(Editor’s note: This was written by Nigel Nunn when he was editor of the Arena, September 1995)
A shiver of satisfaction ripples through the Supreme when a human becomes dependable. But when a group of agondonter humans rises out of the mire of self-interest, cultural bondage and planetary delusions, and commits itself to gather dependably for a methodical examination of The Urantia Book, schemes can be hatched. The midwayers and planetary guardians can begin to set up the serendipitous, the Nebadon administration can project their plans, and the Deities themselves turn their collective eye to watch things unfold.
Consider how much effort goes into preparing a human so that they can first want to read, and secondly, endure the reading of, The Urantia Book. Then consider what it means, to those fostering our planet’s development, to have a group of such husbanded humans choose to gather regularly to read this book. Our study groups are just such, and thus can be considered invaluable.
Of course, the future of Urantia does not depend on the success or expansion of our study groups. Planetary progress is being made in hundreds of disconnected and surprising places. But where else can the administrators of Nebadon engage in direct education, rather than resorting to phenomena and ad hoc schemes? Without The Urantia Book, and study groups to complement it, they may work for years with a single attuned soul to plant the idea of a non-absolute spacetime-limited creator deity (Creator Sons), to suggest that fragments of absolute deity indwell the otherwise unspirited human animal (Thought Adjusters), to inspire the idea of a plane of existence midway between the incarnate and the spiritual (Morontia).
In the study group, and by means of The Urantia Book, they have put in place a mechanism which allows them to pour these concepts into the thirsty souls of both new and veteran readers. Safely. Efficiently. Reliably. And once such a group is established, with its core of resilient dependability in place, it can be used to trigger developments in these early days of the Fifth Epoch: a casual visitor adjusted at just the right moment; a lover of God being ignited by the knowledge that it was Michael of Nebadon who had satisfied the desire of his ages; the sceptical logician seeing that the universe is both lovely and rational. Those sincere readers with less tenacity or need, who may pass briefly through such a group, will at the very least receive the notion of Michael, a sub-absolute deity ruling in Nebadon. This surprising and remarkable discovery will be sitting in the back of their mind when next they consider the problem of Jesus, or wonder “So just who is running the show?”
“The gospel of Jesus is for saving souls. The Urantia Papers can orient those saved souls.”