“There is an art in defeat which noble souls always acquire; you must know how to lose cheerfully; you must be fearless in disappointment.” (160:4.13)

We as a movement need to be “wise as serpents,” which means practicing shrewd discernment in the face of our challenging dilemmas. According to Jesus, of course, mere strategic awareness of this sort is not enough. Skillful discernment should be balanced with gentle love and forgiveness, even toward one’s enemies.

And today, in the year 2026, such balanced wisdom requires that we face our strategic failures as a movement, which might also entail forgiving ourselves.

Along with that, I will argue here that we need to humbly accept our unqualified dependence on divine guidance—not just as individuals, but as a community promoting epochal revelation to a chaotic and confused world.

What is signified here by the phrase “dependence on divine guidance”? It means we are not in charge of the revelation. I suppose I’m old school, but I support the original publication mandates, which came down to us from those in charge. As you know, these are incorporated into the Declaration of Trust of Urantia Foundation, and were included verbatim in the Brotherood’s constitution. You’ll remember that the mandate document advocates serving the world community by fostering institutions of religion, philosophy, and cosmology that are “commensurate with humanity’s intellectual and culture development.” In addition, the nascent Urantia organizations were told to generate translations and create thousands of study groups. These mandates were promulgated (just prior to the printing of the book) by the Revelatory Commission, which was and as far I know still is comprised of twelve midwayers acting under the supervision of a Melchizedek Revelatory Director.

In this essay, I invite you to confront a small subset of the many occurrences that validate the reality of our default as a movement. Later on, in order to process this grim reality, we will turn to Rodan’s teaching on the wisdom of facing failure, which in the first place requires that we recognize its symptoms.

Grim indicators of confusion and default

A case in point is the recent mounting a billboard in Nashville by UB veteran Rebecca Bynum and her group in Nashville, which had the slogan: “The Urantia Book has answers —The Spirit of God Lives Within You.” This was an optimistic, bold, and creative gesture, certainly a blessing for some who viewed it. And yet, I regard this tactic as a symptom of failure. It’s a dramatic version of those many partial . . . disconnected . . . and ad hoc efforts at outreach (including my own), projects that become sobering learning devices after they fail.

Ask yourself: What is the likelihood that people driving down a highway in Nashville, a town at the heart of the Bible belt, will be the right target audience? Plus, how many of them will remember an advertisement that they see only once, or only in one place? What then is the likely ROI (return on investment) for this expenditure of funds and effort?

Now, theologians and religious studies professors are more likely within our target audience, since they influence many thousands of young students and hundreds of seminarians. Good idea, right? But mounting a booth at the American Academy of Religion also had a poor ROI, despite the presence of over 8,000 scholars walking the exhibit floor. I led such an effort twice, gratefully using funds from the Fellowship and the Foundation in 2022 (Denver) and 2024 (San Diego). But this also can’t easily work, for a similar reason. The missing piece here is visibility, which lends itself to credibility. These professionals in religion never hear about the revelation from trusted colleagues. They never see reference to it in their academic journals. It is not covered in the current books in their field—not even in a single footnote!

Here’s another symptom of our difficulty. Some have advocated that millions be drawn from moneys now sitting in the treasury at the Urantia Foundation (UF), and should be spent on outreach and education. This makes a bit more sense. These funds can be used to saturate target audiences, creating that all-important sense of familiarity that is missing across the board. But who is competent to manage such funds toward that goal? Further, someone wise as a serpent might also ask: Where is the strategic plan that goes along with it, where are the experienced staffers, and how will it work to simply send new people to our websites since we have so few study groups? To suddenly spend in the seven figures may make tactical inroads here and there, but this too sounds like an act of desperation in the eleventh hour of failure.

At the root of this failure, as I see it, is that the Urantia movement lacks leadership based on divinely ordained plans for revelation governance. Such plans would certainly would include the wisdom gained over eons of managing epochal revelations on other worlds, including rebellion planets. But our leaders largely ignore the original mandates provided by the revelators, with the exception of their sometimes haphazard focus on translations and creating study groups.

I say all this despite my own advocacy for unwise policies in the past, including my call for a large branding campaign (and related measures) that I previously posted here at Union of Souls substack. This was mistaken, because as I have also stated here, we are a movement with a body that lacks a head.

Again, this “head” I refer to is the Revelatory Commission, et al. We might do our best using our hands and feet (and may even wield a sword), but we are missing our head—reminiscent of the legendary headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

Too many of us, including me, have been “headless” activists. We flail around with well-meaning but idiosyncratic projects that make little difference. And such efforts are too often carried out by untrained volunteers who have never run marketing campaigns before, good folks operating in a vacuum without a master plan, let alone divine sanction. I say this as someone who has worked professionally, having run over 30 national marketing campaigns for books I have published going back to 1997; I have also worked on salary for several companies that have hired me as marketing director, and I have volunteered as a media spokesperson for the Urantia revelation with a lengthy record of podcast, radio, TV, and conference appearance that have reached tens of thousands.

How and where do we send new readers?

But let’s say someone gets lucky and carries out a successful episode of outreach, even a billboard, and they harvest a hefty email list. Where exactly does one send these new people? Can we provide the with inspiring places of fellowship where social introductions are easily made, and where worship, prayer, and healing are cultivated, and where ministries serve the needs of families and people of all ages? Alternately, might we send them to substantive educational centers, standing institutions where cosmic philosophy based on the revelation is taught—something like the “Temples of Philosophy” depicted in Paper 72 (about our neighboring planet)? There is in fact nowhere to send newbies for in-person contact other than study groups often dominated by heady people over 60 who are not trained ministers or teachers (with a few exceptions thanks to the important work of Urantia University, only recently founded).

Typically, there will be no study groups in this new person’s proximity. For example, I live in a region with two adjacent large cities, Baltimore and Washington DC. Neither city has a study group within its city limits. When I lived in Manhattan several years back, it had only one small elderly study group that met 15 subway stops from me. At that time there were no study groups in Brooklyn or the Bronx.

Sadly, our random and incremental outreach efforts simply don’t work well and eventually cause frustration and burn out. You might say that all such well-meaning but often fruitless efforts are “soul-making,” which truly is a plus. But these projects are too often futile because we lack a coordinated planetary outreach campaign guided by our celestial friends, the very ones who initiated the FER in the first place. Meanwhile, as we dawdle “the heathen rage.”

Let’s not confuse levels of analysis here. It’s true that many readers are transformed by the book, and as a result enjoy profound contact with their indwelling spirits and are inspired to serve the revelation and our fellow siblings by engaging in helpful (or headless) projects, large and small. These too are facts. But as a body of readers, that is, as a collective of Urantia Book advocates worldwide taken as a whole, we must face other facts, social facts if you will, that are far less positive.

Recognizing dependence on divine guidance

But where will we find our head, after all? In my view, our head can be located “in the clouds,” as it were.

By this I mean that we as a global movement should be in explicit liaison with the seraphic planetary government on high, and through them, with divine agencies such as the Revelatory Commission. But presently we lack a reliable method for accomplishing such contact, though it was once very successfully achieved by the original Contact Commission. Back then they got their head on straight.

In fact, you might say that epochal revelation originates in cloudlike fashion, if I may extend the metaphor. The FER got started in the heavens first, and only later descended to earth when it was initiated through the original contacts with the Sadlers early in the twentieth century. In fact, “cloud contact” is literal in the Bible. Recall this passage: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, I will come to you in a dense cloud.’” (See Exodus 19.)

As we all know, it was the unseen revelators who gathered the six individuals comprising the original Contact Commission. This was purely a heaven-sent initiative. Thereupon, these contactees worked intimately under higher direction for over four decades; it is in this sense that our unseen friends were the heads of a new revelatory movement. By the same token, the Contact Commissioners, and later the Forum, were the body. They were dependent and obedient, but also cooperative and highly interactive, acting as “the hands and feet” of the celestials.

I don’t see a compelling reason why we can’t return to this kind of direction from the Revelatory Commission, but in new and equally effective ways that are commensurate with our time and technology.

But first things first: the first step to change involves recognizing our divine dependence as a community. We painfully learn of our dependence on nonhuman help when we recognize that so far, we have failed at global outreach despite many tactical and incremental achievements, some of them being rather inspired and even a few of them dazzling.

Accepting failure with laughter

Since this substack is sponsored by Rodan Institute, let’s turn to Rodan on the issue of failure at 160:4.13–15.

“There is an art in defeat which noble souls always acquire; you must know how to lose cheerfully; you must be fearless of disappointment. Never hesitate to admit failure. Make no attempt to hide failure under deceptive smiles and beaming optimism. It sounds well always to claim success, but the end results are appalling.”

I hope you are now feeling just a bit cheerful. I am going to spare you by not belaboring the discussion of the evidence that we signally failed over many decades.

The point here is that the teachings have never gained a significant foothold in any aspect of contemporary culture. Sadly, this is the case even on the far edges of the current discourses of religion, theology, the sciences, cosmology, or psychology or philosophy, these being fields I have monitored for five decades as a journalist, academic, and book publisher. Can you cite a journal article or a review covering the UB in any of these disciplines or publications? To verify this, you need only search in any number of archives or databases online, which I have done. Can you think of a place where the UB appears in a bibliography at the end of any book not written by one of us committed readers, either in a fluffy new age bestseller or a serious academic treatise on theology? As far as I know, the only treatment of the UB published by an established academic press is my own book, Truths about Evil, Sin, and the Demonic (Wipf & Stock, 2023), which covers the UB in two of its 10 chapters. It does not sell and has never been professionally reviewed.

This abiding lack of influence even includes the UFO field, the most fertile domain for active outreach according to the most of us on the Fellowship’s Outreach Committee, of which I am a member. I have attended over 20 ufology conferences going back to 2001—and in fact I have hosted booths at many and have spoken occasionally, giving workshops or sitting on panels at my own expense and initiative. I personally know many of the principals in the UFO field, and though they may listen politely, they see no reason to include UB-derived ideas in their writings or talks or workshops or conferences.

And why would this be? If I may put it another way, it’s because our text and movement lack pedigree, or “provenance.” Our epochal revelation is simply invisible, not part of the noosphere of any field of study I know of, and indeed is never treated as one of the foundational texts in any discipline, however esoteric.

Let’s close with more wisdom by Rodan.

“Success may generate courage and promote confidence, but wisdom comes only from the experiences of adjustment to the results of one’s failures. Men who prefer optimistic illusions to reality can never become wise. Only those who face facts and adjust them to ideals can achieve wisdom.

“ . . . . And it is in this business of facing failure and adjusting to defeat that the far-reaching vision of religion exerts its supreme influence. Failure is simply an educational episode—a cultural experiment in the acquirement of wisdom—in the experience of the God-seeking man who has embarked on the eternal adventure of the exploration of a universe. To such men defeat is but a new tool for the achievement of higher levels of universe reality.”

We have failed with great sincerity, if I may put it cheerfully. The point is that the revelation does not belong to us. Our movement remains the ward of the original Revelatory Commission, and it is time to stop galloping headless through Sleepy Hollow or making fruitless gestures while the world passes by oblivious.

Barbara is stellar in this exclusive recording. She narrates the entire story of the earliest decades, extending from 1906 to the book’s publication in 1955—and beyond. And she answers numerous questions posed by our large group of participants.

Most notable for me is her account of a disturbing incident, one that I also find symbolic.

And yet, allow me to add: nothing in the course of these all-too-human events should shake our abiding faith—our knowledge that providence is at work even in the midst of the most trying situations.

Barbara explains that the Revelatory Commission had given a mandate to the Contact Commissioners: They must write an official history of the contact using all available sources, including input from other Forum members (i.e., written recollections about their experiences that had been solictied by Dr. Lena Sadler, one of the Commissioners).

Of course, these sources also included all written records handed down from the Contact Commissioners, both personal and administrative.

But Barbara reveals that that all these historical records disappeared from a secured location in 1979, although there were some duplicates found later. The fact remains that an entire file cabinet of original historical materials was removed and never returned. Only a few people even knew this cabinet was located in the sunroom adjacent to Christy’s bedroom on the third floor. And only a few had access to the keys. (Fyi, Emma Christensen, known as “Christy,” was the last surviving member of the Contact Commission.)

In my opinion, this event provides a clue for understanding why we are experiencing difficulties with Urantia movement governance, even today. I believe today’s many hard challenges have their roots in the late 1970s and continued on during the very turbulent period of the 1980s. The 1979 theft marks the beginning of this decisive period of crisis.

Movement veterans know that during the decade from 1979 to 1989, many adverse events occurred, one after another:
1979: The theft of the movement’s historical records
1980–1982: Urantia Foundation lawsuits against several licensed Urantia Societies
1984: The collapse of Family of God Foundation, our largest outreach organization
1989: The schism of the Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood (ongoing)

In my view, all Urantia movement activists need to know the details about such events, the highs and the lows—because our destiny as a community depends on knowing our origin and history! (Below is my favorite historic shot of Dr. William Sadler, looking optimistic—and may the same optimism reign in the future.)

Here’s some fun preparation—especially for the UB nerds out there. Read this short history (below) to whet your appetite for our special dialogue tomorrow. Our special guest, movement historian Barbara Newsom, will be with us—a rare event.

Scan my piece below and look for its incorrect facts. Find some and you’ll win prizes (in heaven). It’s excerpted from the Appendix to my 2017 book, Your Evolving Soul.

Hey guys, all Union of Souls subscribers should own this book, which you can order here, and while you are at it scan its 57 reviews and get your siblings to purchase it.

(Or, email me at: byron@rodaninstitute.org and I’ll send you a free eBook or PDF version. .)

Here goes the excerpt:

The Origin Story of the Urantia Papers

The Urantia text came into being during a complex process that was initiated in 1911 (some say 1908) and completed in the early 1940s—most likely in the year 1942—but some believe the final editing of the UB concluded as late as 1945. The origin story has been shrouded in secrecy and mystery until the last two decades or so, when ongoing historical research into private archives, diaries, written testimonials, and oral histories, as well as evidence provided in the aforementioned federal copyright lawsuits, revealed a large amount of new information and lore about the process.

According to the records we have, there were no direct witnesses to the formal transmission process of the original materials comprising the Urantia Papers. No one ever saw the purported contact person or anyone else write down these source materials. (But there are witnesses to the informal and unofficial communications, which are also discussed below). According to all the accounts we have, the Papers first appeared in hand-written form but not in the handwriting of any known person. The best available handwriting-analysis experts were unable to trace the written materials to the alleged contact personality or any other person involved. Yet, for a period of a few decades, voluminous handwritten documents frequently appeared in direct association with the contact person or in close proximity to him, according to all accounts. These materials were various drafts of the Papers that physically appeared in succession over at almost two decades.

The contact personality (sometimes also known as “the sleeping subject”) was described by one reliable source as “a hard-boiled businessman and a member of the Chicago Board of Trade and Stock Exchange.” Over the entire time of contact, the celestials also engaged in informal verbal communications through him, we are told, in the manner conventionally known as channeling, usually by speaking through the vocal chords of the contact personality after he was rendered deeply unconscious by some mysterious force. At times there were also dictations to members of the Contact Commission that appeared as short written messages of practical import. (There were also cases of “direct voice” contact—actual audio communications from unseen beings that were heard, as it were, “in the air” during the frequent meetings of the Contact Commissioners.)

According to the testimony, the contact person was not personally or physically engaged with the process other than to allow his body to be used in informal oral communications having to do with logistics and practical concerns of the revelatory process. The promulgation of the written content did not occur in any known manner through the vehicle of his body or mind.^[1] Preliminary informal “channeling” through the contact is known to have existed as far back as 1908, but the formal written Papers began to appear in succession on February 11, 1924 and continued to “manifest” for the next eighteen years. The physical papers were carefully typed up and proofread over these years.

All of these celestial transactions occurred in the city of Chicago. The main locus was the large home of a distinguished physician, psychiatrist, professor, author, and public speaker, Dr. William S. Sadler, and his wife Dr. Lena Sadler, also a well-known and respected physician and author. Their place in the near-north side of the city was also the meeting place of the Forum, the initial group of several hundred readers of the early drafts.

Dr. Sadler trained as a surgeon and physician, and had also studied briefly in Vienna with Sigmund Freud. Because of his prolific writing and research and decades of clinical practice, he was known by some in his day as “the father of American psychiatry.” He wrote a widely used psychiatry textbook and was author of several dozen other books, many of these directed to the popular reader. He and his wife were also pioneers in preventive medicine and in their earlier careers were Seventh Day Adventist ministers. Lena Sadler was especially known as a pediatrician and for her pioneering work in women’s health, but died in 1939 before the completion of the reception of the Urantia Papers. Her husband lived on to see the book printed in 1955 and died at age 93 in 1969.

One scholar and trained historian, Sioux Oliva, PhD, has concluded that Bill Sadler himself was the contact personality for the revelation, but covered his tracks to remain anonymous. According to her controversial thesis, Sadler invented an origin story about an unknown contact person who never existed, doing so in order to protect the revelation from a direct link to any possible human association with the writing process. Sioux’s enormous effort to uncover new facts about the Sadler family, the Contact Commissioners, and their associates in the Forum is exemplary, but her concluding speculations seem to far overreach her own historical data. (See Dr. Sadler and the Urantia Book: A History of a Spiritual Revelation in the 20^th Century Sioux Oliva, 2014). Martin Gardner, the famed skeptic and science writer, took the position that the contact personality must have been Wilfred Kellogg, a brother-in-law of Lena Sadler who was a member of the Contact Commission. Virtually all other researchers believe that neither of these two men were the contact, or “conduit,” and that it must have been some other unknown person living very near the Sadler home. And this is the universal testimony of Sadler and the other direct witnesses.

According to these latter sources, each new paper came into existence in the proximity of the contact personality, always in hand-written form. It would purportedly appear—either on a table in his bedroom or miraculously in a nearby safe or other locations. Some reliable oral accounts indicate that papers were either “materialized” as hand-written text and then dematerialized once they were typed—or more likely, were very quickly hand-written by an unseen being while the contact person and his wife slept at night. According to Bill Sadler, Jr., one of the Contact Commissioners, “I think you would have seen a very exciting phenomenon, a pencil moving over paper with no visible means of propulsion. That’s where the physical writing was consummated.”^[2]

Dr. Sadler explained in an account first published in 1929 that—despite all sorts of probes and tests—he and his associates could detect no discernible link to the contact personality’s mentality, personal beliefs, worldview, or handwriting style. Eventually, all of those who were personally involved came to believe that the writing was actually carried out by unseen celestial beings and was not generated somehow through the human mind of the contact person. Sadler himself, with his hard-core scientific training during an era of logical positivism, remained a skeptic longer than all the others involved in the process. He even invited other scientists as well as debunkers and magicians, including even the likes of Harry Houdini, to investigate the phenomenon, in order see if these outsiders might come up with an explanation for the materialization of the papers. He finally accepted the miraculous explanation in 1936, after all 196 papers had come forth, many of them in multiple drafts, but with no trace of a human author.

Here is a brief overview of the revelatory process: Once a new paper of the revelation appeared, it was carefully typed and checked, and then read aloud at the Forum meetings that were held every Sunday afternoon beginning in 1924. After the reading of a paper, Forum members would immediately ask questions, which were written down and later sorted and classified. It is believed by some that these new questions were presented by the Contact Commissioners in closed meetings; it is also reported that the celestials simply monitored the human reactions to each new Paper in the Forum meetings. And then, like clockwork, a new draft would appear soon thereafter. This procedure continued until 119 papers had been compiled in 1934. And then, to the greatest surprise of all, the last 77 papers appeared all at once. This material became the 774-page Part IV of the text, the beloved “The Life and Teachings of Jesus.” This was the capstone of the process and of the revelation. After its appearance, the Forum was invited for one more round of interaction. The entire corpus was presented once again to the Forum, new questions were asked and more reactions were monitored, and then the final drafts of the 196 Papers appeared, culminating in 1942 or soon after. After many years of proofreading and typesetting, plus a delay requested by the celestials, the book was first printed in 1955, has been through innumerable re-printings, and has been translated into 17 languages.

The Origin Story of the Urantia Papers

The Urantia text came into being during a complex process that was initiated in 1911 (some say 1908) and completed in the early 1940s—most likely in the year 1942—but some believe the final editing of the UB concluded as late as 1945. The origin story has been shrouded in secrecy and mystery until the last two decades or so, when ongoing historical research into private archives, diaries, written testimonials, and oral histories, as well as evidence provided in the aforementioned federal copyright lawsuits, revealed a large amount of new information and lore about the process.

According to the records we have, there were no direct witnesses to the formal transmission process of the original materials comprising the Urantia Papers. No one ever saw the purported contact person or anyone else write down these source materials. (But there are witnesses to the informal and unofficial communications, which are also discussed below). According to all the accounts we have, the Papers first appeared in hand-written form but not in the handwriting of any known person. The best available handwriting-analysis experts were unable to trace the written materials to the alleged contact personality or any other person involved. Yet, for a period of a few decades, voluminous handwritten documents frequently appeared in direct association with the contact person or in close proximity to him, according to all accounts. These materials were various drafts of the Papers that physically appeared in succession over at almost two decades.

The contact personality (sometimes also known as “the sleeping subject”) was described by one reliable source as “a hard-boiled businessman and a member of the Chicago Board of Trade and Stock Exchange.” Over the entire time of contact, the celestials also engaged in informal verbal communications through him, we are told, in the manner conventionally known as channeling, usually by speaking through the vocal chords of the contact personality after he was rendered deeply unconscious by some mysterious force. At times there were also dictations to members of the Contact Commission that appeared as short written messages of practical import. (There were also cases of “direct voice” contact—actual audio communications from unseen beings that were heard, as it were, “in the air” during the frequent meetings of the Contact Commissioners.)

According to the testimony, the contact person was not personally or physically engaged with the process other than to allow his body to be used in informal oral communications having to do with logistics and practical concerns of the revelatory process. The promulgation of the written content did not occur in any known manner through the vehicle of his body or mind.^[3] Preliminary informal “channeling” through the contact is known to have existed as far back as 1908, but the formal written Papers began to appear in succession on February 11, 1924 and continued to “manifest” for the next eighteen years. The physical papers were carefully typed up and proofread over these years.

All of these celestial transactions occurred in the city of Chicago. The main locus was the large home of a distinguished physician, psychiatrist, professor, author, and public speaker, Dr. William S. Sadler, and his wife Dr. Lena Sadler, also a well-known and respected physician and author. Their place in the near-north side of the city was also the meeting place of the Forum, the initial group of several hundred readers of the early drafts.

Dr. Sadler trained as a surgeon and physician, and had also studied briefly in Vienna with Sigmund Freud. Because of his prolific writing and research and decades of clinical practice, he was known by some in his day as “the father of American psychiatry.” He wrote a widely used psychiatry textbook and was author of several dozen other books, many of these directed to the popular reader. He and his wife were also pioneers in preventive medicine and in their earlier careers were Seventh Day Adventist ministers. Lena Sadler was especially known as a pediatrician and for her pioneering work in women’s health, but died in 1939 before the completion of the reception of the Urantia Papers. Her husband lived on to see the book printed in 1955 and died at age 93 in 1969.

One scholar and trained historian, Sioux Oliva, PhD, has concluded that Bill Sadler himself was the contact personality for the revelation, but covered his tracks to remain anonymous. According to her controversial thesis, Sadler invented an origin story about an unknown contact person who never existed, doing so in order to protect the revelation from a direct link to any possible human association with the writing process. Sioux’s enormous effort to uncover new facts about the Sadler family, the Contact Commissioners, and their associates in the Forum is exemplary, but her concluding speculations seem to far overreach her own historical data. (See Dr. Sadler and the Urantia Book: A History of a Spiritual Revelation in the 20^th Century (Sioux Oliva, 2014). Martin Gardner, the famed skeptic and science writer, took the position that the contact personality must have been Wilfred Kellogg, a brother-in-law of Lena Sadler who was a member of the Contact Commission. Virtually all other researchers believe that neither of these two men were the contact, or “conduit,” and that it must have been some other unknown person living very near the Sadler home. And this is the universal testimony of Sadler and the other direct witnesses.

According to these latter sources, each new paper came into existence in the proximity of the contact personality, always in hand-written form. It would purportedly appear—either on a table in his bedroom or miraculously in a nearby safe or other locations. Some reliable oral accounts indicate that papers were either “materialized” as hand-written text and then dematerialized once they were typed—or more likely, were very quickly hand-written by an unseen being while the contact person and his wife slept at night. According to Bill Sadler, Jr., one of the Contact Commissioners, “I think you would have seen a very exciting phenomenon, a pencil moving over paper with no visible means of propulsion. That’s where the physical writing was consummated.”^[4]

Dr. Sadler explained in an account first published in 1929 that—despite all sorts of probes and tests—he and his associates could detect no discernible link to the contact personality’s mentality, personal beliefs, worldview, or handwriting style. Eventually, all of those who were personally involved came to believe that the writing was actually carried out by unseen celestial beings and was not generated somehow through the human mind of the contact person. Sadler himself, with his hard-core scientific training during an era of logical positivism, remained a skeptic longer than all the others involved in the process. He even invited other scientists as well as debunkers and magicians, including even the likes of Harry Houdini, to investigate the phenomenon, in order see if these outsiders might come up with an explanation for the materialization of the papers. He finally accepted the miraculous explanation in 1936, after all 196 papers had come forth, many of them in multiple drafts, but with no trace of a human author.

Here is a brief overview of the revelatory process: Once a new paper of the revelation appeared, it was carefully typed and checked, and then read aloud at the Forum meetings that were held every Sunday afternoon beginning in 1924. After the reading of a paper, Forum members would immediately ask questions, which were written down and later sorted and classified. It is believed by some that these new questions were presented by the Contact Commissioners in closed meetings; it is also reported that the celestials simply monitored the human reactions to each new Paper in the Forum meetings. And then, like clockwork, a new draft would appear soon thereafter. This procedure continued until 119 papers had been compiled in 1934. And then, to the greatest surprise of all, the last 77 papers appeared all at once. This material became the 774-page Part IV of the text, the beloved “The Life and Teachings of Jesus.” This was the capstone of the process and of the revelation. After its appearance, the Forum was invited for one more round of interaction. The entire corpus was presented once again to the Forum, new questions were asked and more reactions were monitored, and then the final drafts of the 196 Papers appeared, culminating in 1942 or soon after. After many years of proofreading and typesetting, plus a delay requested by the celestials, the book was first printed in 1955, has been through innumerable re-printings, and has been translated into 17 languages.

FOOTNOTES:

^[1] The evidence seems to indicate that the informal communications between the celestial authors and the human contact group for the Urantia Revelation took place via a technique similar to that of Edgar Cayce and his interlocutors. According to the sources I have consulted, it transpired in a manner not unlike any number of other case of channeling, mediumship, or oracular activities before and since. These instances might be called classic channeling as contrasted with “epochal revelation” of the sort that is unique to the Urantia Revelation. The so-called Teaching Mission is a controversial case of contemporary channeling that has involved scores of contactees who are Urantia students, many of them veteran readers, and occurring decades after the publication of the UB. These “transmitter-receivers” (the term they use) have long claimed to channel three types of beings (1) some of the original celestial authors of the UB, (2) other beings introduced in the Urantia text, and (3) “ascended” humans speaking from the afterlife. This movement has continued up to the present, and in recent years has been extended its purview into another celestially inspired activity known as the Magisterial Mission, which purports to provide the teachings of the Magisterial Sonwho is soon to incarnate on Earth (or so it is claimed). The umbrella for both of all these newer contact missions is known as The Correcting Time. The massive series of thousands of transcribed lessons linked with these activities began in 1987. All of these teachings are highly referential to the Urantia Revelation, but these phenomena and the associated claims are outside the scope of the present study. This material is covered in my forthcoming book, Romancing the Universe.

^[2] The source of this quote is what I consider to be the best existing history, authored by Larry Mullins with the assistance of Dr. Meredith Sprunger: A History of the Urantia Papers (CreateSpace, 2010). See chapters 4 and 5 of this book for a detailed account of the revelatory process. Ernest Moyer is the author of a well-researched but controversial alternative history entitled The Birth of a Divine Revelation: The Origin of the Urantia Papers (Moyer Pub, 2000).

^[3] The evidence seems to indicate that the informal communications between the celestial authors and the human contact group for the Urantia Revelation took place via a technique similar to that of Edgar Cayce and his interlocutors. According to the sources I have consulted, it transpired in a manner not unlike any number of other case of channeling, mediumship, or oracular activities before and since. These instances might be called classic channeling as contrasted with “epochal revelation” of the sort that is unique to the Urantia Revelation. The so-called Teaching Mission is a controversial case of contemporary channeling that has involved scores of contactees who are Urantia students, many of them veteran readers, and occurring decades after the publication of the UB. These “transmitter-receivers” (the term they use) have long claimed to channel three types of beings (1) some of the original celestial authors of the UB, (2) other beings introduced in the Urantia text, and (3) “ascended” humans speaking from the afterlife. This movement has continued up to the present, and in recent years has been extended its purview into another celestially inspired activity known as the Magisterial Mission, which purports to provide the teachings of the Magisterial Sonwho is soon to incarnate on Earth (or so it is claimed). The umbrella for both of all these newer contact missions is known as The Correcting Time. The massive series of thousands of transcribed lessons linked with these activities began in 1987. All of these teachings are highly referential to the Urantia Revelation, but these phenomena and the associated claims are outside the scope of the present study. This material is covered in my forthcoming book, Romancing the Universe.

^[4] The source of this quote is what I consider to be the best existing history, authored by Larry Mullins with the assistance of Dr. Meredith Sprunger: A History of the Urantia Papers (CreateSpace, 2010). See chapters 4 and 5 of this book for a detailed account of the revelatory process. Ernest Moyer is the author of a well-researched but controversial alternative history entitled The Birth of a Divine Revelation: The Origin of the Urantia Papers (Moyer Pub, 2000).

Friends, enjoy this raw recording! (I can’t edit it because of file size.)

I had also invited veteran reader Fred Harris to speak on June 7. Instead, he sent a short essay, posted below. (It is just below Bob Debold’s slide, which is immediately below.)

Fred adds an essential element of our inquiry: How we can work directly with Christian churches. He calls it “Guerrilla Spiritual Warfare.” His practical technique is detailed at the end of the essay.

GUERILLA SPIRITUAL WARFARE
Fred Harris

When one side has overwhelming strength, the other often turns to guerrilla tactics to gain an advantage. History shows that this approach can be highly effective.

Jesus advised us to be thoughtful and strategic in spreading the Good News.

First, let’s define a few of the challenges we face in expanding the Kingdom:

a. Many people are put off by organized religion.

b. Those who do embrace religion are generally not open to any faith tradition or theology other than their own.

c. The Urantia Book has a controversial origin story (i.e., involving celestial beings), along with certain concepts that are politically toxic today - especially comments regarding the black race and eugenics.

d. People do not read as much as they once did, and few can comfortably read at the level of the UB.

e. The Urantia community is extremely small. There have only been approximately 850,000 hard copies of the Urantia Book sold as of 2022 (479,000 in English, 183,000 in Spanish and 63,000 in French) and approximately 1 million digital UB downloads. There are only approximately 1,200 members of the Urantia Fellowship. There are 8.3 billion people on this planet. Therefore the number of Urantia Book readers is less than 0.001% of the population – a rounding error.

But don’t worry. As the Dalai Lama has stated , “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

The UB reminds us that truth must be restated for each generation, telling us that the Spirit of Truth is required “for each new generation, to restate the Jesus message so that every new group of mortals to appear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date version of the gospel…”. We should take note and do the same.

Rodan reminds us that persuasion often grows out of relationship, saying:

“you can hardly expect success unless you are equipped with that wisdom of mind and charm of personality which enable you to win the hearty support and co-operation of your fellows. You cannot hope for a large measure of success in either secular or religious work unless you can learn how to persuade your fellows, to prevail with men. You simply must have tact and tolerance.”

UB readers are a very small group of religionists, but they carry an excellent message, including:

1. There are as many paths to the Father as there are people to walk them.

2. Salvation is lost at the transition from this world only if a mortal knowingly chooses not to proceed.

“We had rather assume the risk of a system rebellion than to court the hazard of depriving one struggling mortal from any evolutionary world of the eternal joy of pursuing the ascending career.”

3. The two directives are to love and to serve.

So how do we effectively present an up-to-date version of the gospel in a way that persuades our fellow mortals? First, let’s consider the impersonal avenues.

A. Sell or give away Urantia Books.

B. Translate the UB into every language, with AI assisting where appropriate.

C. Make all translations of the UB available online for free.

D. Create videos and films based on the stories found in the UB.

E. Create social media pages and groups.

But what about personal efforts?

1. Attend conferences (like the UFO conference, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, etc.) and have a UB table. (Also bring along a computer and large screen and hook it up to AI and have people pose questions to the UB about any topic and watch AI summarize the UB position on the question.)

2. Talk to your neighbors (and be available to lend them a hand when they need it)

3. Support service projects—schools, financial assistance, orphanages, food pantries, disaster relief, and other forms of personal outreach.

4. Demonstrate the UB beliefs from your actions and countenance.

And fail not to remember that the will of God can be done in any earthly occupation. Some callings are not holy and others secular. All things are sacred in the lives of those who are spirit led; that is, subordinated to truth, ennobled by love, dominated by mercy, and restrained by fairness — justice. The Urantia Book 155:6.11

Also, St. Francis of Assisi allegedly said,

“Preach the Gospel at all times and, if necessary, use words.”

The extent to which you have to go with your message to the people is, in a way, the measure of your failure to live the whole or righteous life, the truth‑co‑ordinated life. The Urantia Book, 155:1.5

Guerrilla Spiritual Warfare Plan

That brings me to the guerrilla strategy I suggest. Keeping in mind that we are a very small group of UB readers and we know that the Chrisitan church is very well entrenched in the world, here is the foundation of the plan:

The UB says the following about the Christian church:

“this church is only the larval stage of the thwarted spiritual kingdom, which will carry it through this material age and over into a more spiritual dispensation where the Master’s teachings may enjoy a fuller opportunity for development. Thus does the so-called Christian church become the cocoon in which the kingdom of Jesus’ concept now slumbers.” 170:5.21(1866.4)

I would also remind you of the parable of the mustard seed.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man sowed in his field. Now a mustard seed is the least of seeds, but when it is full grown, it becomes the greatest of all herbs and is like a tree so that the birds of heaven are able to come and rest in the branches thereof.”

Similarly, this plan of guerrilla spiritual warfare is about a small group of people planting the seeds of the Gospel in the cocoon that is the Christian church and then letting the spiritual forces water the seeds and provide the growth needed.

I would also suggest that you stay in contact with your spiritual connection during this project (really, at all times).

If you yield to the leadings of the spiritual forces in you and around you, you cannot fail to attain the high destiny established by a loving God as the universe goal of his ascendant creatures from the evolutionary worlds of space. The Urantia Book, Page 64

So, first step: go to several Christian churches in your area to see which one has a preacher whose message is most consistent with the teachings of the UB. Then, attend that church as a visitor. You will be noticed and approached by people in the congregation, as they want to welcome visitors and encourage them to join the church.

After a few weeks of visiting, if you are interested in joining, go to the minister and tell him or her that you are interested, but let the minister know that you are a UB reader so that you won’t be joining under false pretenses. If the elders of the church (who will be told about your beliefs) vote to admit you, then the chance that you will be asked to leave as a result of your UB beliefs will be diminished significantly.

Once you become a member, contribute financially as you are able, be friendly and get to know the people who are members of the church. Volunteer for service projects. Go to Sunday School – a good place to discuss UB concepts. If possible don’t mention that the UB is where you are getting your ideas. If pushed, by all means, fess up, but don’t become overbearing about your UB beliefs. It is best to demonstrate them. Most members won’t care about your UB background, as many of them don’t support many of their congregation’s stated beliefs and few have actually read the Bible.

Once you show yourself to be friendly and a part of that church, your ability to influence people will be expanded. Plus, you will find yourself in a spiritual community.

In my own efforts, I am a member of First Presbyterian Church in Quincy, Florida. I attend Sunday School classes and the Sunday service. I volunteer my time to help build ramps for people who need better access to their homes and beds for children who sleep on the floor. Our church has wonderful community outreach. We host a soccer camp on our grounds, maintain a clothes closet, distribute food to those in need, and do as much as we can in the community. Everyone in my Sunday School class knows that I am a UB reader, and no one minds. They listen when I describe various UB concepts. I rarely mention the UB directly, but I am planting seeds. You can too! Become that light on the hill.

Hold High the Mission! It shall not fail!

Lighten Life, Fred

All others who are not paid or invited, contact me directly for access at: byron@rodaninstitute.org

Now providing more time for our presenters—because so much is at stake

Rather than pack in a five diverse speakers on Sunday, the Rodan Institute has decided to provide more time for our experts. So there will be up to four zooms, all recorded. (Dates to be announced other than the event today). These discussions are intended to lead up to IC ’26, to inform the crucial conversations going on there.

1. Today (June 7) at 4pm ET: (see link above)
The role of religious community and “positive cultism” in movement renewal.
Establishing worshipful communities and diverse ministries adjacent to study groups. Among our special guests is Bob Debold, veteran reader and organizational management expert. Bob is founder of the Debold Group.

2. Our movement lineage–new discoveries about Urantia movement history.
Featuring Barbara Newsom, one of our leading historians who is convener of the Urantia Historical Society. Without facts about origins we can’t envision our destiny.

3. Universe governance and the Fifth Epochal Revelation.
Expert panel on off-world contact with both celestials and extraterrestrials, along with invited critics of such contact. Urantia movement governance needs to be nested within local universe governance.

4. Urantia movement governance:
A synthesis of findings—just prior to IC ‘26.

Let’s say you are an active evangel, a stalwart.

You resonate with the Rodan quote just above.

You even aspire to be a “solider of the circles” (if I may use that old phrase coined by Christy in the early days).

If you relate to these ideas above, even mildly, the forthcoming invitation is for you.

It involves two zooms, one on June 7 (for subscribers and invitees only), and a second one on June 24 for everyone. The latter will be our second powwow on the future of the movement, the last one being Feb 15. See details below.

Your predicament—if you’re anything like me

The teachings transformed your life, and you are very mindful of Rodan’s advocacy for what we might call sacred activism.

You realize there are two aspects of this sacred work: One must distinguish (1) the complex endeavor of book dissemination from (2) genuine gospel work, which focuses only on the simple message of the updated gospel.

Meanwhile, you’ve been around the block a time or two. You know that carrying out any aspect of this dual mission is tough and often disappointing in a mysterious way. And you have noticed that the U-movement is inwardly focused and only gets very mixed results in its public-facing activities.

Let’s say that, on one hand, you are edified by the educational services of UUI (Urantia University Institute), which is slowly and steadily evolving and appears sustainable. Also, some pretty good online worship is happening and you participate; but then again you notice these things are geared for the in-group of established readers. It is not outwardly focused on the public, and it does not bridge to open-minded Christians.

On the other hand, your online study group still meets, thank God. However, everyone there is over 60. “Hmm, we haven’t seen someone under 40 attend for years and years,” someone says. You’re also reluctant to bring a new person to the group because it’s just too “heady.”

Or, let’s say that you go to a Society meeting, but it feels like a waste of time—yet it’s still a necessity (you say to yourself), because this is all we have to work with. You feel (quietly) that the worship is perfunctory. You realize it’s also an “in-group” populated by the same leaders for many years. It doesn’t feel like a heartful community bent on an effective mission to share the gospel or the book with others in your region.

Here are more examples of mixed results:

• Once a year or two, you rustle up funds and fly to a Urantia conference to get some social time. But which conference? Several organizations are competing for the same readers.

• You arrive there, and after you check into the hotel you realize, once again, that only a few young people are present; plus, the attendance is half what it used to be.

• You’re happy that translations are getting done, against odds; however, this too is a mixed bag. If you’re like me, you’ve noticed that these amazing texts are usually not translated, printed, and published by indigenous publishers in the country where that language is spoken. The process is totally controlled from Chicago, and you wonder why, since no other publishers handle translations this way. You then discover that the result of all this effort is just an eBook posted on a website. This precious translation is not well-promoted in the way a local publisher would routinely do it, because their success depends on a tight relationship with the reading public and the booksellers in their nation.

You therefore wonder . . . maybe we can do better than that!—not in an impatient way, but with wise strategy and heartfelt, prayerful cooperation.

If you still resonate, please join me to consider the state of the U-movement once again in “Future of the Urantia Movement, Part II. You’ll recall that almost forty of us dove into this issue on February 15 (see zoom recording for “Future of the Urantia Movement,”)—and this is a follow-up.

Let these considerations serve as prep for IC’26.

Two Zooms for “Torch Carriers”—on two Sundays in June

Please mark your calendar for two Union of Souls events sponsored by Rodan Institute, coming up:

1. SUBSCRIBERS’ CONCLAVE
On Sunday, June 7, at 4pm ET, I will host a zoom for paid subscribers only. This will be an intimate 90+ minutes of strategic discussion based on the five points I made in February as well as strategic statements many of you made. (This event is also open for anyone under 40 and any others who apply for a scholarship.) Subscribers please RSVP, or if not a paying member, apply to me writing: byron@rodaninstitute.org.

2. UNION OF SOULS POWWOW
Then, on Sunday, June 21, 4pm ET, a powwow for all of us will build on the input given on June 7. More details are coming.

Now, let’s get back to you (I am phrasing this in the second person as an experiment). . . .

• You’re a highly curious person. You’ve made the rounds. You’re engaged with the cultural and spiritual trends of our time (that is, inside and outside of the U-movement). You go to cutting-edge conferences on timely topics, or you attend the latest big New Age or UFO conference or you go to a progressive church. And you never see or hear a reference to the UB. Not ever. And while there, you tend to self-censor. It’s just too much work because there’s no name recognition for the UB among this group.

• Let’s say you attend the World Parliament of Religions every three years. The huge UB booth there seems to be a success. So that’s a plus!

• You donate when you can, but does it make sense to donate to just one of the Urantia organizations and ignore the others? It’s a hard choice and you’re not sure which one is most effective and legitimate, and none of them are warmly religious (in the good sense). You’re embarrassed to initiate a new reader for these reasons.

• You do, however, see well-done Youtube video on the UB, but these are usually geared to UB initiates, often full of jargon.

So, if you’re like me, you keep asking yourself: what’s wrong here?

Why are the results so mixed up and why is there near-zero awareness of the revelation—even in places that are ready for it?

Why do I feel so isolated around my own closest associates?

For decades, my family, my kids, and my close friends have been unable to relate to my involvement with the UB. And then there’s my “spiritual-not-religious” friends at work, the ones who dutifully follow some new online teaching that speaks of frequencies and quantum physics—a new synthetic religion built with AI tools!

On weekends you wake up wondering: Am I the problem here? Is it my approach, my lack of faith? Or, could it be that our very lengthy revelation is just too out of date and too difficult? Or, is it that am I part of a movement that has lost its way, and that does not sufficiently support outreach and mission work—leaving it to poorly funded individual efforts with little ongoing support? Or . . . is it all these?

Should I still hold high the torch? Or shrink back?

What will it take to get the job done?

Then you hear something like this from a younger person: “What we’ve been doing for the past 70 years just isn’t getting the job done.” So said Derek Grimm at the recent “Leadership Roundtable,” which occurred in late April, as quoted in a well-reported piece by Sue Secconde in the Mini Messenger. Derek reportedly also said that “most of the content is inward facing, produced by Urantians for Urantians. It is also deeply Westernized …” Good critical thinker! Hosted by Urantia Foundation at its headquarters, this meeting was sincere and well-meaning.

So, now you look at the list of ideas that emerged at this leadership meeting: a bright young Nigerian named Maya Anazodo says that one should call zoom meetings to introduce the book, but use the current language of self-improvement to meet folks where they are; you also learn that the Seed of Truth Sower’s Kit is now available in French, a wonderful idea from a wonderful man, Gaétan Charland; Brad Garner says we should create noncommercial websites that are beautiful sanctuaries—great ideas each one, but … so limited and so basic.

There was also a call to achieve “1,000 study groups,” but this hasn’t worked well over 70 years. You realize that there are few study groups left in your region, and they are aging out; but thankfully, Marvin Garwin proposed that we create spiritual groups adjunct to the study groups. An old idea but a good one.

We’ve heard pretty much the same ideas for years and years, and the job still isn’t getting done. If you’re like me you remember the words from the activist Forum member, Clyde Bedell: “We’re like a body without a head.” Clyde was our first great champion of outreach who ended his life in disappointment, by all accounts—yet always a man of stellar faith.

Attaching a head to our body

Because we’re still like a body without a head, I blurted out something with touch of sarcasm in our special event in February: “The Urantia Foundation should not spend that $20 million it has in the bank,” I said. “Because, speaking as a businessman, serious money should never be spent unless you have a solid, well-funded strategic plan and a competent, well-managed team, many of them paid staffers with proven skills, plus a sense of community and heartful connection, both to each other and to the public, in order to sustain the effort.”

So that’s why I’m making one more call for strategists, our torch-bearers and jolt-receivers, to convene, in the lead up to IC’26. Look for more details to come. Please mark your calendars!

After all, it was the 1960s media theorist Marshall McLuhan who once quipped “the future of the future is the present.” Think on that one. You can construe this witty line either way, positive or negative.

And, consider the possibility that McLuhan was also right that the “medium is the message.” Remember that old slogan that made him famous?

In our case, the medium would refer to a 2,000+ page book published in 1955, and its message is based in the liberal, optimistic, mainline Protestantism of the early twentieth century—this being the scholarly group out of which the revelators chose many crucial human sources. The “future” of this message culminated in the few decades after 1955.

Please talk to me about this one in the chat, okay? (and also hit that ‘like’ or ‘subscribe” button, some of you).

Are we now witnessing the cosmic religion of the future?

What we see now in this present moment, in my humble opinion, is indeed the immediate future of our endeavor.

More of the same is most likely—that is, without a sea-change in leadership and followership, plus genuine organizational reform. That’s my conclusion after more than a month of dialogue with many of you, plus some searching prayer as well.

Many good things are indeed brewing these days, but the momentum remains modest. The reception of the FER by what I believe to be the most approachable niches—adventurous youth, progressive clergy, and open-minded scholars—will remain limited.

In this connection, one loyal friend and subscriber, Richard Rosen, wrote a full-fledged essay in response to this inquiry, posted just below this missive. Richard says that he is happy, or at least accepting, of the U-movement’s present. He states that “critical mass has been achieved.” Please scroll down and have a close look at it. He takes me to task on many points, including the idea that a highly targeted outreach campaign to certain niche influencers (listed just above) is now needed.

A proposal for unifying and harmonizing the Urantia movement

You’ll recall that I started this inquiry with a slide show on movement history that was followed by a well-attended zoom discussion, entitled “Future of the Urantia Movement.” This content, too, is worth a review since we got a rich variety of perspectives.

And then after that I got a bit nasty—but in a nice way.

In my next post herein on Union of Souls, entitled “Salvington, we have a timing problem,” I speculated that in 75 years from now, only a tiny sliver of educated Christians will find Part IV recognizable and inspiring. More important, I went so far as to say that the ideal window for the dissemination was between 1990 and 2015—and that’s because Part IV is rhetorically aimed at the liberal wing of the Christian church, whose decline has since then has been precipitous. This means that the year 3,000 simply can’t work as an ultimate objective, as has been suggested by some of our leaders.

I got in a bit of trouble for this opinion, but I consider it “good trouble” (if I may quote the civil rights leader John Lewis).

You’ll recall that I concluded my last missive by saying, for consolation: “Hold steady, I will cover a more hopeful perspective in my next post!” And so here it is, an optimistic suggestion for U-movement organizational reform called, “Build the Unity Team.”

The idea here is that the present moment doesn’t feel quite right to some of us, largely because of the schismatic division of the movement that first began in 1989, and which had roots much earlier. (See the aforementioned slide show.) And I’ve done some homework on this proposition, since I gave a well-received talk on that very subject in 2024 at the American Academy of Religion meeting in San Diego.

Anyway, here goes—and the last section is forthcoming. After perusing this, please page down to the essay by Richard Rosen for a counterpoint.

Build the Unity Team

A proposal for unifying and harmonizing the Urantia movement (April 23)

Preamble:

We live in a divided world where many destructive wars are being fought. In the face of this great crisis of conflict, we stand as representatives for a great revelation, one that literally advocates world unity; we are also advocates for the updated teachings of Christ Michael, his gospel of love, healing, and reconciliation. If we are to be a credible witness to our troubled world, decency and commonsense require that we ourselves “be that which we want to see in the world.” And yet, our own movement is in conflict and gridlocked in a divided state; now is the time to present a united front to a world that needs healing, but this endeavor requires a unified Urantia movement. The first obvious step in this process of “cleaning up our own house” is to recognize the schism at the heart of our community. We will also need to acknowledge that previous efforts to build unity are not working. Sincere dialogues by leaders in the separated organizations have not yet born significant fruit over many years. So, here is another approach.

Proposal:

To get started, I suggest that a Unity Team be created that is devoted to building movement unity and harmony. This ambitious teamwork would proceed over months and years in several steps, but it would not consist of the same set of “leaders in the separated organizations” (as alluded to above). Instead, it would draw from those who have already served and are now independent of day-to-day pressures. Preferably, these “elders” would be past presidents of the currently separated organizations (of which there are three, or possibly four).

Provisions:
I am holding this part back right now, but there are ten of these. Contact me if you want to see the list, otherwise I will post it soon—after I refine it!

Next: An essay by Richard Rosen, April 2026

A case for the evolutional growth of the Fifth Epochal Revelation in contrast to the rapid promotion of the Urantia Book

Richard Rosen, April 2026

The spiritual idealism of Urantia Book devotees urges them on to share the revelation with as many as they can. And why not? Look what it has done for us, and love moves us to do good to others by sharing the Fifth Epochal Revelation. Furthermore, might not the world already immersed in an interregnum (between the fading stability of Christian tradition and not yet emerged individual God-knowingness) find its way out (and thus the urgency)?

Patience (tempered zeal) or a “massive branding campaign?”

There is an inherent cycle to growth that cannot be rushed without danger. Does the apparent value to the world of the Urantia Book justify the launching of a professional marketing campaign that extensively and rapidly makes known the name “Urantia” and particular content? Is such marketing wise? Might it incite fervid religionists to call out the workings of the Evil One? Might it bring about the unintended consequence of secularists and their media organs converging on a new cause célèbre?

In contrast, I contend that critical mass has been achieved, meaning:

· A sufficient number of people throughout the world recognize the revelation for what it is, and, as true evangelists, avidly share as occasion allows.

· Organizational infrastructure has been developed to support outreach.

· Of crucial importance is the advent of the internet over the last 30 years. For it has enabled an ever-increasing number of students of the Revelation to disseminate it by this means. It has provided a readily accessible means for those who hunger for truth to find it in numbers much greater than was possible when only the printed book was available.

What about comparison with the apostles and early church that rapidly spread the gospel, following Jesus’ injunction, “Go into all the world proclaiming this gospel to all nations, to every man, woman, and child” (165:6.3)? The early church, although well-meaning, focused on making as many people believers in Jesus in the shortest time possible. Their zeal propelled them. They did this by theological compromise and focusing on the divine Jesus, leading with the “miracle” of his resurrection from the dead. This invites the question: is the widespread and rapid promulgation of the early church that ended in the gospel of Jesus being cocooned in the Christian church a model to be emulated and admired?

Is it good that the Urantia Book become more widely known? Yes. Nevertheless, any good thing taken to an extreme becomes bad. And that is what a “massive branding campaign” heralds to me. The early church went about their promulgation wrongly (despite widespread and rapid acceptance). In my opinion, likewise would be the launch of an aggressive marketing campaign.

Is there a window of time we must act upon?

Here’s what is said in The Publication Mandate:^[i]

The Book belongs to the era immediately to follow the conclusion of the present ideological struggle. That will be the day when men will be willing to seek truth and righteousness. When the chaos of the present confusion has passed, it will be more readily possible to formulate the cosmos of a new and improved era of human relationships. And it is for this better order of affairs on earth that the book has been made ready. But the publication of the book has not been postponed to that (possibly) somewhat remote date.

I disagree with the interpretation that the ideological struggle refers to the end of the Cold War around 1990 when a 25 year window opened for the widespread recognition of the Urantia Book. Here is my reasoning:

· It speaks above to an “era,” not a minuscule period of time.

· Do these recent years demonstrate “the day when men will be willing to seek truth and righteousness?”

· Has “the chaos of the present confusion…passed?”

· Does the recent 25 year window for dissemination correspond to “that (possibly) somewhat remote date” referenced above?

Evolution takes time, and the revelators timed the advent of the Revelation knowing it will take a long time for “the day when men will be willing to seek truth and righteousness.”

History of promotion efforts

There have been previous efforts to get the Urantia Book more widely known. These are three:

1940s— Harold Sherman knew how to market. He rebelled against Doctor Sadler’s leadership, in part, because he would not employ marketing techniques to rapidly spread the knowledge of the Urantia Book.

1950s—The book was sent to all members of Congress without a response.

1980s—Meredith Sprunger did a personal campaign to fellow ministers. This had some success. “Starting in 1983, we sent letters along with a pamphlet and an offer of a loan book to all of the United Church of Christ ministers in the United States and the United Methodist ministers in the Northern Indiana Conference. From the 8,000 personal letters sent, there were 330 ministers who asked for loan books. This 4% request for loan books was greater than the 1% which we hypothesized would ask for books. Around 25% of those who examined the book have purchased their own personal copy.”^[ii]

Avoiding an interregnum

Does the distress and potential disaster the world is experiencing mean that now is the time for the revelation to be mightily promoted to people of influence who might make a difference? The calamity of the fall of Roman civilization was not sufficient for the true teachings of Jesus to emerge from the cocoon of the Catholic Church. What makes it different now?

There are those who believe that the widespread recognition of the Urantia Book may prevent catastrophe and diffuse an interregnum. This is predicated on the recognition that change to civilization and society’s institutions can come about only by a sufficient number of individuals centering their inner lives around God. Realistically, how many desire to be God-knowing in this material comfort age dominated by the profit motive and infused with materialism, humanism, and secularism? How many individuals are there in positions of influence who hunger for truth and thirst for righteousness? And how many have even the capacity to receive the Fifth Epochal Revelation? Similarly, how many were prepared to receive the gospel of the Fourth Epochal Revelation and share their inner lives with God? Not many as evidenced by the gospel about Jesus replacing the gospel of Jesus. Why would it be different for this epochal revelation?

Final thought: I shared the concept of an interregnum with a sincere Christian religionist. She said, “that may be just what’s needed to correct things.”

What is really needed?

Are we tasked by the revelators to make known the Urantia Book to as many as possible—at least thought leaders—in as short a time as possible? Or is it to reveal the truths of the Fifth Epochal Revelation as embodied in the lives of those who have taken it to heart? I like how Sheila Keene-Lund put it:

“Jesus did not center his mission on publicity, institutional reach, or cultural influence. He centered it on doing the will of God and growing in character….Such transformation will attract others, the movement will grow organically, and its influence will gradually be reflected in our homes, our communities, and eventually in our societies.”^[iii]

The Urantia movement is the social structure in which individuals rise into the personal spiritual experience of a relationship with the Father that the world might see “Jesus living again on earth in the experience of all men” (195:10.1). The Urantia movement is a placeholder to keep vital the Fifth Epochal Revelation until “many forward-looking individuals are hungering for knowledge and thirsting for wisdom,” the fourth developmental epoch, the quest for knowledge and wisdom (50.5.7).

Meanwhile, to make the effort to birth the baby before its time is dangerous. So what to do? Just live, don’t try so hard to spread the revelation. Trust the Supreme to take care of that in his time, when the world sees “Jesus living again on earth in the experience of all men”. Or to paraphrase 181:2.20, when a critical mass of individuals are able to say, “He who has seen me has seen Jesus.”

^[i] https://urantia-association.org/publication-mandate

^[ii] https://archive.urantiabook.org/archive/mjs_archive/mjs_clergy_evaluate_II.htm

^[iii] https://urantiabook.org/learn-with-others/news-and-discussion

The “wages” of a culture of secrecy

A more damaging example of excessive secrecy was the theft of historical papers documenting the early Urantia movement. As discussed before, it is an established fact that, in 1979, a trove of rare documents was surreptitiously removed from the drawers of a locked cabinet in the 533 Diversey Parkway office. Some of this precious correspondence had duplicates, but this single act—by someone committed to secrecy!—crippled the mandated effort to disclose and analyze our movement’s earliest history. Ever since, Urantia movement historians have struggled to create a definitive account that covers the first days of the Contact Commission and the earliest years of the movement. Meanwhile, decades have passed without a clear depiction of these world-historic events; plus, we still lack a clear idea of the injunctions that were left behind by the revelators.

Our origin thus remains obscure. And bear in mind that the concept of “origin” is a keystone in the triad of “origin, history, destiny”—a crucial teaching the revelation.

The missing official history reflects the “overhang,” as it were, of the Forum’s secrecy culture. This dilemma is roughly comparable to the eight decades of official UFO secrecy, which has left ufologists with an incoherent series of competing legends and confused folklore about the alleged extraterrestrial presence.

Let’s put it this way: when lack of disclosure goes too far, and when governance is less than transparent, reliable facts are scarce. As a result, honest people engage in groundless speculation; and naturally, questionable beliefs will arise to fill the information gap.

A case in point is the 2026 President’s Letter from Mo Siegel, sent out last week, which alludes to one such belief in this statement: “If seeding this revelation and its teachings into society is a thousand-year project,” Mo writes in this formal report, “we are still in the earliest chapters. If you draw a ten-inch line to represent the timeline, we have not yet reached the first inch. And yet progress is real.”

I am sure this statement is well-intended. It reassures donors, which is a positive. And Mo lists some good goals that were achieved in 2025. But this “thousand years” idea strikes me as a kind of mushroom that grows in darkness. This biblical-sounding notion of a one thousand-year mission (see Rev 20: 4-6) isn’t found in any documented statement from the revelators; I am told that is a product of “oral tradition.” And it definitely does not appear in the so-called “1955 Publication Mandate.” (Look it up here.) This idea also defies common sense and practical reality, as I see it.

Instead, and sorry to say this, this phrase is a piece of convenient folklore, one that serves to have a palliative effect. Put starkly, it gives our generation good reason to be complacent.

Is the window for dissemination passing us by?

In fact, the key statement in the Publication Mandate goes as follows: “The book belongs to the era immediately to follow the conclusion of the present ideological struggle. . . And it is for this better order of affairs on earth that the book has been made ready.”

The struggle being spoken of here refers quite obviously to the end of the Cold War. And when did that end, folks? The Cold War ended in 1991. In other words, we had 36 years to support and translate the book as we prepared for the inevitable collapse of the atheistic communist threat; after that, the real push could begin “immediately,” states the Mandate.

Sadly, our movement missed that ideal window, that “better order of affairs,” which I surmise must have stretched for 25 years between 1990 and 2015. If I am right, we now have tremendous remedial work to do, a big uphill climb, especially given that the period we are now entering feels more like a “dangerous order of affairs.”

Here’s a side note to bear in mind: professional book publishers like myself typically give a newly published book an 18-month window to make its mark. After that, a fresh new title that was once pertinent to the current zeitgeist very soon gets set aside as “old news,” as newer books on the topic hit the shelves.

The mistaken legend of “the one-thousand years”

My guess is that the “thousand years” idea started to circulate sometime after the calamitous 1989 schism between the Foundation and the Brotherhood. But let’s hold any commentary on that sad event for another day and time.

My point here is that the thousand-years motto came into use as critics began to point out that the Urantia movement was in decline.

These critics especially noted items like these: the aging out and disappearance of study groups and Societies; the decreased attendance at conferences; the dearth of young readers; and the fact that the movement had now broken up in three distinct organizations duplicating efforts and competing for the same resources.

And then there is the taboo topic that even the critics steer around: the fact that one movement organization disappeared because of neglect and suppression, that being the celestial contact mission sometimes known as the Correcting Time (and nowadays pejoratively known as the “Teaching Mission”).

Please consider: the prime years for these contacts with our invisible friends happened to also coincide with the aforementioned “better order of affairs”: that same 25 years between 1990 and 2015. I was there and these were the most productive years. In fact, this period witnessed a series of over 5,000 dialogues with over 500 angels, midwayers, ascenders, and even Paradise-origin beings. Many of the contactees were veteran readers, and they were spread out over more than two dozen locations during this period.

Wanted: Shepherds and influencers for the cosmic religion of the future

Other critics pointed out that, while thousands of books may be in print, the movement lacks an active corps of teachers and ministers. They argued that scholars, authors, reviewers, publishers, pastors, preachers, healers, worship leaders, evangelists, and media spokespeople are crucial for the formidable endeavor of introducing an epochal revelation to a troubled and confused world.

We can think of it this way: Such advocates are essential for the formidable task of carefully shepherding thought leaders into the greatly expanded paradigm of the UB text—thus turning these initiates into influencers in their own communities.

Only in the last few years are we training leaders and teachers thanks to the laudable efforts of Urantia University. But because of the long hiatus during the “cultural prime time” just after the Cold War, our movement is falling behind. An exception that may prove the rule may be the reception of the UB by the global interfaith movement. But let’s face it: the UB’s ideas have gained near-zero acknowledgment among the general intelligentsia, no coverage from departments of academia, no open acceptance by the churches, virtually no examination from the political class across the world, very little interest from youth under 40 years old, and so on.

And if the revelation does by chance get a foothold with a visionary in one of these communities, this person is usually forced to “self-censor” around their friends and colleagues to save their jobs and reputations.

In other words, the movement was indeed failing in its mission to spread the teaching, said the critics.

But hey, you can feel better now because we can turn this around by the year 3,000.

A book is just a bag of words lined up nicely on a white background. Let’s not make an idol out of any book. Let’s not be idolators. In a hundred years (and certainly in a thousand years!), the UB text will long since have been superseded by all manner of developments on our world, many very positive. More on that later, because the main point I want to offer here is that the UB’s ideal window has probably closed, and the more challenging window for any kind of advocacy work is soon closing. I would give us 75 years at best, rather than 1,000 years—and again, I would argue that the period between 1990 and 2015 was the ideal window.

I speculate, with sadness in my heart, that as we hit the year 2100, the content of the UB will be seen as out of date and out of sync with the needs of the twenty-second century.

How the revelators targeted their main audience

Why such pessimism on my part? It’s really just a dose of realism! The key reasons (among many) that we missed the ideal window is this: the concepts and language of the UB, especially Part IV, are intentionally targeted.

Stated simply, Part IV sets up a direct dialogue with the liberal wing of the Christian church. As I see it, the heyday of the revelation was earmarked for the late twentieth century, yes, beginning sometime around 1990. This is the period of America’s cultural dominance combined with the apex of the great liberal Christian tradition, yielding a platform of great power and influence worldwide.

The religious lineage being targeted is found especially in the Episcopal Church and in Methodism, Presbyterianism, the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, the Evangelical Lutherans, and others. Others have agued that the new age movement, which also emerged in these years, was also part of the intended audience (that is, before the New Age became a place of commerce and celebrity.)

The key point is this period was the high point of the mainline, nondoctrinaire, inclusive, progressive, Protestant line of development that is, perforce, now in steep decline. The target audience for the UB is not by any means the conservative churches; and that’s because they are, more or less, idolaters of the Bible, some of whom eschew the idea of evolution.

Consider: the human sources for Part IV (aside from the Bible itself) feature writers and theologians who were prominent in liberal denominations between 1980 and 1940. Scholarly support for this idea is provided in an academic essay of mine excerpted in the Addendum below.

Today, many Part IV passages have the ring and rhetoric of a passing era, fast receding from our sight and hearing range, a time now almost considered archaic by today’s theologians. The grandiloquent way the revelators rendered the teachings of Jesus, especially in his discourses and sermons, displays the high-minded and almost ponderous preaching style of an era of optimism, prior to World War II and the Holocaust, and the expansive optimism for a liberal, “open source” Christianity has now passed us by. I speculate that in 75 years from now, only a tiny sliver of educated Christians will find Part IV recognizable and inspiring.

Sadly, in 2026, all wings of the liberal church—our best target group—are in decline in the Western world; the conservative, doctrinaire, and bible-centered Christians who follow Trump or Putin are now greatly ascendant, and these folks are not anywhere near the target audience of the revelators.

But hold steady, I will cover a more hopeful perspective in my next post!

ADDENDUM (Excerpted from Reason and Revelation (Origin Press, 2024), 54–56.

“My own survey of the human sources used for the UB’s theology and philosophy of religion shows that the revelators draw heavily from post-Kantian liberal Protestant theology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—or at least what was left of this movement (in the U.S. and the UK) after Karl Barth and his followers attempted to dethrone the liberal Christian establishment in Europe using the cudgel of Barth’s crisis theology.

”We can speculate further that the UB’s revelators purposefully turned to liberal Christian thinkers outside the orbit of Germany, doing so for a number of reasons: First, the majority of the German church was about to capitulate to Hitler. Second, a sufficient number of liberal American (or British) theologians had already trained in Germany or had been influenced by the post-Kantian tradition in other ways. Third, the ideas of this less doctrinaire lineage more closely match the tenets the UB’s authors had in mind and, at the same time, these thinkers represented the highest pinnacle of evolving Protestant thought—unencumbered by church authority—that had been achieved prior to World War II’s conclusion. Finally, the UB’s revelators had obvious practical reasons for using English-speaking authors, thus obviating the need to translate such borrowed ideas into current English usage.

“In this connection, we now know that some of the UB’s most notable source authors for theology were among the most respected American liberal theologians of the early twentieth century. The result is that the UB text itself communicates the optimism and self-confidence of that era that had survived in the academic settings of the new world previous to WWII’s final horrors. Sadly, this mentality has not survived into our era of theology, which has had to confront the post-WWII horrors of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, nuclear weapons proliferation, the advent of abusive technocracies, rising environmental devastation, and the gross failures of global governance.

“These American source authors include the likes of Rufus Jones, one of the most influential Quakers of the 20th century and Henry Nelson Wieman, arguably America’s first Whitehead expert and a leading proponent of religious naturalism and empirical theology. In addition, no less than Charles Hartshorne—a very prominent mid-century philosopher of religion—is also a prominent human source. Others include William Hocking, an influential Harvard philosopher who trained under idealist Josiah Royce, and the prominent liberal Protestant theologian Albert C. Knudson, one of the founders of Boston personalism.”

On February 11 exactly 102 years ago, Machiventa first announced the FER to the Contact Commission. Let’s pick up that thread. Let’s have an open and friendly public debate on how to proceed. I suggested five ideas in my last post (listed above), which we will review first. Then the floor is open to your ideas in a moderated discussion—the first in a series.
Use this link:
https://zoom.us/j/2270743911
See you on Wednesday, February 11, 8pm ET / 5pm PT

My friend Marilynn Kulieke, vice president of Urantia Foundation, posed a good question a week ago. In an open-hearted way, she asked me: what I would do with the surplus millions I crowed about in my last post. I stumbled around with a few ideas, but I’ve got a better handle now. I also had illuminating discussions with other veteran colleagues in the last few days, which helped retune me to the spirit of truth.

What follows are five suggestions to help fuel a community-wide debate, still tentative. Some of these would require, for the first time, professional marketing staff in our organizations who would work with outside consultants.

These ideas below are offered in the humorous spirit of James Carville, who helped Bill Clinton win the presidency with the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

1. It’s the gospel, stupid! What this really means is: foster the cosmic religion of the future based on the updated gospel of Jesus. By coincidence, this vaunted “future” is here, now—in the form of young people. When I say “cosmic religion,” I also mean that that which is “cosmic” is also here, now—in the form of the extraterrestrial and angelic presence knocking on our doors. Note well: gospel ministry and missions are not the same thing as disseminating a book and hosting study groups, which are secondary but important.

2. Look to Christianity, for Chrissake! I don’t mean to be impertinent. But mere Christianity is the largest religion on Urantia. Word on the street is that they follow the same Christ we do. Not only that, but for twenty centuries they’ve tried every imaginable form of innovation in governance, liturgy, ministry, interpretation, evangelism, theology, music—all inspired by the same Holy Spirit that inspires us. Lots to learn and much to choose from as we foster a Christ-centered religion based on new revelation, humbly building on the lessons of the last epochal revelation.

3. Create community, Lucy! We need young ministers and pastors and healers and theologians and songwriters who will grow real worship communities from the ground up, in part perhaps following Rodan’s ideas. By this I mean face-to-face prayer and service pods, centers of healthy religious socialization for all ages, as well as heartful meditation groups—all supported by digital tools. And out of this, the Spirit will produce fervent evangelists, leaders, and apostles who will go out and turn everything else around in the Urantia movement. But young people won’t rise to the occasion to do these great things if we don’t recruit them, train them, fund them well, and love them. We can afford to start that right now.

4. Do the branding, brother! A massive branding campaign could be launched right away. It should be led by an outside branding firm whose work is overseen by our own in-house marketing experts. We can afford this too! Such a campaign should be done for the sake of name recognition—for starters. It will feature intriguing slogans, inspiring imagery, and maybe celebrity endorsements. Suggested goals:
• Every Christian preacher in the land should have at least heard the name of the revelation and know it has a new biography of Jesus.
• Honest Christians should know they their beloved gospel is updated in Part IV, and let the controversy begin.
• Educated people should know that “Urantia” is the name of our planet and that there are billions of other inhabited worlds.
• Visionaries promoting the UB should no longer be instantly marginalized because no one in their community has heard of it!

5. It requires unity, dummy! The major existing Urantia organizations are culturally different and serve varied constituencies in our movement. Perhaps the best way forward is a “revelation federation” where all stakeholders have a seat at the table, so that efforts are not duplicated and ideas are cross-fertilized.

What else would you add? I tried to get this to seven items, so we need to fill in at least two more. Any suggestions? Meanwhile, stay tuned for details on the upcoming summit.

Here’s a bold question: Is your study group capable of following Rodan to inspire youth to become modern-day apostles for the gospel movement? In this post, I’ll broach how to mobilize existing material resources to take the next step in church history—while leaving behind “churchiness” (as well as fanaticism and martyrdom).

Rodan was a consummate professional in his day, and I argue that we urgently need such competent professionals in our time. So let’s get practical and identify financial resources already available to support this approach, worldwide.

Toward a movement for Urantia Book heterodoxy

Today’s postmodern milieu is a wild confluence of cultures and religious ideas that will never countenance a Urantia-based orthodoxy.

Young people have far more attractive options at their fingertips, and their approach to spirituality is amplified by the AI engines in their palms.

As I have stated in an earlier post (“The Big Crunch”), the well-meaning attempt by boomer Fellowship administrators to create a worship ceremony at the recent Summer Session, replete with grape juice and crunchy wafers and old Christian hymns, was an honest but wrong-headed way to fill the vacuum of real religion in our movement—albeit carried out with good will (and a rather rockin’ band).

Nor should it be in the purview of our major organizations to define in-groups and out-groups. Very oddly, they exclude those who experiment with celestial contact, even though our very movement began with decades of telepathic celestial contact. Suppressing present-day contactees, or for that matter prophets and unorthodox preachers, is a prima facie attempt to impose an orthodoxy.

I advocate that our leading organizations should instead go wide and favor religious freedom. They should not try to fill the worship vacuum they have unwittingly created. They should not exclude exotic practices they have not studied. What they should do is become cheerleaders, catalyzers, funders, trainers, planners, and competent professional administrators whose work is to foster genuine religion out in the field, especially by evangelical youth.

Toward that end, they should create an infrastructure that supports the growth of a wide range of independent ministries, missions, and service experiments, and refrain from competing with them or designing an orthodoxy to regulate them.

Let’s find ways to foster—with material resources—experimental communities and pods of creative evangelists, each with unique expressions and their own home-grown rites, worship practices, and modes of outreach and sermonizing. Let them find each other and pool spiritual possessions as they see fit. This is the most effective way to raise postmodern apostles energized for worldwide outreach in a dangerous and chaotic world.

Bring on the professionals

A key missing piece here is professionalism, a topic I promised to cover in my last post, wherein I also lamented how the Urantia movement is insular and stuck in gridlock, in part because it lacks independent journalistic scrutiny and public accountability.

In other words, if we put on a journalistic hat and look at the raw data, we will quickly realize that we simply need more paid staff, mundane as that sounds. We need people well-trained and highly experienced in the business disciplines and the business methods required to foster a sustainable worldwide outreach movement. And that requires substantial funding—indeed, funds that appear to already be available.

Friends, face it. We are a movement run almost entirely by volunteers and each one is a well-meaning amateur. Most have no professional training for their self-appointed roles in the movement, let alone business-world experience, and many are unaware of church history and the journey of Christian missionaries, for better or worse, over two millennia. The effectiveness of these sincere workers for the revelation is born out by the fact that our movement is increasingly becoming irrelevant, even as the world passes us by.

Sorry to put it so starkly—so please, someone, prove me wrong.

An independent thinker and writer, Ryan McGuire, recently pointed out in an email to movement leaders that “Urantia Foundation and The Urantia Book Fellowship devote only a small portion of their actual expenditures to mission‑aligned outreach.” McGuire brought forward some striking numbers, figures available in a required annual public filing: IRS Form 990. His report is lengthy, but for now we’ll examine its data very briefly, enough to grasp our movement’s out-of-proportion financial ratios.

Did you know that the Urantia Foundation’s (UF) total net assets in 2024 were over $20 million? (See ProPublica). Meanwhile, annual revenue has more than doubled since 2011 to over $2 million, and the UF’s net revenues have been roughly double their expenses in recent years.

Of that, how much do you think went to paid full-time staffers, that is, competent professionals able to manage the spread of the Fifth Epochal Revelation to our troubled world?

Or, put it this way: How many professionals do we have on hand with the profile of a Rodan, a man capable of training the young evangelists who turned Jerusalem upside down?

The UF has only one full-time staffer, the very capable Tamara Strumfeld. All told, wage and salary expenses were about $200,000 in 2024. (See Annual Report.) Friends, do the math and consider these ratios: $20m in net assets, $2m in revenues annually, and $200k annually devoted to salaries and wages.

The Urantia Book Fellowship displays a similar ratio, with just one full-time staffer, the highly skilled and dynamic Geoff Theiss, plus assets of over $3 million and revenues that greatly exceed expenses. (See Cause IQ.)

Enough said for now. I will leave it there, a thread we will pick up again soon.

Friends, I really do mean it. If you want to suggest a story, or contribute to one, or even publish a finished piece at Union of Souls, please send me a pitch (byron@originpress.com). The recent journalistic effort of one such independent researcher and devoted reader, Ryan McGuire, will be covered in the follow-up to this piece. The modest goal of this post is to simply provide a rationale for my advocacy.

Achieving “profitable levels of self-correction”

Union of Souls has a specialized purpose when it comes to responsible coverage and self-scrutiny. We support journalistic research toward the end of fostering the cosmic religion of the future, our stated purpose at Rodan Institute. Of course, there are many other valid purposes for independent investigations, as you will see below.

Paper 99 comes to mind here, especially one key passage I will condense as follows: The revelators encourage “open religious criticism [for the purpose of] attaining profitable levels of self-correction,” so that a religious community may be “disciplined by constructive criticism. . . ” (See 99:3.7.)

As I see it, such self-correction is the proper domain of journalism, which should be independent, investigative, caring, and constructive. This is reporting that “cares enough to confront” (as psychotherapists sometimes say), and it must be ethical and deeply researched. Ultimately, it’s an act of love tempered by fairness, justice, and mercy.

One model worth emulating is the National Catholic Register, which has provided professional journalistic coverage of the Catholic world since 1927. (See, for example, this summary of NCR’s 40 years of pioneering coverage of the Church’s pedophilia scandal.) Religion Dispatches is an example of (usually) reliable but edgy journalistic coverage of religion in general.

Pen versus sword: rising to the occasion when the stakes are high

A great deal is at stake in bringing an epochal revelation to our dangerous, warlike, and chaotic world. But how do we become high-functioning in our outreach to “such a planet”? The key, I think, is deep attunement to the real problems and needs of the world community, which in turn requires a constant effort at self-correction and adaptation by our worldwide community.

To achieve mid-course corrections at any point, we must look outward to grasp the prevailing conditions under which we operate; and we must look inward to scrutinize our own practices, programs, and governance.

As I see it, the aim should also be to make UB readers (1) well-versed about the concrete conditions of the historical moment, (2) better informed about the difficulties we face internally as a community, (3) more literate about our complicated history—and (4) hopefully, more willing to become constructive and critical thinkers, activists, and ministers.

None of these things are possible without investigative journalism motivated by at least three factors, which I will list below and then explain:

Factor 1: Far better outreach. We must put an end to our near-absence in the mainstream marketplace of ideas, and we should evangelize vigorously and widely to fostering of a worldwide religious awakening. Let’s figure out why we are not doing these things well.

Factor 2: An end to insularity. Guard against the unhealthy cultism that results from insularity and groupthink, which makes us impervious to the facts about changing world conditions.

Factor 3: Activation. Get more readers engaged in governance, activism, research, fundraising, scholarship, and ministries.

Factor 1. If you think our outreach is just fine and on track, this essay is not meant for you. Here’s my view of this issue, in brief. Over five decades, I have circulated widely in religious organizations; I have studied religion and theology in numerous academic settings; and I have engaged very often with mainstream and alternative media as well as a variety of cultural and progressive organizations. With rare exceptions, there was zero name recognition of the Urantia revelation in these venues. It is especially appalling that there is virtually no awareness of the FER in religious studies and theology departments nationwide, including seminaries. A big exception, one that may prove the rule, is the rising awareness of the UB at the World Parliament of Religions and related interfaith forums.

Factor 2. Over the years, there’s been a dearth of independent, public, or third-party scrutiny of The Urantia Book, or of the Urantia movement and its governance. And, neither the Foundation nor the Fellowship engage in publicity or media relations, which begins with issuing press releases. This deficit in outside engagement lends itself to groupthink—a certain rigidity, irrelevance, and “drift” that naturally results when a community is insular or disconnected. Here’s an AI definition of groupthink. “Groupthink occurs when a cohesive group prioritizes harmony and consensus, leading members to suppress dissenting opinions and critical thinking, resulting in irrational or poor decision-making because the desire to agree overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.”

Does any of that sound familiar? I think we suffer from insular leadership in at least three ways:

• Our relative neglect of the explicitly stated mandate of fostering a religion. Don’t forget: As Rodan taught, real religion is mission-based and evangelistic (160:5.3). In my view, the central organizations should foster and help coordinate all sorts of diverse and relatively independent religious, evangelistic, and service ministries while not competing with them. This is why I founded the Rodan Institute, which renews that specific goal. Sadly, official movement organizations tend to compete with independent ministries, filling this space with a proto-official religious practices and even rituals. For example, see my recent Union of Souls post that covers this very issue. (Union of Souls is a project of the Rodan Institute.)

• Our inability to implement movement unity, which weakens everything we do. We remain a polarized movement within a polarized society. Enough said for now on this sore point that has long been debated.

• The unfair treatment of the Teaching Mission cohort, a religious minority. Over 30 years, there’s been little effort at intra-faith dialogue, though often requested by TM leaders. I have long regarded this mode of treatment as a species of groupthink, because there were few if any initiatives for open, rigorous, or public inquiry over these decades by official organizations. The TM harbored many problems and generated controversy, no doubt about it. But actual research and collegial scrutiny from the “mainstream” might have fostered greater diversity within unity, at a bare minimum.

Factor 3: The issue of increasing engagement and activation, as I see it, has to do with the need for professionalization—which I will pick in the next installment.

Stay tuned, dear friends, big thanks for your support in 2025—and happy new year, one and all, from Union of Souls.

Savor this wide-ranging presentation and group discussion, focused mainly on the future of spiritual practice. Over 20 folks joined us in the 2 hour+ journey, which included the original founder of the field of exopolitics, Alfred Webre, JD. Also present was a co-founder of the exo-theology, Professor Ted Peters, one of my mentors, and a professor at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at UC Berkeley.

Originally, this seminar was intended for our paid subscribers, but I herein offer it too all as a Christmas gift.

TRANSCRIPT (excerpt): These are the opening lines, to whet your appetite …

“So, I wanted you to know I’m kind of turning into a futurist.

And that’s one reason I started the Rodan Institute, to foster the religion of the future.

Sounds a little bit grand.

Not only that, I call it the cosmic religion of the future.

So what’s Jesus got to do with it? well, a lot.

First, we’re going to talk about nondual consciousness,

specifically nondual higher states.

And then compare the difference between states of consciousness and levels of consciousness.

This is the “infrastructure,” you might say, for what we’re going to talk about.

And then there is the key notion of heart coherence...

And then . . . we take a leap to sort of the baptismal reception of the Spirit, the opening of the heart. . . .”

https://zoom.us/j/2270743911

[Want a scholarship? Email for permission to enter: byron@originpress.com]

First, mark your calendar for a free live teleseminar for all my paid subscribers. This will examine and celebrate the advent of Jesus, our Master Son. The date is December 18, at 7pm—details to come!

And second . . . Many of you enjoyed my Union of Souls “white paper” on Galactic Federation of Light. Well, I created a new version that makes it suitable for non-UB folks—that is, normal people! Hmmm, why didn’t I think of that before?

Not only that, but this newer piece is the inaugural essay for a new substack called Exo-Realities. I just posted an essay there entitled “The Person of Jesus and the Galactic Federation of Light.”

Now, I know you’re a beloved Union of Souls subscriber, but I invite you to become a free subscriber to Exo-Realities as well. Why? Because it covers very timely “exotic” realities outside the direct purview of the UB—but often closely adjacent to it. Check out Exo-Realities here.

Meanwhile, with this shift, Union of Souls goes back to its original charter of drilling down into revelation topics of keen interest to committed readers.

But Byron, why on earth would you start a second Substack?

Because, if you are paying attention, there’s a tsunami of breaking news in the realm of the exotic.

Exotic in this case means off-world beings of light AND the exotic tech that’s changing everything, that is, AI, quantum computing, zero-point energy, and more—all of which will be covered at Exo-Realities with the help of an “exotheological” and spiritual framework inspired by the Urantia revelation. (The other reason is personal: for a long time I covered Silicon Valley as a journalist, and I love riding the wave of exciting new technologies.)

Above: The new logo for Exo-Realities

And there’s even a third reason: This new substack will gently introduce people to the UB as a big part of my ongoing outreach ministry—here and there, it will strategically allude to UB teachings in an introductory way. This is necessary because my Union of Souls substack is not suitable for popular audiences since it’s directed at UB insiders. These days, I truly want to serve a wider audience.

In view of all this, you might alert your non-UB family and friends to Exo-Realities, as a way to ease them into the topic of off-world phenomena and also to the UB itself.

Anyway, thanks for your support and enjoy the season! Please join us on December 18.

NEW EDITION–On Benevolent ET Intervention

This essay begins with panoramic descriptions of planetary affairs seen from three perspectives. Next I’ll introduce distinctions borrowed from exotheology, a discipline based on the encounter of theology with claims of off-world visitors—“sheep of another fold” (John 10:16). The forthcoming discussion also draws from the dialogue of theology and science, as well as philosophy of religion and interfaith methodology. In this Special Report, I’ll bring these tools to bear as we examine an ET contact phenomenon that has gained wide attention. It is known as the Galactic Federation of Light (GFL)—purportedly a consortium of extraterrestrials who have produced a vast body of teachings in the form of hundreds of recorded discourses, all posted on a Youtube channel called GFL Station. The screenshot below gives a flavor of the cleverness and the wide set of skills deployed in this massive outreach effort.

What the viewer first sees are AI-processed images of attractive and apparently ageless extraterrestrials, and it’s paired with clickbait headings often tied to current events. They’re all white, young, and attractive except for two blue-skinned races—and one race, the Lyrans, are feline.

The Federation’s member races are said to include Arcturians, Andromedans, Sirians, Lyrans, and Pleiadians. Each race is represented by one or two spokespersons, many listed here, and these presenters come with exotic names such as Ashtar, Valir, Orxa, Laayti, Rieva, Xandi, or Zorrion. This panoply of words, sounds, images, and personalities is entertaining and uplifting, even if science fiction.

In the effort to reach us, an ET’s raw input is transmitted telepathically to one of many human contactees, whose names are posted with each GFL transmission. The material is quickly transcribed and well edited, and the clean transcript is then recorded using AI-managed voices of hired actors, whose names are also listed.
A striking feature of GFL Station’s production activity is its beauty; the art direction is superb in my opinion. The flow of the dense verbal content is well-paced, each discourse accompanied by a tasteful music bed, and meaningful images map into the ET orations. The website introduction says the art is “curated,” but even if AI-generated, this visionary imagery is professionally rendered.

The GFL Station operation is incredibly prolific and consistent. Nearly 1,000 audio-videos have been posted on Youtube since 2022, often two a day, each one a minimum of 30 minutes in length and many much longer.

GFL Station’s media producers are headquartered in British Columbia and are led by a man named David Nicholas, who appears to also be the primary contactee. He states at the site that he and his partner Kelley Lynn were “directed to start the station in 2022 on account of the huge upcoming UFO / ET disclosure.” This large endeavor, this outpouring of cosmic evangelism (if you will), is truly a success in business terms. It has so far gathered over 147,000 subscribers, and some of these videos garner over 100,000 views while the average one gets roughly 40,000 views each. Most programs acquire hundreds of likes and comments.

Perspective 1: We begin by considering three perspectives on world affairs, and the first of these concerns our epochal crisis, the ominous threat of humanity’s self-destruction. According to GFL, this predicament has summoned the help of fleets of benign ETs from many different worlds, now supposedly hovering in our skies in cloaked spaceships.

In brief, Perspective 1 proclaims that our future looks exceedingly dire. Humankind is failing the test of planetary sustainability, which has both environmental and social/political dimensions. I won’t burden you here with the usual recitation of humanity’s wicked problems (such as genocide with impunity, out-of-control AI, overwhelming pollution, egregious inequality, political corruption, and all the rest). The general point is that our global crisis is devastating and relentless in much the same way that the wars in Gaza or Ukraine are devastating and virtually impossible to stop through any known means.

In a real sense, then, humanity is in a helpless state, and this is why millions of benign ETs are here on an urgent mission, as made clear in this early teaching in June by Ashtar, “commander of the Galactic Light Forces of the Ashtar Command,” who states that their mission is “ordained by the Supreme Creator . . . and protected by cosmic decree.”

The grim conclusion of Perspective 1 is that, unless our current maladies are quickly reversed, a dystopian future of systemic collapse and die-off appears inevitable.
Allow this first viewpoint to become an initial premise informing our exploration of the emergency presence of GFL. We should add that, according to Ashtar:

“Some of our vessels are in orbit just beyond your atmosphere. Others are stationed on the far side of your moon and even within your solar systems neighboring planets, all cloaked for now. We have ships positioned over key energy vortexes of Earth and even beneath your oceans as part of this grand preparation.”

Perspective 2: While the above snapshot is starkly negative, our second perspective holds that transcendent faith in an infinite and loving God offers a way out of self-destruction. Choosing the divine way is the surest path forward, according to all GFL instructors—many of whom sound like mystic poets. Their prophecy of an imminent transformation is starkly positive—and parallels the eschatologies of our great religions.

But there is a critical turning point in the “ascension” path to planetary sustainability. Getting there requires a critical mass of dedicated spiritual practitioners among people of all faiths—and to my great surprise, the GFL states that this tipping point has already been achieved on Earth. Those of us engaged in direct communion with the divine are now the vanguard of a unified world religion that will evolve by the year 2040—as stated in a lesson received on October 25. Here’s a small excerpt:

“Beloved hearts, before we speak further of love’s immensity, allow us to illuminate what is unfolding in the domain humanity calls religion. From our vantage beyond time, we witness how every creed, every temple, every prayer language was a bright fragment of one great mirror—each shard reflecting a facet of the same Infinite Source. For millennia, these fragments glittered separately, guiding tribes and nations through the long night of forgetfulness. Yet as the dawn of higher consciousness rises upon Earth, those scattered reflections begin to converge into a single radiant surface. By the year 2040 of your calendar, this convergence will reach full resonance. It will not arrive as conquest or collapse, but as a gentle dissolving—an awakening recognition that there has only ever been One Presenceshining through countless forms. . . . Every faith kept alive a spark of the One Light through centuries when darkness seemed to prevail. But now the lesson is complete. The next stage of spiritual maturity is dawning: direct communion without intermediaries, a universal practice of inner stillness through which every soul perceives the same living Presence within.”

Seen from this optimistic perspective, humankind is on a fast track to join the greater community of enlightened worlds.

And it all sounds too good to be true.

In the face of the skeptics (including me in moments of doubt), GFL boldly asserts that a huge leap is imminent, even in the face of our current grisly scenes of genocide, poverty, corruption, and turbulence. It doesn’t matter if you are a pessimist or a doomer; spritely optimism is a constant theme in all GFL transmissions.
Indeed, the GFL teachers, all of them, frequently insist that what we see in the news today is the proverbial darkness before the dawn.
It’s the apocalypical acting out of the obstructionists before they flame out. It’s the final and desperate stand of the so-called dark cabal, “the powers that were,” as their self-dealing and illegitimate ruling institutions crumble and collapse before our eyes. We’ll be escorted through this harsh period by our designated “teachers from the light”—the advanced extraterrestrials mandated by our Creator to take the lead.
What makes the GFL instructors so qualified to lead such a profound mission? The answer is simple: their races long ago passed their own test of planetary survival. Their success is due to their own partnershipwith the Universal Creator, which guided them toward global sustainability and a unified world religion. [The image below appeared in the session just cited, and depicts the convergence of our world’s religions.]

Progress for any inhabited planet requires inspired revelation

I have viewed several dozen GFL videos so far. And I’ve concluded that the achievement of an enlightened civilization onanyinhabited planet entails slow but sureevolution punctuated by occasional leaps. Success requires millennia of guidance by forces of light in all its forms, both inner and outer.

But the choice to follow the light is optional, given that sovereign free will is always sacrosanct.

Sadly, in rare cases, a planet may opt out. And of so, it eventually self-destructs. But the average inhabited world opts-in, and its transformations unfold by means of periodic divine revelations, visitations, and giftings of divine energy. If the population is receptive, such influences render these worlds supremely sustainable and well-governed. They settle down permanently into posterity as a lawful and peaceful global culture, radiant with love and compassion.

And at some point, such a mature world embarks on interplanetary exploration, often to share their achievements with cosmic siblings on younger worlds, especially a troubled planet like ours, which has been isolated for eons due to a calamitous start.

A forensic look at our planetary dilemma

And yet, a third point of view is missing from this picture, which I will now bluntly state as Perspective 3: the notion that our dire threat of planetary collapseis not directly our fault.

Here I offer the audacious premise that our current global crises have a malignantoff-world origin.Everything else is secondary.

Consider that the record of human history is marred by human exploitation, environmental degradation, and ferocious warfare, including the specter of an endless series of violent empires (e.g., Rome, the Mongols, Nazi Germany) that rise and fall in succession. And yet, it is also true that humanity has enjoyed brief golden ages: ancient Athens, the Tang dynasty in China, Germany prior to WWI, the US after WWII. But those short periods of high culture are the exceptions that prove the rule. Not one of these bursts of peace and creativity have endured sufficiently to enable a permanent flowering of human potential. They wereallunsustainable in every dimension of human activity.

According to Perspective 3, this depressing record is asymptomatic expression.In other words, our putative human nature (read: original sin) is not the direct cause of these woes. Rather, to put it starkly, we are traumatized survivors of collective abuse by

outside usurpers and human elites who colluded with them, as alluded to in ancient records worldwide.

And this continues to be the case up to the current moment, when innumerable witnesses speak to the fact that a global cabal, which draws sustenance from off-world support, has held sway on our world—even threatening nuclear war to get its way. (See the transcriptfor the transmission on this topic by Mira, pictured at left.)

Tragic as this sounds, a forensic analysis reveals that the original “tort” was visited upon us by malicious non-human intelligences, both fallen angels and dark ETs—and isstilla factor.Let this be the third and final distinction informing our exotheological inquiry, but please refer to our forthcoming Part II for much more detail.

While most “modern” people miss this essential fact about diabolical off-world interference, biblical Christians grasp this truth in mythic form, for example, in the description of the Nephilim of Genesis 6:1-4, the stories of Satan in numerous passages, and in the doctrine of original sin attributed to Adam’s fall.

I provide a modernized theological understanding of these realities in my recent study,Truths About Evil, Sin, and the Demonic (Wipf & Stock, 2023). In this work I provide a history of the problem of evil followed by theodicy for the future, that is, a theological understanding of the nature of evil and its overcoming. I also call for “the fostering of the cosmic religion of the future” (the slogan of Rodan Institute)—one of many versions of which can be found in the GFL transmissions.

Benign intervention is on fast track because compensation is due to us

The key point remains the same: the remedial ancient interventions described earlier were warranted. And such revelations and visitationscontinue to be requiredif we are to finally break with our past trauma at the hands of once-dominant dark forces—a great purgation evoked in mytho-poetic form in the biblical Book of Revelation.

I argue this because the malign effect of some sort of off-world calamity seems to have powerfully cascaded down through the millennia and is now manifesting as our present moment of great peril and threat of self-destruction. Thankfully, momentum

has been slowed by the reconstructive policies inspired by gifts of grace, including the evolution of constitutional democratic government, the modern focus on human rights, and the astounding progress in science and technology of the last two centuries.

So, here’s the upshot:unaided social evolution is insufficient. Heavenly and extraterrestrial support, that is, off-world assistance commensurate with our current predicament is needed in the coming months and years—and again, thankfully, the universe has purchased “cosmic underwriting” for our recovery in the form of the sacred assets conferred by earlier interventions.

If one can accept Perspective 3—the idea that we are unwitting victims of off-world exploitation—then it makes sense that lavish mercy is not only available, but in fact isdue to us in the form of compensatory grace.

Consider the fact that, even in ordinary human statutes, the remedy for a tort isimmediate compensation, the payment of monetary damages that bring justice to the injured party. Allow me to speculate that a heavenly jurisprudence is now at work, and it has ruled that rapid compensation or reparation is now due to the long-suffering peoples of Earth.

And that’s why I argue, with caution, that one of the more uplifting new forms of compensatory grace now owed to us, but just one among many, comes our way from the Galactic Federation of Light, which can best be understood within the framework of our three Perspectives, each one a factor in the global events to come.

Download the full Report here as a 21-page PDF.