© 2003 Carolyn Kendall
© 2003 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 28 — Winter 2003 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 28 — Winter 2003 | The art of living — according to Jesus and the Urantia Book |
The Time Factor — It’s all in the Time factor.
Leaders who are confirmed, spirits that are raised, and requests for money.
Welcome: First of all, I would like to play a small role. “The year is 1924. It is the beginning of February. The Great War ended only a few years ago. New nations are forming from the ashes of the defeated countries. The world is at relative peace. The post-war population is beginning to search for meaning. Scientific and technological achievements are accelerating. The American economy is growing more and more. The exploration of the planet has never been so extensive. The speaker is someone of authority. He is addressing his associates.
“My dear friends, I have some momentous news to share with you. I am pleased to inform you that our mission is about to enter a new phase. I am pleased with the progress made so far by the core group. We have subjected these personalities to every possible test for the past twenty years, and they have certainly used all their efforts to establish by what authority we have recruited their cooperation! We are now convinced that they are all dedicated to working with us. They may not be perfect, but they are better qualified than any other group we would have selected! We are confident that this group is the one that can successfully carry out our great experiment.”
"Although their leader still has some doubts, we are sure that he will ultimately believe in us. He is a brilliant man, of great adaptability. He has devoted his life to purifying society of charlatans and impostors, those who prey on the weakness and credulity of the common people. All these humans—the members of the contact commission—are loyal, disciplined, and diligent.
“Today I authorize the termination of contact with the two reserve groups. We do not need them any longer. We will continue to move forward with the Chicago group. They have followed our suggestions, and have gathered around them a group, known as the Forum, which will serve our purposes adequately. Their responsibility will be to ask questions, many questions, and then to revise the text as we send it to them. In time, others will join their group.”
“The 400 years of planning our message are almost complete. Since the Middle Ages, we have carefully considered what we will reveal to them. It was the time of the invention of printing, the time of the Reformation and the discovery of America.”
“As for the sleeping human personality, she is the perfect individual for collaboration in this project. She has no curiosity about what is going on; her mind and body are in no way affected. She is perfectly content to remain behind the scenes and seeks no notoriety. We are installing all sorts of safeguards to ensure that no trace will be left, which would only complicate the legacy of revelation. No one will know her name or what she looks like. She will leave no papers, writings, or fingerprints, just as our Master did when he lived on earth. The techniques employed by the midwayers and the Thought Adjuster will remain secret, and there will be no magic or sleight of hand.”
“The twenty years of probation will soon be over. Next week, on February 11, we will make the announcement to our human associates, the members of the contact group. We anticipate that the development period will take a little over ten years, approximately until 1935. We are still awaiting permission from higher authorities to include the complete story of our Master Son’s bestowal on Urantia. If we are granted permission, the final details will take another five or six years, and then publication will be in the early 1940s. However, in the event of war or an unforeseen political crisis on the planet, publication may be delayed for a few years. The science may seem a little outdated, but the basic spiritual revelation will be good for at least a thousand years. Nevertheless, we, and we alone, will tell them when the time is ripe to publish the book!”
“Nevertheless, any delay will work in our favor to develop the basis for the leadership of the eventual Urantia movement. Once the book is published, thousands of study groups will begin to form, as well as the preparation throughout the world of new leaders and teachers, and the raising of funds for translations into all languages.”
“Looking into the future, I foresee that the most difficult thing for these humans will be to work together once they have established their organizations. And they must have organization, even a minimal structure. There may be a tendency to over-organize. Unfortunately, in 19 centuries there has never been so much confusion and competition as for control of The Urantia Book. We hope that one day they will learn that unnecessary duplication of functions only confuses the people and reduces the resources needed to carry out their important work.”
“We hope that human believers will never lose sight of the high purpose of this revelation, which is first of all to save souls; secondly, to prepare the planet for the close and adjudication of the bestowal age of a Creator Son; and thirdly, to foster evolutionary growth in anticipation of the arrival of the next order of Sons.”
"As those responsible for this great mission, we must remember to honor the divine plan of this revelation. Many of our predecessors have failed and betrayed their commitments because they became blind to the dangers of impatience and sophistry. The divine plan follows a consistent pattern:
Evolution is intensified by revelation which is imparted through evolutionary techniques built on existing foundations and thus allowing it to develop naturally.
“We estimate that the Urantia revelation will be ready to blend with evolutionary culture sometime in the middle of the 21st century, when the world is weary of war and chaos and ready to settle down to a search for righteousness. This will occur when the vast majority of the world’s population desires peace.”
Leadership
One of the greatest treasures of the early Urantia movement was its leadership. People of remarkable character took initiative, made decisions, and assumed astonishing responsibilities.
Dr. William S. Sadler was the head of the Contact Commission, the group chosen to receive the Fifth Epochal Revelation. My late husband, Tom Kendall, observed not disparagingly that Dr. Sadler had a “big man complex.” He was not a small-minded personality; he was the originator of big ideas and the achiever of big things. Sadler began as a grain salesman in Battle Creek, Michigan. He went on to be an ordained minister, a Bible scholar, a detective, a doctor, a surgeon, a great orator on the Chautauqua tour, a psychiatrist, a professor of pastoral psychology in a theological seminary, a popularizer of health problems in periodicals, and the author of 42 books. He wasted no time in idle talk, except for one thing: he was a Chicago baseball fan, and he never missed a game on the radio.
He was the best storyteller I have ever known. When he was speaking to a group in the Forum or addressing a summer workshop, he could “bring the house down” when he was on form. Unfortunately, the only tape collection of Dr. Sadler giving a lecture series burned in a fire in Phoenix in 2002.
I had the privilege of knowing him for the last 17 years of his life, from 1951 until his death in 1969. I worked for him for two and a half years in the early 1950s. Many patients suffering from depression would come into the office with their heads down, and after spending an hour listening to his inspired counsel, would leave the office on cloud nine. He would lift their spirits by doing exactly what Jesus did when He brought the frightened young man out of his stupor on the island of Crete.
Lena Celestia Kellogg was a registered nurse when she married William Sadler in 1897. After their infant son died, she told her husband that she was going to study medicine. He decided to join her, and got a job with the Pinkerton Detective Agency to help pay for their medical school education. He was so successful as a detective that Pinkerton offered him a share in their company if he would stay with the agency after graduation. He declined the offer and put his wife in charge of their new medical practice while he went to England to study surgery. Dr. Sadler is credited with first using a prosthesis in an operation for a broken bone. When he heard about Sigmund Freud, he went to Vienna, and along with Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, he became one of Freud’s early disciples. However, Sadler was the first to reject most of Freud’s theories, which did not endear him to his former mentor. I saw in the files, letters from Jung and Anna Freud - but none from his father.
Dr. Lena was a firebrand, a speaker, and a writer for causes she cared about. She was an activist for women’s health issues. She advocated for birth control and promoted eugenics. Lena Sadler was the first to believe in the reality of the phenomenon that eventually led to the production of the Urantia Papers. Her husband was suspicious—he had felt burned by Ellen White and her so-called messages. He had developed a reputation as an investigator and debunker of false mediums and psychic phenomena. He maintained this attitude until the appearance of the Twelve Apostles paper in 1935. By then, he was a practicing psychiatrist, and concluded that no human writer could enter the minds of these twelve men, so he capitulated and believed from then on.
During all those years, from the beginning of the 20th century until 1935, the Sadlers faithfully encouraged the growth and development of the human phase of the revelation—Lena the believer, William the doubter. Before her death in 1939, Lena Sadler raised $20,000 for a fund to type and manufacture the plates that were eventually used to print The Urantia Book.
The Sadlers had other associates who served as members of the contact committee. Lena’s sister, Anna Bell Kellogg, was a spunky, determined, and resolute woman with twinkling eyes. She was also a registered nurse, lively, professional, and the cutest little woman imaginable. Anna remained faithful to her pledge of secrecy, never divulging any information regarding the origin of the Urantia Papers. She worked on the index of The Urantia Book for the last 15 years of her life.
Anna’s husband, Wilfred Custer Kellogg, was the manager of Dr. Sadler’s medical practice, handling the accounting and billing. He was a shy, nervous little man, with a very closed mind. He was not an imaginative or creative person. At first I wondered what qualities he brought to the contact group. But as I came to know and love him, I realized how loyal and trustworthy he was. He was the “hands and legs” of the contact committee. The Sadlers could not have continued without his loyal service.
Shortly after Anna Kellogg’s death, Dr. Sadler told me that she had received a small inheritance from a Kellogg trust fund in Battle Creek. Mrs. Kellogg had left very little money to his wife. Her will provided that after paying final expenses, the remainder should go to the Urantia Foundation. The Doctor said they were astonished to learn that the supposed remainder amounted to $20,000. This was enough to pay the balance of the French translation, La Cosmogonie d’Urantia. He told me that she had never imagined that she would have all that money.
When in 1922 the contact group needed a secretary, the revelators found and introduced a tall, commanding, common-sense woman, Emma Louise Christensen. Eventually, Christy typed the entire book three to five times on one of those old hand-operated typewriters while she worked full-time as a director of the Chicago Federal Reserve. When I worked at 533 Diversey, Chicago, I was between the ages of 19 and 22, and frankly I was intimidated by Christy. She was firm, decisive, and resolute. Christy was not only a contact commissioner, she later became a Trustee of Urantia Foundation and vice president and president of Urantia Brotherhood. She lived 13 years after the death of Dr. Sadler, the leader of the original contact commission. Christy had a firm influence on the organizations over which she presided. She remembered the instructions she and her former associates had listened to and they had carried out their vows as best they could, until her death in 1982.
There is another important person in the list of early leaders: William S. Sadler, Jr. Bill Sadler was the only surviving son of the lineage of Lena and William. He was the great scholar of the Urantia Papers. It was Bill who asked the questions that gave rise to the complex papers on the Supreme and the Absolutes. The revelators went to great lengths to select what was to be included in The Urantia Book. Every word, every nuance was carefully considered, to be meticulously examined. He predicted that the true meanings would not emerge for years. Bill Sadler stimulated his mother, Lena, who despaired of ever understanding the “hard stuff” in the book. “You dig; and you will get there,” Bill instructed her. She dug, and eventually she did. In 1951, the revelators rebuked the Forum, saying they were “shocked by your lack of enthusiasm and your relative indifference to the importance of the mission entrusted to you.” Bill had no patience with people who only read the papers superficially; they were not worthy of leadership roles if they did not know the papers. He was arrogant, but he was probably the greatest teacher of the papers who ever lived!
Bill Sadler was the principal architect of Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood. Although he served as vice president of the Foundation and president of the Brotherhood, he remained mostly behind the scenes until his death in 1963. Bill’s period of fame occurred primarily during the last 20 years of the Forum, and during the few years after publication, when he gave seminars in California and Oklahoma.
In the early years, our leaders tended to be spectacular, inspired orators and scholars. They led by sheer intellectual or moral force. Later, leadership became more diffuse; the days of celebrities diminished. We learned not to trust some of our leaders. These days, it seems that all leaders are suspect. When someone becomes a leader, it is an opportunity to target them, to undermine what they say or write. We live in an atmosphere that discourages people from volunteering to take on leadership roles.
Last year, Paul Snider, a former president of Urantia Brotherhood, expressed concern about the major problem in our movement—a distinct lack of great leadership. “How can we find the great visionary leader we need to move us forward?” he wrote. “Should we do a better job of exploring? Should we solicit suggestions from members? Should we define the characteristics needed for such leadership? Is there a visionary leader among us who has not yet come forward?”
The revelators have promised that one day a great religious leader will manifest to espouse the teachings of The Urantia Book. Will we recognize him when he arrives? Or, when she arrives?
Take the time to read the Declaration of Trust carefully and you will find that the Trustees have the responsibility to print the book forever, “to keep The Urantia Book in print in perpetuity.” Article III, 3.3 says: “It shall be the duty of the Trustees to maintain absolute and unconditional control of all plates and other media for the printing and reproduction of The Urantia Book and any translations thereof.” The 27 men and women who have served as Trustees since 1950 have always believed this to be their duty.
The Trustees can claim to publish an “inviolate text” even though there have been corrections of spelling mistakes, capitalization, punctuation as well as minor inconsistencies. The plan was to find all the “imps” and correct them at the beginning of the printing of the first edition. All changes to the text were authorized by the revelators until the death of the last of the contact commissioners. These printings were intended only for inclusion in the first edition. The first printing was a work of art in many ways, but it was given unnecessary homage, for it was imperfect and full of errors. In the dictionary, the meaning of the word “inviolate” is: “not profaned, free from all prejudice, counterfeiting or corruption” and “intact.”
Urantia Foundation was intentionally designed to be an autocratic group. The Trustees appoint their own successors. It was anticipated that unpopular decisions would be necessary from time to time, and that the Trustees were to be free from political pressure. Their Trust document does not directly specify the number of Trustees, nor their length of service. They may serve for life or for a term. In the last 53 years, only 2 Trustees have died while serving: Wilfred Kellogg and Arthur Burch. Those who have served the longest are: Edith Cook, 36 years; William Hales, 33 years; and Emma Christensen, Thomas Kendall, and Martin Mayers, 21, 20, and 20 years respectively. Three Trustees were removed. The remainder served an average of 6.5 years — not exactly life terms.
The Foundation is appealing to the Supreme Court of the United States in the copyright case, Michael Foundation v. Urantia Foundation. Some readers may wonder: Why appeal, since the copyright expires in 2005? This is not true. If the copyright is reinstated, it will be valid for another 47 years, until 2050. A copyright is an important tool for maintaining the integrity of the original text.
People ask: what’s the harm in having more than one publisher of the original text? Of course, if it turns out that the copyright for the English books is lost, there will probably be more than one publisher. There are many advantages to having a consistent text both in the original English text and in all subsequent translations. The main advantage is that when the pagination, indexes and appendices are formatted based on the English Foundation book, this reduces the risk of confusion.
If the copyright were lost forever, that would not prevent foreign publishers from raiding the book and publishing other versions of The Urantia Book. Go back behind the scenes with the revelators, and ask yourself if they would approve of a version that changed the meanings of what they wanted to reveal to mankind. Or, how would you view a dumbed-down version of the book? How would they feel if the market were flooded with a comic book version of the book? Without copyright, there is no legal way to combat such outrages. Eventually, a falsified version of The Urantia Book might become more popular than the original, and then bookstores might carry only the “popular” version. Would they want the market to determine whether an unadulterated revelation is available to the world?
The Declaration of Trust states that it is the duty of the Trustees to “disseminate the teachings and doctrines of The Urantia Book.” Since the Foundation is not a membership organization, and has no structure to accomplish its task, dissemination was delegated in 1955 to the Urantia Brotherhood. Since the mid-1990s, the Foundation has delegated dissemination activities to the International Urantia Association (IUA). Urantia Book Fellowship continues to operate under the same Constitution and structure as when it was called Urantia Brotherhood.
The IUA exists and thrives because its members support the Foundation as the exclusive publisher of The Urantia Book, as well as the management of the Urantia name and the concentric circles—the trademarks. IUA members prefer not to be part of the Fellowship. Many Fellowship members also support the Foundation as the exclusive publisher and translator of the book, as well as the owner of the trademarks. These people do not wish to leave the Fellowship and go to the IUA. They, their friends, and their families founded the Brotherhood and the Societies, and they are loyal to the purposes for which the Brotherhood was originally established. The release of the mandate by the revelators has given all of us the mission to found thousands of study groups, and to train leaders and teachers. By and large, the local Societies continue to carry out these responsibilities.
There was never enough money to do everything. It was a family business at first. The Sadler family provided the place and general hospitality. Dr. Sadler told me that he was once the highest paid speaker on the Chautauqua circuit, after William Jennings Bryant. It is not generally known that the Doctor left the building at 533 Diversey in Chicago to the Foundation, and not much else. He had had to sell the Beverly Shores property on Lake Michigan in Indiana to meet expenses. Christy was living on her Federal Reserve pension? When she died, the Family of God graciously provided the memorial luncheon which was enjoyed by many who came to pay their last respects. When she and the Doctor needed money for building maintenance, personal travel, or to host a social event, a generous donor provided the money. One family in particular contributed much more financially than we will ever know.
When the time came to print the first Urantia Books, a wealthy gentleman offered to pay the entire cost of $50,000. The revelators indicated that it was desirable that everyone should contribute to the cost of publishing the book, rather than having one or two wealthy individuals pay for it. The letter requesting funds brought in $49,000. The Forum members paid in advance $-5 pour leur exemplaire. Il y eut des promesses d’achat, des tarifs pour souscripteur ainsi que des prix pour des achats en nombre. Le premier donateur enregistré fut le regretté, grand explorateur et aventurier de l’Arctique, Sir Hubert Wilkins, qui envoya $ 1,000, which at the time was a lot of money.
Of course, we will never conquer the world if we cannot find enough money to print the books. Up to now, every Urantia Book ever published has been subsidized. It turns out that relatively few people have given disproportionately large sums to ensure that this revelation reaches those who need and want it. A few very wealthy people, as well as people of very modest means, have paid for all of these books. Mrs. Kellogg’s entire inheritance, her “widow’s power,” went to pay for the original French translation.
Many of us think that paying for our own travel to meetings and conferences, and reporting them as expenses on our tax returns, is enough. There is a simple answer to this: expenses incurred by meetings do not pay for the translation of the books; nor do they pay for the printing, binding, and storage of the books. Since we have benefited, we must in turn become benefactors to the rest of the planet.
As we eagerly await the final dissemination of the teachings of The Urantia Book throughout the world, we are confident that evolutionary progress will continue to prepare the way. Think of drivers pulling onto a highway on-ramp, merging with traffic, and gradually increasing their speed. Then think of the late 19th and early 20th century authors whom Matthew Block has identified as some of the sources of the Papers; these authors also influenced other authors and philosophers, and their ideas slowly trickled down into schools and churches. They may have indirectly prepared the minds of some of our present readers.
Today’s authors might well prepare the young mind to accept The Urantia Book. For example, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series might stimulate a search for spirituality as well as satisfy a search for complexity, rather than the banalities so prevalent in today’s culture. The strange names of The Urantia Book should not be a hindrance to Potter fans. Many current novels, films, and television shows are just waiting to be used as a springboard or introduction to The Urantia Book.
The search for spiritual values never ceases. As Bill Sadler wrote in his third triennial presidential address: “The book itself is not an End; it is a very important means to an End. The Brotherhood is designed to bring God and man closer together. God is the only true End. Our primary spiritual devotion and consecration is to the Universal Father, and to Him alone. All other things are secondary and subordinate to the acquisition of this one ‘pearl of great price’—the realization of sonship with God.”
Carolyn Kendall, New York
Translated by Chris and Nicole Ragetly from an article published in Newsflash in September 2003 (the second part will appear in the next issue of Newsflash)
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 28 — Winter 2003 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 28 — Winter 2003 | The art of living — according to Jesus and the Urantia Book |