“There is a new book that offers you fresh solutions to age old problems, reassurance about the future, and personal peace of mind. It’s called The Urantia Book (Urantia means Earth). The Urantia book is a treasury of spiritual truth and intellectual insights…. illuminated by spiritual wisdom, its teachings address your problems and your needs.” Introduction to the Urantia Book (Boulder, CO: The Jesusonian Foundation, 1988).

I and a friend of mine entered the Boston Park Plaza Hotel on a Saturday afternoon in November. We found the registration desk and paid our admission fee. “To what?” you ask? To the Whole Health Expo. Being on Sound Doctrine Ministries’ mailing list, you are probably familiar with Congress ’95. And you may even be planning to attend Congress ’96 in January. (For those not familiar with Congress, every year the Evangelical Association of New England sponsors a huge gathering of Christians and Christian ministries. There are hundreds of ministries who have booths you can visit, there are seminars you can attend, etc.). Well, the New Age Movement has an answer to Congress — The Whole Health Expo.

Before roaming the exhibition hall to visit various booths, we proceeded straight to a seminar. A woman was going to give a lecture on The Urantia Book (see over for an account of my conversation with this woman). What is The Urantia Book? What does it teach?

The Urantia Book (Chicago: The Urantia Foundation, 1955) is a 2,097 page “revelation” given to a select group of earthlings during the second quarter of this century by beings not of this world. There are, according to proponents of the book, “trillions of inhabited planets, heavenly worlds, and spirit personalities” (Introduction to the Urantia Book, 2).

The book is divided into four parts: 1, the Central and Superuniverses; 2, the Local Universe; 3, the History of Urantia (Earth);

and 4, the Life and Teachings of Jesus. Since the book deals with Jesus (as most “revelations” do, it seems), we would do well to examine a few of its teachings concerning Him. Keep in mind that followers of The Urantia Book claim that it “generally [some say “perfectly”] corresponds with the Bible,” though “it stands unique, packed with new information and fresh insights” (Ibid., 7). Does it correspond or contradict? Let’s find out.

On page 1323, Jesus is described as “Michael of Nebadon,” “a Creator Son” (see also pp. 53, 1145), by “the Melchizedek director of the revelatory commission” (apparently one of these other-worldly beings). Thus, Jesus as the unique Son of God (see Jn. 1: 14, 18) is denied. Regarding Jesus’ crucifixion, page 2,002 reads, “It was man and not God who planned and executed the death of Jesus on the cross.” Yet this flatly contradicts Acts 2:22-23. Consequently, what are to Christians cardinal and essential doctrines relating to the Gospel of Christ (“propitiation, repentance, atonement… sacrifice… salvation, redemption, covenant,”) are to readers of The Urantia Book a product of “primordial ghost fear” (p. 1,005). Finally, regarding the bodily resurrection of Christ (see Jn. 2: 19-21; 20:24-27; Lk. 24:36-40), the book recalls “the formulation of a belief which was not true: the teaching that the material and mortal body of Jesus was raised from the grave” (p. 2,023).

Extra-biblical revelations abound. And for each and every one of them it is not a matter of adding more insight to the Bible, as adherents of these claim. Rather, it is a matter of contradiction. If the Bible is the word of God (and it is), any other “revelation” coming to us that contradicts the Bible must be rejected outright.