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Byron Belitsos on Revealed Religion - Getting Academia To Take Notice · Urantia Radio

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  On this episode of the Rancho Radio podcast.
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  I'm excited to announce Byron. Boletos is joining us.
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  Byron is the author of The Great Book.
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  You're evolving soul, and is about ready to release another
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  book called the truth about evil sin, and the Demonic much to
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  discuss on the Rancher Radio podcast, don't forget.
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  We now drop two episodes per week, Thursdays and Sundays.
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  So follow us often on your favorite podcast player.
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  Byron recently graduated from Seminary and is also attending
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  the American Academy of religion conference in Washington.
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  D.c. marking the first time, in decades of the Urantia book,
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  will have a presence at this. Acclaimed, conference in our
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  interview, we talked about introducing the Rancho book to
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  Academia and why it becomes necessary to do.
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  So, and Byron's opinion to advance the Revelation.
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  And we also talked about evil. My Byron believe that your Ranch
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  book is an answer to the tumultuous times.
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  We find ourselves in so many more great topics.
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  We're going to discuss a lot. So this time up on the Rancher
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  Radio podcast, my guest Byron bullets.
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  Owes the book is soon to be released called truths about
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  evil sin, and the Demonic. Right now, we're going to get to
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  some some really just brilliant Pros, that that's part of the
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  book and also the academic level of research that went into this
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  book. Look is more than impressive.
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  You know, back to the point is that up until recently.
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  That's exactly what the problem has been.
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  Is that the scientist some has taken over Academia and they
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  feel uncomfortable with anything that smells of religion.
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  And I think that's why we're having a lot of the problems in
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  society today because of this sort of secular attitude and
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  there's all kinds of political Things about a to.
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  So I hope we can talk about all that, but so you're going to
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  this event and it and there was another caveat to it that you
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  had touched upon about the event itself.
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  Yes, you're going. The fellowship is is bringing
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  their guns with them and they're going to have a.
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  So how what is it that these these these folks do that's a
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  different from say Christian organizations getting together
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  at their annual all conclaves. How is this different from from
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  that? Right.
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  This is a non-sectarian in the sense that academics are
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  academics. They are there doing research in
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  any of these areas without necessarily being Advocates of
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  food materials that they're studying your there so they're
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  not preachers right there there their professors and the
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  researchers and you know so it's like any other academic
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  discipline that you Have some some object of distance for what
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  you're studying. But if you know, if you're
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  committed Catholic and you're a professor at say Georgetown a
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  Catholic University. Yeah, you're espousing
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  Catholicism. But you have a little bit of
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  distance otherwise you couldn't be an academic, you'd be
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  something else. You'd be a you know you'd be an
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  Archbishop or you'd be a preacher.
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  So this is the role that one needs in any field and so I This
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  point being that with the coming back to the ranch or Revelation.
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  If the Rancher relation has not been studied in that way by
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  academics. Who have a methodology for
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  research that, that, that they, at least since the 19th century.
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  You know, that we've had Research into the Bible and
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  church history and you name it, you know, You the philosophy
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  religion, you know, and these are the people that are our
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  professors that teach our kids universities and we want them to
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  be informed about anything of interest and you know you start
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  out Jim saying that science isn't has taken over, you know,
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  the culture and Academia but but these are the religious studies
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  people. So this is our job to, to study
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  religion. You know, they're they're not
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  atheist. Materialists that you might find
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  in the physics department. This is a religion department of
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  theology department. So most of them are theists and
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  we, you know, and there's a methodology for the study of
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  theology religion. That's well, understood worked
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  out, you know, there's different dimensions, there's history
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  there sociology, there's you know, Plum flat-out philosophy.
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  You know, philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.
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  This is well Oh yeah. Will chart a territory?
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  And the Rancher book is very strong in these areas of
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  philosophy, religion, and philosophical theology.
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  Sort of History was just presented history.
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  It's almost like a dialogue that moves along from Century to
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  Century and in this century were debating.
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  The thoughts and ideas of those before us which you bring a lot
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  of that to your new soon-to-be released book, where you're
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  going back to st. Augustine and the arguments that
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  they were having been about Free Will versus, you know, the total
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  control in your book, you refer to that.
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  Lot. And you know, the you depict the
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  lessons of job and how they were argued then versus you know in
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  more recent times with Immanuel Kant and so it is a lot like a
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  continuation of a dialogue where these I assume these professors
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  and professional. I guess you could call them
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  professional theologians in a sense.
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  But right where you are. Yeah, and they're dead and
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  they're having these same debates and how they apply you.
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  No, because I would imagine, you know, you know, and I know that
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  it's very politically contentious.
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  I would, I would almost argue that these kinds of courses have
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  to be kind of careful about what they say, you know, isn't there?
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  Sort of a Wolk Wolk - fear of saying, the wrong thing and
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  religion is such a touchy subject.
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  Even if you're teaching it as a historical, you know, it's bound
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  to be Goodbye. You know, a lot of the political
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  political correctness that we see going on today.
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  Do you see any of that? Oh yeah.
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  Oh yeah, sure, you know, but it's always the case that
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  fashion, you know, affects everybody and everything.
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  So you know today's fashion is be politically correct and woke
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  and that's pervasive in all Departments of universities that
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  I can tell. I mean even like physics or
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  genetics. But when you know, I was in a
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  seminary academic setting just graduated from Union,
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  Theological, Seminary was incredibly agile.
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  A quote, by the way. Thank you.
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  Yeah, just a Masters or PhD was a very woke institution.
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  You know, beyond belief and we find one finds that with these.
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  Carly, you know sort of academic if feet seminaries.
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  That they're all sort of left wing is so to speak.
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  Yeah. And woke and but then on the
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  other side are conservative. Seminaries and, you know,
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  centers of theological study to, you know, and they're not, you
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  know, the so there's still religious freedom in the
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  country. So you do not, you know, long as
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  you don't break the, you know, violate the Civil Rights Act of
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  1964 you're going to be okay to have a conservative Seminary
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  somewhere and and and and and abounds in the country and you
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  know, they have their own professorships, you know, these
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  are Very strong thinkers, even though they're conservative, you
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  know, you may not agree with them and they are the ones to
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  that are coming to the academy American Academy of religion,
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  and they have their conclaves within it, you know, they each
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  each denomination Dental meet as a denomination but they have
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  their, you know, their favored Scholars and they give their
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  papers. And so if you're on the
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  Seventh-day Adventist, you know, they're saying, professors that
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  are really great or if you're Catholic Or if your product, you
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  know, if your Lutheran but you know, they're not advocates for
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  their sectarian view, their advocate for an academic
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  understanding of their, you know, other Theology.
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  And so with the Rancho revelation, we don't have that
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  any of that. Yeah, yeah, not did not have it.
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  There's no presence. Although I do know we were at
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  recently where we have the World Council of religions.
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  Was there a presence of your Rancho represent?
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  Maybe that's the problem is we don't have Then it is like a lot
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  of these organizations. You know, we sort of shied away
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  from that organizational representative or spokesperson.
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  You know. There is no, I would maybe
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  except for maybe most Siegel I can't think of anybody else.
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  Who would be considered a spokesperson for the Urantia
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  book? You know what I mean?
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  Oh yeah, I know, I think that they're more than a few that are
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  more or less informal but some a little bit more formal maybe but
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  I think it was the you're speaking of the world.
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  Parliament of religion perhaps. Yeah.
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  Well I saw a world traveler is not an academic no, more of a
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  popular thing. And yeah, it's a good place and
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  it but it's not doesn't have the kind of depth.
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  Yeah, I get it. So you're excited about this is
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  for obvious reasons, are you? What is it that you when you
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  want to know which are which are go Laura Active to have this
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  continued year after year and have have perhaps an inability
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  to introduce the Rancho book to people on the academic level and
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  have them taken seriously. And that's got to be a little
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  challenging. I would imagine, right?
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  We call, you know what I mean, you know, anything to do with,
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  you know, with with a new revelation is challenging and
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  that just comes with the territory.
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  If if you, if you can muster the courage to do that, then you
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  shouldn't be in this movement, although it's fine to read the
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  text for yourself. Nothing wrong with that.
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  But yeah. So, if you're more in involved,
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  with Outreach and Mission work, you need to, you know, you need
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  to Target different sectors of society.
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  So, if you want to be really effective, you target more
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  influential sectors of society. And so, that's my idea.
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  Is this is, this is kind of influential.
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  Okay. Yeah, but and if you shy away
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  from it, it means well, either you again, not not enough
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  courage. Or it means you maybe don't have
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  the courage of your convictions, maybe it doesn't.
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  Maybe you'll think it'll hold up.
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  And, and that is why I did the book, which is really a 20-year
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  project, but refined and when I went back to school, I I was
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  interested in sort of the history of theology, the history
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  of religion and but I focus on the problem of evil in
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  particular because that is Central is not the only big
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  problem, but it's a very Central problem in in religion to see,
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  you know, where is the UB stand up?
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  How does it hold up? Really, if you looked at the
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  survey, what has been said all the way back to job in the Old,
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  Testament up to the present, you know, what are we saying about
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  Good and Evil and What it how do you define it and the you be
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  really really holds up quite well and so in an academic
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  setting because when I introduced this to the
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  professors that were on, you know, when it's a small
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  committee when your Masters so would you give to people in your
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  committee and they never could never heard of the Rancho
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  revelation, of course and you know throughout Academia and
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  that was ever heard of it. So it was you know not easy to
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  do. And but it helped that the older
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  than my professors. Yeah, but you just have to be
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  able to talk real fast and fill in, you know, using their
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  language. And you know, their language is
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  right there, it's in the library.
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  It's, this is how they see the problem of evil.
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  Yeah, from there from the lineage, from the Bible, and
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  it's write explicitly. There.
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  And so if you learn their language, they can learn your
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  language you know, because you can have a dialogue that way.
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  And so I entered into this dialogue on the so-called
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  problem evil or theodicy. Yeah.
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  This is going to ask you about that word theodicy expound on
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  that word because I frankly was not familiar with it.
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  Yes, it just technical term, its professional term and it just
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  simply means It's the the question of evil and how we use
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  to how the answer to that question eggs, you know,
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  supports our idea about a good God, right?
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  Is those is much a good, the goodness of God, but the power
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  of God, the omnipotence of God. So if an omnipotent good, God is
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  really the case. That how come we have so much
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  evil? In the world.
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  If God is good. And you know, never know that
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  was really got a solution to that, I mean, there's you know,
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  of course Jesus had had a solution but it wasn't a
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  philosophic solution, really. Although the Rancher book,
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  depicts Jesus with a philosophic solution to the problem of evil
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  but the Bible doesn't right so you know right right there you
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  right there. You have this huge advance in
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  that the Bible brooches it. and beautiful way but doesn't give a
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  philosophic answer but we have sermons from Jesus in the
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  Rancher book that gives an answer to this problem and so we
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  give The academic world, a chance to look at this and see.
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  Hey man, we maybe we've got a solution that you've been
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  looking for philosophically. Well, first with job.
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  What, when you really kind of drill down into the Book of Job,
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  what you find out is this is a guy that had a very terrible
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  misfortune and his friends came and sat with him in his
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  suffering and grief. And they said, look, it's
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  actually because of the, you know, you're suffering this
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  because of x y z, right? So they but their their Theory,
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  they gay theodicies. Okay.
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  And they is all God allows this to happen to you because Good.
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  A bad person job and this is what you deserve a suffering and
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  that was the the Aussie was giving him, which was number
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  one. No.
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  Consolation number to a false theodicy in philosophically
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  unsound, and the poor guy was inundated with these terrible
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  ideas from his own friends and totally sort of wave them aside
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  and rejected all of their advice.
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  And then he had a revelatory experience.
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  Where God comes to Him and says, no, this is how it really is.
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  This is how I've designed the universe.
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  So have a look at my view, my perspective, all the universe.
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  So he reveals who you Peters out of the world winner reveals a
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  theodicy, really? And so what I'm actually saying
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  here in the book is that the your Ranch a book is the same
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  thing. The Urantia book is God, coming
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  through his, through his angels, You know, those celestials to
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  tell us how God understands good and evil so that we can have
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  consolation and I point out and it is I knows disputed but the
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  the completion of the UB was likely to be 1945 point.
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  Being here of is that at the time that the final solution was
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  being Carried out by Hitler. We were getting a revelation.
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  Yeah. You Ranch Revelation and that's
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  that's like the it's like what happened with job job was at his
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  worst hit bottom, then the Revelation comes right.
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  So so the Rancher Revelation comes in The Darkest Hour of the
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  20th century, really And if you think of the 1930s, it was the
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  rise of the Nazi movement and kind of other commentary.
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  Don't you write in your book just about what you're saying.
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  He say starkly put I believe we should be open to new revelation
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  at this time because our world needs and indeed has earned a
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  Divine rescue and Salvage. Operation, I'd like to refer to
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  such an Outreach effort as the compass compass.
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  Ettore nature of divine Malaysian and then this, when a
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  planet is nearing, the very Extinction of its natal native
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  life, the heart of the Creator's aroused and is moved to call
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  forth emergency measures such as a new revelation or even a
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  Divine visitation very well put. And I think you're you're right.
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  I mean it seems to be I keep thinking it's going to get
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  better and better man. When did things start taking a
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  turn is what I'm wondering. Was it the breakdown of the
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  family and the 60s Jim where you are really on the same page and
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  stuff like we're the same age that age group, you you remember
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  the 50s that's just peaceful harmonious secure time and then
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  suddenly everything gets upended in the late 60s and then there's
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  kind of this Regression of the culture, you know, by the 80s or
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  90 whatever you think it is. And yeah, but I mean it's just
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  it's cyclical that a sense that the Lucifer Eric Legacy shows up
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  in ways, you kind of, you kind of beat it back for a while for
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  a decade or two, but it returns and it's in a powerful way.
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  And, you know, so you have little periods of peace and
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  civilization but they don't last they're not sustainable.
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  And that's because we've not, you know, Jude ocation of the
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  Lucifer Rebellion. According to some, it's
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  partially adjudicated or even fully adjudicated, but that's
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  disputed, right? So, so in any case we, there's
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  not much evidence and there's strong evidence is put it this
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  way that the horrendous Evils are still occurring not unlike
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  the Holocaust that are still occurring and so that the test
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  of theodicy really is the degree.
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  In depth of evils that are perpetrated, you have to find a
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  way if you're in this business of explaining how a loving
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  all-powerful, God can coincide with, you know, great Wars, that
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  better genocide oil does desire. God permit genocide of whole
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  people's well, apparently. So because it happened and maybe
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  it's going to happen again and it's and there's been genocides.
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  Since the Holocaust it's a hard truth.
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  It's not to mean that he's not compassionate and besides we all
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  know that Christ said he'll go through a with you I mean he's
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  he's in it to win it. He's in peas have bested partner
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  in that sense. So you know and obviously the
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  thought adjusters have a real challenge to because you know,
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  they have to go through it. It'll work.
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  Yeah. Yeah yeah.
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  I want to get back to that because as a, as a scholar And
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  going through the process of the Seminary School.
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  How consistent was the ranch? A book to you did it?
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  Hold up. Did it have the right argument?
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  Yeah I think that they hold up, they throat phrase they held up
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  against the other theodicies that are well understood.
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  Well known, you know, since Augustine or pre you know, even
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  biblical origin. Because Augustine's not just
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  biblical so it holds up in relation to the different kinds
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  or seven kinds actually that identified yet over the entire
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  2,000 years. So, types of theodicies, not
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  only does the Rancher book commensurate with those ideas
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  but it synthesizes them. That's what's really beautiful
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  and almost hard to believe that. I think I've shown and my
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  professors who have never heard the Rancher book.
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  You know, endorsed actually is that the UB is the best of the
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  theodicies of the past including Augustine, including Thomas
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  Aquinas, including Luther including the more modern
• 22:39
  thinkers and then right up to the present that it, you know,
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  these are the also human sources.
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  Don't forget of the UB itself. I mean Augustine and Luther are
• 22:49
  human sources that not that they're literally, you know,
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  quoted but that The spirit and the content of their theologies
• 22:59
  are reflected in the you be there, but they're transcended
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  as well. So they're included and
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  transcended in the UB. UB is a synthesis of our
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  tradition. In at least in the regard to
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  this problem, probably so-called problem of evil.
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  I think the book shows that you can proudly tell other say
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  Christians even you know Jewish thinkers.
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  This is our tradition crystallized or kind of
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  fulfilled even in a new revelatory text that is not just
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  some new age thing out of the blow.
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  This is something that's rooted in our entire tradition from the
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  time of Jesus's, Saint on Earth and it's what it should be.
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  I mean otherwise it's just irrelevant New Age, Donald kind
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  of as Meredith prior once said gobbledygook.
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  Yeah. Anyway you know new age has got
• 23:55
  a purpose you know for consolation for people who are
• 23:58
  not necessarily people deeply thoughtful but but it it has a
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  place. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's
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  part, you know, partial truths are still something and new age
• 24:08
  because I was a new age publisher there.
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  Not nothing, you know, but you need philosophic depth and
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  philosophic, you need to unify your ideas and we call that
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  theology. How does all of this amount to
• 24:21
  something which we can give as a discourse.
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  That really works. It really supports people to
• 24:28
  their faith and their consolation a particularly when
• 24:31
  you're facing, you know, you you live in a hurricane area for
• 24:37
  Myers, you know? You, you know you have a big
• 24:40
  decision. Master there.
• 24:41
  So, how does your face survive disasters?
• 24:44
  Like that? Hey, you know, I'll tell you
• 24:46
  something just as an aside, I there was a certain kind of, and
• 24:51
  I know this sounds strange, but I think I wrote a brief paper on
• 24:55
  it or something the in getting a glimpse of the eye of the
• 25:01
  hurricane which I was able to kind of see within like 10
• 25:06
  miles. I could see the light coming
• 25:07
  through but not exactly, you know, the blue sky.
• 25:10
  Bye. And I said to myself, you know,
• 25:12
  it's so calm and peaceful in the middle of this hurricane.
• 25:15
  It's a lot like paradise. It's a lot like paradise because
• 25:18
  in the model of paradise you have all this energy.
• 25:21
  That's spinning around it in the form of the seven
• 25:24
  superuniverses. We're all this life is happening
• 25:28
  and, and the force of life is moving in.
• 25:31
  It, it came through and it, you know, it, regardless of the fact
• 25:36
  that humans were here. It cleaned out nature.
• 25:39
  It click it, took anything. Was dead with it and afterwards,
• 25:44
  aside from the mass of the human, you know, trash.
• 25:48
  Everything else was clean, the water was clean, the trees were
• 25:51
  clean and I thought, you know, this is and I'm that's that's
• 25:55
  how my faith sort of dealt with the whatever you could call it
• 25:59
  the trauma. Because to me, there was a,
• 26:01
  there was a metaphorical perspective which Immanuel Kant
• 26:07
  used to talk about where he says, when you see if I think it
• 26:09
  was conned, He said when you see like when you see a rainbow or
• 26:13
  you see a magnificent waterfall or something, you're you're
• 26:17
  peeking into the them, the eye of divinity, you're seeing a
• 26:21
  glimpse of deity, you know? And that's what I did.
• 26:25
  I saw a glimpse of deity in this her otherwise horrific, you
• 26:28
  know, weather phenomena. So and that comes from the
• 26:33
  teachings of the Urantia book. See when you when you study them
• 26:37
  long enough and then things do happen, your mind.
• 26:40
  Refers to something that it learned either through Jesus
• 26:44
  teachings or the ranch book, at least that's my experience.
• 26:48
  So, you know, they're not at that is really the like a method
• 26:55
  that the Urantia book teaches us, which is that the light is
• 27:01
  there, even if you can barely see it, but it may be obscured
• 27:05
  for now, but the omnipotent all-loving God is present.
• 27:10
  Hunt, however, don't forget that that that's in the central
• 27:16
  Universe. You know, the father rules
• 27:19
  imperfection and all the beings are perfect or, you know,
• 27:23
  perfected beings, but outside of, so you of the center
• 27:28
  Universe, it's the domain of the Supreme, the evolving deity.
• 27:33
  And so in evolutionary planets, there's lots of lots of lots of
• 27:39
  grief, and darkness and suffering, Ring.
• 27:41
  But yes, the at the center of this is Paradise.
• 27:46
  And it's light. So how do we give consolation to
• 27:50
  people who are facing the kind of perils that we have now on
• 27:54
  the planet we're really accumulating dark clouds and so
• 27:59
  that's why I also, you know, call for in the book and
• 28:02
  elsewhere that your Ranch and should get involved in
• 28:06
  ministries direct Ministries open Ministries, using the
• 28:12
  Rancho text. To provide hope and consolation
• 28:18
  in these times are difficult times but we're not yet doing it
• 28:22
  and many of us aspire to do it, but we're not doing it.
• 28:26
  So what I'm trying to do is at least have a academic support
• 28:30
  for that which in other words you if you had a fee logical
• 28:33
  Center to train people, you could train ministers who really
• 28:37
  understand the Rancho text in relation to the biblical text
• 28:41
  who can be these kind of teachers and preachers.
• 28:44
  You know, we cuz we're going to have climate change is going to,
• 28:47
  you know, just what visited you in Fort Myers and so much so
• 28:51
  much to deal with in the coming decade.
• 28:53
  And to two decades, that we really need an updated picture
• 29:00
  of God's love for us despite the apparent evils.
• 29:08
  And in fact that that God doesn't permit the evils but But
• 29:14
  creates a context in, which humans can outwork with working
• 29:18
  with these elements. Their free will their freedom,
• 29:21
  but with the necessities of life that are not necessarily going
• 29:25
  to be provided, you know, without human effort.
• 29:30
  So it's kind of a long-winded way of saying, you know, what we
• 29:34
  need, we need to, we need to become leaders in our in our
• 29:39
  current culture and stop being underground with and timid.
• 29:47
  Yeah, with our revelation. You know, I was there were two
• 29:54
  Divergent questions depending on which one you want to answer.
• 29:57
  My first is going back to the Lucifer, the luciferian concept
• 30:02
  of unbridled self Liberty, which I think is what we're
• 30:04
  experiencing now. And that's why everything is off
• 30:09
  the rails, you know? But I also thought I would go
• 30:13
  into the direction of what you were saying about coming out of
• 30:18
  the shadows. And how do we do that?
• 30:20
  When we You know, to me there, this is going to be a process
• 30:25
  that takes, maybe a thousand years because it seems to me
• 30:29
  that the people at large would not be yet quite prepared for
• 30:34
  these Concepts that are in the Rancho book now, they may change
• 30:38
  their mind when they start to discovering that there is life
• 30:41
  in abundance in the universe, you know, when we start
• 30:44
  detecting life on other planets but that's, you know, decades
• 30:48
  away, probably. But eventually I think the
• 30:53
  reality of the Rancho book will catch up to the people and
• 30:57
  they'll start to see. Oh, okay, well, but we can't
• 30:59
  even have discussions about race as they're depicted, any Ranch,
• 31:04
  teachings or the book. No, we can't have gender
• 31:07
  conversations because anybody reads the Urantia book would
• 31:10
  would would automatically understand that.
• 31:13
  This whole transgender movement is attaching itself to the
• 31:17
  luciferian concept of unbridled self-liberation.
• 31:21
  Taking your own reality and running with it.
• 31:23
  That's counter to the teachings of the Urantia book.
• 31:28
  Right? You have to recognize your what
• 31:30
  is they could call your Cosmic obligations?
• 31:34
  You know? Yo, you know this wasn't just
• 31:36
  created for us to be able to turn our hair purple and walk
• 31:39
  around and identify is, is unknown objects.
• 31:42
  You know, I mean, this is what we, this is what we've become in
• 31:45
  our world today and it's, I think I mentioned it somewhere,
• 31:50
  you know, God, God isn't in the room and that I think when, when
• 31:54
  that happens, you know, the nature abhors a vacuum.
• 31:57
  It's To get filled with something and it's being in my
• 32:01
  opinion and I'd love to get your take on.
• 32:04
  This is, you know, the Rancho book would be spit on.
• 32:09
  I mean how dare you say God the father as if fathers are the
• 32:13
  only things that can be God. I mean there's no can't even get
• 32:17
  past that discussion. So how do you know?
• 32:22
  I mean, you just have to do it, you have to get past it, you
• 32:25
  have to answer it. You have to have the chops to do
• 32:28
  it. You have to have the training to
• 32:29
  do it and to Prevail in these discussions, that's the reason
• 32:34
  why we need to have academics involved in the sense that they
• 32:39
  can. If you make these distinctions,
• 32:40
  in other words you're an undergraduate somewhere or you
• 32:43
  know, more likely a graduate student in religion Theology.
• 32:46
  And the professor says, now we're going to spend a week on
• 32:48
  the ranch or Revelation. I'm not sure what it is.
• 32:51
  But man is it have a lot of depth theologically.
• 32:55
  So we're going to expound on that this week and we want you
• 32:58
  to read these excerpts. This is what ought to be
• 33:00
  happening in these programs and these academic programs kids
• 33:05
  should be trained in what the ranch a book teaches on these
• 33:08
  subjects. I would say that's that
• 33:10
  imperative and it's inexcusable really that the academic
• 33:15
  Community doesn't know and is not examine this, so that's what
• 33:19
  I did. But I want to backtrack a little
• 33:21
  bit on another aspect of what you're saying, which is, there
• 33:25
  was a consensus sufficient to hold culture.
• 33:29
  Our culture's together in the 40s, 50s early 60s, which you
• 33:35
  and I are on the same page about and you can tell when you look
• 33:39
  at the Cultural, you know, signposts of that period, for
• 33:43
  example, movies in the 40s and 50s, you can feel the sense that
• 33:48
  there was a solidarity and consensus culturally about what
• 33:52
  was good and what was bad. Yeah, because the bad guys were
• 33:55
  bad guys. And the good guys were good,
• 33:57
  guys, and mainly, but but it was not, it was not Sunday school.
• 34:02
  It was, you know, sophisticated stories.
• 34:04
  Now we don't have that kind of sense of solidarity and unity in
• 34:11
  the culture. We have a breakdown of this and
• 34:13
  that's because Christianity itself has run out of steam.
• 34:17
  You know, the Christian culture has lost its legitimacy with the
• 34:23
  elites, right? I mean they you know the the
• 34:28
  mainline church has declined about 80% in membership since
• 34:33
  1960 and that was the elite consensus was the mainline
• 34:37
  Protestant church. Yeah, we had a period of
• 34:45
  solidarity. Yeah, yeah, peace solidarity,
• 34:49
  Prosperity cultural grima, General cultural agreement, with
• 34:54
  big exceptions, you know, around, you know, civil rights,
• 34:57
  for example. But but enough that there was a
• 35:00
  sense of feeling of belonging that everybody had except those
• 35:05
  those minorities and then their rights were then recognized in
• 35:08
  the 60s. 70s. Right?
• 35:10
  So it should have it should have been sufficient for cultural
• 35:14
  Unity but it wasn't sufficient because the church ran ran out
• 35:19
  of credibility by that time. So so people are just anything
• 35:24
  goes really and yeah well I think you had the one word your
• 35:29
  maybe could include in. This is the breakdown of the
• 35:32
  family because the part of that solidarity, came from the
• 35:36
  recognized. You know, there was a moral
• 35:38
  obligation Right? Or wrongly constructed, or
• 35:42
  otherwise that you the proper way was to have a family that
• 35:46
  family was very important. And that it was the family where
• 35:50
  real social structure sort of, you know, gets built and we've
• 35:55
  lost that sense. Now family is it can be any
• 35:59
  variation of things. Now, I'm not just specifically
• 36:02
  saying that, but that that community of family is seems to
• 36:07
  be shattered. And I don't know.
• 36:09
  II don't know if it's part of the evolutionary growth.
• 36:13
  Maybe we're maybe we'll become a different kind of society with
• 36:16
  different kinds of families in the future, I don't know, maybe
• 36:20
  we'll produce babies in the factory.
• 36:21
  I don't know where the world is headed, you know,
• 36:25
  scientifically. The whole point of male and
• 36:28
  female is moot because you can go down and get you know, you
• 36:32
  could get yourself inseminated. So and so, even that is proved
• 36:39
  An unsettling, I think, for the world because we're grappling
• 36:43
  with new rules to the game. We call this the post post
• 36:50
  modernism, right? Where there really isn't any set
• 36:54
  boundaries or structures that we can rely on.
• 36:57
  For example, that genders have fears as you read your book
• 37:00
  calls it, right? That is a structure here that we
• 37:03
  call feminine. Another structure, we call
• 37:05
  masculine. And in fact, it's upheld by the
• 37:09
  funked, the kind of body functions that we see in the
• 37:12
  Divine mother mother Spirit functions differently than Then
• 37:16
  Christ, Michael he function, he has different things that Christ
• 37:20
  Michael does because he's nasties in the masculine
• 37:23
  archetype. So that kind of structure is
• 37:27
  well, when you quote, the it's completely, then you anything
• 37:30
  goes in this? Yeah, go ahead.
• 37:32
  No, that's well, put that's well put but and I also wanted to
• 37:37
  mention this. Do you know, or are you aware of
• 37:40
  the Rancho book meeting being taught in any colleges?
• 37:44
  I believe it. Angie Thurston.
• 37:45
  And it was involved in some Outreach in Boston but I don't
• 37:51
  know enough on that but certainly the Urantia book must
• 37:54
  be being taught in college. No no I'm not aware I don't
• 37:57
  think it is that that's really kind of my one of my main
• 38:04
  complaints and you know, and Angie introduce the you be at
• 38:10
  Harvard Divinity School and you know, her charisma So abilities
• 38:16
  and she had a lot of inroads but she didn't, it was never taught
• 38:20
  there but she's just simply set up a study group which still is
• 38:24
  still there. And then one or two professors
• 38:26
  were friendly to it. But no, it's not taught at
• 38:29
  Harvard and it's not taught anywhere.
• 38:31
  And that's that's the tragedy of our movement is that it is not
• 38:36
  taught to young people, they have no idea about it.
• 38:38
  And again, this is back to this notion of stuff structures,
• 38:42
  right? So that if the structure of for
• 38:45
  culture, Sure, is that there are certain centers of cultural
• 38:51
  wisdom and dissemination called universities, and universities
• 38:56
  are places where the rent. The Rancher was really designed
• 38:59
  for University study. Yeah.
• 39:01
  And it's it provides you with something that is a bulwark
• 39:05
  against postmodern, postmodern sentiments, which is a really,
• 39:10
  you know, what we call Post truth Society, right there
• 39:13
  really are no true. They're just fungible, you know,
• 39:18
  perspectives it, anybody can have any perspective and they're
• 39:21
  all kind of valid. Your truth is my truth, right?
• 39:25
  Yeah. You hear that?
• 39:28
  It's do your own thing and that, that came from the 60s, more or
• 39:33
  less, but it came into Academia and I was present in, saw it
• 39:36
  come into Academia, where, you know, the, the what were
• 39:40
  considered facts for centuries? Were question.
• 39:43
  Now, these really aren't facts. These are just Power gains be
• 39:48
  played by by certain powerful groups so that whatever you see
• 39:52
  in the Bible with just because somebody one power, you know,
• 39:57
  the fourth Century, you know, because they had a conclave and
• 40:00
  they said this is what the truth is.
• 40:01
  But we all know that was just their Will To Power.
• 40:04
  They were trying to take over the Roman Empire, right?
• 40:07
  So this is how they began to point.
• 40:10
  Yeah. Cast doubt on the Bible.
• 40:12
  Right? So once the Bible becomes what
• 40:15
  just Other sort of piece of propaganda.
• 40:21
  You then what are you going to stand on?
• 40:23
  Well, guess what? We got a new revelation.
• 40:26
  We got kind of a new modern Bible that can fit the bill.
• 40:32
  But it was not, it was not promulgated to the to those,
• 40:37
  those leaders. In those Elites, it was not
• 40:40
  done, it was not done, it was, it was evaded and it's a
• 40:43
  responsibility that was evaded for reasons.
• 40:47
  You know, maybe good reasons that, you know, but it was was
• 40:50
  not accomplished. So we have a deficit here.
• 40:54
  We have, we have to remediate and it's never too late.
• 40:59
  In my view, especially since it purports to be a Divine and
• 41:03
  ethical Revelation. I means somewhere in Academia,
• 41:06
  somebody has to me that that's the screaming, headline, God
• 41:10
  speaks, and you make the point again in your book that you know
• 41:16
  it's an appropriate response to a people who are going through
• 41:20
  this sort of ideological struggle.
• 41:22
  I mean they certainly recognize that we're going through the
• 41:26
  ideological struggle and so So this is their answer to that,
• 41:31
  but it's going to take a little time because we're our language.
• 41:35
  We don't have the concepts of a local universe or constellations
• 41:40
  and system sovereigns, we don't have the concepts of the
• 41:43
  hierarchy of of, I remember one of the early criticism to Sadler
• 41:49
  that he received when he tried to introduce the book to his
• 41:52
  fellows and Sadler was a true academic.
• 41:55
  I mean, the guy had how many phds did he?
• 41:58
  He have and his wife Linda I mean they were brilliant
• 42:01
  well-respected. I don't think of them as
• 42:04
  academics but they were great thinkers, whether they were
• 42:07
  Innovative in trend-setting for their further time and age
• 42:11
  especially in health and things of that nature.
• 42:13
  So but they were getting pushed back saying, you know you it's
• 42:16
  to Gnostic I mean what is it with all these you know even
• 42:20
  even Meredith who I've spoken now three or four times a real
• 42:25
  important mentor to me in my early years is It that he even
• 42:30
  put it away when when he was first given the book, it wasn't
• 42:33
  until he actually read the part about Jesus, and the Twelve
• 42:38
  Apostles that he went. Wow, who wrote this.
• 42:43
  So I'll ask you Byron. What was your wow moment.
• 42:48
  Oh, I guess it was part for when you feel really you know what?
• 42:58
  I was the young man and had a summer with nothing to do,
• 43:03
  especially, so I was able to read that straight through.
• 43:06
  So I think everybody anyone reads for four straight through,
• 43:10
  that's that's going to be a while.
• 43:11
  Moser was for me transformative. Now it makes a difference of the
• 43:17
  timing because that was the 70s. When people still believed in
• 43:21
  these things, we still believe in this guy Jesus and the
• 43:25
  biblical account was not invalidated Entirely.
• 43:29
  So, social harder now because it's like, well, totally out of
• 43:33
  context and who cares about biblical realities anymore.
• 43:38
  Among most people, many people. But anyway, that was the moment.
• 43:42
  My wow moment was parked for, for sure.
• 43:45
  Yeah, I think my wow moment was part one but just because that
• 43:53
  just the way the word it just it wreaked of authority.
• 43:56
  Like whoever wrote this Knew what they were talking about.
• 44:00
  So who am I? That's one of the things that
• 44:03
  believe it or not Byron. I get reassurance.
• 44:06
  I can tell from the quality of your writing and your research
• 44:11
  that you put into not only this book but your previous book and
• 44:18
  it you're a smarter man. So I guess if you're smarter
• 44:23
  than me, and you think that your answer book is a revelation, who
• 44:27
  am I to disagree? I'm glad you are someone who has
• 44:33
  good and could disagree if there's no authorities here.
• 44:37
  And and but what, what I would appeal to is a consensus among
• 44:42
  Community, is what it's not about any particular leader or
• 44:45
  person or writer, because he can have idiosyncratic in a people
• 44:49
  rise up and say, you know, this, you know, have a cultish kind of
• 44:53
  focus on a person who says, this is true or not.
• 44:56
  True. I'm not.
• 44:57
  Personally, I have no, Trust in that.
• 44:59
  I'm interested in the community of cultural community and
• 45:04
  religious community that is working on this as a team and A
• 45:08
  Team like way that you can support each other as we have
• 45:14
  these challenges, but if you're just stand alone, doing this and
• 45:17
  going out to your local, you know, professor of Theology and
• 45:21
  you're nobody, you're walking in with this big book.
• 45:24
  It's a terrible way to do. You're just what we need to do,
• 45:28
  is You need to be able to say we have an entire community of
• 45:32
  Scholars who've written articles in your journals about this.
• 45:36
  So we'll look those up and you'll see that we know we're
• 45:40
  talking about not only that we also know what you're talking
• 45:43
  about. We know the tradition that
• 45:46
  you're talking about but we have something to add to your
• 45:49
  tradition rather than we have we have the final we have the
• 45:53
  ultimate state that isn't what this is, not the ultimate, the
• 45:56
  Standalone at all. Is it standing on the shoulders
• 46:00
  of the tradition, particularly the Christian tradition?
• 46:04
  So that we need to be able to tell them?
• 46:07
  Is your tradition that we are ratifying and also, we're
• 46:11
  sorting it out. There are parts that like the
• 46:14
  atonement Doctrine. You know, that's not, that's
• 46:18
  needs to be put aside, okay? The patriarchal male oriented
• 46:23
  religion that needs to be put aside in a certain things I need
• 46:26
  to be corrected but in the Aim your teachings of Jesus in the
• 46:31
  New Testament are really good and we are on that.
• 46:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point.
• 46:39
  But, you know, is there enough? Validation is there enough
• 46:41
  evidence? Somebody would say, well, prove
• 46:43
  to me that this year, Ranch, a book has is a revelatory
• 46:47
  document. Now I personally can point to
• 46:49
  probably a half a dozen revelatory statements, I'm sure
• 46:53
  you can too. Is there enough evidence to
• 46:56
  support that claim? I mean, People have said, you
• 47:00
  know, judge the Urantia book on the Merit of its contents and
• 47:04
  you will see are you satisfied intellectually that it proves
• 47:08
  its case? I don't think I am in the in the
• 47:13
  narrow sense that the within from within the text you can
• 47:18
  prove the text. I don't think that works.
• 47:22
  It could work in certain circumstances but I think it has
• 47:27
  to be Call intertextual. Rather than textual in other
• 47:33
  words that how does it correlate with Luther Augustine, the
• 47:39
  Bible, Hagel Kant. How does it speak to those
• 47:43
  problems? The problems that these these
• 47:45
  men highlighted that's intertextual that's what I'm
• 47:49
  doing in my book. I'm not just you know
• 47:51
  celebrating the beautiful your Ranch revelation.
• 47:54
  We have to stop just doing that and isolation.
• 47:57
  That can't work. That's no proof their number
• 47:59
  one. Number two.
• 48:01
  You need to be able to point to the fruits of the text, the
• 48:05
  fruits of the Revelation. You need to be able to say,
• 48:08
  look, we have a thriving Community here.
• 48:11
  Look at the charitable works that we're doing.
• 48:12
  Look at the look at, look at the way we're influencing, you know,
• 48:17
  whatever may be in society and politics.
• 48:21
  You can't really point to that right now.
• 48:24
  You know, you can't take somebody to a study group in a
• 48:27
  study group isn't going to be sufficient proof of fruits of
• 48:31
  the spirit, you know. So that's there's many, many big
• 48:36
  problems here. So the text itself doesn't stand
• 48:39
  alone on its own nor and the community is not yet mature
• 48:43
  enough to exhibit the fruits of the spirit that would attract
• 48:47
  people through that through that vehicle.
• 48:51
  I'm sure you're familiar dr. Philip Calabrese did a
• 48:54
  statistical analysis of statements that were unverified
• 48:59
  at the time that your answer book was written.
• 49:02
  And he played it 1955. So anything that was discovered
• 49:06
  after 1955 and he did a statistical analysis of.
• 49:12
  I think there are maybe 15 different things that were
• 49:15
  stated in the ranch a book that were not conclusive by the The
• 49:20
  community until after the publication of the book.
• 49:23
  So it lends itself to the sort of prophetic, how could they
• 49:27
  have predicted? This would be an established
• 49:30
  fact. So for example, Pangea was still
• 49:33
  sort of a theory but it wasn't until 1962 that we conclusively.
• 49:37
  Knew that there was, you know, continental drift and so forth
• 49:41
  and his, his analysis as a mathematician, which is
• 49:44
  interesting. Was that there was a 50 million
• 49:48
  to one odds. That whoever wrote, the book
• 49:51
  would have been systematically. Correct on those numbers of
• 49:55
  things that they stated as fact and in also, ignoring things was
• 50:01
  that one discovery that turned out to be fake of skeletal
• 50:04
  remains, I can't remember. Yeah.
• 50:07
  But anyway, it's an interesting, you know, from a mathematical
• 50:10
  equation, he points that out. So for if you're not familiar
• 50:14
  with it, I think you are, I'm sure you've.
• 50:16
  Oh yeah, yeah, I'm very familiar with it and but I'm very
• 50:18
  compelling Think it's compelling for the Believers but it's not
• 50:22
  compelling outside. The reason I say it is number
• 50:26
  one, he is a Believer number one, number two, there isn't any
• 50:32
  external. There isn't a peer review
• 50:34
  process for his work. So what we now need is it peer
• 50:41
  review? Oh yeah, I like that of this
• 50:44
  kind of work it and it's not not like rockets.
• 50:46
  I this is how everything is done.
• 50:48
  This is how you do your son so you do you.
• 50:51
  So you need to have a as I'm saying a community of with a
• 50:55
  discourse where there is a lot of agreement than there's a lot
• 50:59
  of depth, but it's not a lot of depth to have one isolated
• 51:03
  mathematician. Who's already a Believer making
• 51:07
  these claims? It's not theirs.
• 51:09
  It's definitely he's going to be biased, right?
• 51:12
  I mean they, obviously your bias is towards proving your your
• 51:16
  assertion, and that's it. Yeah, it's just not, it's what
• 51:20
  effect does is this is sectarian Behavior.
• 51:24
  But I mean, the good sense, I mean I love insulin is work and
• 51:28
  everything but it's where a sect that were not part of the larger
• 51:33
  discourse of. Of people who theistic
• 51:37
  Christians, we're not in that because we don't have peer
• 51:40
  review. So if what reason I'm again,
• 51:45
  going to this academic conferences, to begin to start
• 51:49
  this process of letting other peer peers, who are academics,
• 51:56
  work with us, look at our data. Look at, look at what fills
• 52:00
  their look at my book. Whatever review it, pass it
• 52:04
  around. Then you then you begin to get
• 52:06
  something to has credibility but you can't have Standalone.
• 52:09
  Yeah. You know, profits like I need
• 52:11
  profits have a place for sure but profits are not do not
• 52:16
  constitute. The culture of the culture has
• 52:18
  to respond to the to these leaders and then develop the
• 52:23
  consensus of solidarity that we right now don't have.
• 52:27
  But we will have yeah well I think you're a little bit more
• 52:30
  optimistic about academics than I am because my experience with
• 52:34
  X is that they have their own built-in bias and they're very
• 52:42
  what's the word? They don't want to be out of
• 52:44
  step with their contemporaries and now more than ever because
• 52:49
  environmentalism and it has been infected by politics Pharma has
• 52:53
  been infected by the profit motive.
• 52:56
  And by politics, everybody's got a piece of the pie and nobody's
• 53:00
  going to step out. And you have to have a certain
• 53:02
  amount of Faith walking into this.
• 53:04
  Book, I would say, I mean, it sounds to me like in your, in
• 53:09
  your experience, the Urantia book is a matter of faith.
• 53:13
  I mean, you have to kind of believe that their death is
• 53:17
  possible for this reality to be true and and it and you can't
• 53:22
  prove it by its own. What you've just said is that
• 53:26
  that even Calabrese is stuff is biased.
• 53:28
  So would it stand up to peer review, how could you peer
• 53:32
  review for example, the paper On the celestial Artisans.
• 53:38
  Couldn't tell right? You couldn't.
• 53:40
  Well, here you would have a tough time but you would, you
• 53:45
  know, you anything goes I'm in a sense of Academia.
• 53:49
  You can take on any problem. That would be one, I wouldn't do
• 53:54
  first, but I would certainly look at its claims about Christ.
• 53:58
  That is a plausibility in the idea that Christ would say such
• 54:01
  things, is there a possibility in the idea that That say, there
• 54:05
  were women. Apostles you know the woman's
• 54:10
  evangelist is that set a plausible idea or is that just
• 54:13
  some freakish off-the-wall New Age idea and that's that's not
• 54:21
  such a stretch for a scholar or you know more I think more
• 54:26
  important. Let's look at the Theology of
• 54:29
  the Urantia book is that a contribution to theology it?
• 54:33
  Or is it just you know, some 19th century ideas ideas of Just
• 54:38
  Sadler's ideas. Well, if you if you drill down
• 54:41
  into currency, ology the Rancher books.
• 54:43
  Theology saw some big problems that are not solved, especially
• 54:49
  evolutionary deity and there were suggestions of evolutionary
• 54:53
  deity, very strongly and whiteheads.
• 54:56
  Work-in-process theology is very well established but the Rancho
• 55:01
  book has much more to say about evolutionary deity.
• 55:04
  Then even Whitehead. We can, you know, that does.
• 55:08
  So I presented the ranch book to a leading scholar in process
• 55:13
  Theology and this person's fairly excited and I will I will
• 55:18
  meet this professor in Denver at the par-5 who's like, wow, this
• 55:23
  is interesting. You guys came up with this and
• 55:24
  that that's what white head came up with and you guys extended in
• 55:28
  these directions. And so you can find it, you
• 55:31
  build these Bridges where you may not have thought because
• 55:37
  evolution Has really begun to validate the the Urantia book
• 55:42
  and evolution of theology is validating the Rancho Theology
• 55:47
  and the science according to Calabrese is also being
• 55:50
  validated. So we just need to step out and
• 55:54
  be willing to take the arrows of criticism.
• 55:57
  Yeah that's that's the thing is we have to be willing to do that
• 56:00
  and I think it's a good thing that you're going because you
• 56:03
  put that you put a very good face on The credibility of the
• 56:06
  Rancho book. Which could you know, and in
• 56:09
  line with that part 3 of the Urantia book.
• 56:12
  There's a statement, the authors say the the historical records
• 56:16
  of this. What is stated here?
• 56:19
  The statements Will Stand The Testament of time or the test of
• 56:23
  time and so I take that to mean that there's a lot of Discovery
• 56:27
  to be made in the Rancho book particularly part 3 in The
• 56:31
  Sciences, even going back to, you know, the origins of our sun
• 56:36
  and the nebula. And, and correlating the big
• 56:39
  bang, and trying to figure out. There's just the it's up to me,
• 56:42
  if, as a scientist, if somebody handed me a book and said, you
• 56:46
  know, if you read about the geological history book, you
• 56:49
  might learn something from this book, that could help you in a
• 56:52
  discovery of something that could further along, you know,
• 56:56
  that that particular discipline. And I think that's what also
• 57:00
  needs to take places. People need to find evidence in
• 57:04
  this book. That's that, that how did this
• 57:07
  book? No this.
• 57:08
  How did they know that there's Shale all over?
• 57:11
  Can you know, Kentucky, who knew about?
• 57:13
  You know what I'm saying? And they describe, you know, and
• 57:17
  I think there's there are Nobel prizes to be won just by
• 57:21
  applying some of the, some of the clues that the that are
• 57:27
  contained in the book to me, that to me is exciting.
• 57:29
  The astronomical information that they have the types of
• 57:34
  planets that have different kinds of Worlds could help us.
• 57:37
  Maybe Look a little deeper at certain or you know, they're
• 57:41
  discovering planets all the time that are in that Goldilocks zone
• 57:46
  all the time and in this your Angela puts a face on that.
• 57:50
  And you know, there are planets where you have three foot high
• 57:53
  people that are not necessarily descendant from lemur like they
• 57:59
  have different, you know, that to me just opens up a lot of
• 58:02
  different worlds of Discovery. So hopefully, this will be a big
• 58:06
  first step in that direction. Erection because I think that
• 58:08
  would help validate at least Drive some curiosity and and
• 58:13
  then do what you say, the peer review.
• 58:15
  I think that's important. Yeah.
• 58:17
  Thank you saying and so well said and you know I think so
• 58:20
  those are actually career directions for young people
• 58:25
  coming up is like, hey man, I'm going to base my career on what
• 58:29
  the Rancher book says about the location of Eden.
• 58:32
  Yeah, for example and you know that connection as you know,
• 58:36
  there's been too Additions to the site.
• 58:39
  Yep. You know the second was funded
• 58:41
  by the History Channel and you know scientists were aboard that
• 58:44
  ship and really the problem there was the equipment
• 58:47
  malfunction and you know but that's a very interesting
• 58:51
  invalid pursuit of scientific geological or archaeological
• 58:58
  Pursuit just by itself. Could be somebody's career in
• 59:02
  archaeology and fact we involved with that.
• 59:07
  Project and its really been revived.
• 59:10
  I'd say because of the new interpretation of the data that
• 59:15
  Captain Robert Bates is put out in a book called the Eden
• 59:20
  Atlantis project and it's just another example of these areas
• 59:24
  where we need to look at what what what the legacy is and then
• 59:30
  correlated with the UB. We in this case, in Roberts, our
• 59:33
  mask looked at Plato's Legacy and everybody else to talk to
• 59:37
  Atlantis. Right?
• 59:39
  And then correlated it with real data with the guidance of the
• 59:43
  ranch book. So, you know, it's just, there's
• 59:45
  a hundred things like that that are waiting for us to have the
• 59:50
  courage to take. Take them on.
• 59:52
  Did I ask you since you're you're aware that project.
• 59:55
  I've always been curious. I don't know whether it was
• 59:58
  Howard Katz, ins stuff that he did early on.
• 1:00:02
  But it is am I right in guessing that the peninsula?
• 1:00:07
  Of the edenic peninsula is off the coast of Latakia in Syria.
• 1:00:13
  There's like a drop off cliff where you could actually almost
• 1:00:18
  kind of see the curvature of an inland now.
• 1:00:21
  Submerged Inland or is it somewhere else?
• 1:00:25
  Do you do we know where the actual or would he do?
• 1:00:28
  He's suspect from Bates and sorry, Mass work that that we
• 1:00:32
  know approximately where Eden is located.
• 1:00:36
  Yeah, we have a Divergence between the two star Masters
• 1:00:40
  you. I guess you were alluding to
• 1:00:42
  came out recently and said, you know, we really have the wrong
• 1:00:47
  area of Eastern Mediterranean and if you're referring to that,
• 1:00:53
  yeah, we we being rubber baits and and I, yeah, I agree with
• 1:00:59
  him on that respectfully and based on the data, and the
• 1:01:05
  analysis. The data that already been
• 1:01:08
  obtained. We think that there's a very
• 1:01:11
  strong indication that we were right, that he was right in the
• 1:01:15
  first expedition and and so baby might want have Bates.
• 1:01:19
  Come on your show because he's active and I'm working with a
• 1:01:23
  moose was a few other people including a couple of
• 1:01:25
  archaeologists and I have come to our son and and he is really
• 1:01:31
  strong on this in the book that he put out, which I helped him
• 1:01:34
  with was very strong and not well received in the Rancher
• 1:01:38
  Community for whatever reason. But it's a data analysis of the
• 1:01:43
  already acquired data things that people missed because
• 1:01:47
  everybody was so disappointed after the second Expedition
• 1:01:50
  because of the failures of the equipment.
• 1:01:53
  But so he stuck with it and you know, on the larger point, the
• 1:02:01
  contextual we have a contextual problem because somebody just
• 1:02:05
  pitched this To the Discovery Channel, right?
• 1:02:08
  A really good person at the Discovery Channel.
• 1:02:12
  Now has this data, but they have never heard of the ranch above
• 1:02:17
  course. We have a huge problem with this
• 1:02:21
  guy, but I think you would, he looks at the way Bates, laid out
• 1:02:25
  the data in these beautiful color, color, images, and
• 1:02:31
  illustrations, then it's pretty compelling.
• 1:02:34
  But again, he's like, who are you?
• 1:02:36
  People, where'd you come from? What is this text?
• 1:02:39
  It's just, it's daunting, you know?
• 1:02:41
  Yeah, so the boulder based Historical Society we call
• 1:02:46
  ourselves Urantia that's all. But what so where is it?
• 1:02:49
  So where did where is Eden? Where did it, what what part of
• 1:02:52
  Syria did it spring off from before it got submerged?
• 1:02:56
  So many thousands of years ago, Dude, did I miss what you?
• 1:02:59
  What? You had said?
• 1:03:01
  Yeah, that there was a disagreement.
• 1:03:03
  Now, the original song, the sunken And so called told Amell
• 1:03:08
  of its Keys sort of continent scientifically.
• 1:03:12
  Yeah it has this, you know, this apparent connection but as one
• 1:03:18
  mile down, right? So so you got to do is get some
• 1:03:21
  good instruments out there to validate that.
• 1:03:23
  But we, we think even in 2007, we have enough validation of the
• 1:03:28
  original thesis but star Mass has this new thesis and there's
• 1:03:32
  this other pretty prominent guy that has says it's even On
• 1:03:36
  further south toward Israel and all that seemed to be sorted
• 1:03:41
  out, but I think that they chose, you know, the artifact on
• 1:03:44
  the ocean bottom, it was identified even in the first
• 1:03:48
  Expedition, which is 1 mile plus straight line with a right
• 1:03:53
  angle, turn very distinct. 90 degree, right angle turns is
• 1:04:00
  can't possibly be natural. And that that's not a disputed
• 1:04:07
  in. It is a piece of data, nobody's
• 1:04:09
  streets that data. And and so that that is one of
• 1:04:14
  several key elements. Then he, you know, sore Mass had
• 1:04:20
  the view that that was a wall. But Bates has changed that
• 1:04:25
  interpretation to. I don't know if you heard this
• 1:04:29
  Jim but that that's the sewage system home.
• 1:04:34
  Conduit that the UB tells you about, right?
• 1:04:38
  Well, yeah, yeah. So he's saying that.
• 1:04:40
  So so the, you know, this is a serious space on 10 years of
• 1:04:45
  studying the data that they. So I don't know how we got into
• 1:04:48
  style changes but no, but it's very interesting too because it
• 1:04:51
  kind of lends itself to the Or idea.
• 1:04:53
  That yes, there's a lot that Academia could benefit from the
• 1:04:57
  study of the Rancho book and this is just one example of
• 1:05:00
  that. Well, listen.
• 1:05:01
  I yeah. Go ahead.
• 1:05:04
  Final question. You're evolving sold book, did
• 1:05:07
  well. Were you surprised?
• 1:05:11
  Oh yeah I you know I didn't know what to think but it I wouldn't
• 1:05:14
  say it's sold that that well but it was well reviewed and thank
• 1:05:20
  you. Yeah.
• 1:05:20
  I mean I think people who've read it really like it and I
• 1:05:24
  often hear from them so you know, there's a hunger and
• 1:05:27
  there's not an I know there's all kinds of self-help books out
• 1:05:30
  there. But, you know, the basic
• 1:05:32
  questions. Why are we here?
• 1:05:33
  Where are we Goin? What's our purpose?
• 1:05:35
  What's the soul? How do I pray?
• 1:05:37
  Those are the basic Fundamentals and you know almost like you
• 1:05:42
  know there is a, is a good example, just pops into my head
• 1:05:47
  at some point. I think Society had a hurricane
• 1:05:50
  and it's separated basic religious.
• 1:05:54
  You know what they call the classics, the the new people
• 1:05:57
  today. There's a gap that they did, it
• 1:06:01
  didn't carry over, you know, from you think about innate, the
• 1:06:06
  1800's everybody learned how to read by reading the Right that
• 1:06:10
  if that's not happening today, you know.
• 1:06:13
  So there's a there's a there's a language may be a spiritual
• 1:06:16
  conceptual deficit, even in basic things like the soul.
• 1:06:21
  I mean, the soul used to be something that was debated.
• 1:06:23
  Now, you know, other than the upcoming conference.
• 1:06:27
  I don't hear those kinds of discussions.
• 1:06:29
  Being debated on, you know, Kelly Clarkson or, you know,
• 1:06:36
  whatever TV show is on. They're not having The Urantia
• 1:06:39
  book, you need to go to Ted Talks, that's what you need to
• 1:06:42
  do, Byron, you need to get yourself invited on TED talks
• 1:06:47
  and get over there and get those people to, you know, learn the
• 1:06:52
  name, your Ranch. Uh, because right now half the
• 1:06:55
  time people go. What what is that?
• 1:06:57
  What is that Chacha? It'll come back Rancho.
• 1:07:09
  The ranch the ranch. So we got our work cut out for
• 1:07:12
  us, you kind of dressing. But yeah, I mean, you know, if
• 1:07:18
  I'm inviting colleagues to join me in this end of it which is
• 1:07:22
  bore a little bit more of the academic end of it but maybe we
• 1:07:28
  can conclude with that. The initiative that I have has
• 1:07:32
  two parts, one part is the academic or a seminary, this a
• 1:07:37
  20 year. Project.
• 1:07:39
  But, but that, if we're training, people see, a
• 1:07:42
  logically that we should train them to be ministers as well.
• 1:07:47
  They along with rain. They've tried that didn't enjoy,
• 1:07:51
  I don't know. Somebody tried to your Ranch is
• 1:07:53
  school. Grant University?
• 1:07:57
  Yeah. The well that's still going and
• 1:07:59
  it's still okay. And I think it's growing and and
• 1:08:02
  but it's got the Paradigm of were not in relationship to the
• 1:08:07
  Christian tradition. We are separate and distinct,
• 1:08:12
  and stand above, and beyond it. That's, that's kind of the
• 1:08:16
  posture of the ranch University, which I honor what they're
• 1:08:20
  doing, but I disagree respectfully that the ranch book
• 1:08:25
  does not stand alone and you the.
• 1:08:27
  So University should have courses in biblical studies.
• 1:08:30
  Yeah. Right, right.
• 1:08:31
  I feel like there's a little guy ranching but I just think it's
• 1:08:37
  not responsible. The way to do it because the
• 1:08:40
  ranch Builds on the tradition and I, you know, I say, you
• 1:08:45
  know, with all humility that I'm trying to show that in my book
• 1:08:51
  that the Rancher book is in intertextual, it's in
• 1:08:55
  relationship to our tradition. It is not settled.
• 1:08:58
  So in University training should be intertextual should be
• 1:09:03
  reading outside the ranch book, not just internally in the
• 1:09:06
  Rancher book, it doesn't work. I hear that she doesn't work to
• 1:09:10
  do that. It doesn't have the it has to
• 1:09:13
  have that scholarly credulity, you know, if you graduate from
• 1:09:18
  your Ranch University it should mean something and not just oh
• 1:09:21
  you're an expert at the ranch a book you know.
• 1:09:24
  Yeah just one little text versus versus versus, you know, you
• 1:09:28
  study part for let's say you had a study of part for the aren't
• 1:09:30
  University, the other be able to come out of there and say oh
• 1:09:34
  well these are these are these are things that Echo the Bible.
• 1:09:37
  You know this is where They're quoting literally a passage of
• 1:09:41
  Jesus in the Bible. This is biblical.
• 1:09:44
  Yeah. And so that you build a bridge
• 1:09:47
  to your colleagues in the churches rather than your
• 1:09:50
  Standalone sect. Yeah, without relation to point
• 1:09:56
  that, that's how you're a good point.
• 1:09:58
  Absolutely. I'm glad you brought that up.
• 1:10:00
  It's something for all of us to sort of take that in well.
• 1:10:04
  Byron, boletos is if I called you the Academic professor of
• 1:10:10
  the Year Rancho book and I wish you well on this upcoming event
• 1:10:15
  and and maybe we could have you back on and you could share some
• 1:10:19
  insights that you got from this upcoming conference.
• 1:10:22
  So good luck on that. Hey, listen by the time, I know
• 1:10:25
  we're at the time of the recording.
• 1:10:27
  It's a few days before the elections care to make any
• 1:10:30
  predictions. I think everybody is saying even
• 1:10:34
  Bill Maher just said last night, if anybody watches that, you
• 1:10:38
  know, he I think that the Republicans are going to, you
• 1:10:42
  know, be strong, really strong and that's just the way it goes,
• 1:10:47
  you know. And yeah, we have to deal with
• 1:10:49
  that. And you know, as your Ranch ins,
• 1:10:52
  we have a bigger picture. And so we have to Encompass,
• 1:10:57
  whatever happens, you know, with Grace, it's a way I would put
• 1:11:01
  it. Yeah.
• 1:11:03
  You know, I just think it's the economy.
• 1:11:06
  Stupid, everything is about the economy.
• 1:11:10
  And, you know, I learned during the hurricane that energy is
• 1:11:14
  very important without it Society.
• 1:11:16
  Crumbles very quickly. So anyway, but it's good to
• 1:11:21
  catch up with you. Thank you again for coming on
• 1:11:23
  and the new book is going to be out truths about evil sin, and
• 1:11:27
  the Demonic toward an intrical theodicy for the 21st century.
• 1:11:32
  So it is a fantastic read. Absolutely, I'm about 3/4
• 1:11:38
  through and just it's a wonderful book.
• 1:11:41
  So when it comes out Amazon, is that the usual origin, press?
• 1:11:45
  Right? Origin press know, it's it's a
• 1:11:49
  press, is that it's an academic press and splitter will be on
• 1:11:53
  Amazon, but anybody listening to this, you know, it's likely
• 1:11:56
  someone, I know they can just contact me and I'll send them
• 1:11:59
  the PDF because this is because an academic, Pushing their now
• 1:12:03
  charging a lot of money for a book.
• 1:12:06
  It's going to be close to forty dollars.
• 1:12:09
  So I want my friends to have it so I'll send you the PDF.
• 1:12:13
  Okay. Alright.
• 1:12:14
  Well we'll talk again, thank you a bar and I appreciate it.
• 1:12:17
  And I am very curious to hear how it goes with the the
• 1:12:20
  upcoming conference. I think that'll be excited.
• 1:12:22
  Thanks for watching. Thanks for checking out this
• 1:12:26
  latest podcast. And again, thanks to Byron for
• 1:12:28
  joining us. Don't forget new episodes.
• 1:12:31
  Now, twice a week, follow this podcast and be sure to share it
• 1:12:34
  with fellow truth-seekers. You want to know more about the
• 1:12:36
  ranch book? Also follow us online, at your
• 1:12:39
  ranch or radio dotnet. I'm Joe Watkins.
• 1:12:41
  Thanks for stopping by.