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Photo compilation above
[L-R]: Harry Loose; Harold and Martha Sherman; Sir
Hubert Wilkins; 533 Diversey Parkway, Chicago;
contact commissioners Emma (Christy) Christensen,
Dr. Lena K. Sadler, Dr. William S. Sadler; Bill
Sadler; Anna and Wilfred Kellogg; Clyde Bedell. |
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I will begin by declaring that 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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