I consider this passage to contain one of the most important "lists" in the Urantia Book:
From Paper 140 - The Ordination of the Twelve
(1585.7) 140:10.9 John asked Jesus, “Master, what is the kingdom of heaven?” And Jesus answered: “The kingdom of heaven consists in these three essentials: first, recognition of the fact of the sovereignty of God; second, belief in the truth of sonship with God; and third, faith in the effectiveness of the supreme human desire to do the will of God — to be like God. And this is the good news of the gospel: that by faith every mortal may have all these essentials of salvation.”
Okay, here that is in "list" form:
Three Essentials of the Kingdom of Heaven, according to Jesus:
- Recognition of the fact of the sovereignty of God
- Belief in the truth of sonship with God
- Faith in the effectiveness of the supreme human desire to do the will of God — to be like God
One Good News of the Gospel:
- By faith every mortal may have all these essentials of salvation
Download your own Urantia Book
- http://www.urantia-book.org/downloads/the-urantia-book-uversa-press-2012.pdf.zip - 30MB - handy, built-in index
- http://urantia-book.org/downloads/The-Urantia-Book-Uversa-Press.zip - 7.4MB
- http://urantia-book.org/downloads/English/Urantia-USletter-twocolumn.zip - 8.8MB
The Urantia Book: A Brief Overview by David Kantor
The Urantia Papers, an authoritative sorting and coordination of over 2,000 years of the primary theological, philosophical and scientific ideas of Western civilization, provide the means for a rediscovery of essential meanings. They also provide a conceptual basis for a grasp of higher moral and spiritual values and lead to a revitalization of the fundamental Christian symbols within the experience of the individual.
The Urantia Book provides a unique synthesis of the highest ideas, ideals and values found in Christian thought with an authoritative presentation of fundamental concepts of the universe into which we are being born. The text itself indicates that its expression is based upon the best thought of over one thousand human beings. A focus of current scholarship is the attempt to locate the sources of these ideas.Current research into this matter is turning up authors which include Charles Hartshorne, Auguste Sabatier, Rufus Jones, E. Washburn Hopkins and other thinkers from the first half of the twentieth century.
The text is divided into four distinct parts. The first two provide an explication of Trinitarian cosmology, describing in considerable detail the functional relationship of the Trinity to the finite, as well as the derivation of the finite from Trinity sources and its response to Trinity overcontrol. The resultant cosmology describes a universe consisting of matter, mind and spirit which, on the level of the developing finite, are progressively integrating under the dominance of spirit.
The third part of the book provides an evolutionary anthropology which describes a biological foundation for life under the control of mind for the purposes of spirit. It expands the Old Testament witness to the development of monotheism amongst the Hebrew peoples. The activity of divine agency in human history is made relevant to the contemporary mind by juxtaposing a twentieth century understanding of history and evolutionary anthropology with revealed concepts of spiritual overcontrol. Its portrayal of human destiny expands the horizon of Christian eschatological hopes.
Perhaps the most ambitious theological reach in the Urantia papers is the integration of emergent twentieth century process theology with traditional Trinitarian thought. A representation of the mechanism of process is developed, with similarities to the philosophical theology of Charles Hartshorne, and A.N. Whitehead's metaphysics. The integration with Trinitarian theology is further developed in the portrayal of the Son of God functioning as the human Jesus of Nazareth.
Rather than constructing a definitive Christology in the traditional sense, the authors have provided, as the fourth and final part of the book, a detailed narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus, and a description of the cosmological context in which his mission to our world has been undertaken. As was mentioned earlier, this presentation of the life and teachings of Jesus may be the single most significant aspect of the text in terms of its acceptance and spread throughout the Christian world.
The concluding paper contains a significant challenge to contemporary Christianity:
"If Christianity could only grasp more of Jesus' teachings, it could do so much more in helping modern man to solve his new and increasingly complex problems.
"Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become identified in the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the industrial life, and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has Christianity unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without conscience, and industry without morality.
"The hope of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor the social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it humbly bows itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn anew from Jesus of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear--the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. The Urantia Book, [195:10.19].
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