Urantia21: A Restatement of The Urantia Book for the 21st Century

“The modern state is the institution which survived in the long struggle for group power. Superior power eventually prevailed, and it produced a creature of fact — the state — together with the moral myth of the absolute obligation of the citizen to live and die for the state. But the state is not of divine genesis; it was not even produced by volitionally intelligent human action; it is purely an...

“No sooner had people partially solved the problem of making a living than they were confronted with the task of regulating human contacts. The development of industry demanded law, order, and social adjustment; private property necessitated government.” Government on Urantia began with the village and grew to progressively larger units until the emergence of the present nation-state. Our current...

All human institutions are based on the mores of the past which become taboos, then traditions, and ultimately conventions. Human institutions fall into three basis categories: self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, and self-gratification. “Primitive humans were not slow to recognize the advantages of association. Association led to organization, and the first result of organization was division of...

“This is the beginning of the narrative of the long, long forward struggle of the human species from a status that was little better than an animal existence, through the intervening ages, and down to the later times when a real, though imperfect, civilization had evolved among the higher races of humankind.” Socialization initially takes place for mutual protection against animals and hostile tri...

“The problems associated with human existence on Urantia are impossible to understand without a knowledge of certain great epochs of the past, notably the occurrence and consequences of the planetary rebellion. Although this upheaval did not seriously interfere with the progress of organic evolution, it did markedly modify the course of social evolution and of spiritual development.” The story of...

When the ability to choose the path of eternal survival has developed in the minds of primitive humans, a spiritual administrator is generally dispatched to supervise the progress of the planet. On Urantia this assignment occurred about half a million years after the first instance of human will, and concurrent with the appearance of the six colored races. The Planetary Administrator brings a corp...

Evolution takes place on three levels – physical, intellectual, and spiritual. The initiation of life on a new planet puts the evolutionary process in motion. The early stages of evolution are purposeful and are guided by the Life Carriers, who may employ natural resources and fortuitous circumstances which will enhance the developmental progress of life, but are not permitted to mechanically inte...

The early races of humanity began to form distinct races based on the mixture of human and simian stocks. Centers of primitive culture were developed in various parts of the inhabited world, as glaciers forced these tribes to move in particular directions. Finally, in the northwestern highlands of India, a new type of human emerged that exhibited skin that was colored in six different varieties. T...

Urantia was registered as an inhabited world when the first two human beings, twins, exhibited the characteristics of human mind. This paper tells the story of this first human pair and their progeny. As humans multiplied, social conventions were created to govern the emerging tribal systems. From these beginnings, human tribes spread throughout the contiguous continents that are now known as Asia...

The immediate ancestors of humankind were the lemur type of mammal. Brain size now became the determining factor in human evolution. The Urantia Book calls these creatures “mid-mammals,” and compared with earlier species, they were an improvement in every way. Modern humans and simians (apes) are both descended from these mid-mammals, but they represent completely different strains of evolution. T...

“The parent of the placental mammals was a small, highly active, carnivorous, springing type of dinosaur.” “Mammals possess an immense survival advantage over all other forms of animal life...” “Although the early placental mammals sprang from carnivorous ancestors, very soon herbivorous branches developed, and, before long, omnivorous mammalian families also sprang up.” The ice age marked the end...

The dominant creatures of the beginning of this era were the frogs, followed by reptiles that evolved into what we know as dinosaurs. After millions of years the dinosaurs died out and were replaced by a profusion of birds and flowers, leading to the appearance of trees. Both land and marine life continued to evolve and led to the culmination of the development of land creatures, the mammals.

The history of the planet is marked by five major eras, culminating in the emergence of mammals in the last fifty million years. Life had been implanted in shallow seas, and from them came the earliest forms of marine creatures. Throughout the evolution of living creatures, the planet was going through a series of physical changes, with continents rising and sinking. The marine-life era concluded...

“ 600,000,000  years ago the commission of Life Carriers sent out from Jerusem arrived on Urantia and began the study of physical conditions preparatory to launching life on world number 606 of the Satania system.” The story is told by a member of an order of being called the “Life Carriers,” who narrates the development of life here after the initial implantation roughly 550,000,000 years ago. Th...

These papers focus on the history of our planet beginning almost one trillion years ago with the initial organization of the Andronover nebula into the material parent of our local universe. This fascinating process is described up to the point where our Local Universe Creator began the work of universe building. Our own sun emerged five billion years ago, leading to the formation of our solar sys...

Episode Summary: “The Universal Source is unity. Deity is universally co-ordinated. The universe of universes is one vast integrated mechanism which is absolutely controlled by one infinite mind. The physical, intellectual, and spiritual domains of universal creation are divinely correlated.” This paper explores universal coordination in the physical, intellectual, and spiritual realms, along with...

Episode Summary: “The age of light and life is the final evolutionary attainment of a world of time and space.” It is the culmination of ages of physical, social, and spiritual evolution. “The advanced stages of a world settled in light and life represent the acme of evolutionary material development.” The description of a state of light and life presented here gives us a preview of the future of...

Episode Summary: Lucifer’s attitude was one of claiming unbridled personal liberty from any restrictions and responsibilities imposed by a relationship to a larger structure. The concept of liberty is explored in this paper and has direct implications for life on our planet today. Also explained is the way justice and mercy are administered by the spiritual powers that are in place in the universe...

Episode Summary: Our planet has been handicapped by two major setbacks in its evolution toward light and life. The worst of these was the decision by our system sovereign to rebel against the universe government and declare independence from it. Many of the inhabitants of the system were swept up in this rebellion, causing a breakdown in the evolutionary process. This tragedy has not yet been full...

Episode Summary: Every inhabited planet is designed to go through a process of physical, social, and spiritual evolution that leads to a final flowering of harmonious life that The Urantia Book calls “light and life.” On an average world there are seven major epochs that mark the progress of this evolution. This paper provides a description of those epochs, along with an assessment of the present...

Episode Summary: “During the dispensation of a Planetary Administrator, primitive mortals reach the limit of natural evolutionary development, and this biologic attainment signals the System Sovereign to dispatch the Biologic Uplifters to such a world.” These uplifters are material beings who are ordinarily resident on the system capital, but are dispatched to individual evolutionary planets to in...

Episode Summary: Each evolutionary world has a spiritual administrator in charge of the spiritual government of the planet. On Urantia we are unaware of the existence of this government, but according to The Urantia Book it has existed for ages and is directly involved in our planetary evolution. The functions of a planetary government are described in this paper, along with an outline of the prog...

Episode Summary: "All mortal-inhabited worlds are evolutionary in origin and nature. These spheres are the spawning ground, the evolutionary cradle, of the mortal races of time and space. Each unit of the ascendant life is a veritable training school for the stage of existence just ahead, and this is true of every stage of humankind’s progressive Paradise ascent; just as true of the initial mortal...

Episode Summary: “The morontia life, extending as it does over the various stages of the local universe career, is the only possible approach by which material mortals could attain the threshold of the spirit world.” What an exciting revelation it is to have a description of the life that immediately follows our existence on this planet! The morontia progression – the transition from material to s...

Episode Summary: The name “mansion worlds” has been used to designate the first morontia worlds to be encountered by mortals after leaving their planets of origin. On the mansion worlds, survivors pick up where they left off on their home planet but receive new bodies with heightened senses that can appreciate the stunning beauty of the morontia existence. The mansion worlds provide the transition...