I am a student of the revelation who is particularly drawn to the history we find mostly in Part III. Apart from it being absolutely fascinating, it accomplishes two things for me:
- Answers a multitude of “why” questions, and goes a long way towards explaining the state of affairs on our planet.
- Provides a gateway for research. What do I mean by that? The authors of The Urantia Book tell us that although much of the science in its pages will stand in need of revision as we progress, the history will not. It will stand the test of time and thus, the history in The Urantia Book is an obvious gateway for researchers to tackle the question of its credibility. The history is where the rubber meets the road.
Credibility is perhaps not an issue for a lot of readers, but for me, logic, consistency, and credibility were cornerstones I found lacking in the religious tradition I was raised in. They were in large part what led me to search elsewhere for answers, and after having found The Urantia Book, what led me to accept and believe its message.
Have I stopped searching? Absolutely not! For something to be considered worthy of my belief, it must be able to stand up to the most ruthless sincere criticism. Thus, while I am continually studying the revelation for a deeper and more profound understanding, I am also reading a great deal of other literature to keep myself as well informed as possible.
As much as The Urantia Book tells us about our history, digging into it more deeply, I realize just how much we haven’t been told. This isn’t a complaint per se; I have come to the conclusion that the revelators have told us just enough to give us direction, and to allow us the exercise of greater discernment over fact and fiction in the historical record. It is still up to us to do the work of connecting it all. (There is some inspiring work in this area by longtime students such as Derek Saramas and Chuck Thurston in their most excellent study groups, and Halbert Katzen’s work on his website).
What I find particularly lacking in The Urantia Book account is detail on the 160,000 year period between the Caligastia betrayal and the arrival of Adam and Eve. I have my theories as to why this is so, nonetheless there are a lot of unanswered questions regarding what happened during this period, and I find myself drawn to finding out as much as I can about questions such as: what kind of civilization did Caligastia and the rebels try to build? How advanced was it?
We know that the 100 were trying to get the city’s inhabitants to work with steam (66:5.25) before the rebellion; something we didn’t fully embrace until the 19th century. We have accounts of a war between the Gods using flying machines (vimanas) in some of our oldest surviving records such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. One description in the Mahabharata:
“The celestial chariot, enjoyable to the deities and beautifully crystalline in the sky,..”
-Mahabharata - Volume 1 - Adi Parva - 064
All of this to say, I think we grossly underestimate how far civilization had advanced by the outbreak of the rebellion, and then from that, what sort of things the rebels tried to do during their attempts to accelerate it.
In my opinion, knowing more about what the rebels tried to do, especially after the initial failure, would go a long way towards identifying those elements in our own civilization that either shouldn’t be there, or have been maliciously distorted; what exactly did the rebels do for the several millennia after their plans collapsed; and the question most concerning this article: once the rebel staff members died, how was Caligastia able to continue to exert his will over the human races and control them?
I found an intriguing answer to this question in a book written by Timothy Wyllie called Confessions of a Rebel Angel. I’m not going to argue the validity of the information in his book— have several big problems with the historical account of the rebel angel (my need for logic and consistency kicking in again)—but the intriguing part for me is how the angel says Caligastia exerted his control over the human races: he did so through primary midwayers who communicated his directives through oracles.
Think about that for a minute. When I read that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It makes an awful lot of sense! We know quite a bit about the enormous influence that oracles exerted over rulers in the ancient world. The rebel midwayers make excellent candidates for the “daemons” whom the oracles purportedly communicated with, and this whole set up is the only way I can imagine that Caligastia would be able to continually influence and shape entire civilisations once his direct connections to the races had died.
So why am I writing about this? Well, being exposed to that idea in Timothy’s book, it was still just a theory. But I took it to our study group for discussion, and one of our members made me aware of some of Plutarch’s lesser known writings.
Plutarch was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist who lived in the first century AD. He is primarily known for his works, Parallel Lives, and Moralia. He also served as the senior of two priests at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, the site of the famed Delphic Oracle. He was therefore in a unique position of authority to participate in, and record a meeting with a group of prominent Greek thinkers who had gathered to discuss a crisis of the oracles: it seems that they had fallen silent. His record takes the form of a dialogue entitled, On the Cessation of Oracles (De Defectu Oraculorum).
According to popular scholarship, the cessation of the oracles is attributed to the decline of Greek influence and religion, and the rise of Rome. Benno Zuiddam, in a paper written for the Society of Biblical Literature regarding his examination of De Defectu Oraculorum, suggests that this explanation is not sufficient to satisfactorily explain Plutarch’s view on the crisis. Plutarch’s explanation is decidedly religious in nature. I agree with Zuiddam, and in the light of The Urantia Book‘s account of events connected with Michael’s bestowal, Plutarch seems pretty much right on the money.
We are told in The Urantia Book that in conjunction with Michael’s termination of the Lucifer Rebellion, all rebels were rounded up and removed from the planet (save Caligastia and Daligastia). This occurred exactly in the timeframe Plutarch asserts that the oracles ceased.
So why is this important to Urantia Book students? Well, the removal of all rebels from the planet is something that is not easily reconciled by some readers. The continued proliferation of stories of demonic possession, and a wide variety of similar, as yet unexplained phenomenon would suggest that perhaps not all the rebels have been removed. The alarm of Plutarch and his contemporaries at just the time we are told that the rebels were indeed removed is a welcome corroboration.
It is also interesting to note that even though the oracles had “fallen silent”, many ordinary people persisted in seeking them out for decades to follow. It took several centuries for them to decline into full obscurity. Tradition is not broken easily and the power of the mind to project meaning and perhaps the phenomena themselves is a very real possibility.
Realizing the connection between the cessation of the oracles and the termination of the Lucifer Rebellion isn’t a huge revelation; it may not change your life, but sometimes a large number of little corroborations goes much further than one huge one. In really digging into The Urantia Book—doing the hard work—I have been rewarded many times by these little synchronicities. They keep me motivated and hungry for more.
If you are hungry for more, you might want to visit the following places:
Halbert Katzen’s UBtheNews Project.
Urantia Book Network for Derek Samaras and Chuck Thurston’s study groups.