I was invited to Chicago in April 2019, along with other readers from other countries, to talk about the opportunities of spreading The Urantia Book in countries worldwide. I spoke about the possibilities in Nigeria, based on my limited experience of living there.
My starting point is that Nigeria is a country of great spiritual potential but is experiencing those common problems and social dislocations of a nascent democracy and emerging economy. Whilst this can make everyday life unpredictable, its unpredictability creates a fertile ground for an improved and more enlightened spiritual awakening because of the on-going struggle to resolve the problems of basic existence. The everyday living in Africa, taken for granted in more settled societies and mature economies, is precarious. Therefore, people are more spiritually attuned and are less at risk of the self-satisfied skepticism of those whose basic needs have been met. We do not know how long this window will remain open. The increasing risk is that people become overwhelmed and respond through social unrest, making it difficult to work.
It is not secularism that is the obstacle to sharing The Urantia Book in Nigeria and more widely in Africa. The biggest barrier to spreading the word in Nigeria is the entrenched authority of organized religion. The Bible is the word and has the last word. So where does The Urantia Book fit in? How do you disseminate a revelation that will be judged against the authority of the Bible and other religious texts? In my limited sharing of the book with Nigerians, I am asked—does it align with the Bible?
Well, many Nigerian churches hold the Pentecostal tradition in which members receive extra-biblical revelations. A church in Nigeria received a revelation to download The Urantia Book and they are now a beacon of hope for the revelation. This reminded me of the Forum; although the comparison is not direct, it shows that the revelators will find a way through the fog of human confusion.
I will let Alicejane pick-up the story from here.
Ade Awoyinka, England
I am Alicejane Uwaoma the assistant pastor at the Positive Way Mission Church of Lagos, Nigeria, where my husband, Iheanacho Peter Uwaoma, is the senior pastor of the church.
The Urantia Book revelations came to us prophetically, that is, it was not given to us by any man but it was revealed to us by the divine spirit of God. The experience was a build-up because there were several experiences that occurred in our lives before then. Let me share them.
The first thing that happened to us as a family was that we hit the rocks financially and everything went down. Life happened to us and we lost our jobs and all. We were practicing Christians at that time and so we resorted to prayers and fasting to help us get a trajectory of how we were to solve our problems, this was in 2014. So we were going to prayer retreats and attending many prayer sessions at the Assemblies of God Church where we were active members. However, the pattern of praying in all our churches were in the negative tone and we all prayed those negative prayers believing that was the way God wanted it. We were gifted a book by Pastor Umunna entitled From the Poorhouse to the Penthouse by Kay Heugen (2002), back in 2007. The book taught about using affirmations in prayers, I tried following its instructions for a few months but stopped since it was not our normal pattern in Christian praying. And so, after eight years, in 2015, my husband traveled for job training, and I started a seven-day fast book on our table where we stacked our Christian books, called, From the Poorhouse to the Penthouse. I drew out the book and broke down in tears. And there and then I made a vow to follow all the instructions in that book until my answers came. That was how we started praying positive prayers called affirmations.
By 2016, my husband felt inspired to restructure our ministry to teach people the way of positive praying and that was how we changed all our prayer patterns and began to use affirmations in our church. And so, we continued praying the affirmations in the I and ALL mode. Then in March 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, we were in a session of affirmation prayers when we heard,
“Download The Urantia Book and read it.” We had never heard about the book before but, in our usual manner of obedience, we just went to the internet to search out the book and behold it was on the internet, so we downloaded The Urantia Book and began to read it. Within three months of downloading the book, my husband and I had finished reading the book from the beginning to the end. At this point, t my husband was inspired to begin to use portions of the book in his Sunday preaching, combining it with Bible scriptures. So by late 2020, my husband was preaching with the Bible and The Urantia Book and he found they blended so beautifully. The book was ready at hand answering so many questions that lacked clear answers in the Bible and we were all being blessed thereby.
For about one year our pastor was using the downloaded version of The Urantia Book from his phone to preach; we had no hard copy of the book. In 2021 around the month of March, we prayerfully searched the internet on how to get the book in Nigeria and we got the phone number of a brother based in Kaduna state, the northern part of Nigeria. We called him on the phone and he connected us to Pastor Karo Akamune who lives in the United States and Pastor Karo sent us twelve copies of The Urantia Book. Later on, Pastor Karo connected us to Bro Emeka Anazodo who gave us twelve more copies in 2022. In 2023, Pastor Karo sent us about twenty-four books and we bought another twenty-four books from Amazon. Most of these books we gifted to our members and other people.
The Urantia Book revelations have helped our church in many ways. Right from the time we started praying the positive prophetic prayers (affirmations), the mindset of our members started shifting and changing, they became more receptive to truth and more tolerant in receiving new insight and knowledge about the things of God and the Word of God especially as we introduce The Urantia Book to new members. Initially there may be resistance, but as we continue praying the affirmation prayers and reading the book, we begin to see that the concepts of goodness, beauty, and truth are in the affirmations and the book and are supported by the Bible as well so they begin to accept it, even as we do a lot of teaching and explanation in our trainings.
In 2022, we gave a few books to people who were not of our church and who do not pray our affirmation prayers and we regretted it. They called the book all sorts of names, saying it was occultic and so on. So we decided we would give the affirmation prayers first, and to those who accepted the affirmation prayers we would give The Urantia Book. To those who do not accept the affirmation prayers we would not give the book, and that stand has been helping us to date.
In 2022, our hearts were inspired to start Urantia Book training centers in people’s homes like cell groups where we go daily, pray the affirmation prayers and study The Urantia Book with them for about two hours. We had our church venue as the central place and we had about five other locations where we were carrying out this training. Then the people started complaining that they needed some sort of sustenance for themselves and their families if they were coming for the training every day. By this time, it was evident that we needed the people as part of our team for them to become active ambassadors of The Urantia Book. It was this everyday study and prayers that made the other churches around us begin to notice us and enquire about our activities and we would then introduce the affirmation and The Urantia Book to them.
In 2023, with the help of Pastor Soren and his team, we standardized the church as The Urantia Book training center where all other of our center members gather. We employed them and agreed to pay them to come and study The Urantia Book and pray from 8am to 4pm as a paid job and we closed down the outside centers. This allowed us to get consistent readership for The Urantia Book. We were able to explain the book to our trainees who in turn went out to tell other people about this newfound book.
Early in 2024, we started the monthly pastors fellowship where we invite pastors and leaders of churches, we introduce them to the positive prayers as a better mode of praying than the negative prayers. Then we would tell them about The Urantia Book and give them a copy of the book as a gift if they satisfy our condition.
Last year we celebrated Jesus’ Birthday on August 21 as written in The Urantia Book. We went round our community and boldly introduced the Jesus Birthday concept affirming that Jesus was not born on 25th December as we have been told. We had a gathering of over two hundred people, both adults and children at the event, and we shared food and drinks to all attendees for free. That occasion caused a stir in our community and greatly increased the acceptance of The Urantia Book revelations around us.
This year, we decided to host the Jesus Birthday celebration at the prestigious Airport Hotel Ikeja Lagos. We invited seasoned men of God; leaders and founders of churches with their wives. We had almost a hundred participants at the event and it was wonderful. The pastors accepted the affirmation prayers and The Urantia Book revelations making request for free copies of the book for the pastors, workers and members of their various churches.
The challenges we have faced have been mainly in the dogmatic way the Christian community have held unto the Bible and the Bible teachings as the final truth and no other. But as they begin to make affirmations their minds begin to soften and their hearts open up to investigate The Urantia Book revelations by themselves. Also, the economic situation around us makes it necessary for us to always have resources to help people. Many of the people come to us because they have needs including pastors, we then help them the best we can and begin to teach them that they can actually free themselves unto a better life as they become aware of the truth of The Urantia Book revelations with the support of the positive prophetic prayers (affirmations).
Our hopes for the future are very high because we know that the problem of our people is ignorance; the Bible rightly says it that “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). So when they are enlightened, they would do much better in all areas. We are determined to bring the knowledge of The Urantia Book revelations to as many as are willing to hear us. We would continue to train and pay people because we know that when we pay, they will pay attention to us. We would commence a pastors training program knowing that the ecclesiastical power of the church can be used positively. When the pastor is convinced, it is very easy for him to convince the members of his congregation, and this would make the knowledge of The Urantia Book spread faster.
We appreciate greatly all that have helped us to get to where we are. May the blessings of our Paradise Father be with you all.