Talk:2016-08-21-Solving the Disunity of the Urantia Revelation

January 2, 2017

Rob wrote: Jan 2, 2017 at 11:06pm

Dear Friends,

Many of you know of the recent document "Solving the Disunity of the Urantia Revelation” attributed to an anonymous source and distributed by Nick Scalzo of Clinton, CT. I am in the process of formatting it in the wiki, and you can view its present form at this link. I would request your own comments in writing to be included in the discussion page. Likewise,would you be willing to invite a larger number of individuals whose comments might be solicited as well by the Editorial Advisory Board itself?

Looking forward,

Rob--rdavis 07:04, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

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Rob wrote: Jan 2, 2017 at 11:48pm

Hello Nick -

As I have uploaded the document re: Solving the Disunity of the Urantia Revelation… in a publicly accessible online reference work, I wanted to verify that indeed, the last few lines in which your contact information is found is what you want to be affixed to the document as it is featured here.

I am soliciting comments from individuals I know who are serious students of The Urantia Book even if a majority are not affiliated with the organizations referenced. Their comments will be included in the document’s discussion page Naturally, if you wish for your comments to be added, let me know.

Gratefully,

Rob Davis--rdavis 07:17, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Nick Scalzo wrote: Jan 2, 2017, at 11:31 PM

Rob, Please leave my contact information affixed to the treatise on "Solving the Disunity of the Urantia Revelation." It is there as it should be for those of spiritual insight who have finished reading it should they have question that I can answer.

Please distribute it to all who would benefit from it by any and all means that you can.

Please ask them to contact each one of the three organizations with their cry for unity as the treatise suggests even though they may not be members or supporters.

Let the UF, TUBF and UAI know that if they should ever become one in unity that will attract the non-affiliates to their doors.

May God bless you in your efforts in seeking truth, unity and the Revelator's mandates.

I am with you in Service to Michael in accordance with the Father's Will.

Warmest regards,

Nicholas Scalzo (860) 669-4900

January 3, 2017

Marty wrote: Jan 3, 2017, at 9:55 AM Marty resent my letter to tml, ctc, and his harpofgod bulletins He added a note saying:

NOTE: Comments can be by reply to this post or directly to Rob Davis <rdavis@daynal.org> We are already late since New Years Day in getting started with this job. Let us get busy. Marty.

Rob wrote: Jan 3, 2017, at 11:48 AM

Hello Nick -

Thank you for confirming the inclusion of your contact information at the end of the document. We’ll see what thoughts emerge, and I will include as many as I can to demonstrate the range of thinking in readers of The Urantia Book at this time. No doubt, for those who can see, the hand of our Father is shaping a new world in and through his children. How wonderful to be alive in Him!

Gratefully,

Rob--rdavis 20:03, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Gerald Farley wrote at 20:15 UTC

Thank You Rob and Marty. The openness, transparency and humanness approach is refreshing. Can anything on this material plane really be personal? I liked the way Jesus dealt with it all. He was only interested and focused on Our Father's Truth and allowed the human propensity for right and wrong to disappear as the illusion it was.

Gerald Farley

January 4, 2017

Marty wrote at 10:03am

We are hereby informed of the errors of our Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood and their failure to engage the mandates given to them upon the publication of the Urantia Book in 1955. The joy that we all have in the light of this Epochal Revelation is now shadowed by the default of our mission to prepare the infrastructure for worldwide readiness for the transformation of the religious life on this world.

The scheduled time is now arriving wherein our world's spiritual development is in need of the corrections that are presented by the Urantia Revelation. It is time to bring Light and Life to this world of rebellion and confusion. It is time for the epochal transformation of the spiritual life of our world; The very purpose of the FER. It is also given that an Avonal Son is due to arrive here at such a time as this, but we have not made the preparations.

Now we are given a chance to correct our mistaken efforts. It is the job of our Foundation, Fellowship, and UAI to follow the instructions given in the treatise below.

Although this is not our personal responsibility as readers, It is our responsibility as members and as recipients of their ministry to provide them with support and to assist them in the needed correction.

Our Sonship that comes with our indwelling Father Fragments, with The Spirit of Truth and the ministry of our Divine Mother, give us great spiritual capabilities which we can manifest collectively by the unification of our intentions and the union of our TAs.

Let us come together in support of the officers of the Urantia Foundation and of the Fellowship to assist them in the correction of this default. We are told that the solution to this problem is simple. However it will require a full-hearted decision by each and all of us to abandon our characteristic political viewpoints, argumentative or competitive tendencies, and fears, so that we can come together in unity of intention in the love of God to fulfill the mandates given by the revelators. This will require a very great personal effort by one and all of us who have been raised and trained in competitive self-service.

In prayer and supplication let us conjoin, sharing our intention to correct the default of our movement. Let us ask the chief of Thought Adjusters who served Michael of Nebadon as Jesus and who also served Machiventa Melchizedek, to help in our collective effort to bring our officers and trustees together in unity. Let it be so.

Rob wrote at 1:53pm

Thank you for sharing Marty!

After spending some time reading this document, it is apparent to me that the thought expressed is one wholly occupied with visible and material means rather than the one invisible and spiritual end that is the essence of life. I am reminded that any visible organization cannot handicap the progress of the invisible and spiritual brotherhood that is the kingdom of heaven. It is this spiritual reality that is becoming a living organism in contrast to any institutionalized social organization, and while it may be well to utilize such social organizations, the spiritual cannot be supplanted by them.

January 5, 2017

Marty wrote at 11:05am

Rob,

I am addressing the failure of the contact commission/Urantia Foundation, Urantia Brotherhood Corporation, and we, the first generation of readers to carry out the mandates given to us in 1955. People are questioning the source and validity of this notice of default but I do not doubt its true meaning for us as workers for the FER who should be carrying out the mandated establishment of this infrastructure for the transformation of the Urantian spiritual experience, initiated by this epochal revelation.

I do not believe that there is anything in existence in the entire master universe that does not have spiritual meaning. Social institutions, every one of them, are spiritual organisms that have a life of mortal souls in collective endeavor. Indeed, that is the the very substance of the living spiritual brotherhood of the Sonship.

My question is, "What are we to do about the accomplishment of these designated mandates"? Unlike the default of Adam and Eve, we still can correct the errors of our default. There is still a little time left for us to work on this problem. I have already recommended that we join our TAs in cooperative conjoint consultation with their chief to help us stir up our administrators in the Foundation and the Fellowship. It would probably be a good idea for us all personally to make contact with these officers to ask that they make the effort to accomplish the required task.

With the help of our Planetary Prince, the ministry of the Angels, the hierarchy of Heaven, and the United Midwayers of Urantia, we readers of the Book can still get this job done in preparation for the coming of our Avonal Son.

In the joy of Sonship,

Marty

Rob wrote at 9:39pm

Thanks again for sharing Marty!

I appreciate your efforts, and while I concur with the document as it pertains to the material endeavor of book publishing, I cannot but observe the thrust of the document focused upon the construction of ‘a’ religion with details as to how it should be made. Here I remain as an observer of the chameleon like changes in the material forms attempting expression of a spiritual content that is eternal. While it may be that the religion about the Urantia Book is an evolutionary step forward, it remains a second hand religion. Alas, religions are not made. The religions of human construction grow up over long periods of time while the revelations of God flash upon earth in the lives of those who reveal God to their fellows. And just as those who heard these words uttered by Jesus did not comprehend them then, neither it seems do those who read these words today.

Looking forward,

Rob

January 6, 2017

Marty wrote at 7:12am

Rob,

I have not seen any "detailed instructions" about establishing a new religion, only the mandate of fostering of religion, (as organized by the readers meeting in their study groups with intention to update worship in the light of the new revelation.)

4. Foster a religion: This mandate has never happened at all, nor has it ever been discussed or taken seriously. This is one method by which Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood were to carry out their goals. These words were given respectively by the Revelators to both organizations and carried on by the three organizations today. Also look at the objects and purposes stated in their respective Declaration of Trust of Urantia Foundation, the Constitution of the Fellowship, and the Charter of the UAI. They all share the same mandate, except for the amendments made in default or unauthorized actions. In addition to not carrying out this mandate from the Revelators, UAI actually changed their version of it by adding the word, ―Personal,‖ and the Fellowship amended their wording, confusing the meaning.

We have begun to celebrate Suppers of Remembrance and gatherings on the Birthday of Jesus, But we have not really focused on the organization of a church where we can gather regularly to share worship in the light of our new revelation. Religions are evolutionary, fostered by revelation, not evolutionary without the help of revelation.

Thanks for your thinking Rob. I highly value your thoughts. Marty

Byron wrote at 10:21am

Rob, as you know, I generally agree with the position of Marty on this. Over the years you have argued fervently against the “exoteric” aspect (organizational, institutional manifestations) and you make good points. But formal religious expression is natural and evolutionary and inevitable, and especially important for children’s socialization and also the formation of communities of worship and support that all adults need unless they are very advanced and able to dwell entirely in an esoteric relationship with the unseen brotherhood. The idea here is that we should have used the UB to seed our ideas in a vast formal Christian institutional structure. We’ve had near-zero impact in that domain such that millions (actually billions) of Christians have no idea of the FER. That shows a vast incompetence in our outreach, obvious to all objective observers, which is addressed in the document. That said, I am not personally very impressed with the authenticity of Scalzo’s document, especially since it makes no mention of the Correcting Time, Teaching Mission, etc. and for other reasons.

Happy new year to all,

Byron

Mer wrote at 11:31am

This has been an interesting conversation to listen in on!

Marty, I very much enjoyed, and frequently agreed with, your perspectives while seeing value in Rob's as well. I took the time to read the Disunity document over and contemplate it, and although I find it believable that much of it may be divinely inspired, I do not think it will be adopted by the major organizations due to it's failure to deal authentically with its' authorship. The author, who ever he or she may be, implies repetitively that they have a hotline to God and inside information about who's in default, why, and what must be done. This is just unacceptable and repeats an error the Teaching Mission made over and over. There is NO hotline to God. I've never met anyone who had one. That's not meant to imply that communication with the divine does not occur. We all know with a great inner knowing, that it does. The problem is, one can never be sure which messages you've heard correctly and which have become garbled in translation. The Urantia Book warns us many times about the difficulty of accurate communication with the divine and the dangers of assuming that what you've heard is the definitive word of God.

I do not mind the author choosing to remain anonymous, and I find many of the ideas to be positive actions that could promote unity. In my opinion, however, if the author had given a disclaimer, honestly stating that the ideas presented were his/her best understanding of the divine will, instead of suggesting he/she had certain knowledge of the divine plan, the odds of success would have been higher. Since many of the movement's leaders lived through the whole Family of God/end of the world scenario, they are never going to accept (perhaps wisely) unsubstantiated claims of definitive precognition of the divine will. We all need to grow up and accept the difficult realities of trying to communicate with God from planet earth. A healthy balance is possible, and I pray that we may find it! I want to see the movement reach a state of spiritual maturity which constantly seeks answers from on high, yet never attempts to mislead others about infallibility, and maintains an honest and rational skepticism about what is heard.

with love for my brothers, Mer

Well said, Byron!

Rob wrote at 12:42pm

Thank you Marty!

I have always maintained that there exists one letter in the Declaration of Trust that is problematic, namely the letter ‘a’ in the clause cited below to “foster a religion”. The letter ‘a’ signifies one among many e.g. one of many competing religions currently operating in this world, some as evolutionary repercussions of ‘revelation’. However, the document becomes explicit in the section entitled “Current Status of the Revelator’s Mandates” where it is observed that as "there are none ordained”, a failing grade of F is given.

Nevermind the overall tone of the document reading like a new age version of the infamous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by the colonial theologian Jonathan Edwards, or perhaps more accurately, a contemporary Sales Director of the media monster owned by Rupert Murdoch whose lust for profit has wreaked ruin upon some of the best book publishing in the field of religion.

The ritual celebrations you cite are healthy unconscious developments that are emblematic of any effective cult. These are natural evolutionary repercussions of sharing the experience of ‘revelation’, at least in this case, such as is confined with the covers of The Urantia Book. Of course, we have observed in the course of our lifetimes how hostile an attitude can be fostered toward 'continuing revelation' in any thinking they are in possession of an 'epochal revelation’ underscoring the irony of this document’s attribution.

Gratefully,

Rob

Rob wrote at 12:51pm

Hello Byron -

Yes, we are (in) familiar territory here ;-)

It is a misperception that I have argued against formal (exoteric) expressions of an unspeakable inner (esoteric) experience. It would be more accurate to say that I but maintain the primacy of the inner life as the creative source of (all) that which is visibly manifest around us. When persons value sharing that inner life over and above any material artifacts emerging from it, we will be well on our way into the settled culture of “light and life”. Until then, the material inertia of attachment to these ‘artifacts’ offers a necessary evolutionary brake upon progress that is however being lifted much in this time of correction.

Gratefully,

Rob

Rob wrote at 2:50pm

Hello Mer -

Good to ‘see’ you in the conversation!

The error in the proverbial ‘hotline’ to God is manifest in every ‘communication’ given the inherent limitations in the use of symbols. This will persist as long as methods of indirection are relied upon so heavily, especially in worlds lingering in the after effects of isolation. Otherwise, I sense as you do, the unlikelihood of existing Urantia Book organizations taking seriously any semblance of ‘continuing revelation’ since the organizations’ existence relies upon an exclusive focus on a single episode of ‘revelation’.

Gratefully,

Rob