crisis

67:3.7This seven years of wait­ing was a time of heart search­ing and soul dis­ci­pline. Such crises in the af­fairs of a uni­verse demon­strate the tremen­dous in­flu­ence of mind as a fac­tor in spir­i­tual choos­ing. Ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing, and ex­pe­ri­ence are fac­tors in most of the vi­tal de­ci­sions of all evo­lu­tion­ary moral crea­tures. But it is en­tirely pos­si­ble for the in­dwelling spirit to make di­rect con­tact with the de­ci­sion-de­ter­min­ing pow­ers of the hu­man per­son­al­ity so as to em­power the fully con­se­crated will of the crea­ture to per­form amaz­ing acts of loyal de­vo­tion to the will and the way of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. And this is just what oc­curred in the ex­pe­ri­ence of Amadon, the mod­i­fied hu­man as­so­ciate of Van.

153:1.4This cri­sis in Je­sus’ earth life be­gan with the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and ended with this ser­mon in the syn­a­gogue; the cri­sis in the lives of the apos­tles be­gan with this ser­mon in the syn­a­gogue and con­tin­ued for a whole year, end­ing only with the Mas­ter’s trial and cru­ci­fix­ion.

170:4.15Al­though Je­sus re­ferred one phase of the king­dom to the fu­ture and did, on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, in­ti­mate that such an event might ap­pear as a part of a world cri­sis; and though he did like­wise most cer­tainly, on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, def­i­nitely prom­ise some­time to re­turn to Uran­tia, it should be re­corded that he never pos­i­tively linked these two ideas to­gether. He prom­ised a new rev­e­la­tion of the king­dom on earth and at some fu­ture time; he also prom­ised some­time to come back to this world in per­son; but he did not say that these two events were syn­ony­mous. From all we know these promises may, or may not, re­fer to the same event.

3:2.6The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is not a tran­sient force, a shift­ing power, or a fluc­tu­at­ing en­ergy. The power and wis­dom of the Fa­ther are wholly ad­e­quate to cope with any and all uni­verse ex­i­gen­cies. As the emer­gen­cies of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence arise, he has fore­seen them all, and there­fore he does not re­act to the af­fairs of the uni­verse in a de­tached way but rather in ac­cor­dance with the dic­tates of eter­nal wis­dom and in con­so­nance with the man­dates of in­fi­nite judg­ment. Re­gard­less of ap­pear­ances, the power of God is not func­tion­ing in the uni­verse as a blind force.

3:2.7Sit­u­a­tions do arise in which it ap­pears that emer­gency rul­ings have been made, that nat­u­ral laws have been sus­pended, that mis­adap­ta­tions have been rec­og­nized, and that an ef­fort is be­ing made to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion; but such is not the case. Such con­cepts of God have their ori­gin in the lim­ited range of your view­point, in the finite­ness of your com­pre­hen­sion, and in the cir­cum­scribed scope of your sur­vey; such mis­un­der­stand­ing of God is due to the pro­found ig­no­rance you en­joy re­gard­ing the ex­is­tence of the higher laws of the realm, the mag­ni­tude of the Fa­ther’s char­ac­ter, the in­fin­ity of his at­tri­butes, and the fact of his free-will­ness.

110:7.9While the voice of the Ad­juster is ever within you, most of you will hear it sel­dom dur­ing a life­time. Hu­man be­ings be­low the third and sec­ond cir­cles of at­tain­ment rarely hear the Ad­juster’s di­rect voice ex­cept in mo­ments of su­preme de­sire, in a su­preme sit­u­a­tion, and con­se­quent upon a su­preme de­ci­sion.

152:5.5Je­sus then an­nounced that he wished to with­draw for a few days of rest with his apos­tles be­fore they made ready to go up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, and he for­bade any of the dis­ci­ples or the mul­ti­tude to fol­low him. Ac­cord­ingly they went by boat to the re­gion of Gen­nesaret for two or three days of rest and sleep. Je­sus was prepar­ing for a great cri­sis of his life on earth, and he there­fore spent much time in com­mu­nion with the Fa­ther in heaven.

153:1.3The Mas­ter well knew that many of his fol­low­ers were slowly but surely prepar­ing their minds fi­nally to re­ject him. He like­wise knew that many of his dis­ci­ples were slowly but cer­tainly pass­ing through that train­ing of mind and that dis­ci­pline of soul which would en­able them to tri­umph over doubt and coura­geously to as­sert their full-fledged faith in the gospel of the king­dom. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how men pre­pare them­selves for the de­ci­sions of a cri­sis and the per­for­mance of sud­den deeds of coura­geous choos­ing by the slow pro­cess of the re­it­er­ated choos­ing be­tween the re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions of good and evil. He sub­jected his cho­sen mes­sen­gers to re­peated re­hearsals in dis­ap­point­ment and pro­vided them with fre­quent and test­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for choos­ing be­tween the right and the wrong way of meet­ing spir­i­tual tri­als. He knew he could de­pend on his fol­low­ers, when they met the fi­nal test, to make their vi­tal de­ci­sions in ac­cor­dance with prior and ha­bit­ual men­tal at­ti­tudes and spirit re­ac­tions.

114:7.9On many worlds the bet­ter adapted sec­ondary mid­way crea­tures are able to at­tain vary­ing de­grees of con­tact with the Thought Ad­justers of cer­tain fa­vor­ably con­sti­tuted mor­tals through the skill­ful pen­e­tra­tion of the minds of the lat­ters’ in­dwelling. (And it was by just such a for­tu­itous com­bi­na­tion of cos­mic ad­just­ments that these rev­e­la­tions were ma­te­ri­al­ized in the En­glish lan­guage on Uran­tia.) Such po­ten­tial con­tact mor­tals of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are mo­bi­lized in the nu­mer­ous re­serve corps, and it is, to a cer­tain ex­tent, through these small groups of for­ward-look­ing per­son­al­i­ties that spir­i­tual civ­i­liza­tion is ad­vanced and the Most Highs are able to rule in the king­doms of men. The men and women of these re­serve corps of des­tiny thus have var­i­ous de­grees of con­tact with their Ad­justers through the in­ter­ven­ing min­istry of the mid­way crea­tures; but these same mor­tals are lit­tle known to their fel­lows ex­cept in those rare so­cial emer­gen­cies and spir­i­tual ex­i­gen­cies wherein these re­serve per­son­al­i­ties func­tion for the pre­ven­tion of the break­down of evo­lu­tion­ary cul­ture or the ex­tinc­tion of the light of liv­ing truth. On Uran­tia these re­servists of des­tiny have sel­dom been em­bla­zoned on the pages of hu­man his­tory.

187:2.4Be­fore Je­sus was put on his cross, the two brig­ands had al­ready been placed on their crosses, all the while curs­ing and spit­ting upon their ex­e­cu­tion­ers. Je­sus’ only words, as they nailed him to the cross­beam, were, “Fa­ther, for­give them, for they know not what they do.” He could not have so mer­ci­fully and lov­ingly in­ter­ceded for his ex­e­cu­tion­ers if such thoughts of af­fec­tion­ate de­vo­tion had not been the main­spring of all his life of un­selfish ser­vice. The ideas, mo­tives, and long­ings of a life­time are openly re­vealed in a cri­sis.

113:5.4In the life of the flesh the in­tel­li­gence of an­gels is not di­rectly avail­able to mor­tal men. They are not over­lords or di­rec­tors; they are sim­ply guard­i­ans. The ser­a­phim guard you; they do not seek di­rectly to in­flu­ence you; you must chart your own course, but these an­gels then act to make the best pos­si­ble use of the course you have cho­sen. They do not (or­di­nar­ily) ar­bi­trar­ily in­ter­vene in the rou­tine af­fairs of hu­man life. But when they re­ceive in­struc­tions from their su­pe­ri­ors to per­form some un­usual ex­ploit, you may rest as­sured that these guard­i­ans will find some means of car­ry­ing out these man­dates. They do not, there­fore, in­trude into the pic­ture of hu­man drama ex­cept in emer­gen­cies and then usu­ally on the di­rect or­ders of their su­pe­ri­ors. They are the be­ings who are go­ing to fol­low you for many an age, and they are thus re­ceiv­ing an in­tro­duc­tion to their fu­ture work and per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion.

113:5.5Ser­a­phim are able to func­tion as ma­te­rial min­is­ters to hu­man be­ings un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but their ac­tion in this ca­pac­ity is very rare. They are able, with the as­sis­tance of the mid­way crea­tures and the phys­i­cal con­trol­lers, to func­tion in a wide range of ac­tiv­i­ties in be­half of hu­man be­ings, even to make ac­tual con­tact with man­kind, but such oc­cur­rences are very un­usual. In most in­stances the cir­cum­stances of the ma­te­rial realm pro­ceed un­al­tered by se­raphic ac­tion, al­though oc­ca­sions have arisen, in­volv­ing jeop­ardy to vi­tal links in the chain of hu­man evo­lu­tion, in which se­raphic guard­i­ans have acted, and prop­erly, on their own ini­tia­tive.

100:2.8Af­ter such spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, whether se­cured by grad­ual growth or spe­cific cri­sis, there oc­curs a new ori­en­ta­tion of per­son­al­ity as well as the de­vel­op­ment of a new stan­dard of val­ues. Such spirit-born in­di­vid­u­als are so re­mo­ti­vated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fond­est am­bi­tions per­ish and their keen­est hopes crash; they pos­i­tively know that such catas­tro­phes are but the redi­rect­ing cat­a­clysms which wreck one’s tem­po­ral cre­ations pre­lim­i­nary to the rear­ing of the more no­ble and en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of a new and more sub­lime level of uni­verse at­tain­ment.

84:3.3But man was no more to blame for his low opin­ion of woman dur­ing past ages than was woman her­self. She failed to get so­cial rec­og­ni­tion dur­ing prim­i­tive times be­cause she did not func­tion in an emer­gency; she was not a spec­tac­u­lar or cri­sis hero. Ma­ter­nity was a dis­tinct dis­abil­ity in the ex­is­tence strug­gle; mother love hand­i­capped women in the tribal de­fense.