|
find it declared that our God-given free will is sacrosanct. Having certain knowledge of a divine being and of what that being might absolutely require from us cancels the grant of unconditional free will. Uncertainty is an essential requirement for this grant of free will to be truly free.
3. Possible error sources. Failure to understand that Part 4, "The Life of Jesus" was the whole of the revelation intended for actual publication
There is yet another possible explanation for the error content of these Papers, one that some believe is the most likely reason for its existence. It relates to Part 4, the Life of Jesus of Nazareth, being the real revelation. This implies that the other three parts of The Urantia Book were derived from material accumulated during the establishment and training of an organization that was nurtured so as to ensure publication and distribution of the real revelation.
Since none of us has ever been a celestial being (that we know of) charged with the responsibility of delivering an updated repeat of the revelation by Jesus of Nazareth about the true nature of God, we are quite ignorant of the factors involved and the degree of difficulty attaching to various phases of the task.
The task appears to have had the following components. Find a way to get the revelation into an earth language, find and train people who will accept it, then foster a larger group who will eventually form an organization to print, publish, and distribute the revelation and publicize its existence.
The first component required a choice of country and language. Considering the chaotic situation after world war one and the depression era that followed, it is not surprising that the United States was the country of choice. Hence English had to be the language of choice.
We know nothing of how the recipient, the one generally called the sleeping subject, was chosen nor what his qualities would need to have been other than not being excessively perturbed by the events to follow.
A group then had to be found to receive the revelation and transcribe it into suitable form for copying. These two units had to be brought together in a way that would ensure amicable cooperation. Amazingly, Dr William S. Sadler was chosen to lead this phase. Subsequent history demonstrates the remarkable abilities of those who made these choices.
The first contact with the Sadlers may have been as early as 1906.1 In 1909 William S. Sadler was still a staunch associate and disciple of Seventh Day Adventist guru, Ellen G. White. He was a conservative evangelical Christian, a believer in the infallibility of the Bible, and in the imminent return of Christ. In that year he published a book entitled Soul Winning Texts 2 consisting of selected quotations from both the Old and New Testaments that were designed to help the sinner to, "see the light." Examination of that book reveals Sadler as the most unlikely looking candidate that could be imagined for the role of playing midwife to a new revelation--and definitely not one with any potential to play herald to the rebirth of the original spiritual religion of Jesus of Nazareth.
The people around Sadler who became close associates in this affair were of the same ilk. His wife, Lena, also was a Seventh Day Adventist. The two attended medical school together, first at Stanford and then at SDA Medical Mission School, Illinois. Both graduated with MD certification from the State of Illinois. Later, Sadler changed his interests from surgery to psychiatry, going to Europe to study for a year in Vienna with Freud. On return to the USA, the Sadlers established a practice in Chicago.
Possibly in 1908, the Sadlers were temporarily housed in a furnished apartment while waiting for their new residence to be prepared. Late one summer evening, a lady tenant knocked on their door and asked would they go downstairs with her because her sleeping husband was acting strangely but she could not awaken him.1 This was the first contact of the Sadlers with the "sleeping subject" subject who then remained their patient at least until 1935.
Rightly he was called the "sleeping subject" for though everything about him appeared normal, they were quite unable to awaken him. He did so, of his own accord, several hours later and quite unaware of anything being amiss. This strange behavior repeated itself several times then, on one such an occasion when he was observed to moisten his lips, Dr. Lena Sadler asked how he felt and a voice, not his own that his wife could recognize, answered it was a student from another planet on an observation visit. Sadler himself assumed this was some kind of automatic speaking produced from the subconscious of the patient.
|
|
