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Urantiana
A summary derived from Urantia Paper 75, sections 4-8, and Paper 76.

Adam's Reactions

Realization

Adam hears of Eve's error. Both Adam and Eve are "reproved...for disobedience," and told that "they had disobeyed" and "they had defaulted." They are advised by Solonia, heed some of this angel's advice, disregard some.

Adam is "heartbroken and dejected," and for Eve has "only pity and sympathy."

Betrayal

Unable to bear the idea of continuing without his mate, Adam intentionally seeks out Laotta and "with premeditation committed the folly of Eve."

Abandonment

Then Adam "wandered in solitude" for thirty days. "Not in fifty years" did Adam's older children recover from the shock of the default, and "especially" Adam's thirty days away. The pregnant Eve is in "complete ignorance of his whereabouts or fate" and "never" fully recovered from his month's absence.

Return

Adam returns and with Eve begins to plan for the future. (Eve "experienced a satisfaction of joy and gratitude that never was effaced by their long and difficult life partnership of toiling service.")

After the Garden

Departure

Bereft of supermortal advice or assistance, under siege from the Nodites, Adam confers with followers and they decide to leave the garden, going east.

Bereavement

Three days out, two thirds of those Adamic children over the age of twenty choose to leave the planet.

Adam and Eve have it confirmed that they are in default (although not considered in rebellion), and consequently are mortal.

The journey to the new garden takes a year. While on the road Eve gives birth to Cain, son of Cano, and Laotta gives birth to Adam's daughter Sansa. Laotta dies in childbirth. Eve suffered in childbirth but survived. Eve nurses and rears Sansa.

Second Garden

Restarting

The existing occupants fled the Tigris-Euphrates lands. Adam's company arrive and begin fortifying their new home.

Abel, the first post-default child of Adam and Eve, is born.

Religion Degrades

Adam, "burdened" and "depressed spiritually," delegates authority. The religion of Adam's company is already degrading — animal sacrifice is no longer discouraged (which plays a part in Cain and Abel's quarrels).

More Tragedy

Cain, twenty, slays his eighteen-year-old half-brother Abel. Cain is encouraged to leave the new garden. He later becomes instrumental in re-establishing and keeping peace with the Nodites.

Mortal Life

Adam spends most of his time training his children, which paves the way for a smoother transition upon his eventual demise. Their life is hard. The new garden had to be started from scratch. Adam and Eve are even reduced to sometimes eating meat.

Adam's Seed

With Eve as "the head of a commission...on race improvement," Adam impregnates one thousand six hundred eighty-two non-Adamic, mostly Nodite, women. All but 112 of these children survive to adulthood, reared in their mothers' tribes. Mixed-race conceptions cause difficulties in childbirth. Laotta died giving birth to Adam's daughter. Although there is no mention how many of these nearly seventeen hundred women were condemned to death for conceiving by Adam, presumably many were. And Adam and Eve must have recognized in advance that these mothers were human sacrifices for the mission of racial uplift. Harsh.

Fate of Adam and Eve

Adam's Death

Adam and Eve received Thought Adjusters soon after their degradation to mortality. They were comforted by a cryptic message from their universe sovereign Michael, from which Adam inferred that the Paradise Son might bestow himself upon this poor world. They were reassured in the hope of resurrection.

Eve died "of a weakened heart" after five hundred eleven years on Urantia. Adam died "of what might be termed old age" after five hundred thirty years. They were buried in the center of the temple of divine service.

This ended four hundred seventy thousand years of continuous existence of a material representative of superhuman government on our world.

Survival

Three days after Adam's death, by order of Lanaforge, Adam and Eve were repersonalized in a special dispensational resurrection. They progressed through Jerusem citizenship and returned to Edenic residency, but now as ascendant citizens. They are currently on the Urantia advisory board of twenty-four.




Urantiana

How do you explain what's happening?

In response to a quote from The Urantia Book regarding the internment of rebel midwayers, posted on alt.religion.urantia-book, a correspondent asked:

How do you explain what is going on these days in the U.S.A. and on this planet?

Many glib and superficial answers to this generality occur to me. :)

But more seriously, friend, what would you like explained? Not all superhuman beings are revealed in the UB, but it is usually interpreted that all those who were rebels have been interned. Except one, the chief rebel of our world, Caligastia, the "devil" himself. While some UB students like to believe that Caligastia has been hauled off as well, and some "revelation update" alleged psychics also support this view, they do so without any cause from the UB itself.

I sometimes think we can almost trace the travels of Caligastia, for example deserting Hitler and cleaving to Mao, or in modern days dallying in the Middle East or the Balkans. But his virus, regardless of his continuing presence, is still the chief contagion and contaminant of our world's spirit. We should all pray for the infection's utter elimination.

That said, I would add,

In general, when weak and dissolute mortals are supposed to be under the influence of devils and demons, they are merely being dominated by their own inherent and debased tendencies, being led away by their own natural propensities. The devil has been given a great deal of credit for evil which does not belong to him. Caligastia has been comparatively impotent since the cross of Christ.

The Lucifer Rebellion: The Son of Man on Urantia [UP53 §8 ¶9 p610]^ Worth a read in its entirety if you wish to peruse the question in greater depth.



Urantiana
Some not-so-serious thinking about the reasons given in The Urantia Book why Jesus used clay and spittle to heal the blind man

Urantia Paper 164, §3, ¶12:^

Jesus made use of the clay and the spittle and directed him to wash in the symbolic pool of Siloam for three reasons…

And what were these three reasons? Welll…

1. This was not a miracle response to the individual's faith. This was a wonder which Jesus chose to perform for a purpose of his own, but which he so arranged that this man might derive lasting benefit therefrom.

Okay, we'll take their word for it that this action was taken so the man could benefit lastingly, which in the further development of the story does seem to prove true.

2. As the blind man had not asked for healing, and since the faith he had was slight, these material acts were suggested for the purpose of encouraging him. He did believe in the superstition of the efficacy of spittle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisacred place. But he would hardly have gone there had it not been necessary to wash away the clay of his anointing. There was just enough ceremony about the transaction to induce him to act.

This doesn't seem so much like a second reason as an expansion of the first. [Shrug]

3. But Jesus had a third reason for resorting to these material means in connection with this unique transaction: This was a miracle wrought purely in obedience to his own choosing, and thereby he desired to teach his followers of that day and all subsequent ages to refrain from despising or neglecting material means in the healing of the sick. He wanted to teach them that they must cease to regard miracles as the only method of curing human diseases.

This is the reason why I'm writing. This has always struck me as, well, lame. Strained. I've always felt it was, like, what Sadler (or some Midwayer) thought Jesus might have meant.

After all, there was (we may presume) no real material efficacy in this treatment. Its logic is inconsistent. This miracle was wrought to teach us not to regard miracles as the only method of curing disease? It would seem more to suggest that material means are more or less placebo in nature. That, as some religionists have supposed, the efficacy of a system lies not in innate physical propensities but in the belief of the patient. Doctors are well acquainted with the "miraculous" potentials of the placebo. One article I read not long ago said that in tests, even hair growth has been stimulated by placebo. If we believe in magic, it works. When we cease to believe in magic and believe in science, magic ceases to work, but science works. If we believe in allopathy, it works. Alternatively, if we believe in homeopathy, it works. That's not what the UB says, but it is more like what one might interpret from Jesus' use of holy mud and spit, especially in light of the first two reasons given.

Right now, I'm doing my best to believe that my prescription of penicillin will keep me from losing this swollen thumb, or worse, infected by catbite. Oh, I believe! I believe! But I also believe all healing comes from God, whatever the route.

Hello?




Urantiana

What if there is no hereafter?

A correspondent in alt.religion.urantia-book wondered about eternal life. The Jews, he said, direct inheritors of the teachings of Melchizedek, have no belief system regarding eternal life. He wondered, what if there is no afterlife?

Something I've always thought: If there is no afterlife, by the time I find out, I'll never know, and I won't get a chance to yell at anybody about it! [grin]

Actually, the Jews do have a concept of the afterlife, at least some do. It's typically Jewishly exquisite. I've seen it called the Great Mercy and it goes like this. (Forgive me if I err--this is from readings about twenty-five, thirty years ago.) Maybe the Creator sees fit to grant something beyond this life. If so, that's his Great Mercy. If he doesn't, he doesn't. (At this point, I think, you give a casual shrug in Yiddish and say, "Enh!" or "Nu!") It doesn't change one's Duty in this life, to obey the Commandments, etc.

I really like that attitude so much better than the overmuch concern of so many Christians and others with personal salvation, which is, at base, just a form of selfish desire and fraught with a tendency to deny the importance of this life except as it leads to salvation, rather than just the assurance of faith in God's love and, well, Great Mercy. "This life, this moment, this is all the Heaven you get right now, so live as if you're already in the presence of God" sounds good to me.

And, whah! b'gosh! here it is right here in that fat blue book!

All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and grounded in selfishness. Jesus taught that service to one's fellows is the highest concept of the brotherhood of spirit believers. Salvation should be taken for granted by those who believe in the fatherhood of God. The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.

Urantia Paper 188^, Section 4, Paragraph 9, page 2017.

That's the commandment to keep!




Urantiana

Each year we make a little progress in improving our garden home, but we're also aware that we're starting twenty years later than we might've…

This article was originally posted on "Little Urantial," the now-gone urantial@ubook.org mail list, on 1997 Jan 18. As with many discussions online, the background for this is a little convoluted. In a discussion of various Urantia Book-related legal matters, I had, in passing, mentioned the role of the gardener for the Urantia Foundation headquarters, and my statement was mistaken such that a correspondent asked if I had "lost interest in gardening," whether I had lost sight of "gardening's vital importance as a human activity." Following is my response.

You've put me in a very delicate position here.

If you were joking, that was a fantastic bit of rare, dry wit, and I'd like to congratulate you on it. But if it was wit, it was so dryly presented, and I'm so unfamiliar with you, that I can't tell if you were joking or really trying to take me to task!

If you were at all serious, then to laugh at the wit could likely be aggrevating to you, and furthermore I'd be forced to tediously defend my remarks by reiterating the crucial difference between the work of a printer or a gardener and the work of those who actually represent the book itself. Surely you didn't miss my highly-qualifying remark that every person is a brother or sister to the UBer, did you?

My choice of "gardener" was quite intentional, at any rate, and far from intending to demean the position, it is a position I would have enjoyed, just as I (having worked to restore fine older buildings) would have enjoyed the "menial" task of being able to handle the restoration of that lovely building at 533 Diversey.

When Mary Jo and I joined one another in the eternal adventure, over twenty years ago, we then resided, all too briefly, on a piece of property of which I owned an undivided one-quarter, and thus, technically, it was not mine at all, at least as far as freedom to operate it as we wished. In this little corner of Washington County, Oklahoma, my great-grandfather worked, and my grandparents' gardens grew. My grandmother made it nigh-Edenic with her rosebushes and peacocks.

All that disappeared after my grandfather and father died in quick and shocking succession, and all our efforts to buy or lease the property were thwarted by my partners. The place deteriorated. As the caretaker for all those years has said, when a tree died, he'd just take out the stump, pat the dirt down, and hope the grass grew. That was the extent of the "gardening" he could do, besides the small garden he and his wife grew behind their house. As years went by, and his budget was repeatedly cut, he did what he could, but mostly the property was neglected.

Meanwhile, Mary Jo and I spent thirteen years with a gardener-frustrating postage-stamp yard in Chicago, bringing forth what we could from that sandy and often-frozen patch. Then, finally, a few years ago, we were suddenly able to acquire the old family place. We made numerous sacrifices (some of which I'm still paying for mightily) to move back there, to be on the land.

I spent the first few years going around ripping out several miles of poison ivy, poison oak, and other vines which threatened to strangle the remaining oaks, pecans, and pines, and clearing the heavy growth from the long concrete wall which my grandfather poured around the living area.

Now my children enjoy strawberries and pecans and morning glories brought forth from that long-neglected soil. Each year we make a little progress in improving our garden home, but we're also aware that we're starting twenty years later than we might've — we really wanted to raise our kids here from the beginning. Perhaps, in some Supreme device, this was the Only Way for us; perhaps we wouldn't have valued it quite so highly had we not been forced away for so many years. I do wish we'd been building up our organic garden soil for twenty years already, though.

Lately, Mary Jo and I have been drooling through the seed catalogues, planning our expansion of the cultivation efforts we've made so far. Building a natural intercropped intensive organic garden is a joyous labor, and while we err often (our apple trees died), we're learning. I'm personally especially fond of what I joke is morontia vegetation — purple plants. (As I recall, violet is said to be to morontia vegetation what chlorophyll-green is to earthly plant life.)

Haven't yet, but I'd like to have a part of our yard planted in three concentric circles of azure blue flowers surrounded by white alyssum (a/k/a carpet of snow). Think I should plant a little (R) near it? :)

I really hope you were joking. But whether or not you were, thank you, for I'd rather talk about the joys of gardening than the tedium of lawsuits any day! :Don




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