The URANTIA Book
A Description
Published by: URANTIA Foundation, 533 Diversey Parkway, Chicago Illinois 60614 USA
Office: (773) 525 3319 Fax: (773) 525 7739
The URANTIA Book is a unique publication of epochal significance to the people of our planet, Urantia. It contains 2,097 pages, and is divided into four parts. It tells about Deity, the organization and administration of universes and the relation of the planet on which we live to the universe, of the genesis and destiny of man and his relation to God, and of the teachings of Jesus Christ. It speaks to man's deep spiritual yearnings and satisfies the intellect, fully harmonizing religion, philosophy, and today's science through the fostering of individual spiritual growth and an understanding of the universe which are commensurate with man's intellectual and cultural development. It opens new vistas of time and eternity, new concepts of man's ever ascending adventure of finding God the Father. This book of 196 papers gives a new, comprehensive, organized record of man's origin, history and destiny.
These thirty one papers depict the nature of Deity, the reality of Paradise, the organization and working of the central and superuniverses, the personalities of the grand universe, and the high destiny of evolutionary mortals. They were sponsored, formulated, and put into English by a commission of twenty four spiritual administrators acting in accordance with a mandate issued by high deity authorities (the Ancients of Days) directing that they do this on Urantia in the year A.D. 1934.
A local universe is the handiwork of a Creator Son of the Paradise order of Michael. It comprises one hundred constellations, each embracing one hundred systems of inhabited worlds. Each system will eventually contain approximately one thousand inhabited spheres. Our world, Urantia, belongs to a local universe whose sovereign is Michael, the Son of God and the Son of Man, known on this world as Jesus of Nazareth. In the central universe the Universal Father (God) is personally present; in the universes and planets of space our Father is being represented by his Sovereign Sons, while he is intimately present in the minds of his mortal children through his indwelling spirit, The Thought Adjusters. The twenty five papers comprising Part II tell the story of man's ascension career following his initial life on the evolutionary planet.
Around 1,000,000,000 years ago Urantia had attained approximately its present size. At this time it was placed upon the physical registries of our local universe, Nebadon, and given its name, Urantia. (Page 660, Par. 3) The sixty three papers comprising this section relate the history of our planet, the geologic development, the establishment of life, and the evolution and history of man, evolving civilizations, human institutions and governments. Here also are discussed the Trinity concept, the evolution of religion, the indwelling spirit of God (the Thought Adjuster), personality survival, the bestowals of Christ Michael. "Urantia is the sentimental shrine of all Nebadon, the chief of ten million inhabited worlds, the mortal home of Christ Michael...And your record tells the truth when it says that this same Jesus has promised some time to return to the world of his terminal bestowal, the World of the Cross." (Page 1319, Par. 1)
These seventy seven papers give a year by year account of the
life and teachings of the Son of Man, his childhood, youth, and early travels,
his personal and public ministry, the choosing and training of the twelve
apostles, his trial, death, and resurrection. This biography of Jesus occupies
the last third of The URANTIA Book. The first three sections of the book
constitute an informing introduction, a universe backdrop, for the enthralling
drama of this human divine life of Jesus on our planet. The presentation,
therefore, of the picture of this matchless life in its cosmic frame is
rightly the climax, the fitting conclusion of the URANTIA revelation. Jesus'
life and precepts, in their original form, unencumbered by tradition and
dogma, are by far the greatest possible help that moral man can have in
his age long climb to Paradise. "The great hope of Urantia lies in
the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation
of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the
numerous families of his present day professed followers." (Page 2086,
Par. 2) "The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of
the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions
and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries....What a transcendent service
if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the
tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the
church that bears his name, and to all other religions!" (Page 2090,
Par. 3)
Quotations and descriptions used herein are from
The URANTIA Book © 1955
URANTIA Foundation, 533 Diversey Parkway, Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. All Rights Reserved.
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Foundation