The Seraphic Hosts

39:4.1The fourth or­der of ser­a­phim are as­signed to the ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties of the lo­cal sys­tems. They are in­dige­nous to the sys­tem cap­i­tals but are sta­tioned in large num­bers on the man­sion and mor­ontia spheres and on the in­hab­ited worlds. Fourth-or­der ser­a­phim are by na­ture en­dowed with un­usual ad­min­is­tra­tive abil­ity. They are the able as­sis­tants of the di­rec­tors of the lower di­vi­sions of the uni­verse gov­ern­ment of a Cre­ator Son and are mainly oc­cu­pied with the af­fairs of the lo­cal sys­tems and their com­po­nent worlds. They are or­ga­nized for ser­vice as fol­lows:

39:4.21. Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tants. These able ser­a­phim are the im­me­di­ate as­sis­tants of a Sys­tem Sov­er­eign, a pri­mary La­non­an­dek Son. They are in­valu­able aids in the ex­e­cu­tion of the in­tri­cate de­tails of the ex­ec­u­tive work of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. They also serve as the per­sonal agents of the sys­tem rulers, jour­ney­ing back and forth in large num­bers to the var­i­ous tran­si­tion worlds and to the in­hab­ited plan­ets, ex­e­cut­ing many com­mis­sions for the wel­fare of the sys­tem and in the phys­i­cal and bi­o­logic in­ter­ests of its in­hab­ited worlds.

39:4.3These same se­raphic ad­min­is­tra­tors are also at­tached to the gov­ern­ments of the world rulers, the Plan­e­tary Princes. The ma­jor­ity of plan­ets in a given uni­verse are un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of a sec­ondary La­non­an­dek Son, but on cer­tain worlds, such as Uran­tia, there has been a mis­car­riage of the di­vine plan. In the event of the de­fec­tion of a Plan­e­tary Prince, these ser­a­phim be­come at­tached to the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers and their suc­ces­sors in plan­e­tary au­thor­ity. The pres­ent act­ing ruler of Uran­tia is as­sisted by a corps of one thou­sand of this ver­sa­tile or­der of ser­a­phim.

39:4.42. Jus­tice Guides. These are the an­gels who pre­sent the sum­mary of ev­i­dence con­cern­ing the eter­nal wel­fare of men and an­gels when such mat­ters come up for ad­ju­di­ca­tion in the tri­bu­nals of a sys­tem or a planet. They pre­pare the state­ments for all pre­lim­i­nary hear­ings in­volv­ing mor­tal sur­vival, state­ments which are sub­se­quently car­ried with the rec­ords of such cases to the higher tri­bu­nals of the uni­verse and the super­uni­verse. The de­fense of all cases of doubt­ful sur­vival is pre­pared by these ser­a­phim, who have a per­fect un­der­stand­ing of all the de­tails of ev­ery fea­ture of ev­ery count in the in­dict­ments drawn by the ad­min­is­tra­tors of uni­verse jus­tice.

39:4.5It is not the mis­sion of these an­gels to de­feat or to de­lay jus­tice but rather to in­sure that unerring jus­tice is dealt out with gen­er­ous mercy in fair­ness to all crea­tures. These ser­a­phim of­ten func­tion on the lo­cal worlds, com­monly ap­pear­ing be­fore the ref­eree trios of the con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions—the courts for mi­nor mis­un­der­stand­ings. Many who at one time served as jus­tice guides in the lower realms later ap­pear as Voices of Mercy in the higher spheres and on Sal­ving­ton.

39:4.6In the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion in Sa­ta­nia very few of the jus­tice guides were lost, but more than one quar­ter of the other ad­min­is­tra­tor ser­a­phim and of the lower or­ders of se­raphic min­is­ters were mis­led and de­luded by the soph­ist­ries of un­bri­dled per­sonal lib­erty.

39:4.73. In­ter­preters of Cos­mic Cit­i­zen­ship. When as­cend­ing mor­tals have com­pleted the man­sion world train­ing, the first stu­dent ap­pren­tice­ship in the uni­verse ca­reer, they are per­mit­ted to en­joy the tran­sient sat­is­fac­tions of rel­a­tive ma­tu­rity—cit­i­zen­ship on the sys­tem cap­i­tal. While the at­tain­ment of each as­cen­dant goal is a fac­tual achieve­ment, in the larger sense such goals are sim­ply mile­stones on the long as­cend­ing path to Par­a­dise. But how­ever rel­a­tive such suc­cesses may be, no evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture is ever de­nied the full though tran­sient sat­is­fac­tion of goal at­tain­ment. Ever and anon there is a pause in the Par­a­dise as­cent, a short breath­ing spell, dur­ing which uni­verse hori­zons stand still, crea­ture sta­tus is sta­tion­ary, and the per­son­al­ity tastes the sweet­ness of goal ful­fill­ment.

39:4.8The first of such pe­ri­ods in the ca­reer of a mor­tal as­cender oc­curs on the cap­i­tal of a lo­cal sys­tem. Dur­ing this pause you will, as a cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem, at­tempt to ex­press in crea­ture life those things which you have ac­quired dur­ing the eight pre­ced­ing life ex­pe­ri­ences—em­brac­ing Uran­tia and the seven man­sion worlds.

39:4.9The se­raphic in­ter­preters of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship guide the new cit­i­zens of the sys­tem cap­i­tals and quicken their ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of uni­verse gov­ern­ment. These ser­a­phim are also closely as­so­ci­ated with the Ma­te­rial Sons in the sys­tem ad­min­is­tra­tion, while they por­tray the re­spon­si­bil­ity and moral­ity of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship to the ma­te­rial mor­tals on the in­hab­ited worlds.

39:4.104. Quick­en­ers of Moral­ity. On the man­sion worlds you be­gin to learn self-gov­ern­ment for the ben­e­fit of all con­cerned. Your mind learns co-op­er­a­tion, learns how to plan with other and wiser be­ings. On the sys­tem head­quar­ters the se­raphic teach­ers will fur­ther quicken your ap­pre­ci­a­tion of cos­mic moral­ity—of the in­ter­ac­tions of lib­erty and loy­alty.

39:4.11What is loy­alty? It is the fruit of an in­tel­li­gent ap­pre­ci­a­tion of uni­verse broth­er­hood; one could not take so much and give noth­ing. As you as­cend the per­son­al­ity scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be fil­ial, and then may you be free; but not un­til you are a fi­nal­i­ter, not un­til you have at­tained per­fec­tion of loy­alty, can you self-re­al­ize fi­nal­ity of lib­erty.

39:4.12These ser­a­phim teach the fruit­ful­ness of pa­tience: That stag­na­tion is cer­tain death, but that over­rapid growth is equally sui­ci­dal; that as a drop of wa­ter from a higher level falls to a lower and, flow­ing on­ward, passes ever down­ward through a suc­ces­sion of short falls, so ever up­ward is prog­ress in the mor­ontia and spirit worlds—and just as slowly and by just such grad­ual stages.

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

39:4.14The keys of the king­dom of heaven are: sin­cer­ity, more sin­cer­ity, and more sin­cer­ity. All men have these keys. Men use them—ad­vance in spirit sta­tus—by de­ci­sions, by more de­ci­sions, and by more de­ci­sions. The high­est moral choice is the choice of the high­est pos­si­ble value, and al­ways—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the hum­blest cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem or even the least of mor­tals on Uran­tia.

39:4.155. The Trans­port­ers. These are the trans­port ser­a­phim who func­tion in the lo­cal sys­tems. In Sa­ta­nia, your sys­tem, they carry pas­sen­gers back and forth from Je­ru­sem and oth­er­wise serve as in­ter­plan­e­tary trans­port­ers. Sel­dom does a day pass in which a trans­port ser­a­phim of Sa­ta­nia does not de­posit some stu­dent vis­i­tor or some other trav­eler of spirit or semispirit na­ture on the shores of Uran­tia. These very space tra­versers will some­time carry you to and from the var­i­ous worlds of the sys­tem head­quar­ters group, and when you have fin­ished the Je­ru­sem as­sign­ment, they will carry you for­ward to Eden­tia. But un­der no cir­cum­stances will they carry you back­ward to the world of hu­man ori­gin. A mor­tal never re­turns to his na­tive planet dur­ing the dis­pen­sa­tion of his tem­po­ral ex­is­tence, and if he should re­turn dur­ing a sub­se­quent dis­pen­sa­tion, he would be es­corted by a trans­port ser­a­phim of the uni­verse head­quar­ters group.

39:4.166. The Re­cord­ers. These ser­a­phim are the keep­ers of the three­fold rec­ords of the lo­cal sys­tems. The tem­ple of rec­ords on a sys­tem cap­i­tal is a unique struc­ture, one third ma­te­rial, con­structed of lu­mi­nous met­als and crys­tals; one third mor­ontial, fab­ri­cated of the li­ai­son of spir­i­tual and ma­te­rial en­ergy but be­yond the range of mor­tal vi­sion; and one third spir­i­tual. The re­cord­ers of this or­der pre­side over and main­tain this three­fold sys­tem of rec­ords. As­cend­ing mor­tals will at first con­sult the ma­te­rial ar­chives, Ma­te­rial Sons and the higher tran­si­tion be­ings con­sult those of the mor­ontia halls, while ser­a­phim and the higher spirit per­son­al­i­ties of the realm pe­ruse the rec­ords of the spirit sec­tion.

39:4.177. The Re­serves. The re­serve corps of ad­min­is­tra­tor ser­a­phim on Je­ru­sem spend much of their wait­ing time in vis­it­ing, as spirit com­pan­ions, with the newly ar­rived as­cend­ing mor­tals from the var­i­ous worlds of the sys­tem—the ac­cred­ited grad­u­ates of the man­sion worlds. One of the de­lights of your so­journ on Je­ru­sem will be to talk and visit, dur­ing re­cess pe­ri­ods, with these much-trav­eled and many-ex­pe­ri­enced ser­a­phim of the wait­ing re­serve corps.

39:4.18It is just such friendly re­la­tion­ships as these that so en­dear a sys­tem cap­i­tal to the as­cend­ing mor­tals. On Je­ru­sem you will find the first in­ter­min­gling of Ma­te­rial Sons, an­gels, and as­cend­ing pil­grims. Here frat­er­nize be­ings who are wholly spir­i­tual and semispir­i­tual and in­di­vid­u­als just emerg­ing from ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. Mor­tal forms are there so mod­i­fied and hu­man ranges of light re­ac­tion so ex­tended that all are able to en­joy mu­tual rec­og­ni­tion and sym­pa­thetic per­son­al­ity un­der­stand­ing.