Straightforward contradiction between two "revealed from a higher spiritual source" books: the Urantia Book and Conversations with God (Neale Donald Walsh) about reincarnation

 Before you read this post, you have to be familiar with this one. There, I claimed that many influential New Age Spiritualities and Religions contradict themselves regarding basic doctrines or aspects about the spiritual nature and fate of human beings. Whatever their differences, what they have in common in each case is a radical revisionism of the traditional Christian view of Jesus.

In this post, I want to illustrate my point with an example taken from the very influential book called The Urantia Book and another influential one called Conversations with God. Keep in mind that, as I stressed in my previous post, both groups (like most revisionistic groups about the historical Jesus among the paranormal community) have 3 things in common: 

1-The group or movement in question originated in the United States of America.

2-The group or movement in question claims to have privileged access to information about the historical Jesus (and other related spiritual matters) from a high-level spiritual (and hence supposedly reliable) source through paranormal means.

3-The group or movement in question provide a revisionistic liberal view about Jesus which is clearly anti-Christian (i.e. contrary to traditional Christianity), in which key Christian concepts like "sin", "salvation",  "hell", etc. (doctrines which are the ones mainly connected with negative feelings or emotions of anti-Christians) are denied or reinterpreteted in a way which sounds (feels) good and "nice" for contemporary anti-Christian ears.

I will show specific examples of this later, but in this moment I want to stress the contradictions in key doctrines defended by both groups which proves that, at least, one of them is FALSE.

Let's mention the example of reincarnation:

In the famous Urantia Book, you can read this about reincarnation:

A mortal never returns to his native planet during the dispensation of his temporal existence, and if he should return during a subsequent dispensation, he would be escorted by a transport seraphim of the universe headquarters group (39:4.15)

Note carefully that reincarnation is straightforwardly denied, not merely made unlikely or rare or exceptional. It is said that a mortal NEVER returns to his planet to live again. Not qualification about exceptions is found in the Urantia Book, as far I've read it. (On this point, they fully agree with traditional traditional Christianity).

 

Keep in mind that this book (which provides a kind of liberal reconstruction of the historical Jesus) supposedly comes from advanced extraterrestial beings who are spiritually more advanced than us. So, presumibly, they know what they're talking about. The implication is that it is a reliable source of information about spiritual matters.

Compare, however, with Neale Donald Walsh's book Conversations with God, in which is God himself who supposedly is giving Walsh the answers. When Walsh asked "God" about reincarnation, "God" replied like this:

You have had 647 past lives, since you insist on being exact. This is your 648th. You were everything in them. A king, a queen, a serf…. No, there is not such thing as karmic debt – not in the sense that you mean… You are not obligated to do anything (p.204)

As you can see, "God" is contradicting the information given in the Urantia Book about reincarnation, and explicitly asserting that Walsh lived several lives (more of 600!).

Also, "God"'s reply includes a subtle AMORAL element (strangely very similar to some oriental philosophies and contrary to the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament) according to which "You are not obligated to do anything", in other words, no moral obligation at all exists. This amoralistic view is repeated and stressed in the book.

Note that, for a American anti-Chrisitian individual raised and educated in a fundamentalistic Christian family which (wrongly) forced onto him negative feelings of guilt and fear of divine punishment and "sins", the above "there are no obligation at all and hence not punishment" liberal view is a kind of emotional release and fresh air. This is exactly what the anti-Christian WANTS to hear. (This kind of person, if interested in Jesus scholarship, will tend to be sympathetic to the views of liberal groups like the Jesus Seminar, because this liberal group also tell him what he largely want to hear and which resonates with his anti-Christian sensibilities, specially when such information is presented as the representative mainstream conclusions of contemporary scholarship. This anti-Christian animus is the main reason why these kind of books like Walsh's have been best-sellers in USA or at least had very sympathetic reception among the public in USA).

I'm convinced that all or most of these New Age movements are based on wishful thinking about what people WANT to hear regarding spiritual matters, and they choose these journeys because they provide them with the positive, nice, refreashing and liberating emotions which were repressed or inhibited when they were being raised in Christianity, so Christianity triggers in them extremely negative feelings and memories of guilt and fear.

The danger of this is that you cannot settle what is true based on your emotions and feelings. Such a approach is extremely misleading and potentially (spiritually) very dangeous, because if for the argument's sake Christianity would turn to be true (at least his basic teachings about Jesus's exclusivistic role for salvation) then we won't have excuse, because the New Testament information about Jesus already suggests that false prophets and sources of information astutely claiming to be the real Jesus or the real voice of God will appear with "sheep's cloting" in order to deceive us: "Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it.  For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand." (Matthew 24: 23-25)

Since it is an extremely important question from the spiritual point of view, you cannot settle this question appealing to your emotions and feelings about what you WANT to hear about Jesus and God. You cannot settle it through blind faith, supported by a bunch of positive and relieving emotions and wishful thinking, regarding the reliability of an "inner voice" supposedly heard by a person (already strongly biased against Christianity), or the information received from a bunch of putatively advanced extraterrestials beings or "elder brothers", through automatic writing or dreams, claiming to be the real Jesus or the true God.

You have to examine seriously, objectively and rigurously the evidence about Jesus' teachings and his resurrection, even if what you find is strongly unpalatable or triggers on you negative emotions And to do the same regarding other religions and spiritual traditions.

This is a very hard and consuming task, but our spiritual fate can crucially depend on this.