Urantia is moving toward danger on multiple fronts.
F.E.R, FER = Fifth Epochal Revelation
Urantia is moving toward danger on multiple fronts. Let’s break down the warnings in the UB about the impending crisis by category; we can add direct quotes to each category below as they’re found.
Let’s start with the danger to the Light of Truth on Urantia:
RELIGIOUS CRISIS
P.2075 - A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities can NO MORE BE MAINTAINED than could the solar system without gravity.
P.2082 - The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and society can lead only to disaster. During the first third of the twentieth century Urantians killed more human beings than were killed during the whole of the Christian dispensation up to that time. And this is only the beginning of the dire harvest of materialism and secularism; still MORE TERRIBLE DESTRUCTION is yet to come.
P.911 - The maintenance of world-wide civilization is DEPENDENT on human beings learning how to live together in peace and fraternity.
P.1092 - But as religion becomes institutionalized, its power for good is curtailed, while the possibilities for evil are GREATLY MULTIPLIED. The dangers of formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase of secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; creation of the aristocratic "chosen-people" attitude; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the petrification of worship; tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of religious castes; it becomes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of eternal salvation.
P.2075 - …Christianity…stands face to face with a STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE which is even more ominous than those eventful crises which have characterized its past battles for dominance.
P.2086 - 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.
P.2086 - The HOPE of modern Christianity is that it should cease to sponsor the social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization…
P.1088 - There is always the GREAT DANGER that religion will become distorted and perverted into the pursuit of false goals, as when in times of war each contending nation prostitutes its RELIGION INTO MILITARY propaganda.
P.785 - War is strong medicine, very costly and most dangerous; while often curative of certain social disorders, it sometimes kills the patient, DESTROYS the society.
P.1090 - Man's greatest SPIRITUAL JEOPARDY consists in partial progress, the predicament of unfinished growth: forsaking the evolutionary religions of fear without immediately grasping the revelatory religion of love.
P.389 - …Melchizedek…volunteered to incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh and did so with the approval of the Melchizedek receivers of the planet, who feared that the light of life would become extinguished during that period of increasing spiritual darkness.
OVERPOPULATION CRISIS
P 768 - When the land yield is reduced or the population is increased, the inevitable struggle is renewed; the VERY WORST TRAITS of human nature are brought to the surface.
P.907 - 4. Human resources. Man power is indispensable to the spread of civilization. All things equal, a numerous people will dominate the civilization of a smaller race. Hence failure to increase in numbers up to a certain point prevents the full realization of national destiny, but there comes a point in population increase where further growth is SUICIDAL.
P.765 - Modern society is ENDURING the strain of one of its MOST DANGEROUS PHASES of far-flung interassociation and highly complicated interdependence.
(p.770) "From a world standpoint, overpopulation has never been a serious problem in the past, but if war is lessened and science increasingly controls human diseases, it may become a SERIOUS PROBLEM IN THE NEAR FUTURE. At such a time the great test of the wisdom of world leadership will present itself. Will Urantia rulers have the insight and courage to foster the multiplication of the average or stabilized human being instead of the extremes of the supernormal and the enormously increasing groups of the subnormal? The normal man should be fostered; he is the backbone of civilization and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race. The subnormal man should be kept under society's control; no more should be produced than are required to administer the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring intelligence above the animal level but making such low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of mankind."
P.921 - …the REAL JEOPARDY of the human species is to be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the inferior and degenerate strains of the various civilized peoples…
P.803 - No society has progressed very far when it permits idleness or tolerates poverty. But poverty and dependence CAN NEVER be eliminated if the defective and degenerate stocks are freely supported and permitted to reproduce without restraint.
FAMILY CRISIS
P.942 - Property accumulation is becoming an instrument for augmenting all forms of self-gratification, while marriage is often viewed only as a means of pleasure. And this overindulgence, this widely spread pleasure mania, now constitutes the GREATEST THREAT that has ever been leveled at the social evolutionary institution of family life, the home.
P.943 - Pleasures are indeed suicidal if they succeed in destroying property, which has become the institution of self-maintenance; and self-gratifications have indeed cost a fatal price if they bring about the collapse of marriage, the decadence of family life, and the destruction of the home--man's supreme evolutionary acquirement and civilization's ONLY HOPE OF SURVIVAL.
TRANSITIONAL (hint hint) CRISIS
P.1086 - §6 Urantia society can never hope to settle down as in past ages. The social ship has steamed out of the sheltered bays of established tradition and has begun its cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny; and the soul of man, as never before in the world's history, needs carefully to scrutinize its charts of morality and painstakingly to observe the compass of religious guidance. The paramount mission of religion as a social influence is to stabilize the ideals of mankind during THESE DANGEROUS TIMES OF TRANSITION from one phase of civilization to another, from one level of culture to another.
P.911 - The great danger to any civilization--at any one moment--is the threat of BREAKDOWN DURING THE TIME OF TRANSITION from the established methods of the past to those new and better, but untried, procedures of the future.
P.2082 - Urantia is now quivering on the VERY BRINK of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of SOCIAL READJUSTMENT, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.
P.911 - No great social or economic change should be attempted suddenly…The ideals of the race are the chief support and assurance during the CRITICAL TIMES when civilization is IN TRANSIT from one level to another.
P.1302 - For when culture advances overfast, when material achievement outruns the evolution of worship-wisdom, then does civilization contain within itself the SEEDS OF RETROGRESSION; and unless buttressed by the swift augmentation of experiential wisdom, such human societies will recede from high but premature levels of attainment, and the "dark ages" of the interregnum of wisdom will bear witness to the inexorable restoration of the imbalance between self-liberty and self-control.
P.782 - Make certain that when you change the social order you change for the better. Do not be persuaded to experiment with the discarded formulas of your forefathers. Go forward, NOT BACKWARD! Let evolution proceed! Do not take a backward step.
EDUCATIONAL CRISIS
P.1220 - Any civilization is in JEOPARDY when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world. Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology.
P.908 - But the continent richest in natural deposits and the most advanced mechanical equipment will make little progress if the intelligence of its people is ON THE DECLINE.
P.909 - A mechanical age CAN PROVE DISASTROUS only to a nation whose intellectual level is TOO LOW TO DISCOVER THOSE WISE METHODS and sound techniques for successfully adjusting to the TRANSITION DIFFICULTIES arising from the sudden loss of employment by large numbers consequent upon the too rapid invention of new types of laborsaving machinery.
P.909 - But the improvement in education has not kept pace with the expanding social structure; neither has the modern appreciation of ethics developed in correspondence with growth along more purely intellectual and scientific lines. And modern civilization is at a STANDSTILL in spiritual development and the SAFEGUARDING of the home institution.
LEADERSHIP CRISIS
P.911 - Wisdom, insight, and foresight are indispensable to the endurance of nations. Civilization is never really jeopardized UNTIL able leadership begins to vanish.
P.803 - The status of any level of civilization is faithfully PORTRAYED by the caliber of its citizens who volunteer to accept the responsibilities of statehood.
GOVERNMENTAL CRISIS
P.801 - Democracy, while an ideal, is a product of civilization, not of evolution. Go slowly! select carefully! for the DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY are: 1. Glorification of mediocrity. 2. Choice of base and ignorant rulers. 3. Failure to recognize the basic facts of social evolution. 4. Danger of universal suffrage in the hands of uneducated and indolent majorities. 5. Slavery to public opinion; the majority is not always right.
P.786 - The PERILS of budding industry on Urantia are: 1. The strong drift toward materialism, spiritual blindness. 2. The worship of wealth-power, value distortion. 3. The vices of luxury, cultural immaturity. 4. The increasing dangers of indolence, service insensitivity. 5. The growth of undesirable racial softness, biologic deterioration. 6. The threat of standardized industrial slavery, personality stagnation. Labor is ennobling but drudgery is benumbing.
P.798 - If men would maintain their freedom, they must, after having chosen their charter of liberty, provide for its wise, intelligent, and fearless interpretation to the end that there may be PREVENTED: 1. Usurpation of unwarranted power by either the executive or legislative branches. 2. Machinations of ignorant and superstitious agitators. 3. Retardation of scientific progress. 4. Stalemate of the dominance of mediocrity. 5. Domination by vicious minorities. 6. Control by ambitious and clever would-be dictators. 7. Disastrous disruption of panics. 8. Exploitation by the unscrupulous. 9. Taxation enslavement of the citizenry by the state. 10. Failure of social and economic fairness. 11. Union of church and state. 12. Loss of personal liberty.
SPIRITUAL GENIUS CRISIS
P.1207 - §6 For many thousands of years, so the records of Jerusem show, in each generation there have lived fewer and fewer beings who could function safely with self-acting Adjusters. This is an ALARMING PICTURE, and the supervising personalities of Satania look with favor upon the proposals of some of your more immediate planetary supervisors who advocate the inauguration of measures designed to FOSTER AND CONSERVE the higher spiritual types of the Urantia races.
MIDWAYERS FEELING THE HEAT
P.1487 - We have, therefore, in the following presentation departed more widely from the substance of the Master's teachings at Urmia concerning political sovereignty, at the same time attempting to depict the import of such teachings as they are applicable to the PECULIARLY CRITICAL STAGE of the evolution of political sovereignty in the twentieth century after Christ.
-------------------------------------With the multiple warnings it gives us regarding the present danger in the spiritual, social and political leanings of Urantia, we are given subtle hints that the “tribulation” era is at hand.
With the revelation of Christ Michael’s statement about how (P.1914) “…when the kingdom shall have come to its full fruition, be assured that the Father in heaven will not fail to visit you with an ENLARGED REVELATION OF TRUTH and an enhanced demonstration of righteousness” we’re given a strong but indirect hint that the arrival of the FER itself signals that the time of the “harvest” has arrived, and an "enhanced demonstration of righteousness" will follow by a Paradise Son. The arrival of the FER and the "full fruition" are directly correlated in the quote.
Now, let’s review what the FER says about the impending arrival of the Trinity Teachers Sons:
P.231 – “When the progress of events on an evolutionary world indicates that the time is ripe to initiate a spiritual age, the Trinity Teacher Sons always volunteer for this service. You are not familiar with this order of sonship because Urantia has never experienced a spiritual age, a millennium of cosmic enlightenment. But the Teacher Sons EVEN NOW visit your world for the purpose of formulating plans concerning their projected sojourn on your sphere. They will be due to appear on Urantia after its inhabitants have gained comparative deliverance from the shackles of animalism and from the fetters of materialism.”
First, take note that we’re told of a coming “spiritual age” which will last a thousand years. We’re then told that the Teacher Sons are “even now” (starting 100 years ago) visiting Urantia in preparation for their arrival, and that the timing for their arrival will be signaled by our “comparative deliverance” from animalism and materialism. Are we “comparatively” triumphing over animalism and materialism? The FER definitively claims that that is indeed the case:
P.2082 – “The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and are EVEN NOW slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation.”
Again, the revelation is signaling that its own arrival was timed to coincide with the time when Urantia gained “comparative deliverance” from animalism and materialism. It actually says it again and again:
P.2076 – “At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn.”
And just in case that doesn’t do the job, they practically shout it out at us:
P.2082 – “Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.”
So, we’re told that the Trinity Teacher Sons are “even now” getting their plans ready for Urantia, and that the FER itself is actually preparing us for their imminent arrival. But the Teacher Sons never come alone:
P.231 – “Trinity Teacher Sons have nothing to do with terminating planetary dispensations. They neither judge the dead nor translate the living, but on each planetary mission they are accompanied by a Magisterial Son who performs these services. Teacher Sons are wholly concerned with the initiation of a spiritual age, with the dawn of the era of spiritual realities on an evolutionary planet…The Teacher Sons usually remain on their visitation planets for one thousand years of planetary time.”
The FER is very clearly saying that the Trinity Teachers Sons are due to arrive on Urantia any day; that they come with a Magisterial Son who terminates the dispensational era (“Judgment Day”); and that the next phase (“millennium of cosmic enlightenment”) will last a thousand years, at which time the era of Light and Life begins.
The only thing remaining is the exact date; but no one outside the councils of Paradise knows that.
More on the upcoming Magisterial Mission: http://urantiabook.org/archive/readers/magisterial_missions.htm