God

0:2.1Evolv­ing mor­tal crea­tures ex­pe­ri­ence an ir­re­sistible urge to sym­bol­ize their fi­nite con­cepts of God. Man’s con­scious­ness of moral duty and his spir­i­tual ide­al­ism rep­re­sent a value level—an ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­ity—which is dif­fi­cult of sym­bol­iza­tion.

• consciousness of God

0:2.2Cos­mic con­scious­ness im­plies the rec­og­ni­tion of a First Cause, the one and only un­caused re­al­ity. God, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, func­tions on three De­ity-per­son­al­ity lev­els of subin­fi­nite value and rel­a­tive di­vin­ity ex­pres­sion:

0:2.31. Preper­sonal—as in the min­istry of the Fa­ther frag­ments, such as the Thought Ad­justers.

0:2.42. Per­sonal—as in the evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence of cre­ated and pro­cre­ated be­ings.

0:2.53. Super­per­sonal—as in the even­tu­ated ex­is­tences of cer­tain ab­so­nite and as­so­ci­ated be­ings.

• term “God” › word symbol designating all personalizations of Deity; needs a different definition on each level

0:2.6GOD is a word sym­bol des­ig­nat­ing all per­son­al­iza­tions of De­ity. The term re­quires a dif­fer­ent def­i­ni­tion on each per­sonal level of De­ity func­tion and must be still fur­ther re­de­fined within each of these lev­els, as this term may be used to des­ig­nate the di­verse co-or­di­nate and sub­or­di­nate per­son­al­iza­tions of De­ity; for ex­am­ple: the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons—the lo­cal uni­verse fa­thers.

0:2.7The term God, as we make use of it, may be un­der­stood:

0:2.8By des­ig­na­tion—as God the Fa­ther.

• term “God” › infinite concept of Father

0:2.9By con­text—as when used in the dis­cus­sion of some one de­ity level or as­so­ci­a­tion. When in doubt as to the ex­act in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the word God, it would be ad­vis­able to re­fer it to the per­son of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

0:2.10The term God al­ways de­notes per­son­al­ity. De­ity may, or may not, re­fer to di­vin­ity per­son­al­i­ties.

0:2.11The word GOD is used, in these pa­pers, with the fol­low­ing mean­ings:

0:2.121. God the Fa­ther—Cre­ator, Con­trol­ler, and Up­holder. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the First Per­son of De­ity.

0:2.132. God the Son—Co-or­di­nate Cre­ator, Spirit Con­trol­ler, and Spir­i­tual Ad­min­is­tra­tor. The Eter­nal Son, the Sec­ond Per­son of De­ity.

0:2.143. God the Spirit—Con­joint Ac­tor, Uni­ver­sal In­te­gra­tor, and Mind Be­stower. The In­fi­nite Spirit, the Third Per­son of De­ity.

0:2.154. God the Su­preme—the ac­tu­al­iz­ing or evolv­ing God of time and space. Per­sonal De­ity as­so­cia­tively re­al­iz­ing the time-space ex­pe­ri­en­tial achieve­ment of crea­ture-Cre­ator iden­tity. The Su­preme Be­ing is per­son­ally ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the achieve­ment of De­ity unity as the evolv­ing and ex­pe­ri­en­tial God of the evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures of time and space.

0:2.165. God the Sev­en­fold—De­ity per­son­al­ity any­where ac­tu­ally func­tion­ing in time and space. The per­sonal Par­a­dise De­i­ties and their cre­ative as­so­ciates func­tion­ing in and be­yond the bor­ders of the cen­tral uni­verse and power-per­son­al­iz­ing as the Su­preme Be­ing on the first crea­ture level of uni­fy­ing De­ity rev­e­la­tion in time and space. This level, the grand uni­verse, is the sphere of the time-space de­scen­sion of Par­a­dise per­son­al­i­ties in re­cip­ro­cal as­so­ci­a­tion with the time-space as­cen­sion of evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures.

0:2.176. God the Ul­ti­mate—the even­tu­at­ing God of super­time and tran­scended space. The sec­ond ex­pe­ri­en­tial level of uni­fy­ing De­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion. God the Ul­ti­mate im­plies the at­tained re­al­iza­tion of the syn­the­sized ab­so­nite-super­per­sonal, time-space-tran­scended, and even­tu­ated-ex­pe­ri­en­tial val­ues, co-or­di­nated on fi­nal cre­ative lev­els of De­ity re­al­ity.

0:2.187. God the Ab­so­lute—the ex­pe­ri­en­tial­iz­ing God of tran­scended super­per­sonal val­ues and di­vin­ity mean­ings, now ex­is­ten­tial as the De­ity Ab­so­lute. This is the third level of uni­fy­ing De­ity ex­pres­sion and ex­pan­sion. On this super­cre­ative level, De­ity ex­pe­ri­ences ex­haus­tion of per­son­al­iz­able po­ten­tial, en­coun­ters com­ple­tion of di­vin­ity, and un­der­goes de­ple­tion of ca­pac­ity for self-rev­e­la­tion to suc­ces­sive and pro­gres­sive lev­els of other-per­son­al­iza­tion. De­ity now en­coun­ters, im­pinges upon, and ex­pe­ri­ences iden­tity with, the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute.

• God’s nature › primal, personal as Father

0:3.9God, as the First Source and Cen­ter, is pri­mal in re­la­tion to to­tal re­al­ity—un­qual­i­fiedly. The First Source and Cen­ter is in­fi­nite as well as eter­nal and is there­fore lim­ited or con­di­tioned only by vo­li­tion.

0:3.10God—the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther—is the per­son­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter and as such main­tains per­sonal re­la­tions of in­fi­nite con­trol over all co-or­di­nate and sub­or­di­nate sources and cen­ters. Such con­trol is per­sonal and in­fi­nite in po­ten­tial, even though it may never ac­tu­ally func­tion ow­ing to the per­fec­tion of the func­tion of such co-or­di­nate and sub­or­di­nate sources and cen­ters and per­son­al­i­ties.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

0:3.11The First Source and Cen­ter is, there­fore, pri­mal in all do­mains: de­i­fied or un­de­i­fied, per­sonal or im­per­sonal, ac­tual or po­ten­tial, fi­nite or in­fi­nite. No thing or be­ing, no rel­a­tiv­ity or fi­nal­ity, ex­ists ex­cept in di­rect or in­di­rect re­la­tion to, and de­pen­dence on, the pri­macy of the First Source and Cen­ter.

• finding God › none go to God except through Michael
• finding God › sevenfold approach to Deity

0:8.1To atone for fin­ity of sta­tus and to com­pen­sate for crea­ture lim­i­ta­tions of con­cept, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has es­tab­lished the evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture’s sev­en­fold ap­proach to De­ity:

0:8.21. The Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons.

0:8.32. The An­cients of Days.

0:8.43. The Seven Mas­ter Spir­its.

0:8.54. The Su­preme Be­ing.

0:8.65. God the Spirit.

0:8.76. God the Son.

0:8.87. God the Fa­ther.

• finding God › begins by recognizing divinity of Creator Son
• finding God › he who has seen a Creator Son has seen God

0:8.9This sev­en­fold De­ity per­son­al­iza­tion in time and space and to the seven super­uni­verses en­ables mor­tal man to at­tain the pres­ence of God, who is spirit. This sev­en­fold De­ity, to fi­nite time-space crea­tures some­time power-per­son­al­iz­ing in the Su­preme Be­ing, is the func­tional De­ity of the mor­tal evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures of the Par­a­dise-as­cen­sion ca­reer. Such an ex­pe­ri­en­tial dis­cov­ery-ca­reer of the re­al­iza­tion of God be­gins with the rec­og­ni­tion of the di­vin­ity of the Cre­ator Son of the lo­cal uni­verse and as­cends through the super­uni­verse An­cients of Days and by way of the per­son of one of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its to the at­tain­ment of the dis­cov­ery and rec­og­ni­tion of the di­vine per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

• consciousness of God › we may attain perfection of

1:0.5Uran­tia mor­tals can hardly hope to be per­fect in the in­fi­nite sense, but it is en­tirely pos­si­ble for hu­man be­ings, start­ing out as they do on this planet, to at­tain the su­per­nal and di­vine goal which the in­fi­nite God has set for mor­tal man; and when they do achieve this des­tiny, they will, in all that per­tains to self-re­al­iza­tion and mind at­tain­ment, be just as re­plete in their sphere of di­vine per­fec­tion as God him­self is in his sphere of in­fin­ity and eter­nity. Such per­fec­tion may not be uni­ver­sal in the ma­te­rial sense, un­lim­ited in in­tel­lec­tual grasp, or fi­nal in spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is fi­nal and com­plete in all fi­nite as­pects of di­vin­ity of will, per­fec­tion of per­son­al­ity mo­ti­va­tion, and God-con­scious­ness.

• finding God › greatest experience in human existence

1:0.6This is the true mean­ing of that di­vine com­mand, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect,” which ever urges mor­tal man on­ward and beck­ons him in­ward in that long and fas­ci­nat­ing strug­gle for the at­tain­ment of higher and higher lev­els of spir­i­tual val­ues and true uni­verse mean­ings. This sub­lime search for the God of uni­verses is the su­preme ad­ven­ture of the in­hab­i­tants of all the worlds of time and space.

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

1:1.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never im­poses any form of ar­bi­trary rec­og­ni­tion, for­mal wor­ship, or slav­ish ser­vice upon the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses. The evo­lu­tion­ary in­hab­i­tants of the worlds of time and space must of them­selves—in their own hearts—rec­og­nize, love, and vol­un­tar­ily wor­ship him. The Cre­ator re­fuses to co­erce or com­pel the sub­mis­sion of the spir­i­tual free wills of his ma­te­rial crea­tures. The af­fec­tion­ate ded­i­ca­tion of the hu­man will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is man’s choic­est gift to God; in fact, such a con­se­cra­tion of crea­ture will con­sti­tutes man’s only pos­si­ble gift of true value to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. In God, man lives, moves, and has his be­ing; there is noth­ing which man can give to God ex­cept this choos­ing to abide by the Fa­ther’s will, and such de­ci­sions, ef­fected by the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses, con­sti­tute the re­al­ity of that true wor­ship which is so sat­is­fy­ing to the love-dom­i­nated na­ture of the Cre­ator Fa­ther.

• misconceptions about God

1:2.2The eter­nal God is in­finitely more than re­al­ity ide­al­ized or the uni­verse per­son­al­ized. God is not sim­ply the su­preme de­sire of man, the mor­tal quest ob­jec­ti­fied. Nei­ther is God merely a con­cept, the power-po­ten­tial of righ­teous­ness. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is not a syn­onym for na­ture, nei­ther is he nat­u­ral law per­son­i­fied. God is a tran­scen­dent re­al­ity, not merely man’s tra­di­tional con­cept of su­preme val­ues. God is not a psy­cho­log­i­cal fo­cal­iza­tion of spir­i­tual mean­ings, nei­ther is he “the no­blest work of man.” God may be any or all of these con­cepts in the minds of men, but he is more. He is a sav­ing per­son and a lov­ing Fa­ther to all who en­joy spir­i­tual peace on earth, and who crave to ex­pe­ri­ence per­son­al­ity sur­vival in death.

• finding God › cannot find God through science

1:2.7The ex­is­tence of God can never be proved by sci­en­tific ex­per­i­ment or by the pure rea­son of log­i­cal de­duc­tion. God can be re­al­ized only in the realms of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; nev­er­the­less, the true con­cept of the re­al­ity of God is rea­son­able to logic, plau­si­ble to phi­los­o­phy, es­sen­tial to re­li­gion, and in­dis­pens­able to any hope of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

• God’s nature › invisible
• God’s nature › spirit
• infinite
• man › created in image of God

1:3.1“God is spirit.” He is a uni­ver­sal spir­i­tual pres­ence. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is an in­fi­nite spir­i­tual re­al­ity; he is “the sov­er­eign, eter­nal, im­mor­tal, in­vis­i­ble, and only true God.” Even though you are “the off­spring of God,” you ought not to think that the Fa­ther is like your­selves in form and physique be­cause you are said to be cre­ated “in his im­age”—in­dwelt by Mys­tery Mon­i­tors dis­patched from the cen­tral abode of his eter­nal pres­ence. Spirit be­ings are real, not­with­stand­ing they are in­vis­i­ble to hu­man eyes; even though they have not flesh and blood.

• finding God › God is approachable; not in hiding
• finding God › through leadings of spiritual insight

1:3.3The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is not in­vis­i­ble be­cause he is hid­ing him­self away from the lowly crea­tures of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic hand­i­caps and lim­ited spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. The sit­u­a­tion rather is: “You can­not see my face, for no mor­tal can see me and live.” No ma­te­rial man could be­hold the spirit God and pre­serve his mor­tal ex­is­tence. The glory and the spir­i­tual bril­liance of the di­vine per­son­al­ity pres­ence is im­pos­si­ble of ap­proach by the lower groups of spirit be­ings or by any or­der of ma­te­rial per­son­al­i­ties. The spir­i­tual lu­mi­nos­ity of the Fa­ther’s per­sonal pres­ence is a “light which no mor­tal man can ap­proach; which no ma­te­rial crea­ture has seen or can see.” But it is not nec­es­sary to see God with the eyes of the flesh in or­der to dis­cern him by the faith-vi­sion of the spir­i­tu­al­ized mind.

• God’s nature › is love
• God’s nature › spirit

1:3.8I come forth from the Eter­nal, and I have re­peat­edly re­turned to the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I know of the ac­tu­al­ity and per­son­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter, the Eter­nal and Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I know that, while the great God is ab­so­lute, eter­nal, and in­fi­nite, he is also good, di­vine, and gra­cious. I know the truth of the great dec­la­ra­tions: “God is spirit” and “God is love,” and these two at­tri­butes are most com­pletely re­vealed to the uni­verse in the Eter­nal Son.

• finding God › God manifests himself to our capacity

1:4.5The di­vine mys­tery con­sists in the in­her­ent dif­fer­ence which ex­ists be­tween the fi­nite and the in­fi­nite, the tem­po­ral and the eter­nal, the time-space crea­ture and the Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator, the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, the im­per­fec­tion of man and the per­fec­tion of Par­a­dise De­ity. The God of uni­ver­sal love un­fail­ingly man­i­fests him­self to ev­ery one of his crea­tures up to the full­ness of that crea­ture’s ca­pac­ity to spir­i­tu­ally grasp the qual­i­ties of di­vine truth, beauty, and good­ness.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

1:4.6To ev­ery spirit be­ing and to ev­ery mor­tal crea­ture in ev­ery sphere and on ev­ery world of the uni­verse of uni­verses, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther re­veals all of his gra­cious and di­vine self that can be dis­cerned or com­pre­hended by such spirit be­ings and by such mor­tal crea­tures. God is no re­specter of per­sons, ei­ther spir­i­tual or ma­te­rial. The di­vine pres­ence which any child of the uni­verse en­joys at any given mo­ment is lim­ited only by the ca­pac­ity of such a crea­ture to re­ceive and to dis­cern the spirit ac­tu­al­i­ties of the super­ma­te­rial world.

• infinite

1:5.1Do not per­mit the mag­ni­tude of God, his in­fin­ity, ei­ther to ob­scure or eclipse his per­son­al­ity. “He who planned the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall he not see?” The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the acme of di­vine per­son­al­ity; he is the ori­gin and des­tiny of per­son­al­ity through­out all cre­ation. God is both in­fi­nite and per­sonal; he is an in­fi­nite per­son­al­ity. The Fa­ther is truly a per­son­al­ity, not­with­stand­ing that the in­fin­ity of his per­son places him for­ever be­yond the full com­pre­hen­sion of ma­te­rial and fi­nite be­ings.

• finding God › discern God through creation, revelations of Sons
• finding God › God is approachable; not in hiding
• God’s nature › invisible

1:5.3God is not hid­ing from any of his crea­tures. He is un­ap­proach­able to so many or­ders of be­ings only be­cause he “dwells in a light which no ma­te­rial crea­ture can ap­proach.” The im­men­sity and grandeur of the di­vine per­son­al­ity is be­yond the grasp of the un­per­fected mind of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals. He “mea­sures the wa­ters in the hol­low of his hand, mea­sures a uni­verse with the span of his hand. It is he who sits on the cir­cle of the earth, who stretches out the heav­ens as a cur­tain and spreads them out as a uni­verse to dwell in.” “Lift up your eyes on high and be­hold who has cre­ated all these things, who brings out their worlds by num­ber and calls them all by their names”; and so it is true that “the in­vis­i­ble things of God are par­tially un­der­stood by the things which are made.” To­day, and as you are, you must dis­cern the in­vis­i­ble Maker through his man­i­fold and di­verse cre­ation, as well as through the rev­e­la­tion and min­is­tra­tion of his Sons and their nu­mer­ous sub­or­di­nates.

1:5.4Even though ma­te­rial mor­tals can­not see the per­son of God, they should re­joice in the as­sur­ance that he is a per­son; by faith ac­cept the truth which por­trays that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther so loved the world as to pro­vide for the eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion of its lowly in­hab­i­tants; that he “de­lights in his chil­dren.” God is lack­ing in none of those super­hu­man and di­vine at­tri­butes which con­sti­tute a per­fect, eter­nal, lov­ing, and in­fi­nite Cre­ator per­son­al­ity.

• man › understands God’s unity only by personal approach

1:5.11Prim­i­tive re­li­gion had many per­sonal gods, and they were fash­ioned in the im­age of man. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms the va­lid­ity of the per­son­al­ity con­cept of God which is merely pos­si­ble in the sci­en­tific pos­tu­late of a First Cause and is only pro­vi­sion­ally sug­gested in the philo­sophic idea of Uni­ver­sal Unity. Only by per­son­al­ity ap­proach can any per­son be­gin to com­pre­hend the unity of God. To deny the per­son­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter leaves one only the choice of two philo­sophic dilem­mas: ma­te­ri­al­ism or pan­the­ism.

• misconceptions about God › pantheistic corporeality error

1:5.12In the con­tem­pla­tion of De­ity, the con­cept of per­son­al­ity must be di­vested of the idea of cor­po­re­al­ity. A ma­te­rial body is not in­dis­pens­able to per­son­al­ity in ei­ther man or God. The cor­po­re­al­ity er­ror is shown in both ex­tremes of hu­man phi­los­o­phy. In ma­te­ri­al­ism, since man loses his body at death, he ceases to ex­ist as a per­son­al­ity; in pan­the­ism, since God has no body, he is not, there­fore, a per­son. The super­hu­man type of pro­gress­ing per­son­al­ity func­tions in a union of mind and spirit.

• God’s nature › enjoys expansions of self-realization

1:5.14God, be­ing eter­nal, uni­ver­sal, ab­so­lute, and in­fi­nite, does not grow in knowl­edge nor in­crease in wis­dom. God does not ac­quire ex­pe­ri­ence, as fi­nite man might con­jec­ture or com­pre­hend, but he does, within the realms of his own eter­nal per­son­al­ity, en­joy those con­tin­u­ous ex­pan­sions of self-re­al­iza­tion which are in cer­tain ways com­pa­ra­ble to, and anal­o­gous with, the ac­quire­ment of new ex­pe­ri­ence by the fi­nite crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

1:5.15The ab­so­lute per­fec­tion of the in­fi­nite God would cause him to suf­fer the aw­ful lim­i­ta­tions of un­qual­i­fied fi­nal­ity of per­fect­ness were it not a fact that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther di­rectly par­tic­i­pates in the per­son­al­ity strug­gle of ev­ery im­per­fect soul in the wide uni­verse who seeks, by di­vine aid, to as­cend to the spir­i­tu­ally per­fect worlds on high. This pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of ev­ery spirit be­ing and ev­ery mor­tal crea­ture through­out the uni­verse of uni­verses is a part of the Fa­ther’s ever-ex­pand­ing De­ity-con­scious­ness of the never-end­ing di­vine cir­cle of cease­less self-re­al­iza­tion.

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

1:5.16It is lit­er­ally true: “In all your af­flic­tions he is af­flicted.” “In all your tri­umphs he tri­umphs in and with you.” His preper­sonal di­vine spirit is a real part of you. The Isle of Par­a­dise re­sponds to all the phys­i­cal meta­mor­phoses of the uni­verse of uni­verses; the Eter­nal Son in­cludes all the spirit im­pulses of all cre­ation; the Con­joint Ac­tor en­com­passes all the mind ex­pres­sion of the ex­pand­ing cos­mos. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther re­al­izes in the full­ness of the di­vine con­scious­ness all the in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence of the pro­gres­sive strug­gles of the ex­pand­ing minds and the as­cend­ing spir­its of ev­ery en­tity, be­ing, and per­son­al­ity of the whole evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ation of time and space. And all this is lit­er­ally true, for “in Him we all live and move and have our be­ing.”

• finding God › all man’s endowments must be consecrated to

1:6.5Some de­gree of moral affin­ity and spir­i­tual har­mony is es­sen­tial to friend­ship be­tween two per­sons; a lov­ing per­son­al­ity can hardly re­veal him­self to a love­less per­son. Even to ap­proach the know­ing of a di­vine per­son­al­ity, all of man’s per­son­al­ity en­dow­ments must be wholly con­se­crated to the ef­fort; half­hearted, par­tial de­vo­tion will be un­avail­ing.

• term “God” › infinite concept of Father

1:7.1When Je­sus talked about “the liv­ing God,” he re­ferred to a per­sonal De­ity—the Fa­ther in heaven. The con­cept of the per­son­al­ity of De­ity fa­cil­i­tates fel­low­ship; it fa­vors in­tel­li­gent wor­ship; it pro­motes re­fresh­ing trust­ful­ness. In­ter­ac­tions can be had be­tween non­per­sonal things, but not fel­low­ship. The fel­low­ship re­la­tion of fa­ther and son, as be­tween God and man, can­not be en­joyed un­less both are per­sons. Only per­son­al­i­ties can com­mune with each other, al­beit this per­sonal com­mu­nion may be greatly fa­cil­i­tated by the pres­ence of just such an im­per­sonal en­tity as the Thought Ad­juster.

• finding God › divine union attained by progressive reciprocal spiritual communion, conformity to divine will

1:7.2Man does not achieve union with God as a drop of wa­ter might find unity with the ocean. Man at­tains di­vine union by pro­gres­sive re­cip­ro­cal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, by per­son­al­ity in­ter­course with the per­sonal God, by in­creas­ingly at­tain­ing the di­vine na­ture through whole­hearted and in­tel­li­gent con­for­mity to the di­vine will. Such a sub­lime re­la­tion­ship can ex­ist only be­tween per­son­al­i­ties.

• infinite

1:7.7This con­cept of in­di­vis­i­bil­ity in as­so­ci­a­tion with the con­cept of unity im­plies tran­scen­dence of both time and space by the Ul­ti­macy of De­ity; there­fore nei­ther space nor time can be ab­so­lute or in­fi­nite. The First Source and Cen­ter is that in­fin­ity who un­qual­i­fiedly tran­scends all mind, all mat­ter, and all spirit.

• highest concept is as primal and infinite personality
• term “God” › Father idea is highest human concept of God

2:0.1Inas­much as man’s high­est pos­si­ble con­cept of God is em­braced within the hu­man idea and ideal of a pri­mal and in­fi­nite per­son­al­ity, it is per­mis­si­ble, and may prove help­ful, to study cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics of the di­vine na­ture which con­sti­tute the char­ac­ter of De­ity. The na­ture of God can best be un­der­stood by the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther which Mi­chael of Neb­a­don un­folded in his man­i­fold teach­ings and in his su­perb mor­tal life in the flesh. The di­vine na­ture can also be bet­ter un­der­stood by man if he re­gards him­self as a child of God and looks up to the Par­a­dise Cre­ator as a true spir­i­tual Fa­ther.

• revelators only able to enlarge man’s concept of God due to the aid of Adjusters, Spirit of Truth

2:0.3In all our ef­forts to en­large and spir­i­tu­al­ize the hu­man con­cept of God, we are tremen­dously hand­i­capped by the lim­ited ca­pac­ity of the mor­tal mind. We are also se­ri­ously hand­i­capped in the ex­e­cu­tion of our as­sign­ment by the lim­i­ta­tions of lan­guage and by the pov­erty of ma­te­rial which can be uti­lized for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion or com­par­i­son in our ef­forts to por­tray di­vine val­ues and to pre­sent spir­i­tual mean­ings to the fi­nite, mor­tal mind of man. All our ef­forts to en­large the hu­man con­cept of God would be well-nigh fu­tile ex­cept for the fact that the mor­tal mind is in­dwelt by the be­stowed Ad­juster of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and is per­vaded by the Truth Spirit of the Cre­ator Son. De­pend­ing, there­fore, on the pres­ence of these di­vine spir­its within the heart of man for as­sis­tance in the en­large­ment of the con­cept of God, I cheer­fully un­der­take the ex­e­cu­tion of my man­date to at­tempt the fur­ther por­trayal of the na­ture of God to the mind of man.

2:1.1“Touch­ing the In­fi­nite, we can­not find him out. The di­vine foot­steps are not known.” “His un­der­stand­ing is in­fi­nite and his great­ness is un­search­able.” The blind­ing light of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence is such that to his lowly crea­tures he ap­par­ently “dwells in the thick dark­ness.” Not only are his thoughts and plans un­search­able, but “he does great and mar­velous things with­out num­ber.” “God is great; we com­pre­hend him not, nei­ther can the num­ber of his years be searched out.” “Will God in­deed dwell on the earth? Be­hold, the heaven (uni­verse) and the heaven of heav­ens (uni­verse of uni­verses) can­not con­tain him.” “How un­search­able are his judg­ments and his ways past find­ing out!”

• God’s nature › all things are possible with God

2:1.2“There is but one God, the in­fi­nite Fa­ther, who is also a faith­ful Cre­ator.” “The di­vine Cre­ator is also the Uni­ver­sal Dis­poser, the source and des­tiny of souls. He is the Su­preme Soul, the Pri­mal Mind, and the Un­lim­ited Spirit of all cre­ation.” “The great Con­trol­ler makes no mis­takes. He is re­splen­dent in majesty and glory.” “The Cre­ator God is wholly de­void of fear and en­mity. He is im­mor­tal, eter­nal, self-ex­is­tent, di­vine, and boun­ti­ful.” “How pure and beau­ti­ful, how deep and un­fath­omable is the su­per­nal An­ces­tor of all things!” “The In­fi­nite is most ex­cel­lent in that he im­parts him­self to men. He is the be­gin­ning and the end, the Fa­ther of ev­ery good and per­fect pur­pose.” “With God all things are pos­si­ble; the eter­nal Cre­ator is the cause of causes.”

2:1.3Not­with­stand­ing the in­fin­ity of the stu­pen­dous man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal and uni­ver­sal per­son­al­ity, he is un­qual­i­fiedly self-con­scious of both his in­fin­ity and eter­nity; like­wise he knows fully his per­fec­tion and power. He is the only be­ing in the uni­verse, aside from his di­vine co-or­di­nates, who ex­pe­ri­ences a per­fect, proper, and com­plete ap­praisal of him­self.

• misconceptions about God › not a cosmic accident or universe experimenter

2:1.4The Fa­ther con­stantly and un­fail­ingly meets the need of the dif­fer­en­tial of de­mand for him­self as it changes from time to time in var­i­ous sec­tions of his mas­ter uni­verse. The great God knows and un­der­stands him­self; he is in­finitely self-con­scious of all his pri­mal at­tri­butes of per­fec­tion. God is not a cos­mic ac­ci­dent; nei­ther is he a uni­verse ex­per­i­menter. The Uni­verse Sov­er­eigns may en­gage in ad­ven­ture; the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers may ex­per­i­ment; the sys­tem heads may prac­tice; but the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther sees the end from the be­gin­ning, and his di­vine plan and eter­nal pur­pose ac­tu­ally em­brace and com­pre­hend all the ex­per­i­ments and all the ad­ven­tures of all his sub­or­di­nates in ev­ery world, sys­tem, and con­stel­la­tion in ev­ery uni­verse of his vast do­mains.

2:1.5No thing is new to God, and no cos­mic event ever comes as a sur­prise; he in­hab­its the cir­cle of eter­nity. He is with­out be­gin­ning or end of days. To God there is no past, pres­ent, or fu­ture; all time is pres­ent at any given mo­ment. He is the great and only I AM.

• finding God › infinity of God shuts him off from direct personal communication with finite beings

2:1.6The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is ab­so­lutely and with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion in­fi­nite in all his at­tri­butes; and this fact, in and of it­self, au­to­mat­i­cally shuts him off from all di­rect per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with fi­nite ma­te­rial be­ings and other lowly cre­ated in­tel­li­gences.

2:1.7And all this ne­ces­si­tates such ar­range­ments for con­tact and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his man­i­fold crea­tures as have been or­dained, first, in the per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise Sons of God, who, al­though per­fect in di­vin­ity, also of­ten par­take of the na­ture of the very flesh and blood of the plan­e­tary races, be­com­ing one of you and one with you; thus, as it were, God be­comes man, as oc­curred in the be­stowal of Mi­chael, who was called in­ter­change­ably the Son of God and the Son of Man. And sec­ond, there are the per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit, the var­i­ous or­ders of the se­raphic hosts and other ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences who draw near to the ma­te­rial be­ings of lowly ori­gin and in so many ways min­is­ter to them and serve them. And third, there are the im­per­sonal Mys­tery Mon­i­tors, Thought Ad­justers, the ac­tual gift of the great God him­self sent to in­dwell such as the hu­mans of Uran­tia, sent with­out an­nounce­ment and with­out ex­pla­na­tion. In end­less pro­fu­sion they de­scend from the heights of glory to grace and in­dwell the hum­ble minds of those mor­tals who pos­sess the ca­pac­ity for God-con­scious­ness or the po­ten­tial there­for.

2:1.8In these ways and in many oth­ers, in ways un­known to you and ut­terly be­yond fi­nite com­pre­hen­sion, does the Par­a­dise Fa­ther lov­ingly and will­ingly down­step and oth­er­wise mod­ify, di­lute, and at­ten­u­ate his in­fin­ity in or­der that he may be able to draw nearer the fi­nite minds of his crea­ture chil­dren. And so, through a se­ries of per­son­al­ity dis­tri­bu­tions which are di­min­ish­ingly ab­so­lute, the in­fi­nite Fa­ther is en­abled to en­joy close con­tact with the di­verse in­tel­li­gences of the many realms of his far-flung uni­verse.

2:1.9All this he has done and now does, and ev­er­more will con­tinue to do, with­out in the least de­tract­ing from the fact and re­al­ity of his in­fin­ity, eter­nity, and pri­macy. And these things are ab­so­lutely true, not­with­stand­ing the dif­fi­culty of their com­pre­hen­sion, the mys­tery in which they are en­shrouded, or the im­pos­si­bil­ity of their be­ing fully un­der­stood by crea­tures such as dwell on Uran­tia.

2:1.10Be­cause the First Fa­ther is in­fi­nite in his plans and eter­nal in his pur­poses, it is in­her­ently im­pos­si­ble for any fi­nite be­ing ever to grasp or com­pre­hend these di­vine plans and pur­poses in their full­ness. Mor­tal man can glimpse the Fa­ther’s pur­poses only now and then, here and there, as they are re­vealed in re­la­tion to the out­work­ing of the plan of crea­ture as­cen­sion on its suc­ces­sive lev­els of uni­verse pro­gres­sion. Though man can­not en­com­pass the sig­nif­i­cance of in­fin­ity, the in­fi­nite Fa­ther does most cer­tainly fully com­pre­hend and lov­ingly em­brace all the fin­ity of all his chil­dren in all uni­verses.

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

2:1.11Di­vin­ity and eter­nity the Fa­ther shares with large num­bers of the higher Par­a­dise be­ings, but we ques­tion whether in­fin­ity and con­se­quent uni­ver­sal pri­macy is fully shared with any save his co-or­di­nate as­so­ciates of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. In­fin­ity of per­son­al­ity must, per­force, em­brace all fini­tude of per­son­al­ity; hence the truth—lit­eral truth—of the teach­ing which de­clares that “In Him we live and move and have our be­ing.” That frag­ment of the pure De­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther which in­dwells mor­tal man is a part of the in­fin­ity of the First Great Source and Cen­ter, the Fa­ther of Fa­thers.

• inhabits the present moment

2:2.1Even your olden proph­ets un­der­stood the eter­nal, never-be­gin­ning, never-end­ing, cir­cu­lar na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God is lit­er­ally and eter­nally pres­ent in his uni­verse of uni­verses. He in­hab­its the pres­ent mo­ment with all his ab­so­lute majesty and eter­nal great­ness. “The Fa­ther has life in him­self, and this life is eter­nal life.” Through­out the eter­nal ages it has been the Fa­ther who “gives to all life.” There is in­fi­nite per­fec­tion in the di­vine in­tegrity. “I am the Lord; I change not.” Our knowl­edge of the uni­verse of uni­verses dis­closes not only that he is the Fa­ther of lights, but also that in his con­duct of in­ter­plan­e­tary af­fairs there “is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing.” He “de­clares the end from the be­gin­ning.” He says: “My coun­sel shall stand; I will do all my plea­sures” “ac­cord­ing to the eter­nal pur­pose which I pur­posed in my Son.” Thus are the plans and pur­poses of the First Source and Cen­ter like him­self: eter­nal, per­fect, and for­ever change­less.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

2:3.1God is righ­teous; there­fore is he just. “The Lord is righ­teous in all his ways.” “‘I have not done with­out cause all that I have done,’ says the Lord.” “The judg­ments of the Lord are true and righ­teous al­to­gether.” The jus­tice of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not be in­flu­enced by the acts and per­for­mances of his crea­tures, “for there is no in­iq­uity with the Lord our God, no re­spect of per­sons, no tak­ing of gifts.”

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

2:3.3Ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence is usu­ally de­creed at the dis­pen­sa­tional or ep­ochal ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the realm or realms. On a world such as Uran­tia it comes at the end of a plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tion. Ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence can be de­creed at such times by co-or­di­nate ac­tion of all tri­bu­nals of ju­ris­dic­tion, ex­tend­ing from the plan­e­tary coun­cil up through the courts of the Cre­ator Son to the judg­ment tri­bu­nals of the An­cients of Days. The man­date of dis­so­lu­tion orig­i­nates in the higher courts of the super­uni­verse fol­low­ing an un­bro­ken con­fir­ma­tion of the in­dict­ment orig­i­nat­ing on the sphere of the wrong­doer’s res­i­dence; and then, when sen­tence of ex­tinc­tion has been con­firmed on high, the ex­e­cu­tion is by the di­rect act of those judges res­i­den­tial on, and op­er­at­ing from, the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse.

2:3.4When this sen­tence is fi­nally con­firmed, the sin-iden­ti­fied be­ing in­stantly be­comes as though he had not been. There is no res­ur­rec­tion from such a fate; it is ev­er­last­ing and eter­nal. The liv­ing en­ergy fac­tors of iden­tity are re­solved by the trans­for­ma­tions of time and the meta­mor­phoses of space into the cos­mic po­ten­tials whence they once emerged. As for the per­son­al­ity of the in­iq­ui­tous one, it is de­prived of a con­tin­u­ing life ve­hi­cle by the crea­ture’s fail­ure to make those choices and fi­nal de­ci­sions which would have as­sured eter­nal life. When the con­tin­ued em­brace of sin by the as­so­ci­ated mind cul­mi­nates in com­plete self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with in­iq­uity, then upon the ces­sa­tion of life, upon cos­mic dis­so­lu­tion, such an iso­lated per­son­al­ity is ab­sorbed into the over­soul of cre­ation, be­com­ing a part of the evolv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing. Never again does it ap­pear as a per­son­al­ity; its iden­tity be­comes as though it had never been. In the case of an Ad­juster-in­dwelt per­son­al­ity, the ex­pe­ri­en­tial spirit val­ues sur­vive in the re­al­ity of the con­tin­u­ing Ad­juster.

2:3.5In any uni­verse con­test be­tween ac­tual lev­els of re­al­ity, the per­son­al­ity of the higher level will ul­ti­mately tri­umph over the per­son­al­ity of the lower level. This in­ev­i­ta­ble out­come of uni­verse con­tro­versy is in­her­ent in the fact that di­vin­ity of qual­ity equals the de­gree of re­al­ity or ac­tu­al­ity of any will crea­ture. Undi­luted evil, com­plete er­ror, will­ful sin, and un­mit­i­gated in­iq­uity are in­her­ently and au­to­mat­i­cally sui­ci­dal. Such at­ti­tudes of cos­mic un­re­al­ity can sur­vive in the uni­verse only be­cause of tran­sient mercy-tol­er­ance pend­ing the ac­tion of the jus­tice-de­ter­min­ing and fair­ness-find­ing mech­a­nisms of the uni­verse tri­bu­nals of righ­teous ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

2:3.6The rule of the Cre­ator Sons in the lo­cal uni­verses is one of cre­ation and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion. These Sons de­vote them­selves to the ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion of the Par­a­dise plan of pro­gres­sive mor­tal as­cen­sion, to the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of rebels and wrong thinkers, but when all such lov­ing ef­forts are fi­nally and for­ever re­jected, the fi­nal de­cree of dis­so­lu­tion is ex­e­cuted by forces act­ing un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the An­cients of Days.

2:4.1Mercy is sim­ply jus­tice tem­pered by that wis­dom which grows out of per­fec­tion of knowl­edge and the full rec­og­ni­tion of the nat­u­ral weak­nesses and en­vi­ron­men­tal hand­i­caps of fi­nite crea­tures. “Our God is full of com­pas­sion, gra­cious, long-suf­fer­ing, and plen­teous in mercy.” There­fore “whoso­ever calls upon the Lord shall be saved,” “for he will abun­dantly par­don.” “The mercy of the Lord is from ev­er­last­ing to ev­er­last­ing”; yes, “his mercy en­dures for­ever.” “I am the Lord who ex­e­cutes lov­ing-kind­ness, judg­ment, and righ­teous­ness in the earth, for in these things I de­light.” “I do not af­flict will­ingly nor grieve the chil­dren of men,” for I am “the Fa­ther of mer­cies and the God of all com­fort.”

2:4.2God is in­her­ently kind, nat­u­rally com­pas­sion­ate, and ev­er­last­ingly mer­ci­ful. And never is it nec­es­sary that any in­flu­ence be brought to bear upon the Fa­ther to call forth his lov­ing-kind­ness. The crea­ture’s need is wholly suf­fi­cient to in­sure the full flow of the Fa­ther’s ten­der mer­cies and his sav­ing grace. Since God knows all about his chil­dren, it is easy for him to for­give. The bet­ter man un­der­stands his neigh­bor, the eas­ier it will be to for­give him, even to love him.

• never victim of attitudinal antagonisms

2:4.3Only the dis­cern­ment of in­fi­nite wis­dom en­ables a righ­teous God to min­is­ter jus­tice and mercy at the same time and in any given uni­verse sit­u­a­tion. The heav­enly Fa­ther is never torn by con­flict­ing at­ti­tudes to­wards his uni­verse chil­dren; God is never a vic­tim of at­ti­tu­di­nal an­tag­o­nisms. God’s all-know­ing­ness un­fail­ingly di­rects his free will in the choos­ing of that uni­verse con­duct which per­fectly, si­mul­ta­ne­ously, and equally sat­is­fies the de­mands of all his di­vine at­tri­butes and the in­fi­nite qual­i­ties of his eter­nal na­ture.

2:4.4Mercy is the nat­u­ral and in­ev­i­ta­ble off­spring of good­ness and love. The good na­ture of a lov­ing Fa­ther could not pos­si­bly with­hold the wise min­istry of mercy to each mem­ber of ev­ery group of his uni­verse chil­dren. Eter­nal jus­tice and di­vine mercy to­gether con­sti­tute what in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence would be called fair­ness.

2:4.5Di­vine mercy rep­re­sents a fair­ness tech­nique of ad­just­ment be­tween the uni­verse lev­els of per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion. Mercy is the jus­tice of Su­prem­acy adapted to the sit­u­a­tions of the evolv­ing fi­nite, the righ­teous­ness of eter­nity mod­i­fied to meet the high­est in­ter­ests and uni­verse wel­fare of the chil­dren of time. Mercy is not a con­tra­ven­tion of jus­tice but rather an un­der­stand­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the de­mands of su­preme jus­tice as it is fairly ap­plied to the sub­or­di­nate spir­i­tual be­ings and to the ma­te­rial crea­tures of the evolv­ing uni­verses. Mercy is the jus­tice of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity wisely and lov­ingly vis­ited upon the man­i­fold in­tel­li­gences of the cre­ations of time and space as it is for­mu­lated by di­vine wis­dom and de­ter­mined by the all-know­ing mind and the sov­er­eign free will of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and all his as­so­ci­ated Cre­ators.

• God’s nature › is love

2:5.1“God is love”; there­fore his only per­sonal at­ti­tude to­wards the af­fairs of the uni­verse is al­ways a re­ac­tion of di­vine af­fec­tion. The Fa­ther loves us suf­fi­ciently to be­stow his life upon us. “He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the un­just.”

• all men are children of God

2:5.4God is di­vinely kind to sin­ners. When rebels re­turn to righ­teous­ness, they are mer­ci­fully re­ceived, “for our God will abun­dantly par­don.” “I am he who blots out your trans­gres­sions for my own sake, and I will not re­mem­ber your sins.” “Be­hold what man­ner of love the Fa­ther has be­stowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.”

• term “God” › Father idea is highest human concept of God

2:5.9The Fa­ther’s love fol­lows us now and through­out the end­less cir­cle of the eter­nal ages. As you pon­der the lov­ing na­ture of God, there is only one rea­son­able and nat­u­ral per­son­al­ity re­ac­tion thereto: You will in­creas­ingly love your Maker; you will yield to God an af­fec­tion anal­o­gous to that given by a child to an earthly par­ent; for, as a fa­ther, a real fa­ther, a true fa­ther, loves his chil­dren, so the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther loves and for­ever seeks the wel­fare of his cre­ated sons and daugh­ters.

• God’s nature › is love

2:5.10But the love of God is an in­tel­li­gent and farsee­ing pa­ren­tal af­fec­tion. The di­vine love func­tions in uni­fied as­so­ci­a­tion with di­vine wis­dom and all other in­fi­nite char­ac­ter­is­tics of the per­fect na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God is love, but love is not God. The great­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the di­vine love for mor­tal be­ings is ob­served in the be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers, but your great­est rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s love is seen in the be­stowal life of his Son Mi­chael as he lived on earth the ideal spir­i­tual life. It is the in­dwelling Ad­juster who in­di­vid­u­al­izes the love of God to each hu­man soul.

2:6.1In the phys­i­cal uni­verse we may see the di­vine beauty, in the in­tel­lec­tual world we may dis­cern eter­nal truth, but the good­ness of God is found only in the spir­i­tual world of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. In its true essence, re­li­gion is a faith-trust in the good­ness of God. God could be great and ab­so­lute, some­how even in­tel­li­gent and per­sonal, in phi­los­o­phy, but in re­li­gion God must also be moral; he must be good. Man might fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a good God. This good­ness of God is a part of the per­son­al­ity of God, and its full rev­e­la­tion ap­pears only in the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the be­liev­ing sons of God.

2:6.2Re­li­gion im­plies that the super­world of spirit na­ture is cog­nizant of, and re­spon­sive to, the fun­da­men­tal needs of the hu­man world. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion may be­come eth­i­cal, but only re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes truly and spir­i­tu­ally moral. The olden con­cept that God is a De­ity dom­i­nated by kingly moral­ity was up­stepped by Je­sus to that af­fec­tion­ately touch­ing level of in­ti­mate fam­ily moral­ity of the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship, than which there is none more ten­der and beau­ti­ful in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence.

2:6.3The “rich­ness of the good­ness of God leads erring man to re­pen­tance.” “Ev­ery good gift and ev­ery per­fect gift comes down from the Fa­ther of lights.” “God is good; he is the eter­nal refuge of the souls of men.” “The Lord God is mer­ci­ful and gra­cious. He is long-suf­fer­ing and abun­dant in good­ness and truth.” “Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts him.” “The Lord is gra­cious and full of com­pas­sion. He is the God of sal­va­tion.” “He heals the bro­ken­hearted and binds up the wounds of the soul. He is man’s all-pow­er­ful bene­fac­tor.”

2:6.4The con­cept of God as a king-judge, al­though it fos­tered a high moral stan­dard and cre­ated a law-re­spect­ing peo­ple as a group, left the in­di­vid­ual be­liever in a sad po­si­tion of in­se­cu­rity re­spect­ing his sta­tus in time and in eter­nity. The later He­brew proph­ets pro­claimed God to be a Fa­ther to Is­rael; Je­sus re­vealed God as the Fa­ther of each hu­man be­ing. The en­tire mor­tal con­cept of God is tran­scen­dently il­lu­mi­nated by the life of Je­sus. Self­less­ness is in­her­ent in pa­ren­tal love. God loves not like a fa­ther, but as a fa­ther. He is the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of ev­ery uni­verse per­son­al­ity.

2:6.5Righ­teous­ness im­plies that God is the source of the moral law of the uni­verse. Truth ex­hibits God as a re­vealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves af­fec­tion, seeks un­der­stand­ing fel­low­ship such as ex­ists be­tween par­ent and child. Righ­teous­ness may be the di­vine thought, but love is a fa­ther’s at­ti­tude. The er­ro­neous sup­po­si­tion that the righ­teous­ness of God was ir­rec­on­cil­able with the self­less love of the heav­enly Fa­ther, pre­sup­posed ab­sence of unity in the na­ture of De­ity and led di­rectly to the elab­o­ra­tion of the atone­ment doc­trine, which is a philo­sophic as­sault upon both the unity and the free-will­ness of God.

• God’s nature › as a father, transcends God as a judge

2:6.6The af­fec­tion­ate heav­enly Fa­ther, whose spirit in­dwells his chil­dren on earth, is not a di­vided per­son­al­ity—one of jus­tice and one of mercy—nei­ther does it re­quire a me­di­a­tor to se­cure the Fa­ther’s fa­vor or for­give­ness. Di­vine righ­teous­ness is not dom­i­nated by strict re­tribu­tive jus­tice; God as a fa­ther tran­scends God as a judge.

• God’s nature › never vengeful or angry

2:6.7God is never wrath­ful, venge­ful, or an­gry. It is true that wis­dom does of­ten re­strain his love, while jus­tice con­di­tions his re­jected mercy. His love of righ­teous­ness can­not help be­ing ex­hib­ited as equal ha­tred for sin. The Fa­ther is not an in­con­sis­tent per­son­al­ity; the di­vine unity is per­fect. In the Par­a­dise Trin­ity there is ab­so­lute unity de­spite the eter­nal iden­ti­ties of the co-or­di­nates of God.

2:6.8God loves the sin­ner and hates the sin: such a state­ment is true phil­o­soph­i­cally, but God is a tran­scen­dent per­son­al­ity, and per­sons can only love and hate other per­sons. Sin is not a per­son. God loves the sin­ner be­cause he is a per­son­al­ity re­al­ity (po­ten­tially eter­nal), while to­wards sin God strikes no per­sonal at­ti­tude, for sin is not a spir­i­tual re­al­ity; it is not per­sonal; there­fore does only the jus­tice of God take cog­nizance of its ex­is­tence. The love of God saves the sin­ner; the law of God de­stroys the sin. This at­ti­tude of the di­vine na­ture would ap­par­ently change if the sin­ner fi­nally iden­ti­fied him­self wholly with sin just as the same mor­tal mind may also fully iden­tify it­self with the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster. Such a sin-iden­ti­fied mor­tal would then be­come wholly un­spir­i­tual in na­ture (and there­fore per­son­ally un­real) and would ex­pe­ri­ence even­tual ex­tinc­tion of be­ing. Un­re­al­ity, even in­com­plete­ness of crea­ture na­ture, can­not ex­ist for­ever in a pro­gress­ingly real and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual uni­verse.

• God’s nature › a loving person facing world of personality; a personal love facing spiritual world

2:6.9Fac­ing the world of per­son­al­ity, God is dis­cov­ered to be a lov­ing per­son; fac­ing the spir­i­tual world, he is a per­sonal love; in re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence he is both. Love iden­ti­fies the vo­li­tional will of God. The good­ness of God rests at the bot­tom of the di­vine free-will­ness—the uni­ver­sal ten­dency to love, show mercy, man­i­fest pa­tience, and min­is­ter for­give­ness.

• finding God › God is approachable; not in hiding
• God’s nature › invisible

3:0.2The highly per­son­al­ized Sons of God are clearly dis­cern­i­ble by the lower or­ders of cre­ated in­tel­li­gences, and so do they com­pen­sate for the in­vis­i­bil­ity of the in­fi­nite and there­fore less dis­cern­i­ble Fa­ther. The Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther are a rev­e­la­tion of an oth­er­wise in­vis­i­ble be­ing, in­vis­i­ble be­cause of the ab­so­lute­ness and in­fin­ity in­her­ent in the cir­cle of eter­nity and in the per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

3:1.2“‘I am a God at hand as well as afar off,’ says the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’” The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is all the time pres­ent in all parts and in all hearts of his far-flung cre­ation. He is “the full­ness of him who fills all and in all,” and “who works all in all,” and fur­ther, the con­cept of his per­son­al­ity is such that “the heaven (uni­verse) and heaven of heav­ens (uni­verse of uni­verses) can­not con­tain him.” It is lit­er­ally true that God is all and in all. But even that is not all of God. The In­fi­nite can be fi­nally re­vealed only in in­fin­ity; the cause can never be fully com­pre­hended by an anal­y­sis of ef­fects; the liv­ing God is im­mea­sur­ably greater than the sum to­tal of cre­ation that has come into be­ing as a re­sult of the cre­ative acts of his un­fet­tered free will. God is re­vealed through­out the cos­mos, but the cos­mos can never con­tain or en­com­pass the en­tirety of the in­fin­ity of God.

• finding God › man searches for friend who lives within his heart
• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

3:1.4The crea­ture not only ex­ists in God, but God also lives in the crea­ture. “We know we dwell in him be­cause he lives in us; he has given us his spirit. This gift from the Par­a­dise Fa­ther is man’s in­sep­a­ra­ble com­pan­ion.” “He is the ever-pres­ent and all-per­vad­ing God.” “The spirit of the ev­er­last­ing Fa­ther is con­cealed in the mind of ev­ery mor­tal child.” “Man goes forth search­ing for a friend while that very friend lives within his own heart.” “The true God is not afar off; he is a part of us; his spirit speaks from within us.” “The Fa­ther lives in the child. God is al­ways with us. He is the guid­ing spirit of eter­nal des­tiny.”

• discernibly present without limitation only on Paradise and in Havona

3:1.6The om­nipres­ence of God is in re­al­ity a part of his in­fi­nite na­ture; space con­sti­tutes no bar­rier to De­ity. God is, in per­fec­tion and with­out lim­i­ta­tion, dis­cernibly pres­ent only on Par­a­dise and in the cen­tral uni­verse. He is not thus ob­serv­ably pres­ent in the cre­ations en­cir­cling Ha­vona, for God has lim­ited his di­rect and ac­tual pres­ence in rec­og­ni­tion of the sov­er­eignty and the di­vine pre­rog­a­tives of the co-or­di­nate cre­ators and rulers of the uni­verses of time and space. Hence must the con­cept of the di­vine pres­ence al­low for a wide range of both mode and chan­nel of man­i­fes­ta­tion em­brac­ing the pres­ence cir­cuits of the Eter­nal Son, the In­fi­nite Spirit, and the Isle of Par­a­dise. Nor is it al­ways pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish be­tween the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the ac­tions of his eter­nal co-or­di­nates and agen­cies, so per­fectly do they ful­fill all the in­fi­nite re­quire­ments of his un­chang­ing pur­pose. But not so with the per­son­al­ity cir­cuit and the Ad­justers; here God acts uniquely, di­rectly, and ex­clu­sively.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

3:1.7The Uni­ver­sal Con­trol­ler is po­ten­tially pres­ent in the grav­ity cir­cuits of the Isle of Par­a­dise in all parts of the uni­verse at all times and in the same de­gree, in ac­cor­dance with the mass, in re­sponse to the phys­i­cal de­mands for this pres­ence, and be­cause of the in­her­ent na­ture of all cre­ation which causes all things to ad­here and con­sist in him. Like­wise is the First Source and Cen­ter po­ten­tially pres­ent in the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute, the re­pos­i­tory of the un­cre­ated uni­verses of the eter­nal fu­ture. God thus po­ten­tially per­vades the phys­i­cal uni­verses of the past, pres­ent, and fu­ture. He is the pri­mor­dial foun­da­tion of the co­her­ence of the so-called ma­te­rial cre­ation. This non­spir­i­tual De­ity po­ten­tial be­comes ac­tual here and there through­out the level of phys­i­cal ex­is­tences by the in­ex­pli­ca­ble in­tru­sion of some one of his ex­clu­sive agen­cies upon the stage of uni­verse ac­tion.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › determined by en masse loyalty to God

3:1.10Con­cern­ing God’s pres­ence in a planet, sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, or a uni­verse, the de­gree of such pres­ence in any cre­ational unit is a mea­sure of the de­gree of the evolv­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing: It is de­ter­mined by the en masse rec­og­ni­tion of God and loy­alty to him on the part of the vast uni­verse or­ga­ni­za­tion, run­ning down to the sys­tems and plan­ets them­selves. There­fore it is some­times with the hope of con­serv­ing and safe­guard­ing these phases of God’s pre­cious pres­ence that, when some plan­ets (or even sys­tems) have plunged far into spir­i­tual dark­ness, they are in a cer­tain sense quar­an­tined, or par­tially iso­lated from in­ter­course with the larger units of cre­ation. And all this, as it op­er­ates on Uran­tia, is a spir­i­tu­ally de­fen­sive re­ac­tion of the ma­jor­ity of the worlds to save them­selves, as far as pos­si­ble, from suf­fer­ing the iso­lat­ing con­se­quences of the alien­at­ing acts of a head­strong, wicked, and re­bel­lious mi­nor­ity.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

3:1.12The fluc­tu­a­tions of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence are not due to the change­able­ness of God. The Fa­ther does not re­tire in seclu­sion be­cause he has been slighted; his af­fec­tions are not alien­ated be­cause of the crea­ture’s wrong­do­ing. Rather, hav­ing been en­dowed with the power of choice (con­cern­ing Him­self), his chil­dren, in the ex­er­cise of that choice, di­rectly de­ter­mine the de­gree and lim­i­ta­tions of the Fa­ther’s di­vine in­flu­ence in their own hearts and souls. The Fa­ther has freely be­stowed him­self upon us with­out limit and with­out fa­vor. He is no re­specter of per­sons, plan­ets, sys­tems, or uni­verses. In the sec­tors of time he con­fers dif­fer­en­tial honor only on the Par­a­dise per­son­al­i­ties of God the Sev­en­fold, the co-or­di­nate cre­ators of the fi­nite uni­verses.

• God’s nature › all things are possible with God

3:2.2Within the bounds of that which is con­sis­tent with the di­vine na­ture, it is lit­er­ally true that “with God all things are pos­si­ble.” The long-drawn-out evo­lu­tion­ary pro­cesses of peo­ples, plan­ets, and uni­verses are un­der the per­fect con­trol of the uni­verse cre­ators and ad­min­is­tra­tors and un­fold in ac­cor­dance with the eter­nal pur­pose of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, pro­ceed­ing in har­mony and or­der and in keep­ing with the all-wise plan of God. There is only one law­giver. He up­holds the worlds in space and swings the uni­verses around the end­less cir­cle of the eter­nal cir­cuit.

• God’s nature › energy infinity

3:2.3Of all the di­vine at­tri­butes, his om­nipo­tence, es­pe­cially as it pre­vails in the ma­te­rial uni­verse, is the best un­der­stood. Viewed as an un­spir­i­tual phe­nom­e­non, God is en­ergy. This dec­la­ra­tion of phys­i­cal fact is pred­i­cated on the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble truth that the First Source and Cen­ter is the pri­mal cause of the uni­ver­sal phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena of all space. From this di­vine ac­tiv­ity all phys­i­cal en­ergy and other ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions are de­rived. Light, that is, light with­out heat, is an­other of the non­spir­i­tual man­i­fes­ta­tions of the De­i­ties. And there is still an­other form of non­spir­i­tual en­ergy which is vir­tu­ally un­known on Uran­tia; it is as yet un­rec­og­nized.

• finding God › man’s nearest approach to God is through love
• man › created in image of God

3:4.7Fi­nite ap­pre­ci­a­tion of in­fi­nite qual­i­ties far tran­scends the log­i­cally lim­ited ca­pac­i­ties of the crea­ture be­cause of the fact that mor­tal man is made in the im­age of God—there lives within him a frag­ment of in­fin­ity. There­fore man’s near­est and dear­est ap­proach to God is by and through love, for God is love. And all of such a unique re­la­tion­ship is an ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in cos­mic so­ci­ol­ogy, the Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship—the Fa­ther-child af­fec­tion.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

3:5.4Said Je­sus: “My Fa­ther, who gave them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to pluck them out of my Fa­ther’s hand.” As you glimpse the man­i­fold work­ings and view the stag­ger­ing im­men­sity of God’s well-nigh lim­it­less cre­ation, you may fal­ter in your con­cept of his pri­macy, but you should not fail to ac­cept him as se­curely and ev­er­last­ingly en­throned at the Par­a­dise cen­ter of all things and as the benef­i­cent Fa­ther of all in­tel­li­gent be­ings. There is but “one God and Fa­ther of all, who is above all and in all,” “and he is be­fore all things, and in him all things con­sist.”

3:6.1With di­vine self­less­ness, con­sum­mate gen­eros­ity, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther re­lin­quishes au­thor­ity and del­e­gates power, but he is still pri­mal; his hand is on the mighty lever of the cir­cum­stances of the uni­ver­sal realms; he has re­served all fi­nal de­ci­sions and unerringly wields the all-pow­er­ful veto scepter of his eter­nal pur­pose with un­chal­lenge­able au­thor­ity over the wel­fare and des­tiny of the out­stretched, whirling, and ever-cir­cling cre­ation.

3:6.2The sov­er­eignty of God is un­lim­ited; it is the fun­da­men­tal fact of all cre­ation. The uni­verse was not in­ev­i­ta­ble. The uni­verse is not an ac­ci­dent, nei­ther is it self-ex­is­tent. The uni­verse is a work of cre­ation and is there­fore wholly sub­ject to the will of the Cre­ator. The will of God is di­vine truth, liv­ing love; there­fore are the per­fect­ing cre­ations of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses char­ac­ter­ized by good­ness—near­ness to di­vin­ity; by po­ten­tial evil—re­mote­ness from di­vin­ity.

3:6.3All re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy, sooner or later, ar­rives at the con­cept of uni­fied uni­verse rule, of one God. Uni­verse causes can­not be lower than uni­verse ef­fects. The source of the streams of uni­verse life and of the cos­mic mind must be above the lev­els of their man­i­fes­ta­tion. The hu­man mind can­not be con­sis­tently ex­plained in terms of the lower or­ders of ex­is­tence. Man’s mind can be truly com­pre­hended only by rec­og­niz­ing the re­al­ity of higher or­ders of thought and pur­po­sive will. Man as a moral be­ing is in­ex­pli­ca­ble un­less the re­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is ac­knowl­edged.

3:6.4The mech­a­nis­tic philoso­pher pro­fesses to re­ject the idea of a uni­ver­sal and sov­er­eign will, the very sov­er­eign will whose ac­tiv­ity in the elab­o­ra­tion of uni­verse laws he so deeply rev­er­ences. What un­in­tended homage the mech­a­nist pays the law-Cre­ator when he con­ceives such laws to be self-act­ing and self-ex­plana­tory!

• misconceptions about God › great blunder to humanize God, except in concept of Adjuster; worse to mechanize him

3:6.5It is a great blun­der to hu­man­ize God, ex­cept in the con­cept of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster, but even that is not so stupid as com­pletely to mech­a­nize the idea of the First Great Source and Cen­ter.

3:6.6Does the Par­a­dise Fa­ther suf­fer? I do not know. The Cre­ator Sons most cer­tainly can and some­times do, even as do mor­tals. The Eter­nal Son and the In­fi­nite Spirit suf­fer in a mod­i­fied sense. I think the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther does, but I can­not un­der­stand how; per­haps through the per­son­al­ity cir­cuit or through the in­di­vid­u­al­ity of the Thought Ad­justers and other be­stowals of his eter­nal na­ture. He has said of the mor­tal races, “In all your af­flic­tions I am af­flicted.” He un­ques­tion­ably ex­pe­ri­ences a fa­therly and sym­pa­thetic un­der­stand­ing; he may truly suf­fer, but I do not com­pre­hend the na­ture thereof.

3:6.7The in­fi­nite and eter­nal Ruler of the uni­verse of uni­verses is power, form, en­ergy, pro­cess, pat­tern, prin­ci­ple, pres­ence, and ide­al­ized re­al­ity. But he is more; he is per­sonal; he ex­er­cises a sov­er­eign will, ex­pe­ri­ences self-con­scious­ness of di­vin­ity, ex­e­cutes the man­dates of a cre­ative mind, pur­sues the sat­is­fac­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of an eter­nal pur­pose, and man­i­fests a Fa­ther’s love and af­fec­tion for his uni­verse chil­dren. And all these more per­sonal traits of the Fa­ther can be bet­ter un­der­stood by ob­serv­ing them as they were re­vealed in the be­stowal life of Mi­chael, your Cre­ator Son, while he was in­car­nated on Uran­tia.

3:6.8God the Fa­ther loves men; God the Son serves men; God the Spirit in­spires the chil­dren of the uni­verse to the ever-as­cend­ing ad­ven­ture of find­ing God the Fa­ther by the ways or­dained by God the Sons through the min­istry of the grace of God the Spirit.

3:6.9[Be­ing the Di­vine Coun­selor as­signed to the pre­sen­ta­tion of the rev­e­la­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, I have con­tin­ued with this state­ment of the at­tri­butes of De­ity.]

• also known as › Most High

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.”

• and nature

4:2.5God is not per­son­ally pres­ent in na­ture or in any of the forces of na­ture, for the phe­nom­e­non of na­ture is the super­im­po­si­tion of the im­per­fec­tions of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion and, some­times, the con­se­quences of in­sur­rec­tionary re­bel­lion, upon the Par­a­dise foun­da­tions of God’s uni­ver­sal law. As it ap­pears on such a world as Uran­tia, na­ture can never be the ad­e­quate ex­pres­sion, the true rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the faith­ful por­trayal, of an all-wise and in­fi­nite God.

• misconceptions about God › God jealous for man, not of man

4:3.1All too long has man thought of God as one like him­self. God is not, never was, and never will be jeal­ous of man or any other be­ing in the uni­verse of uni­verses. Know­ing that the Cre­ator Son in­tended man to be the mas­ter­piece of the plan­e­tary cre­ation, to be the ruler of all the earth, the sight of his be­ing dom­i­nated by his own baser pas­sions, the spec­ta­cle of his bow­ing down be­fore idols of wood, stone, gold, and self­ish am­bi­tion—these sor­did scenes stir God and his Sons to be jeal­ous for man, but never of him.

• also known as › “Father” is most appropriate name
• finding God › God as Father takes precedence over all phases of Deity
• God’s nature › is Father

4:4.5God’s ab­so­lute­ness per­vades all seven lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity. And the whole of this ab­so­lute na­ture is sub­ject to the re­la­tion­ship of the Cre­ator to his uni­verse crea­ture fam­ily. Pre­ci­sion may char­ac­ter­ize trini­tar­ian jus­tice in the uni­verse of uni­verses, but in all his vast fam­ily re­la­tion­ship with the crea­tures of time the God of uni­verses is gov­erned by di­vine sen­ti­ment. First and last—eter­nally—the in­fi­nite God is a Fa­ther. Of all the pos­si­ble ti­tles by which he might ap­pro­pri­ately be known, I have been in­structed to por­tray the God of all cre­ation as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

4:4.6In God the Fa­ther free­will per­for­mances are not ruled by power, nor are they guided by in­tel­lect alone; the di­vine per­son­al­ity is de­fined as con­sist­ing in spirit and man­i­fest­ing him­self to the uni­verses as love. There­fore, in all his per­sonal re­la­tions with the crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verses, the First Source and Cen­ter is al­ways and con­sis­tently a lov­ing Fa­ther. God is a Fa­ther in the high­est sense of the term. He is eter­nally mo­ti­vated by the per­fect ide­al­ism of di­vine love, and that ten­der na­ture finds its strong­est ex­pres­sion and great­est sat­is­fac­tion in lov­ing and be­ing loved.

• God’s nature › confers reality of existence upon all other beings

4:4.7In sci­ence, God is the First Cause; in re­li­gion, the uni­ver­sal and lov­ing Fa­ther; in phi­los­o­phy, the one be­ing who ex­ists by him­self, not de­pen­dent on any other be­ing for ex­is­tence but benef­i­cently con­fer­ring re­al­ity of ex­is­tence on all things and upon all other be­ings. But it re­quires rev­e­la­tion to show that the First Cause of sci­ence and the self-ex­is­tent Unity of phi­los­o­phy are the God of re­li­gion, full of mercy and good­ness and pledged to ef­fect the eter­nal sur­vival of his chil­dren on earth.

4:5.1Re­li­gious tra­di­tion is the im­per­fectly pre­served rec­ord of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the God-know­ing men of past ages, but such rec­ords are un­trust­wor­thy as guides for re­li­gious liv­ing or as the source of true in­for­ma­tion about the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Such an­cient be­liefs have been in­vari­ably al­tered by the fact that prim­i­tive man was a myth­maker.

4:5.2One of the great­est sources of con­fu­sion on Uran­tia con­cern­ing the na­ture of God grows out of the fail­ure of your sa­cred books clearly to dis­tin­guish be­tween the per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and be­tween Par­a­dise De­ity and the lo­cal uni­verse cre­ators and ad­min­is­tra­tors. Dur­ing the past dis­pen­sa­tions of par­tial un­der­stand­ing, your priests and proph­ets failed clearly to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween Plan­e­tary Princes, Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, Cre­ator Sons, Super­uni­verse Rulers, the Su­preme Be­ing, and the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Many of the mes­sages of sub­or­di­nate per­son­al­i­ties, such as Life Car­ri­ers and var­i­ous or­ders of an­gels, have been, in your rec­ords, pre­sented as com­ing from God him­self. Uran­tian re­li­gious thought still con­fuses the as­so­ciate per­son­al­i­ties of De­ity with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther him­self, so that all are in­cluded un­der one ap­pel­la­tion.

4:5.3The peo­ple of Uran­tia con­tinue to suf­fer from the in­flu­ence of prim­i­tive con­cepts of God. The gods who go on a ram­page in the storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger; who in­flict their judg­ments of dis­plea­sure in times of famine and flood—these are the gods of prim­i­tive re­li­gion; they are not the Gods who live and rule the uni­verses. Such con­cepts are a relic of the times when men sup­posed that the uni­verse was un­der the guid­ance and dom­i­na­tion of the whims of such imag­i­nary gods. But mor­tal man is be­gin­ning to re­al­ize that he lives in a realm of com­par­a­tive law and or­der as far as con­cerns the ad­min­is­tra­tive poli­cies and con­duct of the Su­preme Cre­ators and the Su­preme Con­trol­lers.

4:5.4The bar­barous idea of ap­peas­ing an an­gry God, of pro­pi­ti­at­ing an of­fended Lord, of win­ning the fa­vor of De­ity through sac­ri­fices and pen­ance and even by the shed­ding of blood, rep­re­sents a re­li­gion wholly puerile and prim­i­tive, a phi­los­o­phy un­wor­thy of an en­light­ened age of sci­ence and truth. Such be­liefs are ut­terly re­pul­sive to the ce­les­tial be­ings and the di­vine rulers who serve and reign in the uni­verses. It is an af­front to God to be­lieve, hold, or teach that in­no­cent blood must be shed in or­der to win his fa­vor or to di­vert the fic­ti­tious di­vine wrath.

4:5.5The He­brews be­lieved that “with­out the shed­ding of blood there could be no re­mis­sion of sin.” They had not found de­liv­er­ance from the old and pa­gan idea that the Gods could not be ap­peased ex­cept by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a dis­tinct ad­vance when he for­bade hu­man sac­ri­fices and sub­sti­tuted there­for, in the prim­i­tive minds of his child­like Bed­ouin fol­low­ers, the cer­e­mo­nial sac­ri­fice of an­i­mals.

4:5.6The be­stowal of a Par­a­dise Son on your world was in­her­ent in the sit­u­a­tion of clos­ing a plan­e­tary age; it was in­es­cap­able, and it was not made nec­es­sary for the pur­pose of win­ning the fa­vor of God. This be­stowal also hap­pened to be the fi­nal per­sonal act of a Cre­ator Son in the long ad­ven­ture of earn­ing the ex­pe­ri­en­tial sov­er­eignty of his uni­verse. What a trav­esty upon the in­fi­nite char­ac­ter of God! this teach­ing that his fa­therly heart in all its aus­tere cold­ness and hard­ness was so un­touched by the mis­for­tunes and sor­rows of his crea­tures that his ten­der mer­cies were not forth­com­ing un­til he saw his blame­less Son bleed­ing and dy­ing upon the cross of Cal­vary!

4:5.7But the in­hab­i­tants of Uran­tia are to find de­liv­er­ance from these an­cient er­rors and pa­gan su­per­sti­tions re­spect­ing the na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The rev­e­la­tion of the truth about God is ap­pear­ing, and the hu­man race is des­tined to know the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in all that beauty of char­ac­ter and love­li­ness of at­tri­butes so mag­nif­i­cently por­trayed by the Cre­ator Son who so­journed on Uran­tia as the Son of Man and the Son of God.

4:5.8[Pre­sented by a Di­vine Coun­selor of Uversa.]

• finding God › through soul’s contemplation of inner spiritual reality

5:0.1If the fi­nite mind of man is un­able to com­pre­hend how so great and so ma­jes­tic a God as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can de­scend from his eter­nal abode in in­fi­nite per­fec­tion to frat­er­nize with the in­di­vid­ual hu­man crea­ture, then must such a fi­nite in­tel­lect rest as­sur­ance of di­vine fel­low­ship upon the truth of the fact that an ac­tual frag­ment of the liv­ing God re­sides within the in­tel­lect of ev­ery nor­mal-minded and morally con­scious Uran­tia mor­tal. The in­dwelling Thought Ad­justers are a part of the eter­nal De­ity of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Man does not have to go far­ther than his own in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of the soul’s con­tem­pla­tion of this spir­i­tual-re­al­ity pres­ence to find God and at­tempt com­mu­nion with him.

• finding God › our limitations determine when we see God

5:1.1The in­abil­ity of the fi­nite crea­ture to ap­proach the in­fi­nite Fa­ther is in­her­ent, not in the Fa­ther’s aloof­ness, but in the finite­ness and ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions of cre­ated be­ings. The mag­ni­tude of the spir­i­tual dif­fer­ence be­tween the high­est per­son­al­ity of uni­verse ex­is­tence and the lower groups of cre­ated in­tel­li­gences is in­con­ceiv­able. Were it pos­si­ble for the lower or­ders of in­tel­li­gence to be trans­ported in­stantly into the pres­ence of the Fa­ther him­self, they would not know they were there. They would there be just as obliv­i­ous of the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther as where they now are. There is a long, long road ahead of mor­tal man be­fore he can con­sis­tently and within the realms of pos­si­bil­ity ask for safe con­duct into the Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Spir­i­tu­ally, man must be trans­lated many times be­fore he can at­tain a plane that will yield the spir­i­tual vi­sion which will en­able him to see even any one of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its.

5:1.2Our Fa­ther is not in hid­ing; he is not in ar­bi­trary seclu­sion. He has mo­bi­lized the re­sources of di­vine wis­dom in a never-end­ing ef­fort to re­veal him­self to the chil­dren of his uni­ver­sal do­mains. There is an in­fi­nite grandeur and an in­ex­press­ible gen­eros­ity con­nected with the majesty of his love which causes him to yearn for the as­so­ci­a­tion of ev­ery cre­ated be­ing who can com­pre­hend, love, or ap­proach him; and it is, there­fore, the lim­i­ta­tions in­her­ent in you, in­sep­a­ra­ble from your fi­nite per­son­al­ity and ma­te­rial ex­is­tence, that de­ter­mine the time and place and cir­cum­stances in which you may achieve the goal of the jour­ney of mor­tal as­cen­sion and stand in the pres­ence of the Fa­ther at the cen­ter of all things.

5:1.3Al­though the ap­proach to the Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Fa­ther must await your at­tain­ment of the high­est fi­nite lev­els of spirit pro­gres­sion, you should re­joice in the rec­og­ni­tion of the ever-pres­ent pos­si­bil­ity of im­me­di­ate com­mu­nion with the be­stowal spirit of the Fa­ther so in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with your in­ner soul and your spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing self.

5:1.4The mor­tals of the realms of time and space may dif­fer greatly in in­nate abil­i­ties and in­tel­lec­tual en­dow­ment, they may en­joy en­vi­ron­ments ex­cep­tion­ally fa­vor­able to so­cial ad­vance­ment and moral prog­ress, or they may suf­fer from the lack of al­most ev­ery hu­man aid to cul­ture and sup­posed ad­vance­ment in the arts of civ­i­liza­tion; but the pos­si­bil­i­ties for spir­i­tual prog­ress in the as­cen­sion ca­reer are equal to all; in­creas­ing lev­els of spir­i­tual in­sight and cos­mic mean­ings are at­tained quite in­de­pen­dently of all such so­ciomoral dif­fer­en­tials of the di­ver­si­fied ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ments on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

5:1.5How­ever Uran­tia mor­tals may dif­fer in their in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, eco­nomic, and even moral op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­dow­ments, for­get not that their spir­i­tual en­dow­ment is uni­form and unique. They all en­joy the same di­vine pres­ence of the gift from the Fa­ther, and they are all equally priv­i­leged to seek in­ti­mate per­sonal com­mu­nion with this in­dwelling spirit of di­vine ori­gin, while they may all equally choose to ac­cept the uni­form spir­i­tual lead­ing of these Mys­tery Mon­i­tors.

• consciousness of God › inevitable result of consecration to Father’s will

5:1.6If mor­tal man is whole­heart­edly spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated, un­re­servedly con­se­crated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will, then, since he is so cer­tainly and so ef­fec­tively spir­i­tu­ally en­dowed by the in­dwelling and di­vine Ad­juster, there can­not fail to ma­te­ri­al­ize in that in­di­vid­ual’s ex­pe­ri­ence the sub­lime con­scious­ness of know­ing God and the su­per­nal as­sur­ance of sur­viv­ing for the pur­pose of find­ing God by the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like him.

5:1.7Man is spir­i­tu­ally in­dwelt by a sur­viv­ing Thought Ad­juster. If such a hu­man mind is sin­cerely and spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated, if such a hu­man soul de­sires to know God and be­come like him, hon­estly wants to do the Fa­ther’s will, there ex­ists no neg­a­tive in­flu­ence of mor­tal de­pri­va­tion nor pos­i­tive power of pos­si­ble in­ter­fer­ence which can pre­vent such a di­vinely mo­ti­vated soul from se­curely as­cend­ing to the por­tals of Par­a­dise.

• finding God › God is approachable; not in hiding

5:1.8The Fa­ther de­sires all his crea­tures to be in per­sonal com­mu­nion with him. He has on Par­a­dise a place to re­ceive all those whose sur­vival sta­tus and spir­i­tual na­ture make pos­si­ble such at­tain­ment. There­fore set­tle in your phi­los­o­phy now and for­ever: To each of you and to all of us, God is ap­proach­able, the Fa­ther is at­tain­able, the way is open; the forces of di­vine love and the ways and means of di­vine ad­min­is­tra­tion are all in­ter­locked in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate the ad­vance­ment of ev­ery wor­thy in­tel­li­gence of ev­ery uni­verse to the Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › we shall one day see God, figuratively speaking, face to face

5:1.9The fact that vast time is in­volved in the at­tain­ment of God makes the pres­ence and per­son­al­ity of the In­fi­nite none the less real. Your as­cen­sion is a part of the cir­cuit of the seven super­uni­verses, and though you swing around it count­less times, you may ex­pect, in spirit and in sta­tus, to be ever swing­ing in­ward. You can de­pend upon be­ing trans­lated from sphere to sphere, from the outer cir­cuits ever nearer the in­ner cen­ter, and some day, doubt not, you shall stand in the di­vine and cen­tral pres­ence and see him, fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing, face to face. It is a ques­tion of the at­tain­ment of ac­tual and lit­eral spir­i­tual lev­els; and these spir­i­tual lev­els are at­tain­able by any be­ing who has been in­dwelt by a Mys­tery Mon­i­tor, and who has sub­se­quently eter­nally fused with that Thought Ad­juster.

5:1.10The Fa­ther is not in spir­i­tual hid­ing, but so many of his crea­tures have hid­den them­selves away in the mists of their own will­ful de­ci­sions and for the time be­ing have sep­a­rated them­selves from the com­mu­nion of his spirit and the spirit of his Son by the choos­ing of their own per­verse ways and by the in­dul­gence of the self-as­sertive­ness of their in­tol­er­ant minds and un­spir­i­tual na­tures.

5:1.11Mor­tal man may draw near God and may re­peat­edly for­sake the di­vine will so long as the power of choice re­mains. Man’s fi­nal doom is not sealed un­til he has lost the power to choose the Fa­ther’s will. There is never a clo­sure of the Fa­ther’s heart to the need and the pe­ti­tion of his chil­dren. Only do his off­spring close their hearts for­ever to the Fa­ther’s draw­ing power when they fi­nally and for­ever lose the de­sire to do his di­vine will—to know him and to be like him. Like­wise is man’s eter­nal des­tiny as­sured when Ad­juster fu­sion pro­claims to the uni­verse that such an as­cender has made the fi­nal and ir­re­vo­ca­ble choice to live the Fa­ther’s will.

5:1.12The great God makes di­rect con­tact with mor­tal man and gives a part of his in­fi­nite and eter­nal and in­com­pre­hen­si­ble self to live and dwell within him. God has em­barked upon the eter­nal ad­ven­ture with man. If you yield to the lead­ings of the spir­i­tual forces in you and around you, you can­not fail to at­tain the high des­tiny es­tab­lished by a lov­ing God as the uni­verse goal of his as­cen­dant crea­tures from the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of space.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › determined by spiritual capacity, consecration

5:2.1The phys­i­cal pres­ence of the In­fi­nite is the re­al­ity of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. The mind pres­ence of De­ity must be de­ter­mined by the depth of in­di­vid­ual in­tel­lec­tual ex­pe­ri­ence and by the evo­lu­tion­ary per­son­al­ity level. The spir­i­tual pres­ence of Di­vin­ity must of ne­ces­sity be dif­fer­en­tial in the uni­verse. It is de­ter­mined by the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity and by the de­gree of the con­se­cra­tion of the crea­ture’s will to the do­ing of the di­vine will.

5:2.2God lives in ev­ery one of his spirit-born sons. The Par­a­dise Sons al­ways have ac­cess to the pres­ence of God, “the right hand of the Fa­ther,” and all of his crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties have ac­cess to the “bo­som of the Fa­ther.” This refers to the per­son­al­ity cir­cuit, when­ever, wher­ever, and how­ever con­tacted, or oth­er­wise en­tails per­sonal, self-con­scious con­tact and com­mu­nion with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, whether at the cen­tral abode or at some other des­ig­nated place, as on one of the seven sa­cred spheres of Par­a­dise.

• consciousness of God › best discovered in communion with Adjuster

5:2.3The di­vine pres­ence can­not, how­ever, be dis­cov­ered any­where in na­ture or even in the lives of God-know­ing mor­tals so fully and so cer­tainly as in your at­tempted com­mu­nion with the in­dwelling Mys­tery Mon­i­tor, the Par­a­dise Thought Ad­juster. What a mis­take to dream of God far off in the skies when the spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther lives within your own mind!

• consciousness of God › presence of God › man rarely conscious of
• consciousness of God › proved by fruits of spirit; desire to do Father’s will

5:2.4It is be­cause of this God frag­ment that in­dwells you that you can hope, as you pro­gress in har­mo­niz­ing with the Ad­juster’s spir­i­tual lead­ings, more fully to dis­cern the pres­ence and trans­form­ing power of those other spir­i­tual in­flu­ences that sur­round you and im­pinge upon you but do not func­tion as an in­te­gral part of you. The fact that you are not in­tel­lec­tu­ally con­scious of close and in­ti­mate con­tact with the in­dwelling Ad­juster does not in the least dis­prove such an ex­alted ex­pe­ri­ence. The proof of fra­ter­nity with the di­vine Ad­juster con­sists wholly in the na­ture and ex­tent of the fruits of the spirit which are yielded in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever. “By their fruits you shall know them.”

• consciousness of God › presence of God › man rarely conscious of

5:2.5It is ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult for the mea­gerly spir­i­tu­al­ized, ma­te­rial mind of mor­tal man to ex­pe­ri­ence marked con­scious­ness of the spirit ac­tiv­i­ties of such di­vine en­ti­ties as the Par­a­dise Ad­justers. As the soul of joint mind and Ad­juster cre­ation be­comes in­creas­ingly ex­is­tent, there also evolves a new phase of soul con­scious­ness which is ca­pa­ble of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the pres­ence, and of rec­og­niz­ing the spirit lead­ings and other super­ma­te­rial ac­tiv­i­ties, of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors.

5:2.6The en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence of Ad­juster com­mu­nion is one in­volv­ing moral sta­tus, men­tal mo­ti­va­tion, and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The self-re­al­iza­tion of such an achieve­ment is mainly, though not ex­clu­sively, lim­ited to the realms of soul con­scious­ness, but the proofs are forth­com­ing and abun­dant in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the fruits of the spirit in the lives of all such in­ner-spirit con­tac­tors.

• term “God” › reality of values, substance of meanings, life of truth

5:4.2The great and im­me­di­ate ser­vice of true re­li­gion is the es­tab­lish­ment of an en­dur­ing unity in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, a last­ing peace and a pro­found as­sur­ance. With prim­i­tive man, even poly­the­ism is a rel­a­tive uni­fi­ca­tion of the evolv­ing con­cept of De­ity; poly­the­ism is mono­the­ism in the mak­ing. Sooner or later, God is des­tined to be com­pre­hended as the re­al­ity of val­ues, the sub­stance of mean­ings, and the life of truth.

• man’s eternal destination

5:4.3God is not only the de­ter­miner of des­tiny; he is man’s eter­nal des­ti­na­tion. All non­re­li­gious hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties seek to bend the uni­verse to the dis­tort­ing ser­vice of self; the truly re­li­gious in­di­vid­ual seeks to iden­tify the self with the uni­verse and then to ded­i­cate the ac­tiv­i­ties of this uni­fied self to the ser­vice of the uni­verse fam­ily of fel­low be­ings, hu­man and super­hu­man.

• evolution of God concept

5:4.9The con­cept of a semi­hu­man and jeal­ous God is an in­ev­i­ta­ble tran­si­tion be­tween poly­the­ism and sub­lime mono­the­ism. An ex­alted an­thro­po­mor­phism is the high­est at­tain­ment level of purely evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Chris­tian­ity has el­e­vated the con­cept of an­thro­po­mor­phism from the ideal of the hu­man to the tran­scen­dent and di­vine con­cept of the per­son of the glo­ri­fied Christ. And this is the high­est an­thro­po­mor­phism that man can ever con­ceive.

5:4.10The Chris­tian con­cept of God is an at­tempt to com­bine three sep­a­rate teach­ings:

5:4.111. The He­brew con­cept—God as a vin­di­ca­tor of moral val­ues, a righ­teous God.

5:4.122. The Greek con­cept—God as a uni­fier, a God of wis­dom.

5:4.133. Je­sus’ con­cept—God as a liv­ing friend, a lov­ing Fa­ther, the di­vine pres­ence.

• consciousness of God › idea, ideal, spirit reality, and personality of God

5:5.11God-con­scious­ness, as it is ex­pe­ri­enced by an evolv­ing mor­tal of the realms, must con­sist of three vary­ing fac­tors, three dif­fer­en­tial lev­els of re­al­ity re­al­iza­tion. There is first the mind con­scious­ness—the com­pre­hen­sion of the idea of God. Then fol­lows the soul con­scious­ness—the re­al­iza­tion of the ideal of God. Last, dawns the spirit con­scious­ness—the re­al­iza­tion of the spirit re­al­ity of God. By the uni­fi­ca­tion of these fac­tors of the di­vine re­al­iza­tion, no mat­ter how in­com­plete, the mor­tal per­son­al­ity at all times over­spreads all con­scious lev­els with a re­al­iza­tion of the per­son­al­ity of God. In those mor­tals who have at­tained the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity all this will in time lead to the re­al­iza­tion of the su­prem­acy of God and may sub­se­quently even­tu­ate in the re­al­iza­tion of the ul­ti­macy of God, some phase of the ab­so­nite super­con­scious­ness of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• consciousness of God › experience remains the same over generations
• evolution of God concept
• term “God” › theologic definitions must change with each epoch

5:5.12The ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness re­mains the same from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but with each ad­vanc­ing epoch in hu­man knowl­edge the philo­sophic con­cept and the the­o­logic def­i­ni­tions of God must change. God-know­ing­ness, re­li­gious con­scious­ness, is a uni­verse re­al­ity, but no mat­ter how valid (real) re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is, it must be will­ing to sub­ject it­self to in­tel­li­gent crit­i­cism and rea­son­able philo­sophic in­ter­pre­ta­tion; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the to­tal­ity of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• God’s nature › spirit

6:1.2The Eter­nal Son is the spir­i­tual cen­ter and the di­vine ad­min­is­tra­tor of the spir­i­tual gov­ern­ment of the uni­verse of uni­verses. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is first a cre­ator and then a con­trol­ler; the Eter­nal Son is first a cocre­ator and then a spir­i­tual ad­min­is­tra­tor. “God is spirit,” and the Son is a per­sonal rev­e­la­tion of that spirit. The First Source and Cen­ter is the Vo­li­tional Ab­so­lute; the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter is the Per­son­al­ity Ab­so­lute.

• God’s nature › spirit

6:2.6God is, in­deed, a uni­ver­sal spirit; God is spirit; and this spirit na­ture of the Fa­ther is fo­cal­ized and per­son­al­ized in the De­ity of the Eter­nal Son. In the Son all spir­i­tual char­ac­ter­is­tics are ap­par­ently greatly en­hanced by dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion from the uni­ver­sal­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter. And as the Fa­ther shares his spirit na­ture with the Son, so do they to­gether just as fully and un­re­servedly share the di­vine spirit with the Con­joint Ac­tor, the In­fi­nite Spirit.

6:3.1The Son shares the jus­tice and righ­teous­ness of the Trin­ity but over­shad­ows these di­vin­ity traits by the in­fi­nite per­son­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy; the Son is the rev­e­la­tion of di­vine love to the uni­verses. As God is love, so the Son is mercy. The Son can­not love more than the Fa­ther, but he can show mercy to crea­tures in one ad­di­tional way, for he not only is a pri­mal cre­ator like the Fa­ther, but he is also the Eter­nal Son of that same Fa­ther, thereby shar­ing in the son­ship ex­pe­ri­ence of all other sons of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

6:3.2The Eter­nal Son is the great mercy min­is­ter to all cre­ation. Mercy is the essence of the Son’s spir­i­tual char­ac­ter. The man­dates of the Eter­nal Son, as they go forth over the spirit cir­cuits of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter, are keyed in tones of mercy.

6:3.3To com­pre­hend the love of the Eter­nal Son, you must first per­ceive its di­vine source, the Fa­ther, who is love, and then be­hold the un­fold­ing of this in­fi­nite af­fec­tion in the far-flung min­istry of the In­fi­nite Spirit and his al­most lim­it­less host of min­is­ter­ing per­son­al­i­ties.

6:3.4The min­istry of the Eter­nal Son is de­voted to the rev­e­la­tion of the God of love to the uni­verse of uni­verses. This di­vine Son is not en­gaged in the ig­no­ble task of try­ing to per­suade his gra­cious Fa­ther to love his lowly crea­tures and to show mercy to the wrong­do­ers of time. How wrong to en­vis­age the Eter­nal Son as ap­peal­ing to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther to show mercy to his lowly crea­tures on the ma­te­rial worlds of space! Such con­cepts of God are crude and grotesque. Rather should you re­al­ize that all the mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tions of the Sons of God are a di­rect rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s heart of uni­ver­sal love and in­fi­nite com­pas­sion. The Fa­ther’s love is the real and eter­nal source of the Son’s mercy.

6:3.5God is love, the Son is mercy. Mercy is ap­plied love, the Fa­ther’s love in ac­tion in the per­son of his Eter­nal Son. The love of this uni­ver­sal Son is like­wise uni­ver­sal. As love is com­pre­hended on a sex planet, the love of God is more com­pa­ra­ble to the love of a fa­ther, while the love of the Eter­nal Son is more like the af­fec­tion of a mother. Crude, in­deed, are such il­lus­tra­tions, but I em­ploy them in the hope of con­vey­ing to the hu­man mind the thought that there is a dif­fer­ence, not in di­vine con­tent but in qual­ity and tech­nique of ex­pres­sion, be­tween the love of the Fa­ther and the love of the Son.

• man › created in image of God

6:5.7Though the Eter­nal Son can­not per­son­ally par­tic­i­pate in the be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers, he did sit in coun­cil with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in the eter­nal past, ap­prov­ing the plan and pledg­ing end­less co-op­er­a­tion, when the Fa­ther, in pro­ject­ing the be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers, pro­posed to the Son, “Let us make mor­tal man in our own im­age.” And as the spirit frag­ment of the Fa­ther dwells within you, so does the spirit pres­ence of the Son en­velop you, while these two for­ever work as one for your spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment.

• man › created in image of God

7:4.41. The Plan of Pro­gres­sive At­tain­ment. This is the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s plan of evo­lu­tion­ary as­cen­sion, a pro­gram un­re­servedly ac­cepted by the Eter­nal Son when he con­curred in the Fa­ther’s pro­posal, “Let us make mor­tal crea­tures in our own im­age.” This pro­vi­sion for up­step­ping the crea­tures of time in­volves the Fa­ther’s be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers and the en­dow­ing of ma­te­rial crea­tures with the pre­rog­a­tives of per­son­al­ity.

• God’s nature › is love

8:4.2God is love, the Son is mercy, the Spirit is min­istry—the min­istry of di­vine love and end­less mercy to all in­tel­li­gent cre­ation. The Spirit is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and the Son’s mercy; in him are they eter­nally united for uni­ver­sal ser­vice. The Spirit is love ap­plied to the crea­ture cre­ation, the com­bined love of the Fa­ther and the Son.

8:5.1The out­stand­ing at­tri­bute of the In­fi­nite Spirit is om­nipres­ence. Through­out all the uni­verse of uni­verses there is ev­ery­where pres­ent this all-per­vad­ing spirit, which is so akin to the pres­ence of a uni­ver­sal and di­vine mind. Both the Sec­ond Per­son and the Third Per­son of De­ity are rep­re­sented on all worlds by their ever-pres­ent spir­its.

8:5.2The Fa­ther is in­fi­nite and is there­fore lim­ited only by vo­li­tion. In the be­stowal of Ad­justers and in the en­cir­cuit­ment of per­son­al­ity, the Fa­ther acts alone, but in the con­tact of spirit forces with in­tel­li­gent be­ings, he uti­lizes the spir­its and per­son­al­i­ties of the Eter­nal Son and the In­fi­nite Spirit. He is at will spir­i­tu­ally pres­ent equally with the Son or with the Con­joint Ac­tor; he is pres­ent with the Son and in the Spirit. The Fa­ther is most cer­tainly ev­ery­where pres­ent, and we dis­cern his pres­ence by and through any and all of these di­verse but as­so­ci­ated forces, in­flu­ences, and pres­ences.

8:5.3In your sa­cred writ­ings the term Spirit of God seems to be used in­ter­change­ably to des­ig­nate both the In­fi­nite Spirit on Par­a­dise and the Cre­ative Spirit of your lo­cal uni­verse. The Holy Spirit is the spir­i­tual cir­cuit of this Cre­ative Daugh­ter of the Par­a­dise In­fi­nite Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a cir­cuit in­dige­nous to each lo­cal uni­verse and is con­fined to the spir­i­tual realm of that cre­ation; but the In­fi­nite Spirit is om­ni­pres­ent.

8:5.4There are many spir­i­tual in­flu­ences, and they are all as one. Even the work of the Thought Ad­justers, though in­de­pen­dent of all other in­flu­ences, un­vary­ingly co­in­cides with the spirit min­istry of the com­bined in­flu­ences of the In­fi­nite Spirit and a lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. As these spir­i­tual pres­ences op­er­ate in the lives of Uran­tians, they can­not be seg­re­gated. In your minds and upon your souls they func­tion as one spirit, not­with­stand­ing their di­verse ori­gins. And as this united spir­i­tual min­is­tra­tion is ex­pe­ri­enced, it be­comes to you the in­flu­ence of the Su­preme, “who is ever able to keep you from fail­ing and to pre­sent you blame­less be­fore your Fa­ther on high.”

8:5.5Ever re­mem­ber that the In­fi­nite Spirit is the Con­joint Ac­tor; both the Fa­ther and the Son are func­tion­ing in and through him; he is pres­ent not only as him­self but also as the Fa­ther and as the Son and as the Fa­ther-Son. In rec­og­ni­tion of this and for many ad­di­tional rea­sons the spirit pres­ence of the In­fi­nite Spirit is of­ten re­ferred to as “the spirit of God.”

8:5.6It would also be con­sis­tent to re­fer to the li­ai­son of all spir­i­tual min­istry as the spirit of God, for such a li­ai­son is truly the union of the spir­its of God the Fa­ther, God the Son, God the Spirit, and God the Sev­en­fold—even the spirit of God the Su­preme.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

9:0.4Through­out the uni­verses the agen­cies of the Con­joint Ac­tor cease­lessly ma­nip­u­late the forces and en­er­gies of all space. Like the First Source and Cen­ter, the Third is re­spon­sive to both the spir­i­tual and the ma­te­rial. The Con­joint Ac­tor is the rev­e­la­tion of the unity of God, in whom all things con­sist—things, mean­ings, and val­ues; en­er­gies, minds, and spir­its.

• God’s nature › spirit

9:2.1God is spirit in a three­fold sense: He him­self is spirit; in his Son he ap­pears as spirit with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion; in the Con­joint Ac­tor, as spirit al­lied with mind. And in ad­di­tion to these spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties, we think we dis­cern lev­els of ex­pe­ri­en­tial spirit phe­nom­ena—the spir­its of the Su­preme Be­ing, Ul­ti­mate De­ity, and De­ity Ab­so­lute.

• man › created in image of God

10:3.1Not­with­stand­ing there is only one De­ity, there are three pos­i­tive and di­vine per­son­al­iza­tions of De­ity. Re­gard­ing the en­dow­ment of man with the di­vine Ad­justers, the Fa­ther said: “Let us make mor­tal man in our own im­age.” Re­peat­edly through­out the Uran­tian writ­ings there oc­curs this ref­er­ence to the acts and do­ings of plu­ral De­ity, clearly show­ing rec­og­ni­tion of the ex­is­tence and work­ing of the three Sources and Cen­ters.

11:1.1Par­a­dise serves many pur­poses in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­ver­sal realms, but to crea­ture be­ings it ex­ists pri­mar­ily as the dwell­ing place of De­ity. The per­sonal pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is res­i­dent at the very cen­ter of the up­per sur­face of this well-nigh cir­cu­lar, but not spher­i­cal, abode of the De­i­ties. This Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is im­me­di­ately sur­rounded by the per­sonal pres­ence of the Eter­nal Son, while they are both in­vested by the un­speak­able glory of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

11:1.2God dwells, has dwelt, and ev­er­last­ingly will dwell in this same cen­tral and eter­nal abode. We have al­ways found him there and al­ways will. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is cos­mi­cally fo­cal­ized, spir­i­tu­ally per­son­al­ized, and ge­o­graph­i­cally res­i­dent at this cen­ter of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

• finding God › few have found God on Paradise

11:1.3We all know the di­rect course to pur­sue to find the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. You are not able to com­pre­hend much about the di­vine res­i­dence be­cause of its re­mote­ness from you and the im­men­sity of the in­ter­ven­ing space, but those who are able to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of these enor­mous dis­tances know God’s lo­ca­tion and res­i­dence just as cer­tainly and lit­er­ally as you know the lo­ca­tion of New York, Lon­don, Rome, or Sin­ga­pore, cities def­i­nitely and ge­o­graph­i­cally lo­cated on Uran­tia. If you were an in­tel­li­gent nav­i­ga­tor, equipped with ship, maps, and com­pass, you could read­ily find these cities. Like­wise, if you had the time and means of pas­sage, were spir­i­tu­ally qual­i­fied, and had the nec­es­sary guid­ance, you could be pi­loted through uni­verse upon uni­verse and from cir­cuit to cir­cuit, ever jour­ney­ing in­ward through the starry realms, un­til at last you would stand be­fore the cen­tral shin­ing of the spir­i­tual glory of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Pro­vided with all the ne­ces­si­ties for the jour­ney, it is just as pos­si­ble to find the per­sonal pres­ence of God at the cen­ter of all things as to find dis­tant cities on your own planet. That you have not vis­ited these places in no way dis­proves their re­al­ity or ac­tual ex­is­tence. That so few of the uni­verse crea­tures have found God on Par­a­dise in no way dis­proves ei­ther the re­al­ity of his ex­is­tence or the ac­tu­al­ity of his spir­i­tual per­son at the cen­ter of all things.

11:1.4The Fa­ther is al­ways to be found at this cen­tral lo­ca­tion. Did he move, uni­ver­sal pan­de­mo­nium would be pre­cip­i­tated, for there con­verge in him at this res­i­den­tial cen­ter the uni­ver­sal lines of grav­ity from the ends of cre­ation. Whether we trace the per­son­al­ity cir­cuit back through the uni­verses or fol­low the as­cend­ing per­son­al­i­ties as they jour­ney in­ward to the Fa­ther; whether we trace the lines of ma­te­rial grav­ity to nether Par­a­dise or fol­low the in­surg­ing cy­cles of cos­mic force; whether we trace the lines of spir­i­tual grav­ity to the Eter­nal Son or fol­low the in­ward pro­ces­sional of the Par­a­dise Sons of God; whether we trace out the mind cir­cuits or fol­low the tril­lions upon tril­lions of ce­les­tial be­ings who spring from the In­fi­nite Spirit—by any of these ob­ser­va­tions or by all of them we are led di­rectly back to the Fa­ther’s pres­ence, to his cen­tral abode. Here is God per­son­ally, lit­er­ally, and ac­tu­ally pres­ent. And from his in­fi­nite be­ing there flow the flood-streams of life, en­ergy, and per­son­al­ity to all uni­verses.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

11:8.1The in­es­cap­able pull of grav­ity ef­fec­tively grips all the worlds of all the uni­verses of all space. Grav­ity is the all-pow­er­ful grasp of the phys­i­cal pres­ence of Par­a­dise. Grav­ity is the om­nipo­tent strand on which are strung the gleam­ing stars, blaz­ing suns, and whirling spheres which con­sti­tute the uni­ver­sal phys­i­cal adorn­ment of the eter­nal God, who is all things, fills all things, and in whom all things con­sist.

• God’s nature › merciful
• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

12:7.1There is op­er­a­tive through­out all time and space and with re­gard to all re­al­ity of what­ever na­ture an in­ex­orable and im­per­sonal law which is equiv­a­lent to the func­tion of a cos­mic prov­i­dence. Mercy char­ac­ter­izes God’s at­ti­tude of love for the in­di­vid­ual; im­par­tial­ity mo­ti­vates God’s at­ti­tude to­ward the to­tal. The will of God does not nec­es­sar­ily pre­vail in the part—the heart of any one per­son­al­ity—but his will does ac­tu­ally rule the whole, the uni­verse of uni­verses.

• God’s nature › changeless
• misconceptions about God › God is not a habit-bound slave

12:7.4God is not a habit-bound slave to the chronic­ity of the rep­e­ti­tion of his own vol­un­tary acts. There is no con­flict among the laws of the In­fi­nite; they are all per­fec­tions of the in­fal­li­ble na­ture; they are all the un­ques­tioned acts ex­pres­sive of fault­less de­ci­sions. Law is the un­chang­ing re­ac­tion of an in­fi­nite, per­fect, and di­vine mind. The acts of God are all vo­li­tional not­with­stand­ing this ap­par­ent same­ness. In God there “is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing.” But all this which can be truly said of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not be said with equal cer­tainty of all his sub­or­di­nate in­tel­li­gences or of his evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures.

12:7.5Be­cause God is change­less, there­fore can you de­pend, in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, on his do­ing the same thing in the same iden­ti­cal and or­di­nary way. God is the as­sur­ance of sta­bil­ity for all cre­ated things and be­ings. He is God; there­fore he changes not.

• misconceptions about God
• misconceptions about God › God is not a habit-bound slave

12:7.6And all this stead­fast­ness of con­duct and uni­for­mity of ac­tion is per­sonal, con­scious, and highly vo­li­tional, for the great God is not a help­less slave to his own per­fec­tion and in­fin­ity. God is not a self-act­ing au­to­matic force; he is not a slav­ish law-bound power. God is nei­ther a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion nor a chem­i­cal for­mula. He is a free­will and pri­mal per­son­al­ity. He is the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, a be­ing sur­charged with per­son­al­ity and the uni­ver­sal fount of all crea­ture per­son­al­ity.

• God’s nature › lover of mankind, helper of the distressed
• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

12:7.8The Fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man pre­sent the para­dox of the part and the whole on the level of per­son­al­ity. God loves each in­di­vid­ual as an in­di­vid­ual child in the heav­enly fam­ily. Yet God thus loves ev­ery in­di­vid­ual; he is no re­specter of per­sons, and the uni­ver­sal­ity of his love brings into be­ing a re­la­tion­ship of the whole, the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood.

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

12:7.12It is a mys­tery that God is a highly per­sonal self-con­scious be­ing with res­i­den­tial head­quar­ters, and at the same time per­son­ally pres­ent in such a vast uni­verse and per­son­ally in con­tact with such a well-nigh in­fi­nite num­ber of be­ings. That such a phe­nom­e­non is a mys­tery be­yond hu­man com­pre­hen­sion should not in the least lessen your faith. Do not al­low the mag­ni­tude of the in­fin­ity, the im­men­sity of the eter­nity, and the grandeur and glory of the match­less char­ac­ter of God to over­awe, stag­ger, or dis­cour­age you; for the Fa­ther is not very far from any one of you; he dwells within you, and in him do we all lit­er­ally move, ac­tu­ally live, and ver­i­ta­bly have our be­ing.

• God’s nature › spirit

12:8.1“God is spirit,” but Par­a­dise is not. The ma­te­rial uni­verse is al­ways the arena wherein take place all spir­i­tual ac­tiv­i­ties; spirit be­ings and spirit as­cend­ers live and work on phys­i­cal spheres of ma­te­rial re­al­ity.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › determined by en masse loyalty to God
• consciousness of God › presence of God › equalized by Master Spirits

13:4.3From these seven spe­cial spheres the Mas­ter Spir­its op­er­ate to equal­ize and sta­bi­lize the cos­mic-mind cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse. They also have to do with the dif­fer­en­tial spir­i­tual at­ti­tude and pres­ence of the De­i­ties through­out the grand uni­verse. Phys­i­cal re­ac­tions are uni­form, un­vary­ing, and al­ways in­stan­ta­neous and au­to­matic. But ex­pe­ri­en­tial spir­i­tual pres­ence is in ac­cor­dance with the un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions or states of spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity in­her­ent in the in­di­vid­ual minds of the realms.

13:4.4Phys­i­cal au­thor­ity, pres­ence, and func­tion are un­vary­ing in all the uni­verses, small or great. The dif­fer­ing fac­tor in spir­i­tual pres­ence, or re­ac­tion, is the fluc­tu­at­ing dif­fer­en­tial in its rec­og­ni­tion and re­cep­tion by will crea­tures. Whereas the spir­i­tual pres­ence of ab­so­lute and ex­is­ten­tial De­ity is in no man­ner what­ever in­flu­enced by at­ti­tudes of loy­alty or dis­loy­alty on the part of cre­ated be­ings, at the same time it is true that the func­tion­ing pres­ence of sub­ab­so­lute and ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­ity is def­i­nitely and di­rectly in­flu­enced by the de­ci­sions, choices, and will-at­ti­tudes of such fi­nite crea­ture be­ings—by the loy­alty and de­vo­tion of the in­di­vid­ual be­ing, planet, sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, or uni­verse. But this spir­i­tual pres­ence of di­vin­ity is not whim­si­cal nor ar­bi­trary; its ex­pe­ri­en­tial vari­ance is in­her­ent in the free­will en­dow­ment of per­sonal crea­tures.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › humbly obedient to creature choosing

13:4.5The de­ter­miner of the dif­fer­en­tial of spir­i­tual pres­ence ex­ists in your own hearts and minds and con­sists in the man­ner of your own choos­ing, in the de­ci­sions of your minds, and in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of your own wills. This dif­fer­en­tial is in­her­ent in the free­will re­ac­tions of in­tel­li­gent per­sonal be­ings, be­ings whom the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has or­dained shall ex­er­cise this lib­erty of choos­ing. And the De­i­ties are ever true to the ebb and flow of their spir­its in meet­ing and sat­is­fy­ing the con­di­tions and de­mands of this dif­fer­en­tial of crea­ture choice, now be­stow­ing more of their pres­ence in re­sponse to a sin­cere de­sire for the same and again with­draw­ing them­selves from the scene as their crea­tures de­cide ad­versely in the ex­er­cise of their di­vinely be­stowed free­dom of choice. And thus does the spirit of di­vin­ity be­come humbly obe­di­ent to the choos­ing of the crea­tures of the realms.

• also known as › Value-Giver

16:8.147. Wor­ship, the sin­cere pur­suit of di­vine val­ues and the whole­hearted love of the di­vine Value-Giver.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › inalienable
• consciousness of God › presence of God › more real than fellow beings

16:9.4Hu­man self-con­scious­ness im­plies the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of selves other than the con­scious self and fur­ther im­plies that such aware­ness is mu­tual; that the self is known as it knows. This is shown in a purely hu­man man­ner in man’s so­cial life. But you can­not be­come so ab­so­lutely cer­tain of a fel­low be­ing’s re­al­ity as you can of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God that lives within you. The so­cial con­scious­ness is not in­alien­able like the God-con­scious­ness; it is a cul­tural de­vel­op­ment and is de­pen­dent on knowl­edge, sym­bols, and the con­tri­bu­tions of the con­sti­tu­tive en­dow­ments of man—sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion. And these cos­mic gifts, so­cial­ized, con­sti­tute civ­i­liza­tion.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God
• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

16:9.14You be­come con­scious of man as your crea­ture brother be­cause you are al­ready con­scious of God as your Cre­ator Fa­ther. Fa­ther­hood is the re­la­tion­ship out of which we rea­son our­selves into the rec­og­ni­tion of broth­er­hood. And Fa­ther­hood be­comes, or may be­come, a uni­verse re­al­ity to all moral crea­tures be­cause the Fa­ther has him­self be­stowed per­son­al­ity upon all such be­ings and has en­cir­cuited them within the grasp of the uni­ver­sal per­son­al­ity cir­cuit. We wor­ship God, first, be­cause he is, then, be­cause he is in us, and last, be­cause we are in him.

• God’s nature › changeless

19:6.8We know that the Ha­vona of the pre­vi­ous uni­verse age was some­what dif­fer­ent from the Ha­vona of the pres­ent age. We deem it no more than rea­son­able to as­sume that we are now wit­ness­ing those slow changes in the cen­tral uni­verse that are an­tic­i­pa­tory of the ages to come. One thing is cer­tain: The uni­verse is non­static; only God is change­less.

• also known as › Luminous Persons

24:7.2A servi­tal will be long ab­sent from Ha­vona on super­uni­verse as­sign­ment, hav­ing been on many such mis­sions pre­vi­ously, will re­turn home, be granted the priv­i­lege of “per­sonal con­tact” with the Par­a­dise Cen­tral Shin­ing, will be em­braced by the Lu­mi­nous Per­sons, and dis­ap­pear from the rec­og­ni­tion of his spirit fel­lows, never more to reap­pear among those of his kind.

• finding God › failure in Deity adventure remands to universes; second attempt always successful

25:8.9Many ad­di­tional ser­vices are per­formed by the Par­a­dise Com­pan­ions: If an as­cend­ing mor­tal should reach the cen­tral uni­verse alone and, while travers­ing Ha­vona, should fail in some phase of the De­ity ad­ven­ture, in due course he would be re­manded to the uni­verses of time, and forth­with a call would be made to the re­serves of the Par­a­dise Com­pan­ions. One of this or­der would be as­signed to fol­low the de­feated pil­grim, to be with him and to com­fort and cheer him, and to re­main with him un­til he re­turned to the cen­tral uni­verse to re­sume the Par­a­dise as­cent.

• God’s nature › all things are possible with God

26:5.3That, then, is the pri­mary or el­e­men­tary course which con­fronts the faith-tested and much-trav­eled pil­grims of space. But long be­fore reach­ing Ha­vona, these as­cen­dant chil­dren of time have learned to feast upon un­cer­tainty, to fat­ten upon dis­ap­point­ment, to en­thuse over ap­par­ent de­feat, to in­vig­o­rate in the pres­ence of dif­fi­cul­ties, to ex­hibit in­domitable cour­age in the face of im­men­sity, and to ex­er­cise un­con­quer­able faith when con­fronted with the chal­lenge of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble. Long since, the bat­tle cry of these pil­grims be­came: “In li­ai­son with God, noth­ing—ab­so­lutely noth­ing—is im­pos­si­ble.”

• finding God › failure in Deity adventure remands to universes; second attempt always successful

26:8.3Af­ter the at­tain­ment of the In­fi­nite Spirit, no more ex­am­i­na­tions are con­ducted. The tests of the in­ner cir­cles are the per­for­mances of the pil­grim can­di­dates when in the em­brace of the en­shroud­ment of the De­i­ties. Ad­vance­ment is de­ter­mined purely by the spir­i­tu­al­ity of the in­di­vid­ual, and no one but the Gods pre­sumes to pass upon this pos­ses­sion. In the event of fail­ure no rea­sons are ever as­signed, nei­ther are the can­di­dates them­selves nor their var­i­ous tu­tors and guides ever chided or crit­i­cized. On Par­a­dise, dis­ap­point­ment is never re­garded as de­feat; post­pone­ment is never looked upon as dis­grace; the ap­par­ent fail­ures of time are never con­fused with the sig­nif­i­cant de­lays of eter­nity.

26:8.4Not many pil­grims ex­pe­ri­ence the de­lay of seem­ing fail­ure in the De­ity ad­ven­ture. Nearly all at­tain the In­fi­nite Spirit, though oc­ca­sion­ally a pil­grim from super­uni­verse num­ber one does not suc­ceed on the first at­tempt. The pil­grims who at­tain the Spirit sel­dom fail in find­ing the Son; of those who do fail on the first ad­ven­ture, al­most all hail from super­uni­verses three and five. The great ma­jor­ity of those who fail on the first ad­ven­ture to at­tain the Fa­ther, af­ter find­ing both the Spirit and the Son, hail from super­uni­verse num­ber six, though a few from num­bers two and three are like­wise un­suc­cess­ful. And all this seems clearly to in­di­cate that there is some good and suf­fi­cient rea­son for these ap­par­ent fail­ures; in re­al­ity, sim­ply un­escapable de­lays.

26:8.5The de­feated can­di­dates for the De­ity ad­ven­ture are placed un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the chiefs of as­sign­ment, a group of pri­mary super­na­phim, and are re­manded to the work of the realms of space for a pe­riod of not less than one mil­len­nium. They never re­turn to the super­uni­verse of their na­tiv­ity, al­ways to that super­cre­ation most pro­pi­tious for their re­train­ing in prepa­ra­tion for the sec­ond De­ity ad­ven­ture. Fol­low­ing this ser­vice, on their own mo­tion, they re­turn to the outer cir­cle of Ha­vona, are im­me­di­ately es­corted to the cir­cle of their in­ter­rupted ca­reer, and at once re­sume their prepa­ra­tions for the De­ity ad­ven­ture. Never do the sec­ondary super­na­phim fail to pi­lot their sub­jects suc­cess­fully on the sec­ond at­tempt, and the same super­aphic min­is­ters and other guides al­ways at­tend these can­di­dates dur­ing this sec­ond ad­ven­ture.

• also known as › Powers of Paradise

27:7.6There are ap­pointed times and places for wor­ship on Par­a­dise, but these are not ad­e­quate to ac­com­mo­date the ever-in­creas­ing over­flow of the spir­i­tual emo­tions of the grow­ing in­tel­li­gence and ex­pand­ing di­vin­ity rec­og­ni­tion of the bril­liant be­ings of ex­pe­ri­en­tial as­cen­sion to the eter­nal Isle. Never since the times of Grand­fanda have the super­na­phim been able fully to ac­com­mo­date the spirit of wor­ship on Par­a­dise. Al­ways is there an ex­cess of wor­ship­ful­ness as gauged by the prepa­ra­tion there­for. And this is be­cause per­son­al­i­ties of in­her­ent per­fec­tion never can fully ap­pre­ci­ate the tremen­dous re­ac­tions of the spir­i­tual emo­tions of be­ings who have slowly and la­bo­ri­ously made their way up­ward to Par­a­dise glory from the depths of the spir­i­tual dark­ness of the lower worlds of time and space. When such an­gels and mor­tals of time at­tain the pres­ence of the Pow­ers of Par­a­dise, there oc­curs the ex­pres­sion of the ac­cu­mu­lated emo­tions of the ages, a spec­ta­cle as­tound­ing to the an­gels of Par­a­dise and pro­duc­tive of the su­preme joy of di­vine sat­is­fac­tion in the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• also known as › Gods

27:7.7Some­times all Par­a­dise be­comes en­gulfed in a dom­i­nat­ing tide of spir­i­tual and wor­ship­ful ex­pres­sion. Of­ten the con­duc­tors of wor­ship can­not con­trol such phe­nom­ena un­til the ap­pear­ance of the three­fold fluc­tu­a­tion of the light of the De­ity abode, sig­ni­fy­ing that the di­vine heart of the Gods has been fully and com­pletely sat­is­fied by the sin­cere wor­ship of the res­i­dents of Par­a­dise, the per­fect cit­i­zens of glory and the as­cen­dant crea­tures of time. What a tri­umph of tech­nique! What a fruition of the eter­nal plan and pur­pose of the Gods that the in­tel­li­gent love of the crea­ture child should give full sat­is­fac­tion to the in­fi­nite love of the Cre­ator Fa­ther!

• finding God › is mortal’s 5th jubilee

27:7.8Af­ter the at­tain­ment of the su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of the full­ness of wor­ship, you are qual­i­fied for ad­mis­sion to the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity. The as­cen­dant ca­reer is well-nigh fin­ished, and the sev­enth ju­bilee pre­pares for cel­e­bra­tion. The first ju­bilee marked the mor­tal agree­ment with the Thought Ad­juster when the pur­pose to sur­vive was sealed; the sec­ond was the awak­en­ing in the mor­ontia life; the third was the fu­sion with the Thought Ad­juster; the fourth was the awak­en­ing in Ha­vona; the fifth cel­e­brated the find­ing of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; and the sixth ju­bilee was the oc­ca­sion of the Par­a­dise awak­en­ing from the fi­nal tran­sit slum­ber of time. The sev­enth ju­bilee marks en­trance into the mor­tal fi­nal­i­ter corps and the be­gin­ning of the eter­nity ser­vice. The at­tain­ment of the sev­enth stage of spirit re­al­iza­tion by a fi­nal­i­ter will prob­a­bly sig­nal­ize the cel­e­bra­tion of the first of the ju­bilees of eter­nity.

• God’s nature › good

28:6.21Great­ness is syn­ony­mous with di­vin­ity. God is su­premely great and good. Great­ness and good­ness sim­ply can­not be di­vorced. They are for­ever made one in God. This truth is lit­er­ally and strik­ingly il­lus­trated by the re­flec­tive in­ter­de­pen­dence of the Se­cret of Great­ness and the Soul of Good­ness, for nei­ther can func­tion with­out the other. In re­flect­ing other qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity, the super­uni­verse se­con­a­phim can and do act alone, but the re­flec­tive es­ti­mates of great­ness and of good­ness ap­pear to be in­sep­a­ra­ble. Hence, on any world, in any uni­verse, must these re­flec­tors of great­ness and of good­ness work to­gether, al­ways show­ing a dual and mu­tu­ally de­pen­dent re­port of ev­ery be­ing upon whom they fo­cal­ize. Great­ness can­not be es­ti­mated with­out know­ing the con­tent of good­ness, while good­ness can­not be por­trayed with­out ex­hibit­ing its in­her­ent and di­vine great­ness.

• eventuates as a superperson, creates as a person, and fragments as a preperson

30:1.99God, as a super­per­son, even­tu­ates; God, as a per­son, cre­ates; God, as a preper­son, frag­ments; and such an Ad­juster frag­ment of him­self evolves the spirit soul upon the ma­te­rial and mor­tal mind in ac­cor­dance with the free­will choos­ing of the per­son­al­ity which has been be­stowed upon such a mor­tal crea­ture by the pa­ren­tal act of God as a Fa­ther.

• man › created in image of God

32:2.8And then, when such a uni­verse has been so com­pletely or­ga­nized and so re­pletely manned, does the Cre­ator Son en­ter into the Fa­ther’s pro­posal to cre­ate mor­tal man in their di­vine im­age.

• finding God › by faith alone
• finding God › he who has seen a Creator Son has seen God

32:3.6The far­ther down the scale of life we go, the more dif­fi­cult it be­comes to lo­cate, with the eye of faith, the in­vis­i­ble Fa­ther. The lower crea­tures—and some­times even the higher per­son­al­i­ties—find it dif­fi­cult al­ways to en­vis­age the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in his Cre­ator Sons. And so, pend­ing the time of their spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion, when per­fec­tion of de­vel­op­ment will en­able them to see God in per­son, they grow weary in pro­gres­sion, en­ter­tain spir­i­tual doubts, stum­ble into con­fu­sion, and thus iso­late them­selves from the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual aims of their time and uni­verse. In this way they lose the abil­ity to see the Fa­ther when be­hold­ing the Cre­ator Son. The surest safe­guard for the crea­ture through­out the long strug­gle to at­tain the Fa­ther, dur­ing this time when in­her­ent con­di­tions make such at­tain­ment im­pos­si­ble, is tena­ciously to hold on to the truth-fact of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence in his Sons. Lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively, spir­i­tu­ally and per­son­ally, the Fa­ther and the Sons are one. It is a fact: He who has seen a Cre­ator Son has seen the Fa­ther.

32:4.1Do not en­ter­tain the idea that, since the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has del­e­gated so much of him­self and his power to oth­ers, he is a silent or in­ac­tive mem­ber of the De­ity part­ner­ship. Aside from per­son­al­ity do­mains and Ad­juster be­stowal, he is ap­par­ently the least ac­tive of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties in that he al­lows his De­ity co-or­di­nates, his Sons, and nu­mer­ous cre­ated in­tel­li­gences to per­form so much in the car­ry­ing out of his eter­nal pur­pose. He is the silent mem­ber of the cre­ative trio only in that he never does aught which any of his co-or­di­nate or sub­or­di­nate as­so­ciates can do.

32:4.2God has full un­der­stand­ing of the need of ev­ery in­tel­li­gent crea­ture for func­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence, and there­fore, in ev­ery sit­u­a­tion, be it con­cerned with the des­tiny of a uni­verse or the wel­fare of the hum­blest of his crea­tures, God re­tires from ac­tiv­ity in fa­vor of the galaxy of crea­ture and Cre­ator per­son­al­i­ties who in­her­ently in­ter­vene be­tween him­self and any given uni­verse sit­u­a­tion or cre­ative event. But not­with­stand­ing this re­tire­ment, this ex­hi­bi­tion of in­fi­nite co-or­di­na­tion, there is on God’s part an ac­tual, lit­eral, and per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion in these events by and through these or­dained agen­cies and per­son­al­i­ties. The Fa­ther is work­ing in and through all these chan­nels for the wel­fare of all his far-flung cre­ation.

32:4.3As re­gards the poli­cies, con­duct, and ad­min­is­tra­tion of a lo­cal uni­verse, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther acts in the per­son of his Cre­ator Son. In the in­ter­re­la­tion­ships of the Sons of God, in the group as­so­ci­a­tions of the per­son­al­i­ties of ori­gin in the Third Source and Cen­ter, or in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween any other crea­tures, such as hu­man be­ings—as con­cerns such as­so­ci­a­tions the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never in­ter­venes. The law of the Cre­ator Son, the rule of the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, the Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, and the Plan­e­tary Princes—the or­dained poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for that uni­verse—al­ways pre­vail. There is no di­vi­sion of au­thor­ity; never is there a cross work­ing of di­vine power and pur­pose. The De­i­ties are in per­fect and eter­nal una­nim­ity.

32:4.4The Cre­ator Son rules su­preme in all mat­ters of eth­i­cal as­so­ci­a­tions, the re­la­tions of any di­vi­sion of crea­tures to any other class of crea­tures or of two or more in­di­vid­u­als within any given group; but such a plan does not mean that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther may not in his own way in­ter­vene and do aught that pleases the di­vine mind with any in­di­vid­ual crea­ture through­out all cre­ation, as per­tains to that in­di­vid­ual’s pres­ent sta­tus or fu­ture prospects and as con­cerns the Fa­ther’s eter­nal plan and in­fi­nite pur­pose.

32:4.5In the mor­tal will crea­tures the Fa­ther is ac­tu­ally pres­ent in the in­dwelling Ad­juster, a frag­ment of his preper­sonal spirit; and the Fa­ther is also the source of the per­son­al­ity of such a mor­tal will crea­ture.

32:4.6These Thought Ad­justers, the be­stowals of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, are com­par­a­tively iso­lated; they in­dwell hu­man minds but have no dis­cern­i­ble con­nec­tion with the eth­i­cal af­fairs of a lo­cal cre­ation. They are not di­rectly co-or­di­nated with the se­raphic ser­vice nor with the ad­min­is­tra­tion of sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, or a lo­cal uni­verse, not even with the rule of a Cre­ator Son, whose will is the su­preme law of his uni­verse.

• finding God › God manifests himself to our capacity

32:4.7The in­dwelling Ad­justers are one of God’s sep­a­rate but uni­fied modes of con­tact with the crea­tures of his all but in­fi­nite cre­ation. Thus does he who is in­vis­i­ble to mor­tal man man­i­fest his pres­ence, and could he do so, he would show him­self to us in still other ways, but such fur­ther rev­e­la­tion is not di­vinely pos­si­ble.

32:4.8We can see and un­der­stand the mech­a­nism whereby the Sons en­joy in­ti­mate and com­plete knowl­edge re­gard­ing the uni­verses of their ju­ris­dic­tion; but we can­not fully com­pre­hend the meth­ods whereby God is so fully and per­son­ally con­ver­sant with the de­tails of the uni­verse of uni­verses, al­though we at least can rec­og­nize the av­enue whereby the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can re­ceive in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing, and man­i­fest his pres­ence to, the be­ings of his im­mense cre­ation. Through the per­son­al­ity cir­cuit the Fa­ther is cog­nizant—has per­sonal knowl­edge—of all the thoughts and acts of all the be­ings in all the sys­tems of all the uni­verses of all cre­ation. Though we can­not fully grasp this tech­nique of God’s com­mu­nion with his chil­dren, we can be strength­ened in the as­sur­ance that the “Lord knows his chil­dren,” and that of each one of us “he takes note where we were born.”

32:4.9In your uni­verse and in your heart the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is pres­ent, spir­i­tu­ally speak­ing, by one of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its of cen­tral abode and, specif­i­cally, by the di­vine Ad­juster who lives and works and waits in the depths of the mor­tal mind.

32:4.10God is not a self-cen­tered per­son­al­ity; the Fa­ther freely dis­tributes him­self to his cre­ation and to his crea­tures. He lives and acts, not only in the De­i­ties, but also in his Sons, whom he in­trusts with the do­ing of ev­ery­thing that it is di­vinely pos­si­ble for them to do. The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has truly di­vested him­self of ev­ery func­tion which it is pos­si­ble for an­other be­ing to per­form. And this is just as true of mor­tal man as of the Cre­ator Son who rules in God’s stead at the head­quar­ters of a lo­cal uni­verse. Thus we be­hold the out­work­ing of the ideal and in­fi­nite love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

32:4.11In this uni­ver­sal be­stowal of him­self we have abun­dant proof of both the mag­ni­tude and the mag­na­nim­ity of the Fa­ther’s di­vine na­ture. If God has with­held aught of him­self from the uni­ver­sal cre­ation, then of that residue he is in lav­ish gen­eros­ity be­stow­ing the Thought Ad­justers upon the mor­tals of the realms, the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors of time, who so pa­tiently in­dwell the mor­tal can­di­dates for life ev­er­last­ing.

32:4.12The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has poured out him­self, as it were, to make all cre­ation rich in per­son­al­ity pos­ses­sion and po­ten­tial spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. God has given us him­self that we may be like him, and he has re­served for him­self of power and glory only that which is nec­es­sary for the main­te­nance of those things for the love of which he has thus di­vested him­self of all things else.

• Creator Sons are God in their local universes

33:1.4The Cre­ator Son is the vicegerent per­son­al­iza­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the di­vin­ity co-or­di­nate of the Eter­nal Son, and the cre­ative as­so­ciate of the In­fi­nite Spirit. To our uni­verse and all its in­hab­ited worlds the Sov­er­eign Son is, to all prac­ti­cal in­tents and pur­poses, God. He per­son­i­fies all of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties which evolv­ing mor­tals can dis­cern­ingly com­pre­hend. This Son and his Spirit as­so­ciate are your cre­ator par­ents. To you, Mi­chael, the Cre­ator Son, is the su­preme per­son­al­ity; to you, the Eter­nal Son is super­su­preme—an in­fi­nite De­ity per­son­al­ity.

40:6.1The mor­tal races stand as the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the low­est or­der of in­tel­li­gent and per­sonal cre­ation. You mor­tals are di­vinely beloved, and ev­ery one of you may choose to ac­cept the cer­tain des­tiny of a glo­ri­ous ex­pe­ri­ence, but you are not yet by na­ture of the di­vine or­der; you are wholly mor­tal. You will be reck­oned as as­cend­ing sons the in­stant fu­sion takes place, but the sta­tus of the mor­tals of time and space is that of faith sons prior to the event of the fi­nal amal­ga­ma­tion of the sur­viv­ing mor­tal soul with some type of eter­nal and im­mor­tal spirit.

40:6.2It is a solemn and su­per­nal fact that such lowly and ma­te­rial crea­tures as Uran­tia hu­man be­ings are the sons of God, faith chil­dren of the High­est. “Be­hold, what man­ner of love the Fa­ther has be­stowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.” “As many as re­ceived him, to them gave he the power to rec­og­nize that they are the sons of God.” While “it does not yet ap­pear what you shall be,” even now “you are the faith sons of God”; “for you have not re­ceived the spirit of bond­age again to fear, but you have re­ceived the spirit of son­ship, whereby you cry, ‘our Fa­ther.’” Spoke the prophet of old in the name of the eter­nal God: “Even to them will I give in my house a place and a name bet­ter than sons; I will give them an ev­er­last­ing name, one that shall not be cut off.” “And be­cause you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts.”

40:6.3All evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of mor­tal habi­ta­tion har­bor these faith sons of God, sons of grace and mercy, mor­tal be­ings be­long­ing to the di­vine fam­ily and ac­cord­ingly called the sons of God. Uran­tia mor­tals are en­ti­tled to re­gard them­selves as be­ing the sons of God be­cause:

40:6.41. You are sons of spir­i­tual prom­ise, faith sons; you have ac­cepted the sta­tus of son­ship. You be­lieve in the re­al­ity of your son­ship, and thus does your son­ship with God be­come eter­nally real.

40:6.52. A Cre­ator Son of God be­came one of you; he is your el­der brother in fact; and if in spirit you be­come truly re­lated broth­ers of Christ, the vic­to­ri­ous Mi­chael, then in spirit must you also be sons of that Fa­ther which you have in com­mon—even the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of all.

40:6.63. You are sons be­cause the spirit of a Son has been poured out upon you, has been freely and cer­tainly be­stowed upon all Uran­tia races. This spirit ever draws you to­ward the di­vine Son, who is its source, and to­ward the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, who is the source of that di­vine Son.

40:6.74. Of his di­vine free-will­ness, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has given you your crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties. You have been en­dowed with a mea­sure of that di­vine spon­tane­ity of free­will ac­tion which God shares with all who may be­come his sons.

40:6.85. There dwells within you a frag­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and you are thus di­rectly re­lated to the di­vine Fa­ther of all the Sons of God.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

40:10.5That mor­tal des­tinies do thus vary in no wise proves that one is nec­es­sar­ily greater or lesser than an­other, merely that they dif­fer. Ad­juster-fused as­cend­ers do in­deed have a grand and glo­ri­ous ca­reer as fi­nal­i­ters spread out be­fore them in the eter­nal fu­ture, but this does not mean that they are pre­ferred above their as­cen­dant breth­ren. There is no fa­voritism, noth­ing ar­bi­trary, in the se­lec­tive op­er­a­tion of the di­vine plan of mor­tal sur­vival.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

40:10.13Thus, in the fi­nal anal­y­sis, it would be hardly proper to use the words “greater” or “lesser” in con­trast­ing the des­tinies of the as­cend­ing or­ders of son­ship. Ev­ery such son of God shares the fa­ther­hood of God, and God loves each of his crea­ture sons alike; he is no more a re­specter of as­cen­dant des­tinies than is he of the crea­tures who may at­tain such des­tinies. The Fa­ther loves each of his sons, and that af­fec­tion is not less than true, holy, di­vine, un­lim­ited, eter­nal, and unique—a love be­stowed upon this son and upon that son, in­di­vid­u­ally, per­son­ally, and ex­clu­sively. And such a love ut­terly eclipses all other facts. Son­ship is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship of the crea­ture to the Cre­ator.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

42:1.2Mat­ter—en­ergy—for they are but di­verse man­i­fes­ta­tions of the same cos­mic re­al­ity, as a uni­verse phe­nom­e­non is in­her­ent in the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. “In him all things con­sist.” Mat­ter may ap­pear to man­i­fest in­her­ent en­ergy and to ex­hibit self-con­tained pow­ers, but the lines of grav­ity in­volved in the en­er­gies con­cerned in all these phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena are de­rived from, and are de­pen­dent on, Par­a­dise. The ul­ti­ma­ton, the first mea­sur­able form of en­ergy, has Par­a­dise as its nu­cleus.

• finding God › cannot find God through science

42:1.3There is in­nate in mat­ter and pres­ent in uni­ver­sal space a form of en­ergy not known on Uran­tia. When this dis­cov­ery is fi­nally made, then will physi­cists feel that they have solved, al­most at least, the mys­tery of mat­ter. And so will they have ap­proached one step nearer the Cre­ator; so will they have mas­tered one more phase of the di­vine tech­nique; but in no sense will they have found God, nei­ther will they have es­tab­lished the ex­is­tence of mat­ter or the op­er­a­tion of nat­u­ral laws apart from the cos­mic tech­nique of Par­a­dise and the mo­ti­vat­ing pur­pose of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• creation of energy and life is prerogative of God; both flow out to all creation

42:1.5The cre­ation of en­ergy and the be­stowal of life are the pre­rog­a­tives of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and his as­so­ciate Cre­ator per­son­al­i­ties. The river of en­ergy and life is a con­tin­u­ous out­pour­ing from the De­i­ties, the uni­ver­sal and united stream of Par­a­dise force go­ing forth to all space. This di­vine en­ergy per­vades all cre­ation. The force or­ga­niz­ers ini­ti­ate those changes and in­sti­tute those mod­i­fi­ca­tions of space-force which even­tu­ate in en­ergy; the power di­rec­tors trans­mute en­ergy into mat­ter; thus the ma­te­rial worlds are born. The Life Car­ri­ers ini­ti­ate those pro­cesses in dead mat­ter which we call life, ma­te­rial life. The Mor­ontia Power Super­vi­sors like­wise per­form through­out the tran­si­tion realms be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual worlds. The higher spirit Cre­ators in­au­gu­rate sim­i­lar pro­cesses in di­vine forms of en­ergy, and there en­sue the higher spirit forms of in­tel­li­gent life.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

42:1.6En­ergy pro­ceeds from Par­a­dise, fash­ioned af­ter the di­vine or­der. En­ergy—pure en­ergy—par­takes of the na­ture of the di­vine or­ga­ni­za­tion; it is fash­ioned af­ter the simil­i­tude of the three Gods em­braced in one, as they func­tion at the head­quar­ters of the uni­verse of uni­verses. And all force is cir­cuited in Par­a­dise, comes from the Par­a­dise Pres­ences and re­turns thereto, and is in essence a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the un­caused Cause—the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; and with­out the Fa­ther would not any­thing ex­ist that does ex­ist.

• God’s nature › energy infinity

42:2.21We know that fi­nite crea­tures can at­tain the wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther through the min­istry of God the Sev­en­fold and the Thought Ad­justers, but we doubt that any sub­ab­so­lute per­son­al­ity, even power di­rec­tors, can com­pre­hend the en­ergy in­fin­ity of the First Great Source and Cen­ter. One thing is cer­tain: If the power di­rec­tors are con­ver­sant with the tech­nique of the meta­mor­pho­sis of space-force, they do not re­veal the se­cret to the rest of us. It is my opin­ion that they do not fully com­pre­hend the func­tion of the force or­ga­niz­ers.

• divine qualities perfectly unified in

44:7.4These di­vine qual­i­ties are per­fectly and ab­so­lutely uni­fied in God. And ev­ery God-know­ing man or an­gel pos­sesses the po­ten­tial of un­lim­ited self-ex­pres­sion on ever-pro­gres­sive lev­els of uni­fied self-re­al­iza­tion by the tech­nique of the never-end­ing achieve­ment of God­like­ness—the ex­pe­ri­en­tial blend­ing in the evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence of eter­nal truth, uni­ver­sal beauty, and di­vine good­ness.

• also known as › Breath Giver

45:4.31. On­a­gar, the mas­ter mind of the pre-Plan­e­tary Prince age, who di­rected his fel­lows in the wor­ship of “The Breath Giver.”

• also known as › Great Light

45:4.42. Mansant, the great teacher of the post-Plan­e­tary Prince age on Uran­tia, who pointed his fel­lows to the ven­er­a­tion of “The Great Light.”

• also known as › Great Spirit

45:4.53. Ona­mo­na­lon­ton, a far-dis­tant leader of the red man and the one who di­rected this race from the wor­ship of many gods to the ven­er­a­tion of “The Great Spirit.”

• also known as › Supreme Chief

45:4.64. Or­landof, a prince of the blue men and their leader in the rec­og­ni­tion of the di­vin­ity of “The Su­preme Chief.”

• also known as › Great Teacher

45:4.75. Por­shunta, the or­a­cle of the ex­tinct or­ange race and the leader of this peo­ple in the wor­ship of “The Great Teacher.”

• also known as › One Truth

45:4.86. Singlang­ton, the first of the yel­low men to teach and lead his peo­ple in the wor­ship of “One Truth” in­stead of many. Thou­sands of years ago the yel­low man knew of the one God.

• also known as › One Source of Life

45:4.97. Fan­tad, the de­liv­erer of the green men from dark­ness and their leader in the wor­ship of “The One Source of Life.”

• also known as › God of Gods

45:4.108. Or­vonon, the en­light­ener of the in­digo races and their leader in the one­time ser­vice of “The God of Gods.”

• also known as › Lord God of Israel

45:4.1412. Moses, the eman­ci­pa­tor of a rem­nant of the sub­merged vi­o­let race and the in­sti­ga­tor of the re­vival of the wor­ship of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther un­der the name of “The God of Is­rael.”

• finding God › parental experience indispensable to finding God

45:6.4No sur­viv­ing mor­tal, mid­wayer, or ser­a­phim may as­cend to Par­a­dise, at­tain the Fa­ther, and be mus­tered into the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity with­out hav­ing passed through that sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence of achiev­ing pa­ren­tal re­la­tion­ship to an evolv­ing child of the worlds or some other ex­pe­ri­ence anal­o­gous and equiv­a­lent thereto. The re­la­tion­ship of child and par­ent is fun­da­men­tal to the es­sen­tial con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and his uni­verse chil­dren. There­fore does such an ex­pe­ri­ence be­come in­dis­pens­able to the ex­pe­ri­en­tial train­ing of all as­cend­ers.

• also known as › Supreme Rulers

46:8.4There will come an end for rebels and re­bel­lion. The Su­preme Rulers are mer­ci­ful and pa­tient, but the law of de­lib­er­ately nour­ished evil is uni­ver­sally and unerringly ex­e­cuted. “The wages of sin is death”—eter­nal oblit­er­a­tion.

• also known as › Supreme Directors

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.

• also known as › Makers

48:4.15When we are tempted to mag­nify our self-im­por­tance, if we stop to con­tem­plate the in­fin­ity of the great­ness and grandeur of our Mak­ers, our own self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion be­comes sub­limely ridicu­lous, even verg­ing on the hu­mor­ous. One of the func­tions of hu­mor is to help all of us take our­selves less se­ri­ously. Hu­mor is the di­vine an­ti­dote for ex­al­ta­tion of ego.

• also known as › Infinite

48:7.1210. Righ­teous­ness strikes the har­mony chords of truth, and the mel­ody vi­brates through­out the cos­mos, even to the rec­og­ni­tion of the In­fi­nite.

• finding God › soul made divine by what it strives to do, not by what it does

48:7.2422. The evolv­ing soul is not made di­vine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.

• also known as › Supreme Rulers

50:1.2The prince of a newly in­hab­ited world is sur­rounded by a loyal corps of helpers and as­sis­tants and by large num­bers of the min­is­ter­ing spir­its. But the di­rect­ing corps of such new worlds must be of the lower or­ders of the ad­min­is­tra­tors of a sys­tem in or­der to be in­nately sym­pa­thetic with, and un­der­stand­ing of, the plan­e­tary prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. And all of this ef­fort to pro­vide sym­pa­thetic ruler­ship for the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds en­tails the in­creased li­a­bil­ity that these near-hu­man per­son­al­i­ties may be led astray by the ex­al­ta­tion of their own minds over and above the will of the Su­preme Rulers.

• also known as › Supreme Rulers

53:2.4Through­out this pe­riod Lu­cifer be­came in­creas­ingly crit­i­cal of the en­tire plan of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion but al­ways pro­fessed whole­hearted loy­alty to the Su­preme Rulers. His first out­spo­ken dis­loy­alty was man­i­fested on the oc­ca­sion of a visit of Ga­briel to Je­ru­sem just a few days be­fore the open procla­ma­tion of the Lu­cifer Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty. Ga­briel was so pro­foundly im­pressed with the cer­tainty of the im­pend­ing out­break that he went di­rect to Eden­tia to con­fer with the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers re­gard­ing the mea­sures to be em­ployed in case of open re­bel­lion.

• God’s nature › neither creates evil nor permits sin and rebellion

54:0.2The Gods nei­ther cre­ate evil nor per­mit sin and re­bel­lion. Po­ten­tial evil is time-ex­is­tent in a uni­verse em­brac­ing dif­fer­en­tial lev­els of per­fec­tion mean­ings and val­ues. Sin is po­ten­tial in all realms where im­per­fect be­ings are en­dowed with the abil­ity to choose be­tween good and evil. The very con­flict­ing pres­ence of truth and un­truth, fact and false­hood, con­sti­tutes the po­ten­tial­ity of er­ror. The de­lib­er­ate choice of evil con­sti­tutes sin; the will­ful re­jec­tion of truth is er­ror; the per­sis­tent pur­suit of sin and er­ror is in­iq­uity.

• also known as › Supreme Rulers
• God’s nature › will not permit anyone to deprive another of free will

54:1.9How dare the self-willed crea­ture en­croach upon the rights of his fel­lows in the name of per­sonal lib­erty when the Su­preme Rulers of the uni­verse stand back in mer­ci­ful re­spect for these pre­rog­a­tives of will and po­ten­tials of per­son­al­ity! No be­ing, in the ex­er­cise of his sup­posed per­sonal lib­erty, has a right to de­prive any other be­ing of those priv­i­leges of ex­is­tence con­ferred by the Cre­ators and duly re­spected by all their loyal as­so­ciates, sub­or­di­nates, and sub­jects.

• also known as › Supreme Rulers
• God’s nature › will not permit anyone to deprive another of free will

54:3.1The moral will crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are al­ways both­ered with the un­think­ing ques­tion as to why the all-wise Cre­ators per­mit evil and sin. They fail to com­pre­hend that both are in­ev­i­ta­ble if the crea­ture is to be truly free. The free will of evolv­ing man or ex­qui­site an­gel is not a mere philo­sophic con­cept, a sym­bolic ideal. Man’s abil­ity to choose good or evil is a uni­verse re­al­ity. This lib­erty to choose for one­self is an en­dow­ment of the Su­preme Rulers, and they will not per­mit any be­ing or group of be­ings to de­prive a sin­gle per­son­al­ity in the wide uni­verse of this di­vinely be­stowed lib­erty—not even to sat­isfy such mis­guided and ig­no­rant be­ings in the en­joy­ment of this mis­named per­sonal lib­erty.

• also known as › Supreme Rulers

54:4.5There are many rea­sons known to us why the Su­preme Rulers did not im­me­di­ately de­stroy or in­tern the lead­ers of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. There are no doubt still other and pos­si­bly bet­ter rea­sons un­known to us. The mercy fea­tures of this de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice were ex­tended per­son­ally by Mi­chael of Neb­a­don. Ex­cept for the af­fec­tion of this Cre­ator-fa­ther for his erring Sons, the su­preme jus­tice of the super­uni­verse would have acted. If such an episode as the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had oc­curred in Neb­a­don while Mi­chael was in­car­nated on Uran­tia, the in­sti­ga­tors of such evil might have been in­stantly and ab­so­lutely an­ni­hi­lated.

• God’s nature › is love

54:4.6Su­preme jus­tice can act in­stantly when not re­strained by di­vine mercy. But the min­istry of mercy to the chil­dren of time and space al­ways pro­vides for this time lag, this sav­ing in­ter­val be­tween seed­time and har­vest. If the seed sow­ing is good, this in­ter­val pro­vides for the test­ing and up­build­ing of char­ac­ter; if the seed sow­ing is evil, this mer­ci­ful de­lay pro­vides time for re­pen­tance and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion. This time de­lay in the ad­ju­di­ca­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of evil­do­ers is in­her­ent in the mercy min­istry of the seven super­uni­verses. This re­straint of jus­tice by mercy proves that God is love, and that such a God of love dom­i­nates the uni­verses and in mercy con­trols the fate and judg­ment of all his crea­tures.

• finding God › God as Father takes precedence over all phases of Deity
• God’s nature › is Father

54:6.2In all their deal­ings with in­tel­li­gent be­ings, both the Cre­ator Son and his Par­a­dise Fa­ther are love dom­i­nated. It is im­pos­si­ble to com­pre­hend many phases of the at­ti­tude of the uni­verse rulers to­ward rebels and re­bel­lion—sin and sin­ners—un­less it be re­mem­bered that God as a Fa­ther takes prece­dence over all other phases of De­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion in all the deal­ings of di­vin­ity with hu­man­ity. It should also be re­called that the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons are all mercy mo­ti­vated.

• God’s nature › unity

56:0.1God is unity. De­ity is uni­ver­sally co-or­di­nated. The uni­verse of uni­verses is one vast in­te­grated mech­a­nism which is ab­so­lutely con­trolled by one in­fi­nite mind. The phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, and spir­i­tual do­mains of uni­ver­sal cre­ation are di­vinely cor­re­lated. The per­fect and im­per­fect are truly in­ter­re­lated, and there­fore may the fi­nite evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture as­cend to Par­a­dise in obe­di­ence to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s man­date: “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.”

• God’s nature › unity

56:1.4Pure en­ergy is the an­ces­tor of all rel­a­tive, non­spirit func­tional re­al­i­ties, while pure spirit is the po­ten­tial of the di­vine and di­rec­tive over­con­trol of all ba­sic en­ergy sys­tems. And these re­al­i­ties, so di­verse as man­i­fested through­out space and as ob­served in the mo­tions of time, are both cen­tered in the per­son of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. In him they are one—must be uni­fied—be­cause God is one. The Fa­ther’s per­son­al­ity is ab­so­lutely uni­fied.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

56:1.5In the in­fi­nite na­ture of God the Fa­ther there could not pos­si­bly ex­ist du­al­ity of re­al­ity, such as phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual; but the in­stant we look aside from the in­fi­nite lev­els and ab­so­lute re­al­ity of the per­sonal val­ues of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, we ob­serve the ex­is­tence of these two re­al­i­ties and rec­og­nize that they are fully re­spon­sive to his per­sonal pres­ence; in him all things con­sist.

• finding God › is oneness with divinity by means of cosmic mind

56:3.6Spirit must al­ways and ul­ti­mately be­come three­fold in ex­pres­sion and Trin­ity-uni­fied in fi­nal re­al­iza­tion. Spirit orig­i­nates from one source through a three­fold ex­pres­sion; and in fi­nal­ity it must and does at­tain its full re­al­iza­tion in that di­vine uni­fi­ca­tion which is ex­pe­ri­enced in find­ing God—one­ness with di­vin­ity—in eter­nity, and by means of the min­istry of the cos­mic mind of the in­fi­nite ex­pres­sion of the eter­nal word of the Fa­ther’s uni­ver­sal thought.

• finding God › by rebound momentum of Thought Adjusters

56:4.1The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is a di­vinely uni­fied per­son­al­ity; hence will all his as­cen­dant chil­dren who are car­ried to Par­a­dise by the re­bound mo­men­tum of the Thought Ad­justers, who went forth from Par­a­dise to in­dwell ma­te­rial mor­tals in obe­di­ence to the Fa­ther’s man­date, like­wise be fully uni­fied per­son­al­i­ties ere they reach Ha­vona.

• finding God › God cannot be plural to personality
• God’s nature › is Father

56:4.4While God is to and in the uni­verses all that we have por­trayed, nev­er­the­less, to you and to all other God-know­ing crea­tures he is one, your Fa­ther and their Fa­ther. To per­son­al­ity God can­not be plu­ral. God is Fa­ther to each of his crea­tures, and it is lit­er­ally im­pos­si­ble for any child to have more than one fa­ther.

56:4.5Phil­o­soph­i­cally, cos­mi­cally, and with ref­er­ence to dif­fer­en­tial lev­els and lo­ca­tions of man­i­fes­ta­tion, you may and per­force must con­ceive of the func­tion­ing of plu­ral De­i­ties and pos­tu­late the ex­is­tence of plu­ral Trin­i­ties; but in the wor­ship­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of the per­sonal con­tact of ev­ery wor­ship­ing per­son­al­ity through­out the mas­ter uni­verse, God is one; and that uni­fied and per­sonal De­ity is our Par­a­dise par­ent, God the Fa­ther, the be­stower, con­ser­va­tor, and Fa­ther of all per­son­al­i­ties from mor­tal man on the in­hab­ited worlds to the Eter­nal Son on the cen­tral Isle of Light.

• finding God › by recognizing truth, beauty, goodness, God of love, comprehension of Supreme

56:6.3The ma­te­rial-minded crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of the seven super­uni­verses can com­pre­hend De­ity unity only as it is evolv­ing in this power-per­son­al­ity syn­the­sis of the Su­preme Be­ing. On any level of ex­is­tence God can­not ex­ceed the con­cep­tual ca­pac­ity of the be­ings who live on such a level. Mor­tal man must, through the rec­og­ni­tion of truth, the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty, and the wor­ship of good­ness, evolve the rec­og­ni­tion of a God of love and then pro­gress through as­cend­ing de­ity lev­els to the com­pre­hen­sion of the Su­preme. De­ity, hav­ing been thus grasped as uni­fied in power, can then be per­son­al­ized in spirit to crea­ture un­der­stand­ing and at­tain­ment.

• growth of God comprehension in light and life

56:7.1The steady prog­ress of evo­lu­tion in the time-space uni­verses is ac­com­pa­nied by ever-en­larg­ing rev­e­la­tions of De­ity to all in­tel­li­gent crea­tures. The at­tain­ment of the height of evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress on a world, in a sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, uni­verse, super­uni­verse, or in the grand uni­verse sig­nal­izes cor­re­spond­ing en­large­ments of de­ity func­tion to and in these pro­gres­sive units of cre­ation. And ev­ery such lo­cal en­hance­ment of di­vin­ity re­al­iza­tion is ac­com­pa­nied by cer­tain well-de­fined reper­cus­sions of en­larged de­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion to all other sec­tors of cre­ation. Ex­tend­ing out­ward from Par­a­dise, each new do­main of re­al­ized and at­tained evo­lu­tion con­sti­tutes a new and en­larged rev­e­la­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­ity to the uni­verse of uni­verses.

56:7.2As the com­po­nents of a lo­cal uni­verse are pro­gres­sively set­tled in light and life, God the Sev­en­fold is in­creas­ingly made man­i­fest. Time-space evo­lu­tion be­gins on a planet with the first ex­pres­sion of God the Sev­en­fold—the Cre­ator Son-Cre­ative Spirit as­so­ci­a­tion—in con­trol. With the set­tling of a sys­tem in light, this Son-Spirit li­ai­son at­tains the full­ness of func­tion; and when an en­tire con­stel­la­tion is thus set­tled, the sec­ond phase of God the Sev­en­fold be­comes more ac­tive through­out such a realm. The com­pleted ad­min­is­tra­tive evo­lu­tion of a lo­cal uni­verse is at­tended by new and more di­rect min­is­tra­tions of the super­uni­verse Mas­ter Spir­its; and at this point there also be­gins that ever-ex­pand­ing rev­e­la­tion and re­al­iza­tion of God the Su­preme which cul­mi­nates in the as­cender’s com­pre­hen­sion of the Su­preme Be­ing while pass­ing through the worlds of the sixth Ha­vona cir­cuit.

• growth of God comprehension in light and life

56:7.5Each new evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ment within a sec­tor of cre­ation, as well as ev­ery new in­va­sion of space by di­vin­ity man­i­fes­ta­tions, is at­tended by si­mul­ta­ne­ous ex­pan­sions of De­ity func­tional-rev­e­la­tion within the then ex­ist­ing and pre­vi­ously or­ga­nized units of all cre­ation. This new in­va­sion of the ad­min­is­tra­tive work of the uni­verses and their com­po­nent units may not al­ways ap­pear to be ex­e­cuted ex­actly in ac­cor­dance with the tech­nique here­with out­lined be­cause it is the prac­tice to send forth ad­vance groups of ad­min­is­tra­tors to pre­pare the way for the sub­se­quent and suc­ces­sive eras of new ad­min­is­tra­tive over­con­trol. Even God the Ul­ti­mate fore­shad­ows his tran­scen­den­tal over­con­trol of the uni­verses dur­ing the later stages of a lo­cal uni­verse set­tled in light and life.

• revelation of God always partial, relative, and progressive

56:9.7Spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity is ab­so­lute only on Par­a­dise, and the con­cept of the Ab­so­lute is un­qual­i­fied only in in­fin­ity. De­ity pres­ence is ab­so­lute only on Par­a­dise, and the rev­e­la­tion of God must al­ways be par­tial, rel­a­tive, and pro­gres­sive un­til his power be­comes ex­pe­ri­en­tially in­fi­nite in the space po­tency of the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute, while his per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion be­comes ex­pe­ri­en­tially in­fi­nite in the man­i­fest pres­ence of the De­ity Ab­so­lute, and while these two po­ten­tials of in­fin­ity be­come re­al­ity-uni­fied in the Uni­ver­sal Ab­so­lute.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

56:9.14The uni­verse of uni­verses is al­to­gether uni­fied. God is one in power and per­son­al­ity. There is co-or­di­na­tion of all lev­els of en­ergy and all phases of per­son­al­ity. Phil­o­soph­i­cally and ex­pe­ri­en­tially, in con­cept and in re­al­ity, all things and be­ings cen­ter in the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. God is all and in all, and no things or be­ings ex­ist with­out him.

• God’s nature › is love

56:10.20To fi­nite man truth, beauty, and good­ness em­brace the full rev­e­la­tion of di­vin­ity re­al­ity. As this love-com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity finds spir­i­tual ex­pres­sion in the lives of God-know­ing mor­tals, there are yielded the fruits of di­vin­ity: in­tel­lec­tual peace, so­cial prog­ress, moral sat­is­fac­tion, spir­i­tual joy, and cos­mic wis­dom. The ad­vanced mor­tals on a world in the sev­enth stage of light and life have learned that love is the great­est thing in the uni­verse—and they know that God is love.

• also known as › Breath Giver

63:6.1As the An­donic dis­per­sion ex­tended, the cul­tural and spir­i­tual sta­tus of the clans ret­ro­gressed for nearly ten thou­sand years un­til the days of On­a­gar, who as­sumed the lead­er­ship of these tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in the wor­ship of the “Breath Giver to men and an­i­mals.”

• also known as › Great Spirit

64:6.7Be­cause of this great ret­ro­gres­sion the red men seemed doomed when, about sixty-five thou­sand years ago, Ona­mo­na­lon­ton ap­peared as their leader and spir­i­tual de­liv­erer. He brought tem­po­rary peace among the Amer­i­can red men and re­vived their wor­ship of the “Great Spirit.” Ona­mo­na­lon­ton lived to be ninety-six years of age and main­tained his head­quar­ters among the great red­wood trees of Cal­i­for­nia. Many of his later de­scen­dants have come down to mod­ern times among the Black­foot In­di­ans.

• also known as › One Truth

64:6.15They trav­eled far from the in­flu­ences of the spir­i­tual head­quar­ters of the world and drifted into great dark­ness fol­low­ing the Cali­gas­tia apos­tasy; but there oc­curred one bril­liant age among this peo­ple when Singlang­ton, about one hun­dred thou­sand years ago, as­sumed the lead­er­ship of these tribes and pro­claimed the wor­ship of the “One Truth.”

• also known as › Supreme Chief

64:6.23About five hun­dred years af­ter Cali­gas­tia’s down­fall a wide­spread re­vival of learn­ing and re­li­gion of a prim­i­tive sort—but none the less real and ben­e­fi­cial—oc­curred. Or­landof be­came a great teacher among the blue race and led many of the tribes back to the wor­ship of the true God un­der the name of the “Su­preme Chief.” This was the great­est ad­vance of the blue man un­til those later times when this race was so greatly up­stepped by the ad­mix­ture of the Adamic stock.

• also known as › God of Gods
• also known as › Unknown

64:6.26Iso­lated in Africa, the in­digo peo­ples, like the red man, re­ceived lit­tle or none of the race el­e­va­tion which would have been de­rived from the in­fu­sion of the Adamic stock. Alone in Africa, the in­digo race made lit­tle ad­vance­ment un­til the days of Or­vonon, when they ex­pe­ri­enced a great spir­i­tual awak­en­ing. While they later al­most en­tirely for­got the “God of Gods” pro­claimed by Or­vonon, they did not en­tirely lose the de­sire to wor­ship the Un­known; at least they main­tained a form of wor­ship up to a few thou­sand years ago.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

64:6.27Not­with­stand­ing their back­ward­ness, these in­digo peo­ples have ex­actly the same stand­ing be­fore the ce­les­tial pow­ers as any other earthly race.

• also known as › Supreme Rulers

65:8.2If spend­ing so much time in ef­fect­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary changes of life de­vel­op­ment oc­ca­sions per­plex­ity, I would say that we can­not time the life pro­cesses to un­fold any faster than the phys­i­cal meta­mor­phoses of a planet will per­mit. We must wait upon the nat­u­ral, phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of a planet; we have ab­so­lutely no con­trol over ge­o­logic evo­lu­tion. If the phys­i­cal con­di­tions would al­low, we could ar­range for the com­pleted evo­lu­tion of life in con­sid­er­ably less than one mil­lion years. But we are all un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Su­preme Rulers of Par­a­dise, and time is nonex­is­tent on Par­a­dise.

• misconceptions about God › atrocities executed in name of God

70:1.15Al­ways these olden tribes made war at the bid­ding of their gods, at the be­hest of their chiefs or med­i­cine men. The He­brews be­lieved in such a “God of bat­tles”; and the nar­ra­tive of their raid on the Mid­i­an­ites is a typ­i­cal recital of the atro­cious cru­elty of the an­cient tribal wars; this as­sault, with its slaugh­ter of all the males and the later killing of all male chil­dren and all women who were not vir­gins, would have done honor to the mores of a tribal chief­tain of two hun­dred thou­sand years ago. And all this was ex­e­cuted in the “name of the Lord God of Is­rael.”

• consciousness of God › proved by fruits of spirit; desire to do Father’s will

71:4.15And this prog­ress in the arts of civ­i­liza­tion leads di­rectly to the re­al­iza­tion of the high­est hu­man and di­vine goals of mor­tal en­deavor—the so­cial achieve­ment of the broth­er­hood of man and the per­sonal sta­tus of God-con­scious­ness, which be­comes re­vealed in the su­preme de­sire of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• consciousness of God › ultimate of mind attainment

71:7.13And then, by means of these achieve­ments, many will as­cend to the mor­tal ul­ti­mate of mind at­tain­ment, God-con­scious­ness.

• man › created in image of God

74:7.20The moral law of Eden was lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the seven com­mand­ments of Dala­ma­tia. But the Adamites taught many ad­di­tional rea­sons for these com­mands; for in­stance, re­gard­ing the in­junc­tion against mur­der, the in­dwelling of the Thought Ad­juster was pre­sented as an ad­di­tional rea­son for not de­stroy­ing hu­man life. They taught that “whoso sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the im­age of God made he man.”

• also known as › Lord God of Israel

74:8.7The Old Tes­ta­ment ac­count of cre­ation dates from long af­ter the time of Moses; he never taught the He­brews such a dis­torted story. But he did pre­sent a sim­ple and con­densed nar­ra­tive of cre­ation to the Is­raelites, hop­ing thereby to aug­ment his ap­peal to wor­ship the Cre­ator, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, whom he called the Lord God of Is­rael.

• misconceptions about God › everything unusual attributed to God’s personal intervention

75:4.8I talked to the fa­ther and mother of the vi­o­let race that night in the Gar­den as be­came my duty un­der the sor­row­ful cir­cum­stances. I lis­tened fully to the recital of all that led up to the de­fault of Mother Eve and gave both of them ad­vice and coun­sel con­cern­ing the im­me­di­ate sit­u­a­tion. Some of this ad­vice they fol­lowed; some they dis­re­garded. This con­fer­ence ap­pears in your rec­ords as “the Lord God call­ing to Adam and Eve in the Gar­den and ask­ing, ‘Where are you?’” It was the prac­tice of later gen­er­a­tions to at­trib­ute ev­ery­thing un­usual and ex­traor­di­nary, whether nat­u­ral or spir­i­tual, di­rectly to the per­sonal in­ter­ven­tion of the Gods.

• finding God › may be attained by seeking superhuman help in resolving conflicts

76:2.8Cain’s life in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had not been ex­actly happy since he was in such a pe­cu­liar way sym­bolic of the de­fault. It was not that his as­so­ciates were un­kind to him, but he had not been un­aware of their sub­con­scious re­sent­ment of his pres­ence. But Cain knew that, since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the first neigh­bor­ing tribes­men who might chance to meet him. Fear, and some re­morse, led him to re­pent. Cain had never been in­dwelt by an Ad­juster, had al­ways been de­fi­ant of the fam­ily dis­ci­pline and dis­dain­ful of his fa­ther’s re­li­gion. But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spir­i­tual help and guid­ance, and when he hon­estly sought di­vine as­sis­tance, an Ad­juster in­dwelt him. And this Ad­juster, dwell­ing within and look­ing out, gave Cain a dis­tinct ad­van­tage of su­pe­ri­or­ity which classed him with the greatly feared tribe of Adam.

• also known as › One Truth

79:6.103. Spir­i­tual. Dur­ing the age of And­ite mi­gra­tions the Chi­nese were among the more spir­i­tual peo­ples of earth. Long ad­her­ence to the wor­ship of the One Truth pro­claimed by Singlang­ton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stim­u­lus of a pro­gres­sive and ad­vanced re­li­gion is of­ten a de­ci­sive fac­tor in cul­tural de­vel­op­ment; as In­dia lan­guished, so China forged ahead un­der the in­vig­o­rat­ing stim­u­lus of a re­li­gion in which truth was en­shrined as the su­preme De­ity.

• also known as › One Truth

79:8.4The be­lief in, and wor­ship of, the “One Truth” as taught by Singlang­ton never en­tirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth be­came over­shad­owed by a grow­ing ten­dency to ven­er­ate that which was al­ready es­tab­lished. Slowly the ge­nius of the yel­low race be­came di­verted from the pur­suit of the un­known to the preser­va­tion of the known. And this is the rea­son for the stag­na­tion of what had been the world’s most rapidly pro­gress­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

• also known as › Shang-ti

79:8.7Soon de­vel­op­ments in writ­ing, to­gether with the es­tab­lish­ment of schools, con­tributed to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge on a pre­vi­ously un­equaled scale. But the cum­ber­some na­ture of the ideo­graphic writ­ing sys­tem placed a nu­mer­i­cal limit upon the learned classes de­spite the early ap­pear­ance of print­ing. And above all else, the pro­cess of so­cial stan­dard­iza­tion and re­li­gio-philo­sophic dogma­ti­za­tion con­tin­ued apace. The re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion be­came fur­ther com­pli­cated by a flood of su­per­sti­tions in­volv­ing na­ture wor­ship, but lin­ger­ing ves­tiges of a real con­cept of God re­mained pre­served in the im­pe­rial wor­ship of Shang-ti.

• man › still evinces disposition to bargain with God

87:6.17Mod­ern man no longer at­tempts openly to co­erce the spir­its, though he still evinces a dis­po­si­tion to bar­gain with De­ity. And he still swears, knocks on wood, crosses his fin­gers, and fol­lows ex­pec­to­ra­tion with some trite phrase; once it was a mag­i­cal for­mula.

• consciousness of God › mysticism praiseworthy unless leading to isolation

91:7.1Mys­ti­cism, as the tech­nique of the cul­ti­va­tion of the con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God, is al­to­gether praise­wor­thy, but when such prac­tices lead to so­cial iso­la­tion and cul­mi­nate in re­li­gious fa­nati­cism, they are all but rep­re­hen­si­ble. Al­to­gether too fre­quently that which the over­wrought mys­tic eval­u­ates as di­vine in­spi­ra­tion is the up­ris­ings of his own deep mind. The con­tact of the mor­tal mind with its in­dwelling Ad­juster, while of­ten fa­vored by de­voted med­i­ta­tion, is more fre­quently fa­cil­i­tated by whole­hearted and lov­ing ser­vice in un­selfish min­istry to one’s fel­low crea­tures.

• man › created in image of God

92:5.1In evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, the gods are con­ceived to ex­ist in the like­ness of man’s im­age; in rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion, men are taught that they are God’s sons—even fash­ioned in the fi­nite im­age of di­vin­ity; in the syn­the­sized be­liefs com­pounded from the teach­ings of rev­e­la­tion and the prod­ucts of evo­lu­tion, the God con­cept is a blend of:

• also known as › Shang-ti

94:5.31. The lin­ger­ing teach­ings of Singlang­ton, which per­sisted in the con­cept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlang­ton the Chi­nese peo­ple be­came vir­tu­ally mono­the­is­tic; they con­cen­trated their wor­ship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the uni­verse ruler. And the yel­low race never fully lost this early con­cept of De­ity, al­though in sub­se­quent cen­turies many sub­or­di­nate gods and spir­its in­sid­i­ously crept into their re­li­gion.

• consciousness of God › indispensable to true progress

94:6.12Like many other spir­i­tual and moral teach­ers, both Con­fu­cius and Lao-tse were even­tu­ally de­i­fied by their fol­low­ers in those spir­i­tu­ally dark ages of China which in­ter­vened be­tween the de­cline and per­ver­sion of the Taoist faith and the com­ing of the Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies from In­dia. Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally deca­dent cen­turies the re­li­gion of the yel­low race de­gen­er­ated into a piti­ful the­ol­ogy wherein swarmed dev­ils, drag­ons, and evil spir­its, all be­to­ken­ing the re­turn­ing fears of the un­en­light­ened mor­tal mind. And China, once at the head of hu­man so­ci­ety be­cause of an ad­vanced re­li­gion, then fell be­hind be­cause of tem­po­rary fail­ure to pro­gress in the true path of the de­vel­op­ment of that God-con­scious­ness which is in­dis­pens­able to the true prog­ress, not only of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal, but also of the in­tri­cate and com­plex civ­i­liza­tions which char­ac­ter­ize the ad­vance of cul­ture and so­ci­ety on an evo­lu­tion­ary planet of time and space.

• also known as › Jehovah

94:12.1The great weak­ness in the cos­mol­ogy of Bud­dhism was two­fold: its con­tam­i­na­tion with many of the su­per­sti­tions of In­dia and China and its sub­li­ma­tion of Gau­tama, first as the en­light­ened one, and then as the Eter­nal Bud­dha. Just as Chris­tian­ity has suf­fered from the ab­sorp­tion of much er­ro­neous hu­man phi­los­o­phy, so does Bud­dhism bear its hu­man birth­mark. But the teach­ings of Gau­tama have con­tin­ued to evolve dur­ing the past two and one-half mil­len­ni­ums. The con­cept of Bud­dha, to an en­light­ened Bud­dhist, is no more the hu­man per­son­al­ity of Gau­tama than the con­cept of Je­ho­vah is iden­ti­cal with the spirit de­mon of Ho­reb to an en­light­ened Chris­tian. Paucity of ter­mi­nol­ogy, to­gether with the sen­ti­men­tal re­ten­tion of olden nomen­cla­ture, is of­ten provoca­tive of the fail­ure to un­der­stand the true sig­nif­i­cance of the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious con­cepts.

• consciousness of God › determining factor in all conduct

95:4.2Amen­emope taught that riches and for­tune were the gift of God, and this con­cept thor­oughly col­ored the later ap­pear­ing He­brew phi­los­o­phy. This no­ble teacher be­lieved that God-con­scious­ness was the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in all con­duct; that ev­ery mo­ment should be lived in the re­al­iza­tion of the pres­ence of, and re­spon­si­bil­ity to, God. The teach­ings of this sage were sub­se­quently trans­lated into He­brew and be­came the sa­cred book of that peo­ple long be­fore the Old Tes­ta­ment was re­duced to writ­ing. The chief preach­ment of this good man had to do with in­struct­ing his son in up­right­ness and hon­esty in gov­ern­men­tal po­si­tions of trust, and these no­ble sen­ti­ments of long ago would do honor to any mod­ern states­man.

• also known as › Allah

95:7.6The strength of Is­lam has been its clear-cut and well-de­fined pre­sen­ta­tion of Al­lah as the one and only De­ity; its weak­ness, the as­so­ci­a­tion of mil­i­tary force with its pro­mul­ga­tion, to­gether with its degra­da­tion of woman. But it has stead­fastly held to its pre­sen­ta­tion of the One Uni­ver­sal De­ity of all, “who knows the in­vis­i­ble and the vis­i­ble. He is the mer­ci­ful and the com­pas­sion­ate.” “Truly God is plen­teous in good­ness to all men.” “And when I am sick, it is he who heals me.” “For when­ever as many as three speak to­gether, God is pres­ent as a fourth,” for is he not “the first and the last, also the seen and the hid­den”?

• also known as › Adonai
• also known as › Ancient of Days
• also known as › Jah
• also known as › Kyrios
• also known as › Most High

96:1.96. Sundry names. The Semites dis­liked to speak the name of their De­ity, and they there­fore re­sorted to nu­mer­ous ap­pel­la­tions from time to time, such as: The Spirit of God, The Lord, The An­gel of the Lord, The Al­mighty, The Holy One, The Most High, Adonai, The An­cient of Days, The Lord God of Is­rael, The Cre­ator of Heaven and Earth, Kyrios, Jah, The Lord of Hosts, and The Fa­ther in Heaven.

• also known as › Jehovah

96:1.10Je­ho­vah is a term which in re­cent times has been em­ployed to des­ig­nate the com­pleted con­cept of Yah­weh which fi­nally evolved in the long He­brew ex­pe­ri­ence. But the name Je­ho­vah did not come into use un­til fif­teen hun­dred years af­ter the times of Je­sus.

• also known as › Jove

96:1.14As man ad­vances in cul­ture, the lesser gods are sub­or­di­nated to a su­preme de­ity; the great Jove per­sists only as an ex­cla­ma­tion. The mono­the­ists keep their sub­or­di­nate gods as spir­its, demons, fates, Nereids, fairies, brown­ies, dwarfs, ban­shees, and the evil eye. The He­brews passed through heno­the­ism and long be­lieved in the ex­is­tence of gods other than Yah­weh, but they in­creas­ingly held that these for­eign de­i­ties were sub­or­di­nate to Yah­weh. They con­ceded the ac­tu­al­ity of Chemosh, god of the Amor­ites, but main­tained that he was sub­or­di­nate to Yah­weh.

• God’s nature › changeless

97:1.4But the great con­tri­bu­tion which Samuel made to the de­vel­op­ment of the con­cept of De­ity was his ring­ing pro­nounce­ment that Yah­weh was change­less, for­ever the same em­bod­i­ment of unerring per­fec­tion and di­vin­ity. In these times Yah­weh was con­ceived to be a fit­ful God of jeal­ous whims, al­ways re­gret­ting that he had done thus and so; but now, for the first time since the He­brews sal­lied forth from Egypt, they heard these startling words, “The Strength of Is­rael will not lie nor re­pent, for he is not a man, that he should re­pent.” Sta­bil­ity in deal­ing with Di­vin­ity was pro­claimed. Samuel re­it­er­ated the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant with Abra­ham and de­clared that the Lord God of Is­rael was the source of all truth, sta­bil­ity, and con­stancy. Al­ways had the He­brews looked upon their God as a man, a super­man, an ex­alted spirit of un­known ori­gin; but now they heard the one­time spirit of Ho­reb ex­alted as an un­chang­ing God of cre­ator per­fec­tion. Samuel was aid­ing the evolv­ing God con­cept to as­cend to heights above the chang­ing state of men’s minds and the vi­cis­si­tudes of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Un­der his teach­ing, the God of the He­brews was be­gin­ning the as­cent from an idea on the or­der of the tribal gods to the ideal of an all-pow­er­ful and change­less Cre­ator and Super­vi­sor of all cre­ation.

97:1.5And he preached anew the story of God’s sin­cer­ity, his covenant-keep­ing re­li­a­bil­ity. Said Samuel: “The Lord will not for­sake his peo­ple.” “He has made with us an ev­er­last­ing covenant, or­dered in all things and sure.” And so, through­out all Pales­tine there sounded the call back to the wor­ship of the su­preme Yah­weh. Ever this en­er­getic teacher pro­claimed, “You are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, nei­ther is there any God be­side you.”

• all men are children of God

99:5.5The doc­trine of the to­tal de­prav­ity of man de­stroyed much of the po­ten­tial of re­li­gion for ef­fect­ing so­cial reper­cus­sions of an up­lift­ing na­ture and of in­spi­ra­tional value. Je­sus sought to re­store man’s dig­nity when he de­clared that all men are the chil­dren of God.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › living as in presence of God favors spiritual growth

100:1.8Re­li­gious habits of think­ing and act­ing are con­trib­u­tory to the econ­omy of spir­i­tual growth. One can de­velop re­li­gious pre­dis­po­si­tions to­ward fa­vor­able re­ac­tion to spir­i­tual stim­uli, a sort of con­di­tioned spir­i­tual re­flex. Habits which fa­vor re­li­gious growth em­brace cul­ti­vated sen­si­tiv­ity to di­vine val­ues, rec­og­ni­tion of re­li­gious liv­ing in oth­ers, re­flec­tive med­i­ta­tion on cos­mic mean­ings, wor­ship­ful prob­lem solv­ing, shar­ing one’s spir­i­tual life with one’s fel­lows, avoid­ance of self­ish­ness, re­fusal to pre­sume on di­vine mercy, liv­ing as in the pres­ence of God. The fac­tors of re­li­gious growth may be in­ten­tional, but the growth it­self is un­vary­ingly un­con­scious.

• term “God” › approach to supreme reality

100:3.2To the re­li­gion­ist the word God be­comes a sym­bol sig­ni­fy­ing the ap­proach to su­preme re­al­ity and the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine value. Hu­man likes and dis­likes do not de­ter­mine good and evil; moral val­ues do not grow out of wish ful­fill­ment or emo­tional frus­tra­tion.

• consciousness of God › indispensable to true progress

100:3.6The as­so­ci­a­tion of ac­tu­als and po­ten­tials equals growth, the ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­iza­tion of val­ues. But growth is not mere prog­ress. Prog­ress is al­ways mean­ing­ful, but it is rel­a­tively val­ue­less with­out growth. The su­preme value of hu­man life con­sists in growth of val­ues, prog­ress in mean­ings, and re­al­iza­tion of the cos­mic in­ter­re­lat­ed­ness of both of these ex­pe­ri­ences. And such an ex­pe­ri­ence is the equiv­a­lent of God-con­scious­ness. Such a mor­tal, while not super­nat­u­ral, is truly be­com­ing super­hu­man; an im­mor­tal soul is evolv­ing.

• God’s nature › nothing separates us from love of

100:6.6One of the most amaz­ing ear­marks of re­li­gious liv­ing is that dy­namic and sub­lime peace, that peace which passes all hu­man un­der­stand­ing, that cos­mic poise which be­to­kens the ab­sence of all doubt and tur­moil. Such lev­els of spir­i­tual sta­bil­ity are im­mune to dis­ap­point­ment. Such re­li­gion­ists are like the Apos­tle Paul, who said: “I am per­suaded that nei­ther death, nor life, nor an­gels, nor prin­ci­pal­i­ties, nor pow­ers, nor things pres­ent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any­thing else shall be able to sep­a­rate us from the love of God.”

• finding God › our thoughts, not our feelings, lead us Godward

101:1.3The di­vine spirit makes con­tact with mor­tal man, not by feel­ings or emo­tions, but in the realm of the high­est and most spir­i­tu­al­ized think­ing. It is your thoughts, not your feel­ings, that lead you God­ward. The di­vine na­ture may be per­ceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that re­ally dis­cerns God, hears the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the pure mind. “With­out ho­li­ness no man may see the Lord.” All such in­ner and spir­i­tual com­mu­nion is termed spir­i­tual in­sight. Such re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences re­sult from the im­press made upon the mind of man by the com­bined op­er­a­tions of the Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth as they func­tion amid and upon the ideas, ide­als, in­sights, and spirit striv­ings of the evolv­ing sons of God.

• soul concludes man has no right not to believe in God

101:1.7Thus it may be seen that re­li­gious long­ings and spir­i­tual urges are not of such a na­ture as would merely lead men to want to be­lieve in God, but rather are they of such na­ture and power that men are pro­foundly im­pressed with the con­vic­tion that they ought to be­lieve in God. The sense of evo­lu­tion­ary duty and the obli­ga­tions con­se­quent upon the il­lu­mi­na­tion of rev­e­la­tion make such a pro­found im­pres­sion upon man’s moral na­ture that he fi­nally reaches that po­si­tion of mind and that at­ti­tude of soul where he con­cludes that he has no right not to be­lieve in God. The higher and super­phil­o­sophic wis­dom of such en­light­ened and dis­ci­plined in­di­vid­u­als ul­ti­mately in­structs them that to doubt God or dis­trust his good­ness would be to prove un­true to the realest and deep­est thing within the hu­man mind and soul—the di­vine Ad­juster.

• finding God › believe in God because of human experience or revelation of truth

101:2.62. The rev­e­la­tion of truth, whether by di­rect per­sonal min­istry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world be­stowal of di­vine Sons, or through the rev­e­la­tions of the writ­ten word.

• finding God › faith reveals God in the soul

101:2.10Faith re­veals God in the soul. Rev­e­la­tion, the sub­sti­tute for mor­ontia in­sight on an evo­lu­tion­ary world, en­ables man to see the same God in na­ture that faith ex­hibits in his soul. Thus does rev­e­la­tion suc­cess­fully bridge the gulf be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, even be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator, be­tween man and God.

• finding God › by faith alone

101:8.1Be­lief has at­tained the level of faith when it mo­ti­vates life and shapes the mode of liv­ing. The ac­cep­tance of a teach­ing as true is not faith; that is mere be­lief. Nei­ther is cer­tainty nor con­vic­tion faith. A state of mind at­tains to faith lev­els only when it ac­tu­ally dom­i­nates the mode of liv­ing. Faith is a liv­ing at­tri­bute of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. One be­lieves truth, ad­mires beauty, and rev­er­ences good­ness, but does not wor­ship them; such an at­ti­tude of sav­ing faith is cen­tered on God alone, who is all of these per­son­i­fied and in­finitely more.

• soul concludes man has no right not to believe in God

101:9.3True re­li­gion is that sub­lime and pro­found con­vic­tion within the soul which com­pellingly ad­mon­ishes man that it would be wrong for him not to be­lieve in those mor­ontial re­al­i­ties which con­sti­tute his high­est eth­i­cal and moral con­cepts, his high­est in­ter­pre­ta­tion of life’s great­est val­ues and the uni­verse’s deep­est re­al­i­ties. And such a re­li­gion is sim­ply the ex­pe­ri­ence of yield­ing in­tel­lec­tual loy­alty to the high­est dic­tates of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness.

• finding God › we know God because we trust him

102:1.5God is so all real and ab­so­lute that no ma­te­rial sign of proof or no dem­on­stra­tion of so-called mir­a­cle may be of­fered in tes­ti­mony of his re­al­ity. Al­ways will we know him be­cause we trust him, and our be­lief in him is wholly based on our per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion in the di­vine man­i­fes­ta­tions of his in­fi­nite re­al­ity.

• God’s nature › personal

102:1.6The in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster un­fail­ingly arouses in man’s soul a true and search­ing hunger for per­fec­tion to­gether with a far-reach­ing cu­rios­ity which can be ad­e­quately sat­is­fied only by com­mu­nion with God, the di­vine source of that Ad­juster. The hun­gry soul of man re­fuses to be sat­is­fied with any­thing less than the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the liv­ing God. What­ever more God may be than a high and per­fect moral per­son­al­ity, he can­not, in our hun­gry and fi­nite con­cept, be any­thing less.

• finding God › impels man to seek loving service-contact with less illuminated fellows

102:3.4Re­li­gious de­sire is the hunger quest for di­vine re­al­ity. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is the re­al­iza­tion of the con­scious­ness of hav­ing found God. And when a hu­man be­ing does find God, there is ex­pe­ri­enced within the soul of that be­ing such an in­de­scrib­able rest­less­ness of tri­umph in dis­cov­ery that he is im­pelled to seek lov­ing ser­vice-con­tact with his less il­lu­mi­nated fel­lows, not to dis­close that he has found God, but rather to al­low the over­flow of the welling-up of eter­nal good­ness within his own soul to re­fresh and en­no­ble his fel­lows. Real re­li­gion leads to in­creased so­cial ser­vice.

• finding God › God is always a reality of personal experience
• God’s nature › source, nature, and destiny of other-mindness

102:4.3Man very early be­comes con­scious that he is not alone in the world or the uni­verse. There de­vel­ops a nat­u­ral spon­ta­neous self-con­scious­ness of other-mind­ness in the en­vi­ron­ment of self­hood. Faith trans­lates this nat­u­ral ex­pe­ri­ence into re­li­gion, the rec­og­ni­tion of God as the re­al­ity—source, na­ture, and des­tiny—of other-mind­ness. But such a knowl­edge of God is ever and al­ways a re­al­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. If God were not a per­son­al­ity, he could not be­come a liv­ing part of the real re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of a hu­man per­son­al­ity.

• finding God › spiritual approach is only one possible

102:4.4The el­e­ment of er­ror pres­ent in hu­man re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the con­tent of ma­te­ri­al­ism which con­tam­i­nates the spir­i­tual con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Man’s pre­spirit pro­gres­sion in the uni­verse con­sists in the ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vest­ing him­self of these er­ro­neous ideas of the na­ture of God and of the re­al­ity of pure and true spirit. De­ity is more than spirit, but the spir­i­tual ap­proach is the only one pos­si­ble to as­cend­ing man.

• God’s nature › claims all allegiance or none

102:6.1The philo­sophic elim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious fear and the steady prog­ress of sci­ence add greatly to the mor­tal­ity of false gods; and even though these ca­su­al­ties of man-made de­i­ties may mo­men­tar­ily be­fog the spir­i­tual vi­sion, they even­tu­ally de­stroy that ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion which so long ob­scured the liv­ing God of eter­nal love. The re­la­tion be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a dy­namic re­li­gious faith, which is not sub­ject to pre­cise def­i­ni­tion. To iso­late part of life and call it re­li­gion is to dis­in­te­grate life and to dis­tort re­li­gion. And this is just why the God of wor­ship claims all al­le­giance or none.

• God’s nature › divine light whose interruptions constitute creation shadows

102:6.2The gods of prim­i­tive men may have been no more than shad­ows of them­selves; the liv­ing God is the di­vine light whose in­ter­rup­tions con­sti­tute the cre­ation shad­ows of all space.

• misconceptions about God

102:6.3The re­li­gion­ist of philo­sophic at­tain­ment has faith in a per­sonal God of per­sonal sal­va­tion, some­thing more than a re­al­ity, a value, a level of achieve­ment, an ex­alted pro­cess, a trans­mu­ta­tion, the ul­ti­mate of time-space, an ide­al­iza­tion, the per­son­al­iza­tion of en­ergy, the en­tity of grav­ity, a hu­man pro­jec­tion, the ide­al­iza­tion of self, na­ture’s up­thrust, the in­cli­na­tion to good­ness, the for­ward im­pulse of evo­lu­tion, or a sub­lime hy­poth­e­sis. The re­li­gion­ist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of re­li­gion and the well­spring of su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion.

• finding God › by faith alone

102:6.5Con­vic­tions about God may be ar­rived at through wise rea­son­ing, but the in­di­vid­ual be­comes God-know­ing only by faith, through per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. In much that per­tains to life, prob­a­bil­ity must be reck­oned with, but when con­tact­ing with cos­mic re­al­ity, cer­tainty may be ex­pe­ri­enced when such mean­ings and val­ues are ap­proached by liv­ing faith. The God-know­ing soul dares to say, “I know,” even when this knowl­edge of God is ques­tioned by the un­be­liever who de­nies such cer­ti­tude be­cause it is not wholly sup­ported by in­tel­lec­tual logic. To ev­ery such doubter the be­liever only replies, “How do you know that I do not know?”

• God’s nature › truth
• to understand God one must explore facts

102:6.6Though rea­son can al­ways ques­tion faith, faith can al­ways sup­ple­ment both rea­son and logic. Rea­son cre­ates the prob­a­bil­ity which faith can trans­form into a moral cer­tainty, even a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. God is the first truth and the last fact; there­fore does all truth take ori­gin in him, while all facts ex­ist rel­a­tive to him. God is ab­so­lute truth. As truth one may know God, but to un­der­stand—to ex­plain—God, one must ex­plore the fact of the uni­verse of uni­verses. The vast gulf be­tween the ex­pe­ri­ence of the truth of God and ig­no­rance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by liv­ing faith. Rea­son alone can­not achieve har­mony be­tween in­fi­nite truth and uni­ver­sal fact.

• what God is to science, philosophy, and religion

102:6.8To sci­ence God is a pos­si­bil­ity, to psy­chol­ogy a de­sir­abil­ity, to phi­los­o­phy a prob­a­bil­ity, to re­li­gion a cer­tainty, an ac­tu­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Rea­son de­mands that a phi­los­o­phy which can­not find the God of prob­a­bil­ity should be very re­spect­ful of that re­li­gious faith which can and does find the God of cer­ti­tude. Nei­ther should sci­ence dis­count re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence on grounds of credulity, not so long as it per­sists in the as­sump­tion that man’s in­tel­lec­tual and philo­sophic en­dow­ments emerged from in­creas­ingly lesser in­tel­li­gences the fur­ther back they go, fi­nally tak­ing ori­gin in prim­i­tive life which was ut­terly de­void of all think­ing and feel­ing.

• God’s nature › one and only self-caused fact in universe

102:7.1The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, be­ing self-ex­is­tent, is also self-ex­plana­tory; he ac­tu­ally lives in ev­ery ra­tio­nal mor­tal. But you can­not be sure about God un­less you know him; son­ship is the only ex­pe­ri­ence which makes fa­ther­hood cer­tain. The uni­verse is ev­ery­where un­der­go­ing change. A chang­ing uni­verse is a de­pen­dent uni­verse; such a cre­ation can­not be ei­ther fi­nal or ab­so­lute. A fi­nite uni­verse is wholly de­pen­dent on the Ul­ti­mate and the Ab­so­lute. The uni­verse and God are not iden­ti­cal; one is cause, the other ef­fect. The cause is ab­so­lute, in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and change­less; the ef­fect, time-space and tran­scen­den­tal but ever chang­ing, al­ways grow­ing.

102:7.2God is the one and only self-caused fact in the uni­verse. He is the se­cret of the or­der, plan, and pur­pose of the whole cre­ation of things and be­ings. The ev­ery­where-chang­ing uni­verse is reg­u­lated and sta­bi­lized by ab­so­lutely un­chang­ing laws, the habits of an un­chang­ing God. The fact of God, the di­vine law, is change­less; the truth of God, his re­la­tion to the uni­verse, is a rel­a­tive rev­e­la­tion which is ever adapt­able to the con­stantly evolv­ing uni­verse.

• God’s nature › personal

102:7.3Those who would in­vent a re­li­gion with­out God are like those who would gather fruit with­out trees, have chil­dren with­out par­ents. You can­not have ef­fects with­out causes; only the I AM is cause­less. The fact of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence im­plies God, and such a God of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence must be a per­sonal De­ity. You can­not pray to a chem­i­cal for­mula, sup­pli­cate a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion, wor­ship a hy­poth­e­sis, con­fide in a pos­tu­late, com­mune with a pro­cess, serve an ab­strac­tion, or hold lov­ing fel­low­ship with a law.

• finding God › maze of superstition, tradition, and materialistic tendencies stand in way of

102:7.6The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is not one who is blind to the dif­fi­cul­ties or un­mind­ful of the ob­sta­cles which stand in the way of find­ing God in the maze of su­per­sti­tion, tra­di­tion, and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies of mod­ern times. He has en­coun­tered all these de­ter­rents and tri­umphed over them, sur­mounted them by liv­ing faith, and at­tained the high­lands of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in spite of them. But it is true that many who are in­wardly sure about God fear to as­sert such feel­ings of cer­tainty be­cause of the mul­ti­plic­ity and clev­er­ness of those who as­sem­ble ob­jec­tions and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties about be­liev­ing in God. It re­quires no great depth of in­tel­lect to pick flaws, ask ques­tions, or raise ob­jec­tions. But it does re­quire bril­liance of mind to an­swer these ques­tions and solve these dif­fi­cul­ties; faith cer­tainty is the great­est tech­nique for deal­ing with all such su­per­fi­cial con­tentions.

• God’s nature › most inescapable of all presences

102:7.10Of God, the most in­es­cap­able of all pres­ences, the most real of all facts, the most liv­ing of all truths, the most lov­ing of all friends, and the most di­vine of all val­ues, we have the right to be the most cer­tain of all uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ences.

• consciousness of God › no word in human language for God-consciousness
• God’s nature › personal

103:1.6The re­al­iza­tion of the rec­og­ni­tion of spir­i­tual val­ues is an ex­pe­ri­ence which is super­ide­a­tional. There is no word in any hu­man lan­guage which can be em­ployed to des­ig­nate this “sense,” “feel­ing,” “in­tu­ition,” or “ex­pe­ri­ence” which we have elected to call God-con­scious­ness. The spirit of God that dwells in man is not per­sonal—the Ad­juster is preper­sonal—but this Mon­i­tor pre­sents a value, ex­udes a fla­vor of di­vin­ity, which is per­sonal in the high­est and in­fi­nite sense. If God were not at least per­sonal, he could not be con­scious, and if not con­scious, then would he be in­frahu­man.

• finding God › may be attained by seeking superhuman help in resolving conflicts

103:2.4Ev­ery hu­man be­ing very early ex­pe­ri­ences some­thing of a con­flict be­tween his self-seek­ing and his al­tru­is­tic im­pulses, and many times the first ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness may be at­tained as the re­sult of seek­ing for super­hu­man help in the task of re­solv­ing such moral con­flicts.

• looks beyond act to uncover motive

103:4.5God the Fa­ther deals with man his child on the ba­sis, not of ac­tual virtue or wor­thi­ness, but in rec­og­ni­tion of the child’s mo­ti­va­tion—the crea­ture pur­pose and in­tent. The re­la­tion­ship is one of par­ent-child as­so­ci­a­tion and is ac­tu­ated by di­vine love.

• valid experience of vs. divergent discourse about God

103:8.2The con­fu­sion about the ex­pe­ri­ence of the cer­tainty of God arises out of the dis­sim­i­lar in­ter­pre­ta­tions and re­la­tions of that ex­pe­ri­ence by sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als and by dif­fer­ent races of men. The ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of God may be wholly valid, but the dis­course about God, be­ing in­tel­lec­tual and phil­o­soph­i­cal, is di­ver­gent and of­ten­times con­fus­ingly fal­la­cious.

• functions in non-Father capacities as force, energy, power, causation, reaction, potentiality, actuality, gravity, tension, pattern, principle, and unity

104:2.6The con­cep­tual grasp of the Trin­ity as­so­ci­a­tion of Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit pre­pares the hu­man mind for the fur­ther pre­sen­ta­tion of cer­tain other three­fold re­la­tion­ships. The­o­log­i­cal rea­son may be fully sat­is­fied by the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, but phil­o­soph­i­cal and cos­mo­log­i­cal rea­son de­mand the rec­og­ni­tion of the other tri­une as­so­ci­a­tions of the First Source and Cen­ter, those tri­uni­ties in which the In­fi­nite func­tions in var­i­ous non-Fa­ther ca­pac­i­ties of uni­ver­sal man­i­fes­ta­tion—the re­la­tion­ships of the God of force, en­ergy, power, cau­sa­tion, re­ac­tion, po­ten­tial­ity, ac­tu­al­ity, grav­ity, ten­sion, pat­tern, prin­ci­ple, and unity.

• God’s nature › all things consist in God

104:4.46The tri­uni­ties are the func­tional bal­ance wheel of in­fin­ity, the uni­fi­ca­tion of the unique­ness of the Seven In­fin­ity Ab­so­lutes. It is the ex­is­ten­tial pres­ence of the tri­uni­ties that en­ables the Fa­ther-I AM to ex­pe­ri­ence func­tional in­fin­ity unity de­spite the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of in­fin­ity into seven Ab­so­lutes. The First Source and Cen­ter is the uni­fy­ing mem­ber of all tri­uni­ties; in him all things have their un­qual­i­fied be­gin­nings, eter­nal ex­is­tences, and in­fi­nite des­tinies—“in him all things con­sist.”

• finding God › he who has seen a Creator Son has seen God

107:0.4Any mor­tal who has seen a Cre­ator Son has seen the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and he who is in­dwelt by a di­vine Ad­juster is in­dwelt by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Ev­ery mor­tal who is con­sciously or un­con­sciously fol­low­ing the lead­ing of his in­dwelling Ad­juster is liv­ing in ac­cor­dance with the will of God. Con­scious­ness of Ad­juster pres­ence is con­scious­ness of God’s pres­ence. Eter­nal fu­sion of the Ad­juster with the evo­lu­tion­ary soul of man is the fac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of eter­nal union with God as a uni­verse as­so­ciate of De­ity.

• God’s nature › all things are possible with God

107:4.7Can you re­ally re­al­ize the true sig­nif­i­cance of the Ad­juster’s in­dwelling? Do you re­ally fathom what it means to have an ab­so­lute frag­ment of the ab­so­lute and in­fi­nite De­ity, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, in­dwelling and fus­ing with your fi­nite mor­tal na­tures? When mor­tal man fuses with an ac­tual frag­ment of the ex­is­ten­tial Cause of the to­tal cos­mos, no limit can ever be placed upon the des­tiny of such an un­prece­dented and unimag­in­able part­ner­ship. In eter­nity, man will be dis­cov­er­ing not only the in­fin­ity of the ob­jec­tive De­ity but also the un­end­ing po­ten­tial­ity of the sub­jec­tive frag­ment of this same God. Al­ways will the Ad­juster be re­veal­ing to the mor­tal per­son­al­ity the won­der of God, and never can this su­per­nal rev­e­la­tion come to an end, for the Ad­juster is of God and as God to mor­tal man.

• God’s nature › infinitely inclusive of all things except evil and creature experience

108:0.2Noth­ing in the en­tire uni­verse can sub­sti­tute for the fact of ex­pe­ri­ence on nonex­is­ten­tial lev­els. The in­fi­nite God is, as al­ways, re­plete and com­plete, in­finitely in­clu­sive of all things ex­cept evil and crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence. God can­not do wrong; he is in­fal­li­ble. God can­not ex­pe­ri­en­tially know what he has never per­son­ally ex­pe­ri­enced; God’s pre­knowl­edge is ex­is­ten­tial. There­fore does the spirit of the Fa­ther de­scend from Par­a­dise to par­tic­i­pate with fi­nite mor­tals in ev­ery bona fide ex­pe­ri­ence of the as­cend­ing ca­reer; it is only by such a method that the ex­is­ten­tial God could be­come in truth and in fact man’s ex­pe­ri­en­tial Fa­ther. The in­fin­ity of the eter­nal God en­com­passes the po­ten­tial for fi­nite ex­pe­ri­ence, which in­deed be­comes ac­tual in the min­istry of the Ad­juster frag­ments that ac­tu­ally share the life vi­cis­si­tude ex­pe­ri­ences of hu­man be­ings.

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

111:5.2The im­i­ta­tion of God is the key to per­fec­tion; the do­ing of his will is the se­cret of sur­vival and of per­fec­tion in sur­vival.

• finding God › choosing Father’s will is

111:5.6This choos­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is the spir­i­tual find­ing of the spirit Fa­ther by mor­tal man, even though an age must pass be­fore the crea­ture son may ac­tu­ally stand in the fac­tual pres­ence of God on Par­a­dise. This choos­ing does not so much con­sist in the nega­tion of crea­ture will—“Not my will but yours be done”—as it con­sists in the crea­ture’s pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tion: “It is my will that your will be done.” And if this choice is made, sooner or later will the God-choos­ing son find in­ner union (fu­sion) with the in­dwelling God frag­ment, while this same per­fect­ing son will find su­preme per­son­al­ity sat­is­fac­tion in the wor­ship com­mu­nion of the per­son­al­ity of man and the per­son­al­ity of his Maker, two per­son­al­i­ties whose cre­ative at­tri­butes have eter­nally joined in self-willed mu­tu­al­ity of ex­pres­sion—the birth of an­other eter­nal part­ner­ship of the will of man and the will of God.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

112:0.1210. Per­son­al­ity is unique, ab­so­lutely unique: It is unique in time and space; it is unique in eter­nity and on Par­a­dise; it is unique when be­stowed—there are no du­pli­cates; it is unique dur­ing ev­ery mo­ment of ex­is­tence; it is unique in re­la­tion to God—he is no re­specter of per­sons, but nei­ther does he add them to­gether, for they are non­addable—they are as­so­cia­ble but non­to­ta­l­able.

• man › created in image of God

117:3.5Mor­tal man is more than fig­u­ra­tively made in the im­age of God. From a phys­i­cal stand­point this state­ment is hardly true, but with ref­er­ence to cer­tain uni­verse po­ten­tial­i­ties it is an ac­tual fact. In the hu­man race, some­thing of the same drama of evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ment is be­ing un­folded as takes place, on a vastly larger scale, in the uni­verse of uni­verses. Man, a vo­li­tional per­son­al­ity, be­comes cre­ative in li­ai­son with an Ad­juster, an im­per­sonal en­tity, in the pres­ence of the fi­nite po­ten­tial­i­ties of the Su­preme, and the re­sult is the flow­er­ing of an im­mor­tal soul. In the uni­verses the Cre­ator per­son­al­i­ties of time and space func­tion in li­ai­son with the im­per­sonal spirit of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and be­come thereby cre­ative of a new power po­ten­tial of De­ity re­al­ity.

• God’s nature › has set up tensions in creations circling Paradise

117:4.14God’s gifts—his be­stowal of re­al­ity—are not di­vorce­ments from him­self; he does not alien­ate cre­ation from him­self, but he has set up ten­sions in the cre­ations cir­cling Par­a­dise. God first loves man and con­fers upon him the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal­ity—eter­nal re­al­ity. And as man loves God, so does man be­come eter­nal in ac­tu­al­ity. And here is mys­tery: The more closely man ap­proaches God through love, the greater the re­al­ity—ac­tu­al­ity—of that man. The more man with­draws from God, the more nearly he ap­proaches non­re­al­ity—ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence. When man con­se­crates his will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is.

• finding God › creates consciousness of the Supreme

117:6.2If you truly de­sire to find God, you can­not help hav­ing born in your minds the con­scious­ness of the Su­preme. As God is your di­vine Fa­ther, so is the Su­preme your di­vine Mother, in whom you are nur­tured through­out your lives as uni­verse crea­tures. “How uni­ver­sal is the Su­preme—he is on all sides! The lim­it­less things of cre­ation de­pend on his pres­ence for life, and none are re­fused.”

• finding God › greatest experience in human existence
• finding God › search for God is search for everything

117:6.9Men all too of­ten for­get that God is the great­est ex­pe­ri­ence in hu­man ex­is­tence. Other ex­pe­ri­ences are lim­ited in their na­ture and con­tent, but the ex­pe­ri­ence of God has no lim­its save those of the crea­ture’s com­pre­hen­sion ca­pac­ity, and this very ex­pe­ri­ence is in it­self ca­pac­ity en­larg­ing. When men search for God, they are search­ing for ev­ery­thing. When they find God, they have found ev­ery­thing. The search for God is the un­stinted be­stowal of love at­tended by amaz­ing dis­cov­er­ies of new and greater love to be be­stowed.

• God’s nature › all true love is from God

117:6.10All true love is from God, and man re­ceives the di­vine af­fec­tion as he him­self be­stows this love upon his fel­lows. Love is dy­namic. It can never be cap­tured; it is alive, free, thrilling, and al­ways mov­ing. Man can never take the love of the Fa­ther and im­prison it within his heart. The Fa­ther’s love can be­come real to mor­tal man only by pass­ing through that man’s per­son­al­ity as he in turn be­stows this love upon his fel­lows. The great cir­cuit of love is from the Fa­ther, through sons to broth­ers, and hence to the Su­preme. The love of the Fa­ther ap­pears in the mor­tal per­son­al­ity by the min­istry of the in­dwelling Ad­juster. Such a God-know­ing son re­veals this love to his uni­verse breth­ren, and this fra­ter­nal af­fec­tion is the essence of the love of the Su­preme.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

117:6.22The Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons; he treats each of his as­cend­ing sons as cos­mic in­di­vid­u­als. The Su­preme like­wise is no re­specter of per­sons; he treats his ex­pe­ri­en­tial chil­dren as a sin­gle cos­mic to­tal.

• finding God › nothing holds those in captivity who seek God

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.”

• God’s nature › is love

130:1.5Je­sus’ last visit with Ga­diah had to do with a dis­cus­sion of good and evil. This young Phil­is­tine was much trou­bled by a feel­ing of in­jus­tice be­cause of the pres­ence of evil in the world along­side the good. He said: “How can God, if he is in­finitely good, per­mit us to suf­fer the sor­rows of evil; af­ter all, who cre­ates evil?” It was still be­lieved by many in those days that God cre­ates both good and evil, but Je­sus never taught such er­ror. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My brother, God is love; there­fore he must be good, and his good­ness is so great and real that it can­not con­tain the small and un­real things of evil. God is so pos­i­tively good that there is ab­so­lutely no place in him for neg­a­tive evil. Evil is the im­ma­ture choos­ing and the un­think­ing mis­step of those who are re­sis­tant to good­ness, re­ject­ful of beauty, and dis­loyal to truth. Evil is only the mis­adap­ta­tion of im­ma­tu­rity or the dis­rup­tive and dis­tort­ing in­flu­ence of ig­no­rance. Evil is the in­ev­i­ta­ble dark­ness which fol­lows upon the heels of the un­wise re­jec­tion of light. Evil is that which is dark and un­true, and which, when con­sciously em­braced and will­fully en­dorsed, be­comes sin.

• God’s nature › source, destiny of all that is good, beautiful, true

130:2.7This was a con­fer­ence which lasted well into the night, in the course of which the young man re­quested Je­sus to tell him the dif­fer­ence be­tween the will of God and that hu­man mind act of choos­ing which is also called will. In sub­stance Je­sus said: The will of God is the way of God, part­ner­ship with the choice of God in the face of any po­ten­tial al­ter­na­tive. To do the will of God, there­fore, is the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like God, and God is the source and des­tiny of all that is good and beau­ti­ful and true. The will of man is the way of man, the sum and sub­stance of that which the mor­tal chooses to be and do. Will is the de­lib­er­ate choice of a self-con­scious be­ing which leads to de­ci­sion-con­duct based on in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.

• finding God › desire to find God is evidence of having found Him

130:8.2At Syra­cuse they spent a full week. The no­table event of their stop here was the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Ezra, the back­slid­den Jew, who kept the tav­ern where Je­sus and his com­pan­ions stopped. Ezra was charmed by Je­sus’ ap­proach and asked him to help him come back to the faith of Is­rael. He ex­pressed his hope­less­ness by say­ing, “I want to be a true son of Abra­ham, but I can­not find God.” Said Je­sus: “If you truly want to find God, that de­sire is in it­self ev­i­dence that you have al­ready found him. Your trou­ble is not that you can­not find God, for the Fa­ther has al­ready found you; your trou­ble is sim­ply that you do not know God. Have you not read in the Prophet Jeremiah, ‘You shall seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart’? And again, does not this same prophet say: ‘And I will give you a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and you shall be­long to my peo­ple, and I will be your God’? And have you not also read in the Scrip­tures where it says: ‘He looks down upon men, and if any will say: I have sinned and per­verted that which was right, and it prof­ited me not, then will God de­liver that man’s soul from dark­ness, and he shall see the light’?” And Ezra found God and to the sat­is­fac­tion of his soul. Later, this Jew, in as­so­ci­a­tion with a well-to-do Greek pros­e­lyte, built the first Chris­tian church in Syra­cuse.

• and nature
• finding God › God is approachable; not in hiding

131:1.5“God pours rain upon the earth, he causes the sun to shine upon the sprout­ing grain, and he gives us the abun­dant har­vest of the good things of this life and eter­nal sal­va­tion in the world to come. Our God en­joys great au­thor­ity; his name is Ex­cel­lent and his na­ture is un­fath­omable. When you are sick, it is the Most High who heals you. God is full of good­ness to­ward all men; we have no friend like the Most High. His mercy fills all places and his good­ness en­com­passes all souls. The Most High is change­less; and he is our helper in ev­ery time of need. Wher­ever you turn to pray, there is the face of the Most High and the open ear of our God. You may hide your­self from men, but not from God. God is not a great dis­tance from us; he is om­ni­pres­ent. God fills all places and lives in the heart of the man who fears his holy name. Cre­ation is in the Cre­ator and the Cre­ator in his cre­ation. We search for the Most High and then find him in our hearts. You go in quest of a dear friend, and then you dis­cover him within your soul.

• finding God › pure in heart shall see God
• God’s nature › truth

131:1.6“The man who knows God looks upon all men as equal; they are his breth­ren. Those who are self­ish, those who ig­nore their broth­ers in the flesh, have only weari­ness as their re­ward. Those who love their fel­lows and who have pure hearts shall see God. God never for­gets sin­cer­ity. He will guide the hon­est of heart into the truth, for God is truth.

• finding God › God is approachable; not in hiding

131:2.4“The mercy of the Lord is from ev­er­last­ing to ev­er­last­ing upon those who fear him and his righ­teous­ness even to our chil­dren’s chil­dren. The Lord is gra­cious and full of com­pas­sion. The Lord is good to all, and his ten­der mer­cies are over all his cre­ation; he heals the bro­ken­hearted and binds up their wounds. Whither shall I go from God’s spirit? whither shall I flee from the di­vine pres­ence? Thus says the High and Lofty One who in­hab­its eter­nity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place; also with him who is of a con­trite heart and a hum­ble spirit!’ None can hide him­self from our God, for he fills heaven and earth. Let the heav­ens be glad and let the earth re­joice. Let all na­tions say: The Lord reigns! Give thanks to God, for his mercy en­dures for­ever.

• finding God › those who seek God with whole heart shall find

131:2.9“The Lord is near all who call upon him in sin­cer­ity and in truth. Weep­ing may en­dure for a night, but joy comes in the morn­ing. A merry heart does good like a med­i­cine. No good thing will God with­hold from those who walk up­rightly. Fear God and keep his com­mand­ments, for this is the whole duty of man. Thus says the Lord who cre­ated the heav­ens and who formed the earth: ‘There is no God be­side me, a just God and a sav­ior. Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. If you seek me, you shall find me if you search for me with all your heart.’ The meek shall in­herit the earth and shall de­light them­selves in the abun­dance of peace. Who­ever sows in­iq­uity shall reap calamity; they who sow the wind shall reap the whirl­wind.

• God’s nature › divine forgiveness inevitable

131:2.11“Love your neigh­bor as your­self; bear a grudge against no man. What­so­ever you hate do to no man. Love your brother, for the Lord has said: ‘I will love my chil­dren freely.’ The path of the just is as a shin­ing light which shines more and more un­til the per­fect day. They who are wise shall shine as the bright­ness of the fir­ma­ment and they who turn many to righ­teous­ness as the stars for­ever and ever. Let the wicked for­sake his evil way and the un­righ­teous man his re­bel­lious thoughts. Says the Lord: ‘Let them re­turn to me, and I will have mercy on them; I will abun­dantly par­don.’

• God’s nature › lover of mankind, helper of the distressed

131:4.4“With our hearts purged of all hate, let us wor­ship the Eter­nal. Our God is the Lord of prayer; he hears the cry of his chil­dren. Let all men sub­mit their wills to him, the Res­o­lute. Let us de­light in the lib­er­al­ity of the Lord of prayer. Make prayer your in­most friend and wor­ship your soul’s sup­port. ‘If you will but wor­ship me in love,’ says the Eter­nal, ‘I will give you the wis­dom to at­tain me, for my wor­ship is the virtue com­mon to all crea­tures.’ God is the il­lu­mi­na­tor of the gloomy and the power of those who are faint. Since God is our strong friend, we have no more fear. We praise the name of the never-con­quered Con­queror. We wor­ship him be­cause he is man’s faith­ful and eter­nal helper. God is our sure leader and un­fail­ing guide. He is the great par­ent of heaven and earth, pos­sessed of un­lim­ited en­ergy and in­fi­nite wis­dom. His splen­dor is sub­lime and his beauty di­vine. He is the su­preme refuge of the uni­verse and the change­less guard­ian of ev­er­last­ing law. Our God is the Lord of life and the Com­forter of all men; he is the lover of man­kind and the helper of those who are dis­tressed. He is our life giver and the Good Shep­herd of the hu­man flocks. God is our fa­ther, brother, and friend. And we long to know this God in our in­ner be­ing.

• God’s nature › truth

131:4.6“The spirit of the Uni­verse Keeper en­ters the soul of the sim­ple crea­ture. That man is wise who wor­ships the One God. Those who strive for per­fec­tion must in­deed know the Lord Su­preme. He never fears who knows the bliss­ful se­cu­rity of the Su­preme, for the Su­preme says to those who serve him, ‘Fear not, for I am with you.’ The God of prov­i­dence is our Fa­ther. God is truth. And it is the de­sire of God that his crea­tures should un­der­stand him—come fully to know the truth. Truth is eter­nal; it sus­tains the uni­verse. Our su­preme de­sire shall be union with the Su­preme. The Great Con­trol­ler is the gen­er­a­tor of all things—all evolves from him. And this is the sum of duty: Let no man do to an­other what would be re­pug­nant to him­self; cher­ish no mal­ice, smite not him who smites you, con­quer anger with mercy, and van­quish hate by benev­o­lence. And all this we should do be­cause God is a kind friend and a gra­cious fa­ther who re­mits all our earthly of­fenses.

• God’s nature › lover of mankind, helper of the distressed

131:5.3“Praise God by seek­ing the plea­sure of the Wise One. Wor­ship the God of light by joy­fully walk­ing in the paths or­dained by his re­vealed re­li­gion. There is but one Su­preme God, the Lord of Lights. We wor­ship him who made the wa­ters, plants, an­i­mals, the earth, and the heav­ens. Our God is Lord, most benef­i­cent. We wor­ship the most beau­teous, the boun­ti­ful Im­mor­tal, en­dowed with eter­nal light. God is far­thest from us and at the same time near­est to us in that he dwells within our souls. Our God is the di­vine and holi­est Spirit of Par­a­dise, and yet he is more friendly to man than the most friendly of all crea­tures. God is most help­ful to us in this great­est of all busi­nesses, the know­ing of him­self. God is our most adorable and righ­teous friend; he is our wis­dom, life, and vigor of soul and body. Through our good think­ing the wise Cre­ator will en­able us to do his will, thereby at­tain­ing the re­al­iza­tion of all that is di­vinely per­fect.

• God’s nature › guides man without self-assertion

131:8.3“All good works of true ser­vice come from the Su­preme. All things de­pend on the Great Source for life. The Great Su­preme seeks no credit for his be­stowals. He is su­preme in power, yet he re­mains hid­den from our gaze. He un­ceas­ingly trans­mutes his at­tri­butes while per­fect­ing his crea­tures. The heav­enly Rea­son is slow and pa­tient in his de­signs but sure of his ac­com­plish­ments. The Su­preme over­spreads the uni­verse and sus­tains it all. How great and mighty are his over­flow­ing in­flu­ence and draw­ing power! True good­ness is like wa­ter in that it blesses ev­ery­thing and harms noth­ing. And like wa­ter, true good­ness seeks the low­est places, even those lev­els which oth­ers avoid, and that is be­cause it is akin to the Su­preme. The Su­preme cre­ates all things, in na­ture nour­ish­ing them and in spirit per­fect­ing them. And it is a mys­tery how the Su­preme fos­ters, pro­tects, and per­fects the crea­ture with­out com­pelling him. He guides and di­rects, but with­out self-as­ser­tion. He min­is­ters pro­gres­sion, but with­out dom­i­na­tion.

• finding God › those who seek God with whole heart shall find

131:8.5“The Great Su­preme is all-per­vad­ing; he is on the left hand and on the right; he sup­ports all cre­ation and in­dwells all true be­ings. You can­not find the Su­preme, nei­ther can you go to a place where he is not. If a man rec­og­nizes the evil of his ways and re­pents of sin from the heart, then may he seek for­give­ness; he may es­cape the penalty; he may change calamity into bless­ing. The Su­preme is the se­cure refuge for all cre­ation; he is the guard­ian and sav­ior of man­kind. If you seek for him daily, you shall find him. Since he can for­give sins, he is in­deed most pre­cious to all men. Al­ways re­mem­ber that God does not re­ward man for what he does but for what he is; there­fore should you ex­tend help to your fel­lows with­out the thought of re­wards. Do good with­out thought of ben­e­fit to the self.

• God’s nature › all things are possible with God
• God’s nature › all things consist in God

131:10.2“The Lord our God is one Lord, and you should love him with all your mind and heart while you do your very best to love all his chil­dren as you love your­self. This one God is our heav­enly Fa­ther, in whom all things con­sist, and who dwells, by his spirit, in ev­ery sin­cere hu­man soul. And we who are the chil­dren of God should learn how to com­mit the keep­ing of our souls to him as to a faith­ful Cre­ator. With our heav­enly Fa­ther all things are pos­si­ble. Since he is the Cre­ator, hav­ing made all things and all be­ings, it could not be oth­er­wise. Though we can­not see God, we can know him. And by daily liv­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, we can re­veal him to our fel­low men.

• God’s nature › gives his children spirit and blessings

131:10.3“The di­vine riches of God’s char­ac­ter must be in­finitely deep and eter­nally wise. We can­not search out God by knowl­edge, but we can know him in our hearts by per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. While his jus­tice may be past find­ing out, his mercy may be re­ceived by the hum­blest be­ing on earth. While the Fa­ther fills the uni­verse, he also lives in our hearts. The mind of man is hu­man, mor­tal, but the spirit of man is di­vine, im­mor­tal. God is not only all-pow­er­ful but also all-wise. If our earth par­ents, be­ing of evil ten­dency, know how to love their chil­dren and be­stow good gifts on them, how much more must the good Fa­ther in heaven know how wisely to love his chil­dren on earth and to be­stow suit­able bless­ings upon them.

• finding God › desire to find God is evidence of having found Him
• God’s nature › all things consist in God

131:10.4“The Fa­ther in heaven will not suf­fer a sin­gle child on earth to per­ish if that child has a de­sire to find the Fa­ther and truly longs to be like him. Our Fa­ther even loves the wicked and is al­ways kind to the un­grate­ful. If more hu­man be­ings could only know about the good­ness of God, they would cer­tainly be led to re­pent of their evil ways and for­sake all known sin. All good things come down from the Fa­ther of light, in whom there is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing. The spirit of the true God is in man’s heart. He in­tends that all men should be broth­ers. When men be­gin to feel af­ter God, that is ev­i­dence that God has found them, and that they are in quest of knowl­edge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

• finding God › those who seek God with whole heart shall find

132:7.1Je­sus, Gonod, and Ga­nid made five trips away from Rome to points of in­ter­est in the sur­round­ing ter­ri­tory. On their visit to the north­ern Ital­ian lakes Je­sus had the long talk with Ga­nid con­cern­ing the im­pos­si­bil­ity of teach­ing a man about God if the man does not de­sire to know God. They had ca­su­ally met a thought­less pa­gan while on their jour­ney up to the lakes, and Ga­nid was sur­prised that Je­sus did not fol­low out his usual prac­tice of en­list­ing the man in con­ver­sa­tion which would nat­u­rally lead up to the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual ques­tions. When Ga­nid asked his teacher why he evinced so lit­tle in­ter­est in this pa­gan, Je­sus an­swered:

• finding God › from experiences of living or contact with those who know God

132:7.2“Ga­nid, the man was not hun­gry for truth. He was not dis­sat­is­fied with him­self. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not open to re­ceive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the har­vest of sal­va­tion; he must be al­lowed more time for the tri­als and dif­fi­cul­ties of life to pre­pare him for the re­cep­tion of wis­dom and higher learn­ing. Or, if we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Fa­ther in heaven, and thus would he be­come so at­tracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be con­strained to in­quire about our Fa­ther. You can­not re­veal God to those who do not seek for him; you can­not lead un­will­ing souls into the joys of sal­va­tion. Man must be­come hun­gry for truth as a re­sult of the ex­pe­ri­ences of liv­ing, or he must de­sire to know God as the re­sult of con­tact with the lives of those who are ac­quainted with the di­vine Fa­ther be­fore an­other hu­man be­ing can act as the means of lead­ing such a fel­low mor­tal to the Fa­ther in heaven. If we know God, our real busi­ness on earth is so to live as to per­mit the Fa­ther to re­veal him­self in our lives, and thus will all God-seek­ing per­sons see the Fa­ther and ask for our help in find­ing out more about the God who in this man­ner finds ex­pres­sion in our lives.”

• great things happen when man goes into partnership with God

132:7.9What a scene for the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences to be­hold, this spec­ta­cle of the In­dian lad propos­ing to the Cre­ator of a uni­verse that they make a new re­li­gion! And though the young man did not know it, they were mak­ing a new and ev­er­last­ing re­li­gion right then and there—this new way of sal­va­tion, the rev­e­la­tion of God to man through, and in, Je­sus. That which the lad wanted most to do he was un­con­sciously ac­tu­ally do­ing. And it was, and is, ever thus. That which the en­light­ened and re­flec­tive hu­man imag­i­na­tion of spir­i­tual teach­ing and lead­ing whole­heart­edly and un­selfishly wants to do and be, be­comes mea­sur­ably cre­ative in ac­cor­dance with the de­gree of mor­tal ded­i­ca­tion to the di­vine do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will. When man goes in part­ner­ship with God, great things may, and do, hap­pen.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

133:0.3One day while rest­ing at lunch, about half­way to Tar­en­tum, Ga­nid asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion as to what he thought of In­dia’s caste sys­tem. Said Je­sus: “Though hu­man be­ings dif­fer in many ways, the one from an­other, be­fore God and in the spir­i­tual world all mor­tals stand on an equal foot­ing. There are only two groups of mor­tals in the eyes of God: those who de­sire to do his will and those who do not. As the uni­verse looks upon an in­hab­ited world, it like­wise dis­cerns two great classes: those who know God and those who do not. Those who can­not know God are reck­oned among the an­i­mals of any given realm. Man­kind can ap­pro­pri­ately be di­vided into many classes in ac­cor­dance with dif­fer­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions, as they may be viewed phys­i­cally, men­tally, so­cially, vo­ca­tion­ally, or morally, but as these dif­fer­ent classes of mor­tals ap­pear be­fore the judg­ment bar of God, they stand on an equal foot­ing; God is truly no re­specter of per­sons. Al­though you can­not es­cape the rec­og­ni­tion of dif­fer­en­tial hu­man abil­i­ties and en­dow­ments in mat­ters in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, and moral, you should make no such dis­tinc­tions in the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of men when as­sem­bled for wor­ship in the pres­ence of God.”

• God’s nature › most inescapable of all presences

133:4.1Je­sus and Ga­nid had many more in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences in Corinth. They had close con­verse with a great num­ber of per­sons who greatly prof­ited by the in­struc­tion re­ceived from Je­sus.

• finding God › seeking God makes us like him

133:4.9Je­sus had many vis­its with a Chi­nese mer­chant. In say­ing good-bye, he ad­mon­ished him: “Wor­ship only God, who is your true spirit an­ces­tor. Re­mem­ber that the Fa­ther’s spirit ever lives within you and al­ways points your soul-di­rec­tion heav­en­ward. If you fol­low the un­con­scious lead­ings of this im­mor­tal spirit, you are cer­tain to con­tinue on in the up­lifted way of find­ing God. And when you do at­tain the Fa­ther in heaven, it will be be­cause by seek­ing him you have be­come more and more like him. And so farewell, Chang, but only for a sea­son, for we shall meet again in the worlds of light where the Fa­ther of spirit souls has pro­vided many de­light­ful stop­ping-places for those who are Par­a­dise-bound.”

• finding God › cannot find God through science

133:6.7“The hu­man soul, when ma­tured, en­no­bled, and spir­i­tu­al­ized, ap­proaches the heav­enly sta­tus in that it comes near to be­ing an en­tity in­ter­ven­ing be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, the ma­te­rial self and the di­vine spirit. The evolv­ing soul of a hu­man be­ing is dif­fi­cult of de­scrip­tion and more dif­fi­cult of dem­on­stra­tion be­cause it is not dis­cov­er­able by the meth­ods of ei­ther ma­te­rial in­ves­ti­ga­tion or spir­i­tual prov­ing. Ma­te­rial sci­ence can­not demon­strate the ex­is­tence of a soul, nei­ther can pure spirit-test­ing. Not­with­stand­ing the fail­ure of both ma­te­rial sci­ence and spir­i­tual stan­dards to dis­cover the ex­is­tence of the hu­man soul, ev­ery morally con­scious mor­tal knows of the ex­is­tence of his soul as a real and ac­tual per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.”

• God’s nature › is love

134:4.1The broth­er­hood of men is founded on the fa­ther­hood of God. The fam­ily of God is de­rived from the love of God—God is love. God the Fa­ther di­vinely loves his chil­dren, all of them.

• God’s nature › spirit

134:4.2The king­dom of heaven, the di­vine gov­ern­ment, is founded on the fact of di­vine sov­er­eignty—God is spirit. Since God is spirit, this king­dom is spir­i­tual. The king­dom of heaven is nei­ther ma­te­rial nor merely in­tel­lec­tual; it is a spir­i­tual re­la­tion­ship be­tween God and man.

• God’s nature › spirit

134:4.7God is spirit, and God gives a frag­ment of his spirit self to dwell in the heart of man. Spir­i­tu­ally, all men are equal. The king­dom of heaven is free from castes, classes, so­cial lev­els, and eco­nomic groups. You are all breth­ren.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

137:8.6“I have come to pro­claim the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. And this king­dom shall in­clude the wor­ship­ing souls of Jew and gen­tile, rich and poor, free and bond, for my Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons; his love and his mercy are over all.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

138:8.2Je­sus taught them to preach the for­give­ness of sin through faith in God with­out pen­ance or sac­ri­fice, and that the Fa­ther in heaven loves all his chil­dren with the same eter­nal love. He en­joined his apos­tles to re­frain from dis­cussing:

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

140:3.16“Your Fa­ther in heaven makes the sun to shine on the evil as well as upon the good; like­wise he sends rain on the just and the un­just. You are the sons of God; even more, you are now the am­bas­sadors of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. Be mer­ci­ful, even as God is mer­ci­ful, and in the eter­nal fu­ture of the king­dom you shall be per­fect, even as your heav­enly Fa­ther is per­fect.

• looks beyond act to uncover motive

140:6.4Then said Si­mon Pe­ter: “Mas­ter, if you have a new com­mand­ment, we would hear it. Re­veal the new way to us.” Je­sus an­swered Pe­ter: “You have heard it said by those who teach the law: ‘You shall not kill; that whoso­ever kills shall be sub­ject to judg­ment.’ But I look be­yond the act to un­cover the mo­tive. I de­clare to you that ev­ery one who is an­gry with his brother is in dan­ger of con­dem­na­tion. He who nurses ha­tred in his heart and plans vengeance in his mind stands in dan­ger of judg­ment. You must judge your fel­lows by their deeds; the Fa­ther in heaven judges by the in­tent.

140:6.5“You have heard the teach­ers of the law say, ‘You shall not com­mit adul­tery.’ But I say to you that ev­ery man who looks upon a woman with in­tent to lust af­ter her has al­ready com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart. You can only judge men by their acts, but my Fa­ther looks into the hearts of his chil­dren and in mercy ad­judges them in ac­cor­dance with their in­tents and real de­sires.”

• looks beyond act to uncover motive

140:10.5The one char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus’ teach­ing was that the moral­ity of his phi­los­o­phy orig­i­nated in the per­sonal re­la­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to God—this very child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the in­di­vid­ual, not on the race or na­tion. While eat­ing sup­per, Je­sus had the talk with Mat­thew in which he ex­plained that the moral­ity of any act is de­ter­mined by the in­di­vid­ual’s mo­tive. Je­sus’ moral­ity was al­ways pos­i­tive. The golden rule as re­stated by Je­sus de­mands ac­tive so­cial con­tact; the older neg­a­tive rule could be obeyed in iso­la­tion. Je­sus stripped moral­ity of all rules and cer­e­monies and el­e­vated it to ma­jes­tic lev­els of spir­i­tual think­ing and truly righ­teous liv­ing.

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

141:2.1The night be­fore they left Pella, Je­sus gave the apos­tles some fur­ther in­struc­tion with re­gard to the new king­dom. Said the Mas­ter: “You have been taught to look for the com­ing of the king­dom of God, and now I come an­nounc­ing that this long-looked-for king­dom is near at hand, even that it is al­ready here and in our midst. In ev­ery king­dom there must be a king seated upon his throne and de­cree­ing the laws of the realm. And so have you de­vel­oped a con­cept of the king­dom of heaven as a glo­ri­fied rule of the Jew­ish peo­ple over all the peo­ples of the earth with Mes­siah sit­ting on David’s throne and from this place of mirac­u­lous power pro­mul­gat­ing the laws of all the world. But, my chil­dren, you see not with the eye of faith, and you hear not with the un­der­stand­ing of the spirit. I de­clare that the king­dom of heaven is the re­al­iza­tion and ac­knowl­edg­ment of God’s rule within the hearts of men. True, there is a King in this king­dom, and that King is my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther. We are in­deed his loyal sub­jects, but far tran­scend­ing that fact is the trans­form­ing truth that we are his sons. In my life this truth is to be­come man­i­fest to all. Our Fa­ther also sits upon a throne, but not one made with hands. The throne of the In­fi­nite is the eter­nal dwell­ing place of the Fa­ther in the heaven of heav­ens; he fills all things and pro­claims his laws to uni­verses upon uni­verses. And the Fa­ther also rules within the hearts of his chil­dren on earth by the spirit which he has sent to live within the souls of mor­tal men.

• God’s nature › is Father

141:4.1While so­journ­ing at Am­athus, Je­sus spent much time with the apos­tles in­struct­ing them in the new con­cept of God; again and again did he im­press upon them that God is a Fa­ther, not a great and su­preme book­keeper who is chiefly en­gaged in mak­ing dam­ag­ing en­tries against his erring chil­dren on earth, record­ings of sin and evil to be used against them when he sub­se­quently sits in judg­ment upon them as the just Judge of all cre­ation. The Jews had long con­ceived of God as a king over all, even as a Fa­ther of the na­tion, but never be­fore had large num­bers of mor­tal men held the idea of God as a lov­ing Fa­ther of the in­di­vid­ual.

142:2.1There was in Je­ru­sa­lem in at­ten­dance upon the Pass­over fes­tiv­i­ties one Ja­cob, a wealthy Jew­ish trader from Crete, and he came to An­drew mak­ing re­quest to see Je­sus pri­vately. An­drew ar­ranged this se­cret meet­ing with Je­sus at Flav­ius’s home the evening of the next day. This man could not com­pre­hend the Mas­ter’s teach­ings, and he came be­cause he de­sired to in­quire more fully about the king­dom of God. Said Ja­cob to Je­sus: “But, Rabbi, Moses and the olden proph­ets tell us that Yah­weh is a jeal­ous God, a God of great wrath and fierce anger. The proph­ets say he hates evil­do­ers and takes vengeance on those who obey not his law. You and your dis­ci­ples teach us that God is a kind and com­pas­sion­ate Fa­ther who so loves all men that he would wel­come them into this new king­dom of heaven, which you pro­claim is so near at hand.”

• growth of God comprehension in light and life
• revelation of God always partial, relative, and progressive

142:2.2When Ja­cob fin­ished speak­ing, Je­sus re­plied: “Ja­cob, you have well stated the teach­ings of the olden proph­ets who taught the chil­dren of their gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the light of their day. Our Fa­ther in Par­a­dise is change­less. But the con­cept of his na­ture has en­larged and grown from the days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the gen­er­a­tion of the prophet Isa­iah. And now have I come in the flesh to re­veal the Fa­ther in new glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds. As the gospel of this king­dom shall spread over the world with its mes­sage of good cheer and good will to all men, there will grow up im­proved and bet­ter re­la­tions among the fam­i­lies of all na­tions. As time passes, fa­thers and their chil­dren will love each other more, and thus will be brought about a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for his chil­dren on earth. Re­mem­ber, Ja­cob, that a good and true fa­ther not only loves his fam­ily as a whole—as a fam­ily—but he also truly loves and af­fec­tion­ately cares for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber.”

142:2.3Af­ter con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s char­ac­ter, Je­sus paused to say: “You, Ja­cob, be­ing a fa­ther of many, know well the truth of my words.” And Ja­cob said: “But, Mas­ter, who told you I was the fa­ther of six chil­dren? How did you know this about me?” And the Mas­ter replied: “Suf­fice it to say that the Fa­ther and the Son know all things, for in­deed they see all. Lov­ing your chil­dren as a fa­ther on earth, you must now ac­cept as a re­al­ity the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for you—not just for all the chil­dren of Abra­ham, but for you, your in­di­vid­ual soul.”

142:2.4Then Je­sus went on to say: “When your chil­dren are very young and im­ma­ture, and when you must chas­tise them, they may re­flect that their fa­ther is an­gry and filled with re­sent­ful wrath. Their im­ma­tu­rity can­not pen­e­trate be­yond the pun­ish­ment to dis­cern the fa­ther’s farsee­ing and cor­rec­tive af­fec­tion. But when these same chil­dren be­come grown-up men and women, would it not be folly for them to cling to these ear­lier and mis­con­ceived no­tions re­gard­ing their fa­ther? As men and women they should now dis­cern their fa­ther’s love in all these early dis­ci­plines. And should not man­kind, as the cen­turies pass, come the bet­ter to un­der­stand the true na­ture and lov­ing char­ac­ter of the Fa­ther in heaven? What profit have you from suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion if you per­sist in view­ing God as Moses and the proph­ets saw him? I say to you, Ja­cob, un­der the bright light of this hour you should see the Fa­ther as none of those who have gone be­fore ever be­held him. And thus see­ing him, you should re­joice to en­ter the king­dom wherein such a mer­ci­ful Fa­ther rules, and you should seek to have his will of love dom­i­nate your life hence­forth.”

142:2.5And Ja­cob an­swered: “Rabbi, I be­lieve; I de­sire that you lead me into the Fa­ther’s king­dom.”

142:3.1The twelve apos­tles, most of whom had lis­tened to this dis­cus­sion of the char­ac­ter of God, that night asked Je­sus many ques­tions about the Fa­ther in heaven. The Mas­ter’s an­swers to these ques­tions can best be pre­sented by the fol­low­ing sum­mary in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy:

142:3.2Je­sus mildly up­braided the twelve, in sub­stance say­ing: Do you not know the tra­di­tions of Is­rael re­lat­ing to the growth of the idea of Yah­weh, and are you ig­no­rant of the teach­ing of the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing the doc­trine of God? And then did the Mas­ter pro­ceed to in­struct the apos­tles about the evo­lu­tion of the con­cept of De­ity through­out the course of the de­vel­op­ment of the Jew­ish peo­ple. He called at­ten­tion to the fol­low­ing phases of the growth of the God idea:

142:3.31. Yah­weh—the god of the Sinai clans. This was the prim­i­tive con­cept of De­ity which Moses ex­alted to the higher level of the Lord God of Is­rael. The Fa­ther in heaven never fails to ac­cept the sin­cere wor­ship of his chil­dren on earth, no mat­ter how crude their con­cept of De­ity or by what name they sym­bol­ize his di­vine na­ture.

142:3.42. The Most High. This con­cept of the Fa­ther in heaven was pro­claimed by Mel­chiz­e­dek to Abra­ham and was car­ried far from Salem by those who sub­se­quently be­lieved in this en­larged and ex­panded idea of De­ity. Abra­ham and his brother left Ur be­cause of the es­tab­lish­ment of sun wor­ship, and they be­came be­liev­ers in Mel­chiz­e­dek’s teach­ing of El Elyon—the Most High God. Theirs was a com­pos­ite con­cept of God, con­sist­ing in a blend­ing of their older Mes­o­po­ta­mian ideas and the Most High doc­trine.

• also known as › Lord God of Israel

142:3.53. El Shad­dai. Dur­ing these early days many of the He­brews wor­shiped El Shad­dai, the Egyp­tian con­cept of the God of heaven, which they learned about dur­ing their cap­tiv­ity in the land of the Nile. Long af­ter the times of Mel­chiz­e­dek all three of these con­cepts of God be­came joined to­gether to form the doc­trine of the cre­ator De­ity, the Lord God of Is­rael.

142:3.64. Elo­him. From the times of Adam the teach­ing of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity has per­sisted. Do you not re­call how the Scrip­tures be­gin by as­sert­ing that “In the be­gin­ning the Gods cre­ated the heav­ens and the earth”? This in­di­cates that when that rec­ord was made the Trin­ity con­cept of three Gods in one had found lodg­ment in the re­li­gion of our fore­bears.

142:3.75. The Su­preme Yah­weh. By the times of Isa­iah these be­liefs about God had ex­panded into the con­cept of a Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator who was si­mul­ta­ne­ously all-pow­er­ful and all-mer­ci­ful. And this evolv­ing and en­larg­ing con­cept of God vir­tu­ally sup­planted all pre­vi­ous ideas of De­ity in our fa­thers’ re­li­gion.

142:3.86. The Fa­ther in heaven. And now do we know God as our Fa­ther in heaven. Our teach­ing pro­vides a re­li­gion wherein the be­liever is a son of God. That is the good news of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Co­ex­is­tent with the Fa­ther are the Son and the Spirit, and the rev­e­la­tion of the na­ture and min­istry of these Par­a­dise De­i­ties will con­tinue to en­large and brighten through­out the end­less ages of the eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion of the as­cend­ing sons of God. At all times and dur­ing all ages the true wor­ship of any hu­man be­ing—as con­cerns in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress—is rec­og­nized by the in­dwelling spirit as homage ren­dered to the Fa­ther in heaven.

142:3.9Never be­fore had the apos­tles been so shocked as they were upon hear­ing this re­count­ing of the growth of the con­cept of God in the Jew­ish minds of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions; they were too be­wil­dered to ask ques­tions. As they sat be­fore Je­sus in si­lence, the Mas­ter con­tin­ued: “And you would have known these truths had you read the Scrip­tures. Have you not read in Samuel where it says: ‘And the anger of the Lord was kin­dled against Is­rael, so much so that he moved David against them, say­ing, go num­ber Is­rael and Ju­dah’? And this was not strange be­cause in the days of Samuel the chil­dren of Abra­ham re­ally be­lieved that Yah­weh cre­ated both good and evil. But when a later writer nar­rated these events, sub­se­quent to the en­large­ment of the Jew­ish con­cept of the na­ture of God, he did not dare at­trib­ute evil to Yah­weh; there­fore he said: ‘And Sa­tan stood up against Is­rael and pro­voked David to num­ber Is­rael.’ Can­not you dis­cern that such rec­ords in the Scrip­tures clearly show how the con­cept of the na­ture of God con­tin­ued to grow from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other?

142:3.10“Again should you have dis­cerned the growth of the un­der­stand­ing of di­vine law in per­fect keep­ing with these en­larg­ing con­cepts of di­vin­ity. When the chil­dren of Is­rael came out of Egypt in the days be­fore the en­larged rev­e­la­tion of Yah­weh, they had ten com­mand­ments which served as their law right up to the times when they were en­camped be­fore Sinai. And these ten com­mand­ments were:

142:3.11“1. You shall wor­ship no other god, for the Lord is a jeal­ous God.

142:3.12“2. You shall not make molten gods.

142:3.13“3. You shall not ne­glect to keep the feast of un­leav­ened bread.

142:3.14“4. Of all the males of men or cat­tle, the first-born are mine, says the Lord.

142:3.15“5. Six days you may work, but on the sev­enth day you shall rest.

142:3.16“6. You shall not fail to ob­serve the feast of the first fruits and the feast of the in­gath­er­ing at the end of the year.

142:3.17“7. You shall not of­fer the blood of any sac­ri­fice with leav­ened bread.

142:3.18“8. The sac­ri­fice of the feast of the Pass­over shall not be left un­til morn­ing.

142:3.19“9. The first of the first fruits of the ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.

142:3.20“10. You shall not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.

142:3.21“And then, amidst the thun­ders and light­nings of Sinai, Moses gave them the new ten com­mand­ments, which you will all al­low are more wor­thy ut­ter­ances to ac­com­pany the en­larg­ing Yah­weh con­cepts of De­ity. And did you never take no­tice of these com­mand­ments as twice re­corded in the Scrip­tures, that in the first case de­liv­er­ance from Egypt is as­signed as the rea­son for Sab­bath keep­ing, while in a later rec­ord the ad­vanc­ing re­li­gious be­liefs of our fore­fa­thers de­manded that this be changed to the rec­og­ni­tion of the fact of cre­ation as the rea­son for Sab­bath ob­ser­vance?

142:3.22“And then will you re­mem­ber that once again—in the greater spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment of Isa­iah’s day—these ten neg­a­tive com­mand­ments were changed into the great and pos­i­tive law of love, the in­junc­tion to love God su­premely and your neigh­bor as your­self. And it is this su­preme law of love for God and for man that I also de­clare to you as con­sti­tut­ing the whole duty of man.”

142:3.23And when he had fin­ished speak­ing, no man asked him a ques­tion. They went, each one to his sleep.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

143:1.5“But who told you that my gospel was in­tended only for slaves and weak­lings? Do you, my cho­sen apos­tles, re­sem­ble weak­lings? Did John look like a weak­ling? Do you ob­serve that I am en­slaved by fear? True, the poor and op­pressed of this gen­er­a­tion have the gospel preached to them. The re­li­gions of this world have ne­glected the poor, but my Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons. Be­sides, the poor of this day are the first to heed the call to re­pen­tance and ac­cep­tance of son­ship. The gospel of the king­dom is to be preached to all men—Jew and gen­tile, Greek and Ro­man, rich and poor, free and bond—and equally to young and old, male and fe­male.

• God’s nature › spirit

143:5.6Je­sus per­ceived the at­tempt of the woman’s soul to avoid di­rect and search­ing con­tact with its Maker, but he also saw that there was pres­ent in her soul a de­sire to know the bet­ter way of life. Af­ter all, there was in Nalda’s heart a true thirst for the liv­ing wa­ter; there­fore he dealt pa­tiently with her, say­ing: “Woman, let me say to you that the day is soon com­ing when nei­ther on this moun­tain nor in Je­ru­sa­lem will you wor­ship the Fa­ther. But now you wor­ship that which you know not, a mix­ture of the re­li­gion of many pa­gan gods and gen­tile philoso­phies. The Jews at least know whom they wor­ship; they have re­moved all con­fu­sion by con­cen­trat­ing their wor­ship upon one God, Yah­weh. But you should be­lieve me when I say that the hour will soon come—even now is—when all sin­cere wor­shipers will wor­ship the Fa­ther in spirit and in truth, for it is just such wor­shipers the Fa­ther seeks. God is spirit, and they who wor­ship him must wor­ship him in spirit and in truth. Your sal­va­tion comes not from know­ing how oth­ers should wor­ship or where but by re­ceiv­ing into your own heart this liv­ing wa­ter which I am of­fer­ing you even now.”

• God’s nature › gives his children spirit and blessings

144:2.4“Which of you who is a fa­ther, if his son asks un­wisely, would hes­i­tate to give in ac­cor­dance with pa­ren­tal wis­dom rather than in the terms of the son’s faulty pe­ti­tion? If the child needs a loaf, will you give him a stone just be­cause he un­wisely asks for it? If your son needs a fish, will you give him a wa­ter­snake just be­cause it may chance to come up in the net with the fish and the child fool­ishly asks for the ser­pent? If you, then, be­ing mor­tal and fi­nite, know how to an­swer prayer and give good and ap­pro­pri­ate gifts to your chil­dren, how much more shall your heav­enly Fa­ther give the spirit and many ad­di­tional bless­ings to those who ask him? Men ought al­ways to pray and not be­come dis­cour­aged.

• let supreme delight be in character of God

146:2.98. Prayer may not be em­ployed to avoid the de­lays of time or to tran­scend the hand­i­caps of space. Prayer is not de­signed as a tech­nique for ag­gran­diz­ing self or for gain­ing un­fair ad­van­tage over one’s fel­lows. A thor­oughly self­ish soul can­not pray in the true sense of the word. Said Je­sus: “Let your su­preme de­light be in the char­ac­ter of God, and he shall surely give you the sin­cere de­sires of your heart.” “Com­mit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.” “For the Lord hears the cry of the needy, and he will re­gard the prayer of the des­ti­tute.”

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

148:6.2“My son, you do not com­pre­hend the mean­ing of ad­ver­sity or the mis­sion of suf­fer­ing. Have you not read that mas­ter­piece of Semitic lit­er­a­ture—the Scrip­ture story of the af­flic­tions of Job? Do you not re­call how this won­der­ful para­ble be­gins with the recital of the ma­te­rial pros­per­ity of the Lord’s ser­vant? You well re­mem­ber that Job was blessed with chil­dren, wealth, dig­nity, po­si­tion, health, and ev­ery­thing else which men value in this tem­po­ral life. Ac­cord­ing to the time-hon­ored teach­ings of the chil­dren of Abra­ham such ma­te­rial pros­per­ity was all-suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence of di­vine fa­vor. But such ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions and such tem­po­ral pros­per­ity do not in­di­cate God’s fa­vor. My Fa­ther in heaven loves the poor just as much as the rich; he is no re­specter of per­sons.

• finding God › learn to love God by loving brethren

155:3.4In­creas­ingly they learned from Je­sus to look upon hu­man per­son­al­i­ties in terms of their pos­si­bil­i­ties in time and in eter­nity. They learned that many souls can best be led to love the un­seen God by be­ing first taught to love their breth­ren whom they can see. And it was in this con­nec­tion that new mean­ing be­came at­tached to the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment con­cern­ing un­selfish ser­vice for one’s fel­lows: “Inas­much as you did it to one of the least of my breth­ren, you did it to me.”

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › increasingly grow to feel

155:6.12You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden rec­ords of the­o­logic au­thor­ity. Those who are born of the spirit of God shall hence­forth dis­cern the word of God re­gard­less of whence it ap­pears to take ori­gin. Di­vine truth must not be dis­counted be­cause the chan­nel of its be­stowal is ap­par­ently hu­man. Many of your breth­ren have minds which ac­cept the the­ory of God while they spir­i­tu­ally fail to re­al­ize the pres­ence of God. And that is just the rea­son why I have so of­ten taught you that the king­dom of heaven can best be re­al­ized by ac­quir­ing the spir­i­tual at­ti­tude of a sin­cere child. It is not the men­tal im­ma­tu­rity of the child that I com­mend to you but rather the spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity of such an easy-be­liev­ing and fully-trust­ing lit­tle one. It is not so im­por­tant that you should know about the fact of God as that you should in­creas­ingly grow in the abil­ity to feel the pres­ence of God.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

156:2.4In many ways these gen­tile be­liev­ers ap­pre­ci­ated Je­sus’ teach­ings more fully than the Jews. Many of these Greek-speak­ing Sy­rophoeni­cians came to know not only that Je­sus was like God but also that God was like Je­sus. These so-called hea­then achieved a good un­der­stand­ing of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings about the uni­for­mity of the laws of this world and the en­tire uni­verse. They grasped the teach­ing that God is no re­specter of per­sons, races, or na­tions; that there is no fa­voritism with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; that the uni­verse is wholly and ever law-abid­ing and un­fail­ingly de­pend­able. These gen­tiles were not afraid of Je­sus; they dared to ac­cept his mes­sage. All down through the ages men have not been un­able to com­pre­hend Je­sus; they have been afraid to.

• finding God › he who has seen Jesus has seen God

157:6.13“Nev­er­the­less, I tell you that the Fa­ther and I are one. He who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther. My Fa­ther is work­ing with me in all these things, and he will never leave me alone in my mis­sion, even as I will never for­sake you when you pres­ently go forth to pro­claim this gospel through­out the world.

159:4.1And then went Je­sus over to Abila, where Na­than­iel and his as­so­ciates la­bored. Na­than­iel was much both­ered by some of Je­sus’ pro­nounce­ments which seemed to de­tract from the au­thor­ity of the rec­og­nized He­brew scrip­tures. Ac­cord­ingly, on this night, af­ter the usual pe­riod of ques­tions and an­swers, Na­than­iel took Je­sus away from the oth­ers and asked: “Mas­ter, could you trust me to know the truth about the Scrip­tures? I ob­serve that you teach us only a por­tion of the sa­cred writ­ings—the best as I view it—and I in­fer that you re­ject the teach­ings of the rab­bis to the ef­fect that the words of the law are the very words of God, hav­ing been with God in heaven even be­fore the times of Abra­ham and Moses. What is the truth about the Scrip­tures?” When Je­sus heard the ques­tion of his be­wil­dered apos­tle, he an­swered:

159:4.2“Na­than­iel, you have rightly judged; I do not re­gard the Scrip­tures as do the rab­bis. I will talk with you about this mat­ter on con­di­tion that you do not re­late these things to your breth­ren, who are not all pre­pared to re­ceive this teach­ing. The words of the law of Moses and the teach­ings of the Scrip­tures were not in ex­is­tence be­fore Abra­ham. Only in re­cent times have the Scrip­tures been gath­ered to­gether as we now have them. While they con­tain the best of the higher thoughts and long­ings of the Jew­ish peo­ple, they also con­tain much that is far from be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the char­ac­ter and teach­ings of the Fa­ther in heaven; where­fore must I choose from among the bet­ter teach­ings those truths which are to be gleaned for the gospel of the king­dom.

159:4.3“These writ­ings are the work of men, some of them holy men, oth­ers not so holy. The teach­ings of these books rep­re­sent the views and ex­tent of en­light­en­ment of the times in which they had their ori­gin. As a rev­e­la­tion of truth, the last are more de­pend­able than the first. The Scrip­tures are faulty and al­to­gether hu­man in ori­gin, but mis­take not, they do con­sti­tute the best col­lec­tion of re­li­gious wis­dom and spir­i­tual truth to be found in all the world at this time.

159:4.4“Many of these books were not writ­ten by the per­sons whose names they bear, but that in no way de­tracts from the value of the truths which they con­tain. If the story of Jonah should not be a fact, even if Jonah had never lived, still would the pro­found truth of this nar­ra­tive, the love of God for Nin­eveh and the so-called hea­then, be none the less pre­cious in the eyes of all those who love their fel­low men. The Scrip­tures are sa­cred be­cause they pre­sent the thoughts and acts of men who were search­ing for God, and who in these writ­ings left on rec­ord their high­est con­cepts of righ­teous­ness, truth, and ho­li­ness. The Scrip­tures con­tain much that is true, very much, but in the light of your pres­ent teach­ing, you know that these writ­ings also con­tain much that is mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther in heaven, the lov­ing God I have come to re­veal to all the worlds.

159:4.5“Na­than­iel, never per­mit your­self for one mo­ment to be­lieve the Scrip­ture rec­ords which tell you that the God of love di­rected your fore­fa­thers to go forth in bat­tle to slay all their en­e­mies—men, women, and chil­dren. Such rec­ords are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are not the word of God. The Scrip­tures al­ways have, and al­ways will, re­flect the in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and spir­i­tual sta­tus of those who cre­ate them. Have you not noted that the con­cepts of Yah­weh grow in beauty and glory as the proph­ets make their rec­ords from Samuel to Isa­iah? And you should re­mem­ber that the Scrip­tures are in­tended for re­li­gious in­struc­tion and spir­i­tual guid­ance. They are not the works of ei­ther his­to­ri­ans or philoso­phers.

159:4.6“The thing most de­plorable is not merely this er­ro­neous idea of the ab­so­lute per­fec­tion of the Scrip­ture rec­ord and the in­fal­li­bil­ity of its teach­ings, but rather the con­fus­ing mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of these sa­cred writ­ings by the tra­di­tion-en­slaved scribes and Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem. And now will they em­ploy both the doc­trine of the in­spi­ra­tion of the Scrip­tures and their mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions thereof in their de­ter­mined ef­fort to with­stand these newer teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom. Na­than­iel, never for­get, the Fa­ther does not limit the rev­e­la­tion of truth to any one gen­er­a­tion or to any one peo­ple. Many earnest seek­ers af­ter the truth have been, and will con­tinue to be, con­fused and dis­heart­ened by these doc­trines of the per­fec­tion of the Scrip­tures.

159:4.7“The au­thor­ity of truth is the very spirit that in­dwells its liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions, and not the dead words of the less il­lu­mi­nated and sup­pos­edly in­spired men of an­other gen­er­a­tion. And even if these holy men of old lived in­spired and spirit-filled lives, that does not mean that their words were sim­i­larly spir­i­tu­ally in­spired. To­day we make no rec­ord of the teach­ings of this gospel of the king­dom lest, when I have gone, you speed­ily be­come di­vided up into sundry groups of truth con­tenders as a re­sult of the di­ver­sity of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my teach­ings. For this gen­er­a­tion it is best that we live these truths while we shun the mak­ing of rec­ords.

159:4.8“Mark you well my words, Na­than­iel, noth­ing which hu­man na­ture has touched can be re­garded as in­fal­li­ble. Through the mind of man di­vine truth may in­deed shine forth, but al­ways of rel­a­tive pu­rity and par­tial di­vin­ity. The crea­ture may crave in­fal­li­bil­ity, but only the Cre­ators pos­sess it.

159:4.9“But the great­est er­ror of the teach­ing about the Scrip­tures is the doc­trine of their be­ing sealed books of mys­tery and wis­dom which only the wise minds of the na­tion dare to in­ter­pret. The rev­e­la­tions of di­vine truth are not sealed ex­cept by hu­man ig­no­rance, big­otry, and nar­row-minded in­tol­er­ance. The light of the Scrip­tures is only dimmed by prej­u­dice and dark­ened by su­per­sti­tion. A false fear of sa­cred­ness has pre­vented re­li­gion from be­ing safe­guarded by com­mon sense. The fear of the au­thor­ity of the sa­cred writ­ings of the past ef­fec­tively pre­vents the hon­est souls of to­day from ac­cept­ing the new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-know­ing men of an­other gen­er­a­tion so in­tensely longed to see.

159:4.10“But the sad­dest fea­ture of all is the fact that some of the teach­ers of the sanc­tity of this tra­di­tion­al­ism know this very truth. They more or less fully un­der­stand these lim­i­ta­tions of Scrip­ture, but they are moral cow­ards, in­tel­lec­tu­ally dis­hon­est. They know the truth re­gard­ing the sa­cred writ­ings, but they pre­fer to with­hold such dis­turb­ing facts from the peo­ple. And thus do they per­vert and dis­tort the Scrip­tures, mak­ing them the guide to slav­ish de­tails of the daily life and an au­thor­ity in things non­spir­i­tual in­stead of ap­peal­ing to the sa­cred writ­ings as the re­pos­i­tory of the moral wis­dom, re­li­gious in­spi­ra­tion, and the spir­i­tual teach­ing of the God-know­ing men of other gen­er­a­tions.”

159:4.11Na­than­iel was en­light­ened, and shocked, by the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment. He long pon­dered this talk in the depths of his soul, but he told no man con­cern­ing this con­fer­ence un­til af­ter Je­sus’ as­cen­sion; and even then he feared to im­part the full story of the Mas­ter’s in­struc­tion.

• God’s nature › supreme ideal of religious loyalty

160:5.4Moral­ity and re­li­gion are not nec­es­sar­ily the same. A sys­tem of morals, by grasp­ing an ob­ject of wor­ship, may be­come a re­li­gion. A re­li­gion, by los­ing its uni­ver­sal ap­peal to loy­alty and su­preme de­vo­tion, may evolve into a sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy or a code of morals. This thing, be­ing, state, or or­der of ex­is­tence, or pos­si­bil­ity of at­tain­ment which con­sti­tutes the su­preme ideal of re­li­gious loy­alty, and which is the re­cip­i­ent of the re­li­gious de­vo­tion of those who wor­ship, is God. Re­gard­less of the name ap­plied to this ideal of spirit re­al­ity, it is God.

160:5.5The so­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of a true re­li­gion con­sist in the fact that it in­vari­ably seeks to con­vert the in­di­vid­ual and to trans­form the world. Re­li­gion im­plies the ex­is­tence of undis­cov­ered ide­als which far tran­scend the known stan­dards of ethics and moral­ity em­bod­ied in even the high­est so­cial us­ages of the most ma­ture in­sti­tu­tions of civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion reaches out for undis­cov­ered ide­als, un­ex­plored re­al­i­ties, super­hu­man val­ues, di­vine wis­dom, and true spirit at­tain­ment. True re­li­gion does all of this; all other be­liefs are not wor­thy of the name. You can­not have a gen­uine spir­i­tual re­li­gion with­out the su­preme and su­per­nal ideal of an eter­nal God. A re­li­gion with­out this God is an in­ven­tion of man, a hu­man in­sti­tu­tion of life­less in­tel­lec­tual be­liefs and mean­ing­less emo­tional cer­e­monies. A re­li­gion might claim as the ob­ject of its de­vo­tion a great ideal. But such ide­als of un­re­al­ity are not at­tain­able; such a con­cept is il­lu­sion­ary. The only ide­als sus­cep­ti­ble of hu­man at­tain­ment are the di­vine re­al­i­ties of the in­fi­nite val­ues res­i­dent in the spir­i­tual fact of the eter­nal God.

160:5.6The word God, the idea of God as con­trasted with the ideal of God, can be­come a part of any re­li­gion, no mat­ter how puerile or false that re­li­gion may chance to be. And this idea of God can be­come any­thing which those who en­ter­tain it may choose to make it. The lower re­li­gions shape their ideas of God to meet the nat­u­ral state of the hu­man heart; the higher re­li­gions de­mand that the hu­man heart shall be changed to meet the de­mands of the ide­als of true re­li­gion.

• God’s nature › is love
• God’s nature › spirit

160:5.11Now are we truly for­sak­ing the lures of the known or­der of ex­is­tence while we un­re­servedly ded­i­cate our quest to the lures of the un­known and un­ex­plored or­der of the ex­is­tence of a fu­ture life of ad­ven­ture in the spirit worlds of the higher ide­al­ism of di­vine re­al­ity. And we seek for those sym­bols of mean­ing where­with to con­vey to our fel­low men these con­cepts of the re­al­ity of the ide­al­ism of the re­li­gion of Je­sus, and we will not cease to pray for that day when all man­kind shall be thrilled by the com­mu­nal vi­sion of this su­preme truth. Just now, our fo­cal­ized con­cept of the Fa­ther, as held in our hearts, is that God is spirit; as con­veyed to our fel­lows, that God is love.

• God’s nature › all things are possible with God

163:3.2When Pe­ter and the apos­tles heard these words, they were as­ton­ished ex­ceed­ingly, so much so that Pe­ter said: “Who then, Lord, can be saved? Shall all who have riches be kept out of the king­dom?” And Je­sus replied: “No, Pe­ter, but all who put their trust in riches shall hardly en­ter into the spir­i­tual life that leads to eter­nal prog­ress. But even then, much which is im­pos­si­ble to man is not be­yond the reach of the Fa­ther in heaven; rather should we rec­og­nize that with God all things are pos­si­ble.”

• looks beyond act to uncover motive

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

166:4.11“The Fa­ther’s hu­man chil­dren have equal ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of ma­te­rial bless­ings; there­fore does he be­stow things phys­i­cal upon the chil­dren of men with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion. When it comes to the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts, the Fa­ther is lim­ited by man’s ca­pac­ity for re­ceiv­ing these di­vine en­dow­ments. Al­though the Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons, in the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts he is lim­ited by man’s faith and by his will­ing­ness al­ways to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.”

• God’s nature › spirit

169:4.2Je­sus never gave his apos­tles a sys­tem­atic les­son con­cern­ing the per­son­al­ity and at­tri­butes of the Fa­ther in heaven. He never asked men to be­lieve in his Fa­ther; he took it for granted they did. Je­sus never be­lit­tled him­self by of­fer­ing ar­gu­ments in proof of the re­al­ity of the Fa­ther. His teach­ing re­gard­ing the Fa­ther all cen­tered in the dec­la­ra­tion that he and the Fa­ther are one; that he who has seen the Son has seen the Fa­ther; that the Fa­ther, like the Son, knows all things; that only the Son re­ally knows the Fa­ther, and he to whom the Son will re­veal him; that he who knows the Son knows also the Fa­ther; and that the Fa­ther sent him into the world to re­veal their com­bined na­tures and to show forth their con­joint work. He never made other pro­nounce­ments about his Fa­ther ex­cept to the woman of Samaria at Ja­cob’s well, when he de­clared, “God is spirit.”

• God’s nature › spirit

169:4.6Je­sus never called the Fa­ther a king, and he very much re­gret­ted that the Jew­ish hope for a re­stored king­dom and John’s procla­ma­tion of a com­ing king­dom made it nec­es­sary for him to de­nom­i­nate his pro­posed spir­i­tual broth­er­hood the king­dom of heaven. With the one ex­cep­tion—the dec­la­ra­tion that “God is spirit”—Je­sus never re­ferred to De­ity in any man­ner other than in terms de­scrip­tive of his own per­sonal re­la­tion­ship with the First Source and Cen­ter of Par­a­dise.

• term “God” › infinite concept of Father

169:4.7Je­sus em­ployed the word God to des­ig­nate the idea of De­ity and the word Fa­ther to des­ig­nate the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God. When the word Fa­ther is em­ployed to de­note God, it should be un­der­stood in its largest pos­si­ble mean­ing. The word God can­not be de­fined and there­fore stands for the in­fi­nite con­cept of the Fa­ther, while the term Fa­ther, be­ing ca­pa­ble of par­tial def­i­ni­tion, may be em­ployed to rep­re­sent the hu­man con­cept of the di­vine Fa­ther as he is as­so­ci­ated with man dur­ing the course of mor­tal ex­is­tence.

174:1.1For sev­eral days Pe­ter and James had been en­gaged in dis­cussing their dif­fer­ences of opin­ion about the Mas­ter’s teach­ing re­gard­ing the for­give­ness of sin. They had both agreed to lay the mat­ter be­fore Je­sus, and Pe­ter em­braced this oc­ca­sion as a fit­ting op­por­tu­nity for se­cur­ing the Mas­ter’s coun­sel. Ac­cord­ingly, Si­mon Pe­ter broke in on the con­ver­sa­tion deal­ing with the dif­fer­ences be­tween praise and wor­ship, by ask­ing: “Mas­ter, James and I are not in ac­cord re­gard­ing your teach­ings hav­ing to do with the for­give­ness of sin. James claims you teach that the Fa­ther for­gives us even be­fore we ask him, and I main­tain that re­pen­tance and con­fes­sion must pre­cede the for­give­ness. Which of us is right? what do you say?”

174:1.2Af­ter a short si­lence Je­sus looked sig­nif­i­cantly at all four and an­swered: “My breth­ren, you err in your opin­ions be­cause you do not com­pre­hend the na­ture of those in­ti­mate and lov­ing re­la­tions be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator, be­tween man and God. You fail to grasp that un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy which the wise par­ent en­ter­tains for his im­ma­ture and some­times erring child. It is in­deed doubt­ful whether in­tel­li­gent and af­fec­tion­ate par­ents are ever called upon to for­give an av­er­age and nor­mal child. Un­der­stand­ing re­la­tion­ships as­so­ci­ated with at­ti­tudes of love ef­fec­tively pre­vent all those es­trange­ments which later ne­ces­si­tate the read­just­ment of re­pen­tance by the child with for­give­ness by the par­ent.

174:1.3“A part of ev­ery fa­ther lives in the child. The fa­ther en­joys pri­or­ity and su­pe­ri­or­ity of un­der­stand­ing in all mat­ters con­nected with the child-par­ent re­la­tion­ship. The par­ent is able to view the im­ma­tu­rity of the child in the light of the more ad­vanced pa­ren­tal ma­tu­rity, the riper ex­pe­ri­ence of the older part­ner. With the earthly child and the heav­enly Fa­ther, the di­vine par­ent pos­sesses in­fin­ity and di­vin­ity of sym­pa­thy and ca­pac­ity for lov­ing un­der­stand­ing. Di­vine for­give­ness is in­ev­i­ta­ble; it is in­her­ent and in­alien­able in God’s in­fi­nite un­der­stand­ing, in his per­fect knowl­edge of all that con­cerns the mis­taken judg­ment and er­ro­neous choos­ing of the child. Di­vine jus­tice is so eter­nally fair that it un­fail­ingly em­bod­ies un­der­stand­ing mercy.

174:1.4“When a wise man un­der­stands the in­ner im­pulses of his fel­lows, he will love them. And when you love your brother, you have al­ready for­given him. This ca­pac­ity to un­der­stand man’s na­ture and for­give his ap­par­ent wrong­do­ing is God­like. If you are wise par­ents, this is the way you will love and un­der­stand your chil­dren, even for­give them when tran­sient mis­un­der­stand­ing has ap­par­ently sep­a­rated you. The child, be­ing im­ma­ture and lack­ing in the fuller un­der­stand­ing of the depth of the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship, must fre­quently feel a sense of guilty sep­a­ra­tion from a fa­ther’s full ap­proval, but the true fa­ther is never con­scious of any such sep­a­ra­tion. Sin is an ex­pe­ri­ence of crea­ture con­scious­ness; it is not a part of God’s con­scious­ness.

174:1.5“Your in­abil­ity or un­will­ing­ness to for­give your fel­lows is the mea­sure of your im­ma­tu­rity, your fail­ure to at­tain adult sym­pa­thy, un­der­stand­ing, and love. You hold grudges and nurse venge­ful­ness in di­rect pro­por­tion to your ig­no­rance of the in­ner na­ture and true long­ings of your chil­dren and your fel­low be­ings. Love is the out­work­ing of the di­vine and in­ner urge of life. It is founded on un­der­stand­ing, nur­tured by un­selfish ser­vice, and per­fected in wis­dom.”

• God’s nature › in him we live and move and have our being

174:3.2Je­sus knew, and so did the peo­ple, that these Sad­ducees were not sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion be­cause it was not likely that such a case would re­ally oc­cur; and be­sides, this prac­tice of the broth­ers of a dead man seek­ing to beget chil­dren for him was prac­ti­cally a dead let­ter at this time among the Jews. Nev­er­the­less, Je­sus con­de­scended to re­ply to their mis­chievous ques­tion. He said: “You all do err in ask­ing such ques­tions be­cause you know nei­ther the Scrip­tures nor the liv­ing power of God. You know that the sons of this world can marry and are given in mar­riage, but you do not seem to un­der­stand that they who are ac­counted wor­thy to at­tain the worlds to come, through the res­ur­rec­tion of the righ­teous, nei­ther marry nor are given in mar­riage. Those who ex­pe­ri­ence the res­ur­rec­tion from the dead are more like the an­gels of heaven, and they never die. These res­ur­rected ones are eter­nally the sons of God; they are the chil­dren of light res­ur­rected into the prog­ress of eter­nal life. And even your Fa­ther Moses un­der­stood this, for, in con­nec­tion with his ex­pe­ri­ences at the burn­ing bush, he heard the Fa­ther say, ‘I am the God of Abra­ham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja­cob.’ And so, along with Moses, do I de­clare that my Fa­ther is not the God of the dead but of the liv­ing. In him you all do live, re­pro­duce, and pos­sess your mor­tal ex­is­tence.”

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

175:2.1The fact that the spir­i­tual lead­ers and the re­li­gious teach­ers of the Jew­ish na­tion one­time re­jected the teach­ings of Je­sus and con­spired to bring about his cruel death, does not in any man­ner af­fect the sta­tus of any in­di­vid­ual Jew in his stand­ing be­fore God. And it should not cause those who pro­fess to be fol­low­ers of the Christ to be prej­u­diced against the Jew as a fel­low mor­tal. The Jews, as a na­tion, as a so­ciopo­lit­i­cal group, paid in full the ter­ri­ble price of re­ject­ing the Prince of Peace. Long since they ceased to be the spir­i­tual torch­bear­ers of di­vine truth to the races of man­kind, but this con­sti­tutes no valid rea­son why the in­di­vid­ual de­scen­dants of these long-ago Jews should be made to suf­fer the per­se­cu­tions which have been vis­ited upon them by in­tol­er­ant, un­wor­thy, and big­oted pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, who was, him­self, a Jew by nat­u­ral birth.

175:2.2Many times has this un­rea­son­ing and un-Christ­like ha­tred and per­se­cu­tion of mod­ern Jews ter­mi­nated in the suf­fer­ing and death of some in­no­cent and un­of­fend­ing Jew­ish in­di­vid­ual whose very an­ces­tors, in the times of Je­sus, heart­ily ac­cepted his gospel and pres­ently died un­flinch­ingly for that truth which they so whole­heart­edly be­lieved. What a shud­der of hor­ror passes over the on­look­ing ce­les­tial be­ings as they be­hold the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus in­dulge them­selves in per­se­cut­ing, ha­rass­ing, and even mur­der­ing the later-day de­scen­dants of Pe­ter, Philip, Mat­thew, and oth­ers of the Pales­tinian Jews who so glo­ri­ously yielded up their lives as the first mar­tyrs of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom!

175:2.3How cruel and un­rea­son­ing to com­pel in­no­cent chil­dren to suf­fer for the sins of their pro­gen­i­tors, mis­deeds of which they are wholly ig­no­rant, and for which they could in no way be re­spon­si­ble! And to do such wicked deeds in the name of one who taught his dis­ci­ples to love even their en­e­mies! It has be­come nec­es­sary, in this recital of the life of Je­sus, to por­tray the man­ner in which cer­tain of his fel­low Jews re­jected him and con­spired to bring about his ig­no­min­ious death; but we would warn all who read this nar­ra­tive that the pre­sen­ta­tion of such a his­tor­i­cal recital in no way jus­ti­fies the un­just ha­tred, nor con­dones the un­fair at­ti­tude of mind, which so many pro­fessed Chris­tians have main­tained to­ward in­di­vid­ual Jews for many cen­turies. King­dom be­liev­ers, those who fol­low the teach­ings of Je­sus, must cease to mis­treat the in­di­vid­ual Jew as one who is guilty of the re­jec­tion and cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. The Fa­ther and his Cre­ator Son have never ceased to love the Jews. God is no re­specter of per­sons, and sal­va­tion is for the Jew as well as for the gen­tile.

• finding God › John Mark spent whole day alone with God

177:1.3Je­sus did not re­turn to the camp that evening un­til af­ter sun­set. The Mas­ter spent this last day of quiet on earth vis­it­ing with this truth-hun­gry youth and talk­ing with his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. This event has be­come known on high as “the day which a young man spent with God in the hills.” For­ever this oc­ca­sion ex­em­pli­fies the will­ing­ness of the Cre­ator to fel­low­ship the crea­ture. Even a youth, if the de­sire of the heart is re­ally su­preme, can com­mand the at­ten­tion and en­joy the lov­ing com­pan­ion­ship of the God of a uni­verse, ac­tu­ally ex­pe­ri­ence the un­for­get­table ec­stasy of be­ing alone with God in the hills, and for a whole day. And such was the unique ex­pe­ri­ence of John Mark on this Wednes­day in the hills of Judea.

• finding God › none go to God except through Michael

180:3.7When Je­sus heard Thomas, he an­swered: “Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man goes to the Fa­ther ex­cept through me. All who find the Fa­ther, first find me. If you know me, you know the way to the Fa­ther. And you do know me, for you have lived with me and you now see me.”

• finding God › he who has seen Jesus has seen God

180:3.9And when Philip had spo­ken, Je­sus said: “Philip, have I been so long with you and yet you do not even now know me? Again do I de­clare: He who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther. How can you then say, Show us the Fa­ther? Do you not be­lieve that I am in the Fa­ther and the Fa­ther in me? Have I not taught you that the words which I speak are not my words but the words of the Fa­ther? I speak for the Fa­ther and not of my­self. I am in this world to do the Fa­ther’s will, and that I have done. My Fa­ther abides in me and works through me. Be­lieve me when I say that the Fa­ther is in me, and that I am in the Fa­ther, or else be­lieve me for the sake of the very life I have lived—for the work’s sake.”

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

181:2.14“Levi, I know much about your anx­i­eties, sac­ri­fices, and labors to keep the trea­sury re­plen­ished which your breth­ren do not know, and I am re­joiced that, though he who car­ried the bag is ab­sent, the pub­li­can am­bas­sador is here at my farewell gath­er­ing with the mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. I pray that you may dis­cern the mean­ing of my teach­ing with the eyes of the spirit. And when the new teacher comes into your heart, fol­low on as he will lead you and let your breth­ren see—even all the world—what the Fa­ther can do for a hated tax-gath­erer who dared to fol­low the Son of Man and to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. Even from the first, Levi, I loved you as I did these other Galileans. Know­ing then so well that nei­ther the Fa­ther nor the Son has re­spect of per­sons, see to it that you make no such dis­tinc­tions among those who be­come be­liev­ers in the gospel through your min­istry. And so, Mat­thew, ded­i­cate your whole fu­ture life ser­vice to show­ing all men that God is no re­specter of per­sons; that, in the sight of God and in the fel­low­ship of the king­dom, all men are equal, all be­liev­ers are the sons of God.”

• finding God › he who has seen Jesus has seen God

182:1.9The Mas­ter, dur­ing the course of this fi­nal prayer with his apos­tles, al­luded to the fact that he had man­i­fested the Fa­ther’s name to the world. And that is truly what he did by the rev­e­la­tion of God through his per­fected life in the flesh. The Fa­ther in heaven had sought to re­veal him­self to Moses, but he could pro­ceed no fur­ther than to cause it to be said, “I AM.” And when pressed for fur­ther rev­e­la­tion of him­self, it was only dis­closed, “I AM that I AM.” But when Je­sus had fin­ished his earth life, this name of the Fa­ther had been so re­vealed that the Mas­ter, who was the Fa­ther in­car­nate, could truly say:

• God’s nature › all things are possible with God

182:3.2The Mas­ter re­mained in a prayer­ful at­ti­tude for a few mo­ments, and then, go­ing over to the three apos­tles, he found them sound asleep, for their eyes were heavy and they could not re­main awake. As Je­sus awoke them, he said: “What! can you not watch with me even for one hour? Can­not you see that my soul is ex­ceed­ingly sor­row­ful, even to death, and that I crave your com­pan­ion­ship?” Af­ter the three had aroused from their slum­ber, the Mas­ter again went apart by him­self and, falling down on the ground, again prayed: “Fa­ther, I know it is pos­si­ble to avoid this cup—all things are pos­si­ble with you—but I have come to do your will, and while this is a bit­ter cup, I would drink it if it is your will.” And when he had thus prayed, a mighty an­gel came down by his side and, speak­ing to him, touched him and strength­ened him.

• misconceptions about God

188:4.8When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and lov­ing Fa­ther, the only con­cept which Je­sus ever taught, you must forth­with, in all con­sis­tency, ut­terly aban­don all those prim­i­tive no­tions about God as an of­fended monarch, a stern and all-pow­er­ful ruler whose chief de­light is to de­tect his sub­jects in wrong­do­ing and to see that they are ad­e­quately pun­ished, un­less some be­ing al­most equal to him­self should vol­un­teer to suf­fer for them, to die as a sub­sti­tute and in their stead. The whole idea of ran­som and atone­ment is in­com­pat­i­ble with the con­cept of God as it was taught and ex­em­pli­fied by Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. The in­fi­nite love of God is not sec­ondary to any­thing in the di­vine na­ture.

• misconceptions about God

188:5.1The cross of Je­sus por­trays the full mea­sure of the su­preme de­vo­tion of the true shep­herd for even the un­wor­thy mem­bers of his flock. It for­ever places all re­la­tions be­tween God and man upon the fam­ily ba­sis. God is the Fa­ther; man is his son. Love, the love of a fa­ther for his son, be­comes the cen­tral truth in the uni­verse re­la­tions of Cre­ator and crea­ture—not the jus­tice of a king which seeks sat­is­fac­tion in the suf­fer­ings and pun­ish­ment of the evil-do­ing sub­ject.

• misconceptions about God

188:5.11Make sure, then, that when you view the cross as a rev­e­la­tion of God, you do not look with the eyes of the prim­i­tive man nor with the view­point of the later bar­bar­ian, both of whom re­garded God as a re­lent­less Sov­er­eign of stern jus­tice and rigid law-en­force­ment. Rather, make sure that you see in the cross the fi­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the love and de­vo­tion of Je­sus to his life mis­sion of be­stowal upon the mor­tal races of his vast uni­verse. See in the death of the Son of Man the cli­max of the un­fold­ing of the Fa­ther’s di­vine love for his sons of the mor­tal spheres. The cross thus por­trays the de­vo­tion of will­ing af­fec­tion and the be­stowal of vol­un­tary sal­va­tion upon those who are will­ing to re­ceive such gifts and de­vo­tion. There was noth­ing in the cross which the Fa­ther re­quired—only that which Je­sus so will­ingly gave, and which he re­fused to avoid.

• God’s nature › no respecter of persons

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

• God’s nature › lover of mankind, helper of the distressed

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

• finding God › through leadings of spiritual insight

195:5.14In re­li­gion, Je­sus ad­vo­cated and fol­lowed the method of ex­pe­ri­ence, even as mod­ern sci­ence pur­sues the tech­nique of ex­per­i­ment. We find God through the lead­ings of spir­i­tual in­sight, but we ap­proach this in­sight of the soul through the love of the beau­ti­ful, the pur­suit of truth, loy­alty to duty, and the wor­ship of di­vine good­ness. But of all these val­ues, love is the true guide to real in­sight.

• finding God › desire to find God is evidence of having found Him

195:6.16Free­dom or ini­tia­tive in any realm of ex­is­tence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the de­gree of spir­i­tual in­flu­ence and cos­mic-mind con­trol; that is, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the de­gree of the ac­tu­al­ity of do­ing “the Fa­ther’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the con­clu­sive proof that God has al­ready found you.

• nothing takes place of God in society

195:8.6Sec­u­lar­ism can never bring peace to man­kind. Noth­ing can take the place of God in hu­man so­ci­ety. But mark you well! do not be quick to sur­ren­der the benef­i­cent gains of the sec­u­lar re­volt from ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion to­day en­joys many lib­er­ties and sat­is­fac­tions as a re­sult of the sec­u­lar re­volt. The great mis­take of sec­u­lar­ism was this: In re­volt­ing against the al­most to­tal con­trol of life by re­li­gious au­thor­ity, and af­ter at­tain­ing the lib­er­a­tion from such ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal tyranny, the sec­u­lar­ists went on to in­sti­tute a re­volt against God him­self, some­times tac­itly and some­times openly.

• God’s nature › needs man to fulfill destiny

195:10.3Ever bear in mind—God and men need each other. They are mu­tu­ally nec­es­sary to the full and fi­nal at­tain­ment of eter­nal per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence in the di­vine des­tiny of uni­verse fi­nal­ity.

• God’s nature › none is good but God

196:0.9The Mas­ter’s en­tire life was con­sis­tently con­di­tioned by this liv­ing faith, this sub­lime re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. This spir­i­tual at­ti­tude wholly dom­i­nated his think­ing and feel­ing, his be­liev­ing and pray­ing, his teach­ing and preach­ing. This per­sonal faith of a son in the cer­tainty and se­cu­rity of the guid­ance and pro­tec­tion of the heav­enly Fa­ther im­parted to his unique life a pro­found en­dow­ment of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. And yet, de­spite this very deep con­scious­ness of close re­la­tion­ship with di­vin­ity, this Galilean, God’s Galilean, when ad­dressed as Good Teacher, in­stantly replied, “Why do you call me good?” When we stand con­fronted by such splen­did self-for­get­ful­ness, we be­gin to un­der­stand how the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther found it pos­si­ble so fully to man­i­fest him­self to him and re­veal him­self through him to the mor­tals of the realms.

• consciousness of God › Jesus attained by unbroken communion

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.

• God’s nature › none is good but God

196:2.2Je­sus’ life in the flesh por­trays a tran­scen­dent re­li­gious growth from the early ideas of prim­i­tive awe and hu­man rev­er­ence up through years of per­sonal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion un­til he fi­nally ar­rived at that ad­vanced and ex­alted sta­tus of the con­scious­ness of his one­ness with the Fa­ther. And thus, in one short life, did Je­sus tra­verse that ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gious spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion which man be­gins on earth and or­di­nar­ily achieves only at the con­clu­sion of his long so­journ in the spirit train­ing schools of the suc­ces­sive lev­els of the pre-Par­a­dise ca­reer. Je­sus pro­gressed from a purely hu­man con­scious­ness of the faith cer­tain­ties of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence to the sub­lime spir­i­tual heights of the pos­i­tive re­al­iza­tion of his di­vine na­ture and to the con­scious­ness of his close as­so­ci­a­tion with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in the man­age­ment of a uni­verse. He pro­gressed from the hum­ble sta­tus of mor­tal de­pen­dence which prompted him spon­ta­neously to say to the one who called him Good Teacher, “Why do you call me good? None is good but God,” to that sub­lime con­scious­ness of achieved di­vin­ity which led him to ex­claim, “Which one of you con­victs me of sin?” And this pro­gress­ing as­cent from the hu­man to the di­vine was an ex­clu­sively mor­tal achieve­ment. And when he had thus at­tained di­vin­ity, he was still the same hu­man Je­sus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God.

• finding God › is identity with reality, self-completion

196:3.3The pro­gres­sive com­pre­hen­sion of re­al­ity is the equiv­a­lent of ap­proach­ing God. The find­ing of God, the con­scious­ness of iden­tity with re­al­ity, is the equiv­a­lent of the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of self-com­ple­tion—self-en­tirety, self-to­tal­ity. The ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of to­tal re­al­ity is the full re­al­iza­tion of God, the fi­nal­ity of the God-know­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

• finding God › oversophistication or irreligious conduct of professed religionists may lead a man, or a generation, to suspend seeking the indwelling God

196:3.17Moral eval­u­a­tion with a re­li­gious mean­ing—spir­i­tual in­sight—con­notes the in­di­vid­ual’s choice be­tween good and evil, truth and er­ror, ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual, hu­man and di­vine, time and eter­nity. Hu­man sur­vival is in great mea­sure de­pen­dent on con­se­crat­ing the hu­man will to the choos­ing of those val­ues se­lected by this spirit-value sorter—the in­dwelling in­ter­preter and uni­fier. Per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in two phases: dis­cov­ery in the hu­man mind and rev­e­la­tion by the in­dwelling di­vine spirit. Through over­so­phis­ti­ca­tion or as a re­sult of the ir­re­li­gious con­duct of pro­fessed re­li­gion­ists, a man, or even a gen­er­a­tion of men, may elect to sus­pend their ef­forts to dis­cover the God who in­dwells them; they may fail to pro­gress in and at­tain the di­vine rev­e­la­tion. But such at­ti­tudes of spir­i­tual non­pro­gres­sion can­not long per­sist be­cause of the pres­ence and in­flu­ence of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­justers.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › resident in Adjuster

196:3.23The ide­al­iza­tion and at­tempted ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Psy­chol­ogy and ide­al­ism are not the equiv­a­lent of re­li­gious re­al­ity. The pro­jec­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect may in­deed orig­i­nate false gods—gods in man’s im­age—but the true God-con­scious­ness does not have such an ori­gin. The God-con­scious­ness is res­i­dent in the in­dwelling spirit. Many of the re­li­gious sys­tems of man come from the for­mu­la­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect, but the God-con­scious­ness is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of these grotesque sys­tems of re­li­gious slav­ery.

• misconceptions about God

196:3.24God is not the mere in­ven­tion of man’s ide­al­ism; he is the very source of all such super­an­i­mal in­sights and val­ues. God is not a hy­poth­e­sis for­mu­lated to unify the hu­man con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness; he is the per­son­al­ity of love from whom all of these uni­verse man­i­fes­ta­tions are de­rived. The truth, beauty, and good­ness of man’s world are uni­fied by the in­creas­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity of the ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tals as­cend­ing to­ward Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties. The unity of truth, beauty, and good­ness can only be re­al­ized in the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the God-know­ing per­son­al­ity.

• consciousness of God › presence of God › resident in Adjuster

196:3.25Moral­ity is the es­sen­tial pre-ex­is­tent soil of per­sonal God-con­scious­ness, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the Ad­juster’s in­ner pres­ence, but such moral­ity is not the source of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and the re­sul­tant spir­i­tual in­sight. The moral na­ture is super­an­i­mal but sub­spir­i­tual. Moral­ity is equiv­a­lent to the rec­og­ni­tion of duty, the re­al­iza­tion of the ex­is­tence of right and wrong. The moral zone in­ter­venes be­tween the an­i­mal and the hu­man types of mind as mor­ontia func­tions be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual spheres of per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment.

• consciousness of God › integration of self with universe
• finding God › God as Father takes precedence over all phases of Deity
• God’s nature › is Father
• term “God” › Father idea is highest human concept of God

196:3.35And God-con­scious­ness is equiv­a­lent to the in­te­gra­tion of the self with the uni­verse, and on its high­est lev­els of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Only the spirit con­tent of any value is im­per­ish­able. Even that which is true, beau­ti­ful, and good may not per­ish in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. If man does not choose to sur­vive, then does the sur­viv­ing Ad­juster con­serve those re­al­i­ties born of love and nur­tured in ser­vice. And all these things are a part of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Fa­ther is liv­ing love, and this life of the Fa­ther is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Fa­ther is in his Sons’ sons—mor­tal men. When all is said and done, the Fa­ther idea is still the high­est hu­man con­cept of God.