Did Sadler Write The Urantia Papers?

Our Urantia Book community actually tackled the subject “Did Sadler Write The Urantia Book” many times in the past, especially since the discovery of many of the human sources. The following is my current take on this topic.

I don’t think we will ever fully understand how the Urantia Papers came into our time and space. The puzzle of what transpired between the sleeping subject and the contact commission (which included Dr. William S. Sadler) will remain a mystery. What we do (possibly) know is thankfully already archived in The Urantia Book Fellowship’s website, including Dr. William S. Sadler’s appendix from The Mind at Mischief printed in 1929. In that appendix, Sadler gives a brief description of “a rather peculiar case of psychic phenomena” which he cannot satisfactorily explain away, as he had just spent the entire book debunking occult and psychic occurrences.

Why he mentions this sleeping subject, but buries it in a short couple of pages in the appendix, is also a mystery to me. If Sadler was setting us up to deflect away from him as the author, why did he give the idea of the sleeping subject  such limited narration exposure? One would think that he might expound on this idea more elaborately to effectively deflect authorship away from him.

Further, Sadler is attributed to have written an article about “Sixty-Four Original Urantia Book Concepts” he describes as original in The Urantia Book “based on his own understanding and research” (presumably sometime around the mid-twentieth century). Writing such an article provides the possibility that he had to discover these concepts rather than that he created these concepts. This article can be seen in the repository of The Urantia Book Fellowship’s website recopied into The Fellowship Herald, Summer 2015, pages 33-35 at https://assetrepository.urantiabook.org/AssetRepository/Archive/NewsletterArchive/newsletters/herald/herald2015.pdf

So, the conundrum regarding Dr. Sadler and the Urantia Papers will probably remain an enigma to us. I believe this quote from section “4. The Mystery of God” (of “Paper 1: The Universal Father”) epitomizes the open ended question of what actually happened in bringing The Urantia Book into play.

As a reality in human spiritual experience God is not a mystery. But when an attempt is made to make plain the realities of the spirit world to the physical minds of the material order, mystery appears: mysteries so subtle and so profound that only the faith-grasp of the God-knowing mortal can achieve the philosophic miracle of the recognition of the Infinite by the finite, the discernment of the eternal God by the evolving mortals of the material worlds of time and space. (1:4.7 [27.2])

In the end, I consider the Urantia Papers as combined into The Urantia Book to be a harmonious arrangement from beginning to end, much like a symphonic masterpiece. We know what all the different musical instruments are capable of individually and somewhat collectively. Yet it’s the master composer (in The Urantia Book’s case, the revelatory commission—the Orvonton commission sent to Urantia to reveal the Urantia Papers) that puts all the instruments (human sources) together to create a beautiful composition that then becomes much more than just a sum of its components. Maybe the Spirit of Truth is our conductor, and is also waiting for us to get our own instruments tuned, practiced, and ready to harmoniously join in.

The new helper which Jesus promised to send into the hearts of believers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This divine endowment is not the letter or law of truth, neither is it to function as the form or expression of truth. The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels. And this new teacher is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptive truth. (180:5.1 [1949.3])

Besides the mystery of The Urantia Book origins (and we humans do love a good mystery), consider this possibility: the human sources were embedded in The Urantia Book, knowingly by the revelatory contributors. This was done with the foreknowledge that all of these sources would be discovered later, so that the dedicated reader-believers would not become adherents to a “sacred text” mentality. This was purposely done so The Urantia Book would not be overtaken by spiritually immature humans who would want the power to become authorities of “the Word of God,” which unfortunately, in the extreme, is what so many “sacred text” radicalized religious zealots do with their scriptures. So it is, on and on with any group that claims they own “the Truth” and want the rest of the world to bow down to their beliefs via religious control, power politics or outright conquest. This “sacred text” mindset leads them to believe that they really are doing “God’s will.”

The revelatory restatement of the living gospel of Jesus in The Urantia Book is the ultimate antidote to a potential “holier than thou” scripture-based attitude. And so, we must harken to Jesus’ Spirit of Truth in partnership with our indwelling Thought Adjusters, and use our free will (humbled by grace and mercy) to garner real spiritual power to influence the world.

And so, for centuries, the Christian church has labored under great embarrassment because it dared to lay claim to those mysterious powers and privileges of the kingdom, powers and privileges which can be exercised and experienced only between Jesus and his spiritual believer brothers. And thus it becomes apparent that membership in the church does not necessarily mean fellowship in the kingdom; one is spiritual, the other mainly social. (170:5.18 [1866.1])

Mistake not! there is in the teachings of Jesus an eternal nature which will not permit them forever to remain unfruitful in the hearts of thinking men. The kingdom as Jesus conceived it has to a large extent failed on earth; for the time being, an outward church has taken its place; but you should comprehend that 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. The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still alive and will eventually and certainly come forth from this long submergence, just as surely as the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful unfolding of its less attractive creature of metamorphic development. (170:5.21 [1866.4])

Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all men. It is futile to talk about a revival of primitive Christianity; you must go forward from where you find yourselves. Modern culture must become spiritually baptized with a new revelation of Jesus’ life and illuminated with a new understanding of his gospel of eternal salvation. And when Jesus becomes thus lifted up, he will draw all men to himself. Jesus’ disciples should be more than conquerors, even overflowing sources of inspiration and enhanced living to all men. Religion is only an exalted humanism until it is made divine by the discovery of the reality of the presence of God in personal experience. (195:10.1 [2084.1])

In summary, the question of Dr. Sadler’s full involvement in the coming together of the Urantia Papers will undoubtedly remain a mystery. What’s most important is the truth revealed in The Urantia Book: it will live on and dynamically grow through each one of us who choose to be led by the Spirit of Truth.