What is salvation?

28 posts · 3 participants · started Sep 11, 2023, 9:33 PM

1. J

   jerrydixonParticipant
   Dec 31, 2025, 2:23 AM

   I answer many questions on the Quora website and most questions are about salvation and going to heaven or hell.  I tell them that Jesus was trying to provide us with salvation, not salvation from hell, but salvation from having a horrible life here on Earth.  If people followed Jesus teachings, there would be so much more love shown in this world.  People on Quora are repeating what they were taught at Christian churches, that all you have to do for salvation from hell is to believe in him that he is the son of God.  They say Jesus died for their sins, but do not really know what that means, and I do not know either.  I tell them that Jesus’ death did nothing for us, because people always had salvation, going back to since Adam and Eve’s time.  Also they ask if their sins are going to send them to hell.  I tell them that the only hell, if you can call it that, is a second death, a permanent death of one’s soul, no punishment, just non-existence, and that is a decision they make after death, if they choose to not live in heaven.  I do this question answering for no benefit to myself other than a good feeling that I am helping people. But rarely does it turn into a conversation, so I can only hope that they are being helped by my writings.

   I am beholden to show mercy; I must go to the rescue of the assaulted lad. 133.1 Mercy and Justice.

2. B

   BradlyParticipant
   Dec 31, 2025, 5:00 AM

   Bread upon the water is but sowing seeds of hope and eternity perspective along the byways of the Pilgrims Path to Paradise.  To share the fruits of the Spirit is what the Children of Light and Life do, one with another.  The sowing is ours, the Harvest is Another’s.

   May Love find its Way…home.

   "Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."

3. J

   jerrydixonParticipant
   Mar 11, 2026, 2:53 AM

   When I see people talking about salvation, my initial thought is salvation from what?  Churches do teach about salvation from hell.  But we Urantians and followers of some Christian denominations and other faiths know that there is no hell.  Therefore, salvation from hell is not needed, and essentially is not a thing.  We learned from the UB that when people die, they sleep for some time then get resurrected.  We then are informed about the mansion worlds, and we make a choice whether we want to go in to live there, or have our souls permanently ended. No hell of punishment, just into an unconscience nothingness.  And the important thing is that decision is made after death, not in the here and now.

   I am beholden to show mercy; I must go to the rescue of the assaulted lad. 133.1 Mercy and Justice.

4. B

   BradlyParticipant
   Mar 13, 2026, 4:27 PM

   Salvation:

   https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/search?keys=Salvation

    

   5:4.5 (67.3)All religions teach the worship of Deity and some doctrine of human salvation. The Buddhist religion promises salvation from suffering, unending peace; the Jewish religion promises salvation from difficulties, prosperity predicated on righteousness; the Greek religion promised salvation from disharmony, ugliness, by the realization of beauty; Christianity promises salvation from sin, sanctity; Mohammedanism provides deliverance from the rigorous moral standards of Judaism and Christianity. The religion of Jesus is salvation from self, deliverance from the evils of creature isolation in time and in eternity.  

   89:10.1 (984.4)Ancient man only attained consciousness of favor with God through sacrifice. Modern man must develop new techniques of achieving the self-consciousness of salvation. The consciousness of sin persists in the mortal mind, but the thought patterns of salvation therefrom have become outworn and antiquated. The reality of the spiritual need persists, but intellectual progress has destroyed the olden ways of securing peace and consolation for mind and soul.

    

   Me here:  I believe “self-consciousness of salvation” includes spiritual assurance.

   https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/search?keys=Assurance+

    

   "Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."

5. B

   BradlyParticipant
   Mar 13, 2026, 5:36 PM

   101:6.8 (1112.4)The teachings of Jesus constituted the first Urantian religion which so fully embraced a harmonious co-ordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquillity, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival. The faith of Jesus pointed the way to finality of human salvation, to the ultimate of mortal universe attainment, since it provided for:

   101:6.9 (1112.5)1. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with God, who is spirit.

   101:6.10 (1112.6)2. Salvation from intellectual bondage: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.

   101:6.11 (1112.7)3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings and the morontian awareness of the brotherhood of all universe creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values.

   101:6.12 (1113.1)4. Salvation from incompleteness of self through the attainment of the spirit levels of the universe and through the eventual realization of the harmony of Havona and the perfection of Paradise.

   101:6.13 (1113.2)5. Salvation from self, deliverance from the limitations of self-consciousness through the attainment of the cosmic levels of the Supreme Mind and by co-ordination with the attainments of all other self-conscious beings.

   101:6.14 (1113.3)6. Salvation from time, the achievement of an eternal life of unending progression in God-recognition and God-service.

   101:6.15 (1113.4)7. Salvation from the finite, the perfected oneness with Deity in and through the Supreme by which the creature attempts the transcendental discovery of the Ultimate on the postfinaliter levels of the absonite.

   101:6.16 (1113.5)Such a sevenfold salvation is the equivalent of the completeness and perfection of the realization of the ultimate experience of the Universal Father. And all this, in potential, is contained within the reality of the faith of the human experience of religion. And it can be so contained since the faith of Jesus was nourished by, and was revelatory of, even realities beyond the ultimate; the faith of Jesus approached the status of a universe absolute in so far as such is possible of manifestation in the evolving cosmos of time and space.

   "Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."

6. B

   BradlyParticipant
   Mar 15, 2026, 12:54 PM

   jerrydixon wrote:

   We learned from the UB that when people die, they sleep for some time then get resurrected.  We then are informed about the mansion worlds, and we make a choice whether we want to go in to live there, or have our souls permanently ended.

   Me here:  This is not correct so far as the UB teaches.  All who survive material death will awaken from the slumber of the sleeping survivor on the Mansion Worlds.  All survival choices are made there but not immediately so upon arrival or anytime soon thereafter either.  Eternity must be rejected consciously, knowingly, and certainly with sufficient information, time, experience, and opportunity to make such a deliberate freewill choice of self destruction and identity erasure.

   This is not easy.  Lucifer and Satan have failed so far, as of the printing of the Urantia Papers.  Consider the time and opportunities and information they have compared to the tadpoles of time!  And still is mercy patiently extended.  Potential is not squandered in God’s friendly universe.   It is nurtured and respected and protected.

   Personally, I do agree with the notion that it is nearly impossible for a tadpole with a soul to consciously choose self annihilation in the brief material life.  Perhaps sociopaths and psychopaths who have zero empathy?  I don’t know.

   But I have always been struck by the Jesusonian teaching in both the Bible and the Urantia Papers that we receive love AND mercy as we give those to others.  It is not any restriction on how those are given, but how (if?) those are received.

   30:4.11 (341.1)2. Sleeping Survivors. All mortals of survival status, in the custody of personal guardians of destiny, pass through the portals of natural death and, on the third period, personalize on the mansion worlds. Those accredited beings who have, for any reason, been unable to attain that level of intelligence mastery and endowment of spirituality which would entitle them to personal guardians, cannot thus immediately and directly go to the mansion worlds. Such surviving souls must rest in unconscious sleep until the judgment day of a new epoch, a new dispensation, the coming of a Son of God to call the rolls of the age and adjudicate the realm, and this is the general practice throughout all Nebadon. It was said of Christ Michael that, when he ascended on high at the conclusion of his work on earth, “He led a great multitude of captives.” And these captives were the sleeping survivors from the days of Adam to the day of the Master’s resurrection on Urantia.

   30:4.12 (341.2)The passing of time is of no moment to sleeping mortals; they are wholly unconscious and oblivious to the length of their rest. On reassembly of personality at the end of an age, those who have slept five thousand years will react no differently than those who have rested five days. Aside from this time delay these survivors pass on through the ascension regime identically with those who avoid the longer or shorter sleep of death.

   30:4.13 (341.3)These dispensational classes of world pilgrims are utilized for group morontia activities in the work of the local universes. There is a great advantage in the mobilization of such enormous groups; they are thus kept together for long periods of effective service.

   "Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."

7. M

   MaraParticipant
   Mar 15, 2026, 4:02 PM

   Bradly wrote:

   But I have always been struck by the Jesusonian teaching in both the Bible and the Urantia Papers that we receive love AND mercy as we give those to others.  It is not any restriction on how those are given, but how (if?) those are received.

    

   Perhaps so.

    

   131:10.3 [Part IV]

   “The divine riches of God’s character must be infinitely deep and eternally wise. We cannot search out God by knowledge, but we can know him in our hearts by personal experience. While his justice may be past finding out, his mercy may be received by the humblest being on earth. While the Father fills the universe, he also lives in our hearts. The mind of man is human, mortal, but the spirit of man is divine, immortal. God is not only all-powerful but also all-wise. If our earth parents, being of evil tendency, know how to love their children and bestow good gifts on them, how much more must the good Father in heaven know how wisely to love his children on earth and to bestow suitable blessings upon them.

   The blessings of love and mercy are ever present. It’s up to the individual to discover God’s  love and mercy in personal experience. It kind of reminds me of this:

   167:5.1 [Part IV]

   On the way to Judea Jesus was followed by a company of almost fifty of his friends and enemies. At their noon lunchtime, on Wednesday, he talked to his apostles and this group of followers on the “Terms of Salvation,” and at the end of this lesson told the parable of the Pharisee and the publican (a tax collector). Said Jesus: “You see, then, that the Father gives salvation to the children of men, and this salvation is a free gift to all who have the faith to receive sonship in the divine family. There is nothing man can do to earn this salvation. Works of self-righteousness cannot buy the favor of God, and much praying in public will not atone for lack of living faith in the heart. Men you may deceive by your outward service, but God looks into your souls. What I am telling you is well illustrated by two men who went into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself:’O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men, extortioners, unlearned, unjust, adulterers, or even like this publican. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven but smote his breast, saying,’God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you that the publican went home with God’s approval rather than the Pharisee, for every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”

8. B

   BradlyParticipant
   Mar 15, 2026, 5:14 PM

   Yes it is complicated.  And fascinating!

   Mercy is always extended.  It is not always received.   Why not?  There is no personal capacity or response to the Deity Connections.(?)

   At Jotapata:

   146:2.4 (1638.4)3. By opening the human end of the channel of the God-man communication, mortals make immediately available the ever-flowing stream of divine ministry to the creatures of the worlds. When man hears God’s spirit speak within the human heart, inherent in such an experience is the fact that God simultaneously hears that man’s prayer. Even the forgiveness of sin operates in this same unerring fashion. The Father in heaven has forgiven you even before you have thought to ask him, but such forgiveness is not available in your personal religious experience until such a time as you forgive your fellow men. God’s forgiveness in fact is not conditioned upon your forgiving your fellows, but in experience it is exactly so conditioned. And this fact of the synchrony of divine and human forgiveness was thus recognized and linked together in the prayer which Jesus taught the apostles.

   146:2.5 (1638.5)4. There is a basic law of justice in the universe which mercy is powerless to circumvent. The unselfish glories of Paradise are not possible of reception by a thoroughly selfish creature of the realms of time and space. Even the infinite love of God cannot force the salvation of eternal survival upon any mortal creature who does not choose to survive. Mercy has great latitude of bestowal, but, after all, there are mandates of justice which even love combined with mercy cannot effectively abrogate. Again Jesus quoted from the Hebrew scriptures: “I have called and you refused to hear; I stretched out my hand, but no man regarded. You have set at naught all my counsel, and you have rejected my reproof, and because of this rebellious attitude it becomes inevitable that you shall call upon me and fail to receive an answer. Having rejected the way of life, you may seek me diligently in your times of suffering, but you will not find me.”

   146:2.6 (1639.1)5. They who would receive mercy must show mercy; judge not that you be not judged. With the spirit with which you judge others you also shall be judged. Mercy does not wholly abrogate universe fairness. In the end it will prove true: “Whoso stops his ears to the cry of the poor, he also shall some day cry for help, and no one will hear him.” The sincerity of any prayer is the assurance of its being heard; the spiritual wisdom and universe consistency of any petition is the determiner of the time, manner, and degree of the answer. A wise father does not literally answer the foolish prayers of his ignorant and inexperienced children, albeit the children may derive much pleasure and real soul satisfaction from the making of such absurd petitions.

   "Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."

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