Q: There is a great similarity to Urantia Book teachings in Ellen White’s writings, Seventh Day Adventist theology (Jesus is Michael, soul sleep, no hell but wicked are finally destroyed, an executive judgment in heaven, acknowledgment of heavenly intelligences observing), and William Sadler was originally Adventist. The connection is clear, while few mention it. If perhaps more Urantia Book readers were Adventists and vice versa, then great change might occur! The Urantia Book states this would be ideal for Christianity, the main representative body of Christ believers in the world, and is inevitable. Comments?

A: Thank you for writing to us with this interesting question. It is a pleasure to hear from a fellow Urantia Book reader.

It could be that one of the reasons that Dr Sadler was chosen for his service to the revelation was that his mind was already prepared for some of the revelatory concepts in The Urantia Book as a result of his association with the Adventist church. His mind-set made him the perfect person to accept these new concepts, as he had fewer elements of traditional and authoritarian Christianity to transcend.

Any religion that fosters a personal kind of relationship with a personal God, and that allows for freedom of thought is a really good religion to belong to.

While I can agree with you that the Adventist church may be one of the more progressive religions in our world, I don’t see where The Urantia Book advocates that the Adventist church is the best, or that it is inevitable that all should become Adventists; that is how your last sentence sounded to me. You probably did not literally mean to say that, but I wanted to clarify that point.

What IS inevitable is that these hidden truths of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man—along with the religion of personal spiritual experience—WILL one day transform our world. Whether we find them first in an established religion or in another kind of progressive church, we will all eventually find these truths as a result of our own personal experience. It is this that will truly transform the world, in my opinion.

From The Urantia Book:

“But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of the Master’s life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.

“The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation. (195:9.2)

Again, I think that the Sadler/Adventist connection is a significant one—mainly for the reason stated above. One could do much worse than decide to join the Adventist Church as one that already holds several of the revelatory truths that we’ve been given through The Urantia Book. As always, Urantia Book reader/believers can act as leaven in any religious organization to help upstep and enlighten established dogma with the refreshing truths of The Urantia Book.

Finally, you might be interested to read more about the connections between Dr Sadler and Ellen White. At the Urantia Book Historical Society website, please see H ERE, which is a search function for the extensive library. Just type in “Ellen White” (minus the quotation marks) in order to see a selection of articles that mention her in connection with The Urantia Book and Dr Sadler.

Thanks again for writing. I hope that this reply has been of some use for you. The comments and opinions are my own. Please feel free to write back at any time!