For a Jew living in Palestine two thousand years ago, who would have been the "great men of earth?"

In those days, Jews had a very strong belief in themselves as "God's chosen people." So simply on racial grounds, all non-Jews would be ruled out. Also for Jesus to ignore them, these "great men" would need to have been living Jews, not "men of old." Next we can rule out those Jews appointed as men of authority by their Roman masters, men such as Antipas and Philip, the sons of Herod the Great.

That leaves relatively few Jews to be considered, among them the scribes and teachers in the great temple at Jerusalem, the lawyers and the rabbis of the synagogue schools--men whom we would now class as "academics," the highly educated group in the Jewish society of those times.

The next clause in our quote from p.1594 states, "He began his work with the poor." But even among this group (which constituted most of the remainder of the Jewish population), Jesus was seeking a special group--those people who would take his revelation of the Father in heaven so seriously that they would actually seek to emulate Jesus in their own lives.

The importance afforded to this group is demonstrated by the repeated references in the Urantia Papers to the mission assigned to it--firstly for the dissemination of the Fourth Epochal Revelation, and now for the dissemination of the revelatory message of the Papers themselves. Examples are:

From Jesus to Ganid about a stranger: "If we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Father in heaven, and thus would he become so attracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be constrained to inquire about our Father." (1466)

"If we know God, our real business on earth is so to live as to permit the Father to reveal himself in our lives." (1466)

Jesus endeavored to make clear that he desired his disciples, having tasted of the good spirit realities of the kingdom, so to live in the world that men, by seeing their lives, would become kingdom conscious and hence be led to inquire of believers concerning the ways of the kingdom." (1593)

 Jesus had come "to establish and demonstrate a standard of human life for all peoples upon all worlds throughout his entire universe. And this standard approached the highest perfection, even the final goodness of the Universal Father" (1594)

"Your mission to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-revealing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall consist in the life which you will live among men--the actual and living experience of loving men and serving them, even as I have loved and served you." (2043)

"As the Father sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have revealed the Father, so shall you reveal the divine love, not merely with words, but in your daily living. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to proclaim the joys of heaven but also to exhibit in your daily experience those spirit realities of the divine life." (2043)

The climactic statement in the Urantia Papers is found on p. 2090:

"To 'follow Jesus' means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it."

Certainly if we make our mission in life the emulation of Jesus' revelation of the Father in our own lives, and the unselfish service of man, then a thorough knowledge of Jesus' life and how he lived it is of critical importance.

But this knowledge of Jesus' life is also of importance in that, in assimilating it, we unconsciously accumulate a "feeling" for what does or does not have spiritual value, the only "stuff" from which our souls can be formed.

Jesus could readily carry out his decision to ignore "the great men" of his day simply by avoiding them. He could also personally seek out those who might decide to emulate his revelatory life. But if this same task was set for the revelators of the Urantia Papers, then it would appear that the only path open to them to do so would be in the actual manner of presentation of the Papers.

A description of some of the "laws of revelation" is provided in Paper 101, including the "proscription of unearned knowledge." However there appears to be only one or two hints as to how they might have gone about "ignoring the great men," whilst encouraging those who might elect to try to live their lives as Jesus lived his.

One curiosity of the presentation of the Urantia Papers is that the mandate for revelation that refers to the proscription of unearned knowledge does not appear until after the half way mark.

In any normal publication in which such an important qualification places restrictions on what can be discussed, one would expect to find this restriction mentioned at the beginning and in a preface or introduction.

The word "cosmology" is used in the Papers (received in the mid-1930's) in its traditional manner as a branch of metaphysics (the study of ultimate reality), and includes philosophy, theology, religion and science with no firm line of demarcation separating the history and the facts of a particular topic.

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Thus when we read, mid-way through the book (p.1109), that "any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time," and we also become aware of some of the Papers' problematic discrepancies, we are entitled to wonder whether perhaps we are being confronted with a twentieth century way of "ignoring the great men."

There is, of course, no possible way to obtain correct answers to such questions--which again poses more matters on which to ponder. Is this deliberate on the part of the revelators?

Why would the revelators of the Urantia Papers want to ignore our great men? One reason could be that many might be more inclined to draw attention to the Papers through addresses, articles, books and other forms of public presentation than by any actual living out of Jesus' revelation in their own lives.

Opinions presented in public tend to harden into hypotheses that must be defended, causing them to solidify, via self-righteousness, into rightness, and thus lead opinionated authors to God-playing.

But perhaps another reason for ignoring the great men is that some "in authority" would be tempted to formalize the life and teachings of Jesus into sets and sub-sets of instructions to be followed meticulously--instead of leaving Jesus-followers to work out their own individual pathway  with their divine helpers, the Spirit of Truth and their Thought Adjuster.

"The Master sought to impress upon all teachers of the gospel of the kingdom that their only business was to reveal God to the individual man as his Father--to lead this individual man to become son-conscious; then to present this same man to God as his faith son. Both of these essential revelations are accomplished in Jesus. He became, indeed, the 'way, the truth, and the life.' The religion of Jesus was based wholly on the living of his bestowal life. When Jesus departed from this world, he left behind no books, laws, or other forms of human organization affecting the religious life of the individual." (1593)

This last quotation indicates that instruction manuals are inappropriate, that Jesus' religion was his bestowal life, and that human organizations should have no part in the actual directing of the personal religious life of the individual.

Of one thing we may be sure. Neither the content of these Papers nor the unusual way in which they were presented was either accidental or due to carelessness. What we have was deliberate, chosen to meet our specific need and in the light of prior experience with multitudes of similar human societies on the planets throughout a vast creation. Some light as to why may perhaps be  concealed in statements of this nature:

"Jesus laid great emphasis upon what he called the two truths of first import in the teachings of the kingdom, and they are: the attainment of salvation by faith, and faith alone, associated with the revolutionary teaching of the attainment of human liberty through the sincere recognition of truth, 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'" (1593)

There is no way to embark upon the eternal universe career that leads to attainment of the Universal Father other than to make a faith decision to dedicate our will back to its origin. This can only be by an individual's independent decision.

And there is no other way to make a faith decision except from a position of uncertainty. A revelation that destroyed our uncertainty would also destroy our ability to make that faith decision.

With the beginning of the third millennium, a new and exciting era appears ready to open. This era will be one in which there may be enough dedicated followers of our Creator-Son making the faith decision that commits them to attempt to actually live out Jesus' revelation of the nature of the Father in their own daily living.

Enough for what? Enough to make a real difference. It is possible, in fact highly probable, that most of these decision-making followers of Jesus will be already committed Christians. Especially if the hopes expressed by the revelators come to pass, directly or indirectly, as a result of the influence of  the Urantia Papers' revelations:

"What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! Surely the Christian fellowship of believers will not hesitate to make such adjustments of faith and of practices of living as will enable it to 'follow after' the Master in the demonstration of his real life of religious devotion to the doing of his Father's will and of consecration to the unselfish service of man." (2090)

The core of our revelation is in that last sentence--that we lead our lives as Jesus led his, in dedication to the Father's will and in consecrated service to our brothers and sisters. And all this set in the framework of the eternal universe career now revealed to be open to us for our choosing.