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As seemingly impossible to be merely made-up this enormous book is, i am convinced that it was made to sell a great lie by borrowing from the truth. A lie that may seem small but to the sensitively critical mind its ideology just doesn’t sit right. Most people would find it fascinating at first glance, or even study it glazing over its error and contradiction towards the true nature of good and evil. All the other ideas in the book may not be bad in nature at all but it only takes one lie for the rest of it to be proven as fiction. I could not bring myself to adopt the thinking of the book as per the “Lucifer rebellion”. The characters Satan and Lucifer are put forward as mere rebels who fought against tyranny. Thats how i see it and i dont think any intelligent person whose given it enough thought would disagree. Ive thought long and hard behind the logic of it because something always felt off. I always sympathized with these devil characters and now its clear to me why, its fiction. Fiction probably hatched just to confuse true seekers as to what the picture is. Satan is the root of all evil, not a mere rebel who sought to free personalities from a stupid bureaucratic universe which is so obviously a iced-up joke on reality. Combined with its word salaries and meaningless terminologies. Of course the “urantia book” isn’t popular anyway, fifth epochal revelation my my it must not be. Its not very important. This book was literally made by the real bad guys as a masterful mindwarp. Now I understand that having a “rebellious” personality does not equate to the evil attributed to the real Satan. And by real Satan I mean the biblical perspective and the one that lives to spread fear amongst the human race. The notions it sells are also pure nonsense. Thought adjuster? By trying to sound fancy and advance on concepts that appeal to the biblical narrative it just creates nonsense meant to confuse you. A pile of doggie doodoo meant to make people think the universe is a bureaucratic mess, a DOUBLE-edged mindfuck. Because it still calls Lucifer and Satan the bad guys, its just that their origins and true nature are fictionally created and warped throw off the truth.


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Ahhhh....the true nature of good and evil?!

Definitely a defining distinction of the Papers in their depiction of the very nature of God and the evolutionary and experiential aspects of time and space.

A superb issue for consideration, and in such contrast to the Biblical fear based superstitions of original sin and "the devil made me do it" nonsense and angry God requiring blood sacrifice and eternal suffering, all of which so clearly contradicts the teachings of Jesus found in the Bible (as well as the UB).

Looking forward to the discussion of the true nature of God and our relationship to Deity and the family of creation.

Are we God's beloved children? Or something else? Something much less. When the Master teaches in the Bible that God is loving, merciful, patient, kind, generous, caring, and attentive to our souls and spirit, is that a lie too I wonder?

When we are taught by Jesus in the Bible (and the Papers) that we reap what we sow and receive mercy as we give it to others, is that also a lie?

When the Master taught to "Fear Not" our material woes or our mortal sufferings or for our souls, was that deception too?

The Urantia Papers present a consistent and glorious perspective of universe reality which gives generous assurances of our Deity Connections and the Divine Affection we are blessed by in our quest for experiential wisdom and spiritization on the path to Paradise and eternal adventures!

8)

As for "sympathy for the devil", the UB certainly does NOT exonerate or excuse or diminish the sins of or the suffering delivered by Lucifer and Satan and our own Planetary Prince in the Satania rebellion.

But the "root of all evil" presented in the UB is immaturity and inexperience and impatience and the self importance of false liberty, and also the lack of sympathy and loyalty and empathetic service by freewill personalities in time.

Everybody knows (or should know) that we reap what we sow, that there are repercussions to our motives, intentions, priorities, and freewill choices!

Long ago, in my youthful naivety, and alternately back and forth, I blamed God and the Devil, both and each, for human suffering...especially my own.

It takes a little perspective and experience and insight to discover the truth about suffering. The Buddhists have known of it since way before the Master reiterated it to the West - freewill is the cause of all our suffering. It is also the solution.

Better and more morality/love based motivation, intentions, priorities, and choices will deliver us each and all from suffering.

I have developed the ability and motive to forgive Satan and the other rebels and am hopeful (and also doubtful) of their rehabilitation. I am grateful for the examples of mercy and forgiveness and God's patience with us erring children.

The rebellion has caused endless repercussions of suffering and delays to our planetary evolutionary progress. But blame, hate, fear, and anxiety are not helpful in our personal quest for spiritual progress. We must forgive. For our own benefit and to reflect our true spirit natures as the beloved children of God in this friendly universe!!

Or so I understand the Papers to teach us.

The Master said:

159:3.11 (1766.7) "Teach all believers to avoid leaning upon the insecure props of false sympathy. You cannot develop strong characters out of the indulgence of self-pity; honestly endeavor to avoid the deceptive influence of mere fellowship in misery. Extend sympathy to the brave and courageous while you withhold overmuch pity from those cowardly souls who only halfheartedly stand up before the trials of living. Offer not consolation to those who lie down before their troubles without a struggle. Sympathize not with your fellows merely that they may sympathize with you in return.

159:3.12 (1766.8) When my children once become self-conscious of the assurance of the divine presence, such a faith will expand the mind, ennoble the soul, reinforce the personality, augment the happiness, deepen the spirit perception, and enhance the power to love and be loved.

159:3.13 (1767.1) Teach all believers that those who enter the kingdom are not thereby rendered immune to the accidents of time or to the ordinary catastrophes of nature. Believing the gospel will not prevent getting into trouble, but it will insure that you shall be unafraid when trouble does overtake you. If you dare to believe in me and wholeheartedly proceed to follow after me, you shall most certainly by so doing enter upon the sure pathway to trouble. I do not promise to deliver you from the waters of adversity, but I do promise to go with you through all of them."

8)

_________________
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."


Last edited by fanofVan on Sat Jun 29, 2024 11:19 am +0000, edited 3 times in total.

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Regarding good and evil:

54:0.1 (613.1) EVOLUTIONARY man finds it difficult fully to comprehend the significance and to grasp the meanings of evil, error, sin, and iniquity. Man is slow to perceive that contrastive perfection and imperfection produce potential evil; that conflicting truth and falsehood create confusing error; that the divine endowment of freewill choice eventuates in the divergent realms of sin and righteousness; that the persistent pursuit of divinity leads to the kingdom of God as contrasted with its continuous rejection, which leads to the domains of iniquity.

54:0.2 (613.2) The Gods neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion. Potential evil is time-existent in a universe embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values. Sin is potential in all realms where imperfect beings are endowed with the ability to choose between good and evil. The very conflicting presence of truth and untruth, fact and falsehood, constitutes the potentiality of error. The deliberate choice of evil constitutes sin; the willful rejection of truth is error; the persistent pursuit of sin and error is iniquity.

8)

130:1.5 (1429.1) Jesus’ last visit with Gadiah had to do with a discussion of good and evil. This young Philistine was much troubled by a feeling of injustice because of the presence of evil in the world alongside the good. He said: “How can God, if he is infinitely good, permit us to suffer the sorrows of evil; after all, who creates evil?” It was still believed by many in those days that God creates both good and evil, but Jesus never taught such error. In answering this question, Jesus said: “My brother, God is love; therefore he must be good, and his goodness is so great and real that it cannot contain the small and unreal things of evil. God is so positively good that there is absolutely no place in him for negative evil. Evil is the immature choosing and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful of beauty, and disloyal to truth. Evil is only the misadaptation of immaturity or the disruptive and distorting influence of ignorance. Evil is the inevitable darkness which follows upon the heels of the unwise rejection of light. Evil is that which is dark and untrue, and which, when consciously embraced and willfully endorsed, becomes sin.

130:1.6 (1429.2) “Your Father in heaven, by endowing you with the power to choose between truth and error, created the potential negative of the positive way of light and life; but such errors of evil are really nonexistent until such a time as an intelligent creature wills their existence by mischoosing the way of life. And then are such evils later exalted into sin by the knowing and deliberate choice of such a willful and rebellious creature. This is why our Father in heaven permits the good and the evil to go along together until the end of life, just as nature allows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side until the harvest.” Gadiah was fully satisfied with Jesus’ answer to his question after their subsequent discussion had made clear to his mind the real meaning of these momentous statements.

8)

_________________
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."


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RedFriendRedemption wrote:
As seemingly impossible to be merely made-up this enormous book is, i am convinced that it was made to sell a great lie by borrowing from the truth. A lie that may seem small but to the sensitively critical mind its ideology just doesn’t sit right. Most people would find it fascinating at first glance, or even study it glazing over its error and contradiction towards the true nature of good and evil. All the other ideas in the book may not be bad in nature at all but it only takes one lie for the rest of it to be proven as fiction. I could not bring myself to adopt the thinking of the book as per the “Lucifer rebellion”. The characters Satan and Lucifer are put forward as mere rebels who fought against tyranny. Thats how i see it and i dont think any intelligent person whose given it enough thought would disagree. Ive thought long and hard behind the logic of it because something always felt off. I always sympathized with these devil characters and now its clear to me why, its fiction. Fiction probably hatched just to confuse true seekers as to what the picture is. Satan is the root of all evil, not a mere rebel who sought to free personalities from a stupid bureaucratic universe which is so obviously a iced-up joke on reality. Combined with its word salaries and meaningless terminologies. Of course the “urantia book” isn’t popular anyway, fifth epochal revelation my my it must not be. Its not very important. This book was literally made by the real bad guys as a masterful mindwarp. Now I understand that having a “rebellious” personality does not equate to the evil attributed to the real Satan. And by real Satan I mean the biblical perspective and the one that lives to spread fear amongst the human race. The notions it sells are also pure nonsense. Thought adjuster? By trying to sound fancy and advance on concepts that appeal to the biblical narrative it just creates nonsense meant to confuse you. A pile of doggie doodoo meant to make people think the universe is a bureaucratic mess, a DOUBLE-edged mindfuck. Because it still calls Lucifer and Satan the bad guys, its just that their origins and true nature are fictionally created and warped throw off the truth.


Are you suggesting/claiming that Satan wrote the UB ("the real bad guys")?

And could you clarify/specify what is the "great lie"?

How can any single being or personality be "the root of all evil"???

And Satan was created iniquitous and has always been so?

So....do you think people would be sin free (moral and wise), except for the work of the Devil?

Then...human freewill is a lie too?

Thank you.

8)

66:8.6 (753.2) The doctrine of a personal devil on Urantia, though it had some foundation in the planetary presence of the traitorous and iniquitous Caligastia, was nevertheless wholly fictitious in its teachings that such a “devil” could influence the normal human mind against its free and natural choosing. Even before Michael’s bestowal on Urantia, neither Caligastia nor Daligastia was ever able to oppress mortals or to coerce any normal individual into doing anything against the human will. The free will of man is supreme in moral affairs; even the indwelling Thought Adjuster refuses to compel man to think a single thought or to perform a single act against the choosing of man’s own will.

8)

_________________
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."


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8) RedFriendRedemption posts above: "The characters Satan and Lucifer are put forward as mere rebels who fought against tyranny. Thats how i see it and i dont think any intelligent person whose given it enough thought would disagree."

No claims about my intelligence, but let me be the first to disagree!!!

:wink:

"Mere rebels"? Holy moly! Rather understated indeed!!

No heavenly "tyranny" exists or is presented in the UB (except that tyranny attempted BY the rebels themselves!). Self importance and false liberty are the causes and motivation for the system rebellion and certainly is a very, very, very rare sort of celestial insanity (3 System rebellions in Nebadon in 10,000 Systems - ever) resulting in iniquity.

8)

53:2.5 (603.1) It is very difficult to point out the exact cause or causes which finally culminated in the Lucifer rebellion. We are certain of only one thing, and that is: Whatever these first beginnings were, they had their origin in Lucifer’s mind. There must have been a pride of self that nourished itself to the point of self-deception, so that Lucifer for a time really persuaded himself that his contemplation of rebellion was actually for the good of the system, if not of the universe. By the time his plans had developed to the point of disillusionment, no doubt he had gone too far for his original and mischief-making pride to permit him to stop. At some point in this experience he became insincere, and evil evolved into deliberate and willful sin. That this happened is proved by the subsequent conduct of this brilliant executive. He was long offered opportunity for repentance, but only some of his subordinates ever accepted the proffered mercy. The Faithful of Days of Edentia, on the request of the Constellation Fathers, in person presented the plan of Michael for the saving of these flagrant rebels, but always was the mercy of the Creator Son rejected and rejected with increasing contempt and disdain.

8)

53:3.1 (603.2) Whatever the early origins of trouble in the hearts of Lucifer and Satan, the final outbreak took form as the Lucifer Declaration of Liberty. The cause of the rebels was stated under three heads:

53:3.2 (603.3) 1. The reality of the Universal Father. Lucifer charged that the Universal Father did not really exist, that physical gravity and space-energy were inherent in the universe, and that the Father was a myth invented by the Paradise Sons to enable them to maintain the rule of the universes in the Father’s name. He denied that personality was a gift of the Universal Father. He even intimated that the finaliters were in collusion with the Paradise Sons to foist fraud upon all creation since they never brought back a very clear-cut idea of the Father’s actual personality as it is discernible on Paradise. He traded on reverence as ignorance. The charge was sweeping, terrible, and blasphemous. It was this veiled attack upon the finaliters that no doubt influenced the ascendant citizens then on Jerusem to stand firm and remain steadfast in resistance to all the rebel’s proposals.

53:3.3 (603.4) 2. The universe government of the Creator Son—Michael. Lucifer contended that the local systems should be autonomous. He protested against the right of Michael, the Creator Son, to assume sovereignty of Nebadon in the name of a hypothetical Paradise Father and require all personalities to acknowledge allegiance to this unseen Father. He asserted that the whole plan of worship was a clever scheme to aggrandize the Paradise Sons. He was willing to acknowledge Michael as his Creator-father but not as his God and rightful ruler.

53:3.4 (603.5) Most bitterly did he attack the right of the Ancients of Days—“foreign potentates”—to interfere in the affairs of the local systems and universes. These rulers he denounced as tyrants and usurpers. He exhorted his followers to believe that none of these rulers could do aught to interfere with the operation of complete home rule if men and angels only had the courage to assert themselves and boldly claim their rights.

53:3.5 (603.6) He contended that the executioners of the Ancients of Days could be debarred from functioning in the local systems if the native beings would only assert their independence. He maintained that immortality was inherent in the system personalities, that resurrection was natural and automatic, and that all beings would live eternally except for the arbitrary and unjust acts of the executioners of the Ancients of Days.

53:3.6 (604.1) 3. The attack upon the universal plan of ascendant mortal training. Lucifer maintained that far too much time and energy were expended upon the scheme of so thoroughly training ascending mortals in the principles of universe administration, principles which he alleged were unethical and unsound. He protested against the agelong program for preparing the mortals of space for some unknown destiny and pointed to the presence of the finaliter corps on Jerusem as proof that these mortals had spent ages of preparation for some destiny of pure fiction. With derision he pointed out that the finaliters had encountered a destiny no more glorious than to be returned to humble spheres similar to those of their origin. He intimated that they had been debauched by overmuch discipline and prolonged training, and that they were in reality traitors to their mortal fellows since they were now co-operating with the scheme of enslaving all creation to the fictions of a mythical eternal destiny for ascending mortals. He advocated that ascenders should enjoy the liberty of individual self-determination. He challenged and condemned the entire plan of mortal ascension as sponsored by the Paradise Sons of God and supported by the Infinite Spirit.

53:3.7 (604.2) And it was with such a Declaration of Liberty that Lucifer launched his orgy of darkness and death.

8)

2. The Theft of Liberty
54:2.1 (614.6) With the Son and in the Spirit did God project eternal Havona, and ever since has there obtained the eternal pattern of co-ordinate participation in creation—sharing. This pattern of sharing is the master design for every one of the Sons and Daughters of God who go out into space to engage in the attempt to duplicate in time the central universe of eternal perfection.

54:2.2 (614.7) Every creature of every evolving universe who aspires to do the Father’s will is destined to become the partner of the time-space Creators in this magnificent adventure of experiential perfection attainment. Were this not true, the Father would have hardly endowed such creatures with creative free will, neither would he indwell them, actually go into partnership with them by means of his own spirit.

54:2.3 (614.8) Lucifer’s folly was the attempt to do the nondoable, to short-circuit time in an experiential universe. Lucifer’s crime was the attempted creative disenfranchisement of every personality in Satania, the unrecognized abridgment of the creature’s personal participation—freewill participation—in the long evolutionary struggle to attain the status of light and life both individually and collectively. In so doing this onetime Sovereign of your system set the temporal purpose of his own will directly athwart the eternal purpose of God’s will as it is revealed in the bestowal of free will upon all personal creatures. The Lucifer rebellion thus threatened the maximum possible infringement of the freewill choice of the ascenders and servers of the system of Satania—a threat forevermore to deprive every one of these beings of the thrilling experience of contributing something personal and unique to the slowly erecting monument to experiential wisdom which will sometime exist as the perfected system of Satania. Thus does the Lucifer manifesto, masquerading in the habiliments of liberty, stand forth in the clear light of reason as a monumental threat to consummate the theft of personal liberty and to do it on a scale that has been approached only twice in all the history of Nebadon.

54:2.4 (615.1) In short, what God had given men and angels Lucifer would have taken away from them, that is, the divine privilege of participating in the creation of their own destinies and of the destiny of this local system of inhabited worlds.

54:2.5 (615.2) No being in all the universe has the rightful liberty to deprive any other being of true liberty, the right to love and be loved, the privilege of worshiping God and of serving his fellows.

_________________
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."


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RedFriendRedemption, thank you for your comments. From your post, you appear to be firmly in the "traditionalist" camp of religionists. I am glad you have found a safe refuge in this, as it gives so many comfort to fall back on a stable, unchanging, "Truth". Dude, I get it. Satan bad, Jesus good. Its very easy and very comforting.
That being said, I also understand the threat the Book is to those who's idea of Religion is settled. The concepts of Good and Evil being relative for all levels short of the Ultimate is jarring. Its not supposed to be like that! The Idea of a God who is simultaneously the Master and creator of a universe of universes, AND has the capacity of living in all of our heads... minds-blowing. Heck the very concept of a universe of universes, populated with an innumerable array of creatures, all slowly traveling inwards to a supreme goal... Impossible!
So I get your point. Something like the Urantia Book, vast, revolutionary, almost all encompassing, is pretty scary and, if taken in, could throw your entire belief system into an unimaginable chaos!!!
So be happy, my friend. Keep your safe beliefs and be content.
We will be there, moving forward, moving inward, content that when our short run on this crazy sphere has run its course, you may join all that make the choice go together to whatever ultimate destiny awaits.
Al


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RedFriend, you have shown your cards. You posit God and the order of creation as a "bureaucratic mess."
I almost expected to hear you say "God is the ultimate oppressor..."

If you don't like the Urantia Book then why do you want to share your discontent with those who do like the Urantia Book. Are you here to save us?

The only question one should ever ask in evaluating any situation's worth or merit: does it bring man closer to God or God closer to man?

I can attest that my experience with the Urantia Book is that it has brought me closer to God on a multitude of levels. It has made life bearable on an otherwise unbearable planet full of selfish people, it has even given me hope for an otherwise hopeless species. And I have not only been assured salvation, but I have been informed what salvation means, and I accept the plan wholeheartedly. I hope we can at least agree on this common ground.

_________________
Jim Watkins
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