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The Forum
Only the tiny Sadler group actually received this training. The origin of a larger group that became known as the Forum was such that they could not have been participants. Likewise there is no evidence that the either the revelators or the Contact Group (the Sadler group) ever attempted any similar training program to upgrade or change the religious beliefs of Forum members.
Other than what has been written by Dr Sadler, little is known about the pre-Forum history of the revelatory process. The Forum originated from a Sunday afternoon patient-doctor gathering convened for the benefit of patients of the Sadlers, and intended to be of a medical nature. But a chance remark by Dr Sadler on the nature of psychic phenomena changed that. In it he said, "With one or two exceptions, all the psychic phenomena which I have investigated have turned out to be either conscious or unconscious frauds." This was the key that commenced the Forum and opened the revelation process.
According to Dr Sadler there was such great interest in these exceptions that his plan for Sunday doctor-patient social gatherings was abandoned. And soon after, during a nocturnal vigil of the Contact Group, and in answer to a question, an "alleged student visitor, speaking through the sleeping subject said: If you only knew what you are in contact with you would not ask such trivial questions. You would rather ask such questions as might elicit answers of supreme value to the human race." "Later that night," says Sadler, "one of our number said: 'Now they have asked for it--let us give them questions that no human being can answer."'
As a direct result of these comments, those attending the Sunday afternoon gatherings were asked if they would like to join in the preparation of questions. This was the beginning of the Forum and the commencement of receipt of the text that finally appeared as Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Urantia Papers. According to Dr Sadler, instructions from the revelators established a routine in which questions submitted at one meeting were answered in time for the next. This pattern is described as, "No questions, no Papers," and "From first to last, when the Papers appeared, the questions disappeared."
This question and answer procedure imposed by the revelators upon the Forum generates some strange and little appreciated difficulties. Through it the revelators had forgone control over the revelatory material to be given to Urantia. For obvious reasons the answers given to questions from the Forum could not be the text of any previously prepared revelatory material intended for the spiritual upgrading of Urantians.
Again, because of the universe rule proscribing interference with our free will, the advent of the Forum must have been entirely fortuitous. It could not have been planned by the revelators. In consequence, its membership also had to be fortuitous. From Dr Sadler's description, it appears to have consisted mainly of middle class, well educated professionals, few of whom had any deep interest in religion.
From its beginning, the substance of the information flowing from the revelators was in the hands of the Forum, and not the revelators. This surely would appear to be a quite extraordinary way to present a planned revelation intended for advancing our spirituality.
It seems likely that the unplanned existence of the Forum was utilized simply because it was there. And being available, the revelators decided to see if it could be used to generate a group that could later undertake the printing and distribution of their revelation. If so, the question and answer sessions became a way of preparing the Forum members for a later task--just as they had done previously with the Sadler group.
But if a planned revelation was already in existence that had the sanction of high celestial authorities, where was it and what was it? The obvious answer to this is that since the Papers that constitute Part 4 of The Urantia Book do upgrade Jesus' Fourth Epochal Revelation they are the original revelation, while those in Parts 1-3 arose from what commenced as a training period. However Part 4 could not have been in its completed form as some of the human source material it uses was not published until the 1930's period.3
There are at least two scenarios concerning the makeup of the final revelation. Both commence with the initial content of the material provided to the Forum arising purely as answers to members' questions that were designed to test the validity of the revelators
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