Revelation is evolutionary but always progressive. Down through the ages of a world's history, the revelations of religion are ever expanding and successively more enlightening. It is the mission of revelation to sort and censor the successive religions of evolution. But if revelation is to exalt and upstep the religions of evolution, then must such divine visitations portray teachings that are not too far removed from the thought and reactions of the age in which they are presented. Thus must and does revelation always keep in touch with evolution. Always is the religion of revelation limited by man's capacity of receptivity.
But regardless of apparent connection or derivation, the religions of revelation are always characterized by a belief in some Deity of final value and in some concept of the survival of personality identity after death.
Evolutionary religion is sentimental, not logical. It is man's reaction to belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit world -- the human belief-reflex, excited by the realization and fear of the unknown. Revelatory religion is propounded by the real spiritual world; it is the response of the super-intellectual cosmos to the mortal hunger to believe in and depend upon the universal Deities. Evolutionary religion pictures the circuitous groping of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory religion is that very truth.
There have been many events of religious revelation but only five of epochal significance. These were as follows:
The true concept of the First Source and Center was first promulgated on Earth by the one hundred corporeal members of Prince Caligastia's staff. This expanding revelation of Deity went on for more than three hundred thousand years until it was suddenly terminated by the planetary secession and the disruption of the teaching regime. Except for the work of Van, the influence of the Dalamatian revelation was practically lost to the whole world. Even the Nodites had forgotten this truth by the time of Adam's arrival. Of all who received the teachings of the one hundred, the red men held them longest, but the idea of the Great Spirit was but a hazy concept in Amerindian religion when contact with Christianity greatly clarified and strengthened it.
Adam and Eve again portrayed the concept of the Father of all to the evolutionary peoples. The disruption of the first Eden halted the course of the Adamic revelation before it had ever fully started. But the Sethite priests carried on the aborted teachings of Adam, and some of these truths have never been entirely lost to the world. The entire trend of Levantine religious evolution was modified by the teachings of the Sethites. But by 2500 B.C. mankind had largely lost sight of the revelation sponsored in the days of Eden.
This emergency Son of Nebadon inaugurated the third revelation of truth on Earth. The cardinal precepts of his teachings were trust and faith. He taught trust in the omnipotent beneficence of God and proclaimed that faith was the act by which men earned God's favor. His teachings gradually commingled with the beliefs and practices of various evolutionary religions and finally developed into those theologic systems present on Earth at the opening of the first millennium after Christ.
Christ Michael presented for the fourth time to Earth the concept of God as the Universal Father, and this teaching has generally persisted ever since. The essence of his teaching was love and service, the loving worship that a creature son voluntarily gives in recognition of and response to the loving ministry of God his Father; the freewill service that such creature sons bestow upon their brethren in the joyous realization that in this service they are likewise serving God the Father.
The Urantia Papers constitute the most recent presentation of truth to the mortals of Earth. These papers differ from all previous revelations, for they are not the work of a single universe personality but a composite presentation by many beings. But no revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Earth when it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at the risk of weakening the future influence and authority of the most recent of the revelations of truth to the mortal races of Earth.
--Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon, from the Urantia Papers.
The problems associated with human existence on earth are impossible of understanding without a knowledge of certain great epochs of the past, notably the occurrence and consequences of the rebellion.
When Adam elected to leave the first garden to the Nodites unopposed, the only way open was to the east, and so they journeyed eastward toward the then pleasant regions between the Tigris and Euphrate
Earth has never had more enthusiastic and aggressive missionaries of any religion than these noble men and women who carried the teachings of Melchizedek over the entire Eastern Hemisphere.
The Salem religion persisted among the Kenites in Palestine as their creed, and this religion as it was later adopted by the Hebrews was influenced by...
The Melchizedek teachings entered Europe along many routes, but chiefly they came by way of Egypt and were embodied in Occidental philosophy after being thoroughly Hellenized and later Christianized.
Chief of the Evening Stars of Nebadon, I am assigned to Earth by Gabriel on the mission of revealing the story of the seven bestowals of the Universe Sovereign, Michael of Nebadon.
...this was the setting of the momentous occasion when Immanuel presented the seventh bestowal commission to the universe ruler who subsequently became Jesus of Nazareth (Christ Michael) on Earth...
I am authorized to place on record the narrative of the life transactions of Michael's bestowal as Jesus of Nazareth as they were observed by my order...
During the Alexandrian sojourn of Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid, the young man spent much of his time and no small sum of his father's money making a collection of the teachings of the world's religions...
Since Gonod carried greetings from the princes of India to Tiberius, the Roman ruler, on the third day after their arrival in Rome the two Indians and Jesus appeared before him.
After preaching the sermon on “The Kingdom,” Jesus called the six apostles together that afternoon and began to disclose his plans for visiting the cities around and about the Sea of Galilee.
Just before noon on Sunday, January 12, A.D. 27, Jesus called the apostles together for their ordination as public preachers of the gospel of the kingdom.
THE first public preaching tour of Galilee began on Sunday, January 18, A.D. 28, and continued for about two months, ending with the return to Capernaum on March 17.
JESUS and the apostles arrived in Capernaum on Wednesday, March 17, and spent two weeks at the Bethsaida headquarters before they departed for Jerusalem.
On Tuesday, January 18, the twenty-four were joined by the tested evangelists, about seventy-five in number, at the Zebedee house in Bethsaida preparatory to being sent forth on the third preaching...
THE story of the cure of Amos, the Kheresa lunatic, had already reached Bethsaida and Capernaum, so that a great crowd was waiting for Jesus when his boat landed that Tuesday forenoon.
It was from among such a group of depressed and disconsolate followers that Jesus went forth on this beautiful Sabbath afternoon to preach his epoch-making sermon in the Capernaum synagogue.
BEFORE Jesus took the twelve for a short sojourn in the vicinity of Caesarea-Philippi, he arranged through the messengers of David to go over to Capernaum on Sunday, August 7, for the purpose of...
As the camp at Pella was being established, Jesus, taking with him Nathaniel and Thomas, secretly went up to Jerusalem to attend the feast of the dedication.
About seven o’clock on this Tuesday morning Jesus met the apostles, the women’s corps, and some two dozen other prominent disciples at the home of Simon.
This Foreword is not, therefore, a finished statement within itself; it is only a definitive guide designed to assist those who shall read the accompanying papers dealing with Deity and the universe..
The Universal Father has an eternal purpose pertaining to the material, intellectual, and spiritual phenomena of the universe of universes, which he is executing throughout all time.
Man does not have to go farther than his own inner experience of the soul's contemplation of this spiritual-reality presence to find God and attempt communion with him.
The Infinite Spirit pervades all space; he indwells the circle of eternity; and the Spirit, like the Father and the Son, is perfect and changeless -- absolute.
Excepting the Trinity Teacher Sons and possibly the Inspired Trinity Spirits, these groups are of definite numbers; their creation is a finished and past event.
Of all the universe personalities concerned in the regulation of interplanetary and interuniverse affairs, the power directors and their associates have been the least understood on Urantia.
The personalities and other-than-personal entities now functioning on Paradise and in the grand universe constitute a well-nigh limitless number of living beings.
While the Universal Father most certainly rules over his vast creation, he functions in a local universe administration through the person of the Creator Son.
AS FAR as we are cognizant, the Infinite Spirit, as personalized on the local universe headquarters, intends to produce uniformly perfect seraphim, but for some unknown reason...
