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The Urantia Papers (An
introduction by Byron Belitsos)
A first glance through the table of contents of
The Urantia Book can be shocking: It lists over fifty names and
types of celestial personalities, few of whom have been heard of on
the planet heretofore. The topics covered are all-embracing in
scope. Its literary style is elevated and complex—often rather
advanced. In addition, the jacket of this 2,097-page book describes
it as an epochal revelation to our planet, which it purports is
called "Urantia" Without a doubt, this text offers a formidable
challenge to anyone approaching it for the first time!
The Urantia Book was authored and presented by celestial
personalities and given to our world through a method that is not
wholly understood. Popular lore recounts a twenty-year process in
the 1920s and 30s in Chicago of direct interaction between a
superhuman commission of celestial personalities and a "contact
commission" of six humans. In addition, a group of several hundred
people known as the Forum, which met once a week during these years
in Chicago, was indirectly involved in the revelatory process,
feeding (through the human contact commissioners) not only hundreds
of questions to the revelators but even comments on early drafts of
the papers. The finished version, a massive tome, was first
published in 1955, and more than 500,000 copies are now in print.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE URANTIA TEXT
The first thing one notices when perusing this text is a huge volume
of 196 chapters (actually known as "papers") that is divided into
four sections:
I.
The Central and Superuniverses,
which presents the infinitely loving and merciful nature of the
Universal Father, the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, the nature and activities
of the Eternal Trinity and other high universe personalities, and
the extent and structure of the far-flung cosmic domains of material
creation.
II.
The Local Universe, which
details the nature and structure of the "local" sector of our galaxy
containing ten million inhabited planets, including its
administration and history.
III.
The History of Urantia, which
narrates the origin of our solar system, a chronological account of
the history of the earth ("Urantia"), and the evolution of life on
the planet, including a spiritual history of humankind.
IV.
The Life and Teachings of Jesus,
which contains a 700-page account of the life and teachings of
Jesus—sometimes day-by-day and hour by hour—including a narration of
the so-called "lost years" of Jesus’ childhood, adolescence, and
young adulthood, as well as an extensive and detailed account of his
public ministry. The background data for this presentation is based
chiefly on records supplied by the guardian angel who accompanied
the Apostle Andrew.
This fourth section of the book is solidly rooted in the New
Testament story. In one of five papers presented for a consultative
panel on The Urantia Book held at the American Academy of Religion
meeting in 1986, Dr. Meredith Sprunger wrote the following about the
Jesus Papers:
"This superb presentation of the life of Jesus brings life to the
sketchy New Testament picture and with it a new authenticity. It has
a universal appeal even when it is viewed only as a historical novel
for it is unsurpassed in theistic philosophical reasonableness,
spiritual insight, and personality appeal. This life of Jesus not
only fills in the "hidden years" from twelve to thirty but The
Urantia Book gives a picture of his pre-incarnation and
post-incarnation experience. It is basically acceptable to all
religions, emphasizing the religion of Jesus which is unifying
rather than the religion about Jesus which tend to be divisive."
