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Is The Urantia Book the Third Testament? · Urantia Radio

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Well, I hope that Spotify will allow me to play this just once.
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I I like to dig of it. It kind of reminds me of it,
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like punk sort of new wave stuff back in the 70s.
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Rancho Radio Podcast.
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Yeah, it's me, Jim Watkins. I hope you had a great week, and
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I hope you were able to celebrate Michael's birthday on
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the 21st, as we all did. I think I did a podcast where we
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got to talk a little bit about that.
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And the numbers keep growing on numbers of listeners.
0:40
And I'm really thrilled because frankly, we are, I think,
0:44
starting to head into a different period of humanity and
0:49
it seems to be more and more evident.
0:50
I, I could have decided that maybe the COVID # pandemic was a
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bit of a one off, you know, one of those periodic exclamation
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points on the pages of human history and that it could go
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away. But it's actually created its
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own new set of problems. One it is, it has struck a
1:12
dagger into the global community.
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It have you ever like as an example, like if you
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accidentally step on an anthill and everything goes scattering,
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all the ants just scatter, right?
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And that's what sort of happened with the pandemic and, and the
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way the different countries were exercising their, their ability
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to govern. But it's also sort of spawned
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its own animal. And that is the, that these
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large corporations are really start starting to put an
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emphasis on controlling the narrative.
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And you know, these stockbrokers from these major companies, they
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never want to admit when they make mistakes, just like
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government officials don't want to admit when they make
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mistakes. But my goodness, if you look
2:03
around at all the, the, the stuff that's going on in big
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cities, particularly with homelessness, and particularly
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with the way that people in, in these cities are, are turning
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into zombies before our eyes. It's strange.
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And it's unsettling really. And I want to explore a couple
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of things this time. I don't think we're going to
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read from any particular paper except for this.
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I, I want to, I lifted this clip and it's from page.
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Is it paper 190? It's the one-on-one O 7 or one
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of those on the social problems of religion.
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And I've read that section probably a dozen times in my
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life and, and every time I read from it, it's great.
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But it has some pointers as to why religion, in particular
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Christianity is, is challenged right now.
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It's challenged on a couple of different fronts. 1 is that you
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have a great population and governments that absolutely
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despise religion for a whole host of reasons.
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Some of it is just reaction through the Enlightenment and
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the age of so-called reason. And we've talked about science
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and how science is asserting itself as the final arbiter of
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truth and how it's become quite dogmatic.
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In fact, I make the argument in my pot on my book, which you can
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buy on Amazon if you go to my web page, which is your
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rancherradio.net and you can see it.
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It's called godlessness, how secularism is destroying
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civilization or society. And it's a quick read.
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It's maybe 60 pages, but it goes into depth about what's happened
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and a lot of it. If you're a Urantia book reader,
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you would really appreciate it because much of the motivation
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to writing that short book is based on paper 195 of the
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Urantia book and, and that period that we're going through
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in this post Christian era. And you can attach all kinds of
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things to it. You know, you know, it's hard
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not to get lost in the morass because there are a lot of
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Christians right now who, and I interview a lot of them and they
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talk about these for the end times.
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And what's happening in Israel is, is you know, they somebody
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told me go to Ezekiel 33 and to 38 and I did.
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And it talks about how Israel is being surrounded on all sides
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and how its destruction seems eminent.
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And Ezekiel is given this, this great vision of, of what's to
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come. But again, like a lot of things,
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especially Revelation, there are so many symbols and metaphors.
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It's really hard to extrapolate anything concrete.
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I mean, everything is up for interpretation.
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You can open up Revelation, Revelations and read all of it.
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And it's some of it seems like, Oh my God, that's happening
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right now. Oh, yeah, this is it.
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But then it's not concrete. At least the Urantia book
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provides a little bit of clarity.
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And it doesn't say that the Second Coming is right around
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the corner. It doesn't say that Jerusalem is
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going to come down. It doesn't.
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It may tends to lend itself to the idea that at any day
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Melchizedek could come or Jesus could come, or Adam and Eve may
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one day return. It's speculative, but I don't I,
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I think we're far, far away from that.
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The problems that we have today are problems that we kind of
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have to work out for, for ourselves.
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And this is what this particular section on that social problems
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of religion, I think it's paper one O 9, but let me read it to
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you and then we can discuss. Man's greatest spiritual
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jeopardy consists in partial progress, the predicament of
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unfinished growth, forsaking the evolutionary religions of fear
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without immediately grasping the revelatory religion of love.
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Modern science, particularly psychology, has weakened only
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those religions which are so largely dependent upon fear,
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superstition, and emotion. OK, so let's take a look at
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that. So the first section, the man's
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greatest spiritual jeopardy, consists in partial progress.
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What do they mean? OK, so when the Enlightenment
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period came, it suddenly released mankind from the chains
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of a very dogmatic religious institution, mainly the
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Christian or Catholic Church. They had control over everything
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that was going on. They controlled the kings
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because they did it mostly through fear.
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And these, these priests were very powerful and they were very
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frightening and they could cancel you in their own way by
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sending your ass off to purgatory, you know, or even
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worse, not being able to receive grace or salvation.
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This was what gave the church its power.
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So when science came along and started poking holes and
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explaining through the experimental method and
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scientific method why certain things happened, well, it
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started to eliminate the superstition and the fear that
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gave religion its strength. And that's the Enlightenment.
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And it even talks about how secularism in Paper 195 again,
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was a way of freeing man from the dogmatic control of
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religion. Now, what's happened today is
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that we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
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And I think that's what they mean, is that while we've been
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forsaking the evolutionary religions of time, the ones that
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are based on fear, the danger is the predicament of unfinished
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growth. So we've thrown out the religion
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of fear, but we have not captured the revelatory religion
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of love, which is that this is a grand universe.
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God is a real person, as Jesus tried to illustrate in his
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teachings and in his life, and that we we haven't grasped on to
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that next, you know, like when you're swinging through the
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jungle and you have a vine, We haven't grabbed on to that next
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forward evolutionary vine, that vine being the religion of love
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that would inspire us to treat each other like brothers.
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And in the Oranget book says, and so does the Bible, that
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there's you can't have brotherhood without fatherhood.
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All right. So it goes on to say the
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transition is always accompanied by confusion.
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And there will be a little, there'll be little tranquility
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in the religious world until the great struggle between the three
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contending philosophies of religion is ended.
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OK, so right now at play are three different ideologies.
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What are they? And they, they spell it out
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right here #1 the spiritistic belief in a providential deity
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of many religions and includes the many different factions of
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the Christian Church and the Catholic Church and all kinds of
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religions that all have a providential deity, Islam.
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OK, so now that that's the chief spiritual ideology providential
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the the variations of the same, but that they all have in common
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a providential deity #2 is an ideology that's now taking
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control, which is the humanistic and idealistic belief of many
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philosophies. And I would, I would term these
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like new age religions sort of fall into this group beliefs in,
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in, in alien life forms or some sort of, you know, we're not
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alone and we're going, we're, you know, and that's kind of
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similar to the Urantia book because the Urantia book very
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clearly states that we are for as a, for example, we're where
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your ranch is six O 6, which means in our system, there are
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605 worlds that evolved before we got here, out there somewhere
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in our local region of space. And we just haven't come in come
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into contact with them. But they're on an evolutionary
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path just as we are. They just might be further along
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than we are. All right.
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So that kind of falls into the humanistic or the idealistic
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belief of many philosophies. Gaia is another philosophy that
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is sort of dominated the New Age area.
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And then there's, of course, you know, you have to give it some
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nod that the whole transgender LGBTQ movement is its own sort
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of humanistic religion, and everything is around the
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centeredness of the human identity.
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Identity now is being fetishized, and it's become a
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religion of its own. And then, of course, there's the
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third, which is the mechanistic and naturalistic conceptions of
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many sciences. So therein lies the secularistic
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viewpoint, which is this is a mechanical universe.
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There was a Big Bang, and we're all here sort of on accident.
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There's no great purpose to it other than the fact of what we
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get out of it. And that's sort of the natural
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Law Group and the scientist, the nihilistic scientist.
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OK, so those are three ideologies that are all at
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battle with each other. They're fighting each other
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right now for dominance and in a in a country like China, they
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have adopted the third, the mechanistic and naturalistic
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conceptions, which is that the governments can do.
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It's governments are their job is to be the God of society to
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keep control. It's a very humanistic belief
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because it it erases any notion of there being an afterlife or
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anything like that. So these three sort of
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ideologies are are fighting each other.
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This is what the Urantia book says about this.
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And these three partial approaches to the reality of the
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cosmos must eventually become harmonized by the revelatory
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presentation of religion, philosophy, and cosmology, one
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that will portray the triune existence of spirit, mind, and
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energy proceeding from the Trinity of Paradise.
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Now, what does the Urantia Book teach?
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The Urantia Book teaches that religion is not concerned with
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science. Religion and science are not
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really at odds. Religion's only concern is the
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scientist, the enduring permeability of the human soul
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which has eternal ascension potential.
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Science can't prove why we would translate into a spirit form,
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but spirit drives mind. Mind is to spirit what
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materialism is to mind. Mind is a non material energy
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form. We don't know what makes mind
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work. I'll give you a fun example is
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this. I've got a dog and a cat, and
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often times they'll sit in the living room and they'll look at
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each other, but they don't even communicate.
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And I think that they're barely even recognizing the fact that
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the other exists. So their minds are not connected
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at all. But ours, our you're hearing my
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voice. I'm translating my thoughts into
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a language that you understand, and you're able to interpret
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that same language and it becomes your thoughts.
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And it even spurs you to have original spontaneous reactions
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to what I'm saying. So if I say to you, drop the red
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ball, boom, you already know that you can envision a red ball
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dropping. And that's the magic of mind.
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And that mind is the conjoint actor in in motion.
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The mind was, if you know the third person of deity, the
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conjoint actor. The infinite spirit is the same
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divine mind that permeates throughout the universe and
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makes it possible for all of us minded beings to be able to
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communicate with each other. And when Andon and Fonta were
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able to communicate with each other, that's when they were
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bestowed the spirit because at once the mind was able to
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connect with another human being.
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And they were. And not all animals can do that,
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but we did. That's what made U.S. special.
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And the Urantia book is telling us that we were endowed with
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mind once the physical apparatus was, and I use the analogy a lot
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of, of computers, you know, it's when you, when you look at the
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old Macs, they can't perform all the functions of today's Macs
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because they're in their infancy and they're not prepared to
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handle the, the more advanced methods and software that they
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have to run. So it's a slow, incremental
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evolutionary development of the mind where it finally reaches
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that threshold where it has spirit capacity.
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Now when Jesus taught us, and I'll, I'll kind of conclude it
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with this because I think with the social problems of religion,
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let me finish this thought. Jesus taught us that God was a
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person, that he was a loving person, that he was a loving
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father. Jesus believed that with his
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entire heart and he spent his entire life teaching people not
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about the anger God or not about this deity that sits on high and
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judges all of us for our moral misgivings.
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He pushed all that away. A lot of religions today, they
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still hang on to all of this stuff.
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They still hang on to original sin and and modern people are
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not going to accept it. They are no longer unless they
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just need the emotional support and they need to know that, you
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know, they, those things make them feel good.
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The emotion of religion, which is the feeling of, of receiving
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grace, for example. But you know, a lot of people,
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they don't get that they don't have, they don't know what that
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means. And not until they're in their
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darkest, most dire moment where they do, they come to that
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realization, which is sad because to me and to others, new
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religion to me is a philosophy of life of living in the moment.
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But knowing that that moment is part of a lot of different
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moments and they continue on and religion has has little appeal
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to people who don't like the shackles of fear and
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superstition and believing in miracles.
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I know atheists who many of the reasons they don't believe in
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the Christian Church because they don't believe in virgin
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birth. It's like you want me to believe
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in something that's against natural law in order to believe
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in something that's supposed to give me salvation.
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And let me tell you something that's a hard argument to make.
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The Urantia book writers specifically addressed this
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issue, saying that we we need to find the religion of love.
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What what is going to connect our species together And I
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believe that the answer is in my next topic, which I want to get
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into here. If you're still with me on this,
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and this has to do with what I call is new Christian thought.
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And I and I would I would I would say that in my thoughts
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about this, the Urantia book is 1/3 Testament.
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OK, and when I what do I mean by that 1/3 Testament?
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So the Old Testament followed by the New Testament.
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The the New Testament substantiated it.
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It concluded the journey of the Old Testament, the Old Testament
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containing Genesis and Exodus. You know, the early searchers of
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God, the prophets, the ones who held on to the message that the
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Urantia book tells us goes back to the first revelation, which
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was the arrival of the Nodites and the early beginnings of
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civilization before the Lucifer rebellion took everything out.
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So there was a period of early human history where man was
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given basic truths and basic instructions.
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And the people that lived in those eras that wrote things
19:28
down, they were part of the Old Testament and it be and it
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became the foundation for the Hebrew faith.
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And the Hebrew faith carried the morsels of truth forward from
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the days of of the mighty men of old, the days that are in the
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fragmented pieces of the stories of Adam and Eve.
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Adam and Eve were the second revelation and it was included
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in the Old Testament. And that's when Adam and Eve
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learned that the Son of Man, the Creator's son, was going to be
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making a visit. And So what did Adam and Eve do
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is they perpetuated the story and it was carried down through
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all of the olden prophets. And they that made-up the the
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bulk of the Hebrew theology carried the truths that there
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would one day be a deliverer. And so they prophesied or
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prophesied that Jesus or the Son of man, the Son of God would
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come. And they got this information
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from Adam and Eve. And Adam and Eve were told in
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the Urantia book, it explains that Adam and Eve were informed
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that Christ had decided that this was going to be the world
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of his final bestowal. And so in the New Testament
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becomes the conclusion, the fulfillment of of what they had
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hoped for and what they were seeking in the Old Testament.
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And now the New Testament carries us forward 2000 years
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and the teachings of Jesus are under assault.
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The teachings of Jesus. If you profess a belief in Jesus
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in many parts of the world, you will be killed in a secular
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society. In the way that some of the laws
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are being written today, they're limiting or curtailing the
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Christian method. And in fact, many people
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actually believe that wearing a cross is considered hate speech.
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So this is how far we've come. So along comes this revelation
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in the early part of the 20th century, and it has the entire
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teachings of Jesus and a sort of the preamble to that, which is
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an announcement. And what's the announcement?
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The announcement is that you are not only loved and cherished by
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a loving and personal Father, but you are part of a grand
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universe that is filled with other civilizations that also
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worship the same Father. So what is the what is the point
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of all this? A new Christian thought and this
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is what I wanted to discuss. I share in my belief in the
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divinity of Jesus Christ with other Christians.
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There are a lot of things that I don't believe in the Bible that
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that some doctrinal differences if you will, but at its essence
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I believe that Jesus Christ is divine and was the Son of God
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and is the Son of man. I share that with my friends and
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I share that with my Christian brothers and sisters.
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What I also declare to be true because the Urantia book extends
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that view out. Not only is Jesus Christ the son
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of this world, but he is the son of millions of other worlds, 10
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million to be exact. Or at least one day that will be
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true when Nebadon has can completely grown out to its
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maximum potential of 10 million worlds.
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And that's why it's so special that the Urantia book says it's
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amazing that you should consider yourself quite fortunate, you
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people that live on Urantia, because not only did the Son of
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Man come to your world, but he had, you know, millions of other
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worlds that he could have gone to.
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But he chose your world because he believed that was the best
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place to exhibit God. But many Christians,
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particularly Christians who have grown tired of the
23:44
ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority of the Christian
23:47
Church, they feel like I want to get to know Jesus Christ, but it
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comes with all these other conditions if I want to do it
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through the traditional church or traditional orthodoxy.
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I think today's believer that has become disenchanted with
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materialism would love to know the idea that we're we're not
24:08
alone, that that spirituality is not confined to just one little
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world. Didn't we are part of a greater,
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greater, fantastically wonderful exercise, which is the growth of
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the grand universe. Be you perfect, even as God is
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perfect, God is expanding outward and we get to be a part
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of that process. I think that the, that's a
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philosophy that you can carry with you, with you in your life.
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You're living for today, but you're also living for tomorrow.
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You're living for the future and you get to carry forward all,
24:44
all of your valuable human experiences.
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I, I just can't imagine anybody wouldn't be thrilled by that.
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So I'll leave it there. And I, I, I, so I, I kind of
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want to title this as the, the third testament.
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What is the third Testament? And I truly believe that the
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Oranja book is giving us an answer on how we can save
25:10
Christianity from becoming just a, you know, something that
25:15
those people, you know, worship. And it loses its salt, and then
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it lies dormant until some future generation.
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And in the meantime, we're living in the dark ages again,
25:30
materialism and totalitarianism and all the other tyranny.
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Anyway, it's a dangerous world out there, and I hope that I've
25:36
inspired you at least a little bit.
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If you have a question or a comment, e-mail me at
25:41
yourrancherbookradio@gmail.com, your rancher book,
25:44
radio@gmail.com. And until next time, thank you
25:49
again for sharing the podcast with for with fellow seekers of
25:53
the truth. See you next time.