© 2022 Neil Francey
After the transmission of content during the 1930s, and prior to preparation for publication in the 1950s, the 1940s provided a time of review. Perhaps text was added or altered during that decade.
Did any of the philosophies of people involved insert content into the revelation? Readers would like to believe that any suggestions to include such human elements into the revelation would have been decisively and summarily resisted by Dr. Sadler. He did dismiss entreaties from external influences. But did he also reject requests from those close to him?
Matthew Block has found this admission by Dr. Sadler, for he writes:
Also, I have discovered several source texts (seventeen, at last count) that were first published after 1935, despite statements in The Urantia Book that Parts I, II and III were written in 1934 or 1935 (UB 31:10.22, UB 56:10.23, UB 119:8.9). This incongruity was resolved for me after reading William S. Sadler’s privately published essay, ‘History of the Urantia Movement’ (1960), in which he acknowledged that new material was added to the Urantia manuscript between 1935 and 1942.
The problem here is that while we know of such inclusions from source documents, we do not know what inclusions might also have come from nonpublished sources.
The following account was written by Carolyn Kendall.
Urantia Foundation was established in 1950, and the trustees began planning to copyright the text and to register the three concentric circles symbol, following the instructions of the revelators in each case.
The human associates reviewed the final text before it was sent to the printing company, checking for errors, such as spelling and typing errors. The revelators indicated their preferences regarding design, font, and binding.
After the Second World War … the revelators announced that the contact commissioners could begin the printing process. In 1953, publication was [apparently] approved by the revelators to begin in early 1955. The actual date of release was in October of 1955.
Finally, the great day arrived on Wednesday, October 12, 1955. Attendees at the Wednesday evening study group, the ‘Seventy’,
received their books that evening. Also, they engaged in a Remembrance Supper led by Edmond Kulieke, who gave a brief talk.He was assisted by Lee Miller Jones, Lulu Steinbeck, and Clarence Bowman. Everyone present was given their previously ordered copies of The Urantia Book. The members of the Forum received their books the following Sunday afternoon, also at 533 W. Diversey Parkway, in Chicago.
Publication happened to fall on the anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492. That year in the fifteenth century also marked the traditional end of the Middle Ages.
It was at that time, according to the contact commissioners, that the Midwayers of Urantia sent a formal request to the rulers of the superuniverse, the Ancients of Days, requesting permission to impart a new revelation to our world, Urantia.
They wished to include more about Jesus than was contained in the four Gospels of the New Testament. It was not until the time of the fifth epochal revelation, in the twentieth century, that the midwayers received the answer to their earlier request: permission to include Part IV of The Urantia Book - The Life and Teachings of Jesus.
October 12, 1955
On October 1, 1956, Urantia Brotherhood Corporation was brought into existence as the fiscal agent of the brotherhood and to act as the distributor of The Urantia Book for Urantia Foundation, and to engage in other outreach activities. The Foundation continued with the separate responsibility of publishing, translating, and protecting the text.
After publication the Book found only a small audience, as it had no popular appeal. In the twenty-first century, it continues to be subject to very slow growth. This may be intentional by higher authorities, a material restriction, or a natural revelatory progression on a mortal realm.
The Declaration of Trust requires the Urantia Foundation to keep the text inviolate and to publish it in perpetuity. In a sense it has to avoid becoming a secular organization, or be influenced by secular interests. Its foundations should always be based on the teachings it has been charged to uphold.