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Regarding its formation Dr Sadler says, "It was inevitable that some sort of fraternal organization would grow out of the teachings of the Urantia Book. All interested persons could see that the Urantia teachings were opposed to the sectarianism of Christian believers. It was clear that it was not the purpose of the Urantia Revelation to start a new church."
A biased view against the Christian Church, even against religion itself, appears to have existed among these early Urantians, amounting almost to paranoia among many later devotees to the book. But there are many statements in the Papers that indicate the major purpose of the revelation is the regeneration of Christianity:
"What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name." (2090)
"If the Christian church would only dare to espouse the Master's program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual undertaking…." (2085)
"But the Christianity of even the twentieth century must not be despised…" (2085)
"The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present-day professed followers." (2086)
There are many more such statements, almost all in Part 4, so perhaps the bias was a leftover from the period prior to when Part 4 was received in 1935. However if many Forum members were antagonistic to Christianity or religion or both, then it must be presumed that the revelators organized the receipt of Papers in such a way that the Sunday afternoon discussions were dominated by topics that would hold the members' interest. And if that main interest was in non-religious themes, and the revelators adhered closely to the proscription against providing unearned knowledge, then almost certainly more and more error would have been introduced into the cosmology in the Papers.
Regardless of the correctness of such speculation, we are nevertheless introduced to some of the problems faced by revelators whose major aims included to bring to Urantia a new and more valid version of Jesus' Fourth Epochal Revelation.
However, portraying "teachings which are not too far removed from the thought and reactions of the age in which they are presented" would present ongoing problems even into the future when substantial numbers of Christians might commence to take the Papers seriously. In giving us Part 4, the revelators have chosen to do away with Adam and Eve as the first man and woman but to retain them in the Garden of Eden, not as the progenitors of original sin, but as donors of new genetic material meant to substantially upgrade the human race.
At a much deeper and more important theological level, they have chosen to condemn the atonement doctrine that was not only of supreme importance for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, but remains today as a potent force for calling Christians to Mass or the Eucharist. But retained in their revelation are many healing miracles, the voice at Jesus' baptism, Lazarus' resurrection from the dead, the Transfiguration story, and others that require some kind of supernatural intervention.
There are numerous statements in the Papers about the ineffectiveness of miracles in revealing the Father, building the Kingdom, proving the reality of God, or even engendering the gratitude of recipients. Thus, it is legitimate to wonder whether miracles, like the imparting of unearned knowledge, may actually be proscribed by some universe law. If so, the accounts of many or all of the miracles as described in the Urantia Papers will, at some future time, disappear from the record.
But perhaps their proscription, though being normal universe policy, may be waived during the incarnation experience of a Creator Son, which, in itself, is a miraculous event.
A further mystery in this saga of the Papers is the long, long delay between their receipt and their publication. If we accept the Papers as true revelation from a celestial source then the revelators were well aware that the longer the time period that elapsed prior to publication, the greater would be the number of errors that would be exposed in their cosmology.
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