On October 12 we will have had The Urantia Book for 63 years. that’s when the first edition of the Urantia Book rolled off the printing press and began to be sold and made available to humanity.
By all accounts, the book is a top-seller. Over a million copies have been sold, the book has been translated into a dozen languages, there are hundreds, if not thousands of sites dedicated to the Urantia Book and its teachings, and because anyone with a smartphone can now download the entire 2,097 page tome for free, thousands continue to do so every year. Downloads now exceed bookstore purchases, according to the Urantia Foundations’ most recent report. Last year over 130,000 people downloaded the book; 19,300 printed books were distributed globally in 2017. Not bad for a book that is never commercially promoted, has no leader or primary spokesperson, and has absolutely no presence in any mainstream media platform (TV, radio or print).
Despite the fact of its continued obscurity, the book spreads, almost like an underground movement with no activist goals. No one who reads the Urantia Book is screaming “new revelation” from the streets. You don’t hear people talking about it in interviews, referring to it in academia, or referencing quotations or topics in mainstream conversation. It’s a secret hidden in wide view.
It’s a revelation of new truth, on the same level of Jesus, Adam and Eve, even greater in scope than Moses and the Ten Commandments. It’s a message from our unseen friends who felt it was time to share with us a much wider context of our world, our place among the worlds of space, and is, for the most part, consistent with its presentation of history, science and philosophy. In short, if you were looking for a new spiritual revelation, there is ample evidence that the Urantia Book is that revelation.
There is no fanaticism connected with the Urantia Book. There are no miracles connected to its appearance, indeed, even the revelators – the ones who wrote the book- don’t reveal how the book was written. It just is, there for anyone to peruse and learn from its scope of presentation.
It is rumored (though never substantiated) that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, as well as Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame, were heavily influenced by the book. If this is true, and Star Trek was the result of the Urantia Book, think of all of the young minds of the 1960’s and 1970’s who went on to create technology not unlike we see in Star Trek. The very notion of life on other worlds, a literal community of planets is now part of our lexicon. One could infer that if Gene was merely borrowing this idea from the Urantia Book, then one could argue that the Urantia Influence has already begun.
Elvis, Jackie Gleason, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jerry Garcia were all avid readers of the Urantia Book. But they never talked about openly, at least as far as the press is concerned (maybe they never asked the right question when interviewing these folks), and yet, look at the influence these people had on our culture. Were their worldviews shaped by the Urantia Book? What other people and in what other industries has the Urantia Book influenced since it’s publication 63 years ago? It would be hard to know since so few people talk about it openly. But I am confident many ‘UB readers’ have made their mark in industry, public policy, government, artistic achievement, science, business, technology and – especially religion.
It is the most popular secret religion in the world.
I believe the revelators are aware of our propensity to worship books, especially ones rooted in antiquity. The Urantia Book is still very much in its infancy, a young 63 years, compared to the Old Testament (3,500 years), The Bhagwat gita (2,500 years) the New Testament (1,700 years), the Quran (1,200 years) and the Book of Mormon (200 years).
Over time, and as it quietly grows in reception, the Urantia Book will one day be regarded as a true historical and religious text because its statements will have lasted the test of time. The information will have had a chance to ferment within the various cultures and within certain progressive societies where people are intellectually and spiritually responsive to what the Urantia book presents.
The Urantia Book is already beginning to reshape our spiritual concepts, pushing them along, as it were, towards a more intelligent understanding of our world and our role in it, a philosophy that is perfectly harmonious with the fact of science, intellectually consistent and religiously satisfying.
Happy Birthday to the Revelators, thank you for your wonderful gift which was given to us on October 12, 1955.
