a human mother who have lived before. The majority of the billions of souls on this planet are brand new souls. They have not lived before; they are just evolving. That is a big subject, and The Cosmic Family, Volume I begins to try to educate the spiritual seeker as to that reality.

What About the End of the Millennium?

We are also asked, “What is the change point? What is the significance of the millennium?” We hear in the New Age about the “Quantum Leap.” That is also not an easy subject to try to teach in just a few minutes. I can only give it a surface spiritual understanding in just ten minutes. We hear about the millennium in Christianity, the thousand-year reign of peace. We understand from studying The URANTIA Book that there are seven stages of light and life on a world, and that at some point, our planet Urantia, like all evolutionary worlds, will come into a level of planetary consciousness where higher thinking, higher individual purpose, higher individual seeking of the Universal Father’s will for your life happens in a more massive way. Part of our work here at the First Planetary Sacred Home is to try to bring this higher revelation, Fifth Epochal Revelation and Continuing, to the world so that we can make this change point happen as quickly as possible. The longer it takes to happen, the more tribulation, pain, and suffering will occur, basically because your negative thoughts cause a lot of the damage to plant life, to atomic structure everywhere, and we have then the increase of viruses and bacteria that cause death, such as AIDS and the Ebola virus and other terrible things, cancers, that presently are the plagues of this world. Good people die young because they die in ignorance. I have known some beautiful souls who I have watched die and been by their bedside, who loved God with all their heart, but who incorporated in their thinking processes many, many falsehoods that they learned from their religious teachers whom they trusted, and who were deceived themselves. It seems as though everybody dies of something, but death does not have to be a reality. God did not make us to die. God did not make us to be diseased. God is perfect love. He does not create an imperfect universe, nor does He create an imperfect soul or ascending spirit. It is up to us, as an ascending soul and spirit to seek the highest truth so that we can live, so that we do not have to catch these diseases that your mothers and fathers have caught. We do not have to do that. There have been spiritual leaders, like Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, who believed that they would be able to live and not die. Some of them lived into their nineties and hundreds. I had the pleasure of meeting a Hopi elder before he died, and he was 106 years old.

It takes the auhter energy of the consciousness of a lot of people. No matter how wonderful we are or how virtuous we are, or knowledgeable we are, if we do not have other people who understand us, then we might as well be speaking to that wall over there. We might as well be trying to walk through a brick wall, because we are not understood. It takes higher consciousness to understand higher consciousness, and if we do not raise our consciousness, then none of us can grow. I have a responsibility to teach you a higher way. It doesn’t mean that I am going to succeed. All it means is that I am going to try. I have a responsibility before God to help you to try. If you can understand, then we become two, then four, then eight, then eighty, eight thousand, eight million, and eight billion, and then we can change the planet. But until then, we are like voices crying out in the wilderness of higher truth, so different that we are not given the time of day to be listened to, even if people do realize that they should listen to some of the things that we are saying.

Some of you are teacher sons and daughters. You are older souls than your mothers and fathers, and when you were four and five and six years old, you knew your parents were a little bit out of it. You knew that your parents were small in their minds, that they didn’t quite understand true reality, and no matter what you tried to say to them, they didn’t listen. You eventually left home and tried to find others who understood what you understood, what you saw, what you wanted to implement, but very few understood. It seems that the ones who did understand were themselves compromising in the systems, in the corporations, with their talents, and so you went looking, continually looking. Guess where you are going to end up today if you really want to find what you are looking for? Right here. It is called the First Planetary Sacred Home; it is called Divine Administration, and there has always been one on this planet throughout the hundreds of thousands of years since the days of the first Planetary Prince. It is just that the whole system of this world is set up to make you miss it; to make you ignore it.

And so, will the change point come? Yes, it will come. It has to come, but I would prefer it coming in the next five years, wouldn’t you, rather than in the next five thousand years? I would prefer it coming at the turn of the century, that sounds like a nice date. How about 2001? I like that date. Let’s all do everything we can to make it happen. You, in Switzerland; you in France; you in England; you in Hungary; you in Poland; you in Norway and in Holland; you who understand exactly what I am saying, you are needed right here at the First Planetary Sacred Home. Your talents are needed. Your ability is needed. We want to make major motion pictures of Divine New Order reality that can help change this planet.

We presently have a CD that we feel (and I am a little biased) is some of the best music in the world. We want to put that CD out there, and we want it to reach millions of people, and when you hear this CD called, Holy City. That CD could knock your spiritual socks right off, far beyond any gospel recording. Gospel singers are in their own way trying to reach the world for Jesus, but with such narrow minds that fundamentalism gets you into. I do not want to make my Father in heaven appear to be such a narrow-minded Master. There is so much freedom in God, so much freedom. Being a believer in Jesus, Christ Michael, and God, the Universal Father, is not a ticket to put you in a box and give you thousands of “do’s” and “don’ts” and ways to dress and ways to talk; that you should look like this and look like that or you are not saved. That is all a bunch of man’s nonsense. There is so much freedom in God, but there are also absolutes. The laws of God are written in your hearts, in each one as individuals. What may be right for me, may be wrong for you. What may be right for you can be wrong for me. Yes, there are some absolutes. We should not murder each other. We should not lie. But sometimes we may actually have to kill when we need to protect our children’s or someone else’s life. It is OK to protect, to do anything we can to stop someone who is trying to murder our children or rape our children, wives, or sisters. We should use all force necessary to stop that aggressor. Sometimes it is appropriate to lie if those of madness want to come in and take our children and put them in gas chambers. What are we going to say? “Oh, yes, they are right over there; they are hiding behind the couch right over there; go over and take them.” There are times when you can lie. God is in your conscience.

Sex before marriage. “Oh, don’t talk about that subject.” Straight across the board, all sex before marriage is wrong in Christianity. What is marriage? What is adultery? Many people who are legally married have never been truly married in the first place. Do you think by getting a piece of paper and taking a vow that you are legally married means you are married before God? No, it is much more than that. Many commit adultery in ways that are truly real. If I take a vow to someone and behind their back I cheat on them and have an affair, that is adultery. But I don’t need a legal piece of paper to marry someone; I just need to make a vow to that person.

There is a movie out, Anna Karenina in which she was married to a man who basically loved her but abused her, and then she met her real complement. She met a man who was really her complement, as we would say in the way we talk as starseed—someone she had been with before in another life, maybe several times. Her husband realized this right away at some level, and he did everything he could to keep her from him. As a matter of fact, she actually committed adultery by not going with the complement. Staying with the husband was the doggone adultery. Do you understand? The present teachings about so many of these issues, about what makes you saved or unsaved are very ridiculous because the world is much bigger than that, and none of us can live in the box of some other man’s or woman’s religious view of reality when they hardly keep that reality themselves. It is easy to talk about it, but it is another thing to live it. Very few on this planet are perfect, very few. We need to strive for that perfection in God, but there is diversity in what that perfection is. In Havona, there are one billion perfect worlds, and each one of those perfect worlds is different, yet perfect. How can that be? How can it possibly be that there can be one billion worlds, each one perfect, and each one individual? That is because perfection is unique and different, and we cannot live in someone else’s inflexible box. That is fundamentalism. You cannot live in someone else’s fundamentalist box because all that does is make you miserable, as well as those who trying to keep you in that box.

Will Jesus Return?

Yes, we absolutely believe that Jesus Christ Michael will come back to this planet. He said He would. He said, “I am going away now, but I am coming back. I will return.” This is Jesus Christ Michael, and He will return. I know it may seem like that is going to be thousands of years from now. Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t think that this planet is going to last another twenty years unless there are some major changes. It will be lucky if it lasts another seven. Yes, He will return, and His promise is to return before this world self-destructs. He does not want this world to self-destruct, or for the human beings on this planet to be completely annihilated. The URANTIA Book talks about the emergency situations that take place on other planets where evacuation is necessary. There is technology on some worlds of time and space that could destroy a whole planet. How would you like to have that kind of technology? Here on this planet we have the nuclear bombs, and we have all these terrible, terrible weapons that can destroy this world very quickly. Do you think that the God that we know and love and talk about wants that to happen to any world in time and space? He will return to stop that from happening. That is our hope. If He does not return soon, then it is up to us to help change this planet as quickly as we can, and that is what we are trying to do here at the First Planetary Sacred Home. We try to use every bit of talent. Many of us in this room have turned down positions where we could have made a lot more money, believe me. As a matter of fact, if you come here, you don’t make any money. You give it away to help change the planet. We could have made a lot of money with our talents and abilities if we were out there in the world system, but we would be trying to get something we don’t even want in the first place, because when you get all these things, then you find out they do not make you happy anyway.

Life on Other Worlds?

Intelligent life on other planets, do we believe that? Let’s hope so! There are trillions and trillions of inhabited worlds. In each local universe, the goal is to have ten million inhabited worlds. Right now in the universe of Nebadon there are approximately 3,800,000 inhabited worlds. Our universe, Nebadon, is a very young universe and our little solar system with Urantia is like a grain of sand on the beach compared to what is out there. Yes, there are inhabited worlds. Yes, there is intelligent life out there. We are not a UFO research group. I don’t sit at night and look up at the skies and hope I see a flying saucer or wait for them to land in my back yard. I am not trying to connect with mortals from other worlds. I am beyond that. I have a relationship with the Universal Father. I do in this life, and thank God, I have had it since the first century, and in other lives. I am not about trying to contact my brothers and sisters in outer space. I am just trying to maintain some normalcy of life here in this world. I know they are out there. I know that there are ships of great sizes, twenty-five, thirty miles long, and more. I know that there are spacecraft that come here. I could care less, because higher spiritual forces that are spirit form are much more knowledgeable than any mortal that flies a ship. I would much rather talk to an angel than a mortal from another world. Though I would enjoy discussing ideas with a mortal from a high planet in light and life.

If there needs to be an evacuation of this planet someday before it self-destructs, doesn’t the New Testament say that it will be Jesus who comes back and does that evacuation? Are you looking for little green men in flying saucers to pull you out of here? Maybe they are mortals that look like you and me, or just a little better, flying ships with higher technology. Hollywood likes to make these movies about ugly alien reptiles, like Independence Day, where the army is the savior; they come in and save the world. But if reptiles with long tongues, whatever they look like, can fly these tremendous vessels, I am sure they have got one thing that movies leave out, and that is the Fatherhood of God in them and the Mother Spirit of God in them. I am sure that if they have this higher technology they are quite loving beings. I prefer E.T. He is a better example of an extraterrestrial than some of the aliens that come around and try to suck your blood. We have to really raise our consciousness in this area. Do you think our loving Jesus is going to allow it, even if there are worlds of time and space that have horrible aliens that are devoid of the spirit of God within them, that are very highly technical but don’t understand the emotions, or any of the things that make mortals human? All mortals are not human, but with those differences that do exist out there, do you think Michael is going to let those beings come into His universe and destroy us? No, those beings are battling it out with their own kind in their own universes. There are laws and barriers that separate them from going into other universes. There are boundaries, just like we have boundaries. Right now the technology on this planet says that we can go to the moon. Well, in time and space where other universes are more highly evolved, going to the moon is like jumping in your car and going to McDonald’s and getting a hamburger. It is nothing. So you have to realize what is out there, and where we are in perspective to our cosmic brothers and sisters.

What Kind of Change Is Needed?

Here on this planet there is too much nationalism, too many countries. We have to come under one divine administration, not the New World Order of the present powerful politicians and corporations, but the world Divine New Order of the spiritual administration. This we have to come into, and eventually we will. But we have to realize that we are cosmic citizens. Here in this country on this planet, we don’t even see ourselves as planetary citizens. We can’t see ourselves as brothers and sisters because we are too busy saying: “Yeah Israel!” “Yeah America!” “Yeah Palestine!” “Yeah South Africa!” “Yeah Germany!” “Yeah England!.” So long as we continue to do that and make those separations we will never have peace on this planet, and we will continue to have wars. So long as we compromise with man’s ways and corporate ways that are not of God, we will continue to have wars because our loyalty is not to God, nor to our brothers and sisters of this planet, nor to our brothers and sisters of other planets which have already come into peace and light and life. Our consciousness is so small that the Universal Father is not going to allow us the company of higher intelligent life until we are ready for it. So, when they do come here in ships, when they do come here in power, when beings such as Lanonandek Sons and Vorondadek Sons and Melchizedeks and Material Sons and Daughters and Mighty Messengers come here, unless we all know who they are and what they are and what their functions are, a little bit about their reality, we are going to think them aliens. We are going to be afraid of them. We are going to be throwing rocks at them, or we are going to be running the other way. So, we must begin to try to understand about divine administration on a spiritual level, so that we can begin to learn to understand the multiplicity of the trillions of inhabited worlds of mortals who are out there, for they might be maybe seven or eight feet tall. They might be three feet tall. I like Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. I like that being because there is a Master in a funny little body, and yet very different from us, who can teach us a lot, but so many of us are too busy trying to look like Hollywood. Most would miss the Masters if they came here, and that is the truth.

There needs to be a quantum leap in the consciousness of us humans. We need to bring Fifth Epochal and Continuing revelation into our realities, and then the change point into a world of peace and fulfillment can happen.

April 27, 1997