A previous article in this issue discussed the strange and quite astonishing error in Part 4 of The Urantia Book regarding its use of a forty day interval elapsing between the time of Jesus crucifixion on the eve of the Jewish Passover and the time of his ascension on the day appointed for the feast of Pentecost. This ancient Jewish harvest festival came seven weeks and one day after Passover, a fifty day period  that derived its name from the Greek word "pentekostos" which means fifty days.

One must be wrong.

The Paper provides the date of Passover as April 8 AD 30, and the date for Pentecost as May 18 AD  30, an interval of forty days being the elapsed time between the two dates. At least one of the dates must be wrong, probably the last one as judged from astronomical evidence.

On saying forty but meaning fifty.

The dates for the period prior to the crucifixion are well catalogued in the Urantia Paper, as are the day of the week and its actual date for the following period up to and including the day of ascension. There is no way of accounting for the forty day error as due to being a copying, typing, or copy editing error. Neither can the forty day interval be a simple mistake by someone writing forty when they really meant fifty, as it is repeated three times and in a different context for each occasion. The first is in relation to a forty day interval that Jesus passed with the Morontia Directors (2040), the second refers to Jesus' morontia career (2057) and the third to the forty days during which the apostles were in hiding after the crucifixion. (2060). And this last reference occurs in the first line under the section heading entitled "The Pentecost Sermon,"--which surely must alert some readers to the occurrence of an inconsistency.

Date for Easter also changes annually.

Many Urantia Book readers, with or without a Christian background, would be aware that the Easter holiday period varies each year because it follows the Jewish tradition for Passover which is fixed by the first new moon following the March equinox. In our earlier article, wonderment was expressed about how the error apparently went undetected by those who read the Papers prior to first printing and how the Midwayers responsible for Part 4 could make such an error--if indeed it was an error. An alternative is that the revelators meant to put it there for some logical reason.

Forty days and forty nights in the Bible.

An examination of the phrase "forty days" in both the Old and New Testament and even The Urantia Book provides a possible clue. The Bible has twenty two "forty day" references, most being associated with events of significance in Jewish history. These range from the great flood and Noah's survival, the period of embalming of the body of Jacob (alias Israel) prior to the return of his body to Canaan, the period that Moses spent on the mount when receiving the ten commandments, a period for exploration of the promised land, a period during which the Philistine giant, Goliath, paraded before the Israelites chiding them until slain by David with a stone from his sling. In the New Testament, there was the forty days of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and the forty days of his appearances after the resurrection.

It seems highly unlikely that a majority of these periods were exactly forty days. If not then perhaps "forty days" is a symbolic term that was attached to significant events of modest duration in Jewish history. An additional "forty day" interval occurs in The Urantia Book as a kind of rest and resuscitation period following directly after the fusion event for our morontia selves with our Thought Adjuster.

Forty days as a symbol.

Did the revelators choose to use an intensely symbolic "forty day" period to describe the interval between Passover and Pentecost, even though it meant that they would introduce error for their dates? If so, were they also drawing attention to their use of symbolism, legend, parable, allegory,  mythology, and "what have you" throughout The Urantia Book to describe and illustrate what is essentially a universe frame (1260) in which we can think rationally about our place and purpose in the universe. My personal opinion is that this is exactly what they did. They appear to have attempted to tell us so in the explanation of the mandate, their use of human sources wherever possible, and their description of the Urantia Papers on page 1008.

The "forty day" error is the last, the most obvious, and the most conclusive in the Urantia Papers. It is followed by some of their most magnificent material. It appears to be impossible to assume this particular error is not there for a very good reason.

The sovereignty of free will.

We humans are an intractable lot. The revelators were aware that many of the early readers would be so impressed by the receipt of a revelation from a celestial source that, almost certainly, they would be impelled to grant it "divinely dictated" status. But a thorough study of  the Papers reveals that such authoritarianism is not the way of our Universal Father. His way is the absolute sovereignty of our free will and the free choice of our ultimate destiny. The revelators may have been attempting to avoid a repetition of the problems that arose through the assignment of divine infallibility to the Bible. Their method of avoidance appears to have been the provision of a universe frame (1260) containing much error but at the same time telling us they were doing precisely that. The "forty day" error was their final attempt to avoid the disaster of a "divine dictation" label. Perhaps also it was the final safeguard.

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Hopes of the revelators.

One of the hopes of the revelators is expressed in these words:

"You should comprehend that this (Christian) church is only the larval stage of the thwarted spiritual kingdom, which will carry it through this material age and over into a more spiritual dispensation where the Master's teachings may enjoy a fuller opportunity for development. Thus does the so-called Christian  church become the cocoon in which the kingdom of Jesus' concept now slumbers. The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still alive and will eventually and certainly come forth from this long submergence, just as surely as the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful unfolding of its less attractive creature of metamorphic development." (1866)

There are other similar expressions of the hope of the revelators that the Urantia Papers would assist to usher in a new era of comprehension of the Master's revelatory life. But The Urantia Book has been afforded an untouchable status among many Christians. They want nothing to do with another "divinely-dictated" revelation such as still confronts them with the fundamentalist view of biblical infallibility.

To obtain for the Urantia Papers the attention they so richly merit and to permit them to fulfil the hopes of their revelators, we have to present them in a way that avoids the stigma of "absolute truth," a label the revelators themselves deny. Until this is done, the Papers will continue to remain virtually unread and therefore ineffective.

It is of no help to point to the getting close to one million Urantia Book sales throughout the world. The truth is that most of those books are just as unread as the Bible, a book that claims the record for best seller status for all time.

The Urantia revelation--what was its purpose.

Surely the real purpose of the Urantia revelation was always the restoration of the truth of the Fourth Epochal Revelation. All else in the Papers is background to improve the universe frame into which we "fit" the meaning of Jesus' revelation and the purpose of our own lives. Currently Jesus' revelation has been made to "fit" into ancient Jewish aspirations and traditions.

The Papers inform us that Jesus' whole life was a revelation of the nature of God as it is comprehensible to mortal man. In fulfilling his task, Jesus chose to portray the "Father" aspect of the First Source and Center as the archetype of love, compassion, mercy, and righteousness. God, the Father of Jesus, is also the epitome of "good" for only God is good--and so Jesus revealed in his life, the quintessence of "goodness."

A problem we now have is how to restore the real meaning of the Fourth Epochal Revelation. It should be obvious to all that this cannot be accomplished by force, coercion, or even overpowering intellectual argument. We Urantia Book readers are expected to live the revelation as Jesus lived it. For that, the Papers give us a detailed account of Jesus' life and its meaning--from which we can perceive that we are required to become consciously God-centered in contrast to being both consciously and unconsciously self-centered. Nothing else will do. Nothing else will work.

That so little progress has been made by so many is at least partially due to their being book-centered and mistaking that for the real task. It is just so simple to remain self-centered even while being book-centered. Achieving God-centeredness is a task uniquely individualistic. It would probably be impossible for most of us in the absence of assistance from the Spirit of Truth.

On inner transformation.

What is required is an inner transformation and re-centering that involves death of self followed by rebirth. "For whosoever would save his life selfishly, shall lose it, but whosoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

The losing of life is metaphorical for an internal process by which we "die to the world and the self" in order to become reborn. The central process of that metaphoric death is our re-centering in God. It is a process that requires faith--a faith defined by:

• A dying to the self as the center of its own concern.

• A dying to the world as the center of security and identity.

• A dying of the self-preoccupied self.

• Rebirth--a birth of a self that is centered in God and in Spirit--and not in worldly aspirations, interests, and expectations.

• A handing over, a surrendering, a letting go, and a radical re-centering in God.

This faith requires that we see at the heart of everything a reality that loves us, a reality that is gracious, merciful, compassionate, and righteous, but a reality whose righteousness is always transcended by mercy. This reality we call God.

If we are to be concerned with leading humanity back to Jesus' Fourth Epochal Revelation then we take on the mighty task appointed to us as possessors of The Urantia Book. We must live, not in imitation of what Jesus said or did or looked like, but in the imitation of his revelation of the nature of God. Only then will the Urantia Papers become truly effective.