38 posts · 8 participants · started Nov 23, 2017, 9:42 PM
I don’t know if you know it or not, but I was part of a cult too. I joined because my husband was a member. It didn’t work out for me because I had enormous faith which quickly revealed all the falsity (and sickness) that was going on there. So I’m kinda like an expert too.
Hi,
It took seven years until everyone made the final choice.
Seven years to listen to the arguments of both sides.
… from the outbreak till enthronement sovereing ruler of Christ/Michael. 53:5.3
Throughout the seven crucial years of the Caligastia rebellion,Van was wholly devoted to the work of ministry to his loyal army of men, midwayers, and angels 67:3.6
Yes we may be born with faith, we might be born into an inherited religion on which we have no say; but we were also born with autonomy.
Hi Leon,
I see you started a thread on this in the new reader forum. I’m not sure if you expected me to respond or not, but I should tell you that I promised the readers of this forum never to post there. Apparently I tend to scare new readers away. So, don’t think I’m ignoring you. Others will answer I’m sure. And thanks for asking a really good question.
Hi Bonita
I was looking for a variety of answers from various people, I used the search the UB function and found a reference to it but no specific condoning or condemnation edict. But mention was made of races going extinct in regards to primitive peoples, so I didnt get a definite moral judgment one way or another. But your quote got my attention because of Singer (who is also OK with bestiality) which also made me think – Is it possible that ‘bad guys’ have examined all sorts of religious/metaphysical/occult writings and have sought to hijack certain teachings or prophecies and create them in their image?
People will fight and die for or against abortion, just like they will fight and die for or against a world government.
We can see fanaticism in suicide bombers, the islamic wahhabi teaching is you get 72 virgins. Also your family gets a free pass to heaven, but the never mentioned part is if you die just as an ordinary muslim you will be conscious in the grave until Judgment Day. So you have the carrot and stick motivation but wouldnt you have a concrete belief? And if so wouldnt you need faith to enact on it?
My email - [email protected]
Some of you know my testimony. For those who don’t, I’ll give a short version. This also might add to the discussion.
I was raised ultra conservative Christian. After discovering and reading the UB, I was challenged. I read it the first time strictly for intertainment. After reading it my feeling was something like “how dare this book challenge my beliefs!” I was still deeply intreagued though. Before I dug into the, as I saw it, different religion, deeper, I decided to read the Bible. I picked a chronological bible plan that put the events of the bible in a timeline order and started reading.
The result of this reading was that by the time I got through reading the bible I was no longer Christian. If it hadn’t been for the ub I’d have lost my faith/belief in God.
Like most people who claim a religion, I hadn’t read the religious texts that my faith was based on. My incounter with the ub forced me to do that. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I had not had the preparation of the ub before reading the Bible. As it stands though, I wholly embrace The Urantia Book and all that it represents. I reject the core of Christianity and the bible though. Sharing my new faith is proving difficult with those who have a conservative world view as I live in the Bible belt.
I have found the best thing for me is to keep my faith in the ub private. I still go to church though for the spiritual fellowship. I do not share my belief in the ub with anyone who does not share it. I wear a necklace with the ub symbol on it and tell people different things about it depending on the person. When I do share my interest in the book I am circumspect there as well. Again, I tell the person different things about the book depending on the person in question. A stock answer might be that I have been investigating a book called The Urantia Book for many years and I think that so and so might be interested as well. That isn’t a lie. I’ll spend the rest of my life reading, studying, and investigating the book. I don’t tell them that the book is the source document from wich I draw my faith.
. . . so I didnt get a definite moral judgment one way or another . . .
And you won’t either. Moral judgments are for humans to make. Morality is superanimal, but subspiritual. Morality evolves along with the culture. We humans must work out our own moral dilemmas. God cannot do that for us but he does attempt to illuminate higher meanings and values as a divinity goal. Those higher values are supernal guidelines discernible within the soul (which is where the Adjuster, or God lives). Morality is the human stepping stone in that direction. Humans must decide to step, or not step, in that direction. Here are a few quotes to get you started:
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 functions between the material and the spiritual spheres of personality attainment.
16:7.8 Man’s moral nature would be impotent without the art of measurement, the discrimination embodied in his ability to scrutinize meanings. Likewise would moral choosing be futile without that cosmic insight which yields the consciousness of spiritual values. From the standpoint of intelligence, man ascends to the level of a moral being because he is endowed with personality.
16:7.9 Morality can never be advanced by law or by force. It is a personal and freewill matter and must be disseminated by the contagion of the contact of morally fragrant persons with those who are less morally responsive, but who are also in some measure desirous of doing the Father’s will.
16:7.10 Moral acts are those human performances which are characterized by the highest intelligence, directed by selective discrimination in the choice of superior ends as well as in the selection of moral means to attain these ends. Such conduct is virtuous. Supreme virtue, then, is wholeheartedly to choose to do the will of the Father in heaven.
I have found the best thing for me is to keep my faith in the ub private.
Do you have faith in TUB, or in God? They’re not the same thing, as I’m sure you know. I think you trust the words in TUB to be truthful, but that is not faith. Just being a little picky about words for the benefit of newbies since we tend to confuse the meaning of the words “faith” and “belief” as outlined in TUB.
101:8.1 The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief. Neither is certainty nor conviction faith.
Point taken bonnita. Let me rephrase…
While it is true that I believe that words of the ub are true and that it claims to be what it says it is, it took me a while to arrive at this conclusion.
At the time of this conclusion, I had two choices… Try to reconcile the bible with common sense, or accept the ub.
My debate with myself went like this. Read the bible in a chronological order with no outside helps. I could study and use commentaries later, but for now, I need an overview of the bible, what happened when and why such and such happened. I’m interested in this Urantia religion, but I need to know about my own first.
While reading the bible at various points… Wait a minute. That is an open contradiction… That doesn’t make sence… Why would God do so and so… Can I believe in a god that apparently condones so and so… Can I believe in a god who has a moral code lower than my own… You get the idea.
On the other hand… Can I believe in a book that sounds like it came from aliens… (remember, I’m trying to let you in on my thought processes) Can I believe in a book that has questionable passages dealing with science… races… A religion that, for all intents and purposes I’d have to be a solitary practishoner of? Remember, at this time virtually everyone I associated with was a Christion/bible believer.
In the end, it came down to relationship. The UB made me “feel” the relationship with Jesus in a way that the gospels never did. Same goes for God. The Bible, to my mind, portrayed a god that quite frankly, I would loathe to worship. While it did have its’ good points, they were overshadowed by the bad ones. As for relationship, it comes through loud and clear in various places throughout the ub. You have to actively hunt for it in the bible.
I hear what you’re saying chucksmith. I never trusted the Bible ever, except the part that says Jesus loved the little children. I always loved anything that had to do with Jesus. It was a love affair that started very early in my life. But the Bible was hooey to me. In fact, I got thrown out of a Presbyterian kindergarten because of that attitude. The teachers just couldn’t abide me having my own personal relationship with God. They said that was hooey and it meant I was just plain selfish. Go figure! My mother was so embarrassed!
So yeah, when I finally got around to reading the truth about things like the Garden of Eden, Noah, Lucifer, and the Land of Nod . . . well heck . . . TUB became a no-brainer. The Bible is merely a record of man’s religious evolution. It’s a good thing to have though. I think we’ll be using some of that stuff on the mansion worlds for reversion therapy (laughing at ourselves). How many wrong ideas about God can man dream up?
Apart from the Psalms, I dont actually read the Bible for the most part.
My email - [email protected]
Did you know that King Tut’s father wrote 12 of those psalms?
(1048.1) 95:5.7 Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator of Aton and supreme Father of all. This young teacher-king was a prolific writer, being author of the exposition entitled “The One God,” a book of thirty-one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship.
Did you know that King Tut’s father wrote 12 of those psalms?
(1048.1) 95:5.7 Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator of Aton and supreme Father of all. This young teacher-king was a prolific writer, being author of the exposition entitled “The One God,” a book of thirty-one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship.
I had no idea
My email - [email protected]
Did you know that King Tut’s father wrote 12 of those psalms?
Not to nitpick Bonita, Tut was his son-in-law.
(95.5:10) The son-in-law of Ikhnaton went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing his name to Tutankhamen.
Not to split hairs but would you consider the retelling of destroyed history a revelation?
. . . would you consider the retelling of destroyed history a revelation?
I question your premise that history was *destroyed*. Epochal revelation fills in so many, many gaps of history and knowledge not known before. It puts it all together in one place. The material is coherent throughtout the revelation where I have yet to find a contradiction in it. If anyone finds a contradiction in the material, I’d like to know. 
No one person who lived with Jesus had access to the overall incarnation story of his life and his teaching. But the midwayers were there and they mention the sources of their info. People who study the genesis and evolution of planet earth and the universe analyize and systhesize info. after the fact. They were not there when it happened. But experts were there when it happened and this bit itself is a revelation! What the revelators want to do is to de-confuse us about our origin, history and destiny.
First paragraph of the Foreward:
0:0.1 IN THE MINDS of the mortals of Urantia — that being the name of your world — there exists great confusion respecting the meaning of such terms as God, divinity, and deity. Human beings are still more confused and uncertain about the relationships of the divine personalities designated by these numerous appellations. 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 corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate into the English language of Urantia.
. . . would you consider the retelling of destroyed history a revelation?
I question your premise that history was *destroyed*. Epochal revelation fills in so many, many gaps of history and knowledge not known before. It puts it all together in one place. The material is coherent throughtout the revelation where I have yet to find a contradiction in it. If anyone finds a contradiction in the material, I’d like to know.
0:0.1 IN THE MINDS of the mortals of Urantia — that being the name of your world — there exists great confusion respecting the meaning of such terms as God, divinity, and deity. Human beings are still more confused and uncertain about the relationships of the divine personalities designated by these numerous appellations. 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 corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate into the English language of Urantia.good point Mara
Not to nitpick Bonita, Tut was his son-in-law.
Thanks Enno. I said “father” because that’s the understanding most of the world has at this time. Leon did not read TUB and would not understand who I was talking about otherwise. Aren’t we supposed to modulate what we teach to the level of the learner? (181:2.21)
As to vanished history, I think revelation is supposed to restore lost knowledge surrounding previous epochal revelations (101:4.8). Ikhnaton based his new religion on teachings from Salem missionaries which were part of the third epochal revelation.
(1047.1) 95:5.1 The teachings of Amenemope were slowly losing their hold on the Egyptian mind when, through the influence of an Egyptian Salemite physician, a woman of the royal family espoused the Melchizedek teachings. This woman prevailed upon her son, Ikhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt, to accept these doctrines of One God.
(1047.2) 95:5.2 Since the disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to that time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion of Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of the most remarkable persons in human history. During this time of increasing spiritual depression in Mesopotamia, he kept alive the doctrine of El Elyon, the One God, in Egypt, thus maintaining the philosophic monotheistic channel which was vital to the religious background of the then future bestowal of Michael. And it was in recognition of this exploit, among other reasons, that the child Jesus was taken to Egypt, where some of the spiritual successors of Ikhnaton saw him and to some extent understood certain phases of his divine mission to Urantia.
