Published in 1955 by Chicago, Illinois, psychiatrist William S. Sadler, The Urantia Book is a compilation of religious teachings that was supposedly dictated telepathically to humans by celestial beings between 1928 and 1935. The book is a complex work with 196 articles, or “papers,” each supposedly authored by one of several celestial beings. According to the Urantia Book Fellowship, which was founded in 1955 to unite believers in the book, the papers were received by a group of Sadler-led volunteers called the Contact Commission, whose names Sadler concealed both during and after the project. Some skeptics, however, believe that The Urantia Book was actually authored by Wilfred Kellogg, who once created a similar—if not the exact same—book for a fringe group of Seventh-Day Adventists founded by Sadler; Kellogg said that he had received, or channelled, the information from celestial beings. Skeptics suggest that The Urantia Book was simply the creation of people who incorporated many teachings from SeventhDay Adventism—and, indeed, from other Christian ideas found in the New Testament as well—into their work. For example, Jesus is an important figure in the book; his life is recounted, and the book expresses the beliefs that he was a son of God, performed miracles, was crucified and arose from the dead, and will appear again on Earth. The main message of the book, however, is that a part of God exists in each individual as a link between that person and the divine, and that this link allows God to speak to people, providing they do not block out the voice and therefore the will of God.

SEE ALSO:

• Channelling

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning