By Olusegun Falola, Lagos, Nigeria
I was born and raised in Nigeria, Africa, and I live there today. Our family went to the Baptist Church. When I was a child, my parents made sure I attended Bible–study classes, a part of which was bible recitation tests at which I excelled. When I was about ten-years old, something deep inside me told me that there was more to God than all that we were doing and learning at church.
So I started praying: "God, show me your secrets and the secrets about the devil and the secrets of heaven and hell. I want to know more than what they teach us at church. In Jesus’ name, Amen." For a long time I did not know what led my young mind to offer such a sincere prayer, but I knew that I was dissatisfied with traditional religion.
I remained in this state of mind for a long time until my final year at FUTA, the Federal University of Technology in Akure, Nigeria. At this time, people were just starting to access the Internet in Nigeria. University students were obtaining their email addresses and were learning to browse the Internet for the first time. Each time my fellow students encouraged me to join them to browse the Internet, I replied, “Not yet.” Something inside me said, “Be patient. In due time you will find some amazing information on the Internet.” It was a strange premonition.
In 2004, during my last year at the university, I had a slight hiccup involving my senior project, and I had to spend extra time re-writing it while my mates were all rejoicing about their upcoming graduation. This was quite disturbing to me because I was an A student. Because I did not have a computer, I was using the computer at a cyber-café to do more research. One fateful morning, I entered the café with some sadness about not graduating. After I finished doing school work, I thought that I would google search my questions about God and Jesus. So I typed "childhood of Jesus" into google and hit enter. On the monitor appeared many results, one of which was The Urantia Book. At first I was a bit skeptical thinking this book may be one of the so called lost books of the Bible. But after reading for about maybe fifteen minutes, I thought, “This book is different. It is full of details about the childhood of Jesus and presents them in chapter after chapter.”
Then I went back to google and searched for the answer to another question that I had had since I was a youngster: What was Lucifer's fall from heaven? And up came many results, one of which was from this same strange Urantia Book titled "The Lucifer Rebellion.” I could not believe my eyes and my luck. So I started reading as fast as I could.
By the time I finished reading, I felt a bit scared. Then I remembered my childhood-one-point-prayer and thought “I know where to find the answers to my questions concerning the secrets of God, the devil, and heaven and hell. In The Urantia Book! Whoa! Immediately, I googled “Adam and Eve,” and the papers did not disappoint me. I was vigorously nodding my head as I glanced through these papers thinking, “Eureka! Yes, this is it―the missing links; this is the book!” I memorized the website: www.urantia.org and was filled with excitement, wonder, amazement, and perplexity.
What churches teach is limited by the Bible; what The Urantia Book brings to the table is an expansion of knowledge. When I returned to the house in which I was rooming, I entered my room, dropped to my knees, and said, "Thank you, Father; thank you, Jesus! Thank you for leading me to The Urantia Book, and thank you for answering my childhood prayer."
While I basked in the euphoria of finding The Urantia Book, I called my parents and friends to share the good news.
The next day I bought packs of diskettes which I took to the cyber-café, where I downloaded quite a few papers from the book. These were the early days of the Internet in Nigeria. Later, when I had a computer, I transferred the book from diskette to my desktop computer, where I read it continuously for more than ninety days.
For ten years, I have been reading The Urantia Book online until last month when I received a physical Urantia Book, sent to me from Barnes & Nobel in the USA. I felt as though I were a child having his first "toy." The book stays in my office bag because I take it to work every day.
My experience finding The Urantia Book online was an intriguing one. Can you imagine having your childhood prayer answered beyond your wildest imagination? It was much later that I read the history of how the Forum started receiving the papers. Honestly, the contents of The Urantia Book are enough for me; I am not really interested in information about the book; I am interested in the information of the book. The challenge I have is how to spread this revelation to my people, the people of Africa who are tradition-bound and religiously dogmatic. But I learnt from the book that revelation must be introduced tactically, wisely, and patiently to our evolutionary world.
One of my colleagues at work (yes I work now―I managed to finish my senior project and graduated on time with my mates), a member of Yahweh Church, has commenced reading The Urantia Book with keen interest. I regularly post excerpts from The Urantia Book on Facebook and other social media.
Let me conclude this article by expressing how grateful I am to the trustees and staff of Urantia Foundation, especially to my dear friend Tamara for finding time to reply to my emails and my many, many questions.
With this revelation, I know where I came from, and I know where I am going.