Administration of the Local Universe

33:7.1The Mas­ter Son, Mi­chael, is su­premely con­cerned with but three things: cre­ation, sus­te­nance, and min­istry. He does not per­son­ally par­tic­i­pate in the ju­di­cial work of the uni­verse. Cre­ators never sit in judg­ment on their crea­tures; that is the ex­clu­sive func­tion of crea­tures of high train­ing and ac­tual crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence.

33:7.2The en­tire ju­di­cial mech­a­nism of Neb­a­don is un­der the super­vi­sion of Ga­briel. The high courts, lo­cated on Sal­ving­ton, are oc­cu­pied with prob­lems of gen­eral uni­verse im­port and with the ap­pel­late cases com­ing up from the sys­tem tri­bu­nals. There are sev­enty branches of these uni­verse courts, and they func­tion in seven di­vi­sions of ten sec­tions each. In all mat­ters of ad­ju­di­ca­tion there pre­sides a dual mag­is­tracy con­sist­ing of one judge of per­fec­tion an­tecedents and one mag­is­trate of as­cen­dant ex­pe­ri­ence.

33:7.3As re­gards ju­ris­dic­tion, the lo­cal uni­verse courts are lim­ited in the fol­low­ing mat­ters:

33:7.41. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of the lo­cal uni­verse is con­cerned with cre­ation, evo­lu­tion, main­te­nance, and min­istry. The uni­verse tri­bu­nals are, there­fore, de­nied the right to pass upon those cases in­volv­ing the ques­tion of eter­nal life and death. This has no ref­er­ence to nat­u­ral death as it ob­tains on Uran­tia, but if the ques­tion of the right of con­tin­ued ex­is­tence, life eter­nal, comes up for ad­ju­di­ca­tion, it must be re­ferred to the tri­bu­nals of Or­von­ton, and if de­cided ad­versely to the in­di­vid­ual, all sen­tences of ex­tinc­tion are car­ried out upon the or­ders, and through the agen­cies, of the rulers of the super­gov­ern­ment.

33:7.52. The de­fault or de­fec­tion of any of the Lo­cal Uni­verse Sons of God which jeop­ar­dizes their sta­tus and au­thor­ity as Sons is never ad­ju­di­cated in the tri­bu­nals of a Son; such a mis­un­der­stand­ing would be im­me­di­ately car­ried to the super­uni­verse courts.

33:7.63. The ques­tion of the read­mis­sion of any con­stituent part of a lo­cal uni­verse—such as a lo­cal sys­tem—to the fel­low­ship of full spir­i­tual sta­tus in the lo­cal cre­ation sub­se­quent to spir­i­tual iso­la­tion must be con­curred in by the high as­sem­bly of the super­uni­verse.

33:7.7In all other mat­ters the courts of Sal­ving­ton are fi­nal and su­preme. There is no ap­peal and no es­cape from their de­ci­sions and de­crees.

33:7.8How­ever un­fairly hu­man con­tentions may some­times ap­pear to be ad­ju­di­cated on Uran­tia, in the uni­verse jus­tice and di­vine eq­uity do pre­vail. You are liv­ing in a well-or­dered uni­verse, and sooner or later you may de­pend upon be­ing dealt with justly, even mer­ci­fully.