APPENDIX A

KEY DOCUMENTS AND REFERENCES are listed in the approximate order they were first endnoted. No "downloaded" documents were used for primary editorial reference.

The Fellowship website (http://www.ubfellowship.org) was used for several photos and verification of some dates. The date for the second printing of The Urantia Book is given as March 1, 1968. However, the printing itself is designated as 1967, and this is the date we used. The Fellowship printing date may be accurate, due to the alteration of the plates, as explained in Chapter Nine.

LIST OF REFERENCES USED

[1]. The Urantia Book, 1955 printing of the original text. Original publication was used.

[2]. THE MIND AT MISCHIEF, by William S. Sadler, M.D., F.A.C.S.; Funk & Wagnall's Company, New York and London, 1929. Original publication was used.

[3]. Paper written by Meredith Sprunger after Dr. Sadler's death, and an article in PERVADED SPACE, a newsletter published by Chicago Urantian David Kulieke, Spring, 1979. Original documents used.

[4]. THE HISTORICITY OF THE URANTIA BOOK by Meredith J. Sprunger, Paper revised December 18, 1993. Original document supplied by Dr. Sprunger. Original document used.

[5]. CHICAGO, A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY by Bill Harris, Crescent Books, New York, 1989.

[6]. HOW TO KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE by Harold Sherman, Fawcett, New York, 1976. Original paperback publication was used. Original publication was used.

[7]. THE CONJOINT READER, Interview by Polly Friedman, Summer, 1993. Original publication was used.

[8]. HISTORY OF THE URANTIA MOVEMENT TWO - [Compiled by a Contact Commissioner.] Undated.Copy of original 30-page document supplied to the court in behalf of Urantia Foundation by Carolyn Kendall, for Maaherra litigation. Title page had been removed and the pages renumbered, some pages had original numbers as well as new numbers. The author believes this document was a hybrid created by using materials from various sources. It was probably compiled by Christy, using the same template as History One. See Chapter Three.

[9]. HISTORY OF THE URANTIA MOVEMENT ONE, "by a Group of Urantian Pioneers, assisted by Members of the Contact Commission, 1960." This history was supplied to me by Meredith Sprunger, who received it directly from Dr. Sadler. The title page had "Dr. Sadler" written across it. It contained hand-editing and comments on several pages, probably Dr. Sadler's. The author believes the original template for this document was developed by several people and used for History Two as well as for Marian Rowley's History created for Urantia Brotherhood in 1960. Marian made a worksheet comparing her history to the "Doctors." Whatever version the Doctor worked on had the same cover sheet as hers, according to her notes, and had a total of 34 pages (although two are listed as "omitted.") History One only has 17 pages, and History Two (missing the title page) had 30 pages. So no existing history exactly matches the "Doctor's" history she referred to. It is also possible that Christy and Dr. Sadler collaborated on History Two. Certainly, if the "Doctor's" history had the "same" cover sheet, he did not plan to claim authorship. All existing cover sheets read: "This historical narrative was prepared by a group of Urantia pioneers, assisted by members of the contact commission." There is simply no way to establish reliable authorship of any of these histories. Also, the various histories were all created with a 1960 date, and none were ever published in finished form. For whatever reason, the "history" projects failed. Yet another history was said to be in process by Christy, but this one never surfaced with clear authorship designated either. It probably used the same template as all the others.

[10]. AN INTERVIEW WITH CLYDE BEDELL, conducted by Barbara Kulieke, The Study Group Herald, December, 1992. Original published document was used.

[11]. URANTIA BROTHERHOOD BULLETIN, Special Memorial Edition, Spring, 1982. Original published document was used.

[12]. Bill Sadler, Jr. tape made in Oklahoma City, dated 2/18/62. Cassette copy of original reel to reel tape was given me by Berkeley Elliott in the late seventies. David Kantor also distributed copies of this tape.

[13]. CONSIDERATION OF SOME CRITICISMS OF THE URANTIA BOOK by Dr. William S. Sadler, a paper produced in 1958. Copy of original document was given to me by Clyde Bedell in 1969.

[14]. The PLAN FOR THE URANTIA BOOK REVELATION, by Carolyn B. Kendall, Paper distributed January 18, 1996. I used the original version that Carolyn distributed. There are some pagination differences between this and the later copies published on internet.

[15]. Sworn deposition of Helen Carlson, Chicago, June 29, 1994, Maaherra litigation.

[16]. BIRTH OF A REVELATION by Mark Kulieke, second edition, 1992.

[17]. The Fellowship Archive, history timeline, various references to cross-check dates from other sources.

[18]. Meredith Sprunger video interviews, taped by Eric Cosh of Phoenix, AZ.

[19]. Personal letter from JJ Johnson September 29, 1999.

[20]. A MONOGRAPH ON A VITAL ISSUE CONCERNING THE URANTIA BOOK AND MOVEMENT by Clyde Bedell, 1/81. Original publication was used supplied by author.

[21]. A COMMENTARY ON THE ORIGIN OF THE URANTIA BOOK by Meredith J. Sprunger, 6/13/91. Original publication was used, supplied by author.

[22]. 1959 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia. Original publication was used.

[23]. Two telephone conversations with a Mr. Krohn and a Bart Paddock, who live in Crawfordsville, Indiana.Krohn was a press supervisor and Paddock a plate department manager for R.R. Donnelley Company in the Fifties and Sixties. I also had several conversations with the Crawfordsville plant. Two telephone conversations with Greg Young (now a minister), who worked on the M-1000 Press in 1969, a year or so after the second printing.

[24]. POSTING by URANTIA FOUNDATION on their website (http://www.urantia.org/newsinfo/strs.htm) in 1999-2000, under the title "Setting the Record Straight."

[25]. A RESPONSE TO A THINLY DISGUISED ATTACK ON THE URANTIA BOOK by Clyde Bedell, a paper dated September 5, 1976. Original publication was used.

[26]. Letter from Trustee Emeritus James Mills to Ken and Betty Glasziou, March 5, 1991. Copy of original supplied by Kristen Maaherra.

[27]. THE CREATORS by Daniel J. Boorstin, Random House, New York, 1992.

[28]. April, 1992 paper titled AD HOC COMMITTEE ON RESEARCH: PRINCIPLES, PATTERNS, AND STRUCTURES IN THE URANTIA BOOK AND RELATED SOURCES by Carolyn Kendall. Original publication was used. Carolyn prepared this material to assist an ad hoc committee for the Fellowship working on a new constitution. I was a member of that committee.

[29]. AFFIDAVIT of Dr. Meredith Sprunger, dated October 24, 1998. Original publication was used, supplied by author. (See pp 316 - 320).

[30]. WITNESSES TO A REVELATION by Polly Friedman, Summer, 1993, School of Meanings and Values. Original publication was used.

[31]. URANTIA, The Great Cult Mystery, by Martin Gardner, Prometheus Books, New York, 1995. Original publication was used.

[32]. THE PLANETARY PRINTS, Spring 1985. Original publication was used.

[33]. RESPONSE TO URANTIA FOUNDATION'S REPORT TO READERS OF THE URANTIA BOOK, June 21, 1990, Tom and Carolyn Kendall. Original publication was used, supplied by authors in 1990 when I was a General Councilor.

[34]. Urantia Foundation Declaration of Trust. Original publication was used.

[35]. HAVES AND HAVE NOTS by Mortimer J. Adler, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1991.

[36]. THE FELLOWSHIP BULLETIN, Winter, 1992. Original publication was used.

[37]. AFFIDAVIT OF MARTIN MYERS, May 24, 1993. Copy of original court document was used.

[38]. Copy of letter of Clyde Bedell to Martin W. Myers, October 16, 1979. Given to me by Clyde in November, 1984.

[39]. URANTIA BROTHERHOOD BULLETIN, Spring, 1982. Original publication was used.

[40]. THE FUTURE OF THE FIFTH EPOCHAL REVELATION by Meredith J. Sprunger, a paper dated 2/10/93. Original publication was used.

[41]. UNITY, NOT UNIFORMITY! A talk dealing with The Urantia Book, the Official Organizations of the Urantia Movement, and Unity, Not Uniformity by Martin W. Myers. Presented to the First Western Urantia Conference June 29, 1973. Copy of original publication was used.

[42]. AN UNOFFICIAL "WHITE PAPER" Some things for the TRUSTEES OF THE URANTIA FOUNDATION and the EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE URANTIA BROTHERHOOD CORPORATION to ponder by Clyde Bedell, April 1976. Original publication was used.

[43]. VERN GRIMSLEY MESSAGE EVALUATION by Hoite Caston, edited by Richard Keeler, June 17, 1984. Original publication was used.

[44]. THE PROBABLE BOMBING OF US NUCLEAR TARGETS (OR IMPROBABLE) as of October 27, 1983, by Clyde Bedell. Original publication was used.

[45]. TO BE (upset) OR NOT TO BE, "Read to a Boulder meeting, the evening of 10/27/83, after people had been given a half-hour or so scare talk urging the storage of food, water, etc., the preparation of each family member with a big kit to take to fall-out shelters upon alarm, etc." By Clyde Bedell. Original publication was used.

[46]. THE GOLDEN YEARS, by Carolyn Kendall and Barbara Newsome, 50th Anniversary Commemorative History of Urantia Foundation, first printing, 2000.

Affidavit of Dr. Meredith Justin Sprunger

MEREDITH J. SPRUNGER
4109 PLAZA DR
FORT WAYNE, IN 46806
219-745-4363

Oct. 24, 1998

AFFIDAVIT

I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the following are my recollections about the authorship, and the issues surrounding the authorship, of The Urantia Book.

Following my discovery of The Urantia Book in December of 1955, and after introducing it to a number of clerical colleagues and friends, I spent years researching with them the historical aspects of the book. We quickly discovered the Urantia Papers were received by a small group of people in Chicago. Their leader was Dr. William S. Sadler. Dr. Sadler was a highly respected psychiatrist and college teacher in the graduate school of medicine at the University of Chicago. For almost thirty years Dr. Sadler was also a lecturer in Pastoral Counseling at McCormick Theological Seminary.

On May 7, 1958, our group of ministers had an appointment with Dr. Sadler to discuss the phenomena associated with the origin of the Urantia Papers. My personal association with Dr. Sadler continued until his death in 1969. In the course of this friendship, we had many candid conversations about the materialization of the Foreword and the 196 Papers that were eventually published as the text of The Urantia Book. It is important to point out that in this regard Dr. Sadler was a professional researcher of unquestioned integrity.

Dr. Sadler categorically declared that there was no known psychic phenomena attached to the origin of the Urantia Papers. The final text of the Urantia Papers was materialized in written form, but it was not channeled or spoken, nor was it the product of automatic writing. Dr. Sadler stated that although the Thought Adjuster (a fragment of God that indwells all normal human minds) of the "contact personality" was somehow engaged in the materialization process by spiritual beings, the contact person was totally unaware of this activity. Neither this contact person, nor any other human, wrote any of the text nor authored or originated any material used in the revelatory text of the Urantia Papers, which consist of the Foreword and the 196 Papers.

Although Dr. Sadler was emphatic that no known psychic phenomena were associated in any way with the authorship of the Urantia Papers, he admitted that he was baffled as to precisely how the text of the Urantia Papers was materialized into the English language. He was very clear in his conviction that no human being edited, selected, or had any creative input whatever into the authorship of the Urantia Papers, nor in the arrangement of the text of The Urantia Book, which consists of the Foreword and Papers one through 196. Dr. Sadler was crystal clear that the members of the contact commission had no editorial authority whatever, and their responsibility was confined to spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Members of the forum were not even permitted to see the original materialized documents, and they had no input in their authorship. Dr. Sadler was convinced that the Urantia Papers are exactly what they purport themselves to be, an epochal revelation authored solely by celestial beings.

I have studied The Urantia Book in depth for over forty years, and I am likewise convinced that the authorship of the text was superhuman, and that it was materialized by unprecedented means that are not fully understood. In my best professional and personal opinion, I am absolutely convinced there was no human authorship or creative input, and there were no human editorial decisions involved with the materialization of the Urantia Papers. I believe the truth of what Dr. Sadler wrote -- and personally disclosed to me numerous times: the Urantia Papers were published just as received, and the contact commission had no editorial authority whatever, and its role was confined solely to the clerical tasks of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Neither did the forum members contribute to the creative contents of the Urantia Papers. The forum was similar to a modem focus group in that they were used by the celestial authors solely as a gauge to measure human understanding.

Dr. Sadler was also absolutely clear about two related things: (1). Absolutely no human name or names should ever be attached to the authorship or materialization of the Urantia Papers and the publication of The Urantia Book. Even the printer, R. R. Donnelley and Sons, was not permitted to place an indicia in the first edition which stated their identity. (2.) No human being knows, or ever knew, the exact method by which the Urantia Papers were materialized. We can only be categorically certain that there was no human authorship, no human editorial involvement, nor any human activity in creating, selecting and/or arranging the Urantia Papers, which consist of the Foreword and Papers one through 196 inclusive, and which constitute the text of The Urantia Book.

Dr. Sadler made it plain to me that the revelators, held total authority over the process by which the Urantia Papers were materialized. The revelators suggested the submission of questions, and, at one point after the contact commission and forum had read some of the papers, requested that more significant questions be developed and asked by the contact commission. Dr. Sadler said that in a particular session a celestial personality who claimed to be a student visitor to our planet stated to the commission: "If you people realized what a high spiritual source you are now associating with you would stop making these puerile investigations to detect fraud and would ask some significant questions about the nature and reality of the universe." It was at this point the forum was engaged by Dr. Sadler to help him formulate appropriate questions in answer to the challenge of the revelators. The forum had originally been assembled by the Sadler family as an group of lay persons who gathered together in Dr. Sadler's home for tea and an hour or two of informal discussion and social exchange. The revelators soon answered the questions the forum had asked, and these answers were presented to the forum by the contact commission. Shortly after this the revelators directed Dr. Sadler and the contact commission to make the forum a closed group, and required each member to take a vow of secrecy about their knowledge of what the contact commission was doing and what information the revelators had disclosed to the forum through the contact commission "The forum, as it were, was taken away from us" wrote Dr. Sadler. He was indicating that the general discussions in the forum ceased, and the revelators henceforth directed the agenda of the group through the contact commission, and used the forum essentially as a focus group for the Urantia Papers.

Dr. Sadler said no forum member except members of the contact commission, was ever present during any of the contacts with the revelators. He also said that only one "sleeping subject," or person was involved throughout the entire process of materializing the text of the Urantia Papers.

Dr. Sadler told me that at one point he and his son Bill wrote a draft for an introduction to the Urantia Papers, and submitted it to the revelators. At a contact session with the revelators they were told that although they meant well, such submissions were not acceptable, and the revelators made the comment, referring to the introduction written by Dr. Sadler and Bill Sadler, Jr.: "A candle cannot light the sun." At the proper time, the humans were assured, an introduction to the book would be materialized. When the revelators produced the Foreword to the Urantia Papers, Dr. Sadler stated that he and his son realized the inadequacy of their own attempt to write an introduction.

Dr. Sadler and his son were, however, given permission to compose a Table of Contents for The Urantia Book. Bill Sadler compiled the titles as they appeared in the Papers, and the section headings from the Papers, and he briefly outlined some of the material that was originated in the Urantia Papers, and incorporated it into a Table of Contents for The Urantia Book. Dr. Sadler and other members of the contact commission assured me that no human wrote, edited, or arranged any of the text of the Urantia Papers, which consist of the Foreword and all of the Papers from Paper one through Paper 196 inclusive. Dr. Sadler told me that one individual, not a member of the contact commission but rather a member of the forum, who made suggestions to "improve" the Urantia Papers was vigorously informed by the revelators (through the contact commission) that no human additions to the Urantia Papers would be allowed. Dr. Sadler said that every possible precaution was taken to see that the text of the Urantia Papers was presented just as the revelators had authored and materialized it.

It should be emphasized that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a human authority on the content or the origin of the Urantia Papers. However, Christy often requested that I reply to many of the letters Urantia Foundation received from readers requesting information on the origin of the Urantia Papers. As these requests increased, I produced a paper on the essentials of the origin of the Urantia Papers, which constitute the text of The Urantia Book. This paper was approved by Urantia Foundation, printed, and freely distributed for several years by both Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood.

In regard to outreach efforts by Urantians, the following statement was written by Dr. Sadler under the heading, Distribution of The Urantia Book: "However, one thing should be made clear: While it is the policy of the Brotherhood to work slowly in the distribution of the book, nothing is done to interfere with the energetic and enthusiastic efforts of any individual to introduce The Urantia Book to his friends and associates."

Signed,
Meredith Justin Sprunger

ADDENDA TO AFFIDAVIT:

MEREDITH JUSTIN SPRUNGER is a minister in the United Church of Christ and a college professor, now retired from pastoral and teaching responsibilities. For many years Dr. Sprunger was active as a counselor and psychological consultant, holding a Private Practice Certificate in Psychology in the State of Indiana. He has served congregations in the Midwest and taught at Elmherst College and Indiana Institute of Technology, functioning as the head of the Department of Psychology, chairman of the division of Liberal Arts, and as President.

Dr. Sprunger has served as a Field Representative, Chairman of the Educational and Fraternal Relations Committees, and President of the Urantia Brotherhood. He is founder and Executive Director of The Christian Fellowship for Students of The Urantia Book, and Executive Editor of The Spiritual Fellowship Journal. Dr. Sprunger is the only living professional educational colleague of Dr. William S. Sadler associated with The Urantia Book.

Dr. Sprunger has served as a Field Representative, Chairman of the Educational and Fraternal Relations Committees, and President of the Urantia Brotherhood. He is founder and Executive Director of The Christian Fellowship for Students of The Urantia Book, and Executive Editor of The Spiritual Fellowship Journal. Dr. Sprunger is the only living professional educational colleague of Dr. William S. Sadler associated with The Urantia Book.