Author: Jim Watkins

Producer, author, media developer, podcaster, national radio host.

What Exactly Is A Urantian?

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What is the difference between the Christian and Urantia Worldview?

By James R. Watkins

In that I was brought up in what I consider to be a typical Judeo-Christian culture, and having spent the better part of forty years studying the Urantia papers, I think I can offer some perspective on the differences between what a Christian believes and what a Urantian believes, as well as what similarities there are between a person who is Christian and a person who believes the Urantia Book is a divine revelation.

For example, most Urantians completely agree with the concept that Jesus was the Son of God, that he was sent here as a human being, and was and is the Lord Jesus Christ. Both Christians and Urantians’ believe that we all have eternal life, that Jesus is our savior, and that when Jesus taught about God, he was personally representing God the Father in the flesh. This is the bedrock of the Christian faith, and the Urantia Book, which declares that Jesus was a revelation of new spiritual truth to mankind.

Where we begin to differ, or separate our views are discussed below. It is also pertinent to the greater discussion that people in the future should probably know what exactly a Urantian is, so as to differentiate itself from mainline Christianity, so that people don’t think the Urantia Book is some off-shoot, or New Age fringe element of the Christian church.

So what are the primary differences between what a Christian believes and what a Urantian believes? Before we answer this question, let me first share the commonalities between Christians and Urantian faith, and they are:

  1. The belief in the divinity of Jesus
  2. The belief that there is a God, a father of all creation, that life – and our existence – is part of God’s plan
  3. The belief in an eternal life where we become spirit beings who continue to worship God in the afterlife
  4. That the Jewish people were chosen to introduce monotheism into the world, and they were the first to recognize the one true God above all other Gods
  5. That there is sin and evil
  6. That Adam and Eve were real
  7. People possess souls

Where we differ would require volumes of text, but in a nutshell, here are the primary differences between what Christians believe and what Urantians do not believe:

  1. That you have to accept Jesus as your savior in order to be “saved”
  2. That there is a hell
  3. That Jesus was the only Son of God
  4. That Adam and Eve were the first humans
  5. That evolution is false
  6. That the Bible is the “Word of God,” thereby the final spiritual authority in book form.
  7. That no other writings or revelations can be added to Scripture
  8. That all other religions are false
  9. That Jesus had to die in order for our sins to be forgiven by God
  10. That the Church is the mediator between God and Man
  11. That Mary was a virgin
  12. That the Devil is the creator of sin in our world
  13. That man “fell” from Grace because of the knowledge of eating the forbidden fruit
  14. That Eve was the mother of sin and her sin cursed humanity

Here the basic tenets of the Urantia faith, or ideology:

  1. That God is a spiritual creator of all spirit-indwelt human beings
  2. That everyone has soul-potential
  3. That Jesus came to show us a new revelation of God the Father
  4. The Atonement Doctrine (the belief of Jesus dying for our sins) is wrong
  5. That there are angels and other spiritual beings who co-exist with us, but that we are limited by material vision so we don’t’ see them, though they do see us and try to minister to us
  6. That as long as you have some level of belief, you will survive mortal death and be given a new body in which to continue on (and that you will remember your life and your fellows from this world when you get to the next)
  7. That there are trillions of worlds just like ours, filled with beings like ourselves who also have the same spirit in them
  8. That evolution is the technique God uses for life to progress
  9. That the Urantia Revelation was not written by humans, but really did come from spiritual beings who were given the task of introducing new spiritual truth to mankind
  10. . That Science and Religion should co-exist. One measures facts, the other, truth.

Now when you compare something like this to biblical teachings and “the sacred history” of the last few thousand years, you begin to appreciate the vast gulf that exists between what the Urantia Book presents and what Christianity presents in its present form.

Comparing the Bible to the Urantia Book is like comparing Aesops Fables with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

The Bible, written between 800 BC and 400 AD, had a fixed viewpoint on reality, one extremely limited by the lack of scientific knowledge, and produced mostly by men who were searching for God and spiritual truth, but were still vastly backward in their understanding of the universe at large, not to mention the ignorance of their own history.

This is not to take away from the spiritual truths of the Bible, and there are thousands of them; the Bible represents the history of man searching for God, and finding him, and also captures enough of the essence of Jesus‘ teachings to immortalize it.

But the Urantia Book brings those truths and many other relevant concepts into much clearer focus by declaring, first and foremost, that God is at the center of all things, but also that scienctific discovery of the great truths of reality is not contradictory to the premise that the universe is a spiritual enterprise, and not random.

The Urantia Book teaches us something of the nature and growth of the Supreme creator and preaches truth, beauty and goodness as beings Gods nature.

Most religions avoid Science, the Urantia Book embraces it.

Most religions focus on tradition and cultural inheritances and practices. The Urantia Book clarifies where those traditions came from, and the purpose they served in helping to develop man’s spiritual quest.

Most religions represent man’s desire for knowledge and truth, The Urantia Book tells us what that truth is and why we desire it.

Not a bad thing at all. But Christians makes a huge mistake when they declares its supremacy over all spiritual truths, even to not recognizing when new truth has been revealed, as in the case of The Urantia Book.

Some have said the Urantia Book is to the New Testament what the New Testament is to the Old Testament, a fulfillment of the ages, a confirmation that the truths in the Bible are in fact, based on an essential truth, which is we are divinely endowed and that life has real spiritual purpose, even beyond the flesh.

And so this statement is really a declaration of my hope that someday, future Christians will begin to see that Urantians’ are really fighting the same fight, which is to reveal God to our brothers and sisters so that they can rejoice in the realization that they too, are citizens of this new reality that encompasses not just our planet, but the entirety of creation.

Think about that the next time you are sitting alone at night gazing up at the stars, that is creation, and you are a part of it.

The Great Ideological Struggle

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by James R. Watkins

August 19, 2019

The great ideological struggle of the modern age is between Faith and Secularism, between those who “hold these truths to be self-evident,” and those who believe the world is what we make it, that we are simply human beings whose rights come from the society in which we live, that scientific materialism is where we derive reality from; that there is no such thing as eternal truth, but rather, relative truth that serves the moment at hand.

At the root of Western society is the idea that individuals have liberties such as the right of self-expression, the free exchange of ideas, to congregate and protest, freedom of movement. freedom to own property. But in secularism, we serve the State, the Party, or the greater good as determined by those who are in power.

At the root of communism is secularism. Communism could never exist in a society of deeply religious people because people who have faith would never submit to the State, only to God.

This is why China doesn’t allow formal religion, it usurps authority away from the State.

Socialism, an offspring of secularism, leads to communism because in essence, the State must govern for the greater good. The individual only matters in proportion to the group.

Sadly, millions of people prefer this social construct because it removes responsibility from the individual and moves it to the collective; the individual no longer needs to apply judgement, he merely agrees with the social order, only needs to agree that it is “best for the greater good of society.” This why the Chinese government can remove any citizen who is deemed “an enemy of the State.” Human rights do not come from God, they come from the State.

If you asked our political leaders (who endorse socialism) what they think of religion, they might be dismissive or they will probably give it light mention. To the secularist, as to the communist, Religion is an opiate, and psychological safe space, a distraction.

Sooner or later, as we have seen, the State requires 100% submission.

But here is the danger.

In the West secularism is eating away at religion. Our educational system is completely secularized, advocacy groups are going to extremes to remove religious symbols and history from State and federal buildings, holidays that were once rooted in religious culture have been secularized: Easter has become ‘spring break,’ Christmas is now ‘winter holiday,’ even Thanksgiving has been thoroughly secularized and commercialized.

Secularistic science tells us that such concepts are myths based on a need for man to explain things, and in doing so science disregards the fact of the reality of existence of God, asserting therefore that we exist as a result of random causation, simple cause and effect; that our existence has no discernable divine hand; that good and evil are just relative values we invented mere labels we use to assign people who are bad or good as just being disabled or suffering from mental illness. People of faith, in this system are labeled intolerant, weak-minded, prejudiced, unscientific, homophobic, racist. Religion is marginalized.

Modern society struggles with religion because we are now several generations deep into a culture that has accepted the notion Science explains everything – and that religion is nothing more than a custom of old belief systems that developed long before science started answering all of our questions about life.

And yet, there it is. People have faith, they believe in God, they pray, they worship. They follow Jesus as their lord and do wonderful things. They pray to allah and submit to his grace, they live the law and have faith in the mercy of God, the most high, the Lord God of Israel.

History tells us that religion is not only good for society because it instills and upholds morals and ethics from one generation to another, but because it more importantly instills family-values which lie at the cornerstone of any solid society. But wait, there is more, and this is key.

The idea that maybe there is – now hold on – such a thing as salvation, a furtherance of existence beyond our mortal shell, an idea so foreign to main street and western culture that it is not even talked about, not in public, not in private, except as some sort of myth unworthy of a truly reasonable mind.
(long pause)

Paper 195, section 6, 7 and 8 talks about the dangers of secularism, it warns us that a society based only on securlistic ideals cannot survive, that without God, our society will eventually disintegrate, that secularism betrays man because he goes from being a slave to the church to being a slave to government and to politically tyranny, which we are now seeing.

In 1935 it warns us that more “terrible destruction to come.” And then we remember that the Urantia Book was written just a few years before World War 2, and of course, the hundred or so million people who died in Russia under Stalin and in China under Mao, secularist regimes that rule under tyranny, the offspring of secularism.

The great ideological struggle is between attaining a society that is based on enduring spiritual principles that give value to the individual human spirit, who we believe is self-evident as being a child of God, or we adhere to humanistic, materialistic principles that give no regard to such ideas such as human rights, only of “universal rights,” or social rights and social justice. When you hear those words you’ll know who is speaking.

I know a lot of people who simply don’t believe in religion, they don’t get it. I understand. But I’m warning them, don’t be fooled into believing that God doesn’t matter in a society just because you feel that way, or that faith doesn’t matter in a society because you don’t have faith.

You don’t want a global society that turns its back on spiritual ideals and truth. That’s China, a total surveillance society where anyone who dissents is put to death or taken off and put away in a labor camp.

Say goodbye to freedom of thought, freedom of expression, of freedom itself. These are spiritual principles because they give account to enduring principles of fairness for the individual.


God and the preservation of the rights of the individual vs. Man and the emphasis on group rights as determined by government. This is the great ideological struggle of our times.

The point of all of this is that I believe this current ideological struggle is being waged now, as we speak. We see it being played out in China between the Hong Kong protestors and the dictatorial Chinese government; in America we see it being played out between the progressive and atheistic Left and the Conservative and sometimes religious right who are vying for political power; in Europe between the globalists and the nationalists who are losing rights “for the greater good,” even in some countries in the Middle East between those who want islamic reform, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the oppressive regimes that still march to the medieval trumpet blasts of religious tyranny not unlike we saw in the early Christian Church.

The great ideological struggle is all around us.

It is stated that “crisis comes before destruction as well as growth.”

Which outcome will we choose?

Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen?

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You hear it after every tragedy, “If there is a God, why does he allow bad things to happen?” Of late, it is actually turned more antagonistic. Celebrities, and even some political leaders, have declared prayers are now worthless; government must act to prevent these mass shootings.

We see death, mayhem, and we want answers.

One great quote is from the film Murder by Decree, where Christopher Plummer, as Sherlock Holmes, declares, with tragedy “we look to God for answers and when we get none, we blame the devil.” The devil in this case, is too many guns and not enough regulation. What isn’t discussed is our culture and how we have marginalized violence.

It takes a village.

I would draw your attention to two paragraphs from Paper 56  in the Urantia Book (pertaining to the problems of the evil and why it occurs) that discusses tragedy, about shared responsibility in any system where free will exists, as these points best illustrate our need to stand back and look at the whole picture of why mass shootings happen in society, why seemingly meaningless tragedy strikes us with no discernible reason.

In these excerpts, the Revelators give us pause in explaining how it is that sin, rebellion and evil are allowed to exist:

54:6.3 If an affectionate father of a large family chooses to show mercy to one of his children guilty of grievous wrongdoing, it may well be that the extension of mercy to this misbehaving child will work a temporary hardship upon all the other and well-behaved children. Such eventualities are inevitable; such a risk is inseparable from the reality situation of having a loving parent and of being a member of a family group. Each member of a family profits by the righteous conduct of every other member; likewise must each member suffer the immediate time-consequences of the misconduct of every other member. Families, groups, nations, races, worlds, systems, constellations, and universes are relationships of association which possess individuality; and therefore does every member of any such group, large or small, reap the benefits and suffer the consequences of the rightdoing and the wrongdoing of all other members of the group concerned.

54:6.4 But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suffer the evil consequences of the sin of some member of your family, some fellow citizen or fellow mortal, even rebellion in the system or elsewhere—no matter what you may have to endure because of the wrongdoing of your associates, fellows, or superiors—you may rest secure in the eternal assurance that such tribulations are transient afflictions. 

These excerpts may not lessen the grief, but it is a reminder than in life, even in tragedy, there is divine wisdom at play. Only an Infinite personality can know “why”. Finite beings such as ourselves must await time to provide this insight as to why these things happen.

And yes, we should continue to pray. Prayer will help us gain insight into God’s mercy and Gods wisdom, that is if we are open to it and willing to change as individuals and as a society.

Life on Other Worlds

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Today it was announced that astronomers have discovered a possibe life-bearing planet a mere 31 light years away.

It’s exciting to think we may very soon discover other life bearing planets. Nothing would excite the human spirit more than new life discovery, it would confirm our suspicions that we are not alone. It might even confirm that if there is one other planet with life, there must be others.

With the exception of the several hundred thousand Urantia Book readers, most of this worlds 6 billion people have no idea what awaits, they have no clue that not only is there life elsewhere, there is abundant life.

In our present grand universe, there are upwards of 700,000 unique universes, each of which has the potential of producing 10,000,000 individual worlds capable of producing evolutionary life, just like us.

The UB lays out the plan throughout the book. Someday Science will know this as will the people of this world, and when the truth does finally reveal that we are not alone, and that there is a spiritual order to life, our world view will change.

And this is what I ponder with every new scientific discovery that confirms what the Urantia Book stated in 1934.

Indeed, these are exciting times.

Joshua Harris Defects: A Teachable Moment

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Audio Narration

I don’t know Joshua Harris, but I am sure he helped a lot of people. Christians do that. It is what they are supposed to do. Serve.

Harris recently announced that he got it wrong on his Christian faith and he is leaving the church, well, kind of. In Evangelicalism, you don’t just leave the church, it leaves you.

No one knows for sure why Harris decided to hang up his Christianity, but many people say it is happening more often these days, disenchanted Christians leaving the Church, leaving their faith behind.

But maybe the reason Christians are disenchanted is not because they are tired of Jesus, but because of what the Christian Church has become, a political body of sorts, a super club that includes a list of litmus tests that you have to agree to in order to be saved.

Perhaps Mr. Harris grew weary of the various codes he had to follow, belief systems he had to adopt in unison. Perhaps this believing son might even feel like he is betraying God, or giving up his soul in order to gain the world,

I have a much different take on Joshua’s dilemma, as well as the dilemma of millions of people who would otherwise gladly follow Jesus’ teachings if they didn’t have to travel through a maze of theological rules in order to find the living Jesus, and the living God.

As a Urantia Book student who understands the importance of having a loving and deep relationship with God, I know how it feels to be scorned by the Church, of having to suffer being under suspicion because my faith doesn’t hold up to every precept and code taught by the Church, who requires me to do so in order for me to be counted as “a true believer.”

In the Urantia Books’ case, the Church has gone so far as to declare the revelation false, as possibly the work of false prophets. This tells me that the Church which bears Christs’ name will never reconcile with any other group that espouses Christs’ teachings – unless they do so in exact uniformity, unless the Church, no pun intended, gives its blessings

Anyone who doesn’t believe in certain doctrines like The Bible as the nly word of God, of holy books, of Original Sin and Atonement, or a virgin birth are declared excluded from God’s kingdom, according to religious authority.

Further, most Christian’s today are being forced to choose between having God in their life – to the exclusion of being able to love and have relationships with people who may not hold the same views, or they must renounce themselves as “true Christians.”

As funny as it sounds, Christian’s seem to have the monopoly on who gets to follow Jesus, and you have to play by their rules; you must be sanctioned through the process of accepting their mores.

This is why I believe the “Nones” are growing. The Law of scripture, has taken over the Spirit of the Lord. The Church has become exactly what Jesus fought against, formalized, fossilized TRUTH frozen in time, unyielding and unforgiving.

Ironically, the very challenges many believers face today are the same as when Jesus walked the earth, dealing with the religious authority of his day, the Pharisees and Sadducee’s – those who enforced Mosaic Law, and controlled who were admitted into God’s kingdom, those who were to be saved by God, and those who perished.

You had to play by their rules in order to get in, and I think today’s Christian is faced with a similar environment of religious authority; an all or nothing proposition.

Jesus says we did not come here to judge, but to serve.

In paper 155 of the Urantia Book, Jesus is giving his discourse to the Apostles on what the spirit of truth is, excellent points that perhaps apply to Joshua, and are well worth remembering.

And I will conclude by sayng this. Joshua Harris, don’t despair. You can have God in your life, and you can still have Jesus as your elder brother and fellow Son in your heart. None of that changes when you leave the church.

God is not a suckers proposition, an either/or – proposition. He belongs to you and I know you know that Josh.

It is written, it is far better to have a religion and not have a church, than to have a church and have no religion.

Here is what Jesus stated in the Urantia Book, and its is a short quote, but also helpful for many people today who love Christ, love God, love to serve – but don’t dig the Church because of it uniform belief system that fossilizes truth.

Said Jesus:

The religions of authority can only divide men and set them in conscientious array against each other; the religion of the spirit will progressively draw men together and cause them to become understandingly sympathetic with one another. The religions of authority require of men uniformity in belief, but this is impossible of realization in the present state of the world. The religion of the spirit requires only unity of experience—uniformity of destiny—making full allowance for diversity of belief. The religion of the spirit requires only uniformity of insight, not uniformity of viewpoint and outlook. The religion of the spirit does not demand uniformity of intellectual views, only unity of spirit feeling. The religions of authority crystallize into lifeless creeds; the religion of the spirit grows into the increasing joy and liberty of ennobling deeds of loving service and merciful ministration.” (Paper 155: 6:9)

Are We Entering The Dark Ages?

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This excerpt is reprinted from Roger Scruten, a well regarded and highly respected Western Philosopher.

There is much that he says that reminds me of the Urantia Book’s narrative on the Angels who carry truth from culture to culture. I hope you will read the entire article posted HERE:

This final passage is most distressing and has to do with the cultural direction of humanity, and the potential dangers that lie ahead if we do not push back with spiritual force, and is why I share it:

We used to look in astonishment on Moscow show-trials, in which the victim, convicted of deviationism, left infantilism, bourgeois idealism, “neo-Schellingism”, Zionist imperialism or whatever, is given a brief chance to confess enthusiastically to his fault, before being taken away to the firing squad. Where was the evidence, we asked, and what exactly was the crime?

Now we see respectable thinkers accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia and a host of other thought crimes, on the strength of a word out of context, a long-forgotten friendship, or (as with Jordan Peterson) a photograph proving that you are capable of standing next to someone wearing the wrong kind of T-shirt.

The punishments are mild compared with those of the Moscow trials. But they are severe enough, as I and Peterson have both discovered. And in every case there is no defence. For every attempt at a defence entrenches the accusation. If you point out that the thought crimes are largely chosen to mean whatever the accuser wishes them to mean, then that is sure proof that you are guilty.

We are, it seems to me, entering a realm of cultural darkness, in which rational argument and respect for the opponent are disappearing from public discourse, and in which increasingly, on every issue that matters, there is only one permitted view, and a licence to persecute all the heretics that do not subscribe to it.

This signifies, to my way of thinking, the death of our political culture, and the rise of a kind of godless religion in its stead.

END

China vs God

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While those of us in the West continue to enjoy our modern-day comforts we need to be concerned about what is happening in China, namely a fever-pitch rise in secularism and a new form of totalitarianism injected with modern tools that make resistance almost impossible.

Today, the threat of atheism, which fuels authoritarian rule, is even greater. China contains half of the world’s population. It also has its tendrils throughout the rest of the world as it becomes even more aggressive as a police state at home and industrial mob-boss abroad, employing new technology to monitor and control not only its own “netizens,” but its global partners as well, as detailed in this report you might find most disconcerting.

And this gives me pause to reflect on the subject matter contained in Paper 195 of the Urantia Book, where the authors extensively discuss the dangers of two primary social constructs of the modern age:

  1. Materialism/Secularism
  2. Totalitarianism

In my early years of study I had considered these two subjects directed more at the early 20th Century, as modern secularism through socialism was quite rampant and of course, Russia and China were pursuing communist goals which opened the door to Totalitarian governments in smaller countries like Cuba North Korea, and others, as this horrific ideology spread

Over time Russia seemed to moved towards a more open Democracy (relatively speaking), and China also seemed to be embracing modern open-markets and presumably, seemed more open to democracy.

Wrong.

If you read the news you are becoming aware that human-rights in China are at an all-time low, and religious expression is under full assault by the Communist party. When half of our world is run by a government which has made it against the law to believe in God and only give adherence to Chairman Xi, there is a problem. 

One wonders what our unseen friends make of it.

Urantia Book Historian Larry Mullins mentioned he was informed on one occasion the Revelators, during the early years of World War II, had expressed grave concerns (in the spiritual echelons of planetary government) about the rise of communism, so much so that it delayed the completion of the Urantia Book for almost ten years while celestial and world armies were at busy at war.

Because China wields so much planetary influence, it is easy to contemplate the importance of not letting an atheistic regime such as China’s reign supreme.

In an update, 27 victims of the Chinese government gave testimony today in Washington. These members, many of whom spent years in prison because of their faith in Falun Gong pledged to witness to the world the atrocities that are even now occurring in China against people of faith, and more pressure is mounting, the word is out, at least in the West, and one only hopes that the actual people of China can be made aware of the atrocities that are being committed in their name, the peoples name, as the Communist Party of China seeks to stamp out God in its country, in order to keep its country under lock and key in both mind and spirit.

The Right To Believe Is Under Assault

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by James R. Watkins

Podcast

What is religion and why does it matter?

Religion is based on a singular idea that there is more to life than just the material world. If you go back in history, you will notice that man has always sought knowledge of the “ghost world”; Man at first negotiated with spirits to effect “good luck,” and later, these very same impulses evolved into the things like magic spells, incantations, and finally, to a thing called “prayer,” which led ultimately to worship.

Again, you may be someone who is not particularly interested in religion, but because man has religion, all of our moral codes, our laws, our “rights” have derived from the religious concept of morality. The Greeks were arguing this point 2500 years ago.

Mankind has long debated the existence of a spiritual world, if for no other reason than we have this inclination to seek truth, and if that truth also includes a place, or even just an idea, of something more ennobling than just physical life, one begins to understand that religion on its own, represents an intellectual desire to find and understand truth. 

In other words, people have, to a greater or lesser agree, religion in our DNA. It is hard-wired for us to seek truth and understanding, and these are religious impulses. How we choose to express our religious impulse explains why there are so many religions in the world, and not all of them have bore good fruit, but in its essence, religious is what distinguishes us, more than any other attribute, from our animal cousins. We are the only species on the planet that “worships.”

Now in today’s world, that might not mean as much because of secularism. But what should interest you is that there is a concerted effort by a growing number of people and governments who want to minimize, marginalize or otherwise diminish the importance of religion, and for a number of reasons you need to know. 

Many ex-religious people, or non-religious groups seek to get rid of religion simply because they don’t think religion is important, or necessary in today’s “scientific age,” and thus, they pressure governments under the guise of the separation of Church and State to remove religious symbols and literature from the public domain. I suppose the thinking here is that if we remove religion from society, society will be free of religion. This idea totally disregards the fact that people are born with a desire to be religious (which is the desire to seek spiritual truth). Even if this impulse isn’t equally shared by non-believers, in a pluralistic society such as ours, it is always in everyone’s interest to protect the right of the individual to choose and practice one’s faith openly without fear of persecution.

Still, other groups, like the Communist Party of China, want to eliminate religion because they see it as a threat to the State.

Others still may only want to remove all religions except their own in order to establish a total theocracy, like what Iran and Saudi Arabia attempt to do. And still there are others, for purely selfish reasons, think that religion is nothing more than a barrier to a happy life ( truth is relative, religion is oppressive, etc). And guess what, this should be protected, too!

The point is that religious freedom, the right to have faith, the right to practice one’s faith is part of our collective human culture and more so, may find origination in a spiritual reality. To deny someone the basic right to explore this idea is the most egregious thing you could to do a person. It’s like taking away someone’s right to eat.

Most of the laws that govern society are rooted in original religious belief. To suggest that mankind no longer sees value in religion is to state that religion is nothing more than an outdated cultural phenomena, and yet, the length that people will go to protect religious faith is one of the most ignoble acts one can ever witness. 

And such faith-conviction is but just one sign of religious “staying power.” Without it, many people would be lost, including this author. I stand by my right to believe just as I will arduously defend another person’s right to not believe. To me, it is the battle of human dignity and nothing less.

I shudder to think of a world without religion. I fear that if that day should ever come, a supreme darkness will hover over this land, not because of an angry God, but because of an angry man who now has complete dominion over all, without regard for a higher source or even a higher truth. 

When man becomes God, watch out. Think Hitler, think Mao, think Castro, think Stalin, think of the hundreds of millions of people who have died because these individuals ruled without God. And even today, I am afraid Xi Jinping falls into this category; he is a dictator who rules under the iron fist of oppression, and it is exactly because he has no God, or religion in his heart – that he can exert such pain and suffering to so many, without remorse. Only a godless man could be so cold to the indifference of human suffering.

And it won’t stop there my friends.

Hear my words. We have to stop religious oppression in all of its forms. When you see religion being marginalized, speak out. When you see a religious person being made fun of, or you hear a story of someone being attacked or victimized because of their faith, speak out. When you read a story of a person who has been persecuted because of their faith, speak out, especially if you are not religious. Because when they are done with the religious people, who do you think they will come after next?

When Will Science Realize The Urantia Book is a Treasure Trove?

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Urantia history encompasses an additional one million years of human activity that modern paleontology current does NOT take into account. Today’s paleontology is barely scratching the surface on things older than the last 4,000 years (going back to about 1,800 BC); the further back in time modern science attempts to go in its attempt at piecing together human evolution, the sketchier’ facts become, which is why there are more theories about human development than there are facts.

I’m noting that the Urantia Book is formatted in four parts; each section presents a historical narrative of origins, purposes and projected outcomes of universal growth.

Part three of the book is our history, including the origin of the specific nebular family from which our solar system found its origin.

Current scientific theory states all material in our universe, including our sun, is just under six billion years old which is comensurate with the Urantia Book account, which predated carbon testing that could confirm this fact.

A lucky guess?

Interestingly, every new “discovery” published today in science Journals typically – though not always – confirms or validates the previously stated Urantia narrative.

Willard Libby developed a carbon dating technique in the late 1940’s, eventually winning a Nobel Prize in 1960 for his application of using radiocarbon dating to determine the age of materials.

Though not always completely accurate (depending on what material is being measured and dated), the oldest rocks are 4.7 billion years old. We know that our earth is about 4 billion years old, and we estimate the sun is 4.7 billion years in age.

Here is what the Urantia Book stated in 1934, over a decade before carbon dating methods could validate the following statement:


 “5,000,000,000 years ago your sun was a comparatively isolated blazing orb, having gathered to itself most of the near-by circulating matter of space, remnants of the recent upheaval which attended its own birth”.

Our earth was stated to have been “born” about 4.5 Billion years ago when the sun disgorged mass that was not recaptured, our planets having been formed from the cooling of this mass to the point of becoming solid, except of course for the four gaseous planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus).

That the Urantia made these statements long before they could be confirmed only emphasis this author’s point that the Urantia Book is a treasure trove of historical information that could save modern scientist time in discovery, not only in our study of astronomy, but also of most of our human history and pre-human history.

Further, we can learn and perhaps evaluate more effective ways to harmonize our global efforts by studying the Urantia historical narrative.

There are several dozen statements about Neanderthals contained in the Urantia Book that have only been recently confirmed by “new discoveries.”

Priot to the 2003 Smithsonian Magazine article published by Joe Alper, the Urantia Book had already narrated, some 70 years previous and with explicit detail, the migratory patterns and the cultural development of this renegade subset of humanity we now call The Neanderthal Man, as I pointed out on my book A New Revelation.

Science had not yet confirmed until 1992, who this superior breed of early humans where, who appeared sometime between an older species of man (1 million years ago) and a later, more developed species of man (40,000 years ago).

And yet in 1934, a tome called the Urantia Book dedicated an enormous amount of information describing this species, including specfic data regarding when they emerged (800,000 years ago), where they emerged from (Siwalik Hills in Northwest India), how long the existed (750,000 years), and the migratory patterns of this early human race as they spread throughout Asia, Europe, North Africa and elsewhere, long before we knew these things in modern times.

Consider this excerpt from Paper 64:

“The Neanderthalers were excellent fighters, and they traveled extensively. They gradually spread from the highland centers in northwest India to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into northern Africa. They dominated the world for almost half a million years until the times of the migration of the evolutionary races of color.”

“800,000 years ago game was abundant; many species of deer, as well as elephants and hippopotamuses, roamed over Europe. Cattle were plentiful; horses and wolves were everywhere. The Neanderthalers were great hunters, and the tribes in France were the first to adopt the practice of giving the most successful hunters the choice of women for wives.”

And finally, this little nugget of information that was finally confirmed and published in National Geographic in 1992, some 58 years after it appeared in writing on the pages of the Urantia Revelation:

“The reindeer was highly useful to these Neanderthal peoples, serving as food, clothing, and for tools, since they made various uses of the horns and bones. They had little culture, but they greatly improved the work in flint until it almost reached the levels of the days of Andon. Large flints attached to wooden handles came back into use and served as axes and picks.”


I would point out that none of what is stated above was theorized at the time the Urantia Book was written, but was subsequently pieced-together during the 70’s and 80’s as new fossils and remnants of culture had been discovered. Even today, there is much discussion about how much Neanderthal DNA we have in modern humans, a relatively recent discovery because of our improvements in DNA mapping. Here again, the Urantia Book states just how much we interbred with this one time robust race of early men long before modern science began to address this question:

“In general and to start with, the Sangik (the colored races who emerged around 500,000 years ago) tribes were more intelligent than, and in most ways far superior to, the deteriorated descendants of the early Andonic (the first human race who emerged 1 million years ago) plainsmen; and the mingling of these Sangik tribes with the Neanderthal peoples led to the immediate improvement of the older race. It was this infusion of Sangik blood, more especially that of the blue man, which produced that marked improvement in the Neanderthal peoples exhibited by the successive waves of increasingly intelligent tribes that swept over Europe from the east.”


For those not familiar, the “blue” man were the Cro-Magnon Europeans, what science might today called Homo Sapien (we are homo sapien-sapien, or “modern man”).

When we factor in our racial differences, our genetic history, our cultural development as they are explained by the Urantia Book, one begins to see the impact the Urantia Book could have on our current research of man’s early history, and further, through a greater understanding of our past, the Urantia Book offers real insight as to how were got here today, and further, what kind of future we can expect depending on our present actions.

This article is not a finished statement.

The Neanderthal Mystery That Isn’t

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For years scientists continue to be baffled about the origin and migration patterns of the Neanderthalers. They continue to be suprised, and then therefore need to constantky recalibrate their data with every new discovery. Indeed, this race of early man provides great intrigue, mainly because of one single quedtion. Why did they failed to survive?

I posit, because of my knowledge of the historical accuracy of the Urantia Book text, much time and energy could be saved if the science community would at least consider what the Urantia revelation can offer in terms of concrete data that might aid in accelerating new discovery.

For example, this most recent discovery has to do with a genome seqeuence of one particular fossil of a male that contains a unique signature not usually found with any previous Neanderthal fossil.

This specimen indicates that this new Neanderthaler came from an even earlier hominid species – much older than previously thought, a species that existed more than 700,000 years ago, which means Neanderhalers existed much longer than the current 150,000 year timeline.

The Urantia Book states emphatically that 750,000 years ago this race (The Neanderthal species) emerged from a tribe of homo sapien (whom they call The Badonans of what is now Northwest India), and further, this robust new species lasted for more than 500,000 years, until the superior colored Sangik tribes (whom Science refers to as the homo sapien sapien) wiped them out).

The Urantia Book also says Neanderthalers earliest fossil records can be found in the Swahilik Vallet in Northwest India, start there. This is where Neanderthalers came from. Not Africa, not Europe, but India.

There most be a treasure-trove of fossils ready to be discovered which would excite any anthropologists or archeologist looking to secure a Nobel Prize.

Most, if not all new discoveries about this mysterious race were documented in 1934, when the Urantia Book was written.

But sadly, even after so many validations of the past six decades, Science continues to ignore this great revelation of pre-human history.

Mankind’s Next Important Chapter

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I want to share some thoughts having to do with the study of Paper 81 on The Development of Civilization – how we got here and what happens next.

For those who are not familiar with who the Adamites and the Nodites were, these names reference ancient superior races who were descended of Adam and Eve, as well as a previous race of “Mighty Men of Old’ (Genesis 6:4) who are identified as the Nodites (‘In the land of Nod, where Cain found a wife” (Genesis 4:16).

On the advice the Revelators give for maintaining civilization in the face of our modern challenges, the underlying lessons I see from Paper 81 are important to understand.

These are surely unprecedented times, the accumulation of the ages forcing us to adapt as no other generation before us has ever had to face. Needless to say the message is loud and clear: Things are changing and you need to be prepared!

Paper 81 summarizes two key points:

1) That we are the end result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary hard labor, coupled with the help of advanced races of the past.

2) That because we are “plunging forward” with the “accumulated momentum” of the previous few hundred thousand years of evolution, a spiritual foundation (or renaissance) is now needed to keep society from breaking down.

The Nodites, Adamites and the mixed Andites started out as spiritually superior races and cultures, as well as also being biologically superior. They have now been completely absorbed into the six primary races of mankind (and the earlier aboriginal Andonites, as well). We are what remains, and so now that we have benefitted from this collective soup of human genomes, both of a divine and a materially progressive order, perhaps now we can start to progress in our spiritual attainment in the coming age. 

The revelators say the next age will be marked by the desire to improve our “quality of thinking.” 

Our intellectual progress AND our spiritual perception must be improved if we are to withstand and control the tidal wave of accumulated momentum that is pushing us forward with breakneck speed.

And that is the challenge, isn’t it?

If mankind is to take that very next important evolutionary step towards world peace and brotherhood, we must improve our thinking, as well as our spiritual understanding of things; not just with the pre-occupation of knowledge alone, but also of meanings, values, purposes, eternal concepts and long-term goals of spiritual-as well as intellectual discovery.

I can’t say it any more plainly than this. But perhaps the late great thinker Steve Allen said it best, echoed by the late-great comedian George Carlin:

“We need to stop being stupid.”

Why Urantians’ Should Pay Attention To China

Published on by Jim Watkins1 Comment

As of this writing, it can be confirmed through numerous and reliable sources that the government of China, the largest government on the planet, is routinely harvesting organs, primarily from religious people who have been imprisoned for being found guilty of the egregious crime of displaying their faith in God.

The Epoch Times, for example, documents as many as 3,000 recent cases where people from South Korea, Africa snd Middle East have traveled to Chinese hospitals to recieve organs, with wait times no longer than a few weeks.

For a Urantian, a person who is familiar with the historical roots of spirituality, this is an unprecedented horror. That a country five times more densely populated than the United States, can, with unfettered ability, persecute people in the form of removing their organs simply because the believe in God, Jesus, Buddhist, or Allah, is beyond reprehensible, and marks a very dark chapter in the annals of human history.

Such methods of human governance also perfectly illustrates why it is so neccessary to have God in our conscience. If ours was a secular government which denied that we were “endowed by our creator,” then we too would have a government that puts its own selfish needs before the dignity of the human spirit. And there is always this ever-present danger if we don’t, as a people, protect religious liberties.

Our ignorance, or our unwllingness to confront organ harvesting within China’s borders is a battle cry for every person of faith who believes something should be done to help save every Falun Gong, Christian or Uyghur Muslim alive today who faces this kind of torture.

I will compose a follow up article on what I think could be a viable step towards helping the prisoners of conscience in China if I can reach 1000 interested readers.

I hope you will share this message.

Below is a 4-part audio summation of this report.

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Jim Watkins is 30-student of The Urantia Book, a national media consultant, author and former network talk show producer and host of the Candidly Speaking political blog and podcast

To My Fellow Humanist, No Thanks

Published on by Jim Watkins5 Comments

by Jim Watkins

A group called Good Without God wanted its city to remove a cross that was erected to honor a World War I veteran.

The case, like many, seeks to uphold the seperation of Church and State, with which I firmly agree. The State should never foster or inhibit religion, it’s in our Constitution, and it is relevant because no government should ever pick sides on which faith it supports.

But by the same token, Good without God is a misnomer. How can good without God be real? Good comes from God, good is God in action, his three personality traits are Truth, Beauty and Goodness. God is the source of all that is good, for goodness would not be possible unless human beings could percieve such a divine attribute; as spiritual beings we observe good, therfore, Good Without God contradicts reality.

I understand there are people who choose to believe there is no such thing as God. To many the idea is slavish, unreasonable and archaic. Humanism is exalted as altogether reasonable; hence it becomes defacto materialistic to assume that since no one can prove God exists, such a belief is unreasonable.

But Humanists miss the point. To assume there is no deity is to profess ignorance of origins. We have no idea why human will creatures have evolved, Science can tell us how, but not why.

Only a belief in a first or original source personality can explain why there is personality. If all things material have a source point of origin, then where does individual perception, personality interpretation find its beginnings?

The ‘why’ is God’s purpose.

If one chooses to believe there is no ‘why’ or purpose to the existence to life, then that is a belief system, a postulate that is also unverified.

An argument could be made that any Athiest group who demands the removal of religious symbols is asking for the prohibtion of religion – which is unconstitutional – and is asking the government to assert on one specific belief system or the other. In this case a non-believer is asserting his/her non-belief as factual, but unverifiable, over another who does believe in deity purpose, a belief which is also yet unverifiable.

Here’s the irony. That such sons of God should debate the ethics of governing is in and of itself, proof of mans’ desire to be godly and more perfect in his governorship, a spiritual principle.

To the Humanist, no thanks. I’ll stick with my belief system until you can prove to me that God does not exist.

The Safety of Non-Belief

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Western secularism has a done a terrific job at inoculating people from having faith or conviction.  We call them “the Nones,” people who aren’t particularly religious, and except for perhaps some minor flicker of faith in some vague notion of providence or the “common good,” most Nones are happy not believing in anything.

And there is a good reason for this.

Dr. Jordon Peterson explains in one of his many dissertations that “failure to engage means not having to say you are sorry for being wrong.” In other words, if you don’t believe in anything you don’t run the risk of being wrong, or being disappointed. For example, if you don’t believe in heaven (since you can never really know for sure until you die), then it won’t matter anyway. If it’s there, we’ll find out.

Most people have this same feeling towards religion.

One person told me “all religions say the same thing, and yet they all say they are “the truth. Who knows what the truth is? or even if there is truth?”

Another person once quipped, “why spend so much time believing in something you can never know is true?” In both scenarios, non-belief requires no action, no engagement, no risk.

But to those who are willing to engage and put their beliefs on the line, there is tremendous gain, and sometimes horrific loss. But you have to put it out there, you do have to have a dog in the race.

I can be committed to the environment or to Krishna, it doesn’t matter, I am making an emotional commitment to being involved because I believe there is a payoff to my emotional contribution; there is something I wish to gain. This is the same when it comes to having religious faith.

I have no doubt that many people of many faiths also feel love and comfort because of their religious faith. In a sense, the comment, “all religions are essentially saying the same thing is a true statement, because one thing (good) religions have in common is that they offer the personal religious experience, the payoff, and something you can never have if you are not religious, just as a person who, in Peterson’s model of social engagement, can never experience career success or relationship success if one never “puts it out there,” and risks rejection or failure.

For the Nones it’s a matter of being non-committed, and therefore, safety in non-belief.

Religion may very well be an invention of man to make him feel better, or it could also be something that is in our DNA because it was put there to drive our spiritual curiosity. Survey after survey says that people who have faith live happier lives, just as it is probably true that people who work hard have better careers or more satisfying lives. When your will becomes self-identified with a cause, any cause, you are engaged and the payoff is commensurate with the effort

Without engagement, there is no payoff, there is only sameness.

To the point of the second comment as to why anyone would choose belief in anything that cannot be proven in our lifetime, I believe this attitude is the result of secular culture that has been a part of the fabric of the Occidental West since the 17th and 18th Century. To paraphrase Allen Bloom from his 1990’s book The Closing of the American Mind,” it is easier to believe in nothing if you just believe in everything. 

Truth has become relative in our culture, it has become a shape-shifting, in congruent notion of evolving thought, aways in motion, subjective to the times and thoughts of the people. Except that in this scenario truth becomes non-absolute, and without absolutes there is no touchstone, no standard, no foundation on which to build. Truth may be relative to us, but this does not mean truth is relative. It only means we are growing in awareness of truth, which is what religious faith offers. Not truth in whole, but truth in awareness.

This is why God is elusive to many people, because they don’t want absolutes, it means they have to agree and be held accountable to that absolute; it means they have to adhere to something that is real and has meaning and is not subject to change. Gravity is an absolute. Thought (the ability to reason) is an absolute. Many argue God is the ultimate Absolute, or as the Urantia Book states, the “only un-caused cause.”

I could quote one of my favorite past time phrases which says that “it’s better to believe in God and be wrong than to not believe and be wrong,” but I really rather wish to close by offering advice to those people who truly believe there is nothing to believe in with conviction, or who subscribe to the belief that all truth is relative, and that message is this:

What gives religion its greatest appeal is that through faith, a will to know, God can be experienced now; you don’t have to wait until whatever happens after this life to find out jf God really exists. It is within each of us to know that answer now. All it takes is a little engagement – and a willingness to risk being wrong.

What a shame that so many people, if they would only have faith and engage in their spiritual potential, would discover the very spirit that eludes them because of their own present disbelief.

It is equally shameful that people are taught not to have confidence in themselves or in the spiritual quest. Religion may be man’s expression of his faith, this is true, so to some extent religion is man’s invention, a physical way to express spiritual feelings. but the real joy comes from experiencing your own faith firsthand.

Having faith requires risk to be sure, but the rewards are far greater than having no faith at all, which is to say you have no dog in this race and no payoff because there’s no investment of self.

To be safe therefore, is to not grow in awareness of truth.

New Neanderthal Study Confirms Revelation

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This is going to get real interesting.

For decades scientist believed, based on DNA and carbon dating techniques, that Neanderthals emerged much later, perhaps 250-500,000 years ago.

New research entitled Dental evolutionary rates and its implications for the Neanderthal–modern human divergence, written by Aida Gomez Robles, published in Science Advances, summarizes the research as follows:

   The origin of Neanderthal and modern human lineages is a matter of intense debate. DNA analyses have generally indicated that both lineages diverged during the middle period of the Middle Pleistocene, an inferred time that has strongly influenced interpretations of the hominin fossil record. This divergence time, however, is not compatible with the anatomical and genetic Neanderthal affinities observed in Middle Pleistocene hominins from Sima de los Huesos (Spain), which are dated to 430 thousand years (ka) ago. Drawing on quantitative analyses of dental evolutionary rates and Bayesian analyses of hominin phylogenetic relationships, I show that any divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans younger than 800 ka ago would have entailed unexpectedly rapid dental evolution in early Neanderthals from Sima de los Huesos. These results support a pre–800 ka last common ancestor for Neanderthals and modern humans unless hitherto unexplained mechanisms sped up dental evolution in early Neanderthals.

This research only confirms what was written in 1934 in Paper 64 on human evolution contained in Part 3 of the Urantia Book,  as it describes what led up to the evolutionary ‘next step’ of the appearing Neanderthal race.

From Paper 64:

   “To the east of the Badonan peoples (the earlier human ancestor), in the Siwalik Hills of northern India may be found fossils that approach nearer to transition types between man and the various prehuman groups than any others on earth.

   850,000 years ago the superior Badonan tribes began a warfare of extermination directed against their inferior and animalistic neighbors. In less than one thousand years most of the borderland animal groups of these regions had been either destroyed or driven back to the southern forests. This campaign for the extermination of inferiors brought about a slight improvement in the hill tribes of that age. And the mixed descendants of this improved Badonite stock appeared on the stage of action as an apparently new people—the Neanderthal race.

   The Neanderthalers were excellent fighters, and they traveled extensively. They gradually spread from the highland centers in northwest India to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into northern Africa. They dominated the world for almost half a million years until the times of the migration of the evolutionary races of color.

To add additional intrigue on both the new discovery and the Urantia Book’s narrative being in-sync, the method by which this discovery is made was through studying teeth evolution.

   Here, we receive explicit instructions from paper 65 in the UB on how to determine human transition periods by studying teeth:

   The continuation of such biologic adjustments is illustrated by the evolution of teeth in the higher Urantia mammals; these attained to thirty-six in man’s remote ancestors, and then began an adaptative readjustment toward thirty-two in the dawn man and his near relatives. Now the human species is slowly gravitating toward twenty-eight. The process of evolution is still actively and adaptatively in progress on this planet.

75 years later, a group of researchers solved the puzzle by doing just that, studying teeth.

 

As a student of the Urantia Book, you can’t help to enjoy the news when new science confirms statements in the Urantia Book, adding to its continued validity as a revelatory document.

Just one more example of why scientists today should eagerly study the Urantia Book for new clues to scientific discovery. There are several Nobel Prizes to be garnered by taking “clues” from the Urantia Book and confirming them with new tools of science.

 

URANTIARADIOLOGO