The Greatest Privilege I Can Imagine
I began searching for a revelation of God in my childhood, after finding out that the world was not exactly as it was presented in the Dick and Jane readers or in Sunday school lessons. I was very unhappy with the hypocrisy and jungle- like, survival-of-the-fittest society in which I found myself growing up during World War II and the subsequent Cold War years.
I went to high school and college at Yeshiva University where I also attended the Hebrew Teachers Institute for six years as a practicing and believing Orthodox Jew. By the time I got out of Yeshiva I was ready to spread my wings and try to change the world. I became a teacher, hoping to nurture the younger generations in brotherhood and love. This ended when I discovered that schools were forbidden to do anything but prepare the next generation for the workplace – for competition. The marketplace with its profit motive was in control and there was nothing I could do about it.
In the mid-’60s I became dedicated to the civil rights struggle and the peace movement. It was through the teachings of Martin Luther King that I became interested in non-violence, and it was in the Black churches that I was introduced to Jesus. Though I had been an activist against the war in Vietnam, part of me leaned in the other direction, toward the belief that violent revolution was the only option. When the moment of decision came – whether to follow the path of violence or non-violence – I had my first real contact with Jesus. When I decided to go his way, I found him by my side and pledged to follow him in my search for truth.
In 1970, while living in northern New Mexico as a hippie, I met someone who, after getting to know me, said, “Marty, you should read The Urantia Book.” The book was not available in that isolated place, but one arrived with a person who was visiting our little village from San Francisco for a week and he loaned it to me. My wife Gloria and I spent the entire week reading aloud to each other. I knew that I had received the information that I’d been searching for.
I was given five full years to devote to its study and to work out the questions I had about revolutionizing the world. I found myself understanding Jesus in a certain way because his childhood culture was so much like mine. His education and parenting were things that I understood firsthand. I feel as though I met Jesus in Capernaum on the shores of Galilee and not at all through the introduction of Paul. I still relate to Jesus as a Jew and find my background to be a real advantage in understanding him.
I have been paid in excess for my labors and have since entered the kingdom and been enlisted in the Urantia corps of agondonters. It is the greatest privilege I can imagine to be in the receivership of the fifth epochal revelation for our world, and meeting my Urantia friends has been an unspeakable joy.
