In 1998 or 1999 I was told by celestial personnel that a Son of God would appear on earth in the not too distant future. At that time I received no indication whatsoever as to the identity of the forthcoming Son. In about November 2005 I was told that it is Elijah, the prophet of the Old Testament, who will appear.

Apostles erroneously believe that Elijah returned as John the Baptist.
The Transfiguration.
     Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him went he went up Mount Herman to converse with Gabriel and the Father Melchizedek regarding the progress of his bestowal in the flesh as this experience was related to the universe of his own creation. The three Apostles witnessed part of Jesus' conversation with Gabriel and the Father Melchizedek. However, the Apostles thought they had seen Moses and Elijah.
[UB 158:0,1,2,3] [Matthew 17:1-13] [Mark 9:2-13] [Luke 9:28 - 36]
     On the way down the mountain Peter asked Jesus: “Master, why is it that the scribes say that Elijah must first come before the Messiah shall appear?” Jesus, following the reasoning of his Apostles, answered: “Elijah indeed comes first to prepare the way for the Son of Man, who must suffer many things and finally be rejected. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they received him not but did to him whatsoever they willed.” And then did the three apostles perceive that he referred to John the Baptist as Elijah. Jesus knew that, if they insisted on regarding him as the Messiah, then must John be the Elijah of the prophecy.

Comment. Note that Jesus did not confirm their belief that Elijah had returned as John the Baptist. However, Elijah was one of the prophets who helped prepare the way for the bestowal of Jesus on our planet. In this instance Jesus did not attempt to correct their erroneous belief that Elijah had returned as John the Baptist. If Elijah had returned as John the Baptist, this would have been a form of reincarnation. The authors of The Urantia Book state emphatically that there is no form of reincarnation on the inhabited worlds of time and space. [UB 46:7:4,5] [UB 158:2:2]

     Incidentally, John the Baptist never claimed to be Elijah. He knew that he was not Elijah. When John was asked directly "if he was Elijah or the prophet that Moses promised" he answered "I am not." When he was asked if he was the Messiah, John answered: "I am not."
John 1:21 And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias [Elijah]? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No. [UB 135:4:4; 9:4]
     Therefore, it appears that we can accept Malachi 4:5 as a literal statement: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD . . . [Malachi 4:5] [UB 158:0,1,2,3]

     Who is this Elijah that he should suddenly be elevated to the position of World Ruler? Why would Jesus [Michael] return Elijah to earth as the World Ruler? We are told in The Urantia Book that Elijah was a translated soul of brilliant spiritual achievement who lived between the times of Moses and Jesus. He was one of two prophets who fused with his Thought Adjuster [Indwelling Spirit] while still in the flesh. [Enoch was the other prophet. (UB 45:4:13,15)]
     And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. [2Kings 2:11]

     When a human being has completed the circles of cosmic achievement, and further, when the final choosing of the mortal will permits the Adjuster to complete the association of human identity with the morontial soul during evolutionary and physical life, then do such consummated liaisons of soul and Adjuster go on independently to the mansion worlds, and there is issued the mandate from Uversa which provides for the immediate fusion of the Adjuster and the morontial soul. This fusion during physical life instantly consumes the material body; the human beings who might witness such a spectacle would only observe the translating mortal disappear “in chariots of fire.” [UB 110:7:2]

The Hebrews During the Times of Elijah.
     In the tenth century before Christ the Hebrew nation became divided into two kingdoms. In both of these political divisions many truth teachers endeavored to stem the reactionary tide of spiritual decadence that had set in, and which continued disastrously after the war of separation. But the efforts to advance the Hebraic religion did not prosper until that determined and fearless warrior for righteousness, Elijah, began his teaching. Elijah restored to the northern kingdom a concept of God comparable with that held in the days of Samuel. Elijah had little opportunity to present an advanced concept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had been before him, overthrowing the altars of Baal and demolishing the idols of false gods. And he carried forward his reforms in the face of the opposition of an idolatrous monarch; his task was even more gigantic and difficult than that which Samuel had faced.
     To read the Biblical account of Elijah and his works see 1Kings and 2Kings.
     Elijah, one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament days, was blunt and direct in his assault upon the sins and vices of his contemporaries. [John the Baptist emulated Elijah's blunt and direct assault on the Roman rulers. Unfortunately, this blunt approach cost John his head. (Matthew 14:10) (Mark 6:27) (UB 135:4:4,5)]

     It was Elijah who reproved Ahab and exposed the priests of Baal.

Yahweh, Baal, and Elijah.
     The long-drawn-out controversy between the believers in Yahweh and the followers of Baal was a socioeconomic clash of ideologies rather than a difference in religious beliefs.
     The inhabitants of Palestine differed in their attitude toward private ownership of land. The southern or wandering Arabian tribes (the Yahwehites) looked upon land as an inalienable—as a gift of Deity to the clan. They held that land could not be sold or mortgaged. “Yahweh spoke, saying, `The land shall not be sold, for the land is mine.’” [Leviticus 25:23]
     The northern and more settled Canaanites (the Baalites) freely bought, sold, and mortgaged their lands. The word Baal means owner. The Baal cult was founded on two major doctrines: First, the validation of property exchange, contracts, and covenants—the right to buy and sell land. Second, Baal was supposed to send rain—he was a god of fertility of the soil. Good crops depended on the favor of Baal. The cult was largely concerned with land, its ownership and fertility.

     In general, the Baalites owned houses, lands, and slaves. They were the aristocratic landlords and lived in the cities. Each Baal had a sacred place, a priesthood, and the “holy women,” the ritual prostitutes.
     Out of this basic difference in the regard for land, there evolved the bitter antagonisms of social, economic, moral, and religious attitudes exhibited by the Canaanites and the Hebrews. This socioeconomic controversy did not become a definite religious issue until the times of Elijah. From the days of this aggressive prophet the issue was fought out on more strictly religious lines—Yahweh vs. Baal—and it ended in the triumph of Yahweh and the subsequent drive toward monotheism.
     Elijah shifted the Yahweh-Baal controversy from the land issue to the religious aspect of Hebrew and Canaanite ideologies. When Ahab murdered the Naboths in the intrigue to get possession of their land, Elijah made a moral issue out of the olden land mores and launched his vigorous campaign against the Baalites. This was also a fight of the country folk against domination by the cities. It was chiefly under Elijah that Yahweh became Elohim. The prophet began as an agrarian reformer and ended up by exalting Deity. Baals were many, Yahweh was one—monotheism won over polytheism. [1Kings 21:13] [2Kings 9:26] [UB 97:3]

     Elijah was the first of the teachers of Israel to be regarded as a prophet.
     Elijah, Amos, and Hosea initiated the beginning of the Jewish and Christian Bibles when they began their secret writing in response to the attempt on the part of certain rulers to suppress the freedom of speech.
[UB 97:2,3] [UB 97:9:19,20] [UB 135:4:2]

Comment. During Jesus' second discourse on religion, he stated: Our Father did indeed speak through Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to minister words of truth to the world when these prophets of old made an end of their utterances. My Father is no respecter of races or generations in that the word of truth is vouchsafed one age and withheld from another. [UB 155:6:2]
     Comment. How, then, can Christians claim that revelation from God ceased with the Old Testament prophets? Revelation from God never ceases. Christian religious leaders err egregiously when they teach that any revelation from God not found in the Bible is heresy.

Elijah: Now a Son of God and Son of Man.
     When Elijah fused with his Thought Adjuster [Indwelling Spirit] he became a Son of God and Son of Man.
     Adjusters are equal partners of the human mind in fostering the evolution of the immortal soul of survival capacity that can fuse with a Thought Adjuster. Fusion by the Thought Adjuster with the soul of a mortal being is a momentous day in the existence of both the Thought Adjuster and the mortal. While we mortals are in nature evolving inward and upward from man to God, the Adjusters are in nature evolving outward and downward from God to man; and so will the final product of this union of divinity and humanity eternally be the Son of Man and the Son of God. [UB 109:1:4,5]

     Elijah, when he appears, will proclaim that "the kingdom of God is at hand"--meaning a return to the high spiritual concept of Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom is the will of his heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer. Elijah will revive the actual teachings of Jesus, such a restatement as will undo the work of the early Christians who created a sociophilosophical system of belief regarding the fact of Jesus' sojourn on earth. Within a short time the teaching of this story about Jesus nearly supplanted the preaching of Jesus' gospel of the kingdom.
     The kingdom as Jesus conceived it has to a large extent failed on earth; for the time being, an outward church has taken its place. The Gospel of Jesus has been largely replaced with the Gospel of Paul. Because Paul's gospel contains numerous incorrect teachings it can make no claim to being infallible.
     Therefore, Christians will be unable to reconcile Elijah's teachings with information in the Bible. If Elijah arrives before the Day of Armageddon, he may encounter much difficulty as he attempts to work with Christian religious leaders who will cling to their belief in the Bible as the infallible, complete, and final revelation of God, not one iota of which is to be altered. I conjecture that the gospel of Jesus as Elijah will present it will be branded a false religion; Elijah may be condemned as a false prophet, or even the Antichrist. [Revelation 19:20; 20:10] [UB 170:5:19,21]

     The following information is from the article "Elijah" in The New Unger's Bible Dictionary.
     The prophet Elijah came from Tishbeh in Gilead, a district that shared deeply in the miseries of the kingdom of the ten tribes. Nothing is known concerning his family or birth. [Comment. As explained in The Urantia Book, there were never more than three or four tribes.]
     Elijah's character is one of moral sublimity. His faith in God seemed to know no limit or questioning. His zeal for Jehovah was an all-absorbing motive of his life, so that he justly said, "I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts." [1Kings 19:10,14] No danger or duty was too severe to shake his confidence--no labor too great for his Lord. His courage was undaunted, even in the presence of royalty or famine. His obedience was as simple and unquestioning as a child's. Tender of soul, he could sympathize with the widow when she lost her child or weep over the sad condition of his deluded countrymen. He was stern in principle. In his opposition to sin, he was as fierce as the fire that more than once answered his command. [Comment. This statement must be read with a grain of salt.] He was by nature a recluse, only appearing before men to deliver his message from God and to enforce it by a miracle, and then disappearing from sight again.
Comment. When reading about the exploits of Elijah in the Bible, the reader should keep in mind that the Hebrews were wont to toss in the occasional miracle to enhance the story. It is very doubtful that Elijah performed the miracles ascribed to him.

     The following information is from the article "Elijah" in the Illustrated Dictionary of the Bible.
     An influential prophet, Elijah shaped the history of his day and dominated Hebrew thinking for centuries afterward. His prophetic activities emphasized the unconditional loyalty to God required of the nation of Israel. He was opposed to the accepted standards of his day when belief in many gods was normal. He appears in the role of God's instrument of judgment upon a wayward Israel because of the nation's widespread idolatry. He understood that the nation of Israel had a mission to preserve its religious system--the worship of the one true God--in a pure form without any mixture with idol worship.

Comment. When Elijah arrives perhaps he will give us a detailed account of his life and teachings. Also, no doubt he can present a detailed history of the origins of the Bible and an explanation of how numerous erroneous concepts crept into the Bible, a Bible now described as the infallible, complete, and final revelation of God.

Will Elijah be infallible?
     Elijah and his Thought Adjuster are now one. Does this mean that Elijah will be infallible?
     Is he one of the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation?
     If the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation do appear, will Elijah be one of them? [Comment. The account of the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation obviously suffered some colorful embellishment.] [Revelation 11:1-14]
     According to a statement in The New Unger's Bible Dictionary, "The voice of early ecclesiastical tradition is almost unanimous in regarding Enoch and Elijah as the two witnesses."
Revelation 11:3: And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days (three and one-half years), clothed in sackcloth.
     However, nowhere in the Book of Revelation do we see the names of Elijah and Enoch. When Elijah appears, no doubt he will confirm or refute that he is one of the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation.

The Tree of Life.
     The Tree of Life is a shrub of Edentia which was sent to earth by the Most Highs at the time of Caligastia's arrival. [UB 66:4:13]
     Caligastia and his Staff of One Hundred arrived from Jerusem about 500,000 years ago. When the bodies of the One Hundred were rematerialized, they were provided with literal bodies consisting of flesh and blood but also attuned to the life circuits of the system. With the aid of the fruit of the Tree of Life, they were enabled to live on indefinitely as long as they had access to its fruit. [UB 66:0:1] [UB 66:4:12,13]
     When Adam and Eve arrived about 38,000 years ago, they were provided with bodies similar to those of the One Hundred. Like the One Hundred, they were dependent on the fruit of the Tree of Life if they were to live on indefinitely in defiance of death. [UB 73:6] [UB 74:0]
     It seems likely that Elijah will be given a specially constructed body if he is to be visible to mortals. Whether he will require the fruit of the Tree of Life to enable him to live on indefinitely I do not know. Elijah has fused with his Thought Adjuster whereas Adam and Eve and members of the Staff of One Hundred had not.