I LOVE history. That’s what first attracted me to the Urantia Book. I
initially saw it as a big, fat history book that was giving me the
straight scoop. Just getting this authoritative account of what
really happened on our planet, with no particular spin or
interpretation, was a breath of fresh air in a world that seemed
built on misinformation and ignorance. I loved learning that our
planetary history began a billion years ago, that life was purposely
planted here by superhuman chemists, and that human history started
one million years ago with the first human beings, Andon and Fonta.
Reading about the Lucifer rebellion and the default of Adam and Eve
not only explained why our world is on a backward course but gave us
clues on where to start making corrections.
The Urantia Book revealed a big plan in the
universe, that we were not just material beings but spiritual beings
who had the potential to live forever. There were rules, and if we
wanted to be an eternal part of God’s plan, we had to discover what
those rules were and follow them. It made sense that if we wanted to
stay alive on the physical plane we had to learn not to get sick,
not to get hit by a car or fall off a cliff or drown, or, on the
positive side, to keep eating the right foods and breathe healthy
air. By the same token, to live forever in God’s spiritual universe
we had to abide by the spiritual laws. Jesus came to teach us those
laws: Love God, love our neighbor, do good to others, serve our
fellows, and go about doing good.
History is the story of people either breaking
those laws or abiding by them, their actions and decisions, and the
repercussions. By studying our planetary history we can see what
went wrong and prevent the same things from happening over and over,
as illustrated by the old saying, “He who does not learn from
history is doomed to repeat it.” This is why the Urantia Book gives
us so much history, why the Prince’s staff began to conserve
knowledge and why the history and culture of the various earth races
were taught in the schools of the Garden of Eden.
The study of history should not interfere with our
lives as spiritual beings. In fact, it could help us to make wiser
choices. On page 215 it says:
The true perspective of any reality
problem—human or divine, terrestrial or cosmic—can be had only by
the full and unprejudiced study and correlation of three phases of
universe reality: origin, history, and destiny.
And:
The present can be truly interpreted only in the
light of the correlated past and future.
If the spiritual aspects of life were all we were
expected to know and share with others, the revelators would have
given us a much shorter book. They would not have made it
approximately 75% history and given us so many details concerning
our origin and destiny. They could have simply grouped together some
inspirational quotes from the Bible, as Dr. Sadler did in 1909 in
his first published book, Soul Winning Texts, or encouraged
the early contact commissioners and Forumites to simply live the
teachings rather than bother with a big book that took thirty or
forty years to produce, as was deemed wise two thousand years ago
when Jesus said:
Today we make no record of the teachings of this
gospel of the kingdom lest, when I have gone, you speedily become
divided up into sundry groups of truth contenders as a result of the
diversity of your interpretation of my teachings. For this
generation it is best that we live these truths while we shun the
making of records. [1768]
That was then. In the twentieth century, it was
decided that we humans had evolved to where we could safely handle a
big, fat book that contained details of our history, origin and
destiny, and live the truths at the same time. And why would there
be a conflict between these two separate but related pursuits? A
class can study history together, yet each individual student can
practice spirituality in his dealings with his teachers and
classmates.
On page 1123 it states
Revealed religion is the unifying element of
human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology,
astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology.
And on page 1109:
While statements with reference to cosmology are
never inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they
at least transiently clarify knowledge by . . . [t]he restoration of
important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in
the distant past.
It’s a fact that the first thing people want to
know about the Urantia Book is who wrote it. I was present when
TheoQuest.com was launched at the Whole Life Expo several years ago,
with a great display describing their website with its many Urantia
Book concepts. However, when it came time for Q&A, the first
question was, “Who wrote the book?” The designated TQ representative
brushed the question off by saying it was not important, that the
book should speak for itself, but the next person asked the same
question. Finally, with the non-Urantia-indoctrinated audience
getting noticeably suspicious and a third questioner demanding to
know, TQ board member and old-time reader David Elders was recruited
from the back of the room to come forth and produce an answer. The
version he reluctantly delivered was so whitewashed and
uninformative, that the audience looked at each other with raised
eyebrows. It was obvious to everyone that this Urantia revelation
had lots of skeletons in the closet!
All religious movements have histories. Just go to
any library or metaphysical book store and you will see how many
thousands of books have been written about early Christian history,
as well as all the ancient religions. You will find shelf after
shelf of histories of more recent belief systems such as Mormonism,
Theosophy, and Seventh-day Adventism. Even A Course in Miracles and
new age communities such as Findhorn in Scotland are developing
extensive histories about their origins.
There are also histories emerging about the
Urantia revelation. But two factors make ours so difficult to sort
out: the wall of secrecy surrounding its origins and the “we’re
special” attitude of the inner circles that arose among its first
ambassadors. Had the Urantia Papers not been singled out as the
greatest truth to hit the planet since Jesus, people wouldn’t have
lost their heads. But with such a build-up, it’s no wonder that the
desire to “own and control” it led to conflict and a sense of
superiority and exclusivity. The “chosen people” attitude is nothing
new:
[The Jews] looked upon all gentile ways with
utter contempt. They worshiped the letter of the law and indulged a
form of self-righteousness based upon the false pride of descent.
[1339]
The average Urantia Book reader claims to have no
interest in Urantia movement politics, but today’s politics are
tomorrow’s history. The sixth epochal revelation will undoubtedly
include a history of the fifth.
Everything that happens with this
revelation—today’s politics and lawsuits included—will be part of
the history of the dissemination of this revelation and studied by
religionists of the future. Those students will be interested in
knowing how the receivers of a revelation of such truth and beauty
could have gotten themselves entangled in such an ugly mess.
A number of years ago, after the copyright issues was settled in the
courts, I attended one of Foundation’s fundraisers in Los Angeles. I
had heard from several sources that they were in dire financial
straits, and I published an open letter to Urantia Foundation with
suggestions that might bring them more donations. In my letter I
recounted some of their past doings. While most responses agreed
with my ideas, I received a few imploring me to quit “bickering,”
forget the past, and strive for unity instead: “Why do we need to
rehash all this old stuff? It’s just tearing us down and we need to
move on.”
I wish it were so easy. If you have a disease, you
can’t just say, “Let’s forget the disease and be healthy!” The
universe is based on laws of cause and effect. To be healthy you
need to first diagnose the disease, take the proper steps to remove
it, and figure out what caused it in the first place so it doesn’t
keep coming back.
The Urantia Book says:
The study of causation is the perusal of
history. [215]
Prior to publication of the five-volume
Sherman Diaries, Urantia movement histories consisted primarily
of Larry Mullins’ History of the Urantia Papers,
Ernest Moyer’s Birth of a Divine Revelation,
Mark Kulieke’s Birth of a Revelation, and
outsider/skeptic Martin Gardner’s Urantia, the Great
Cult Mystery. In this category I would also place John
Bunker and Karen Pressler's Edgar Cayce and the Urantia
Book, for the amount of research that went into it.
While all are to be commended for their detective work, all adding
to our store of information about the early days, their work has
also led to the creation of more myths and legends. Adding to the
mystery and confusion, Urantia Foundation, for its 50th Anniversary
commemoration, produced a 53-page history wherein the participants
were all anonymous. Since God works with personalities, not
phantoms, this whitewashed account reads like the pages of an
unlisted phone numbers directory. The unnamed Dr. Sadler, whom we
all know as the custodian of the revelation, was described as “a
noted Chicago psychologist”—a particularly clumsy attempt to obscure
the facts, since Dr. Sadler was a psychiatrist who wrote thick
textbooks on psychiatry, whose patients by and large comprised the
Forum that first studied the papers. This is an uncomfortable fact
that Urantia historians simply have to deal with.
By far the most helpful and comprehensive history of movement
politics is on the Urantia Book Fellowship’s website, maintained by
David Kantor, with
a timeline
consisting of historic documents presented in chronological order,
allowing the participants on all sides to speak for themselves and
the readers to make judgments in the light of their own truth.
What has mainly steered Urantia Book history has
been the carrying out and slavish following of supposed superhuman
“mandates” and “instructions,” which could have been hearsay or
human wisdom elevated to divine guidance, since nobody—alive or
dead—has ever produced documentation. The diaries and letters of
Harold and Martha Sherman, who were members of the Forum for five
years from 1942 to 1947, cast doubt that these mandates came from
midwayers and other higher beings. The Shermans supply evidence that
even the wording of the Declaration of Trust had human import, as
they themselves sat in on meetings with Clyde Bedell and other
Forumites where the inclusion of certain phrases was debated and
changes made. Harold Sherman himself gave input, as is told in
Volume Two of the Diaries. And yet, one group of Urantia
Book readers, who have created an organization called Urantia
Association International, seems to be forming a religion around the
Declaration of Trust, believing it to be a divinely authored set of
instructions to be followed to the letter. The true facts of the
origin of document need to be brought to light before the falsehoods
become crystallized as official Urantia history, giving license for
fundamentalism to rule supreme.
All modern religions have seriously blundered in
the attempt to put a miraculous interpretation on certain epochs of
human history. [1071]
Another problem we encounter when trying to
produce an official history of the movement has to do with
repercussions of the 1989 Split between the Foundation and the
Brotherhood. So many embarrassing decisions were made leading up to
it, that today’s leaders on both sides have a natural desire to
sanitize the actions of their predecessors, producing conflicting
accounts about the same event, or whole episodes omitted entirely.
Added to this is the bizarre circumstance that for a number of years
the two groups did not recognize each other’s existence. Unless all
cards are being played, how can either side expect to produce a
complete and unprejudiced history of the movement? It will take
unaffiliated readers to present the unbiased history that people of
the future can rely upon.
Another difficulty with Urantia’s past has been
the appearance of both sacred and profane histories. Here’s a
related quote:
The custom of looking upon the record of the
experiences of the Hebrews as sacred history and upon the
transactions of the rest of the world as profane history is
responsible for much of the confusion existing in the human mind as
to the interpretation of history. And this difficulty arises because
there is no secular history of the Jews. [1070]
Were it not for the Internet, where all
information can immediately be posted and scrutinized, and the
emergence of such documents as the diaries and letters of Harold and
Martha Sherman (which were not publicly revealed until the year
2000), we would once again be left with little more than a largely
fictitious and “sacred” history of the movement and nobody left
behind to dispute it. The official Urantia movement history would
be, as the old saying goes, “the lie we all agree upon.” Dr. Sadler
and Christy would be revered as saints and the “Sherman rebellion”
forever fixed as the disruptive act of a lone, disgruntled
individual who had sinister motives to steal the revelation away
from the good Doctor. Fundamentalism would reign supreme.
With Harold and Martha Sherman speaking to us from
beyond the grave, we now have the only eyewitness account that
dispels these secondhand tales and show us that Dr. Sadler and
Christy were above all, human beings capable of making mistakes and
misjudgments. And yet, many who would spend years studying the
history of the Jews and early Christians in a Bible study class, or
the life of Adam and Eve in a Urantia Book study group, would not be
interested in reading The Sherman Diaries, regarding it as “profane”
history.
While some have tried to create a “sacred” history
around the Urantia Book, for a former agnostic like me, there can
only be one history—the plain facts that tell the story of the
course these revelations took before and after they were released to
the world. Because the Urantia revelation contains information that
has the potential awaken humanity to its purpose and destiny, the
rocky history of the book's suppression and dissemination should be
taken very seriously and studied in great depth.
Clyde Bedell, one of the original
Forumites, was widely revered in the Urantia movement as a devoted
student of the Urantia revelation. He was also a contemporary of the
Shermans, and helped produce the petition that led to the Sherman
rebellion in 1942. When Harold Sherman wrote How to Know What to
Believe in 1976 he was 78 years old and looking back at events
through the distorted lens of retrospection. Clyde Bedell, also 78,
remembered events differently. To compare, if I told the story of my
decades-ago first marriage today, and compared it to diaries I might
have kept at the time, minute by minute and day by day, two entirely
different accounts would emerge. Experience has made me
philosophical, and I now look back on those faraway days from a
detached vantage point. Hindsight may be 20-20 but it can not be
relied upon to furnish us with an accurate history.
Offended by Sherman’s account of the 1942 episode,
Bedell wrote a lengthy rebuttal. Larry Mullins, who idolized Bedell
as his mentor who had introduced him to the Urantia Book, took
Bedell’s version as gospel, and presented the Shermans in his
History as the evil stirrer-uppers of what he called “The Sherman
Tempest.” (In print, Mullins incorrectly accused the Shermans of
advocating numerology and astrology, when Sherman’s true mission was
to investigate ESP. The Shermans recount in their diaries how
surprised they were to find many Forumites still taking astrology
seriously even after being exposed to the higher Urantia truths.)
The diaries reveal the true facts. Held alongside what both Sherman
and Bedell wrote thirty-five years later, show that both had faulty
memories, that neither was all right or all wrong. Larry Mullins has
since published an article in The Spiritual Fellowship Journal
setting the record straight about the Shermans, and has plans to
revise the next edition of his History accordingly. I applaud and
admire Mullins for having the courage to change his mind when
presented with irrefutable facts.
We now have almost one hundred years of Urantia
revelation history. Decisions were made that sowed the seeds for
future disharmony, but what the Sherman Diaries reveal, apart from
the underlying causes that produced a turbulent history, is that
there are no villains. Dr. Sadler’s desire to control the course of
the dissemination of the revelation was with the best of intentions,
and why not? He was the custodian, he had devoted his life to it,
and for all intents and purposes, until the papers were published in
book form, he owned the revelation. Even the Sleeping Subject, who,
we could argue, was the true possessor of the material, saw fit to
hand over the reins to Dr. Sadler and his immediate family. The
motives of all concerned were pure, just as Eve did not purposely
mean to default on their mission.
It was farthest from Eve’s intention ever to do
anything which would militate against Adam’s plans or jeopardize
their planetary trust. [840]
The Sherman Diaries make
it clear that even those who opposed Sadler were in full agreement
that the all-important factor was “the proper presentation of the
revelation to the world.”
Everything that happens with this revelation is
being recorded by angels and other beings for future study, and that
includes all the work that each of us are doing. The universe is a
place where meticulous records are kept, and I could produce quote
after quote about higher universe beings whose sole function is to
keep records.
The [seraphic recorders] are the keepers of the
threefold records of the local systems – [material, morontial and
spiritual]. . . . [436]
If we are not to have another major revelation for
a thousand years, why do all this work of information-gathering now
and not leave it for the people of the future? First, certain
individuals still alive today were either directly or indirectly
involved, such as the daughters of the Shermans, Marcia Lynch and
Mary Kobiella. They still have valuable documents in their
possession that can shed more light. Mary, who joined the Forum in
1943, and Marcia, though only fourteen at the time but living with
her parents across the street at 530 Diversey Parkway the entire
five years, have been most cooperative in sharing with us what
remains of their parents’ papers, some of which are of immense value
to a Urantia historian but which the sisters, not being familiar
with the Urantia work, were unsure what to do with.
We are told that throughout eternity we will be
consulting historical records, so I consider it my duty, since this
is my particular interest, to find and preserve as many
Urantia-related documents as possible here on the material plane,
not only for Urantia historians but also for the midwayers of the
future, so they will have something to work with when they compile
the history for the sixth epochal revelation and are mandated only
to use human sources:
As far as possible, consistent with our mandate,
we have endeavored to utilize and to some extent co-ordinate the
existing records having to do with the life of Jesus on Urantia. . .
.[We] have enjoyed access to the lost record of the Apostle Andrew.
. . [It] has been our purpose also to make use of the so-called
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. [1341]
All these writers presented honest pictures of
Jesus as they saw, remembered, or had learned of him. [1342]
The revelators also mention that these records are
imperfect, but they use them anyway. Any eyewitness account, no
matter how flawed, will always have more value than second-hand
rumors or a long chain of gossip.
Because a mystery was purposely created around the
origin of the Urantia Book, those of us who are dedicated to
bringing the facts out into the open have our work cut our for us.
The teachings themselves encourage us to become detectives and
researchers in our pursuit of truth and facts, and that
Except on Paradise, knowledge is not inherent;
understanding of the physical universe is largely dependent on
observation and research. [339]
I have come to believe that the mystery
surrounding the revelation’s origin was deliberately fabricated by
Dr. Sadler. This is documented in Volume Three of The Sherman
Diaries, in which the Doctor announced to the Forum on page 114 that
“in order to succeed, every cult needs a masterful mystery.” It was
no secret that he was forming a cult with the planned organization
of a Urantia Brotherhood. That the mystery angle was a human
decision becomes clear when we read what Jesus told the apostles:
“I declare to you that there is nothing covered
up that is not going to be revealed; there is nothing hidden that
shall not be known.” [1681]
On the one hand we have the revelation, and on the
other we have the evolution of the revelation, in which I include
all the happenings that have surrounded it from its beginning circa
1911. According to my interpretation, it all falls under the
category of evolutionary religion, which is the story of what humans
do with the revelatory information given them.
But when tempted to criticize evolutionary
religion, be careful. Remember, that is what happened; it is a
historical fact. [1005]
The value of a “warts and all” history cannot be
underestimated. If we truly believe that the Urantia Book is the
fifth epochal history to mankind, then at least a few of us need to
dig deep to find out all there is to know about it. How will future
students ever be able to understand such episodes as The Split if
the actual records revealing what led up to it are kept hidden or
destroyed and replaced with self-serving lies and cover-ups? Those
who have found truth in the Urantia revelation will not be satisfied
with anything less than the truest history we can produce during our
lifetimes.
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