Teacher-Brother Dave's initial comments: I am presenting some of my Topical Studies from the fully public domain, 2097 page, Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth and with my added comments. The Revealed text is free of copyright, so you may freely share individually these supernal quotes with your friends and relatives. But my order of selections, font types for emphasis and my added comments are Copyright 2022 by Dave@PureChristians.org All Rights Reserved. Contact me first about using the whole Study or group of Studies.
[My added comments of explanation below are in these square brackets]
Topical Study number 147
"TRUTH - The Truth"
Part 13
Compiled Nov. 22, 2023 by Dave@PureChristians.org
Paper 195 - After Pentecost
7. The Vulnerability of Materialism
195:7.1 (2078.4) How foolish it is for material-minded man to allow such vulnerable theories as those of a mechanistic universe to deprive him of the vast spiritual resources of the personal experience of true religion. Facts never quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may. Better that science should be devoted to the destruction of superstition rather than attempting the overthrow of religious faith—human belief in spiritual realities and divine values.
195:7.2 (2078.5) Science should do for man materially what religion does for him spiritually: extend the horizon of life and enlarge his personality. True science can have no lasting quarrel with true religion. The “scientific method” is merely an intellectual yardstick wherewith to measure material adventures and physical achievements. But being material and wholly intellectual, it is utterly useless in the evaluation of spiritual realities and religious experiences.
195:7.3 (2078.6) The inconsistency of the modern mechanist is: If this were merely a material universe and man only a machine, such a man would be wholly unable to recognize himself as such a machine, and likewise would such a machine-man be wholly unconscious of the fact of the existence of such a material universe. The materialistic dismay and despair of a mechanistic science has failed to recognize the fact of the spirit-indwelt mind of the scientist whose very supermaterial insight formulates these mistaken and self-contradictory concepts of a materialistic universe.
195:7.4 (2078.7) Paradise values of eternity and infinity, of truth, beauty, and goodness, are concealed within the facts of the phenomena of the universes of time and space. But it requires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mortal to detect and discern these spiritual values.
195:7.5 (2078.8) The realities and values of spiritual progress are not a “psychologic projection”—a mere glorified daydream of the material mind. Such things are the spiritual forecasts of the indwelling Adjuster, the spirit of God living in the mind of man. And let not your dabblings with the faintly glimpsed findings of “relativity” disturb your concepts of the eternity and infinity of God. And in all your solicitation concerning the necessity for self-expression do not make the mistake of failing to provide for Adjuster-expression, the manifestation of your real and better self.
195:7.6 (2079.1) If this were only a material universe, material man would never be able to arrive at the concept of the mechanistic character of such an exclusively material existence. This very mechanistic concept of the universe is in itself a nonmaterial phenomenon of mind, and all mind is of nonmaterial origin, no matter how thoroughly it may appear to be materially conditioned and mechanistically controlled.
195:7.7 (2079.2) The partially evolved mental mechanism of mortal man is not overendowed with consistency and wisdom. Man’s conceit often outruns his reason and eludes his logic.
195:7.8 (2079.3) The very pessimism of the most pessimistic materialist is, in and of itself, sufficient proof that the universe of the pessimist is not wholly material. Both optimism and pessimism are concept reactions in a mind conscious of values as well as of facts. If the universe were truly what the materialist regards it to be, man as a human machine would then be devoid of all conscious recognition of that very fact. Without the consciousness of the concept of values within the spirit-born mind, the fact of universe materialism and the mechanistic phenomena of universe operation would be wholly unrecognized by man. One machine cannot be conscious of the nature or value of another machine.
195:7.9 (2079.4) A mechanistic philosophy of life and the universe cannot be scientific because science recognizes and deals only with materials and facts. Philosophy is inevitably superscientific. Man is a material fact of nature, but his life is a phenomenon which transcends the material levels of nature in that it exhibits the control attributes of mind and the creative qualities of spirit.
195:7.10 (2079.5) The sincere effort of man to become a mechanist represents the tragic phenomenon of that man’s futile effort to commit intellectual and moral suicide. But he cannot do it.
195:7.11 (2079.6) If the universe were only material and man only a machine, there would be no science to embolden the scientist to postulate this mechanization of the universe. Machines cannot measure, classify, nor evaluate themselves. Such a scientific piece of work could be executed only by some entity of supermachine status.
195:7.12 (2079.7) If universe reality is only one vast machine, then man must be outside of the universe and apart from it in order to recognize such a fact and become conscious of the insight of such an evaluation.
195:7.13 (2079.8) If man is only a machine, by what technique does this man come to believe or claim to know that he is only a machine? The experience of self-conscious evaluation of one’s self is never an attribute of a mere machine. A self-conscious and avowed mechanist is the best possible answer to mechanism. If materialism were a fact, there could be no self-conscious mechanist. It is also true that one must first be a moral person before one can perform immoral acts.
195:7.14 (2079.9) The very claim of materialism implies a supermaterial consciousness of the mind which presumes to assert such dogmas. A mechanism might deteriorate, but it could never progress. Machines do not think, create, dream, aspire, idealize, hunger for truth, or thirst for righteousness. They do not motivate their lives with the passion to serve other machines and to choose as their goal of eternal progression the sublime task of finding God and striving to be like him. Machines are never intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral, or spiritual.
195:7.15 (2079.10) Art proves that man is not mechanistic, but it does not prove that he is spiritually immortal. Art is mortal morontia, the intervening field between man, the material, and man, the spiritual. Poetry is an effort to escape from material realities to spiritual values.
195:7.16 (2080.1) In a high civilization, art humanizes science, while in turn it is spiritualized by true religion—insight into spiritual and eternal values. Art represents the human and time-space evaluation of reality. Religion is the divine embrace of cosmic values and connotes eternal progression in spiritual ascension and expansion. The art of time is dangerous only when it becomes blind to the spirit standards of the divine patterns which eternity reflects as the reality shadows of time. True art is the effective manipulation of the material things of life; religion is the ennobling transformation of the material facts of life, and it never ceases in its spiritual evaluation of art.
195:7.17 (2080.2) How foolish to presume that an automaton could conceive a philosophy of automatism, and how ridiculous that it should presume to form such a concept of other and fellow automatons!
195:7.18 (2080.3) Any scientific interpretation of the material universe is valueless unless it provides due recognition for the scientist. No appreciation of art is genuine unless it accords recognition to the artist. No evaluation of morals is worth while unless it includes the moralist. No recognition of philosophy is edifying if it ignores the philosopher, and religion cannot exist without the real experience of the religionist who, in and through this very experience, is seeking to find God and to know him. Likewise is the universe of universes without significance apart from the I AM, the infinite God who made it and unceasingly manages it.
195:7.19 (2080.4) Mechanists—humanists—tend to drift with the material currents. Idealists and spiritists dare to use their oars with intelligence and vigor in order to modify the apparently purely material course of the energy streams.
195:7.20 (2080.5) Science lives by the mathematics of the mind; music expresses the tempo of the emotions. Religion is the spiritual rhythm of the soul in time-space harmony with the higher and eternal melody measurements of Infinity. Religious experience is something in human life which is truly supermathematical.
195:7.21 (2080.6) In language, an alphabet represents the mechanism of materialism, while the words expressive of the meaning of a thousand thoughts, grand ideas, and noble ideals—of love and hate, of cowardice and courage—represent the performances of mind within the scope defined by both material and spiritual law, directed by the assertion of the will of personality, and limited by the inherent situational endowment.
195:7.22 (2080.7) The universe is not like the laws, mechanisms, and the uniformities which the scientist discovers, and which he comes to regard as science, but rather like the curious, thinking, choosing, creative, combining, and discriminating scientist who thus observes universe phenomena and classifies the mathematical facts inherent in the mechanistic phases of the material side of creation. Neither is the universe like the art of the artist, but rather like the striving, dreaming, aspiring, and advancing artist who seeks to transcend the world of material things in an effort to achieve a spiritual goal.
195:7.23 (2080.8) The scientist, not science, perceives the reality of an evolving and advancing universe of energy and matter. The artist, not art, demonstrates the existence of the transient morontia world intervening between material existence and spiritual liberty. The religionist, not religion, proves the existence of the spirit realities and divine values which are to be encountered in the progress of eternity.
8. Secular Totalitarianism
195:8.1 (2081.1) But even after materialism and mechanism have been more or less vanquished, the devastating influence of twentieth-century secularism will still blight the spiritual experience of millions of unsuspecting souls.
195:8.2 (2081.2) Modern secularism has been fostered by two world-wide influences. The father of secularism was the narrow-minded and godless attitude of nineteenth- and twentieth-century so-called science—atheistic science. The mother of modern secularism was the totalitarian medieval Christian church. Secularism had its inception as a rising protest against the almost complete domination of Western civilization by the institutionalized Christian church.
195:8.3 (2081.3) At the time of this revelation, the prevailing intellectual and philosophical climate of both European and American life is decidedly secular—humanistic. For three hundred years Western thinking has been progressively secularized. Religion has become more and more a nominal influence, largely a ritualistic exercise. The majority of professed Christians of Western civilization are unwittingly actual secularists.
195:8.4 (2081.4) It required a great power, a mighty influence, to free the thinking and living of the Western peoples from the withering grasp of a totalitarian ecclesiastical domination. Secularism did break the bonds of church control, and now in turn it threatens to establish a new and godless type of mastery over the hearts and minds of modern man. The tyrannical and dictatorial political state is the direct offspring of scientific materialism and philosophic secularism. Secularism no sooner frees man from the domination of the institutionalized church than it sells him into slavish bondage to the totalitarian state. Secularism frees man from ecclesiastical slavery only to betray him into the tyranny of political and economic slavery.
195:8.5 (2081.5) Materialism denies God, secularism simply ignores him; at least that was the earlier attitude. More recently, secularism has assumed a more militant attitude, assuming to take the place of the religion whose totalitarian bondage it onetime resisted. Twentieth-century secularism tends to affirm that man does not need God. But beware! this godless philosophy of human society will lead only to unrest, animosity, unhappiness, war, and world-wide disaster.
195:8.6 (2081.6) Secularism can never bring peace to mankind. Nothing can take the place of God in human society. But mark you well! do not be quick to surrender the beneficent gains of the secular revolt from ecclesiastical totalitarianism. Western civilization today enjoys many liberties and satisfactions as a result of the secular revolt. The great mistake of secularism was this: In revolting against the almost total control of life by religious authority, and after attaining the liberation from such ecclesiastical tyranny, the secularists went on to institute a revolt against God himself, sometimes tacitly and sometimes openly.
195:8.7 (2081.7) To the secularistic revolt you owe the amazing creativity of American industrialism and the unprecedented material progress of Western civilization. And because the secularistic revolt went too far and lost sight of God and true religion, there also followed the unlooked-for harvest of world wars and international unsettledness.
195:8.8 (2081.8) It is not necessary to sacrifice faith in God in order to enjoy the blessings of the modern secularistic revolt: tolerance, social service, democratic government, and civil liberties. It was not necessary for the secularists to antagonize true religion in order to promote science and to advance education.
195:8.9 (2082.1) But secularism is not the sole parent of all these recent gains in the enlargement of living. Behind the gains of the twentieth century are not only science and secularism but also the unrecognized and unacknowledged spiritual workings of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
195:8.10 (2082.2) Without God, without religion, scientific secularism can never co-ordinate its forces, harmonize its divergent and rivalrous interests, races, and nationalisms. This secularistic human society, notwithstanding its unparalleled materialistic achievement, is slowly disintegrating. The chief cohesive force resisting this disintegration of antagonism is nationalism. And nationalism is the chief barrier to world peace.
195:8.11 (2082.3) The inherent weakness of secularism is that it discards ethics and religion for politics and power. You simply cannot establish the brotherhood of men while ignoring or denying the fatherhood of God.
195:8.12 (2082.4) Secular social and political optimism is an illusion. Without God, neither freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace.
195:8.13 (2082.5) The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and society can lead only to disaster. During the first third of the twentieth century Urantians killed more human beings than were killed during the whole of the Christian dispensation up to that time. And this is only the beginning of the dire harvest of materialism and secularism; still more terrible destruction is yet to come.
9. Christianity’s Problem
195:9.1 (2082.6) Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of truth running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a materialistic and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of the superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eternal truth. But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over, the truths of Jesus’ gospel will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and better way.
195:9.2 (2082.7) But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of the Master’s life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.
195:9.3 (2082.8) The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation. [We now have this tremendous Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth: This Urantia Book ! It is now in the public domain to allow worldwide sharing and translations and interpretations.]
195:9.4 (2082.9) Religion does need new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare to depend solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings. If Christianity persists in neglecting its spiritual mission while it continues to busy itself with social and material problems, the spiritual renaissance must await the coming of these new teachers of Jesus’ religion who will be exclusively devoted to the spiritual regeneration of men. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world.
195:9.5 (2083.1) The modern age will refuse to accept a religion which is inconsistent with facts and out of harmony with its highest conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness. The hour is striking for a rediscovery of the true and original foundations of present-day distorted and compromised Christianity—the real life and teachings of Jesus.
195:9.6 (2083.2) Primitive man lived a life of superstitious bondage to religious fear. Modern, civilized men dread the thought of falling under the dominance of strong religious convictions. Thinking man has always feared to be held by a religion. When a strong and moving religion threatens to dominate him, he invariably tries to rationalize, traditionalize, and institutionalize it, thereby hoping to gain control of it. By such procedure, even a revealed religion becomes man-made and man-dominated. Modern men and women of intelligence evade the religion of Jesus because of their fears of what it will do to them—and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The religion of Jesus does, indeed, dominate and transform its believers, demanding that men dedicate their lives to seeking for a knowledge of the will of the Father in heaven and requiring that the energies of living be consecrated to the unselfish service of the brotherhood of man.
195:9.7 (2083.3) Selfish men and women simply will not pay such a price for even the greatest spiritual treasure ever offered mortal man. Only when man has become sufficiently disillusioned by the sorrowful disappointments attendant upon the foolish and deceptive pursuits of selfishness, and subsequent to the discovery of the barrenness of formalized religion, will he be disposed to turn wholeheartedly to the gospel of the kingdom, the religion of Jesus of Nazareth.
195:9.8 (2083.4) The world needs more firsthand religion. [Personal God-consciousness !] Even Christianity—the best of the religions of the twentieth century—is not only a religion about Jesus, but it is so largely one which men experience secondhand. They take their religion wholly as handed down by their accepted religious teachers. What an awakening the world would experience if it could only see Jesus as he really lived on earth and know, firsthand, his life-giving teachings! Descriptive words of things beautiful cannot thrill like the sight thereof, neither can creedal words inspire men’s souls like the experience of knowing the presence of God. But expectant faith will ever keep the hope-door of man’s soul open for the entrance of the eternal spiritual realities of the divine values of the worlds beyond.
195:9.9 (2083.5) Christianity has dared to lower its ideals before the challenge of human greed, war-madness, and the lust for power; but the religion of Jesus stands as the unsullied and transcendent spiritual summons, calling to the best there is in man to rise above all these legacies of animal evolution and, by grace, attain the moral heights of true human destiny.
195:9.10 (2083.6) Christianity is threatened by slow death from formalism, overorganization, intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends. The modern Christian church is not such a brotherhood of dynamic believers as Jesus commissioned continuously to effect the spiritual transformation of successive generations of mankind.
195:9.11 (2083.7) So-called Christianity has become a social and cultural movement as well as a religious belief and practice. The stream of modern Christianity drains many an ancient pagan swamp and many a barbarian morass; many olden cultural watersheds drain into this present-day cultural stream as well as the high Galilean tablelands which are supposed to be its exclusive source.
10. The Future
195:10.1 (2084.1) Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all men. It is futile to talk about a revival of primitive Christianity; you must go forward from where you find yourselves. Modern culture must become spiritually baptized with a new revelation of Jesus’ life and illuminated with a new understanding of his gospel of eternal salvation. And when Jesus becomes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to himself. Jesus’ disciples should be more than conquerors, even overflowing sources of inspiration and enhanced living to all men. Religion is only an exalted humanism until it is made divine by the discovery of the reality of the presence of God in personal experience.
195:10.2 (2084.2) The beauty and sublimity, the humanity and divinity, the simplicity and uniqueness, of Jesus’ life on earth present such a striking and appealing picture of man-saving and God-revealing that the theologians and philosophers of all time should be effectively restrained from daring to form creeds or create theological systems of spiritual bondage out of such a transcendental bestowal of God in the form of man. In Jesus the universe produced a mortal man in whom the spirit of love triumphed over the material handicaps of time and overcame the fact of physical origin.
195:10.3 (2084.3) Ever bear in mind—God and men need each other. They are mutually necessary to the full and final attainment of eternal personality experience in the divine destiny of universe finality. [In Eternity, we are destined to be Finaliters in a Paradise Corps of Finality ! What a Glorious Destiny awaits each of us who love our Father God and ever seek to do his Perfect and Eternal Will. (Volition)]
195:10.4 (2084.4) “The kingdom of God is within you” was probably the greatest pronouncement Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving spirit.
195:10.5 (2084.5) In winning souls for the Master, it is not the first mile of compulsion, duty, or convention that will transform man and his world, but rather the second mile of free service and liberty-loving devotion that betokens the Jesusonian reaching forth to grasp his brother in love and sweep him on under spiritual guidance toward the higher and divine goal of mortal existence. Christianity even now willingly goes the first mile, but mankind languishes and stumbles along in moral darkness because there are so few genuine second-milers—so few professed followers of Jesus who really live and love as he taught his disciples to live and love and serve.
195:10.6 (2084.6) The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus’ brotherhood of the kingdom should thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh.
195:10.7 (2084.7) [Warning:] No social system or political regime which denies the reality of God can contribute in any constructive and lasting manner to the advancement of human civilization. But Christianity, as it is subdivided and secularized today, presents the greatest single obstacle to its further advancement; especially is this true concerning the Orient.
Topical Study number 147
"TRUTH - The Truth"
Part 14
Compiled Nov. 24, 2023 by Dave@PureChristians.org
Paper 195 - After Pentecost, Cont.
10. The Future, Cont.
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
195:10.8 Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living faith, growing spirit, and firsthand experience of the faith-comrades of Jesus in the Brotherhood of man in the spiritual association of the Kingdom of Heaven. The praiseworthy desire to preserve traditions of past achievement often leads to the defense of outgrown systems of worship. The well-meant desire to foster ancient thought systems effectually prevents the sponsoring of new and adequate means and methods designed to satisfy the spiritual longings of the expanding and advancing minds of modern men. Likewise, the Christian churches of the twentieth century stand as great, but wholly unconscious, obstacles to the immediate advance of the real gospel -- the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
195:10.9 Many earnest persons who would gladly yield loyalty to the Christ of the gospel find it very difficult enthusiastically to support a church which exhibits so little of the Spirit of his life and teachings, and which they have been erroneously taught he founded. Jesus did not found the so-called Christian church, but he has, in every manner consistent with his nature, fostered it as the best existent exponent of his lifework on earth.
195:10.10 If the Christian church would only dare to espouse the Master's program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all the way through with this great adventure.
195:10.11 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.
195:10.12 But the Christianity of even the twentieth century must not be despised. It is the product of the combined moral genius of the God-knowing men of many races during many ages, and it has truly been one of the greatest powers for good on earth, and therefore no man should lightly regard it, notwithstanding its inherent and acquired defects. Christianity still contrives to move the minds of reflective men with mighty moral emotions.
195:10.13 But there is no excuse for the involvement of the church in commerce and politics; such unholy alliances are a flagrant betrayal of the Master. And the genuine lovers of truth will be slow to forget that this powerful institutionalized church has often dared to smother newborn faith and persecute truth bearers who chanced to appear in unorthodox raiment.
195:10.14 It is all too true that such a church would not have survived unless there had been men in the world who preferred such a style of worship. Many spiritually indolent souls crave an ancient and authoritative religion of ritual and sacred traditions. Human evolution and spiritual progress are hardly sufficient to enable all men to dispense with religious authority. And the invisible Brotherhood of the Kingdom may well include these family groups of various social and temperamental classes if they are only willing to become truly Spirit-led sons of God. But in this Brotherhood of Jesus there is no place for sectarian rivalry, group bitterness, nor assertions of moral superiority and spiritual infallibility.
195:10.15 These various groupings of Christians may serve to accommodate numerous different types of would-be believers among the various peoples of Western civilization, but such division of Christendom presents a grave weakness when it attempts to carry the gospel of Jesus to Oriental peoples. These races do not yet understand that there is a religion of Jesus separate, and somewhat apart, from Christianity, which has more and more become a religion about Jesus.
195:10.16 The great hope of earth lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present-day professed followers. [Yes !!]
195:10.17 Even secular education could help in this great spiritual Renaissance if it would pay more attention to the work of teaching youth how to engage in life planning and character progression. The purpose of all education should be to foster and further the supreme purpose of life, the development of a majestic and well-balanced personality. There is great need for the teaching of moral discipline in the place of so much self-gratification. Upon such a foundation religion may contribute its spiritual incentive to the enlargement and enrichment of mortal life, even to the security and enhancement of life eternal.
195:10.18 Christianity is an extemporized religion, and therefore must it operate in low gear. High-gear spiritual performances must await the new revelation and the more general acceptance of the real religion of Jesus. But Christianity is a mighty religion, seeing that the commonplace disciples of a crucified carpenter set in motion those teachings which conquered the Roman world in three hundred years and then went on to triumph over the barbarians who overthrew Rome. This same Christianity conquered -- absorbed and exalted -- the whole stream of Hebrew theology and Greek philosophy. And then, when this Christian religion became comatose for more than a thousand years as a result of an overdose of mysteries and paganism, it resurrected itself and virtually reconquered the whole Western world. Christianity contains enough of Jesus' teachings to immortalize it. [Yes, a more Spirit-led and more true Living Personal Christianity will eventually become the one universal living religion worldwide !! This is God's perfect will for all humans on earth - to seek and to follow in love and service only our Eternal Sovereign Savior Jesus Christ ! (aka Jesus Christ Michael). If added divine visitations of made-visible Sons and high Angels are required, our loving Father God will send them as needed.]
195:10.19 If Christianity could only grasp more of Jesus' teachings, it could do so much more in helping modern man to solve his new and increasingly complex problems.
195:10.20 Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become identified in the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the industrial life, and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has Christianity unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without conscience, and industry without morality.
195:10.21 The hope of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor the social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it humbly bows itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn anew from Jesus of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear -- The Living Gospel of the [loving and merciful] Fatherhood of God and the [perfecting] Brotherhood of man. [Please save, peruse often, continue to pray and worship God, and share this very important Paper, or portions of it, with others.]
PAPER 196 -- THE FAITH OF JESUS
Introduction
[This Paper is also very important !]
196:0.1 Jesus enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He experienced the ordinary ups and downs of mortal existence, but he never religiously doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and guidance. His faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine Presence, his indwelling Adjuster. His faith was neither traditional nor merely intellectual; it was wholly personal and purely spiritual.
196:0.2 The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the "will of the Father in Heaven." Jesus' God was at one and the same time "The Holy One of Israel" and "The living and loving Father in Heaven." The concept of God as a Father was not original with Jesus, but he exalted and elevated the idea into a sublime experience by achieving a New Revelation of God and by proclaiming that every mortal creature is a child of this Father of love, a son of God. [Yes, Jesus teaches us in Spirit that each and every human on earth is a divinely beloved son of God with potential for eventual perfection and eternal life ! That is the real Gospel (Good News) of Jesus Christ that all humans on this world most need to know and to believe !]
196:0.3 Jesus did not cling to faith in God as would a struggling soul at war with the universe and at death grips with a hostile and sinful world; he did not resort to faith merely as a consolation in the midst of difficulties or as a comfort in threatened despair; faith was not just an illusory compensation for the unpleasant realities and the sorrows of living. In the very face of all the natural difficulties and the temporal contradictions of mortal existence, he experienced the tranquility of supreme and unquestioned trust in God and felt the tremendous thrill of living, by faith, in the very Presence of the heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith was a living experience of actual Spirit attainment. Jesus' great contribution to the values of human experience was not that he revealed so many new ideas about the Father in Heaven, but rather that he so magnificently and humanly demonstrated a New and higher type of Living Faith in God. Never on all the worlds of this universe, in the life of any one mortal, did God ever become such a Living Reality as in the human experience of Jesus of Nazareth. [So true !! Now our Master Jesus is the fullness of God here to all in His Created Universe ! And He, Jesus, the Spirit of All Truth, is here with us to lovingly lead us -- now and eternally ! Amen !]
196:0.4 In the Master's life on earth, this and all other worlds of the local creation discover a new and higher type of religion, religion based on personal spiritual relations with the Universal Father and wholly validated by the supreme authority of genuine personal experience. [Supreme Authority !] This living faith of Jesus was more than an intellectual reflection, and it was not a mystic meditation.
196:0.5 Theology may fix, formulate, define, and dogmatize faith, but in the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for tradition nor a mere intellectual belief which he held as a sacred creed, but rather a sublime experience and a profound conviction which securely held him. His faith was so real and all-encompassing that it absolutely swept away any spiritual doubts and effectively destroyed every conflicting desire. Nothing was able to tear him away from the spiritual anchorage of this fervent, sublime, and undaunted faith. Even in the face of apparent defeat or in the throes of disappointment and threatening despair, he calmly stood in the divine Presence free from fear and fully conscious of spiritual invincibility. Jesus enjoyed the invigorating assurance of the possession of unflinching faith, and in each of life's trying situations he unfailingly exhibited an unquestioning loyalty to the Father's will. And this superb faith was undaunted even by the cruel and crushing threat of an ignominious death. [Jesus had and has fearless confidence that is Real in God, not false intellectual confidence or arrogance !]
196:0.6 In a religious genius, strong spiritual faith so many times leads directly to disastrous fanaticism, to exaggeration of the religious ego, but it was not so with Jesus. He was not unfavorably affected in his practical life by his extraordinary faith and spirit attainment because this spiritual exaltation was a wholly unconscious and spontaneous soul expression of his personal experience with God.
196:0.7 The all-consuming and indomitable spiritual faith of Jesus never became fanatical, for it never attempted to run away with his well-balanced intellectual judgments concerning the proportional values of practical and commonplace social, economic, and moral life situations. The Son of Man was a splendidly unified human personality; he was a perfectly endowed divine Being; he was also magnificently coordinated as a combined Human and divine Being functioning on earth as a single Personality. Always did the Master co-ordinate the faith of the soul with the wisdom-appraisals of seasoned experience. Personal faith, spiritual hope, and moral devotion were always correlated in a matchless religious unity of harmonious association with the keen realization of the reality and sacredness of all human loyalties -- personal honor, family love, religious obligation, social duty, and economic necessity. [And Jesus continues today and forever to Be the SAME ONE God-Man Spirit Person ! and here with us ! and we each may personally allow him to enter our souls and minds to further guide and transform us !]
196:0.8 The faith of Jesus visualized all Spirit values as being found in the Kingdom of God; therefore he said, "Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven." Jesus saw in the advanced and ideal fellowship of the Kingdom the achievement and fulfillment of the "will of God." The very heart of the prayer which he taught his disciples was, "Your Kingdom come; Your will be done." Having thus conceived of the Kingdom as comprising the will of God, he devoted himself to the cause of its realization with amazing self-forgetfulness and unbounded enthusiasm. But in all his intense Mission and throughout his extraordinary Life there never appeared the fury of the fanatic nor the superficial frothiness of the religious egotist.
196:0.9 The Master's entire life was consistently conditioned by this living faith, this sublime religious experience. This spiritual attitude wholly dominated his thinking and feeling, his believing and praying, his teaching and preaching. This personal faith of a Son in the certainty and security of the guidance and protection of the heavenly Father imparted to his unique life a profound endowment of spiritual Reality. And yet, despite this very deep consciousness of close relationship with Divinity, this Galilean, God's Galilean, when addressed as Good Teacher, instantly replied, "Why do you call me good?" When we stand confronted by such splendid self-forgetfulness, we begin to understand how the Universal Father found it possible so fully to Manifest himself to him and Reveal himself through him to the mortals of the realms.
196:0.10 Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the greatest of all offerings: the consecration and dedication of his own will to the majestic service of doing the divine will. Jesus always and consistently interpreted religion wholly in terms of the Father's will. When you study the career of the Master, as concerns prayer or any other feature of the religious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Jesus never prayed as a religious duty. To him prayer was a sincere expression of spiritual attitude, a declaration of soul loyalty, a recital of personal devotion, an expression of thanksgiving, an avoidance of emotional tension, a prevention of conflict, an exaltation of intellection, an ennoblement of desire, a vindication of moral decision, an enrichment of thought, an invigoration of higher inclinations, a consecration of impulse, a clarification of viewpoint, a declaration of faith, a transcendental surrender of will, a sublime assertion of confidence, a revelation of courage, the proclamation of discovery, a confession of supreme devotion, the validation of consecration, a technique for the adjustment of difficulties, and the mighty mobilization of the combined soul powers to withstand all human tendencies toward selfishness, evil, and sin. [120 words in that one profound sentence !] He lived just such a life of prayerful consecration to the doing of his Father's will and ended his life triumphantly with just such a prayer. [Jesus' last words on the cross, said in a loud Voice were: "IT IS FINISHED! FATHER, INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMEND MY SPIRIT.” ] The secret of his unparalleled religious life was this consciousness of the Presence of God; and he attained it by intelligent prayer and sincere worship -- unbroken communion with God [!!!]-- and not by leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices.
196:0.11 In the earthly life of Jesus, religion was a living experience, a direct and personal movement from spiritual reverence to practical righteousness. The faith of Jesus bore the transcendent fruits of the divine Spirit. His faith was not immature and credulous like that of a child, but in many ways it did resemble the unsuspecting trust of the child mind. Jesus trusted God much as the child trusts a parent. He had a profound confidence in the universe -- just such a trust as the child has in its parental environment. Jesus' wholehearted faith in the fundamental goodness of the universe very much resembled the child's trust in the security of its earthly surroundings. He depended on the heavenly Father as a child leans upon its earthly parent, and his fervent faith never for one moment doubted the certainty of the heavenly Father's overcare. He was not disturbed seriously by fears, doubts, and skepticism. Unbelief did not inhibit the free and original expression of his life. He combined the stalwart and intelligent courage of a full-grown man with the sincere and trusting optimism of a believing child. His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was devoid of fear. [!!]
196:0.12 The faith of Jesus attained the purity of a child's trust. His faith was so absolute and undoubting that it responded to the charm of the contact of fellow beings and to the wonders of the universe. His sense of dependence on the Divine was so complete and so confident that it yielded the joy and the assurance of absolute personal security. [and perfect peace and more !] There was no hesitating pretense in his religious experience. In this giant intellect of the full-grown man the faith of the child reigned supreme in all matters relating to the religious consciousness. It is not strange that he once said, "Except you become as a little child, you shall not enter the Kingdom." Notwithstanding that Jesus' faith was childlike, it was in no sense childish.
196:0.13 Jesus does not require his disciples to believe in him but rather to believe with him, believe in the Reality of the love of God and in full confidence accept the security of the assurance of sonship with the heavenly Father. The Master desires that all his followers should fully share his transcendent faith. Jesus most touchingly challenged his followers, not only to believe what he believed, but also to believe as he believed. This is the full significance of his one supreme requirement, "Follow me." [I choose to believe and to know God in and with my loving Sovereign Savior Jesus as both my Universe Creator Father and very Elder Brother; and thus I believe also in the Universal Father-Infinite I AM on Paradise ! This Infinite Father of All Reality and our loving, merciful, Sovereign Savior Creator Son Jesus Christ Michael are fully One in Spirit Eternally ! In Jesus, God is fully Present here with us in Spirit !]
196:0.14 Jesus' earthly life was devoted to one great purpose -- doing the Father's will, living the human life religiously and by faith. The faith of Jesus was trusting, like that of a child, but it was wholly free from presumption. He made robust and manly decisions, courageously faced manifold disappointments, resolutely surmounted extraordinary difficulties, and unflinchingly confronted the stern requirements of duty. It required [and still requires today] a strong will and an unfailing confidence to believe what Jesus believed and as he believed.
Topical Study number 147
"TRUTH - The Truth"
Part 15
Compiled Nov. 27, 2023 by Dave@PureChristians.org
196:1. JESUS -- THE MAN [Very Important !]
196:1.1 Jesus' devotion to the Father's will and the service of man was even more than mortal decision and human determination; it was a wholehearted consecration of himself to such an unreserved bestowal of love. No matter how great the fact of the sovereignty of [Jesus Christ] Michael, you must not take the human Jesus away from men. The Master has ascended on high as a [all-perfected Spirit] man, as well as God; he belongs to men; men belong to him. How unfortunate that religion itself should be so misinterpreted as to take the human Jesus away from struggling mortals! Let not the discussions of the humanity or the divinity of the Christ obscure the saving Truth that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God; he was the most truly religious Man who has ever lived on earth.
196:1.2 [a very important paragraph:] The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth must not be longer sacrificed to even the splendid concept of the glorified Christ. What a transcendent service if, through this Revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions I Surely the Christian fellowship of believers will not hesitate to make such adjustments of faith and of practices of living as will enable it to "follow after" the Master in the demonstration of his real life of religious devotion to the doing of his Father's will and of consecration to the unselfish service of man. Do professed Christians fear the exposure of a self-sufficient and unconsecrated fellowship of social respectability and selfish economic maladjustment? Does institutional Christianity fear the possible jeopardy, or even the overthrow, of traditional ecclesiastical authority if the Jesus of Galilee is reinstated in the minds and souls of mortal men as the ideal of personal religious living? Indeed, the social readjustments, the economic transformations, the moral rejuvenations, and the religious revisions of Christian civilization would be drastic and revolutionary if the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the theologic religion aboutThis spiritual Renaissance-Transformation worldwide is coming ! Amen !]
196:1.3 To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it. [So True !!]
196:1.4 The common people heard Jesus gladly, and they will again respond to the presentation of his sincere human life of consecrated religious motivation if such truths shall again be proclaimed to the world. The people heard him gladly because he was one of them, an unpretentious layman; the world's greatest religious teacher was indeed a layman. [!!]
196:1.5 It should not be the aim of Kingdom believers literally to imitate the outward life of Jesus in the flesh but rather to share his faith; to trust God as he trusted God and to believe in men as he believed in men. Jesus never argued about either the Fatherhood of God or the brotherhood of men; he was a living illustration of the one and a profound demonstration of the other. [!!! Yes !]
196:1.6 Just as men must progress from the consciousness of the human to the realization of the Divine, so did Jesus ascend from the nature of man to the consciousness of the nature of God. And the Master made this great ascent from the human to the Divine by the conjoint [united together] achievement of the faith of his mortal intellect and the acts of his indwelling Adjuster. The Fact-Realization of the attainment of totality of Divinity (all the while fully conscious of the Reality of [Spirit-perfected] Humanity) was attended by seven stages of faith consciousness of progressive divinization. These stages of progressive self-realization were marked off by the following extraordinary events in the Master's bestowal experience:
196:1.7 1. The arrival of the Thought Adjuster. [at about age 4.5 years]
196:1.8 2. The messenger of Immanuel who appeared to him at Jerusalem when he was about twelve years old. [April 08, A.D. 7]
196:1.9 3. The manifestations attendant upon his baptism. [Jan 14, A.D. 26]
196:1.10 4. The experiences on the Mount of Transfiguration. [Aug 15, A.D. 29]
196:1.11 5. The morontia [soul-form] resurrection. [April 09, A.D. 30]
196:1.12 6. The spirit ascension. [to the Universal Father on Paradise on May 18, A.D. 30]
196:1.13 7. The final embrace of the Paradise Father, conferring unlimited sovereignty of his universe. [May 18, A.D. 30 - on]
196:2. THE RELIGION OF JESUS
196:2.1 Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. ...
196:2.2 Jesus' life in the flesh portrays a transcendent religious growth from the early ideas of primitive awe and human reverence up through years of personal spiritual communion until he finally arrived at that advanced and exalted status of the consciousness of his oneness with the Father. [See Jesus: See God; They are ONE in Spirit: Jesus is I AM here with us !] And thus, in one short life, did Jesus traverse that experience of religious spiritual progression which man begins on earth and ordinarily achieves only at the conclusion of his long sojourn in the Spirit training schools of the successive levels of the pre-Paradise career. Jesus progressed from a purely human consciousness of the faith certainties of personal religious experience to the sublime spiritual heights of the positive realization of his [Eternal] Divine Nature and to the consciousness of his close association with the Universal Father in the management of a universe. He progressed from the humble status of mortal dependence which prompted him spontaneously to say to the one who called him Good Teacher, "Why do you call me good? None is good but God," to that sublime consciousness of achieved Divinity which led him to exclaim, "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" And this progressing ascent from the human to the Divine was an exclusively mortal achievement. And when he had thus attained Divinity, he was still the same human Jesus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God. [Omnipresent Spirit-form God-Man, not a limited, weak, physical human form !]
196:2.4 But the greatest mistake was made in that, while the human Jesus was recognized as having a religion, the Divine Jesus (Christ) almost overnight became a religion. Paul's Christianity made sure of the adoration of the Divine Christ, [which is true and proper !] but it almost wholly lost sight of the struggling and valiant [Spirit-perfected] Human Jesus of Galilee, who, by the valor of his personal religious faith and the heroism of his indwelling Adjuster, ascended from the lowly levels of humanity to become [very important:] ONE with Divinity, thus becoming the New and Living Way whereby all mortals may so ascend from humanity to Divinity. [!!] Mortals in all stages of spirituality and on all worlds may find in the personal Life of Jesus that which will strengthen and inspire them as they progress from the lowest Spirit levels up to the highest Divine Values, from the beginning to the end of all personal religious experience. [Yes !! Perfect peace and eternal joy ! Amen !]
196:2.7 You would be neither shocked nor disturbed by some of Jesus' strong pronouncements if you would only remember that he was the world's most wholehearted and devoted Religionist. He was a wholly consecrated mortal, unreservedly dedicated to doing his Father's will. Many of his apparently hard sayings were more of a personal confession of faith and a pledge of devotion than commands to his followers. And it was this very singleness of purpose and unselfish devotion that enabled him to effect such extraordinary progress in the conquest of the human mind in one short life. Many of his declarations should be considered as a confession of what he demanded of himself rather than what he required of all his followers. In his devotion to the cause of the Kingdom, Jesus burned all bridges behind him; he sacrificed all hindrances to the doing of his Father's will.
196:2.9 Jesus led men to feel at home in the world; he delivered them from the slavery of taboo and taught them that the world was not fundamentally evil. He did not long to escape from his earthly life; he mastered a technique of acceptably doing the Father's will while in the flesh. He attained an idealistic religious life in the very midst of a realistic world. Jesus did not share Paul's pessimistic view of humankind. The Master looked upon men as the sons of God and foresaw a magnificent and eternal future for those who chose survival. He was not a moral skeptic; he viewed man positively, not negatively. He saw most men as weak rather than wicked, more distraught than depraved. But no matter what their status, they were all [ALL !] God's children and his brethren. [Amen ! What a beautiful Savior we have in Jesus who really understands each and all of us, and who desires to transform each human son of God to attain Eternal Life in our loving Father and in His Light ! !]
196:2.10 He taught men to place a high value upon themselves in time and in Eternity. Because of this high estimate which Jesus placed upon men, he was willing to spend himself in the unremitting service of humankind. And it was this Infinite worth of the finite [!!!] that made the golden rule a vital factor in his religion. What mortal can fail to be uplifted by the extraordinary faith Jesus has in him? [Tremendous !!! The higher "golden rule" up-stepped by Jesus is to try to love and serve all humans as you believe that Jesus would do ! Fatherly love is much higher and more real than just human brotherly love !]
196:2.11 Jesus offered no rules for social advancement; his was a religious mission, and religion is an exclusively individual experience. The ultimate goal of society's most advanced achievement can never hope to transcend Jesus' brotherhood of men based on the recognition of the Fatherhood of God. The ideal of all social attainment can be realized only in the coming of this divine Kingdom.
196:3. THE SUPREMACY OF RELIGION
196:3.1 Personal, spiritual religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter, evaluator, and adjuster of all human problems. Religion does not remove or destroy human troubles, but it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and transcend them. True religion unifies the personality for effective adjustment to all mortal requirements. Religious faith -- the positive leading of the indwelling Divine Presence -- unfailingly enables the God-knowing man to bridge that gulf existing between the intellectual logic which recognizes the Universal First Cause as It and those positive affirmations of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heavenly Father of Jesus' gospel, the personal God of human salvation.
196:3.3 [Deep and important:] The progressive comprehension of Reality is the equivalent of approaching God. The finding of God, the consciousness of identity with Reality, is the equivalent of the experiencing of self-completion -- self-entirety, self-totality. The experiencing of Total Reality is the full realization of God, the Finality of the God- knowing experience. [Profound Reality !]
196:3.4 The full summation of human life is the knowledge that man is educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved -- justified -- by religious faith.
196:3.5 Physical certainty consists in the logic of science; moral certainty, in the wisdom of philosophy; spiritual Certainty, in the truth of genuine religious experience. [just as and just where you are at all times and all places !]
196:3.6 The mind of man can attain high levels of spiritual insight and corresponding spheres of divinity of values because it is not wholly material. There is a Spirit Nucleus in the mind of man -- the Adjuster of the Divine Presence. There are three separate evidences of this Spirit indwelling of the human mind:
196:3.7 #1. Humanitarian fellowship -- love. The purely animal mind may be gregarious for self-protection, but only the Spirit-indwelt intellect is unselfishly altruistic and unconditionally loving.
196:3.8 #2. Interpretation of the universe -- wisdom. Only the Spirit-indwelt mind can comprehend that the universe is friendly to the individual. [Definitely Spirit and Cosmic Mind friendly, even if not always physically friendly as finitely perceived by mortals in this initial life on earth.]
196:3.9 #3. Spiritual evaluation of life -- worship. Only the Spirit-indwelt man can realize the Divine Presence and seek to attain a fuller experience in and with this foretaste of Divinity. [Yes, most worthwhile and satisfying ...]
196:3.10 The human mind does not create real values; human experience does not yield universe insight. Concerning insight, the recognition of moral values and the discernment of spiritual meanings, all that the human mind can do is to discover, recognize, interpret, and choose.
196:3.15 Thus it appears that all human progress is effected by a technique of conjoint revelational evolution.
196:3.16 Unless a divine lover lived in man, he could not unselfishly and spiritually love. Unless an interpreter lived in the mind, man could not truly realize the unity of the universe. Unless an evaluator dwelt with man, he could not possibly appraise moral values and recognize spiritual meanings. And this lover hails from the very source of infinite love; this interpreter is a part of Universal Unity; this evaluator is the child of the Center and Source of all Absolute Values of Divine and Eternal Reality. [We have the Thought Adjuster, Jesus the Father-Son Spirit of Truth and the Holy Spirit of the Infinite Spirit ! Three in Two as One to ever love, guide and serve us in Combined Divine Ministry !]
196:3.17 Moral evaluation with a religious meaning -- spiritual insight -- connotes the individual's choice between good and evil, truth and error, material and spiritual, human and divine, time and eternity. Human survival is in great measure dependent on consecrating the human will to the choosing of those values selected by this Spirit-value sorter -- the indwelling interpreter and unifier. Personal religious experience consists in two phases: discovery in the human mind and Revelation by the indwelling Divine Spirit. Through oversophistication or as a result of the irreligious conduct of professed religionists, a man, or even a generation of men, may elect to suspend their efforts to discover the God who indwells them; they may fail to progress in and attain the Divine Revelation. But such attitudes of spiritual nonprogression cannot long persist because of the presence and influence of the indwelling Thought Adjusters.[our Father's perfect love and eternal guidance for us !]
196:3.19 The Hebrews had a religion of moral sublimity; the Greeks evolved a religion of beauty; Paul and his conferees founded a religion of faith, hope, and charity. Jesus revealed and exemplified a religion of love: security in the Father's love, with joy and satisfaction consequent upon sharing this love in the service of the human brotherhood.
196:3.21 The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective Reality that is associated with [and within] mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man's contact with the highest objective Reality, God, is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with him.
196:3.22 True religious worship is not a futile monologue of self-deception. Worship is a personal Communion with that which is divinely Real, with that which is the very Source of Reality. Man aspires by worship to be better and thereby eventually attains the best.
196:3.23 The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience -- spiritual Reality. Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious Reality. The projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods -- gods in man's image -- but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling Spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery. [!!]
196:3.24 God is not the mere invention of man's idealism; he is the very source of all such superanimal insights and values. God is not a hypothesis formulated to unify the human concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness; he is the personality of love from whom all of these universe manifestations are derived. The truth, beauty, and goodness of man's world are unified by the increasing spirituality of the experience of mortals ascending toward Paradise Realities. The unity of truth, beauty, and goodness can only be realized in the spiritual experience of the God-knowing personality.
196:3.25 Morality is the essential pre-existent soil of personal God-consciousness, the personal realization of the Adjuster's inner Presence, but such morality is not the source of religious experience and the resultant spiritual insight. The moral nature is superanimal but subspiritual. Morality is equivalent to the recognition of duty, the realization of the existence of right and wrong. The moral zone intervenes between the animal and the human types of mind as morontia [soul-level reality] functions between the material and the spiritual spheres of personality attainment.
196:3.26 The evolutionary mind is able to discover law, morals, and ethics; but the bestowed Spirit, the indwelling Adjuster, reveals to the evolving human mind the lawgiver, the Father-source of all that is true, beautiful, and good; and such an illuminated man has a religion and is spiritually equipped to begin the long and adventurous search for God.
196:3.27 Morality is not necessarily spiritual; it may be wholly and purely human, albeit real religion enhances all moral values, makes them more meaningful. Morality without religion fails to reveal ultimate goodness, and it also fails to provide for the survival of even its own moral values. Religion provides for the enhancement, glorification, and assured survival of everything morality recognizes and approves.
196:3.32 Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.
[The following sentence is so very important; I will put it in big size and centered:]
196:3.33
Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress,
and the revelation of GOD to the world,
in and through JESUS,
shall not fail.
[Amen ! My Brothers and Sisters in Jesus; do you now realize that you may help in serving our loving Father and Son in Spirit in helping to realize the perfecting Family of God on earth ! Pray about this. Thank you. You may also email me.]
196:3.34 The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of Spirit-consciousness -- contact with the Divine Presence. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such Spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.
196:3.35 And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual Reality. Only the Spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in service. And all these things are a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his [Paradise Coordinate Creator] Sons. [Our Creator Father-Son Jesus Christ Michael] And the Spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons -- mortal men. [Yes, we are Jesusonians: sons of God in Jesus !] When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God.
---END of the Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth: "The Urantia Book" in the public domain to allow worldwide sharing.---
The next Topical Study 147 Parts 16 - on will cover more Truth paragraphs in The Foreword and in Papers 1 through 193. Part 16 be posted here Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023 at 8:00 PM CST
Topical Study number 147
"TRUTH - The Truth"
Part 16
Compiled Nov. 29, 2023 by Dave@PureChristians.org
FOREWARD
0:Introduction
[Numbers are Paper:Section:Paragraph (Page.Paragraph)]
0:0:1 (1.1) Because of this conceptual poverty associated with so much ideational confusion, I have been directed to formulate this introductory statement in explanation of the meanings which should be attached to certain word symbols as they may be hereinafter used in those papers which the Orvonton [our Superuniverse] corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate into the English language of Urantia. [shortened long ago to Urth, now spelled Earth, our planet.]
0:0:2 (1.2) It is exceedingly difficult to present enlarged concepts and advanced truth, in our endeavor to expand cosmic consciousness and enhance spiritual perception, when we are restricted to the use of a circumscribed language of the realm.
I. Deity and Divinity
0:1:17 (3.4) Divinity is creature comprehensible as truth, beauty, and goodness; correlated in personality as love, mercy, and ministry; disclosed on impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty.
XI. The Three Absolutes
0:11.7 (14.5) #2. The Unqualified Absolute is nonpersonal, extradivine, and undeified. The Unqualified Absolute is therefore devoid of personality, divinity, and all creator prerogatives. Neither fact nor truth, experience nor revelation, philosophy nor absonity are able to penetrate the nature and character of this Absolute without universe qualification.
0:11.8 (14.6) Let it be made clear that the Unqualified Absolute is a positive reality pervading the grand universe and, apparently, extending with equal space presence on out into the force activities and prematerial evolutions of the staggering stretches of the space regions beyond the seven superuniverses. The Unqualified Absolute is not a mere negativism of philosophic concept predicated on the assumptions of metaphysical sophistries concerning the universality, dominance, and primacy of the unconditioned and the unqualified. The Unqualified Absolute is a positive universe overcontrol in infinity; this overcontrol is space-force unlimited but is definitely conditioned by the presence of life, mind, spirit, and personality, and is further conditioned by the will-reactions and purposeful mandates of the Paradise Trinity.
XII. The Trinities
0:12.4 (16.1) Trinities are truths of relationship and facts of co-ordinate Deity manifestation. Trinity functions encompass Deity realities, and Deity realities always seek realization and manifestation in personalization. God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and even God the Absolute are therefore divine inevitabilities. These three experiential Deities were potential in the existential Trinity, the Paradise Trinity, but their universe emergence as personalities of power is dependent in part on their own experiential functioning in the universes of power and personality and in part on the experiential achievements of the post-Havona Creators and Trinities.
Acknowledgment
0:12:11 (16.8) In formulating the succeeding presentations having to do with the portrayal of the character of the Universal Father and the nature of his Paradise associates, together with an attempted description of the perfect central universe and the encircling seven superuniverses, we are to be guided by the mandate of the superuniverse rulers which directs that we shall, in all our efforts to reveal truth and co-ordinate essential knowledge, give preference to the highest existing human concepts pertaining to the subjects to be presented.
0:12:12 (17.1) Successive planetary revelations of divine truth invariably embrace the highest existing concepts of spiritual values as a part of the new and enhanced co-ordination of planetary knowledge. ... Wherein these human concepts, assembled from the God-knowing mortals of the past and the present, are inadequate to portray the truth as we are directed to reveal it, we will unhesitatingly supplement them, for this purpose drawing upon our own superior knowledge of the reality and divinity of the Paradise Deities and their transcendent residential universe.
0:12:13 (17.2) But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, [your Thought Adjuster -- the perfect will of God ever guiding you toward eternal perfection -- Godlikeness] and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of truth; [of God and Jesus Christ as One Spirit union] and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all Truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing Reality of personal religious experience—God-consciousness.
0:12:14 (17.3) [Indited by an Orvonton [our Superuniverse] Divine Counselor, Chief of the Corps of Superuniverse Personalities assigned to portray on Urantia [shortened long ago to Urth, then to Earth] the truth concerning the Paradise Deities and the universe of universes.]
Paper 1 - The Universal Father
0. Introduction
1:0:1 (21.1) The Universal Father is the God of all creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. First think of God as a creator, then as a controller, and lastly as an infinite upholder. The truth about the Universal Father had begun to dawn upon mankind when the prophet said: “You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them. By the Sons of God [our Sovereign Creator Son of God Jesus Christ Michael. Michael is a high title, meaning: HE Who IS Just Like GOD.] were the universes made. [Our local Universe is named Nebadon.] The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment and stretches out the heavens as a curtain.” Only the concept of the Universal Father—one God in the place of many gods—enabled mortal man to comprehend the Father as divine creator and infinite controller.
2. The Reality of God
1:2:1 (23.4) God is primal reality in the spirit world; God is the source of truth in the mind spheres; God overshadows all throughout the material realms. To all created intelligences God is a personality, and to the universe of universes he is the First Source and Center of eternal reality. God is neither manlike nor machinelike. The First Father is universal spirit, eternal truth, infinite reality, and father personality.
3. God is a Universal Spirit
1:3:8 (26.2) I [ a high Paradise Divine Counselor] come forth from the Eternal, and I have repeatedly returned to the presence of the Universal Father. I know of the actuality and personality of the First Source and Center, the Eternal and Universal Father. I know that, while the great God is absolute, eternal, and infinite, he is also good, divine, and gracious. I know the truth of the great declarations: “God is spirit” and “God is love,” and these two attributes are most completely revealed to the universe in the Eternal Son.
4. The Mystery of God
1:4:4 (26.6) We are constantly confronted with this mystery of God; we are nonplused by the increasing unfolding of the endless panorama of the truth of his infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character.
1:4:5 (26.7) The divine mystery consists in the inherent difference which exists between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the time-space creature and the Universal Creator, the material and the spiritual, the imperfection of man and the perfection of Paradise Deity. The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every one of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature’s capacity to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty, and goodness.
5. Personality of the Universal Father
1:5:4 (28.1) Even though material mortals cannot see the person of God, they should rejoice in the assurance that he is a person; by faith accept the truth which portrays that the Universal Father so loved the world as to provide for the eternal spiritual progression of its lowly inhabitants; that he “delights in his children.” God is lacking in none of those superhuman and divine attributes which constitute a perfect, eternal, loving, and infinite Creator personality.
1:5:10 (28.7) The idea of the personality of the Universal Father is an enlarged and truer concept of God which has come to mankind chiefly through revelation. Reason, wisdom, and religious experience all infer and imply the personality of God, but they do not altogether validate it. Even the indwelling Thought Adjuster [God's eternal, perfect will guiding you to achieve eternal Paradise Deity perfection !] is prepersonal. [to alllow you to continually accept or reject God's will !] 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.
7. Spiritual Value of the Personality Concept
1:7:3 (31.3) The concept of truth might possibly be entertained apart from personality, the concept of beauty may exist without personality, but the concept of divine goodness is understandable only in relation to personality. Only a person can love and be loved.Even beauty and truth would be divorced from survival hope if they were not attributes of a personal God, a loving Father.
1:7.4 (31.4) 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.
1:7:8 (31.8) The fact of the Paradise Trinity in no manner violates the truth of the divine unity. The three personalities of Paradise Deity are, in all universe reality reactions and in all creature relations, as one. Neither does the existence of these three eternal persons violate the truth of the indivisibility of Deity. I am fully aware that I have at my command no language adequate to make clear to the mortal mind how these universe problems appear to us. But you should not become discouraged; not all of these things are wholly clear to even the high personalities belonging to my group of Paradise beings. Ever bear in mind that these profound truths pertaining to Deity will increasingly clarify as your minds become progressively spiritualized during the successive epochs of the long mortal ascent to Paradise. [Possibly one trillion years to become perfect and an Eternal Paradise Resident in a Corps of The Finality. Then the eternal quest to explore and function in God and His Cosmos-Infinite-Eternal.]
1:7.9 (32.1) [Presented by a Divine Counselor, a member of a group of celestial personalities assigned by the Ancients of Days on Uversa, [our Superuniverse Headquarters] the headquarters of the seventh superuniverse, to supervise those portions of this forthcoming revelation which have to do with affairs beyond the borders of the local universe of Nebadon. I am commissioned to sponsor those papers portraying the nature and attributes of God because I represent the highest source of information available for such a purpose on any inhabited world. I have served as a Divine Counselor in all seven of the superuniverses and have long resided at the Paradise center of all things. Many times have I enjoyed the supreme pleasure of a sojourn in the immediate personal presence of the Universal Father. I portray the reality and truth of the Father’s nature and attributes with unchallengeable authority; I know whereof I speak.]
Paper 2 - The Nature of God
0: Introduction
2:0:3 (33.3) In all our efforts to enlarge and spiritualize the human concept of God, we are tremendously handicapped by the limited capacity of the mortal mind. We are also seriously handicapped in the execution of our assignment by the limitations of language and by the poverty of material which can be utilized for purposes of illustration or comparison in our efforts to portray divine values and to present spiritual meanings to the finite, mortal mind of man. All our efforts to enlarge the human concept of God would be well-nigh futile except for the fact that the mortal mind is indwelt by the bestowed Adjuster of the Universal Father and is pervaded by the Truth Spirit of the Creator Son. Depending, therefore, on the presence of these divine spirits within the heart of man for assistance in the enlargement of the concept of God, I cheerfully undertake the execution of my mandate to attempt the further portrayal of the nature of God to the mind of man.
1. The Infinity of God
2:1.10 (35.3) Because the First Father is infinite in his plans and eternal in his purposes, it is inherently impossible for any finite being ever to grasp or comprehend these divine plans and purposes in their fullness. Mortal man can glimpse the Father’s purposes only now and then, here and there, as they are revealed in relation to the outworking of the plan of creature ascension on its successive levels of universe progression. Though man cannot encompass the significance of infinity, the infinite Father does most certainly fully comprehend and lovingly embrace all the finity of all his children in all universes.
2:1.11 (35.4) Divinity and eternity the Father shares with large numbers of the higher Paradise beings, but we question whether infinity and consequent universal primacy is fully shared with any save his co-ordinate associates of the Paradise Trinity. Infinity of personality must, perforce, embrace all finitude of personality; hence the truth—literal truth—of the teaching which declares that “In Him we live and move and have our being.” That fragment of the pure Deity of the Universal Father which indwells mortal man is a part of the infinity of the First Great Source and Center, the Father of Fathers.
5. The Love of God
2:5:2 (39.1) It is wrong to think of God as being coaxed into loving his children because of the sacrifices of his Sons or the intercession of his subordinate creatures, “for the Father himself loves you.” It is in response to this paternal affection that God sends the marvelous Adjusters to indwell the minds of men. God’s love is universal; “whosoever will may come.” He would “have all men be saved by coming into the knowledge of the truth.” He is “not willing that any should perish.”
6. The Goodness of God
2:6:1 (40.5) In the physical universe we may see the divine beauty, in the intellectual world we may discern eternal truth, but the goodness of God is found only in the spiritual world of personal religious experience. In its true essence, religion is a faith-trust in the goodness of God. God could be great and absolute, somehow even intelligent and personal, in philosophy, but in religion God must also be moral; he must be good. Man might fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a good God. This goodness of God is a part of the personality of God, and its full revelation appears only in the personal religious experience of the believing sons of God.[The best way to approach the true nature of God is to study and learn the life and the teachings of our God-Man Creator and Savior Jesus Christ Michael. That is explained beautifully in this 2097 page Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth: The Urantia Book, public domain to alllow worldwide sharing, translations, and teaching by many ways.]
2:6.2 (40.6) Religion implies that the superworld of spirit nature is cognizant of, and responsive to, the fundamental needs of the human world. Evolutionary religion may become ethical, but only revealed religion becomes truly and spiritually moral. The olden concept that God is a Deity dominated by kingly morality was upstepped by Jesus to that affectionately touching level of intimate family morality of the parent-child relationship, than which there is none more tender and beautiful in mortal experience.
2:6.3 (41.1) [Some Bible quotes:] The “richness of the goodness of God leads erring man to repentance.” “Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.” “God is good; he is the eternal refuge of the souls of men.” “The Lord God is merciful and gracious. He is long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.” “Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts him.” “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. He is the God of salvation.” “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up the wounds of the soul. He is man’s all-powerful benefactor.”
2:6.4 (41.2) The concept of God as a king-judge, although it fostered a high moral standard and created a law-respecting people as a group, left the individual believer in a sad position of insecurity respecting his status in time and in eternity. The later Hebrew prophets proclaimed God to be a Father to Israel; Jesus revealed God as the Father of each human being. The entire mortal concept of God is transcendently illuminated by the life of Jesus. Selflessness is inherent in parental love. God loves not like a father, but as a father. He is the Paradise Father of every universe personality.
2:6:5 (41.3) Righteousness implies that God is the source of the moral law of the universe. Truth exhibits God as a revealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves affection, seeks understanding fellowship such as exists between parent and child. Righteousness may be the divine thought, but love is a father’s attitude. The erroneous supposition that the righteousness of God was irreconcilable with the selfless love of the heavenly Father, presupposed absence of unity in the nature of Deity and led directly to the elaboration of the [ungodly, barbaric, false] atonement doctrine, which is a philosophic assault upon both the unity and the free-willness of God.
2:6.6 (41.4) The affectionate heavenly Father, whose spirit indwells his children on earth, is not a divided personality—one of justice and one of mercy—neither does it require a mediator to secure the Father’s favor or forgiveness. Divine righteousness is not dominated by strict retributive justice; God as a father transcends God as a judge.
7. Divine Truth and Beauty
2:7:1 (42.2) All finite knowledge and creature understanding are relative. Information and intelligence, gleaned from even high sources, is only relatively complete, locally accurate, and personally true.
2:7:2 (42.3) Physical facts are fairly uniform, but truth is a living and flexible factor in the philosophy of the universe. Evolving personalities are only partially wise and relatively true in their communications. They can be certain only as far as their personal experience extends. That which apparently may be wholly true in one place may be only relatively true in another segment of creation.
2:7:3 (42.4) Divine truth, final truth, is uniform and universal, but the story of things spiritual, as it is told by numerous individuals hailing from various spheres, may sometimes vary in details owing to this relativity in the completeness of knowledge and in the repleteness of personal experience as well as in the length and extent of that experience. While the laws and decrees, the thoughts and attitudes, of the First Great Source and Center are eternally, infinitely, and universally true; at the same time, their application to, and adjustment for, every universe, system, world, and created intelligence, are in accordance with the plans and technique of the [700,000] Creator Sons [each Sovereign over up to ten million human-inhabited planets, depending on the age of that local universe.] as they function in their respective universes, as well as in harmony with the local plans and procedures of the Infinite Spirit and of all other associated celestial personalities.
2:7:4 (42.5) The false science of materialism would sentence mortal man to become an outcast in the universe. Such partial knowledge is potentially evil; it is knowledge composed of both good and evil. Truth is beautiful because it is both replete and symmetrical. When man searches for truth, he pursues the divinely real.
2:7:5 (42.6) Philosophers commit their gravest error when they are misled into the fallacy of abstraction, the practice of focusing the attention upon one aspect of reality and then of pronouncing such an isolated aspect to be the whole truth. The wise philosopher will always look for the creative design which is behind, and pre-existent to, all universe phenomena. The creator thought invariably precedes creative action.
2:7:6 (42.7) Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only by the philosophic consistency of its concepts, but more certainly and surely by the unerring response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth. [The One Combined Spirit of God the Universal Father and our Sovereign [Nebadon local Universe] Creator Son of God Jesus Christ.] Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth because it can be acted out; it can be lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon error because, not being a reality, it cannot be realized in experience. Divine truth is best known by its spiritual flavor.
2:7.7 (42.8) The eternal quest is for unification, for divine coherence. The far-flung physical universe coheres in the Isle of Paradise; the intellectual universe coheres in the God of mind, the Conjoint Actor; the spiritual universe is coherent in the personality of the Eternal Son. But the isolated mortal of time and space coheres in God the Father through the direct relationship between the indwelling Thought Adjuster and the Universal Father. Man’s Adjuster is a fragment of God and everlastingly seeks for divine unification; it coheres with, and in, the Paradise Deity of the First Source and Center.
2:7:8 (43.1) The discernment of supreme beauty is the discovery and integration of reality: The discernment of the divine goodness in the eternal truth, that is ultimate beauty. Even the charm of human art consists in the harmony of its unity.
2:7:9 (43.2) The great mistake of the Hebrew religion was its failure to associate the goodness of God with the factual truths of science and the appealing beauty of art. As civilization progressed, and since religion continued to pursue the same unwise course of overemphasizing the goodness of God to the relative exclusion of truth and neglect of beauty, there developed an increasing tendency for certain types of men to turn away from the abstract and dissociated concept of isolated goodness. The overstressed and isolated morality of modern religion, which fails to hold the devotion and loyalty of many twentieth-century men, would rehabilitate itself if, in addition to its moral mandates, it would give equal consideration to the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience, and to the beauties of the physical creation, the charm of intellectual art, and the grandeur of genuine character achievement.
2:7:10 (43.3) The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul. Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly co-ordinated and unified in God, who is love.
2:7.11 (43.4) All truth—material, philosophic, or spiritual—is both beautiful and good. All real beauty—material art or spiritual symmetry—is both true and good. All genuine goodness—whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry—is equally true and beautiful. Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems.
2:7.12 (43.5) Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing. And when these values of that which is real are co-ordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. The real purpose of all universe education is to effect the better co-ordination of the isolated child of the worlds with the larger realities of his expanding experience. Reality is finite on the [beginning Supreme space-time] human level, infinite and eternal on the higher and divine [Ultimate, Absolute and Infinite] evels.
