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the book, The Life and Teachings of Jesus, may have had a different origin though the evidence for this is conflicting.2 Parts 1, 2, and 3 were virtually complete in 1934, though there were additions and modifications up until about 1943. Part 4 was delivered complete in 1935.
For our present purpose, the period during which the Papers were received is our main interest. Lasting about ten years, according to Dr Sadler it commenced in a contact experience when a "visitor," speaking through the sleeping subject, answered a question with these words, "If only you knew what you are in contact with you would not ask such trivial questions. You would rather ask such questions as might elicit answers of supreme value to the human race."
Later that night one of Dr. Sadler's group exclaimed: "Now they have asked for it--let us give them questions that no human being can answer1."
A group called the Forum was then organized, the arrangement being that Papers would be received only as answers to specific questions from the Forum. Questions were posed, collected by Dr Sadler, placed in an arranged location, and an answer later received through the medium of the "sleeping subject."
One of these Papers contained material important to our quest for understanding the error content of the Papers. It needs to be read in the light of the aim of the Forum members that they should ask questions that no human being could answer.
"Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, even of physical origins, it has appeared to be wise from time to time to provide instruction in cosmology. And always has this made trouble for the future. The laws of revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge. Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the associated cosmologies therein presented.
"Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors…within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records. Let it be made clear that revelations are not necessarily inspired." (from P. 1109)
From the first paragraph we note that the laws of revelation "proscribe the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge." In this Paper it is also stated that in some cases information could be supplied to fill vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge. Perhaps this was what sanctioned the inclusion of prophetic material--despite the proscription against the provision of unearned knowledge.
The goal of Forum members to pose questions that human beings could not answer is in conflict with what are described as the laws of revelation--those proscribing provision of unearned knowledge. We might ponder what would have occurred if the answer to each such question had been, "Sorry, we are not permitted to answer." The revelators, whoever they might be, were in the hot seat. Failure to answer probably would have resulted in collapse of the project and loss of twenty years of preparatory work.
If we believe what we find in the Papers themselves, a betrayal of trust on the part of the revelators is unthinkable. Celestial beings of their apparent status simply do not break the rules. In most cases what they appear to have done is to provide the most up-to-date knowledge available in the early 1930's that came reasonably close to being an answer to the question--even though it might later prove to be erroneous. In some cases, there was no suitable response available and rather than responding, "Sorry we cannot answer," fill material was used that would pass muster for many years into the future but could eventually become seriously wrong.
In the long run this served to solve two problems. Granting the high status of the authors, they would probably anticipate the inevitability of many Forum members, and later readers of the Papers, acquiring a fundamentalist attitude to the revelation comparable with that of biblical fundamentalists. But the inclusion of what would later become blatantly erroneous answers,
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