Customer Reviews

The Birth of a Divine Revelation : The Origin of the Urantia Papers

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There is little sense in going back and forth about the mystery of the Urantia Book. It is either of celestial origin or it is not. I'm confident that many of those that actually met and listened to Jesus posed a similiar question to themselves as they pondered the teachings of this unusual man. Whatever conclusion you come to, the Urantia Book is nothing short of miraculous. Try for yourself writing an essay about the nature of God or the ramifications of living amongst free will creatures. The Urantia Book is far removed from New Age type answers to age old questions. Rather, it provides remarkable explanations to many things that you come to find you had often wondered about. Moyer delivers his points with passion and personal conviction. It doesn't trouble me in the slightest if I disagree with some of his conclusions. The research and interpretation thereof are well worth the time spent reading this fascinating book. The Urantia Book is best approached as a vehicle from which man can search for meaning, not a book where one arrives at a set of definitive conclusions.

This is a must read. It is a benchmark work against which all Histories and Mysteries dealing with the origin of the Urantia Papers must be weighed. The wealth of detail from Moyer's extensive research on the early days of William Sadler, human agent for the Revelation, and his meeting of the "Sleeping Subject," has no comparison.

Moyer provides useful introductory material for those who may be meeting the Urantia Book for the first time. He then goes on to survey the sequence of events starting with the appearance of the "Sleeping Subject" in LaGrange, Illinois in 1908, to the event of the actual revelation in 1934 and 1935. He shows the nature of the "Contact Commission," entrusted with the care of the Revelation, and how the "Forum" developed, with its role in the generation of the Papers. He provides an unvarnished account of the interplay of personalities, with all of their human frailties. Those human shortcomings eventually led to Sadler interposing in the text, and reducing the Revelation to something less than the perfection we would expect from divine beings.

Moyer, a believer that the Urantia Papers are a Divine Revelation, exercises an intellectual honesty that is striking. He faces up to cruel realities where others cower. Such a masterful work will withstand the keenest scrutiny.

You will never grasp the truth behind the origins of the Urantia Papers without reading this book.

Ignore the pinhead negative reviews below. "Camille" has likely not read much of the Urantia Book, and the other sneering review you can just swat like an annoying mosquito. I came to the UB some fifteen years ago. I am 50 now and have never read anything even remotely like it. It is difficult, to say the least, but the ring of truth in it is loud and clear, despite the many questions that it raises. As this space is not a forum, I won't go into details about the problems with the UB. But those of you who actually READ and CONSIDER the UB will need Mr. Moyer's book. Don't let no-count simpletons dissuade you from pursuing the TRUTH. The Birth of a Divine Revelation is a brave, living thing. Don't miss it.

The most informative and indeapth researched document I have read in quite a while. And as it pretains to my favorite book, no one could have made me happier. Thank you and view my web site [...]
Sincerely, Reverend Michael Yaknowski

A must read for Urantia Book students, as it is one of only a few in-depth studys & research into the Urantia Foundation members and the actual Revelations reception.
It is collated as a Logue of events pertaining to the reception of the Revelation, heavily appendicted, rather than a flowing read, with the Author failing in his attempt to not add or take away from the contents of the actual Revelation by endorsing his own opinions.
Introduces Urantia Book students to the Custodial battle that has thwarted its reception.
Therefore as an in-depth but in-complete study, of Urantia Foundation members and particulars of the Revelations arrival, it is deserving of an A.
All opinions cast by the Author regarding the Revelations contents, should be viewed with a knowledge of the Authors backround.
Should be read in Conjuction with the Urantia Book.

Intelligent and mature truth seekers will be thrilled by the information revealed and discussed in depth, including the lost history and information on the life of Jesus with new parables and epic story lines that we can draw strength from and find new meaning. To sum, regardless of your religious inclinations nor scientific background, the UB and the study guides are a great assist to making sense of our short time on Earth. If you are noble and wise, you will come away with a sense of awe, inspiration and a renewed purpose, ready to live each day of your life with the sense of joy and meaning that God intended.

After reading part of the Urantia Book (UB), I became so intrigued by the divine inspirations revealed that I wanted to learn more, so I made the mistake of checking out the Gardner book at my library, thinking that I could learn more about the early days of the movement. Despite my determination, I could barely make it through the first 100 pages as I quickly lost interest in the uninspired ramblings and false associations about people only loosely associated with the Sadler family.

If one remembers that the Sadlers spent their life helping the needy and were well commissioned in society, Gardner didn't need to dig very deep to find a few bad apples known by the Sadlers, and he fully relies on a few random acquaintances of this pious family to make the ridiculous correlation that the book is nothing short of plagarism.

It's important to note that for such a bold preface, Gardner doesn't quote any of these supposed resources he claims were relied upon for compiling the "2087 page tome" we lovers or truth know as The Urantia Book.

Gardner essentially makes the claim that the Urantia miracle is nothing less than a hoax, offering his personal opinions and assumptions sprinkled with plenty of sensational verbage such as "I'm convinced that..." or "It's evident that..." with little or no factual evidence to back up those convictions.

He admits his interest in numerology led him to investigate his imagined relationship with the number seven and the 7th Day Adventists, spending enormous energy trying to convince the reader that this digit - as well as prime digits and those numbers which are divisible by 7 - is mentioned with more frequency than would naturally or randomly occur. Why this is interesting to note or of any consequence isn't discussed, so the intelligent reader feels cheated by the inference since the rhetoric doesn't lead to any conclusion, believable or otherwise.

So unless the reader is extremely interested in the randomness of large numbers divisible by 7, a good portion of the book is wasted on the personal musings of an author who reminds me of the autistic character played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. I'm surprised with 74 reviews thus far (shock value -- the number 7 yet again!) his book has actually earned a 2-star rating! He must have a large family, or access to a host of IP addresses.

My advice would be to avoid the huge helping of negative rhetoric and avoid the naysayers and definately read the Urantia papers, which would include this book you are considering and all other study materials. You can review audio and text versions of the book for free on the Urantia Foundation's website, but you'll definately want the own the book for reference and note taking.

This book is for anyone who wants to know the inside workings of bringing The Urantia Book to the masses. It is informative but tedious to read.
All I can say is to take the book at face value and love it as a gift from God, as it is intended.
What has been changed or proven false from the scientific point of view is miminal and not important. The Urantia book is as perfect as human hands could make it.

Move over, Church Lady! I find it intriguing that someone would "blame the devil" in order to defend that which they would otherwise consider to be sacred writ. Such is the case with The Birth of a Divine Revelation (TBOADR), which spends 600 pages attempting to defend the authenticity of The Urantia Book (UB), despite its many shortcomings. No longer can one deny that something is amiss with the UB, thanks largely to Martin Gardner's exposure of various human misgivings therein in his Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery (U:TGCM). But perhaps if TBOADR can manage to dethrone Gardner's theory as to the identity of the sleeping subject (SS), through whom the alleged celestial revelations came, the other reason for going public will be a bit easier to swallow. Granted, TBOADR provides some evidence worth considering that if true would eliminate Wilfred Kellogg as the channeler (I'm sorry, "human instrument"), which Gardner contends. But then again, there is that certain letter from one former participant to another, cited on page 129 of Gardner's U:TGCM, that specifically names Kellogg as the receptor. (Funny how TBOADR fails to mention said confession!) So just how did the benign spirits transmit the fifth epochal revelation? As TBOADR explains, the mighty message was spoken by the "mechanical manipulation of the muscles and breathing of SS while he was fully unconscious" (p. 6). In other words, the midwayers (invisible angels who can manipulate physical objects, according to the UB) used the SS as their marionette to utter the words that were made book. And not once did these celestial puppeteers disturb the SS from his sleep. Well, isn't that special! One might wonder what the difference is between automatic speaking, a form of clairvoyance practiced by well-known psychics such as Edgar Cayce, and the method described above. Isn't it obvious? Channeling involves the "spirit violation of the conscious human mind" and is always resorted to by none other than Caligastia (the name for the devil in the UB) himself, whereas the manipulation of body parts does not require invasion of a person's mind. Therefore, said method (despite the fact that it is an invasion of the human subject's body nonetheless) is considered by TBOADR to be a perfectly valid and credible method of communication by the divine revelators, and one that will always render reliable information, since the UB informs us that there are no rebel midwayers around to take advantage of the method for purposes of malice and fraud. Havona knows that, by virtue of cult founder and noted psychiatrist Dr. William Sadler's good standing with the altruistic celestials, the method has been ratified as legitimate because of Sadler's expert familiarity with all those "aberrant" methods of spirit communication, and he certainly would have picked up on any malfeasance had it been going on at the time (at least, one would think!). So why, then, is the UB laced with material that is admittedly considered erroneous and/or of a suspicious nature? Well, TBOADR has an explanation for that, too. It seems that Caligastia got a foothold during the latter years of the transmission episodes. The messages began coming through another member of the "insider" group other than the SS and, as hindsight provided by TBOADR now tells us, was actually being "channeled" through the mind of this new human conduit by the evil one. How did these crooked communiqués get by the good doctor's expertise? He could not tell the difference at the time! Excuse me, but why then was Sadler not informed by the celestial "good guys" of Caligastia's influence through the SS? Could it be that Sadler was simply unaware of these errors because they were his errors to begin with? But wait, this corruption theory just keeps getting better. If the "good stuff" came through in 1934/35, as TBOADR purports, what about the material in the UB that is known to have been plagiarized from human sources that were published after 1940 and are considered legitimate information? The forward-looking celestials (despite the mandate from their supervisors not to divulge any unearned knowledge to us mortals) had anticipated that these findings would later be discovered. In fact, they were so "prophetic" that they got the ideas almost verbatim years before the human authors penned their words! With this amazing discovery, we are happy to report that any post-1935 material that smacks of erroneous thinking can be automatically assigned to Caligastia, while that which has turned out to be acceptable was a premature gift from the good guys. How conveeeeeeenient! What is more telling in this defense of the defenseless is that TBOADR openly admits that Sadler did make some revisions to the second edition of the UB (but not all errors were caught). By what authority does a mere mortal make changes to a "celestial revelation" after the fact, and does this not smack of human influence, an outcome which the revelators would have preferred to avoid like anathema in order to validate their claim of divine inspiration? Indeed, the very fact that the identity of the SS was supposed to be kept a big secret is a double-edged sword. As TBOADR points out, the identity thereto cannot be clearly established, which brings into question whether there was ever a sleeping subject at all (leaving Sadler holding the bag). Let's see, I wonder who in the whole wide world would be interested in devising such a deceptive scheme as to entice Dr. Sadler into believing that he was the custodian of divine knowledge that would render him and all his fellow believers to be as gods? Hmmmm, could it be . . .

The Urantia book is much like the "Keys of Enoch" by J.J. Hurtuk "inspired" author (NOT) who was associated with secret CIA mind control garbage to get people away from the simple pure truths by a mass production of high "intellectism" passed off as "divine". Jesus' teachings are simple and pure. "Become as a child with a pure heart" is a spiritual teaching of Christ and his teachings were and are simple and easy to understand even for children except when politically mistranslated by man throughout the ages. The pure spiritual teachings of Christ, for instance, equalizing of women, were ordered destroyed by the Bishop of Alexandria during the Council of Nicea 325 AD, yet divinely preserved for today (see the Gospel of Mary, Thomas, and Phillip).
The learned man has produced this nonsense of Urantia. Do NOT be deceived by these two books (Urantia or The Keys of Enoch) or believe in the UFO hoax (complete with hologram technology - see BlueBeam Project) also perpetuated by an elite secret organization that backed CIA MKUltra mind control (exposed in Congressional Hearing by Sen. Frank Church in 1977).
Remember the "channelled" teachings of Commander Hatonn exposing the corruption of the U.S. government produced by a Las Vegas Newspaper? The Expositor was funded by a powerful church in the west who have altered their Ancient American history (scriptures) changing the identity of God. A simple test to know if it is of God? Jesus is God, the Eternal Father and called the "Son of" because he incarnated to this earth while His Spirit remained in Heaven. This is the "Cheribum and the Flaming Sword" that separates us from our past memories upon birth, we may reconnect at night with our Spirits. Source: a profound three day Near Death Experience and confirming pure scriptures. Do not believe in nonsense. God is pure and His teachings are easily comprehended by even children. The money changers and the learned men are the enemy of God.

If you want to know what's going on with this planet - read the Bible. The Urantia Papers and the Holy Scriptures are NOT complementary nor compatible. If you want to read about a divine revelation regarding this planet and the human race get "A Divine Revelation of Hell" and "A Divine Revelation of Heaven" by Mary K. Baxter. Time will certainly tell who's papers are true or not, although God's redeemed are already in the know.