Afterword

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AFTERWORD

In the Foreword to this work we likened The Urantia Book to a symphony. And so it is. In this Afterword we would like to compare it to a romance – a story of love and adventure. Time after time, in the labor of this work, the writer has been struck with the divine affection on the on hand, and on the other by the great adventuresomeness that seems to underlie God’s purposes – as they appear to be revealed in the happenings of the history of the master universe, in all that goes before, and in all that follows after.

God pours himself out upon creation in such a prodigal manner. He gives without measure that all may be enriched by these gifts. Such are the fruits of the infinite love which he seems to bear for all beings.

God is so loving, but so un-soft. He, who gives so much in love, is also the one who challenges those whom he loves. He is the creator of problems, in the solutions of which his children grow.

God is so unchanging, but always the cause of change. Always is he putting the ferment of the new and the challenging into the old and the established. And as the old and the new react to each other each challenges the other, and as each responds to the challenge of the other both grow and rise above the former limitations. God seems to want all of his children to grow, and he seems to want to be a partner with each one in that adventure of growth. He gives his spirit to live within us, to share with us the adventure of exploring his infinity in fact and his infinity of love.

In the preparation of this work the feeling has grown upon the writer that it is a story of romance and adventure, a thrilling tale of challenge and response. The real hero of the whole story is God! This Being is the most exciting personality in the wide-spreading universes. This Being is the most interesting and intriguing perso­nality in existence. This Being is the author of love, and (we believe) the real Source of the spirit of adventure. When he spoke as a Man among men, and to men, he said, “Follow me!”

And if we dare, we may.

* * *

We have traversed many conceptual kilometers in this study. We have been bold in speculation and courageous in adventuresome thinking. There is a passage in the Papers that should comfort us in this regard. The Papers instruct us (330.2) 30:0.2 it is best that we not be told too much, that too much information “would deprive the thinking mortals of the next thousand years of that stimulus to creative speculation which these partially revealed concepts supply.”

The writer is painfully aware of the limitations of human mind. We perceive so dimly, we comprehend so slowly, we seem so impervious to the light of truth. The speculations in this study are undoubtedly very prone to error. We are so unlikely to reason through to valid facts. But, even here, at the very last, another passage from the Papers (2096.7) 196:3.31 offers much by way of comfort:

“All of man’s universe romancing may not be fact, but much, very much is truth.”