The Urantia Book

The Urantia Book (1955), sometimes called the Urantia Papers or The Fifth Epochal Revelation, is a spiritual and philosophical book which discusses God, Jesus, science, cosmology, religion, history, destiny, life, the universe and everything. Its authorship remains a matter of speculation. It seems to have been composed in Chicago, Illinois, sometime between 1924 and 1955, under the direction of William S. Sadler.

The Urantia Book (1955)

The Urantia Book

You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them.

Foreword

Foreword

• In the minds of the mortals of Urantia—that being the name of your world—there exists great confusion respecting the meaning of such terms as God, divinity, and deity. Human beings are still more confused and uncertain about the relationships of the divine personalities designated by these numerous appellations. Because of this conceptual poverty associated with so much ideational confusion, I have been directed to formulate this introductory statement in explanation of the meanings which should be attached to certain word symbols as they may be hereinafter used in those papers which the Orvonton corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate into the English language of Urantia.
  • UB 0:0.1 (1.1)

• It is exceedingly difficult to present enlarged concepts and advanced truth, in our endeavor to expand cosmic consciousness and enhance spiritual perception, when we are restricted to the use of a circumscribed language of the realm. But our mandate admonishes us to make every effort to convey our meanings by using the word symbols of the English tongue. We have been instructed to introduce new terms only when the concept to be portrayed finds no terminology in English which can be employed to convey such a new concept partially or even with more or less distortion of meaning.

  In the hope of facilitating comprehension and of preventing confusion on the part of every mortal who may peruse these papers, we deem it wise to present in this initial statement an outline of the meanings to be attached to numerous English words which are to be employed in designation of Deity and certain associated concepts of the things, meanings, and values of universal reality.

  • UB 0:0.2 (1.2)

• Your world, Urantia, is one of many similar inhabited planets which comprise the local universe of Nebadon. This universe, together with similar creations, makes up the superuniverse of Orvonton, from whose capital, Uversa, our commission hails. Orvonton is one of the seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space which circle the never-beginning, never-ending creation of divine perfection—the central universe of Havona. At the heart of this eternal and central universe is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity and the dwelling place of the eternal God.
  • UB 0:0.5 (1.5)

Part I. The Central and Superuniverses

Paper 1: The Universal Father

Paper 1: The Universal Father

• The Universal Father is the God of all creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. First think of God as a creator, then as a controller, and lastly as an infinite upholder. The truth about the Universal Father had begun to dawn upon mankind when the prophet said: "You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them. By the Sons of God were the universes made. The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment and stretches out the heavens as a curtain."
  • UB 1:0.1 (21.1)

• God is not hiding from any of his creatures. He is unapproachable to so many orders of beings only because he "dwells in a light which no material creature can approach." The immensity and grandeur of the divine personality is beyond the grasp of the unperfected mind of evolutionary mortals.
  • UB 1:5.3 (27.5)

Paper 2: The Nature of God

Paper 2: The Nature of God

Since God knows all about his children, it is easy for him to forgive.

• The greatest punishment (in reality an inevitable consequence) for wrongdoing and deliberate rebellion against the government of God is loss of existence as an individual subject of that government. The final result of wholehearted sin is annihilation. In the last analysis, such sin-identified individuals have destroyed themselves by becoming wholly unreal through their embrace of iniquity.
  • UB 2:3.2 (36.7)

• God is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful. And never is it necessary that any influence be brought to bear upon the Father to call forth his loving-kindness. The creature's need is wholly sufficient to insure the full flow of the Father's tender mercies and his saving grace. Since God knows all about his children, it is easy for him to forgive. The better man understands his neighbor, the easier it will be to forgive him, even to love him.
  • UB 2:4.2 (38.2)

Paper 4: God's Relation to the Universe

Paper 4: God's Relation to the Universe

• The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.
  • UB 4:5.4 (60.3)

Part II. The Local Universe

Paper 32: The Evolution of Local Universes

Paper 32: The Evolution of Local Universes

• There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. And the infinite treasures of such a matchless career are yours for the striving!

  The goal of eternity is ahead! The adventure of divinity attainment lies before you! The race for perfection is on! Whosoever will may enter, and certain victory will crown the efforts of every human being who will run the race of faith and trust, depending every step of the way on the leading of the indwelling Adjuster and on the guidance of that good spirit of the Universe Son, which so freely has been poured out upon all flesh.

  • UB 32:5.7–8 (365.3–4)

Part III. The History of Urantia

Paper 99: The Social Problems of Religion

Paper 99: The Social Problems of Religion

• Religion achieves its highest social ministry when it has least connection with the secular institutions of society. In past ages, since social reforms were largely confined to the moral realms, religion did not have to adjust its attitude to extensive changes in economic and political systems. The chief problem of religion was the endeavor to replace evil with good within the existing social order of political and economic culture. Religion has thus indirectly tended to perpetuate the established order of society, to foster the maintenance of the existent type of civilization.

  But religion should not be directly concerned either with the creation of new social orders or with the preservation of old ones. True religion does oppose violence as a technique of social evolution, but it does not oppose the intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages and adjust its institutions to new economic conditions and cultural requirements.

  Religion did approve the occasional social reforms of past centuries, but in the twentieth century it is of necessity called upon to face adjustment to extensive and continuing social reconstruction. Conditions of living alter so rapidly that institutional modifications must be greatly accelerated, and religion must accordingly quicken its adaptation to this new and ever-changing social order.

  • UB 99:0.1–3 (1086.1–3)

• Life must continue to grow in meaningfulness; man must go on with his reformation of philosophy and his clarification of religion.

  Political science must effect the reconstruction of economics and industry by the techniques it learns from the social sciences and by the insights and motives supplied by religious living. In all social reconstruction religion provides a stabilizing loyalty to a transcendent object, a steadying goal beyond and above the immediate and temporal objective. In the midst of the confusions of a rapidly changing environment mortal man needs the sustenance of a far-flung cosmic perspective.

  • UB 99:7.1–2 (1092.5–6)

• Religion inspires man to live courageously and joyfully on the face of the earth; it joins patience with passion, insight to zeal, sympathy with power, and ideals with energy.

  Man can never wisely decide temporal issues or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless he meditates in the presence of the sovereignty of God and reckons with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual values.

  Economic interdependence and social fraternity will ultimately conduce to brotherhood. Man is naturally a dreamer, but science is sobering him so that religion can presently activate him with far less danger of precipitating fanatical reactions. Economic necessities tie man up with reality, and personal religious experience brings this same man face to face with the eternal realities of an ever-expanding and progressing cosmic citizenship.

  • UB 99:7.3–5 (1093.1–3)

Paper 101: The Real Nature of Religion

Paper 101: The Real Nature of Religion

• Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records.
  • UB 101:4.2 (1109.3)

• Religion effectually cures man's sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen of a new and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe.
  • UB 101:10.7 (1117.1)

Paper 102: The Foundations of Religious Faith

Paper 102: The Foundations of Religious Faith

You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

• Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.
  • UB 102:7.3 (1126.3)

Paper 108: Mission and Ministry of Thought Adjusters

Paper 108: Mission and Ministry of Thought Adjusters

• It is indeed a marvel of divine condescension for the exalted and perfect Adjusters to offer themselves for actual existence in the minds of material creatures, such as the mortals of Urantia, really to consummate a probationary union with the animal-origin beings of earth.

  No matter what the previous status of the inhabitants of a world, subsequent to the bestowal of a divine Son and after the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth upon all humans, the Adjusters flock to such a world to indwell the minds of all normal will creatures. Following the completion of the mission of a Paradise bestowal Son, these Monitors truly become the "kingdom of heaven within you."

  • UB 108:6.1–2 (1192.6–1193.1)

• The Adjuster is the mark of divinity, the presence of God. The "image of God" does not refer to physical likeness nor to the circumscribed limitations of material creature endowment but rather to the gift of the spirit presence of the Universal Father in the supernal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters upon the humble creatures of the universes.
  • UB 108:6.3 (1193.2)

• The Adjusters are the eternal ancestors, the divine originals, of your evolving immortal souls; they are the unceasing urge that leads man to attempt the mastery of the material and present existence in the light of the spiritual and future career. The Monitors are the prisoners of undying hope, the founts of everlasting progression. And how they do enjoy communicating with their subjects in more or less direct channels! How they rejoice when they can dispense with symbols and other methods of indirection and flash their messages straight to the intellects of their human partners!
  • UB 108:6.7 (1193.6)

• You humans have begun an endless unfolding of an almost infinite panorama, a limitless expanding of never-ending, ever-widening spheres of opportunity for exhilarating service, matchless adventure, sublime uncertainty, and boundless attainment. When the clouds gather overhead, your faith should accept the fact of the presence of the indwelling Adjuster, and thus you should be able to look beyond the mists of mortal uncertainty into the clear shining of the sun of eternal righteousness on the beckoning heights of the mansion worlds of Satania.
  • UB 108:6.8 (1194.1)

Part IV. The Life and Teachings of Jesus

The Adjuster is the mark of divinity, the presence of God. The "image of God" does not refer to physical likeness nor to the circumscribed limitations of material creature endowment but rather to the gift of the spirit presence of the Universal Father in the supernal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters upon the humble creatures of the universes.

Paper 196: The Faith of Jesus

Paper 196: The Faith of Jesus

• Jesus enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He experienced the ordinary ups and downs of mortal existence, but he never religiously doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and guidance. His faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine presence, his indwelling Adjuster. His faith was neither traditional nor merely intellectual; it was wholly personal and purely spiritual.
  • UB 196:0.1 (2087.1)

• The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the "will of the Father in heaven." Jesus' God was at one and the same time "The Holy One of Israel" and "The living and loving Father in heaven." The concept of God as a Father was not original with Jesus, but he exalted and elevated the idea into a sublime experience by achieving a new revelation of God and by proclaiming that every mortal creature is a child of this Father of love, a son of God.
  • UB 196:0.2 (2087.2)

• Jesus did not cling to faith in God as would a struggling soul at war with the universe and at death grips with a hostile and sinful world; he did not resort to faith merely as a consolation in the midst of difficulties or as a comfort in threatened despair; faith was not just an illusory compensation for the unpleasant realities and the sorrows of living. In the very face of all the natural difficulties and the temporal contradictions of mortal existence, he experienced the tranquillity of supreme and unquestioned trust in God and felt the tremendous thrill of living, by faith, in the very presence of the heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith was a living experience of actual spirit attainment. Jesus' great contribution to the values of human experience was not that he revealed so many new ideas about the Father in heaven, but rather that he so magnificently and humanly demonstrated a new and higher type of living faith in God. Never on all the worlds of this universe, in the life of any one mortal, did God ever become such a living reality as in the human experience of Jesus of Nazareth.
  • UB 196:0.3 (2087.3)

• To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it.
  • UB 196:1.3 (2090.4)

• Art results from man's attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it is a gesture toward the morontia level. Science is man's effort to solve the apparent riddles of the material universe. Philosophy is man's attempt at the unification of human experience. Religion is man's supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final reality, his determination to find God and to be like him.
  • UB 196:3.30 (2096.6)

• In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion. All of man's universe romancing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth.

  Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.

  Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress, and the revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail.

  • UB 196:3.31–33 (2096.7–2097.1)

• The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness—contact with the divine presence. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.

  And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in service. And all these things are a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons—mortal men. When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God.

  • UB 196:3.34–35 (2097.2–3)

In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion.

Quotes about The Urantia Book

• Sadler said he did not actually believe the revelatory power of the Urantia papers until 1936, when he read the descriptions of the apostles' personalities and character in paper 139. As a psychiatrist, he felt that no human could have written the essays.
  • Sioux Oliva: Dr. Sadler and The Urantia Book: The Historic Origins of a Spiritual Revelation in the 20th Century (2014)

• The UB's Jesus section is indeed a well-written, impressive work. Either it is accurate in its history, coming directly from higher beings in position to know, or it is a work of fertile imagination by someone who knew the New Testament by heart and who was also steeped in knowledge of the times when Jesus lived.
  • Martin Gardner: Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery (1995), p. 312

• The grand universe registry number of Urantia is 5,342,482,337,666 (UB 182). … Could it be that the thirteen digits in Urantia's registry number conceal some sort of message? I asked my old friend Dr. Irving Joshua Matrix, the world's most famous numerologist, for his opinion of this mysterious number. … Satan, Dr. Matrix reminded me, likes to take things backward. So let's reverse the number and partition it like so:

  666-73-328-42435

  The first three digits are, of course, the number assigned to the Beast, an incarnation of Satan, described in the Bible's last book. The next two digits, 7 and 3, add to 10, the number of letters in "Revelation". The three digits in the next set, 3, 2, and 8, add to 13, a chapter in Revelation. The last set of five digits, 4, 2, 4, 3, 5, add to 18, the number of a verse. Now Revelation 13:18 is the very verse in which 666 is assigned to the Beast!

  • Martin Gardner: Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery (1995), pp. 13–14

• Research has revealed that virtually all of the scientific material found in The Urantia Book was the accepted scientific knowledge of the period in which the book was written, was held by some scientists of that time, or was about to be discovered or recognized. … Scholarly evaluation shows that Urantia Book fundamentalism is just as untenable as Biblical fundamentalism.
  • Meredith Sprunger, a liberal believer in The Urantia Book, as quoted in Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery (1995) by Martin Gardner.
  • Urantia believers often cite UB 101:4.2 as a defense.

• There are many sections in the book that can bring consternation when considered outside the context of the full revelation, race being one of them. … Regarding race, regarding humanity in general and regarding the composition of the book—most of the first 119 out of the 196 Papers are written by highly intelligent beings who have never been human, beings of higher origin than humans, "angels". As the lowest order of free will creature in existence we humans now find ourselves reading about our origin, nature, and destiny as perceived from a higher and non-human perspective, sources not so sentimental about our shortcomings as we obviously are.
  • "Is The Urantia Book Racist?" Frequently Asked Questions, Truthbook.com.

• The book was probably written by a Chicago physician and student of Freud named William Sadler who had already been involved in other cults. … Sadler was interested in race eugenics, a field of study that seeks to remove "inferior" kinds of people from the gene pool. One of Sadler's favorite books before The Urantia Book was Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race, which says that nordic people are the "ideal" human race and "getting rid of" other races would "enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums."
  • "The Insane True Story of Sleepytime Tea's Origins in an Extraterrestrial Cult". Thought Catalog (January 3, 2022).

• According to Urantia's text, half a million years ago, six colored races existed on our planet: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo. Again, according to the text, there was a racial superiority order with the indigo race at the bottom, in which, as it notes, "the blue man subdues the indigo" [UB 51:4.6]. It oddly states that strains of giantism can appear in green and orange peoples. The upshot of all of this is that on every planet in every universe, fair-skinned, blue-eyed aliens named Adam and Eve come and up-step the natives, meaning that they eliminate the inferior stocks and purify the planet.
  • Blair Zòn: "Sleepy Time Tea's Weird Cult?" (3:30–4:06). Corporate Casket (February 26, 2021).

See also

• The Urantia Book on love
• William S. Sadler

External links

• Urantia Foundation – the original publisher, but now one of several
  • Downloadable text in many formats
  • Sayings of Jesus – quotes attributed to Jesus of Nazareth
• The Urantia Book Historical Society
• The Urantia Book Fellowship
• Urantia Book Related Websites – with over 300 categorized links
• Quotes from The Urantia Book on Goodreads
• TruthBook.com
• BigBlueBook.org
• UrantiaBookSources.com
• The Urantia Book quotes on Goodreads