Urantia Book Commentary and Articles

by Ken Glasziou

Sooner or later Urantia Book readers are going to need to heed the calls put out by its revelators. One such is on page 43:

"The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness."

A high priority is assigned to bringing Christianity back from its present status of authoritarian religion to what it was always meant to be--a religion of the spirit centered on the relationship between the individual, the Spirit of Truth, and the Father Spirit within. This priority is emphasized in at least ten paragraphs in the Papers, such as:

"Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all menâ€¦."(2084)

Those Urantia Book readers who have already taken this task seriously have learned a lot about what is unlikely to achieve much in the way of long term success.

One historian remarked that the amazing rapidity in which Pauline Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire was because of the incredible relief it brought to people suffering from overwhelming guilt and the fear of punishment for sin. Apparently this syndrome was endemic and particular so among the many followers of Mithraism.

Today it persists in the form of the atonement doctrine. It is held so strongly that few clergy will risk the close to hysterical reaction that they know would follow if they even cast doubt on that doctrine.

Almost all Christians who are strong on atonement make no connection between what it may say about a God who is love and a God who demands the death of his Son before he will forgive his earthly children for their sins. They live happily with the contradiction that God is perfect love and that Jesus demonstrated God's love by dying as a propitiation for our sins.

So what can Urantia Book readers do to aid Christians to recover a religion of the spirit? A good start is to take notice of what Jesus told us:

"And this was his (Jesus) method of instruction: Never once did he attack their errors or even mention the flaws in their teachings. In each case he would select the truth in what they taught and then proceed so to embellish and illuminate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this enhancement of the truth effectively crowded out the associated error; (1455)

This instruction was later repeated to the apostle Simon:

"Jesus answered: "Simon, Simon, how many times have I instructed you to refrain from all efforts to take something out of the hearts of those who seek salvation? How often have I told you to labor only to put something into these hungry souls? Lead men into the kingdom, and the great and living truths of the kingdom will presently drive out all serious error." (1592)

So telling Christians where they are wrong does not appear to find favor with Jesus and is best laid to rest for good.

Jesus gave us an alternative, "Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work." (1932)

Another failure is to approach Christians with a new revelation. Whereas it may work for a tiny minority, experience has shown it is not the way to go. There may be a multitude of reasons, prominent among them being that Christianity has been satiated with false messiahs, prophets, visionaries, and charismatic would-be leaders. And certainly the warning of dire penalties in the Book of Revelations for changing any biblical teaching does engender wariness about embracing new revelation.

So what can we do? First we must have patience, tolerance, humility, and be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves--all these recommendations come directly from Jesus.

The switch to a religion of the spirit demands, as a first essential step, the establishment of a personal relation of the individual and the Father-Spirit within.

There are more than twenty New Testament verses that tell of our indwelling by the Spirits of the Father and the Son. Some of these are:

John 14:23...if a man loves me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.

John 14:26. The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father shall send in my name will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you.

Luke 17:21....for the kingdom of God is within you.
Matthew 10: 20. For it is not you that speaks, but the Spirit of your Father which speaks in you.

1 John 4:12. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us.

1 Cor. 3:16. Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

Galatians 4:6. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

This means we do not even need to mention The Urantia Book nor the Thought Adjuster. In any case the latter term has acquired unfortunate connotations since the Papers were received because of the use of "brain washing" and "thought control" as instruments for controlling the citizens of countries with totalitarian regimes .

At this stage it would appear to be far better to follow Jesus:

"Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you, by truth co-ordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you that they may gain what you have so acquired. The measure wherewith truth seekers are drawn to you represents the measure of your truth endowment, your righteousness. The extent to which you have to go with your message to the people is, in a way, the measure of your failure to live the whole or righteous life, the truth-co-ordinated life." (1726)

"Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all men." (2084)

Note that the emphasis is on us living the God-like life as revealed in Jesus' life and perhaps handing out a Urantia Book after truth seekers are drawn to us. Unless we at least attempt to do that, we make a mockery of the revelation if we identify ourselves as Urantia Book readers.

The phase in which our principal task is to help Christians to become aware of their indwelling may last for hundreds of years. Hence there is little reason to be anxious about what comes next. And in any case we have relevant advice from Jesus:

"You must, in all such matters, wait upon time. Time alone will ripen the green fruit upon the tree.

Season follows season and sundown follows sunrise only with the passing of time. I am now on the way to ..., and that is sufficient for today. My tomorrow is wholly in the hands of my Father in heaven." (1499)

Labels: atonement, Christians, God, Jesus, Ken Glasziou, New Testament, teachers, techniques, The Urantia Book

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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

An Introduction to The Urantia Book for Conservative Christians

Meredith J. Sprunger5/7/82

This document examines the nature of Divine revelation as related to the Bible and draws parallels to the spiritual experience of readers of The Urantia Book.

Contents:How We Got Our Bible
Recognizing New Revelation
The New Fulfills and Enhances the Old
The Human and the Divine
An Enlarged Spiritual Universe
Saviour of Mankind
On Approaching New Truth

Many devout Christians of conservative or fundamentalistic background have read sections of The Urantia Book and recognized the superb quality of its spiritual insights but have been troubled by the revelatory claim of the book or positions taken which differ from some of the literalistic doctrines of fundamentalism. These people over the years have written to ask questions, express perplexity, seek help, or challenge statements.

This paper seeks to speak with constructive understanding to these questions and spiritual anxieties. In many ways it has been the Christian fundamentalists who have maintained the vibrant spiritual emphasis of religion in America. Our intent is not to contend with fundamentalistic beliefs but, rather, to set these spiritual truths in a larger frame of reference which, hopefully, will enable those who hold to a conservative theology to more adequately understand that we subscribe to the same spiritual realities and are brothers in Christ.

Most people who accept the Bible as revelation do not do so because some one demanded obedience to this belief. They accept the Bible as the word of God because they recognize its spiritual truths. Your approach to The Urantia Book should be made the same way. Before you read The Urantia Book you should not regard it as revelation. Only after you have read it are you in a position to begin to consider whether or not it may have been inspired by God. Faith and conviction must come from honest and sincere inner leading and not from external authoritarian claim or demand.

How We Got Our Bible

In thinking about the entire question of revelation it may be helpful to know how we got our Bible. Theological schools devote entire courses to this question and dozens of books are available on the subject. But you can get a short; synoptic knowledge of the Bible's origin by going to the Public Library reference shelf and getting a copy of Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. Look up the term "canon," which means "officially accepted standards or books" and read about how we got our Bible.

You will find the Old Testament evolved in three main stages over thousands of years of history. It was edited periodically by many scholars. The entire canon of the Old Testament was not decided until around 90 A.D. at the famous Council of Jamnia where Hebrew scholars finally determined which books should be included in the "official" scriptures of Judaism. The process and the conclusions are much more complex and extensive than this brief description might lead you to believe.

The New Testament began in the early Christian Church as a series of papers and letters written by numerous people. These papers were circulated among believers, edited, combined, and added to by many early scholars and church leaders. The names of apostles were often attached to the better papers so that they would have more authority for church members.

From around 144 A.D. to 367 A.D. various scholars and bishops drew up their own lists of books which they thought should be canonical or officially recognized books. Finally, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote an Easter letter to the churches of his diocese in the year 367 in which he discusses the books which he considered canonical. This is the first list which includes all of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as we now have it. His list, however, was in a different sequence than our current New Testament. At various church councils in the years that followed, Athanasius' list was widely adopted and in this way we got our New Testament.

In Athanasius' pastoral letter he wrote with all of the authority of a bishop, "let no one add to them (his list) or take away aught of them." Such authoritarian exhortations were considered necessary to protect the purity of revelatory teachings; and statements like the admonition in Rev. 22:18-19 "I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book..." were common. In the same way the revelatory commission of The Urantia Book requested that the book be published under international copyright protection so that the purity of these teachings could be safeguarded. These precautions are not meant to imply that God ceases to enlarge the revelation of himself and spiritual truth to succeeding generations. The history of the Bible shows that God does progressively reveal larger truths to a developing world. Early religious leaders used authoritarian warnings and admonitions frequently to protect the latest prophetic messages.

Once you understand how the content of the Bible was accumulated, edited, adopted, and officially approved, you realize that revelation is validated by centuries of experience. Many people recognize revelation immediately because the indwelling spirit of Got confirms what they hear or read but it takes many people over a long period of time to establish a social tradition of revelation such as the Bible. This tradition along with the authority and prestige of the institutional church results in a cultural conditioning which largely determines how the average person thinks and acts.

Recognizing New Revelation

The Urantia Book being very new must be evaluated by the indwelling spirit of God working in the mind and heart-of each individual. You should accept nothing in The Urantia Book or any other book unless it passes this inner test of truth. I am confident that a thousand years hence, we will have a solid social tradition witnessing to the revelatory quality of The Urantia Book.

Revelation is always the product of the action of God in the life of man. God has an infinite number of ways to do this. In Jesus of Nazareth he used both genetic-physical and spiritual means to bring revelation to us in the form of a person. In the writings of Paul he used spiritual inspiration in the mind of Paul to bring us revelation in the form of brief letters to churches. In John's book of Revelation he used a vision to the mind of John to bring us revelation. In The Urantia Book he used high spirit personalities to bring revelation in the form of a book. God could use an infinite number of channels and manifestations to bring revelation to his mortal children. It is God's wisdom which determines the time, place, method, and form of revelation. We might speculate on why God uses certain channels and forms but this would only be an educated guess.

The spirit of God is always active in the world and in this sense revelation is continuous - usually through inner guidance to individuals who share these prophetic insights with their society. Periodically epochal revelations occur - such as the coming of Jesus. Epochal revelations naturally have a much greater effect on our world than the continuous forms of evolutionary revelation. A study of these epochal revelations show that each succeeding one enlarges and enhances the earlier spiritual understanding.

Revelation must always be given in the language, forms of knowledge, and philosophical concepts which are meaningful to the people given this revelation at the time in which it is given. As human knowledge expands revelation uses these more advanced concepts to convey its spiritual message. This is a never ending process.

The New Fulfills and Enhances the Old

Just as the New Testament fulfills and upsteps the Old Testament, The Urantia Book confirms and enlarges the truths of the Bible. Most people have a much greater appreciation of the Bible after reading The Urantia Book. The Bible and The Urantia Book are companion volumes. Not to recognize this close supportive relationship is to repeat an ancient error. Early in the Christian Church a wealthy ship-owner by the name of Marcion headed a movement to eliminate the Old Testament from Christian literature. The church wisely rejected his views. Any reader of The Urantia Book who took this same attitude toward the Bible, in my judgment, would be making this same mistake. There are many people, in fact, who have not been interested in the Bible until after they have read The Urantia Book.

Because of the natural suspicion conservative religionists have toward any claim of new revelation, a rather common reaction which well meaning fundamentalists have toward The Urantia Book is that it could be a work of Satan. This is an understandable attitude of people who do not have a scholarly background in religion and who have been taught to zealously defend the Bible. It is also interesting to recall that this was the same possibility raised in connection with the message of Jesus. Jesus' response to this accusation, I think, is as good as can be made. He said he should be judged by the fruits of his life - "How can Satan cast out Satan?" The Urantia Book should be judged in the same way. You will find it supports the mission and message of Jesus and refutes the intentions and message of Satan. Epochal revelation will probably always meet the same reception given the message of Jesus. The leaders of traditional religious institutions are likely to oppose it; but, in time, the common people will receive it gladly.

The Human and the Divine

A careful study of the life and teachings of Jesus reveals there is no contradiction between the spiritual teachings regarding Jesus found in The Urantia Book and the Bible. Certain physical and cosmological facts or assumptions are corrected and Jesus' entire life and teachings are enlarged by The Urantia Book; but the essential spiritual truths do not change.

For instance Christian theologians generally affirm that Jesus was both a human and a divine personality but the majority of scholars in mainline churches have long recognized that the story of the immaculate conception and virgin birth were added by the early church to make his divine nature more believable for the church members of those times. An interesting observation is that today, except for the most unlettered people, this story is generally a stumbling block to belief in the authenticity of the Biblical record of the divinity of Jesus. If the virgin birth is a historical fact, the reverse argument is a much sounder philosophical position. That is, since God could have used any method he desired to incarnate his son, the fact of the divinity of Jesus makes the virgin birth a possible option of the divine plan.

The reason most mainline church theologians do not accept the virgin birth story is that only two of the four gospels record it and no where else in the New Testament is it referred to The earliest gospel, Mark, and the latest gospel, John, do not mention it. Such an important event one would expect all of the gospel writers to highlight. Secondly, there are many instances of supernatural conception and virgin birth recorded in the annals of religious history. It was the characteristic method by which ancient peoples designated the divine origin of their prophets and leaders. Paradoxically, the Biblical account traces the lineage of Jesus back to David through the ancestry of Joseph, not Mary. Finally, modern Christian scholars reject the virgin birth story because it is observed that God usually uses the natural laws of his creation to work his purposes in the world.

The spiritual truth regarding the nature of Jesus is that he was both human and divine. This The Urantia Book strongly affirms. The book does not even mention the immaculate conception and virgin birth doctrines. It is assumed that the Father could incarnate his son as a mortal on our world through the natural process of conception and birth. The ancient legend is quietly ignored while the spiritual truths regarding the nature of Jesus are substantiated and enhanced.

An Enlarged Spiritual Universe

The writers of the various books of the Bible had a comparatively simplistic universe cosmology. They visualized a flat earth in the center of creation encompassed by the vault or "firmament" of heaven. This limited astronomical knowledge naturally conditioned their interpretation of spiritual realities and personalities. Basic spiritual truth, therefore, had to be revealed to the Biblical authors in prescientific frames of reference.

The revelators of The Urantia Book present a cosmology which, while in essential agreement with our present astronomical knowledge, goes far beyond our contemporary science. They also clarify our knowledge of the Paradise Trinity, the prebestowal personality and universe status of Jesus, and the functional relationships of spiritual beings in general. Although the Bible does not speak of the Trinity per se, Christian thinkers have developed the doctrine of the Trinity and naturally assumed, without specific Biblical confirmation, that the preincarnate Christ was the second person of the Trinity. The fact that the prologue of John speaks of him as the actual creator of our universe was more or less regarded as a poetic "Logos" doctrine since theologians regarded God the Father as the creator. The authors of The Urantia Book, however, tell us this Biblical description (also stated in Col. 1:16 and Heb. 1:2) of the pre-existent Christ is literally true. He is both the creator and saviour of our universe.

Each Creator Son of a local universe is a unique creation of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son and is known as "the only begotten son" in his universe and all who go to the Father in this universe go through the ministry and means established by this Creator-Savior Son. Even though Jesus is not the second person of the Paradise Trinity, his presence and power are exactly the same as that of the Eternal Son, the second person of the Trinity, if he were acting in the place of Christ in our universe. After Jesus' bestowal on our confused planet, the Father, as recorded in Matthew, placed "all authority in heaven and earth" in his hands; and he has promised one day to return to this world of his crucifixion experience. Here, again, we see The Urantia Book, while correcting assumptions made due to our very limited universe knowledge, confirms and reinforces the basic spiritual truths of the Bible.

Saviour of Mankind

All Christians look to Jesus as the mediator between man and God and regard him as the saviour of mankind. It is in the explanation of this salvation that they differ. Theologians of mainline Christian churches see salvation as the gift of God through faith in Jesus emphasizing God's love for humanity and full acceptance of them as his mortal sons and daughters. The theologians of Christian fundamentalism regard salvation as the gift of God through faith in Jesus because he offered himself as a blood sacrifice demanded by God the Father as the price for forgiving the sins of mankind. This is known as the blood atonement doctrine in which Jesus is seen as the redeemer of humanity from the condemnation of a just and holy God.

The only Christian belief which the authors of The Urantia Book vigorously criticize is the blood atonement theory. They do so because this doctrine distorts and slanders the great love which the Universal Father has for his mortal sons and daughters. It is completely incompatible with Jesus' teachings about the nature of God the Father. God's love is not subordinate to his righteousness or holiness. Love is the Universal Father's primary attitude toward all persons. Jesus is, indeed, the saviour of mankind but not a redeemer.

The blood atonement theory has its origin in the conceptual language of Paul. Coming out of the Jewish tradition and writing with Jewish people in mind, Paul used the symbolic idea of Jesus as the "final sacrifice" in their sacrificial system as a missionary approach which made sense to those with a Jewish background. New Testament scholars today recognize that Paul did not hold a God concept which would be compatible with a literal blood atonement doctrine. He used this sacrificial language because it was the only frame of reference which would be acceptable to the Jews of his day. It was a missionary attempt to relate to the thought patterns of the Jews.

Most ministers in mainline Christian churches have long since abandoned this retributive concept of God. The Bible commentary most widely used in America today is The Interpreter's Bible published by Abingdon Press. In volume VIII, p. 510-11, the writer in commenting on John 3:16 says, "Some of the past explanations of the gospel are not overhelpful to us now. Most of us are not at home in the Jewish sacrificial system; and metaphors drawn from it can be confusing rather than illuminating. And some of the interpretations, popular in the Middle Ages, are to us incredible, and even monstrous. So do many, with the Gospels in their hands, appear to see in them a lesser God giving himself to save us from the implacable fury and resentment of the great God, slow and hard to be appeased, and demanding his pound of flesh from someone. That is hideous heresy; and the blasphemy of blasphemies. It was in the eternal plan of God the Father that Jesus Christ lived out in fact: 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself' (II Cor. 5:19), not standing sullenly aside, and needing himself to be reconciled.

We should recognize that most of those who still accept a literal blood atonement theory in our day probably do so out of misunderstanding and with no intent to deny the loving nature of God. To believe that God the Father cannot or will not love man until his innocent son is brutally executed is a cruel distortion of the loving nature of the Heavenly Father Jesus revealed to man. But The Urantia Book does affirm the positive spiritual values associated with the crucifixion and man's salvation which are important to fundamentalists as well as other Christians.

It was the Father's will that Jesus allow the Jewish leaders to dispose of him as they desired. God does not arbitrarily interfere with the premeditated intentions of man. Jesus' death on the cross demonstrates the profound love he and the Father have for man even when they were torturing and executing him. He refuses to use divine power to save himself or punish these misguided evil doers. This great love is the most powerful saving act the Father and the Son could bestow on self-willed man in this situation to eventually deliver him from his ignorance, evil, and sin and cause man to recognize God's transcendent love and accept sonship. Salvation is something which God in Christ makes possible for man. Finite man cannot save himself but through faith he may accept this gift of eternal life. Christ is the way by which all mortals in our universe go to the Father.

On Approaching New Truth

New truth is always challenging and often threatening to traditionalists. This is both natural and good. The tried and true values of historical experience cannot and should not be easily replaced by the new and untested. But these historic truths are periodically upstepped by prophetic vision. Such growth is usually a traumatic experience for individuals, the church, and society.

Every prophet in the history of the Old and New Testaments has met with unbelief and opposition. The priests of society have regularly stoned its prophets. Then their sons of another century build monuments to honor the prophets persecuted by their fathers. It: is good to be cautious and critical; it is helpful to doubt and carefully evaluate. But we need to be open and objective enough to allow the spirit to lead us to larger truth. Jesus told his apostles that he would send the Spirit of Truth through which he would lead them to greater truths in the future. We must be sensitive to this Spirit of Truth. We need to learn to recognize truth in its many forms and varying appearances.

You will find that The Urantia Book will stand the test of critical examination. It is rooted solidly in the traditional spiritual verities of the Christian faith which have endured for centuries. Reading and studying The Urantia Book will give you a deeper and larger vision of this saving faith and help you become a part of a spiritual renaissance which is dawning on our world.

A Service ofThe Urantia Book Fellowship

Labels: Bible, Christians, conservative, divinity, fundamental, God, humanity, Jesus, Meredith Sprunger, Revelation, The Urantia Book, tradition, truth

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Whatâ€™s a Nice Jewish Girl Like Me Doing in a Place Like This?

This article is adapted from presentations given in Oklahoma City in August 2001 and in Chicago, (â€œWhatâ€™s a Nice Jewish Girl Like Me Doing in a Place Like This?â€�) in October 2001

Every year as far back as I can remember I went to the synagogue for the whole day with my dad on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I sat in the back in the womenâ€™s gallery with my grandmother. Like Jews all over the world we went to pray for forgiveness from God for all our sins against him, to repent and be released from some unknown punishment. We prayed and we fasted all day long. If God was merciful we were inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. I never knew exactly what would happen if we werenâ€™t inscribed, but I guessed that the people who died that year had not been forgiven.

Judaism is a religion that is based on the law, the law of God presented to Moses at Mount Sinai. Many Jewish people think of God as the Lord God of Israel. He is a just God and he expects his law to be followed. When God is disobeyed, he is fearful and punishing. Did he not banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and subject women forever after to pain in childbirth, turn Lotâ€™s wife to a pillar of salt and destroy all life on the earth except for Noahâ€™s family and an arkful of animals? And on Passover Jews praise God for sending devastating plagues on the Egyptians including the destruction of their first born sons. The Old Testament is filled with the stories of Godâ€™s laws and his wrath.

In Paper 96, â€œYahweh-God of the Hebrews,â€� a Melchizedek of Nebadon tells us that in spite of Mosesâ€™s valiant efforts to assure the fleeing Hebrews that God loved them and would not forsake or destroy them, they were also told during a cataclysmic volcanic explosion of Mount Sinai that â€œtheir God was mighty, terrible, a devouring fire, and all-powerful.â€� (96:4.5,6) Although there is much evidence of a God who loves his people in the Old Testament, the idea of a just and powerful God is the one that persists. The Ten Commandments given to Moses at Mount Sinai are mostly â€œThou shalt notsâ€� and the Mosaic law consists of 613 laws that Orthodox Jews obey to this day. The traditions are very powerful and I grew up imagining a bearded king in the clouds who was watching me and waiting for me to slip up.

I always had a deep consciousness of my Jewishness. I was culturally conditioned and thought I was religious. My dad had an orthodox Jewish upbringing and a very strong Jewish identity. He wanted my mother to keep the orthodox religious traditions at home that he had grown up with. Some of those included â€œkeeping the Sabbath holy,â€� lighting Sabbath candles and keeping a kosher home. â€œKeeping kosherâ€� involves a strict set of dietary laws requiring separate silverware, dishes and cookware for meat meals and dairy meals. It is forbidden to eat milk products and meat together because of a Mosaic law which states: â€œThou shalt not eat the flesh of a kid in its mothers milk.â€� There is also a long list of forbidden foods including pork products and shellfish. My mom didnâ€™t light Sabbath candles or keep a kosher home but we ate no pork or shrimp, never had milk products and meat together, and I saw my dad get violently ill after he learned that a roasted chicken he had eaten was basted in butter. He believed with all his heart that he should spend the Sabbath at the synagogue (the Fifth Commandment says: â€œRemember the Sabbath to keep it holyâ€�) but he was employed as a retail merchant in a childrenâ€™s clothing store, and Saturday was the busiest shopping day. The stores were closed on Sunday so Christians could go to church but Saturday was a work day. Like Matadormus and the Jews of old, he was raised to believe that wealth was the token of Godâ€™s favor. He believed he never prospered because he disobeyed God by not keeping the Sabbath.

My dad was sixteen when he came to America from Poland with his mother on a steamship in steerage with one bag. They had lived in a little village called Kowel. (I imagine it to be something like Tevyaâ€™s village.) His grandfather was a traveling rabbi and there was great joy in the village when he was home. He went to the synagogue schools, spoke Yiddish and Hebrew at home and Polish in public. He told me how he had been taunted and abused by soldiers who often rode through the village. He never knew if they were Polish, Russian or German, but he believed they were Christians. They shouted, â€œChrist-killerâ€� â€œJud de Palestinaâ€�(Jew â€“ go to Palestine) as they passed, and they often cut off the beards of the old men with their swords. When he was very young he saw one of them cut off part of his grandfatherâ€™s chin with his sword. He learned to spit three times when he passed a church â€œtu-tu-tu.â€� He lived in fear of Christians.

He knew first hand of rampant anti-Semitism, he experienced the persecution generated by Jew-hating Poles, Russians and Germans, and continued hearing about the pogroms in Europe from relatives who managed to get out by the late 30s.

Hitlerâ€™s â€œfinal solutionâ€� to the elimination of the Jews resulted in the horrors of the Holocaust and my dad and most of the people he knew lost many family members. It was very important to him that his children maintained the faith and survived as Jews.

When my parents were able to buy their first house it was in what they called a â€œnon-Jewishâ€� neighborhood. I was the only Jewish kid in the school. I knew so little about Christianity that I missed getting 100% on a language test because I answered that the gender of the word â€œmonkâ€� could be male or female. I thought â€œmonkâ€� was a short way of saying monkey. In class we celebrated Easter by decorating eggs to take home and Christmas by making decorations and gifts for our families. All my friends went to church on Sunday. Celebrating Christian holidays seemed perfectly normal to me. But not to my dad.

So he made sure I spent a lot of time at the synagogue. After school on Tuesdays and Thursdays I went to Hebrew School, on Friday nights we went to the Sabbath service, on Saturdays I went to â€œJunior Congregationâ€� while the adults who were off on Saturday were in the synagogue, and on Sundays I went to Sunday School. I learned to read and write Hebrew phonetically so I could participate in the rituals of the synagogue service. They were conducted in Hebrew and I participated fully â€“ without ever understanding a word. I also wrote â€œMerry Christmasâ€� phonetically in Hebrew on the chalkboard when my third grade teacher was doing a lesson on how Christmas was celebrated in other lands. It didnâ€™t occur to me that Jews in Israel didnâ€™t say â€œMerry Christmas.â€� I engaged in many mindless rituals, which unlike Jesus, I didnâ€™t question. As prescribed, I kissed the mezuzah (a religious object on the doorpost of Jewish homes) and said to myself: â€œThe Lord shall preserve our going out and our coming in, from this time forth and even forevermore.â€� (124:4.7) I never wrote out the word God because it was forbidden. I wrote G-d. I wore a Jewish star around my neck and studied to become a â€œdaughter of the covenantâ€� (a bat mitzvah) when I was thirteen. I learned all the Old Testament Bible Stories and believed they were true. Iâ€™m embarrassed that when I was in a ninth grade biology class and the teacher asked how life began I unhesitatingly said: â€œwith Adam and Eve.â€�

At the time I thought that doing those things was my religion. I realize now, however, that my experience of being Jewish was more social, cultural and political than religious. My Hebrew School lessons were filled with politics. I was totally immersed in the excitement when Israel officially became the Jewish homeland. The Jews finally had a home, a land where they would be free from persecution. And my studies were filled with morality. I developed sense of righteousness and of guilt and duty. I was a good student because the high value Jews placed on education was always evident. My parents sacrificed many pleasures to save enough money to put three kids through college. I enjoyed celebrating all the holidays with family and participated in all the events at the synagogue. My fatherâ€™s hope was that I would maintain the traditions, become a leader in the Jewish community, perhaps the head of a national Jewish womenâ€™s organization. I was happy with my life and my religion. The problem was that I knew nothing about who God really was, nothing about the spirit within, nothing about doing Godâ€™s will, and I thought about him only when I was doing something wrong.

One Christmas I went to a church service at midnight with a friend. We were seated at the front of a balcony. The service was unfamiliar, but magical and I was totally engaged. Suddenly the preacher was looking at me and shouting: â€œHave you been saved? Have you taken Jesus as your Lord and Master?â€� And then he was yelling: â€œCome down, confess your sins and take Jesus as your savior.â€� I thought he was talking directly to me and I was scared out of my mind. I wondered how he knew I was Jewish and that I didnâ€™t believe in Jesus.

Of course, I was not about to believe in Jesus. Like Mary and Joseph up to the time Jesus was twelve years old, I could never have â€œeven faintly dreamed that Jesus was indeed and in truth the actual creator of this local universe of things and beings (124:4.4) Jewish people just donâ€™t believe in Jesus as divine. First of all, the belief in one God is a certainty in Judaism. Jews KNOW that there simply are not any other gods, especially one who died on a cross and came back to life in three days. They obey the First Commandment: â€œI am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other gods before me.â€� In fact, as Urantia Book readers know the belief in one God is the revelation of Melchizedek and the legacy of Abraham and Moses. The most important Jewish prayer, the Shâ€™ma, (â€œShâ€™ma Yisrael, Adonoi Elohaynu, Adonoi Echad - Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is oneâ€�) is the first prayer that is taught to Jewish children and the last one uttered before one dies. It is repeated many times daily at synagogue services all over the world. It was certainly repeated by Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth and in the Temple at Jerusalem. The â€œShâ€™maâ€� was the answer Jesus gave to one of the Pharisees who while trying to entrap him asked: â€œWhich is the greatest commandment?â€� Jesus answered: â€œThere is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all, and that commandment is: â€�Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is oneâ€¦â€� (174:4.2)

Secondly, â€œJesusâ€� is kind of a bad word in most Jewish households. The persecutions during the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the pogroms, the Holocaust, widespread anti-Semitism â€“ much of the suffering that Jews have experienced is in some way laid at the feet of Jesus. They make no distinction between Christianity and Jesus. And finally, there is the feeling of the need to perpetuate the race. Today the Jewish population is approximately 13.5 million and some fear that the downward trend indicates that Jews may disappear in a few generations. Jews fear assimilation, intermarriage and especially conversion to Christianity.

No, I was not about to believe in Jesus. But I had lots of Christian friends and I liked everybody. It never occurred to me to think who was Jewish and who was not. However, it concerned my parents that I was dating â€œgentiles.â€� In spite of their constant efforts to make me go out with Jewish boys I liked the Italian boys and my dad was very worried that I would fall in love and marry a non-Jewish man. His concern was so great that he uprooted our family and moved to a town that was not â€œrestrictedâ€� and had a sizable Jewish population. There I would likely meet a nice Jewish boy and get married. I did! I met Steve almost immediately and six years later we had a big Jewish wedding.

So how did I come to see Jesus as divine? I was involved in Jewish organizations and on the way to fulfilling my earthly fatherâ€™s dream. I believed I was Cinderella and I had married the prince. But our early years together were very difficult. In the first year Steveâ€™s dad died suddenly and tragically and we became responsible for his despondent mom and sixteen year old sister. I had intended to teach while Steve finished graduate school, but we had an unplanned baby and I was unable to continue teaching full-time. I found my mother in law to be very emotionally needy and demanding, and I was young and immature and didnâ€™t handle things well. There was lots of conflict and sadness and life was not the fairy tale I had imagined it would be.

I was confused, unhappy and not coping well, but Steve was searching. He was searching for meaning and he was searching for truth. For many years he had studied philosophers and truth seekers, explored many paths and contemplated the meaning of life. I went along for the ride, but solutions to our problems were not forthcoming and the quality of life didnâ€™t improve very much. And then he found and began to read The Urantia Book and I saw a significant emotional change in him that seemed very real. In spite of all the chaos and conflict around us, he was peaceful. And it lasted, and I knew he had found something really important. So in spite of the fact that the book had something to do with Jesus (and the idea frightened me very much) I began to read it too. And it was in the pages of The Urantia Book that I first found Jesus.

At first I saw that there was much about his young life that I could relate to personally. Like me, as a child he lived in a place that was more gentile than Jewish and spent lots of time in the synagogue. He engaged in the same rituals (although he questioned their meanings, which I never did) and celebrated the same Jewish holidays. He celebrated Hannukah, the Festival of Lights commemorating the dedication of the Temple after the victory of the Macabbees; Purim, the feast of Esther and Israelâ€™s deliverance through her; Passover, the commemoration of the escape from Egypt and the sparing of Jewish first born sons; Succoth, the feast of the first fruits and the harvest ingathering; and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Like most Jewish boys he was circumcised eight days after birth, and like Steve, and our son Marc, who were first born sons like Jesus, he was ritually redeemed from sacrifice in a temple ceremony. At thirteen, like Jewish boys the world over, when Jesus graduated from the course of training at the synagogue he was pronounced a â€œson of the commandmentâ€� (bar mitzvah). This is a very big occasion today for most Jewish boys.

When his mother joined him on his Passover trip to the Temple for his consecration as a son of the commandment she was made to sit in the womenâ€™s gallery. I remembered the little synagogue where I sat in the back balcony with my grandmother. Women took no part in the religious life of the Jews in Jesusâ€™ time, and are still segregated from the men in Orthodox synagogues today. For almost 4000 years when orthodox men recite the morning prayer, they have prayed: â€œBlessed art thou the Eternal Our God, King of the Universe who hath not made me a woman.â€� Jesusâ€™ treatment of women shocked the apostles, but â€œhe made it very clear to them that women were to be accorded equal rights with men in the kingdom.â€� (138:8.11) As a young man, in spite of the fact â€œthat girls of Jewish families received little education, Jesus maintained that they should go to the same school as boys, and since the synagogue school would not receive them he conducted a home school especially for [his sisters.]â€� (127:1.5) That endeared him to me.

He openly and graciously shared his relationship with his Father in heaven. He knew him to be kind and compassionate, loving and merciful, a Father who loved each of his children personally and affectionately. It was so different from my vision of a powerful God of judgment and anger. I loved when he had his little talks with him. I began to try it myself instead of mindlessly repeating the 23rd Psalm or the â€œOur Father.â€� God didnâ€™t talk back to me, but I began to realize that he was there, and that he was my friend â€“ not my judge. I began to love God instead of fear him, and ask him what he wanted me to do, and not be afraid to do it. I began to have a relationship with God and Jesus was teaching me how, and when I was in doubt about what God wanted, Jesus was there to show me the way. He was the way.

Because of him my marriage improved. I realized that if there were problems to solve I needed to look inside myself for the power of goodness to make the changes, not to the supposed wrongdoer. The story of Jesus and Anaxand in Caesarea made a profound impact on me. My son Marc doesnâ€™t know it, but I became a more competent and caring mother by learning from Jesus who was the master parent to his brothers and sisters. Because of Jesus I became a better teacher. I noticed that my teaching was changing. I began to look more for the childrenâ€™s motives than at their behavior. I tried to give them what they needed before they asked rather than as a reward for good behavior.

His fatherly treatment of aggressors helped me to see aggressive parents at school in a new way. Our district had been accused of â€œinstitutional racismâ€� and white teachers were under scrutiny and attack by many black parents. One day I was summoned to meet with a single mom who had just moved to town and whose son was to be in my class. She pointed her finger at me and yelled threateningly, â€œI know about this district and I know the law and I donâ€™t expect my son to get a fair shake and Iâ€™ll be watching you.â€� It was a scary moment, my heart was pounding, and I took a deep breath and prayed: â€œHelp me Father,â€� and then I heard myself say to her, â€œNickolas is one lucky boy to have an advocate like you in his corner. I canâ€™t imagine what my life would have been like if my mom cared about me the way you care about him.â€� She was completely disarmed and we became friends and partners in Nickolasâ€™ education. I realized later it was the Spirit of Truth speaking and I knew then for the first time what it meant that Jesus would always be with me in times of trouble. And he is.

My dad didnâ€™t have to worry. I am a Jew. Belief in the divinity of Jesus is not conversion to Christianity. It is a deepening of faith in God. Jesus kept all that was fine and beautiful in the Jewish teachings and enlarged the concept of Godâ€™s nature through his life. He asked his followers to believe with him, not in him. I was inspired by his teachings but I was won over by the life he lived. Jesusâ€™ love is irresistible. He was Godâ€™s love revealed and is the most beautiful personal expression of God on earth. Because of him I know I am a beloved child of God. And thatâ€™s simply divine!

Bobbie Dreier is a retired teacher. She is the grandmother of Matthew and Jason. Bobbie and her husband Steve recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. Currently president of The Urantia Book Society of Greater New York, she has been actively involved in Urantia Book activities with Steve for over 30 years.

Labels: anti-Semitism, Bobbie Dreier, Christians, Jesus, Judaism, Moses, Old Testament, orthodoxy, racism, synagogue, Ten Commandments, The Urantia Book, Yom Kippur