By Andrew Story, Dayton, Ohio, USA
The value, meaning, and beauty that I find in The Urantia Book is directly the result of my experience of knowing God and knowing that God is my Father.
The time in my life when I found The Urantia Book was a time of much personal change. I had grown up in a Christian family, and my father was a pastor of a Christian church. I remember my first confirmation and having many questions about my relationship to God and the meaning of Jesus’ life, as it related to our personal spiritual growth and our ability to attain eternal life.
I asked my Father why it was necessary for someone to accept Jesus as their savior to have eternal life. I could not understand how someone would not go to heaven if they had never even heard of him. The answer that I was given only explained that this was God’s plan, and that, in order for man’s relationship with God to be restored, Jesus had to die on the cross. This answer led me to distance myself from a spiritual life. I believed that a person living a good life should be enough to have a relationship with God
Later I became interested in reading about other religions and new-age books. When I read Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You, I had a rejuvenation of my spiritual search. Tolstoy wrote about looking specifically at Jesus’ teachings and at the way he lived his life as being the best approach to understanding his message. He felt that Jesus’ message was that God is within each of us, a part of each one of us, and that when we experience this truth, we shall begin to see the truth of the Golden Rule.
A few months later I told a friend that I truly wanted to know God. I let go of my fears related to my earlier religious experiences, and I opened myself up and allowed God in. My friend then introduced me to The Urantia Book. I looked through it on my own and read on the back about study groups. I wanted to meet other readers and share with them what I was experiencing. I asked my friend if he knew of a study group in our area, and he suggested that we start one.
I remember reading Paper 1, “The Universal Father,” and resonating so clearly with the words describing God’s purpose, his goodness, and his plan for each person to achieve perfection.
The following paragraph in Paper 1 holds profound meaning for me:
On those worlds where a Paradise Son has lived a bestowal life, God is generally known by some name indicative of personal relationship, tender affection, and fatherly devotion. On your constellation headquarters God is referred to as the Universal Father, and on different planets in your local system of inhabited worlds he is variously known as the Father of Fathers, the Paradise Father, the Havona Father, and the Spirit Father. Those who know God through the revelations of the bestowals of the Paradise Sons, eventually yield to the sentimental appeal of the touching relationship of the creature-Creator association and refer to God as “our Father.” ~ The Urantia Book, (23.2) 1:1.5
There is much meaning in The Urantia Book, but the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is the truth most close to my experience of knowing God.