prayer

This post was provoked by some very insensitive statements.

The murdered victims were in a church. If prayers did anything, they'd still be alive, you worthless sack of shit. https://t.co/iGHxPrYrLN— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) November 5, 2017 

They were in church. They had the prayers shot right out of them. Maybe try something else.
— Michael McKean (@MJMcKean) November 5, 2017 

To anyone saying “thoughts and prayers” to the victims...they were in CHURCH.
They don’t need more prayers.
They need gun control.
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) November 5, 2017 

Why not just ban guns and when people are upset about it, just send them thoughts and prayers?
— Erica Buist (@ericabuist) November 5, 2017 

Enough with the “thoughts and prayers already.” The Bible teaches us that faith without works is dead. Do something or say nothing. https://t.co/ekYTtpQhDk— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 5, 2017 

Good news is that we've found two trucks of thoughts and prayers leftover from Vegas!
— Pesach Lattin (@pacelattin) November 5, 2017 

They were literally praying when they were killed. Thoughts and Prayers do nothing, its time for better gun laws
— Pentecostal Atheist (@brandon2479) November 5, 2017 

After decades of data, I think we can all conclude the ‘thoughts and prayers” method of gun-violence prevention is 0% effective.
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) November 5, 2017 

Do people get the irony of sending #ThoughtsAndPrayers to people who were already praying? Apparently not. Religion isn't the answer here.
— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) November 5, 2017 

After NYC Attack: Muslim ban now! Build the wall! Extreme vetting!shot
After Sutherland Springs Texas attack: Thoughts and prayers
— Ali A Olomi (@aaolomi) November 5, 2017

Point taken, Dips.

At Regis College we were not indoctrinated in Christian orthodoxy as expected, although we did have two semesters of religion and two semesters of philosophy that included a good number of religious thinkers. The philosophers were boring, frankly. What a dreadful lot. All of them spent the first half of their discourses defining their terms, a habit they picked up from discussing philosophical matters with other philosophers. As you know when you have any such discussion you end up arguing about what you mean when you use words and more precisely what you don’t mean because your interlocutor will constantly twist the meaning of your own words into something that you are very clear about not intending. It’s what they do. It’s how they discourse, how they challenge each other, so each philosopher builds their own fortress of vocabulary. So they’re boring by telling us what they mean by their words, apparently they must tell us everything they don’t mean before getting to what they mean. Then when they finally get to it you go, “All that for just that?” We had Søren Kierkegaard agonizing about sin and forgiveness and Thomas Aquinas proving humans have a soul that’s eternal and always Marx explaining the world of people to us. And the like.

Among all of those true mind-wracking bores was a book by a non believer about Jesus that is the sweetest little book on Christianity that I ever read. An author examined with an open mind the possibility of Jesus actually living. I cannot recall the title. It was like candy. I do recall it ending, “I don’t know if Jesus was actually the son of God, but if God ever did come to live on Earth then he’d be like Jesus.” 

None of that was helpful. None useful. None of us business majors wanted to take those classes. They were required courses to be got through. We resented them. 

But they did plant the seeds of interest. And that’s all that they did. All that work and study for seeds. After those courses when items on religion came across my reading they were not automatically skipped. I stopped ignoring things having to do with religious thinking. I actually read them, actually gave them a chance, and better, comprehended and cared a little about what they were saying. 

Since then, all that I’ve seen, nothing comes close to Urantia. As Dune is to science fiction in creating an imagined universe completely from top to bottom, Urantia is to the Christian universe and thought. I’ve yet to read anything like it. And nothing will ever match it. Frankly, it’s bizarre. On first reading I accepted it as the wildest science fiction ever written and that went very far in comprehending Christianity. I’m being honest here, it’s the only book that I’ve read ten times. Possibly eleven. I began to lose count at nine readings and I read a couple more times after that. I just couldn’t get enough of it. I still haven't burned out. And nothing else was as good. Nothing. And each reading gives up new insight. I would end the book and start right over again at the beginning. After the third reading I lent the book to another strong reader who somehow imagined I was trading books and in return gave me Steven King’s The Talisman. 

What a ripoff!

G-A-A-A-A-W-W-W-W-L!

I get angry all over again just thinking about that. What a stupid book The Talisman is. Totally unfair trade. I lent him such a splendid book which he kept and he gave me bubblegum. 

So I bought another copy of Urantia and realized it really is a major pain in the butt to read for its heft. So I ripped it apart into major sections so each piece is like a thick wordy magazine. And that turned out to be quite handy. Each section is roughly equal to 200 pages, 196 separate papers. 2100 pages. Best bound book I ever owned. A real shame to rip it up, and it was difficult to tear apart on account of it being so well bound. But that’s how the book got read. I took my unbound sections with me everywhere and read them constantly. This went on for a few years.

And I thought I was a weirdo for doing that and then I read Urantia group is looking for translators and they prefer their translators read the book at least nine times. 

!

And that comforted me. I’m not such a weirdo after all. People actually do read it that many times. It’s not just me taken by its excellence.

It is a very strange book that purports to be revelation. Strange because presumed spiritual entities are dictating the book to a fallen down crackpot in need of psychological help and under hypnosis. His psychiatrist hypnotized him and he began spewing the contents in sequence from beginning to end. His doctor was so taken by the tremendous content coming out this guy, a drunk I think, that he transcribed the sessions and read them to a group of his colleagues. They were equally impressed and their group grew as they went and they formed the first study group. 

After the doctor read the latest segment, the new papers were locked in a safe with the previous papers.

At one point the doctor was reading along and the phrasing caused the study group to laugh at the passage. But humor was not intended by the entity dictating the passage. The next session that passage was reviewed but the expected humor was missing. Somehow the passage was changed. The thing that made them laugh was altered. The humor response was not welcome so it changed while no human was able to touch the manuscript. It just changed. 

Spooky, eh?

The book is the most difficult to read at the beginning because those are higher level spiritual entities doing the dictating. They are much more remote from physical beings. There isn't even language to convey their concepts. The discussion begins with the nature of God. The language and the conceptual framework are very high level. As the book progresses entities at lower universe levels describe their stations. First super-universe levels, then universe level, then local universe level, then moronta (in between spirit and material) level entities describe their activities, their places of their activities, their modes of living, their functions, where and how they fit into the scheme of existence, and how they relate to us. It’s utterly awesome. Lower and lower we read until we’re at planet-level in the material worlds and discussion is about Earth until finally the last 800 pages are about the life and time of Jesus written in a voice closest to our own. And honestly, this is the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever read. There is nothing so touching as this in print. Nothing. It is inspiring. It is the gravy to the whole book. It's so beautiful it makes you cry. And we readers wonder, why don’t they put this section in the front? As hook to the rest of the book. It would make sense to do that. 

But the entities doing the instructions said, no. This is how they want the material presented. It’s important to them that all that other universe organization material come first so that when it comes to the life of Jesus the reader fully appreciates who he is, how he fits into the scheme. They want full appreciation so that he is best understood. They want us to understand how incredible it is that he came to this world for his life in the material realm as one of our order of beings in the material universe. They want us to understand we were chosen, our planet, for how backward we are, how retarded our spiritual progress, that we are simply the worst but because of that we're local universe lottery winners because the creator chose the worst for his embodiment and because of what happened to us to make us so pathetic, and how awesome it is that those are the reasons our creator came here instead of some other planet where spiritual progress went smoothly uninterrupted by various universe failures outside our control. 

We’re blown away with the exquisite organization of the book. But the book is not perfect. 

There are portions that do not match our scientific comprehension of the physical universe. A lot has been discovered since 1934 when this book was written. And here those philosophical terms mentioned earlier and scientific terms used back then when the book was written create a bit of trouble in reading the book today. When Urantia says “universe” and when Urantia describes the organization of matter, we’re forced to contrast those statements with our present day scientific knowledge of the universe we know and astounding number of galaxies and matter aggregation and how they are formed. 

Urantia introduces ideas not accepted by modern science, like suns with heat but not light, and suns with light but not heat and worlds with no reflective light so large that they block out view beyond them.

Discussing the history of Earth, Urantia devotes a good deal of discussion to the “age of frogs”  that our scientific discoveries do not support.

The book describes series of several ice ages and the various races of humans in terms that are unacceptable to scientists today, their individual traits, and their migration patterns.

It describes evolution in a manner that scientists will reject as fantasy.

But all that makes the book no less entertaining.

Urantia online makes the book very easy to search.

Let’s see what Urantia says about prayer.  

Urantia search [prayer]

There are 215 mentions. And they’re ALL very good. 

The philosophers offered at Regis have nothing like this. Not to disparage them, they just don’t.

This is going to be long. I must whittle it down considerably. These are copy/pasted incomplete portions that strike me as some of the best bits. These statements on prayer will be lifted from their context. So they will not hold up as well separated from their place in discussion.

Like these nincompoops cited at the beginning hellbent on driving their sanctimony, I too have a problem with people announcing,"You're in our thoughts and prayers." That phrase bugs me. Because it's trite. When it's shot out automatically and as if that fixes anything or marks the speaker as empathetic. Just shut  up and pray already. If you were actually praying then you wouldn't be saying you're praying. Your prayers would say that you're praying. They would speak for themselves. Or not. Why announce it?  And why use that particularly trite phrase?

Come on. Let's plumb the depths.

Urantia draws a difference between prayer and worship. The subject of prayer is covered extensively under various categories; 

the evolution of prayer

primitive prayer 

prayer and the alter ego,

ethical praying,

social repercussions of prayer

the province of prayer 

mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration,

praying as a personal experience 

conditions of effective prayer  

I'm scanning through the categories and lifting portions of bits I find interesting.

* Worship is for its own sake; prayer embodies a self- or creature-interest element; that is the great difference between worship and prayer. There is absolutely no self-request or other element of personal interest in true worship; we simply worship God for what we comprehend him to be. Worship asks nothing and expects nothing for the worshiper. We do not worship the Father because of anything we may derive from such veneration; we render such devotion and engage in such worship as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father's matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes.

[This happens all the time. Most noticeable on airplanes. It’s why jet setters seem so hypocritical about global warming. We look out the window above the clouds and through creation and we slip into a state of worship. Call it whatever you like. Even atheists feel this. They’re human too, after all. Their political activism is their expression of respect for creation that comes from meditative reflection, prayer,  as stated by religious minded. Admit it or not, phrase it this way or some other way, this actually is their religion.]

* The moment the element of self-interest intrudes upon worship, that instant devotion translates from worship to prayer. 

The following is very Urantia-y. It’s explaining prayer in terms of Urantia cosmology.

* When you deal with the practical affairs of your daily life, you are in the hands of the spirit personalities having origin in the Third Source and Center; you are co-operating with the agencies of the Conjoint Actor. And so it is: You worship God; pray to, and commune with, the Son; and work out the details of your earthly sojourn in connection with the intelligences of the Infinite Spirit operating on your world and throughout your universe.

[These earlier passages are dictated by higher-level entities. The “thought adjuster” is portion of God that is exactly the same, exactly perfect, within each individual human. A very great deal of discussion is devoted to though adjusters that have no personality. They are the only thing about humans that are eternal. The goal of these thought adjusters is to fuse with the spirit of the human of their inhabitance. To gain individual personality. But they cannot do that until the spirit is perfected. The goal of the human spirit is to attain perfection to fuse with their adjustor and gain eternity.]

* Sincere worship connotes the mobilization of all the powers of the human personality under the dominance of the evolving soul and subject to the divine directionization of the associated Thought Adjuster. The mind of material limitations can never become highly conscious of the real significance of true worship. Man's realization of the reality of the worship experience is chiefly determined by the developmental status of his evolving immortal soul. The spiritual growth of the soul takes place wholly independently of the intellectual self- consciousness.

* The worship experience consists in the sublime attempt of the betrothed Adjuster to communicate to the divine Father the inexpressible longings and the unutterable aspirations of the human soul —the conjoint creation of the God-seeking mortal mind and the God-revealing immortal Adjuster. Worship is, therefore, the act of the material mind's assenting to the attempt of its spiritualizing self, under the guidance of the associated spirit, to communicate with God as a faith son of the Universal Father. The mortal mind consents to worship; the immortal soul craves and initiates worship; the divine Adjuster presence conducts such worship in behalf of the mortal mind and the evolving immortal soul. True worship, in the last analysis, becomes an experience realized on four cosmic levels: the intellectual, the morontial, the spiritual, and the personal—the consciousness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their unification in personality.

* The Greek religion had a watchword "Know yourself"; the Hebrews centered their teaching on "Know your God"; the Christians preach a gospel aimed at a "knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ"; Jesus proclaimed the good news of "knowing God, and yourself as a son of God." These differing concepts of the purpose of religion determine the individual's attitude in various life situations and foreshadow the depth of worship and the nature of his personal habits of prayer. The spiritual status of any religion may be determined by the nature of its prayers.

* Supplications of all kinds belong to the realm of the Eternal Son and the Son's spiritual organization. Prayers, all formal communications, everything except adoration and worship of the Universal Father, are matters that concern a local universe

* The spirit-gravity circuit is the basic channel for transmitting the genuine prayers of the believing human heart from the level of human consciousness to the actual consciousness of Deity. That which represents true spiritual value in your petitions will be seized by the universal circuit of spirit gravity and will pass immediately and simultaneously to all divine personalities concerned. Each will occupy himself with that which belongs to his personal province. Therefore, in your practical religious experience, it is immaterial whether, in addressing your supplications, you visualize the Creator Son of your local universe or the Eternal Son at the center of all things.

* Conversely, if your supplications are purely material and wholly self-centered, there exists no plan whereby such unworthy prayers can find lodgment in the spirit circuit of the Eternal Son. The content of any petition which is not “spirit indited” can find no place in the universal spiritual circuit; such purely selfish and material requests fall dead; they do not ascend in the circuits of true spirit values. Such words are as “sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.”

* It was long believed that by reverting to the usages of the more ancient mores the spirits and demigods could be forced into desirable action. Modern man is guilty of the same procedure. You address one another in common, everyday language, but when you engage in prayer, you resort to the older style of another generation, the so-called solemn style.

* Word combinations, the ritual of chants and incantations, were highly magical. Some early incantations finally evolved into prayers. Presently, imitative magic was practiced; prayers were acted out; magical dances were nothing but dramatic prayers. Prayer gradually displaced magic as the associate of sacrifice.

* Primitive forms of prayer were nothing more nor less than bargaining with the spirits, an argument with the gods. It was a kind of bartering in which pleading and persuasion were substituted for something more tangible and costly. The developing commerce of the races had inculcated the spirit of trade and had developed the shrewdness of barter; and now these traits began to appear in man's worship methods. And as some men were better traders than others, so some were regarded as better prayers than others. The prayer of a just man was held in high esteem. A just man was one who had paid all accounts to the spirits, had fully discharged every ritual obligation to the gods.

Early prayer was hardly worship; it was a bargaining petition for health, wealth, and life. And in many respects prayers have not much changed with the passing of the ages. They are still read out of books, recited formally, and written out for emplacement on wheels and for hanging on trees, where the blowing of the winds will save man the trouble of expending his own breath.

* ...When the concepts of ghosts and spirits evolved, these petitions became superhuman in address, and with the consciousness of gods, such expressions attained to the levels of genuine prayer. As an illustration of this, among certain Australian tribes...

*  ... level of prayer. In this early evolutionary confusion men pray to gods - local and national - to fetishes, amulets, ghosts, rulers, and to ordinary people....

* The practice of prayer represents the unintended, but nonetheless personal and collective, effort of any group to secure (to actualize) this conservation of higher values.

* ...But the primitive mind was neither logical nor consistent. Early men did not perceive that material things were not the province of prayer. These simple-minded souls reasoned that food, shelter, rain, game, and other material goods enhanced the...

social welfare, and therefore they began to pray for these physical blessings. While this constituted a perversion of prayer, it encouraged the effort to realize these material objectives by social and ethical actions. Such a prostitution of prayer, while...

*  ...Religion and its agencies, the chief of which is prayer, are allied only with those values which have general social recognition, group approval. Therefore, when primitive man attempted to gratify his baser emotions or to achieve unmitigated selfish...

ambitions, he was deprived of the consolation of religion and the assistance of prayer. If the individual sought to accomplish anything antisocial, he was obliged to seek the aid of nonreligious magic, resort to sorcerers, and thus be deprived of the... assistance of prayer. Prayer, therefore, very early became a mighty promoter of social evolution, moral progress, and spiritual attainment....

* True prayer does not, therefore, appear until the agency of religious ministry is visualized as personal....

* During the earlier times of racial evolution and even at the present time, in the day-by-day experience of the average mortal, prayer is very much a phenomenon of man's intercourse with his own subconscious. But there is also a domain of prayer wherein the intellectually alert and spiritually progressing individual attains more or less contact with the superconscious levels of the human mind, the domain of the indwelling Thought Adjuster. In addition, there is a definite spiritual phase of true prayer which concerns its reception and recognition by the spiritual forces of the universe, and which is entirely distinct from all human and intellectual association.

Prayer contributes greatly to the development of the religious sentiment of an evolving human mind. It is a mighty influence working to prevent isolation of personality.

Prayer represents one technique associated with the natural religions of racial evolution which also forms a part of the experiential values of the higher religions of ethical excellence, the religions of revelation.

* As it is conceived by successive generations of praying mortals, the alter ego evolves up through ghosts, fetishes, and spirits to polytheistic gods, and eventually to the One God, a divine being embodying the highest ideals and the loftiest aspirations of the praying ego. And thus does prayer function as the most potent agency of religion in the conservation of the highest values and ideals of those who pray. From the moment of the conceiving of an alter ego to the appearance of the concept of a divine and heavenly Father, prayer is always a socializing, moralizing, and spiritualizing practice.

* The simple prayer of faith evidences a mighty evolution in human experience whereby the ancient conversations with the fictitious symbol of the alter ego of primitive religion have become exalted to the level of communion with the spirit of the Infinite and to that of a bona fide consciousness of the reality of the eternal God and Paradise Father of all intelligent creation.

* Aside from all that is superself in the experience of praying, it should be remembered that ethical prayer is a splendid way to elevate one's ego and reinforce the self for better living and higher attainment. Prayer induces the human ego to look both ways for help: for material aid to the subconscious reservoir of mortal experience, for inspiration and guidance to the superconscious borders of the contact of the material with the spiritual, with the Mystery Monitor.

* Prayer ever has been and ever will be a twofold human experience: a psychologic procedure interassociated with a spiritual technique. And these two functions of prayer can never be fully separated.

* Enlightened prayer must recognize not only an external and personal God but also an internal and impersonal Divinity, the indwelling Adjuster. 

* No prayer can be ethical when the petitioner seeks for selfish advantage over his fellows. 

* Prayer must never be so prostituted as to become a substitute for action. All ethical prayer is a stimulus to action and a guide to the progressive striving for idealistic goals of superself-attainment.

* … the prayer of the natural or evolved religions is not at first ethical, as it is in the later revealed religions. All praying, whether individual or communal, may be either egoistic or altruistic. That is, the prayer may be centered upon the self or upon others. When the prayer seeks nothing for the one who prays nor anything for his fellows, then such attitudes of the soul tend to the levels of true worship. Egoistic prayers involve confessions and petitions and often consist in requests for material favors. Prayer is somewhat more ethical when it deals with forgiveness and seeks wisdom for enhanced self-control.

* The real prayer of faith always contributes to the augmentation of the technique of living, even if such petitions are not worthy of spiritual recognition. But the spiritually advanced person should exercise great caution in attempting to discourage the primitive or immature mind regarding such prayers.

* Remember, even if prayer does not change God, it very often effects great and lasting changes in the one who prays in faith and confident expectation. Prayer has been the ancestor of much peace of mind, cheerfulness, calmness, courage, self-mastery, and fair-mindedness in the men and women of the evolving races.

* Prayer is the technique whereby, sooner or later, every religion becomes institutionalized. And in time prayer becomes associated with numerous secondary agencies, some helpful, others decidedly deleterious, such as priests, holy books, worship rituals, and ceremonials.

* Prayer, unless in liaison with the will and actions of the personal spiritual forces and material supervisors of a realm, can have no direct effect upon one's physical environment. While there is a very definite limit to the province of the petitions of prayer, such limits do not equally apply to the faith of those who pray.

* Prayer is not a technique for curing real and organic diseases, but it has contributed enormously to the enjoyment of abundant health and to the cure of numerous mental, emotional, and nervous ailments. And even in actual bacterial disease, prayer has many times added to the efficacy of other remedial procedures. Prayer has turned many an irritable and complaining invalid into a paragon of patience and made him an inspiration to all other human sufferers.

* …never forget that the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment.

* Prayer, even as a purely human practice, a dialogue with one's alter ego, constitutes a technique of the most efficient approach to the realization of those reserve powers of human nature which are stored and conserved in the unconscious realms of the human mind. Prayer is a sound psychologic practice, aside from its religious implications and its spiritual significance. It is a fact of human experience that most persons, if sufficiently hard pressed, will pray in some way to some source of help.

* But the efficacy of prayer in the personal spiritual experience of the one who prays is in no way dependent on such a worshiper's intellectual understanding, philosophic acumen, social level, cultural status, or other mortal acquirements. The psychic and spiritual concomitants of the prayer of faith are immediate, personal, and experiential. 

*  When prayer becomes overmuch aesthetic, when it consists almost exclusively in beautiful and blissful contemplation of paradisiacal divinity, it loses much of its socializing influence and tends toward mysticism and the isolation of its devotees. There is a certain danger associated with overmuch private praying which is corrected and prevented by group praying, community devotions.

* There is a truly spontaneous aspect to prayer, for primitive man found himself praying long before he had any clear concept of a God.

* Prayer is not an evolution of magic; they each arose independently. Magic was an attempt to adjust Deity to conditions; prayer is the effort to adjust the personality to the will of Deity. True prayer is both moral and religious; magic is neither.

* To some individuals prayer is the calm expression of gratitude; to others, a group expression of praise, social devotions; sometimes it is the imitation of another's religion, while in true praying it is the sincere and trusting communication of the spiritual nature of the creature with the anywhere presence of the spirit of the Creator.

* But real praying does attain reality. Even when the air currents are ascending, no bird can soar except by outstretched wings. Prayer elevates man because it is a technique of progressing by the utilization of the ascending spiritual currents of the universe.

* Genuine prayer adds to spiritual growth, modifies attitudes, and yields that satisfaction which comes from communion with divinity. It is a spontaneous outburst of God-consciousness.

* God answers man's prayer by giving him an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness. Prayer is a subjective gesture, but it contacts with mighty objective realities on the spiritual levels of human experience; it is a meaningful reach by the human for superhuman values. It is the most potent spiritual-growth stimulus.

* Words are irrelevant to prayer; they are merely the intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual supplication may chance to flow. The word value of a prayer is purely autosuggestive in private devotions and sociosuggestive in group devotions. God answers the soul's attitude, not the words.

* You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.

* Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the Paradise ascension —the attainment of divine perfection.

* The answers to the prayer of the mortal mind are often of such a nature that they can be received and recognized only after that same praying mind has attained the immortal state. The prayer of the material being can many times be answered only...

*  All true prayers are addressed to spiritual beings, and all such petitions must be answered in spiritual terms, and all such answers must consist in spiritual realities. Spirit beings cannot bestow material answers to the spirit petitions of even...

* The prayer of a God-knowing person may be so distorted by ignorance and so deformed by superstition that the answer thereto would be highly undesirable. Then must the intervening spirit beings so translate such a prayer that, when the answer...

arrives, the petitioner wholly fails to recognize it as the answer to his prayer....

Search results continue with prayer in the life and time of Jesus. I’m omitting quite a lot. Jesus prays a lot.

One of my favorite passages is Jesus’ brothers and sisters begging him to fashion a prayer. Jesus kept telling them they must do this themselves, they must develop their own relationship with deity, but his siblings were helpless. After Joseph died family responsibility fell on the youthful shoulders of Jesus and the pity he felt for siblings caused him to fashion for them a prayer for them to use that became The Lord’s Prayer. 

The entire local universe of spiritual intelligences were attendant upon this sacred scene. Their attention riveted to their creator experiencing a life in the flesh on a material world in completion of his task of living a life of each of the orders of his creation. And the other inhabited planets of the spiritually developing material worlds who had not be disconnected from communication by revolt adopted this same prayer in their own forms. Quaintly and beautifully, Urantia provides The Lord’s Prayer as recited on other inhabited planets. They’re all similar to our own version. But it was created here. For his brothers and his sisters to use at home and refined further for his apostles.