Evolving Our Souls With Celestial Wisdom
The Urantia teaching purports to be just what we need on our very confused planet: a blend of updated spirituality, inspired wisdom, superior philosophy, hidden history, and sophisticated cosmology—a celestial answer to hundreds of unanswered human questions about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. It claims to be a sacred text that is commensurate with the needs of the post-modern world, steeped as we now are in rapidly advancing science and an explosion of new knowledge. The main evidence for such bold and broad assertions is, for me, derived from my own experience. This text has boosted my spiritual experience consistently for 37 years. Also, my own expertise as a professional editor leads me to conclude that its literary quality is something “out of this world.” I have personally edited or published over fifty books, many of which have won national prizes, and I have never read anything that rises to this standard of linguistic excellence.
Beyond these indications, many of The Urantia Book’s revelations about evolution, biology, physics, genetics, geology, history, and anthropology have now been corroborated, filling in crucial gaps in knowledge. (A website called UBtheNews.com explores the evidence for its prophetic accuracy in these fields, which is beyond the scope of this article.) And perhaps above all, for me, The UB’s thrilling and original depiction of Jesus is evidence that it is revelatory, or at least essential reading.
By all accounts, the book’s core spiritual message and most powerful narrative is contained in its 774-page Part IV, “The Life and Teachings of Jesus.” Oddly, this part of the Urantia Revelation has been met with very little notice by the Christian religious establishment, even though it contains such an eye-opening challenge to contemporary Christianity. This detailed biography, purportedly written by angelic beings based on their own records of Jesus’ life, provides a story of such depth and beauty that I personally believe it exceeds the New Testament in religious significance—even though I also treasure the Bible’s four gospel narratives.
In this new narrative we are introduced to a Jesus for the twenty-first century. Readers will be able to replace their image of the mythic Jesus of the Bible—who sacrificed his life for our sins—with the postmodern Jesus who teaches a gospel of loving service, self-respect, soul evolution, artistic living, and self-mastery in the context of planetary and cosmic citizenship.
