It’s hard to face. Horrific conventional wars and even genocides continue to blight our world, as does the threat of nuclear war among the great powers. As I write in 2024, humankind is far from abolishing the practice of war-making to settle political conflicts within or among nations. But those with faith in the future are called upon by the revelators, as we will see below, to envision something better. In 1966, Gene Rodenberry, thought to have been a student of the revelation, launched the TV series Star Trek that depicted an “Earth Federation” in our far future—a high-functioning world civilization ruled by a democratic global government. But today’s science-fiction authors and screenwriters too often resort to the flipside scenario, some gloomy version of a nightmarish future dystopia in which humankind has failed to solve its manifold challenges. These current writers along with today’s fashionable “doomers,” indulge in a faithless extension of our current planetary disorder into the far future. What portrayal will win out? And which scenario is consistent with the merciful plans of our Master Sovereign for his planet of nativity?
Decades ago, the Urantia revelation offered the upside scenario: a practical plan for creating a governed world—that is, a sustainable planet thriving under enforceable global law. This achievement of what it calls “mankind government” is depicted as a crucial phase of world transformation preparatory for our entry into the early stages of the Era of Light and Life. The Urmia vision for world federation is provided with such compelling logic and inspiring confidence that many assume this teaching remains valid today and into the future. But rather than act as an advocate for this vision, I only attempt here to briefly summarize its moral imperatives and built-in features as found in Paper 134, as well as offer a broader context that includes The Urantia Book’s teachings about universe-wide law and governance; a brief look at a possible human source for the Urmia lectures; and a glance at the world federalist golden age of the late 1940s.
In these passages, the revelators share what they believe to be the solvent for war, that greatest of political afflictions. Remarkably, this solution is derived from lectures Jesus delivered just prior to his public ministry. I’ll analyze below the assertive political discourse that can be found at 134:5 and 135:6. These statements convey the necessity of creating a world government, and we are told they “depict the import” of the lectures presented by Jesus in A.D. 24, according to the Midwayer authors. These unseen writers were given prior approval to associate this adaptation with the person of Jesus by the Melchizedek chairman of the revelatory commission, an approach that led to a dispute between the seraphim of the churches and the seraphim of progress. We are also told that the chairperson “appointed a commission of three of our number to prepare our view of the Master’s Urmia teachings as adapted to twentieth-century religious and political conditions on Urantia… We now present these statements as they stand after having been edited by the Melchizedek chairman of the revelatory commission” (134:3.8). Notably, we’re not directly told here that this interpretation of Jesus’ lectures also applies to twentieth-first-century religious and political conditions on our world.
Some Background on the Urmia Lectures
Heretofore unknown in history, the Urmia lectures took place on an island within Lake Urmia, a large body of saltwater located adjacent to the old Persian city of Urmia. You will recall that Jesus passed through this region as the conductor of a year-long commercial caravan to and from a delivery point on the southern Caspian Sea. He embarked on this trip at age thirty during the transition period between his journey to Rome (with Gonod and Ganid) and his later return to Palestine to prepare for his public ministry. On his return from the southern Caspian region, Jesus gave up direction of the caravan and remained for two weeks at Urmia, having been commissioned by Cymboyton, the academy’s founder and patron, to give “twenty-four lectures on ‘The Brotherhood of Men,’ and to conduct twelve evening sessions of questions, discussions, and debates on his lectures in particular and on the brotherhood of men in general.”
We are further told that “This was the most systematic and formal of all the Master’s teaching on Urantia. Never before or after did he say so much on one subject as was contained in these lectures and discussions on the brotherhood of men. In reality these lectures were on the ‘Kingdom of God’ and the ‘Kingdoms of Men” (134:3.5).
Here I only cover Jesus’s discussion of the Kingdoms of Men (or kingdom of humankind in today’s parlance). It is noteworthy that his lectures at Urmia concerning the Kingdom of God, “Sovereignty—Divine and Human,” presented at 134:4, has inspired many Urantia Book students to engage with the worldwide interfaith movement, mounting for example elaborate booths at global conferences of the World Parliament of Religions. But I only know of a few readers who utilize the political teachings at 134:5–6 to help them engage with today’s geopolitical dilemmas as activists, diplomats, or politicians.
Foundational Teachings on Political Sovereignty
In the first section of our study, entitled “Political Sovereignty,” the authors begin by laying down the core premise for their overall argument, bluntly declaring that only two forms of political sovereignty are valid on a mortal world.
War on Urantia will never end so long as nations cling to the illusive notions of unlimited national sovereignty. There are only two levels of relative sovereignty on an inhabited world: the spiritual free will of the individual mortal and the collective sovereignty of mankind as a whole. Between the level of the individual human being and the level of the total of mankind, all groupings and associations are relative, transitory, and of value only in so far as they enhance the welfare, well-being, and progress of the individual and the planetary grand total—man and mankind. 134:5.2 (1487.9)
This passage allows for only two functional levels of sovereignty: the free will of the individual—i.e., the innate right to autonomy of the ordinary “world citizen”—and the level of humankind’s intrinsic right to rulership over the political affairs of its home planet. The passage makes clear that these two levels are irreducible, each providing a kind of book-end on one side or the other of the general concept of sovereignty.
These simple assumptions go the distance in the Urmia lectures. The midwayer authors build on them almost exclusively to argue that only a democratic world government, teamed with a global bill of individual rights, can protect humanity from the ravages of war and other global maladies. But we may legitimately ask: Is this method of approach applicable in today’s advanced nuclear age and the approaching era of artificial intelligence? In any case, I am aware of very few political actors on the world stage today who abide by these premises.
Not so, however, for the post-World War II activists and maverick politicians led in large part by fervent world-government advocate Albert Einstein and other prominent atomic scientists in the late 1940s. In my study of this period, I discovered that the foundational ideas recommended by the revelators were already viscerally understood by activists in the years just after the Holocaust and Hiroshima.[1] These leaders of a hopeful new worldwide sentiment against war, a large number of them war veterans, became the “first-wave” world federalists during the highest point of this movement. They had just fought in a great world war that led to over 53 million deaths, including 38 million civilians, so they were now suddenly thrust into a global perspective on politics in order to explain these horrific events. No wonder these activists intuitively regarded the peoples of the world as the true stewards of this planet, rather than the nation-states and great powers who had engineered this vast toll of war atrocities. As a corollary, they argued that individual rights must be universally recognized in law, not just the “rights” of states and empires. They also insisted on the concepts of universal suffrage—the voting rights of world citizens—as well as individual accountability before world law, not just unenforceable treaty laws applied only to nation-states. Many of these same leaders produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, which acknowledges in detail that a long list of basic human rights are innate with the world’s people.
Unfortunately, the most powerful politicians of that period largely ignored these ideas. These men were, of course, the heads of great surviving powers, the five major victors of WWII. They bequeathed to that war-traumatized generation the United Nations Charter, a weak confederation of sovereign nations that proved unable to prevent the Cold War arms race and the dozens of conventional wars since that time. These leaders even reserved for their nations a veto power on the UN’s new Security Council that may fairly be regarded as a de facto veto on the sovereignty of humankind. And rather than enfranchise the world’s citizens as voters for representatives to a global legislature that can pass laws applied both to individuals and states, the founders of the UN created the General Assembly whose delegates are appointed by member nations and whose decisions are non-binding.
“Sovereignty Is Power and It Grows by Organization”
The next two paragraphs at 134:5 remind us that “the Most High” Fathers on Edentia, the Vorondadek overcontrollers of political evolution, “rule in the kingdoms of men”—an allusion to Daniel 4:17 in the Bible. Then the authors pick up with these crucial statements about the evolution of sovereignty:
Sovereignty is power and it grows by organization. This growth of the organization of political power is good and proper, for it tends to encompass ever-widening segments of the total of mankind. But this same growth of political organizations creates a problem at every intervening stage between the initial and natural organization of political power—the family—and the final consummation of political growth—the government of all mankind, by all mankind, and for all mankind. 134:5.5 (1488.3)
Starting out with parental power in the family group, political sovereignty evolves by organization as families overlap into consanguineous clans which become united, for various reasons, into tribal units—superconsanguineous political groupings. And then, by trade, commerce, and conquest, tribes become unified as a nation, while nations themselves sometimes become unified by empire. 134:5.6 (1488.4)
What are some modern implications of this passage regarding the evolution of sovereignty? Beginning in the sixteenth century in Europe, leading Enlightenment thinkers reasoned that the source of sovereignty is the people over whom kings had once ruled, rather than being a set of rights conferred upon them by their kings, whose power often derived from tribal confederations built by military conquest. Later theorists held that sovereignty is inalienable in individual persons and naturally re-appears in the family or tribes but cannot as such be transferred to governments. They argued that people must grant “powers of governing” to successive levels of political power beyond the family or tribe, eventually leading to the evolution of the modern democratic nation-state, and from there to imperial super-powers. For their part, the revelators explain that this steady evolution of sovereignty to ever-greater spans of the world’s people is inexorable, thereby reducing the number of small wars but tragically setting the stage for an era of major world wars:
As sovereignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are lessened. That is, minor wars between smaller nations are lessened, but the potential for greater wars is increased as the nations wielding sovereignty become larger and larger. Presently, when all the world has been explored and occupied, when nations are few, strong, and powerful, when these great and supposedly sovereign nations come to touch borders, when only oceans separate them, then will the stage be set for major wars, world-wide conflicts. So-called sovereign nations cannot rub elbows without generating conflicts and eventuating wars. 134:5.7 (1488.5)
As The Urantia Book states and as history records, the definition of true sovereignty has for centuries broadened to encompass ever-larger concepts of human community—ever-more inclusive definitions of who “the people” are. Each such expansion—where limited by constitutional, democratic government—has brought genuine peace and real advances in human rights to more and more people. This process ultimately leads to the global era in which the few largest powers, dangerously intoxicated with what the revelators call “the delusional virus of national sovereignty,” now face off in a hi-tech militarized struggle for world hegemony. Here the authors energetically warn that half-measures, such as confederations, cannot work at this final stage:
Urantia will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men — mankind government. Internationalism — Leagues of Nations — can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from the League and declare war. You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth. 134:5.10 (1489.1)
The tragic dilemma described above sounds almost as familiar today as it must have when the midwayers first wrote these words. Our current version of a League of Nations, the United Nations, has signally failed to prevent many calamitous wars or scale back most of the devastating environmental conditions since its founding in 1945, chiefly because it enshrines the prerogatives of national sovereignty in its Charter. The revelators continue:
As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind. 134:5.11 (1489.2)
Will the great powers create such an “essential nucleus” in our time? Ninety years later, does this energetic call for the voluntary surrender of sovereignty by the great powers still stand as valid? If the answer is yes, it would logically follow that ordinary world citizens must insist on the creation of a “supernational power” that expresses what the revelators call their “real sovereignty.”
The crown of the midwayers’ argument comes a few sentences later: “Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world. When all the peoples of Urantia create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN” (134:5.12). Upper-case words are rare in the Urantia text, so it is difficult not to be struck by the weightiness of this pronouncement. Notice how this passage ends without a trace of ambiguity: “When such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail—but not until then.”
Global Government Reflects the Principles of Universe Governance
In my view, the Urmia lectures offer a realist political argument. They encourage us to avoid naive utopianism. Imperfect humans simply can’t survive without the rule of laws of some kind at each stage of their evolution. In effect, the authors are telling us that peace on Urantia can never be achieved in the future without the establishment of an elected world legislature in combination with worldwide juridical institutions that interpret and apply law according to the statutes of a global constitution; and it follows that world courts are almost useless without global enforcement mechanisms. According to our midwayers, those who aspire for world peace and genuine freedom on Urantia have no choice but to work for the achievement of enforceable global law—as the Urmia lectures also make clear in the next section at 134.6, “Law, Liberty, and Sovereignty.”
If one man craves freedom—liberty—he must remember that all other men long for the same freedom. Groups of such liberty-loving mortals cannot live together in peace without becoming subservient to such laws, rules, and regulations as will grant each person the same degree of freedom while at the same time safeguarding an equal degree of freedom for all of his fellow mortals. If one man is to be absolutely free, then another must become an absolute slave. And the relative nature of freedom is true socially, economically, and politically. Freedom is the gift of civilization made possible by the enforcement of LAW. 134:6.1 (1490.4)
Once again we encounter an upper-case word. Our trio of midwayer cousins are being emphatic for a second time. They conclude:
Religion makes it spiritually possible to realize the brotherhood of men, but it will require mankind government to regulate the social, economic, and political problems associated with such a goal of human happiness and efficiency. There shall be wars and rumors of wars—nation will rise against nation—just as long as the world’s political sovereignty is divided up and unjustly held by a group of nation-states. . . . Another world war will teach the so-called sovereign nations to form some sort of federation, thus creating the machinery for preventing small wars, wars between the lesser nations. But global wars will go on until the government of mankind is created. Global sovereignty will prevent global wars—nothing else can. 134:6.2–4 (1490.5–7)
Does the revelators’ oft-repeated requirement that we create a lawful world federation seem burdensome? Does it seem unnecessary, overstated, and well-nigh impossible to achieve? Consider the fact that even angelic nature requires governance. The Urantia Book makes abundantly clear that structured governance is pervasive on high and operates through duly constituted courts, executives, and legislatures—even extending to governance mechanisms supplied by “the supreme board of the supercontrol for the affairs of all seven superuniverses” (24:5:2). Says the Chief of Archangels of Nebadon, “You are living in a well-ordered universe” (33:7.8).
That the heavenly realms are ruled by law is a lesson learned the hard way by our local system; it’s the sobering conclusion one must draw from the lawlessness of Lucifer’s rebellion, now being adjudicated in the case, Gabriel vs. Lucifer. We await the rulings of the superuniverse tribunal on Uversa, soon to be followed by the enforcement of its decisions by the sentinels of the Ancients of Days. Indeed, angels and celestials high and low, and ascendant mortals in the afterlife, continue to operate under some form of “heavenly” government, first beginning on our lowly material planet and extending all the way up to Uversa. In Nebadon, the juridical mechanism of the local universe is supervised by Gabriel. We are told that there are seventy divisions of these universe courts on Salvington (the capitol of the local universe of millions of inhabited planets), but we learn that that all the legislation regarding Nebadon affairs takes place on each Constellation of 100,000 inhabited worlds—that is, closer to the action on individual worlds. The three universal functions of government are spread out across a local universe in the following manner:
On Salvington, the headquarters of Nebadon, there are no true legislative bodies. The universe headquarters worlds are concerned largely with adjudication. The legislative assemblies of the local universe are located on the headquarters of the one hundred constellations. The systems are chiefly concerned with the executive and administrative work of the local creations. The System Sovereigns and their associates enforce the legislative mandates of the constellation rulers and execute the judicial decrees of the high courts of the universe. 33:8.1 (373.3)
Human Sources for the Idea of World Federation
As pointed out above, the Midwayers’ robust advocacy for world federation in the Urmia lectures did not take place in a vacuum. Part IV of the book was “indited” in 1935. But many of us speculate that particular “human sources,” certain brilliant political thinkers who were active toward the end of World War II, influenced the final drafts of the Urmia lectures. The most prominent of these possible sources was renowned journalist Emery Reves, whose book The Anatomy of Peace (Harper & Brothers, January 1945) sold over 800,000 copies in thirty languages. The ideas in Reves’ work (and in many other books, manifestos, and pamphlets) powered the numerous post-WWII initiatives for creating a world government; as also noted above, few are aware today that a vibrant and widespread democratic world federalist movement took shape in this period. Its varied efforts on behalf of “one world” burst on the political scene in the US (and Europe) in the second half of the 1940s, only tapering off into pessimism after the Korean War in the early 1950s and the steady acceleration of the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the Soviets. It is notable that The Urantia Book, with its rather overt backing for world federation, appears only a few years later in 1955, brandishing language and concepts seemingly derived in part from Reves’ work.[2] Here are just a half dozen of the many parallels to Reves’ The Anatomy of Peace discovered by veteran researcher Matthew Block. Please note that passages from Reves appear first, followed by the parallel passage from The Urantia Book highlighted in bold (some paraphrased). Many of these passages are very close in meaning to statements in Reves, allowing us to infer that they were likely utilized by the revelators:
1. In absolute form, freedom of one man means the serfdom of the other.
If one man is to be absolutely free, then another must become an absolute slave.
2. The futility [of] debates about armament and disarmament must be apparent to all.
It is not a question of armaments or disarmament.
3. War is never the disease itself. War is a reaction to a disease of society, the symptom of disease.
War is not man’s great and terrible disease; war is a symptom, a result.
4. [Nations] cannot protect their peoples against the devastation of international war.
[Nations] never have had a sovereignty which could protect them from the ravages and devastations of world wars.
5. The problem is not negative and does not involve giving up something we already have. The nations are not giving up sovereignty. The problem is positive—creating something we lack, something we have never had, but that we imperatively need.
The nations are not giving up sovereignty so much as they are actually creating a real, bona fide, and lasting world sovereignty which will henceforth be fully able to protect them from all war.
6. Democratic sovereignty of the people can be correctly expressed and effectively instituted only if local affairs are handled by local government, national affairs by national government, and international, world affairs, by international, world government.
[Under a] lasting world sovereignty . . . local affairs will be handled by local governments; national affairs, by national governments; international affairs will be administered by global government.[3]
Nonpartisanship: An Essential Stance in Creating a Governed World
What, then, is the takeaway for those who feel the Urmia lectures still apply? What should be regarded as the current and optimal version of the upside scenario? If nothing else, it would seem that advocates for a governed world must be strictly non-partisan, given our highly diverse world with its increasingly vocal minorities. The revelators call for a “representative mankind government.” To be fully representative of human sovereignty, those who stand for constitutional world democracy must be accommodating to every non-violent political position. Accordingly, they should maintain awareness of the unique needs of every gender, race, nation, or class—whether left, centrist, populist, or right-wing. After all, universal inclusiveness is a core concept of any genuine democracy, and this principle must also apply to the future world parliament if such a body is to maintain legitimacy. As I understand it, then, a key objective for Urantia Book students who follow the adapted political teachings of Jesus as presented in the Urmia lectures is the creation of such a representative world parliament that will one day abolish war, represent the inherent sovereignty of humankind, and elevate the innate sovereignty of each world citizen. The key to success will be tolerance, universal brotherhood, and unity-in-diversity. May the wisdom and the realism of the mighty Urmia lectures light the way.
BYRON BELITSOS found The Urantia Book in 1974 and became an activist for world federation in 1985. In 1989 he wrote, directed, and produced the film “Toward a Governed World.” Later he published and was principal author of One World Democracy: A Progressive Vision for Enforceable Global Law (Origin Press, 2005). Belitsos worked for Citizens for Global Solutions and is currently a senior staffer with the Earth Constitution Institute. He holds a B.A. in intellectual history from the University of Chicago and most recently earned an M.A. in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He can be reached at this EMAIL.
[1] The definitive history of this period can be found in the two-volume study by scholar Joseph Baratta in The Politics of World Federation: From World Federalism to Global Governance (Praeger, 2004).
[2] During that forgotten era, an activist group called the Student Federalists was considered the most progressive. The largest organization, the United World Federalists, formed in 1947 by the merger of five groups, once had over 50,000 members, with affiliates in almost every state and on scores of campuses, and over 700 chapters. Declining after the disillusionment of the Korean War, the UWF went through several changes until it emerged as the World Federalist Association (WFA) in the 1960’s under the leadership of Saturday Evening Post editor Norman Cousins. Based for decades in Washington D.C., the WFA recently changed its name to Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), leaving behind several important splinters more loyal to the original vision, most notably the Democratic World Federalists, based today in San Francisco. Also important in this equation has been the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA), founded in 1958, whose Constitution for the Federation of Earth was completed in 1991 and is respected worldwide.
[3] To view the entire series of parallels, which runs for 17 pages, download the PDF of Paper 134 here: https://urantiabooksources.com/part-iv/. At this site, researcher Matthew Block also provides parallels the so-called “Midwayer Messages of 1943.” This document is reproduced in Vol. 3 of The Urantia Diaries of Harold and Martha Sherman (2018). The diarists record that these messages were shared by Dr. Sadler during a picnic for Forum members in 1943. See: https://urantiabooksources.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/1943midwayermessages.pdf