New Book Answers the Question: Was 'The Urantia Book' a Strange Hoax or the Most Important Event of the Twentieth Century?

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Jul 20, 2010, 07:55 ET

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla., July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- A new, unauthorized publication, A History of the Urantia Papers, reveals the untold story of The Urantia Book. Over 500,000 copies of The Urantia Book are in print, yet it has never been promoted. It contains 2097 pages, over a million words, and yet no one knows who authored it. The book purports to be a new revelation of the life and teachings of Jesus, one solidly grounded in New Testament realities. Yet the book states it does not represent a new religion, but rather a modern epochal revelation that is designed to synthesize modern science, religion and philosophy into a broad new understanding of reality.

There are numerous closet readers of The Urantia Book (some of them famous), and copies of the tome are in the Vatican and NASA. Modern theologians take The Urantia Book seriously ... a full chapter was devoted to its origins in the Cambridge University Press 2008 publication The Invention of Sacred Tradition. The remarkable fifty-year process that resulted in The Urantia Book and the turmoil that followed its publication in 1955 are told in detail with the national publication of A History of the Urantia Papers ( http://www.urantiapapershistory.com ) by Larry Mullins, with Dr. Meredith Sprunger.

The story that unfolds about The Urantia Book in A History of the Urantia Papers is not what one would expect. It is more gripping than any fiction mystery. There are no gurus, saints or new age fanatics associated with its origin. If The Urantia Book is a hoax, no one has ever figured out why it was perpetrated. No one achieved fame or fortune from it. First editions of The Urantia Book sell for $1,000 or more. Yet, almost as remarkable as its origin and contents was the bizarre struggle for the control of the subsequent printings of The Urantia Book that finally resulted in the loss of its copyright and its placement in the public domain. A History of the Urantia Papers has 484 pages and features over 110 illustrations and exhibits.

Larry Mullins was one of the key authorities used as a source for the Cambridge University Press chapter in The Invention of Sacred Tradition on the origin of The Urantia Book. He is a successful businessman and the author of several books, including most recently The MetaValues Breakthrough and Immature People with Power, How to Handle Them. Dr. Meredith Sprunger has had a remarkable career as a college president, professor, a licensed psychologist, author and an ordained minister. Dr. Sprunger is the only living colleague of Dr. William Sadler (1875-1969), the prominent Chicago psychiatrist whose name is most closely associated with the origin of the Urantia Papers. Larry Mullins and Dr. Sprunger strip away prejudice and superstition and divulge the documented facts about the origin of the Urantia Papers.