Throughout the years there have been many well known celebrities that have read the Urantia book. That is at least what the rumors say. According to the TV show Mysterious Universe, Elvis, Jerry Garcia and even Jimi Hendrix has traveled within its pages. One well known artist however says that this book had changed his life. This artist was Kerry Livgren, the lead guitar player of the rock group Kansas. Anyone who listened to Kansas in the 70’s and 80’s could clearly here the spiritual messages in the lyrics. Tunes like “Dust in the Wind” and “Carry on my wayward son” are two of the most notable both written by Kerry. Livgren was one of the main song writers for the group and soon the Urantia book influences began to make it into his lyrics.
On the album Monolith, one of the songs that he wrote “A Glimpse of Home” is about Christ. Not the Christ of the Bible but the Christ as found in the Urantia Papers. Kerry was always a spiritual searcher even from his early days after the passing of his two grandmothers of whom he was close. Wondering where they went became his lifelong search that led him to dabble in just about every philosophy and religion out there. His early pursuits around 1976 took him mostly into the eastern philosophies after rejecting the Christian message. In 1977 he found the Urantia Book, and in his words “had reached the end of the quest and it came full circle back to Jesus”. He would go on to say that this book gave him all the answers he was looking for. The vastness of the themes and ideas in the Urantia papers coalesced all the religions into one. And that it the book tends to “awe” the reader with its grand view of the Universe. Clearly this book had to have spiritual origins.
At this point Kerry felt his long search had finally ended. Until he met up with a man named Jeff who was a lead singer and a Christian for the opening act for the Kansas 1979 tour. Kerry said in his book “Seeds of Change” that it was his intention to convert him to the Gospel of Urantia. But ultimately the path took a different turn. After a long road trip and countless hours of discussion and debates of Urantia vs the Bible in a hotel at 3am in the morning he did something he said he would never do, in Indianapolis Kerry gave his life to Christ. He realized that he could not reconcile the fact that Jesus was who He said he was in the ancient Scriptures and the Jesus of the Urantia Book was a perversion of the truth. The Urantia book he said intoxicates the intellect and exalts man. Basically, it speaks to the head and not the heart. What he realized is what many who have read the Urantia book have realized, that it has many wonderful teachings in its pages but it is designed to do one thing, and that is to make you doubt the Scriptures and most importantly that Jesus died for our sins and that we can be reconciled to God. A teaching the UB calls an outgrowth of man’s primitive fears.
The Urantia book has the same theme of the passage in Genesis in the garden when the “Nachash” or the serpent says, “did God really say?” He has not changed his tactics in millennia, he is still asking the same question in the UB today. Throughout the book doubt is cast upon the validity of Word of God.
It is my prayer that anyone who is still captured by the philosophies found in the UB would take a second look at the Scriptures as Kerry did and ask God to prove which one is true. You are not going to get to heaven on the Brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God. And don’t delay – I believe time here on earth is wrapping up soon.