Proclamation Document

April 7, 1996

 

A PROCLAMATION TO THE WORLD

 

Consider for a moment the possibility that God (Allah, Jehovah, Dios, ...) sent a message to the world welcoming us all into a universe already populated with myriad orders of beings, providing us with news that begins to set the history of the world straight, presenting us with enhanced spiritual insight to improve our growth in the spiritual cosmos, and that nobody listened. There are many who believe just such an occurrence has transpired. We have chosen this time to reissue God's invitation to us all -- the time for Earth's people to realize an enhanced and expanded vision of the past, present, and the future. "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...." The above quote comes to us from an obscure book that was published in 1955, The Urantia Book, a book which until now has never been formally proclaimed to the world but has instead been nearly completely veiled from public attention. This book, which proclaims itself to be the fifth in a series of epochal revelations of religious truth that began before history on our troubled world is recorded, is intended for all people, all religions, all nationalities. It is with this announcement that we proclaim The Urantia Book accessible and waiting for seekers of the world.

 

Many have dismissed the spiritual reality of creation because the religions that speak of God lack the ring of truth for which they seek. They reject religion altogether and proclaim a world that logic alone can define. The Urantia Book integrates science, religion, philosophy, and history to the delight of logical thinkers.

 

Many religions already proclaim that they are the only true light to the world. While not a religion, The Urantia Book enhances and augments the insights of world religions to the transformation of religionists of every denomination and sect.

 

Brothers and sisters, God reaches out to you. Delight in this gift to the world. The Urantia Book is currently available in English, Spanish, French, and Finnish.

 

"THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND"

 

THE URANTIA BOOK: AN ENLARGED VISION OF SPIRITUAL REALITY

 

The Challenge of a Spiritual Renaissance

 

We are living in one of the great pivotal periods of history. Society has undergone more change in the last one hundred years than the world has experienced in the last two thousand. We are unlocking the secrets of the microcosmos and beginning to explore outer space. During this century we have evolved a new physics, a new astronomy, a new psychology, and the beginning of a new philosophic age.

 

Our planetary life is changing so fast that contemporary society is experiencing future shock. There is a sense of alienation from our traditional cultural values. The great religious systems of the past no longer command the total commitment of humanity or fulfill their ultimate needs. We are passing through a collective psychological and spiritual reorientation equivalent in magnitude to the emergence of Christianity from the ruins of the Greco-Roman civilization.

 

A form of searching underlies the erosion of institutional values in our day. The deterioration of the credibility of traditional social, economic, political, and moral values among perceptive youth is building a hunger for a new spiritual vision. The growing lack of relevance elicited by ancient frames of reference, which have their roots in pre-scientific thought and culture, has triggered an explosion of cults and psycho-mystical movements.

 

A NEW VISION OF REALITY

 

We would like to invite your attention to The Urantia Book ("Urantia" is the name of our planet) which we believe is destined to play a key role in this new spiritual age: "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." (p. 2083) The Urantia Book was authored and presented by celestial personalities and given to our world through a method which is not wholly understood. It integrates science, philosophy, and religion more effectively than any source with which we are acquainted. Urantia Book insights enhance and reinforce the basic truths and highest concepts in all of the world's religions.

 

These Urantia Papers have been in celestial planning and preparation for over 500 years. Although The Urantia Book was published in 1955, it has never been formally announced. Largely through one person telling another, the book has sold over 250,000 copies and is presently available in French, Spanish, and Finnish editions. It is with great joy and expectation that we now bring this divinely inspired book to the attention of the general public.

 

SOME URANTIA BOOK INSIGHTS

 

The 2097 pages of The Urantia Book abound with insights and a masterful presentation of universe Reality. It is difficult to know how to share this wealth of truth, beauty, and goodness. The book is divided into four sections:

 

* I. The Central and Superuniverses,

 

* II. The Local Universe,

 

* III. The History of Urantia, and

 

* IV. The Life and Teachings of Jesus.

 

The Foreword of The Urantia Book begins, "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." (p.1)

 

"One of the greatest sources of confusion on Urantia concerning the nature of God grows out of the failure of your sacred books clearly to distinguish between the personalities of the Paradise Trinity and between Paradise Deity and the local universe creators and administrators. During the past dispensations of partial understanding, your priests and prophets failed clearly to differentiate between Planetary Princes, System Sovereigns, Constellation Fathers, Creator Sons, Superuniverse Rulers, the Supreme Being, and the Universal Father. Many of the messages of subordinate personalities, such as Life Carriers and various orders of angels, have been, in your records, presented as coming from God himself. Urantian religious thought still confuses the associate personalities of Deity with the Universal Father himself, so that all are included under one appellation."

 

"The people of Urantia continue to suffer from the influence of primitive concepts of God. The gods who go on a rampage in the storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger; who inflict their judgments of displeasure in times of famine and flood--these are the gods of primitive religion; they are not the Gods who live and rule the universes."

 

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

 

"The bestowal of a Paradise Son on your world was inherent in the situation of closing a planetary age; it was inescapable, and it was not made necessary for the purpose of winning the favor of God. This bestowal also happened to be the final personal act of a Creator Son in the long adventure of earning the experiential sovereignty of his universe. What a travesty upon the infinite character of God! this teaching that his fatherly heart in all its austere coldness and hardness was so untouched by the misfortunes and sorrows of his creatures that his tender mercies were not forthcoming until he saw his blameless Son bleeding and dying upon the cross of Calvary!"

 

"But the inhabitants of Urantia are to find deliverance from these ancient errors and pagan superstitions respecting the nature of the Universal Father. The revelation of the truth about God is appearing, and the human race is destined to know the Universal Father in all that beauty of character and loveliness of attributes so magnificently portrayed by the Creator Son who sojourned on Urantia as the Son of Man and the Son of God." (p. 60)

 

THE URANTIA BOOK TEACHES

 

"Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences." (p. 1127)

 

"Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the mode of living....Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing. Belief fixates, faith liberates. But living religious faith is more than the association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy; it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. Theologic beliefs can be suggested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the individual religionist." (p. 1114) This presentation of epochal revelation to humanity is destined to bring unity to all religions without demanding uniformity. In the fellowship of the Kingdom of God there shall be neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim nor Buddhist nor rich nor poor, free nor bond, man nor woman. We are all God's children. We are the family of God and we all stand before our Creator--our loving Universal Father, as spiritual equals. Our Heavenly Parent is no respecter of the status of mortals. He treats us all as individuals with the same infinite love. "There is not a Urantia religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths contained in every other faith, for all contain truth. Religions would do better to borrow the best in their neighbors' living spiritual faith rather than to denounce the worst in their lingering superstitions and outworn rituals." (p. 1012)

 

"All Urantia is waiting for the proclamation of the ennobling message of Michael [Jesus], unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin. The hour is striking for presenting to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Hinduism, even to the peoples of all faiths, not the gospel about Jesus, but the living, spiritual reality of the gospel of Jesus." (p. 1041)

 

"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." (p. 2084)

 

"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." (p. 2090)

 

Jesus said, "That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize and daily experience, this ennobling truth. My bestowal should help all men to know that they are the children of God, but such knowledge will not suffice if they fail personally to faith-grasp the saving truth that they are the living spirit sons of the eternal Father. The gospel of the kingdom is concerned with the love of the Father and the service of his children on earth." (p. 2052-53)

 

"The world needs more firsthand religion. 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." (p. 2083)

 

"The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor [Spirit] 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." (p. 2097)

 

"The advances of true civilization are all born in this inner world of mankind. It is only the inner life that is truly creative. Civilization can hardly progress when the majority of the youth of any generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pursuits of the sensory or outer world."

 

"The inner and the outer worlds have a different set of values. Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world. Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology."

 

"Only in the higher levels of the superconscious mind as it impinges upon the spirit realm of human experience can you find those higher concepts in association with effective master patterns which will contribute to the building of a better and more enduring civilization. Personality is inherently creative, but it thus functions only in the inner life of the individual.

 

"Snow crystals are always hexagonal in form, but no two are ever alike. Children conform to types, but no two are exactly alike, even in the case of twins. Personality follows types but is always unique.

 

"Happiness and joy take origin in the inner life. You cannot experience real joy all by yourself. A solitary life is fatal to happiness. Even families and nations will enjoy life more if they share it with others.

 

"You cannot completely control the external world--environment. It is the creativity of the inner world that is most subject to your direction because there your personality is so largely liberated from the fetters of the laws of antecedent causation. There is associated with personality a limited sovereignty of will." (p. 1220)

 

ON THE THRESHOLD OF A SPIRITUAL RENAISSANCE

 

Our planet is experiencing a major transitional period in human history. We desperately need enlarged spiritual foundations to give stability and guidance to the new era struggling to be born. We believe The Urantia Book has the greatest potential for serving in this capacity of any philosophical-religious resource now available to mankind. It is a unique source of enlightening spiritual truth.

 

The Urantia Book has the most exciting and hopeful message of the twentieth century! We invite you to discover this wonderful book for yourself.