This Marvelous Book
Submitted by Joe Feller
I
came home from Vietnam in 1970 feeling
like little more than a wild
animal. Addicted to heroin and with no
direction in life, I didn't even
have a clue what the questions were. I
had been raised in Seattle, and
when I got home, Boeing was laying off
five thousand workers per week,
people with Ph.D.'s were pumping gas,
and the job market was virtually
nonexistent.
I kicked
the heroin, but not drugs entirely.
Later that year, while under a
massive dose of LSD in Long Beach,
California, I was approached on the
street by a man named Brother Jack, who
looked me right in the eyes and
said, "Jesus loves you." I immediately
knew this to be unequivocally
true. Nothing inside of me had any
argument. Several days later, I
looked this man up and my spiritual
journey began.
Jack was
from a strongly Pentecostal background
and had been through much of
what I'd been through, but he was older
and had been forgiven much. The
love he had for his brothers and sisters
was palpable and made a
lasting impression on me. My life began
to change, and I found myself
going to a Bible college in Costa Mesa.
At first all was well, but I
had questions as I studied the Bible
that no one at the college could
answer; they told me I was flirting with
Satan by asking those sorts of
questions. They were afraid, and yet I
kept reading Jesus' watchword,
"Fear not."
So I left
the school and moved north to Sonoma,
where my cousin's ex-wife,
Patricia, was caretaker of the Religion
of Jesus Church. The first
evening my cousin took me over there,
Patricia called me into a little
side room and said she had a book that
she was certain would interest
me. She opened The
Urantia Book
to page 21, said "Start here," and left
the room. When I saw the title
of the page, "The Universal Father," I
prayed for God to keep me from
harm, and began reading. By the time I'd
finished the page, I could
hardly see through the tears that were
falling. Thus began my
relationship with this marvelous book.
That was
in 1975, and though I was to go through
a whole lot of self-induced
misery and addiction for another sixteen
years, God never left me. And,
except for having my Urantia Book stolen
once in 1980, I have always
had a copy in my living room. Best of
all, I had the privilege of
introducing it to my wife when we
started dating, and she is still
reading it. The book has served to
enhance my personal relationship
with God, and I do not entertain the
slightest doubt that it is exactly
what it says it is.
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