Planetary Mortal Epochs

52:5.1When a cer­tain stan­dard of in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment is at­tained on an in­hab­ited world, a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son al­ways ar­rives. On nor­mal worlds he does not ap­pear in the flesh un­til the races have as­cended to the high­est lev­els of in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment and eth­i­cal at­tain­ment. But on Uran­tia the be­stowal Son, even your own Cre­ator Son, ap­peared at the close of the Adamic dis­pen­sa­tion, but that is not the usual or­der of events on the worlds of space.

52:5.2When the worlds have be­come ripe for spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion, the be­stowal Son ar­rives. These Sons al­ways be­long to the Mag­is­te­rial or Avo­nal or­der ex­cept in that case, once in each lo­cal uni­verse, when the Cre­ator Son pre­pares for his ter­mi­nal be­stowal on some evo­lu­tion­ary world, as oc­curred when Mi­chael of Neb­a­don ap­peared on Uran­tia to be­stow him­self upon your mor­tal races. Only one world in near ten mil­lion can en­joy such a gift; all other worlds are spir­i­tu­ally ad­vanced by the be­stowal of a Par­a­dise Son of the Avo­nal or­der.

52:5.3The be­stowal Son ar­rives on a world of high ed­u­ca­tional cul­ture and en­coun­ters a race spir­i­tu­ally trained and pre­pared to as­sim­i­late ad­vanced teach­ings and to ap­pre­ci­ate the be­stowal mis­sion. This is an age char­ac­ter­ized by the world-wide pur­suit of moral cul­ture and spir­i­tual truth. The mor­tal pas­sion of this dis­pen­sa­tion is the pen­e­tra­tion of cos­mic re­al­ity and com­mu­nion with spir­i­tual re­al­ity. The rev­e­la­tions of truth are ex­tended to in­clude the super­uni­verse. En­tirely new sys­tems of ed­u­ca­tion and gov­ern­ment grow up to sup­plant the crude regimes of for­mer times. The joy of liv­ing takes on new color, and the re­ac­tions of life are ex­alted to heav­enly heights of tone and tim­bre.

52:5.4The be­stowal Son lives and dies for the spir­i­tual up­lift of the mor­tal races of a world. He es­tab­lishes the “new and liv­ing way”; his life is an in­car­na­tion of Par­a­dise truth in mor­tal flesh, that very truth—even the Spirit of Truth—in the knowl­edge of which men shall be free.

52:5.5On Uran­tia the es­tab­lish­ment of this “new and liv­ing way” was a mat­ter of fact as well as of truth. The iso­la­tion of Uran­tia in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had sus­pended the pro­ce­dure whereby mor­tals can pass, upon death, di­rectly to the shores of the man­sion worlds. Be­fore the days of Christ Mi­chael on Uran­tia all souls slept on un­til the dis­pen­sa­tional or spe­cial mil­len­nial res­ur­rec­tions. Even Moses was not per­mit­ted to go over to the other side un­til the oc­ca­sion of a spe­cial res­ur­rec­tion, the fallen Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, con­test­ing such a de­liv­er­ance. But ever since the day of Pen­te­cost, Uran­tia mor­tals again may pro­ceed di­rectly to the mor­ontia spheres.

52:5.6Upon the res­ur­rec­tion of a be­stowal Son, on the third day af­ter yield­ing up his in­car­nated life, he as­cends to the right hand of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, re­ceives the as­sur­ance of the ac­cep­tance of the be­stowal mis­sion, and re­turns to the Cre­ator Son at the head­quar­ters of the lo­cal uni­verse. There­upon the be­stowal Avo­nal and the Cre­ator Mi­chael send their joint spirit, the Spirit of Truth, into the be­stowal world. This is the oc­ca­sion when the “spirit of the tri­umphant Son is poured out upon all flesh.” The Uni­verse Mother Spirit also par­tic­i­pates in this be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, and con­comi­tant there­with there is­sues the be­stowal edict of the Thought Ad­justers. There­after all nor­mal-minded will crea­tures of that world will re­ceive Ad­justers as soon as they at­tain the age of moral re­spon­si­bil­ity, of spir­i­tual choice.

52:5.7If such a be­stowal Avo­nal should re­turn to a world af­ter the be­stowal mis­sion, he would not in­car­nate but would come “in glory with the se­raphic hosts.”

52:5.8The postbestowal Son age may ex­tend from ten thou­sand to a hun­dred thou­sand years. There is no ar­bi­trary time al­lot­ted to any of these dis­pen­sa­tional eras. This is a time of great eth­i­cal and spir­i­tual prog­ress. Un­der the spir­i­tual in­flu­ence of these ages, hu­man char­ac­ter un­der­goes tremen­dous trans­for­ma­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences phe­nom­e­nal de­vel­op­ment. It be­comes pos­si­ble to put the golden rule into prac­ti­cal op­er­a­tion. The teach­ings of Je­sus are re­ally ap­pli­ca­ble to a mor­tal world which has had the pre­lim­i­nary train­ing of the pre­be­stowal Sons with their dis­pen­sa­tions of char­ac­ter en­no­ble­ment and cul­ture aug­men­ta­tion.

52:5.9Dur­ing this era the prob­lems of dis­ease and delin­quency are vir­tu­ally solved. De­gen­er­acy has al­ready been largely elim­i­nated by se­lec­tive re­pro­duc­tion. Dis­ease has been prac­ti­cally mas­tered through the high re­sis­tant qual­i­ties of the Adamic strains and by the in­tel­li­gent and world-wide ap­pli­ca­tion of the dis­cov­er­ies of the phys­i­cal sci­ences of pre­ced­ing ages. The av­er­age length of life, dur­ing this pe­riod, climbs well above the equiv­a­lent of three hun­dred years of Uran­tia time.

52:5.10Through­out this epoch there is a grad­ual less­en­ing of gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion. True self-gov­ern­ment is be­gin­ning to func­tion; fewer and fewer re­stric­tive laws are nec­es­sary. The mil­i­tary branches of na­tional re­sis­tance are pass­ing away; the era of in­ter­na­tional har­mony is re­ally ar­riv­ing. There are many na­tions, mostly de­ter­mined by land dis­tri­bu­tion, but only one race, one lan­guage, and one re­li­gion. Mor­tal af­fairs are al­most, but not quite, utopian. This truly is a great and glo­ri­ous age!