circumstances

4:1.4There is no lim­i­ta­tion of the forces and per­son­al­i­ties which the Fa­ther may use to up­hold his pur­pose and sus­tain his crea­tures. “The eter­nal God is our refuge, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms.” “He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.” “Be­hold, he who keeps us shall nei­ther slum­ber nor sleep.” “We know that all things work to­gether for good to those who love God,” “for the eyes of the Lord are over the righ­teous, and his ears are open to their prayers.”

4:1.11I am in­clined to be­lieve that it is this far-flung and gen­er­ally un­rec­og­niz­able con­trol of the co-or­di­na­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of all phases and forms of uni­verse ac­tiv­ity that causes such a var­ie­gated and ap­par­ently hope­lessly con­fused med­ley of phys­i­cal, men­tal, moral, and spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena so unerringly to work out to the glory of God and for the good of men and an­gels.

10:7.5The mor­tal mind can im­me­di­ately think of a thou­sand and one things—catas­trophic phys­i­cal events, ap­palling ac­ci­dents, hor­rific dis­as­ters, painful ill­nesses, and world-wide scourges—and ask whether such vis­i­ta­tions are cor­re­lated in the un­known ma­neu­ver­ing of this prob­a­ble func­tion­ing of the Su­preme Be­ing. Frankly, we do not know; we are not re­ally sure. But we do ob­serve that, as time passes, all these dif­fi­cult and more or less mys­te­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions al­ways work out for the wel­fare and prog­ress of the uni­verses. It may be that the cir­cum­stances of ex­is­tence and the in­ex­pli­ca­ble vi­cis­si­tudes of liv­ing are all in­ter­wo­ven into a mean­ing­ful pat­tern of high value by the func­tion of the Su­preme and the over­con­trol of the Trin­ity.

10:7.6As a son of God you can dis­cern the per­sonal at­ti­tude of love in all the acts of God the Fa­ther. But you will not al­ways be able to un­der­stand how many of the uni­verse acts of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity re­dound to the good of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of space. In the prog­ress of eter­nity the acts of the Trin­ity will be re­vealed as al­to­gether mean­ing­ful and con­sid­er­ate, but they do not al­ways so ap­pear to the crea­tures of time.

48:4.73. Pro­phetic joy. It will per­haps be dif­fi­cult for mor­tals to en­vis­age this phase of hu­mor, but we do get a pe­cu­liar sat­is­fac­tion out of the as­sur­ance “that all things work to­gether for good”—for spir­its and mor­ontians as well as for mor­tals. This as­pect of ce­les­tial hu­mor grows out of our faith in the lov­ing over­care of our su­pe­ri­ors and in the di­vine sta­bil­ity of our Su­preme Di­rec­tors.

54:4.7The mercy de­lays of time are by the man­date of the free will of the Cre­ators. There is good to be de­rived in the uni­verse from this tech­nique of pa­tience in deal­ing with sin­ful rebels. While it is all too true that good can­not come of evil to the one who con­tem­plates and per­forms evil, it is equally true that all things (in­clud­ing evil, po­ten­tial and man­i­fest) work to­gether for good to all be­ings who know God, love to do his will, and are as­cend­ing Par­adis­e­ward ac­cord­ing to his eter­nal plan and di­vine pur­pose.

67:7.8While we can­not fathom the wis­dom that per­mits such catas­tro­phes, we can al­ways dis­cern the ben­e­fi­cial out­work­ing of these lo­cal dis­tur­bances as they are re­flected out upon the uni­verse at large.

67:8.4If the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion has hand­i­capped the lo­cal sys­tem and its fallen worlds, if the loss of this Son and his mis­led as­so­ciates has tem­porar­ily ham­pered the prog­ress of the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek, then weigh the ef­fect of the far-flung pre­sen­ta­tion of the in­spir­ing per­for­mance of this one child of na­ture and his de­ter­mined band of 143 com­rades in stand­ing stead­fast for the higher con­cepts of uni­verse man­age­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tion in the face of such tremen­dous and ad­verse pres­sure ex­erted by his dis­loyal su­pe­ri­ors. And let me as­sure you, this has al­ready done more good in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don and the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton than can ever be out­weighed by the sum to­tal of all the evil and sor­row of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion.

94:6.4Lao-tse also made one of the ear­li­est pre­sen­ta­tions of the doc­trine of re­turn­ing good for evil: “Good­ness begets good­ness, but to the one who is truly good, evil also begets good­ness.”

118:10.18To re­al­ize prov­i­dence in time, man must ac­com­plish the task of achiev­ing per­fec­tion. But man can even now fore­taste this prov­i­dence in its eter­nity mean­ings as he pon­ders the uni­verse fact that all things, be they good or evil, work to­gether for the ad­vance­ment of God-know­ing mor­tals in their quest for the Fa­ther of all.

182:2.1The apos­tles were greatly shocked when they re­turned to their camp and found Ju­das ab­sent. While the eleven were en­gaged in a heated dis­cus­sion of their traitorous fel­low apos­tle, David Zeb­e­dee and John Mark took Je­sus to one side and re­vealed that they had kept Ju­das un­der ob­ser­va­tion for sev­eral days, and that they knew he in­tended to be­tray him into the hands of his en­e­mies. Je­sus lis­tened to them but only said: “My friends, noth­ing can hap­pen to the Son of Man un­less the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Let not your hearts be trou­bled; all things will work to­gether for the glory of God and the sal­va­tion of men.”

140:8.3Je­sus made clear to the three the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship and dis­ci­ple­ship. And even then he did not for­bid the ex­er­cise of pru­dence and fore­sight by the twelve. What he preached against was not fore­thought but anx­i­ety, worry. He taught the ac­tive and alert sub­mis­sion to God’s will. In an­swer to many of their ques­tions re­gard­ing fru­gal­ity and thrifti­ness, he sim­ply called at­ten­tion to his life as car­pen­ter, boat­maker, and fish­er­man, and to his care­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion of the twelve. He sought to make it clear that the world is not to be re­garded as an en­emy; that the cir­cum­stances of life con­sti­tute a di­vine dis­pen­sa­tion work­ing along with the chil­dren of God.

• lived life in the channel of its natural flowing

128:1.6The Naz­a­reth car­pen­ter now fully un­der­stood the work be­fore him, but he chose to live his hu­man life in the chan­nel of its nat­u­ral flow­ing. And in some of these mat­ters he is in­deed an ex­am­ple to his mor­tal crea­tures, even as it is re­corded: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Je­sus, who, be­ing of the na­ture of God, thought it not strange to be equal with God. But he made him­self to be of lit­tle im­port and, tak­ing upon him­self the form of a crea­ture, was born in the like­ness of man­kind. And be­ing thus fash­ioned as a man, he hum­bled him­self and be­came obe­di­ent to death, even the death of the cross.”

• did not interfere with natural events

135:11.3These dis­ci­ples were amazed at John’s pro­nounce­ment, so much so that they de­parted in si­lence. John was also much ag­i­tated, for he per­ceived that he had ut­tered a prophecy. Never again did he wholly doubt the mis­sion and di­vin­ity of Je­sus. But it was a sore dis­ap­point­ment to John that Je­sus sent him no word, that he came not to see him, and that he ex­er­cised none of his great power to de­liver him from prison. But Je­sus knew all about this. He had great love for John, but be­ing now cog­nizant of his di­vine na­ture and know­ing fully the great things in prepa­ra­tion for John when he de­parted from this world and also know­ing that John’s work on earth was fin­ished, he con­strained him­self not to in­ter­fere in the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of the great preacher-prophet’s ca­reer.

• did not interfere with natural events

136:7.2Je­sus knew his fel­low coun­try­men were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would be above nat­u­ral law. Well had he been taught that Scrip­ture: “There shall no evil be­fall you, nei­ther shall any plague come near your dwell­ing. For he shall give his an­gels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Would this sort of pre­sump­tion, this de­fi­ance of his Fa­ther’s laws of grav­ity, be jus­ti­fied in or­der to pro­tect him­self from pos­si­ble harm or, per­chance, to win the con­fi­dence of his mis­taught and dis­tracted peo­ple? But such a course, how­ever grat­i­fy­ing to the sign-seek­ing Jews, would be, not a rev­e­la­tion of his Fa­ther, but a ques­tion­able tri­fling with the es­tab­lished laws of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

136:7.3Un­der­stand­ing all of this and know­ing that the Mas­ter re­fused to work in de­fi­ance of his es­tab­lished laws of na­ture in so far as his per­sonal con­duct was con­cerned, you know of a cer­tainty that he never walked on the wa­ter nor did any­thing else which was an out­rage to his ma­te­rial or­der of ad­min­is­ter­ing the world; al­ways, of course, bear­ing in mind that there had, as yet, been found no way whereby he could be wholly de­liv­ered from the lack of con­trol over the el­e­ment of time in con­nec­tion with those mat­ters put un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

• did not interfere with natural events

136:8.5Je­sus was fully aware of the short cuts open to one of his pow­ers. He knew many ways in which the at­ten­tion of the na­tion, and the whole world, could be im­me­di­ately fo­cused upon him­self. Soon the Pass­over would be cel­e­brated at Je­ru­sa­lem; the city would be thronged with vis­i­tors. He could as­cend the pin­na­cle of the tem­ple and be­fore the be­wil­dered mul­ti­tude walk out on the air; that would be the kind of a Mes­siah they were look­ing for. But he would sub­se­quently dis­ap­point them since he had not come to re-es­tab­lish David’s throne. And he knew the fu­til­ity of the Cali­gas­tia method of try­ing to get ahead of the nat­u­ral, slow, and sure way of ac­com­plish­ing the di­vine pur­pose. Again the Son of Man bowed obe­di­ently to the Fa­ther’s way, the Fa­ther’s will.

136:8.6Je­sus chose to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of man­kind by nat­u­ral, or­di­nary, dif­fi­cult, and try­ing meth­ods, just such pro­ce­dures as his earth chil­dren must sub­se­quently fol­low in their work of en­larg­ing and ex­tend­ing that heav­enly king­dom. For well did the Son of Man know that it would be “through much tribu­la­tion that many of the chil­dren of all ages would en­ter into the king­dom.” Je­sus was now pass­ing through the great test of civ­i­lized man, to have power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for purely self­ish or per­sonal pur­poses.

• did not interfere with natural events

136:9.9By these de­ci­sions Je­sus set a wor­thy ex­am­ple for ev­ery per­son on ev­ery world through­out a vast uni­verse when he re­fused to ap­ply ma­te­rial tests to prove spir­i­tual prob­lems, when he re­fused pre­sump­tu­ously to defy nat­u­ral laws. And he set an in­spir­ing ex­am­ple of uni­verse loy­alty and moral no­bil­ity when he re­fused to grasp tem­po­ral power as the pre­lude to spir­i­tual glory.

• did not interfere with natural events

182:3.7Ear­lier in the evening it had not seemed so dif­fi­cult to drink the cup, but as the hu­man Je­sus bade farewell to his apos­tles and sent them to their rest, the trial grew more ap­palling. Je­sus ex­pe­ri­enced that nat­u­ral ebb and flow of feel­ing which is com­mon to all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, and just now he was weary from work, ex­hausted from the long hours of stren­u­ous la­bor and painful anx­i­ety con­cern­ing the safety of his apos­tles. While no mor­tal can pre­sume to un­der­stand the thoughts and feel­ings of the in­car­nate Son of God at such a time as this, we know that he en­dured great an­guish and suf­fered un­told sor­row, for the per­spi­ra­tion rolled off his face in great drops. He was at last con­vinced that the Fa­ther in­tended to al­low nat­u­ral events to take their course; he was fully de­ter­mined to em­ploy none of his sov­er­eign power as the su­preme head of a uni­verse to save him­self.

• did not interfere with natural events

183:1.2The Fa­ther in heaven de­sired the be­stowal Son to fin­ish his earth ca­reer nat­u­rally, just as all mor­tals must fin­ish up their lives on earth and in the flesh. Or­di­nary men and women can­not ex­pect to have their last hours on earth and the super­ven­ing episode of death made easy by a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, Je­sus elected to lay down his life in the flesh in the man­ner which was in keep­ing with the out­work­ing of nat­u­ral events, and he stead­fastly re­fused to ex­tri­cate him­self from the cruel clutches of a wicked con­spir­acy of in­hu­man events which swept on with hor­ri­ble cer­tainty to­ward his un­be­liev­able hu­mil­i­a­tion and ig­no­min­ious death. And ev­ery bit of all this as­tound­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of ha­tred and this un­prece­dented dem­on­stra­tion of cru­elty was the work of evil men and wicked mor­tals. God in heaven did not will it, nei­ther did the arch­en­e­mies of Je­sus dic­tate it, though they did much to in­sure that un­think­ing and evil mor­tals would thus re­ject the be­stowal Son. Even the fa­ther of sin turned his face away from the ex­cru­ci­at­ing hor­ror of the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion.

• did not interfere with natural events

186:2.3Je­sus was con­vinced that it was the will of the Fa­ther that he sub­mit him­self to the nat­u­ral and or­di­nary course of hu­man events just as ev­ery other mor­tal crea­ture must, and there­fore he re­fused to em­ploy even his purely hu­man pow­ers of per­sua­sive elo­quence to in­flu­ence the out­come of the machi­na­tions of his so­cially near­sighted and spir­i­tu­ally blinded fel­low mor­tals. Al­though Je­sus lived and died on Uran­tia, his whole hu­man ca­reer, from first to last, was a spec­ta­cle de­signed to in­flu­ence and in­struct the en­tire uni­verse of his cre­ation and un­ceas­ing up­hold­ing.

113:3.5On the spir­i­tual level, ser­a­phim make per­sonal many oth­er­wise im­per­sonal and preper­sonal min­istries of the uni­verse; they are co-or­di­na­tors. On the in­tel­lec­tual level they are the cor­re­la­tors of mind and mor­ontia; they are in­ter­preters. And on the phys­i­cal level they ma­nip­u­late ter­res­trial en­vi­ron­ment through their li­ai­son with the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers and through the co-op­er­a­tive min­istry of the mid­way crea­tures.

113:4.4The im­pulse of wor­ship largely orig­i­nates in the spirit prompt­ings of the higher mind ad­ju­tants, re­in­forced by the lead­ings of the Ad­juster. But the urge to pray so of­ten ex­pe­ri­enced by God-con­scious mor­tals very of­ten arises as the re­sult of se­raphic in­flu­ence. The guard­ing ser­a­phim is con­stantly ma­nip­u­lat­ing the mor­tal en­vi­ron­ment for the pur­pose of aug­ment­ing the cos­mic in­sight of the hu­man as­cender to the end that such a sur­vival can­di­date may ac­quire en­hanced re­al­iza­tion of the pres­ence of the in­dwelling Ad­juster and thus be en­abled to yield in­creased co-op­er­a­tion with the spir­i­tual mis­sion of the di­vine pres­ence.

114:6.18None of these an­gelic groups ex­er­cise di­rect or ar­bi­trary con­trol over the do­mains of their as­sign­ment. They can­not fully con­trol the af­fairs of their re­spec­tive realms of ac­tion, but they can and do so ma­nip­u­late plan­e­tary con­di­tions and so as­so­ciate cir­cum­stances as fa­vor­ably to in­flu­ence the spheres of hu­man ac­tiv­ity to which they are at­tached.

130:1.2One day af­ter the evening meal Je­sus and the young Phil­is­tine strolled down by the sea, and Ga­diah, not know­ing that this “scribe of Da­mas­cus” was so well versed in the He­brew tra­di­tions, pointed out to Je­sus the ship land­ing from which it was re­puted that Jonah had em­barked on his ill-fated voy­age to Tarshish. And when he had con­cluded his re­marks, he asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “But do you sup­pose the big fish re­ally did swal­low Jonah?” Je­sus per­ceived that this young man’s life had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by this tra­di­tion, and that its con­tem­pla­tion had im­pressed upon him the folly of try­ing to run away from duty; Je­sus there­fore said noth­ing that would sud­denly de­stroy the foun­da­tions of Ga­diah’s pres­ent mo­ti­va­tion for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My friend, we are all Jon­ahs with lives to live in ac­cor­dance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to es­cape the pres­ent duty of liv­ing by run­ning away to far-off en­tice­ments, we thereby put our­selves in the im­me­di­ate con­trol of those in­flu­ences which are not di­rected by the pow­ers of truth and the forces of righ­teous­ness. The flight from duty is the sac­ri­fice of truth. The es­cape from the ser­vice of light and life can only re­sult in those dis­tress­ing con­flicts with the dif­fi­cult whales of self­ish­ness which lead even­tu­ally to dark­ness and death un­less such God-for­sak­ing Jon­ahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of de­spair, to seek af­ter God and his good­ness. And when such dis­heart­ened souls sin­cerely seek for God—hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—there is noth­ing that can hold them in fur­ther cap­tiv­ity. No mat­ter into what great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will de­liver them from their cap­tiv­ity; the evil cir­cum­stances of life will spew them out upon the dry land of fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­newed ser­vice and wiser liv­ing.”