Message #5385

[Majeston]

At first it seemed too weird

Submitted by Joseph H. Reza

My Father died around 1982. I was depressed for a while after his death. I felt sad at the loss of his company on this earth. I was happy for the foundation of love he left me to build on. Both feelings made me cry tears of sadness and tears of joy. I was emotional at the time.
My wife at the time became disturbed at the amount of time it was taking me to get over my dad's death. About six months after his death, I had a healing dream about him. When I awoke I felt a pressure or tightness had lifted off of my chest area that I wasn't even aware was there.
Almost immediately after that I became interested in researching spiritual things that interested or bothered me in my life. One was the fact that I wanted to know what happened to the missing years in Jesus’ life. What happened between 13 and 30? I began to ask questions of my friends, co-workers and family. I heard about the lost books of the bible, and the council of Nicea around 410 AD or so where it was decided what writings would be included in the Bible. I wanted to know what happen to the ones that weren't included? Did any of them have information about Jesus’ life?
I went to library and researched and scanned and read books. One was a brand new fragmented translation of Cave Scrolls recently found in the Holy Land. It supposedly had writings of St. Matthew. They were too fragmented, just in the beginnings of translation and though they had many differences from the bible, none seemed very important.
I read a book by an American minister from the South from about the 1850's. A purported revelation describing a religious sect called the Essenes and how Jesus supposedly passed through all their teachings and even reached the level of Divine. One test was in a Pyramid where he passed a test of denial of sexual desire displaying only pure spiritual Love. The best book I found was “Jesus, the Son of Man” by Kahlil Gibran the author of "The Prophet". He translated these letters about Jesus written by those who knew him at the time, from Ancient Aramaic which he learn from monks in a Monastery as a youth.
Around the time I was researching Jesus, a friend of mine gave me "The Urantia Book" I began to browse and review the index. My friend liked a lot of Science Fiction and in my brief review I wasn't interested. He urged me to at least read the part about Jesus. I said O.K. but didn't.
About a year later while exploring another interest in Electro-magnetism (I wanted to find a source of energy that would produced more energy than it needed to create it.) I figured that the earth's magnetic fields would give up energy when something passed through it's lines of force by changing the polarity on the object to attract it to the line of force and repulse it after momentum pushed the object through the line of force. I met a family friend at a party and he said the Urantia book spoke of energy like that. He also mentioned that it spoke of other scientific discoveries before they were discovered and that it spoke of others that hadn't been discovered yet.
So it was that after about a year or so on top of my dresser I began to look for answers to my energy questions in the Urantia Book. Eventually I read the story of Jesus. I can't tell you the joy of satisfaction, the sense of completeness that I felt after reading that story. I told my sister who was into the church that it was quite simply the best story I've ever read or seen (like movies) on Jesus. I had a strong faith and had believed in earnest in Jesus since I was thirteen or 14 in Catholic School. I was truly moved by Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels. I loved the New Testament because it was Jesus’ teachings. There were many things in the Old Testament I couldn't reconcile in my heart with the teachings in the New Testament. And now I had something fulfilled inside of me. The holes that were empty had been filled so beautifully by this new story.
I had read many of Herman Hesse's books. "Journey to the East", "Siddhartha", "Narcissus and Goldman", Jung, Freud, Heddiger, Marx, Hegel, and now I finally found something that just made me feel content, good, at peace with myself.
Since that time I've bought and given away the Urantia book in Spanish, French, English and Korean, to family, friends and co-workers. I tell everybody to start on page 1344 (old blue book). So they don’t fall into the same trap I did. If they read that, then I tell them to read part 3, then part 2 and finally part 1. My sister always seemed to have reservations about my enthusiasm about the Urantia Book. I told my sister you find Truth everywhere. You find it in Nature. You find it in novels. You find it in movies. You find it at work. You find it in life. It's everywhere waiting for you to discover it. I use to tell her "do you think native's that have never heard of God or the Bible or religion or church aren't saved?" Everyone can reach God.
Now I had found a book (the Urantia Book) that reinforced the religion I had found in myself through my experience in this life. And because of this book I have become a more spiritual person. Because of this book I now read the bible and many translations of it. And I get so much more out of it. Now because of this book (and our search for truth and fulfillment in our lives) I'm a better Catholic. Another friend who reads it is a better Methodist, another a better born again Christian, etc. etc. etc. I want more and more to do God's will on earth as it is in heaven. And now that means something to me. I look forward to my progression and spiritual evolution. I await the more perfect unions with my heavenly father and my heavenly and earthly brothers. I don't fear death. Wars will come and go and eventually we will have world peace. Or if our world is physically destroyed our spiritual progression will continue.
I can now see life in terms of spiritual time, which is even much longer than geological time. Our human frailties are passing experiences and our spiritual eventuality a long awaited development. God Bless and guide us all.