© 2002 The Brotherhood of Man Library
This presentation attempts to explore the difficulties that faced a group of celestial beings who were given the task of providing a new revelation to the people of a certain disadvantaged planet they call Urantia. The purpose of the revelation? The people of Urantia suffer not only from a set of unforeseen events in their history but also from the effects of those events upon their rate of evolutionary progress—which, under more normal universe circumstances, would have advanced them very much further along a path leading away from their congenital animal behavioral instincts and towards a far more spiritual way of co-existence.
Where possible, we want to review events, not from a human point of view, but the point of view of the celestial revelators. In doing so, we hope to gain a better understanding of many puzzling features of the revelation which became known as the Urantia Papers.
It is widely held by many theologians that the dominant role of Jesus’ earthly life was his provision to us of a living revelation of God, that aspect of the unfathomable First Source and Center that Jesus called “Abba,” meaning Father—this being an aspect of God that is comprehensible to the minds of mere mortals. The Urantia Papers confirm that conclusion. However, Jesus’ original revelation did suffer serious corruption prior to and during its incorporation into the Gospels.
It is now apparent that the major purpose of these Urantia Papers is a long-overdue upgrading of the New Testament version of the Fourth Epochal Revelation, the bestowal life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
A decision to provide a revelation having been made, the order of events would surely have been: first prepare the text and when satisfied with its content and quality, formulate ways and means of making it available to the people of Urantia. What should the text contain? What else but Jesus’ life and teachings!
To provide the revelation, two major problems had to be solved. Firstly, by what means could the revelation be placed into receptive hands on Urantia? Secondly, where could a group of individuals be located having the attributes necessary to receive, believe, print, and distribute this revelation?
The first problem led the revelators to using an unusual human individual who became known to Urantia Book readers as the “Sleeping Subject.” Information provided by the revelators (UB 110:5.7) indicates that this chosen subject was asleep and without any consciousness of proceedings whenever he was operating as an agent of communication. Moreover, he was cooperative about being used in this way when required.
The Kingdom of God is within you, but faith—and faith alone—will pass you through its portals. (sep. UB 140:1.4)
In considering their choice for a contact group to be prepared for receipt of the revelation, one possibility would have been a forward-looking group from some theological school whose New Testament studies had caused them to be dissatisfied with current interpretations of the gospel message. Many such scholarly groups, with views far closer to those presented in the Urantia Papers than is found in mainstream Christianity, had already existed on Urantia. Starting around the beginning of the seventeenth century, they became progressively stronger and more numerous right through to the present times. But despite the fact that these groups had an effective input into the training of the clergy and priests for all mainline Christian churches, their effect upon established Christian dogma and doctrines was negligible.[1]
Why did three centuries of effort that culminated in virtually every ordained minister or priest from mainstream Christianity being informed about the fallacies and flaws in Christian dogma, nevertheless fail to impact on Christianity as it is taught to the masses?
Knowledge of why this has been be so could lead to important decisions about how, at some future date, mainstream Christianity could be brought to a state in which reform of its fundamental doctrines and dogmas might become an unavoidable imperative.
In many ways churches operate like a commercial business. Thus, from early times and at its deepest levels, organized religion was, and is, controlled by financial considerations. Put crudely, whatever attracts people to a religion is also likely to attract their financial support. Whatever drives people away (or fails to attract) does the opposite.
Foremost among the ‘attractive’ forces of mainstream Christianity is the grateful acceptance by sin-conscious Christian congregations of the dogma by which forgiveness for sin is inextricably linked to the sacrificial death of the Christ. Despite how it might reflect upon God’s character, the relief brought to guilt laden individuals by this doctrine, plus the preference of many individuals for what they believe is a reliable, authoritative religion, are major contributing factors to the longevity of the Christian Churches. Additionally, the present level of evolutionary advancement of the mind state of most Urantians is one that is still dominated by inherited animal instincts. That includes an intense animal fear of uncertainty—which increases people’s receptivity for authoritative religion.
An alternative theology, preached mainly by intellectuals, decries what they characterize as theism—a tyrant God who punishes the sinner, rewards the obedient, destroys their enemies etc. Instead they substitute an impersonal concept of deity that becomes their “Ground of all Being.” Unfortunately, their impersonal “Ground of all Being” is virtually meaningless to all but philosophers and theologians.
What the revelators of the Urantia Papers appear to have deemed is our reality discards the tyrant God and personalizes the “Ground of all Being” as the God who is love, truth, beauty, and goodness, and whose spirit indwells us individually, seeking to draw us to him.
How the revelators actually selected the “sleeping subject” as the means of completing a communication pathway or how they went about selecting the recipient group for their revelation is totally unknown.
However, the fact that the Urantia Papers inform us that the free will of man is sacrosanct excludes all actions by the revelators that would interfere with human free will. This means it is virtually impossible for even celestial beings to have any control whatsoever over future planetary events that involve human participation.
In many ways, the revelators’ choice of Dr Sadler appears to be inexplicable. Reference to his book, “Soul Winning Texts,” first printed in 1909 reveals a picture of a narrow-minded, biblical fundamentalist, intent on saving sinners through the redeeming blood of Christ—and probably as the primary means of walking that straight and narrow path expected by Christian evangelicals to lead to their personal reward of salvation. Sadler, at that time, was a prime example of personal dedication to the type of authoritarian religion that the Urantia Papers’ religion of the spirit would seek to displace.
However there were saving attributes. The Sadler group appears to have consisted of people disaffected with the world-view of their particular religious sect. Both Dr Sadler and his wife Lena, also a medical doctor, were gifted people having leadership and intellectual qualities that were eminently suitable for the task ahead. They had one other fantastically advantageous attribute. They were medically qualified and had a keen interest in the new science of psychiatry that completed the requisite qualities to become trusted doctors, friends and advisors to the “Sleeping Subject” whose emerging nocturnal performances were about to become a source of worry and anxiety to a distraught wife. How it really was that these two essential sub-units did come together will ever remain a mystery.
About fifteen or so years after the first encounter, Dr Sadler[2] admits that great changes of attitudes had been induced almost unconsciously in their group. He lists them as:
Later in his Paper, Dr Sadler stated, “As the Revelation progressed we came more fully to appreciate how we had been prepared for the vast alteration of our religious beliefs by these preliminary contacts. . . ” However the subject matter for this training period was not the revelation. It also appears that matters associated with the life and teachings of Jesus were deliberately avoided.
Ultimate truth exists. If we think deeply and reflect carefully, we shall realize that we ourselves have our existence in ultimate truth.
Only the tiny Sadler group actually received this training. The origin of a larger group that became known as the Forum was such that they could not have been participants. Likewise there is no evidence that the either the revelators or the Contact Group (the Sadler group) ever attempted any similar training program to upgrade or change the religious beliefs of Forum members.
Other than what has been written by Dr Sadler, little is known about the pre-Forum history of the revelatory process. The Forum originated from a Sunday afternoon patient-doctor gathering convened for the benefit of patients of the Sadlers, and intended to be of a medical nature. But a chance remark by Dr Sadler on the nature of psychic phenomena changed that. In it he said, “With one or two exceptions, all the psychic phenomena which I have investigated have turned out to be either conscious or unconscious frauds.” This was the key that commenced the Forum and opened the revelation process.
According to Dr Sadler there was such great interest in these exceptions that his plan for Sunday doctor-patient social gatherings was abandoned. And soon after, during a nocturnal vigil of the Contact Group, and in answer to a question, an “alleged student visitor, speaking through the sleeping subject said: If you only knew what you are in contact with you would not ask such trivial questions. You would rather ask such questions as might elicit answers of supreme value to the human race.” “Later that night,” says Sadler, “one of our number said: 'Now they have asked for it—let us give them questions that no human being can answer.”’
As a direct result of these comments, those attending the Sunday afternoon gatherings were asked if they would like to join in the preparation of questions. This was the beginning of the Forum and the commencement of receipt of the text that finally appeared as Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Urantia Papers. According to Dr Sadler, instructions from the revelators established a routine in which questions submitted at one meeting were answered in time for the next. This pattern is described as, “No questions, no Papers,” and “From first to last, when the Papers appeared, the questions disappeared.”
This question and answer procedure imposed by the revelators upon the Forum generates some strange and little appreciated difficulties. Through it the revelators had forgone control over the revelatory material to be given to Urantia. For obvious reasons the answers given to questions from the Forum could not be the text of any previously prepared revelatory material intended for the spiritual upgrading of Urantians.
Again, because of the universe rule proscribing interference with our free will, the advent of the Forum must have been entirely fortuitous. It could not have been planned by the revelators. In consequence, its membership also had to be fortuitous. From Dr Sadler’s description, it appears to have consisted mainly of middle class, well educated professionals, few of whom had any deep interest in religion.
From its beginning, the substance of the information flowing from the revelators was in the hands of the Forum, and not the revelators. This surely would appear to be a quite extraordinary way to present a planned revelation intended for advancing our spirituality.
It seems likely that the unplanned existence of the Forum was utilized simply because it was there. And being available, the revelators decided to see if it could be used to generate a group that could later undertake the printing and distribution of their revelation. If so, the question and answer sessions became a way of preparing the Forum members for a later task—just as they had done previously with the Sadler group.
But if a planned revelation was already in existence that had the sanction of high celestial authorities, where was it and what was it? The obvious answer to this is that since the Papers that constitute Part 4 of The Urantia Book do upgrade Jesus’ Fourth Epochal Revelation they are the original revelation, while those in Parts 1-3 arose from what commenced as a training period. However Part 4 could not have been in its completed form as some of the human source material it uses was not published until the 1930’s period.[3]
There are at least two scenarios concerning the makeup of the final revelation. Both commence with the initial content of the material provided to the Forum arising purely as answers to members’ questions that were designed to test the validity of the revelators superhuman status. Supposedly the questions were such that “no human being could answer.” Most likely they were concerned with cosmology, science, history, etc.—subject matter designed to expose fraudulence. However, amalgamated into what now constitutes Parts 1-3, is material of such extraordinarily high quality that it could not be other than revelation originating from very high sources. Perhaps it arose at a later time from questions by a more mature Forum.
According to Dr Sadler’s record, Part 4, “The Life and Teachings of Jesus,” was given quite separately from Parts 1-3, and about one year later. And according to Dr Sadler, it was a complete surprise. At a point in time when all four parts were in existence, a misunderstanding or some other unplanned event (such as loss of the sleeping subject, etc.) may have occurred. Perhaps the Contact Group had failed to understand that Part 4 was the planned revelation and it alone was ever directly designed to be published. And, having presented Part 4, the revelators considered their mission had been completed—so they simply departed.
The Contact Group and the Forum would then have been on their own and with no clear concept of what was expected from them.
An alternative scenario is the Contact Group was fully aware they were expected to publish Part 4 only—but because the Forum members had little or no familiarity with it, the Contact Group doubted that they could muster enough enthusiasm to organize and finance a Part 4 only publication. Either way, they procrastinated.
Completing these scenarios, somewhere further along in time, one or more members of the Contact Group started channeling. Later, on the false assumption that they were still in contact with the revelators, they eventually published Parts 1-4 as The Urantia Book.
It is said that we should renounce this life. That doesn’t mean we should go hungry or not take care of this lifetime at all, but that we should reduce our attachment to affairs that are limited to this lifetime.
Dalai Lama
These scenarios have the advantage of explaining why there are many errors in the cosmology of the Papers. Mainly, they would have come about from the questions posed by the Forum that they believed “no human being could answer.” Many such questions would have required the revelators to provide unearned knowledge—knowledge that they were proscribed from giving. (UB 101:4.1) So, to avoid the whole project falling apart, the revelators appear to have given answers from the forefront of knowledge of that time, full knowing that much of it would later prove to be erroneous.
[Note: The Book’s error content has been markedly expanded recently because of new, highly accurate methods of dating rock strata using zircon crystals. About thirty of these errors will be listed in the next issue of Innerface.]
However, testing for fraud may have been confined to the early period following establishment of the Forum. After receiving the initial group of Papers, Dr Sadler reported receiving a message from the revelators suggesting that “since we could now ask many and more intelligent questions. . . (they would) enlarge the revelation. . . in accordance with our new questions”—the implication being that their earlier questions were not all that brilliant.
Many of the Papers of Parts 1-3 are not only of extraordinary quality but are also of enormous value for fostering the future spiritual growth of Urantians. It is possible that such material was a result of exceptionally high quality questioning from the Forum. The revelators, recognizing the future value to us mortals, then decided to try and find a way by which they could be published either alone or in conjunction with Part 4.
Such a decision immediately brought to the fore the problem of the error content already introduced into the cosmology as a result of the Forum members’ attempts to gain proof for the revelators’ credentials. The revelators had not expected that this material would be published. But now they had to get rid of it. Or find a way to divert attention elsewhere. Their best hope may be that future scholarly analysis would recognize the transient nature of cosmological truth—hence concentrate attention to those revelatory elements having truth value essential for renewing our spiritual advancement.
But would Urantians understand that universe rules and policies ensured that no revelation can ever be infallible? Or would they take the easy way out and imitate Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, an attitude that could be sustained for a few years only, but must eventually become untenable as more and more error became exposed? One way to ensure that fundamentalism could not for long be sustained would be to include material that is simply and obviously ridiculous—a status that much of the erroneous material has now attained.
The essence of all spiritual life is your motions, your attitude towards others. Once you have pure and sincere motivation, all the rest follows.
What our age lacks is not reflection but passion.
Soren Kierkgaarde
Before proceeding further, we need to be aware that God loves all of his children, that any new revelation is for the whole of the human race, not just for a privileged few. We need also to be aware that with understanding, privilege becomes obligation. If we have read and understood the Urantia Papers, we are certainly privileged—and we are obligated. The survey described in the next paragraph is illustrative of the degree of privilege that mostly comes from the accident of being born in the right place and the right time:
Recent surveys by the U.S. Department of Education show that almost 25% of high school seniors do not have reading skills at a level that would permit them to comprehend a relatively simple passage from a book. These figures are an overall average. They are much, much worse for substantial sections of the population. They also show that at least 60% of students have not attained the skills that would permit them to gain significant understanding of a complex work—such as The Urantia Book undoubtedly is.
There is an important principle to be noted from Dr Sadler’s description of the contact experiences prior to the Forum being established. Number 6 on his list states the revelators were indulging in, “tentative testing of our theologic concepts. Patient determination of how far we might possibly go in the direction of modifying our theologic beliefs and philosophical opinions.” And Number 15 on the list has, “We listened to occasional references to Jesus’ life and teachings—but they were very cautious about the introduction of any new concepts regarding Michael’s Urantia bestowal. . . ”
On reflection, we can see that this policy of the revelators was most likely designed to avoid either scaring off the members of the contact commission with revelation that was beyond their intellectual capacity to absorb, or introducing new concepts or information that threatened cherished beliefs prior to group members being conditioned to accept such changes.
In view of the cautious approach taken by the revelators with a group who had experienced many years of exposure to new ideas and concepts, how much more would these same revelators take care not to introduce too much too soon to members of the Forum who had not been so prepared? This cautious attitude has surely been carried forward to affect the content of the Urantia Papers including Part 4. It would also be a factor in any plan the revelators had for the periods coming after their delivery of the Papers.
A possible example of this cautious attitude may be seen in the revision of the Adam and Eve story as it is presented in the Urantia Papers. Basic to both Christian and Islamic fundamentalism is the dictum that the Bible or the Koran are the infallible word of God. By the time the Papers were received, various sciences such as genetics and archaeology were already postulating a diverse origin for the human race.
One of the many ways that the Papers have attempted to countermand biblical fundamentalism is to modify Old Testament stories. Thus, Andon and Fonta are partial substitutes for Adam and Eve but instead of them being the sole progenitors of the human race we have:
“Subsequent to the appearance of Andon and Fonta, there evolved no less than seven thousand favorable strains which could have achieved some sort of human development. And many of these better stocks were subsequently assimilated by the various branches of the expanding human species.” (UB 65:3.4) Here the Papers lend support to the diversity at origin theory.
And in a later stage of their Adam and Eve story, the revelators absolve the biblical pair from the inherited sin that their disobedience was said to have bestowed upon the whole of the human race. In doing so, they undermine the veracity of many New Testament-based dogma such as the atonement, the need for the virgin birth of Jesus, plus related doctrines such as Mary’s immaculate conception and her later bodily ascension. So whether or not the Adam and Eve story as given in the Urantia Papers is some form of “progressive and evolutionary truth,” is not so important as that these modified stories demand careful thought concerning established beliefs—but without them being direct frontal attacks that might excessively distress new readers of the revelation to the point they abandon further reading.
In so many places the revelators have spelled out their go slow policy for gradual and progressive advance in their revelation of truth—as well as reminding us that the mandate for revelation proscribes the impartation of unearned knowledge.
However, a truly remarkable feature of the 45 years after publication of the Papers has been the ingenuity of so many readers in avoiding what the revelators surely intended to be obvious—and so to find justification for clinging to the concept of the infallibility of the Papers.
The lengths to which the revelators were prepared to go in attempting to ensure that their revelation could not for long survive as an infallible icon among either the most gullible among us or even the most fanatical of fundamentalists, is illustrated below:
First consider their “passenger birds.” The Papers have these incredible creatures being employed like taxis to ferry Adam and Eve to meeting places in the garden. If this was not remarkable enough we are told:
“These enormous birds are able to carry one or two average-sized men for a nonstop flight of over five hundred miles. . . These birds are most intelligent, very obedient, and unbelievably affectionate.” And they were “often able to speak many words of the languages of the realm.” (UB 52:1.5)
A second example of deliberately stretching human gullibility beyond all reasonable limits is the origin of those invisible creatures known as the secondary midwayers. Their grandparents are given as Adamson and Ratta, both labeled as belonging to a type of superhuman being who looked and acted “normal” and were able to interbreed with ordinary humans—hence were matched with us genetically and would qualify as the same species as ourselves.
However the Papers have this remarkable pair marry one another, then have sixty seven children. All seemed to be normal except that one out of very four was born invisible! Adamson, apparently being of scientific bent and noting that were eight males and eight females among the sixteen invisible offspring, paired them off and embarked on a breeding program to see what would happen.
The results must have amazed him. The pairs were able to reproduce themselves every seventy days, their offspring not only being invisible but were born fully developed and fully mature—“though they never ceased to grow in wisdom and experience.”
These unusual offspring were called the secondary midwayers. Though incapable of procreation, they have no need for sleep or for earthly material food, being energized from “space emanations” that are a mystery to us poor humans. And they are immortal. (UB 77:5.6)
If Urantia Book readers read such material in the Bible or the Koran they would likely collapse in raucous laughter. So surely these two examples must force us to consider whether the revelators have repeatedly challenged our intellects, virtually begging us to refrain from converting their precious revelation into an infallible icon.
The revelators also told us:
It is more important to look forward to the future than to dwell in the past.
“Physical facts are fairly uniform, but truth is a living and flexible factor in the philosophy of the universe. Evolving personalities are only partially wise and relatively true in their communications. They can be certain only as far as their personal experience extends. That which apparently may be wholly true in one place may be only relatively true in another segment of creation.” (UB 2:7.2)
In the light of all these warnings (there are many, many more), readers would have to be equipped with tunnel vision in order to maintain belief in any infallible revelation ever being available to us humans.
The absence of certainty in this life is the way things are meant to be. For to make a true faith decision, we must be uncertain. If we have certainty, then our decision is made by logic, not by faith. The revelators confirm that postulate with their own resounding truths:
“That, then, is the primary or elementary course which confronts the faith-tested and much-traveled pilgrims of space. But long before reaching Havona, these ascendant children of time have learned to feast upon uncertainty, to fatten upon disappointment, to enthuse over apparent defeat, to invigorate in the presence of difficulties, to exhibit indomitable courage in the face of immensity, and to exercise unconquerable faith when confronted with the challenge of the inexplicable. Long since, the battle cry of these pilgrims became: ‘In liaison with God, nothing—absolutely nothing—is impossible.’” (UB 26:5.3)
Hope sees the invisible,feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.
“And what is more important than knowledge?” asked the mind. “Caring and seeing with the heart,” answered the soul.
The love we give away is the only love we keep.
Elbert Hubbard
We have seen that the Forum was established on a question and answer basis, the Forum putting questions to the revelators and later receiving a Paper in response to the questions it posed. Ultimately these same Papers became the basis for Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Urantia Papers that have since been printed, along with Part 4, as The Urantia Book. In learning about the origins of these Papers we get a deeper appreciation of the peculiarities of the content–peculiarities that may appear to range from the sublime to the ridiculous. However the sublime in these Papers can be so sublime that their very sublimity forces the conclusion that the ridiculous must be deliberate. And it must have a rational purpose. Important for our understanding is the following from the revelators:
“If revelation is to exalt and upstep the religions of evolution, then must such divine visitations portray teachings which are not too far removed from the thought and reactions of the age in which they are presented. Thus must and does revelation keep in touch with evolution. Always must the religion of revelation be limited by man’s capacity for receptivity.” (UB 92:4.1)
This statement demands our attention, it demands giving thought to the kind of problems and difficulties to be faced by all celestial or divine beings who are commissioned to provide revelation to us finite evolutionary mortal beings whose spiritual receptivity and intellectual capacity is only meagerly above the animal level.
The Papers inform us the purpose of such revelation is biased towards preparing us for a career in eternity. It is not to ease our pathway through this earthly life. And only those earthly experiences that have spiritual meaning and value have the capability of surviving with our souls into the next stage of our eternal adventure.
Revelation is for the future. It is not given in order to enlighten us about past and present history nor about the material facts of the physical universe. Therefore our attention must focus squarely upon deriving from revelation whatever can increase our God-consciousness, decrease our animal-like self-centeredness, enhance our spirituality, and promote our longing for the goodness and love of God.
Contemplation of the problems that faced the revelators, and doing so from their point of view, provides us with a quite different slant about the truth-value of revelation at a pragmatic, material, and finite level. For the Urantia revelators, there was an inalienable guiding principle. Regardless of the difficulties encountered, at all times they would do their utmost to be at one with the will of the God who is Universal Father to us all, as well as their utmost so to relate themselves to us that we receive the highest possible cosmic good as the result of their contact with us. Our “cosmic good” refers not to immediate good but our good over all eternity.
If we accept in good faith that this is so, then we will approach the Urantia revelation seeking from it not a revelation about history, science, or philosophy, but one in which the merit of any part is purely on the basis of its spiritual meaning and value. In doing so we ignore all thought of who wrote it or their status. We seek only truth–truth that must be decided by each individual in conjunction with their indwelling Father-Spirit. There is no other way to decide what is truth. Truth is always and inalienably between self and the God-Within. For the individual, there is no other authority.
Whereas the Forum was intimately and vitally concerned with the content of Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Urantia Papers, it had no part in determining the content of Part 4, “The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.”
Is unselfishness—the spirit of self-forgetfulness—desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor.
The life and teachings of Jesus appears to have attracted little attention over the whole period of contact with the revelators right up to the time when the Jesus Papers were received. Prior to the establishment of the Forum, Dr Sadler says: “We listened to occasional references to Jesus’ life and teachings–but they (the revelators) were very cautious about the introduction of any new concepts regarding Michael’s Urantia bestowal. Of all the Urantia Revelation the Jesus Papers were the biggest surprise.” This reticence about Jesus continued right through the period of receipt of Parts 1-3. Out of a total of 2564 mentions of the word “Jesus” in all of the Papers, only 114 occur in Parts 1-3.
The question is why? In Part 1, Paper 2, “The Nature of God,” has in its opening paragraph:
“The nature of God can best be understood by the revelation of the Father which Michael of Nebadon unfolded in his manifold teachings and in his superb mortal life in the flesh.” (UB 2:0.1)
And in its second paragraph:
“The nature of God can be studied in a revelation of supreme ideas, the divine character can be envisaged as a portrayal of supernal ideals, but the most enlightening and spiritually edifying of all revelations of the divine nature is to be found in the comprehension of the religious life of Jesus of Nazareth, both before and after his attainment of full consciousness of divinity. If the incarnated life of Michael is taken as the background of the revelation of God to man, we may attempt to put in human word symbols certain ideas and ideals concerning the divine nature which may possibly contribute to a further illumination and unification of the human concept of the nature and the character of the personality of the Universal Father.” (UB 2:0.2)
Then in the third of this short three paragraph introduction to Paper 2, we find:
“All our efforts to enlarge the human concept of God would be well-nigh futile except for the fact that the mortal mind is indwelt by the bestowed Adjuster of the Universal Father **and is pervaded by the Truth Spirit of the Creator Son.” (UB 2:0.3)
Coming from celestial revelators in the materialistic age that peaked around the 1930’s, that is mind blowing stuff. It probably came long after doubters about the credentials of the revelators would surely have left the Forum. But the fact that these most marvelous and compelling revelations elicited little or no interest, and apparently led to no further questions of significance from the Forum members defies credibility.
Here at the beginning of Paper 2, the Forum members received confirmation from beyond our planet that Jesus of Nazareth truly was the incarnate Son of God, that both before and after his full self-consciousness of divinity, Jesus’ religious life was our, “most enlightening and spiritually edifying of all revelations of the divine nature,” and finally, that the mind of each of us mere mortals is indwelt by both the Spirit of the Universal Father and the Spirit of Truth. Wow!!
How do we account for this apparent lack of interest? One way might be to postulate that the order and perhaps the content of the Urantia Papers as they are now given in Parts 1-3 had little relationship to the actual order and content of the Papers that were discussed in the Sunday afternoon sessions of the Forum. It is also possible that only a minor percentage of the content of Parts 1-3 was ever discussed in any animated way.
The period of receipt of the Papers was a period in world history when interest in things savoring of the religious or spiritual in the Western World had reached rock bottom. Also the Forum did not come together as a religious group but as patients of a husband and wife medical team. Their initial interest was stimulated by Dr Sadler’s mention of messages deriving from supposedly celestial beings, messages that could not be shown to be fraudulent.
If we look at some of the statistics given by Dr Sadler we may get a feeling for why there appears to have been so little interest in Jesus. During the 17 years of its existence the total number of people who at some time were members of the Forum was 486. When in 1939 a group was formed to make a serious study of the revelation only 70 joined. Later, when, in 1955, the decision was made to publish the book and form an organization to promote the revelation, only 36 joined.
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Regarding its formation Dr Sadler says, “It was inevitable that some sort of fraternal organization would grow out of the teachings of The Urantia Book. All interested persons could see that the Urantia teachings were opposed to the sectarianism of Christian believers. It was clear that it was not the purpose of the Urantia Revelation to start a new church.”
A biased view against the Christian Church, even against religion itself, appears to have existed among these early Urantians, amounting almost to paranoia among many later devotees to the book. But there are many statements in the Papers that indicate the major purpose of the revelation is the regeneration of Christianity:
“What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name.” (UB 196:1.2)
“If the Christian church would only dare to espouse the Master’s program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual undertaking….” (UB 195:10.10)
“But the Christianity of even the twentieth century must not be despised…” (UB 195:10.12)
“The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present-day professed followers.” (UB 195:10.16)
There are many more such statements, almost all in Part 4, so perhaps the bias was a leftover from the period prior to when Part 4 was received in 1935. However if many Forum members were antagonistic to Christianity or religion or both, then it must be presumed that the revelators organized the receipt of Papers in such a way that the Sunday afternoon discussions were dominated by topics that would hold the members’ interest. And if that main interest was in non-religious themes, and the revelators adhered closely to the proscription against providing unearned knowledge, then almost certainly more and more error would have been introduced into the cosmology in the Papers.
Regardless of the correctness of such speculation, we are nevertheless introduced to some of the problems faced by revelators whose major aims included to bring to Urantia a new and more valid version of Jesus’ Fourth Epochal Revelation.
However, portraying “teachings which are not too far removed from the thought and reactions of the age in which they are presented” would present ongoing problems even into the future when substantial numbers of Christians might commence to take the Papers seriously. In giving us Part 4, the revelators have chosen to do away with Adam and Eve as the first man and woman but to retain them in the Garden of Eden, not as the progenitors of original sin, but as donors of new genetic material meant to substantially upgrade the human race.
At a much deeper and more important theological level, they have chosen to condemn the atonement doctrine that was not only of supreme importance for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, but remains today as a potent force for calling Christians to Mass or the Eucharist. But retained in their revelation are many healing miracles, the voice at Jesus’ baptism, Lazarus’ resurrection from the dead, the Transfiguration story, and others that require some kind of supernatural intervention.
There are numerous statements in the Papers about the ineffectiveness of miracles in revealing the Father, building the Kingdom, proving the reality of God, or even engendering the gratitude of recipients. Thus, it is legitimate to wonder whether miracles, like the imparting of unearned knowledge, may actually be proscribed by some universe law. If so, the accounts of many or all of the miracles as described in the Urantia Papers will, at some future time, disappear from the record.
But perhaps their proscription, though being normal universe policy, may be waived during the incarnation experience of a Creator Son, which, in itself, is a miraculous event.
A further mystery in this saga of the Papers is the long, long delay between their receipt and their publication. If we accept the Papers as true revelation from a celestial source then the revelators were well aware that the longer the time period that elapsed prior to publication, the greater would be the number of errors that would be exposed in their cosmology.
All Urantia is waiting for the proclamation of the ennobling message of Jesus, unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin. The hour is striking for presenting to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Hinduism, even to the peoples of all faiths, not the gospel about Jesus, but the living, spiritual reality of the gospel of Jesus. (UB 94:12.7)
And because of the potential that its error content would drastically cut or even eliminate interest, any delay in publication would shorten the time slot for the revelation to make the impact necessary to ensure its survival, despite its error content. Already, not yet fifty years after publication, acceptance of the Urantia revelation is largely dependent upon the ignorance of the reader in matters of science and cosmology.
It is possible that the delay in publication was solely due to a misunderstanding at the time of completion of the revelation and the delayed publication came about because the Contact Group became reliant on what may have been spurious channeled messages. What might have happened if the Jesus Papers had been published in 1935 can only be speculation.
It may have been the hope or even the plan of the revelators that, in time, the cosmology in the Papers would be recognized as a temporary expedient, and serious studies of the Papers would then be confined to their spiritual, theological, and philosophical content.
For serious believers in the high value and quality of this aspect of the Urantia Papers, an important question is how to get this knowledge out from the Papers and into the knowledge sphere of Christian and other religious congregations. We should be aware that the revelators did not require that the Papers be spread around the world. Rather they asked that the message contained in the Papers be made available to men and women of all religions.
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not achieve them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott