grace (God’s mercy)

102:2.4Time is an in­vari­able el­e­ment in the at­tain­ment of knowl­edge; re­li­gion makes its en­dow­ments im­me­di­ately avail­able, al­beit there is the im­por­tant fac­tor of growth in grace, def­i­nite ad­vance­ment in all phases of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Knowl­edge is an eter­nal quest; al­ways are you learn­ing, but never are you able to ar­rive at the full knowl­edge of ab­so­lute truth. In knowl­edge alone there can never be ab­so­lute cer­tainty, only in­creas­ing prob­a­bil­ity of ap­prox­i­ma­tion; but the re­li­gious soul of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion knows, and knows now. And yet this pro­found and pos­i­tive cer­ti­tude does not lead such a sound-minded re­li­gion­ist to take any less in­ter­est in the ups and downs of the prog­ress of hu­man wis­dom, which is bound up on its ma­te­rial end with the de­vel­op­ments of slow-mov­ing sci­ence.

32:3.9The per­fec­tion of the crea­tures of time, when fi­nally achieved, is wholly an ac­quire­ment, a bona fide per­son­al­ity pos­ses­sion. While the el­e­ments of grace are freely ad­mixed, nev­er­the­less, the crea­ture at­tain­ments are the re­sult of in­di­vid­ual ef­fort and ac­tual liv­ing, per­son­al­ity re­ac­tion to the ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

144:4.3In all pray­ing, re­mem­ber that son­ship is a gift. No child has aught to do with earn­ing the sta­tus of son or daugh­ter. The earth child comes into be­ing by the will of its par­ents. Even so, the child of God comes into grace and the new life of the spirit by the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There­fore must the king­dom of heaven—di­vine son­ship—be re­ceived as by a lit­tle child. You earn righ­teous­ness—pro­gres­sive char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment—but you re­ceive son­ship by grace and through faith.

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.

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.

48:7.64. Few mor­tals ever dare to draw any­thing like the sum of per­son­al­ity cred­its es­tab­lished by the com­bined min­istries of na­ture and grace. The ma­jor­ity of im­pov­er­ished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to be­lieve it.

147:8.5And then long into the night Je­sus pro­pounded to his apos­tles the truth that it was their faith that made them se­cure in the king­dom of the pres­ent and the fu­ture, and not their af­flic­tion of soul nor fast­ing of body. He ex­horted the apos­tles at least to live up to the ideas of the prophet of old and ex­pressed the hope that they would pro­gress far be­yond even the ide­als of Isa­iah and the older proph­ets. His last words that night were: “Grow in grace by means of that liv­ing faith which grasps the fact that you are the sons of God while at the same time it rec­og­nizes ev­ery man as a brother.”

28:6.52. The Mem­ory of Mercy. These are the ac­tual, full and re­plete, liv­ing rec­ords of the mercy which has been ex­tended to in­di­vid­u­als and races by the ten­der min­is­tra­tions of the in­stru­men­tal­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit in the mis­sion of adapt­ing the jus­tice of righ­teous­ness to the sta­tus of the realms, as dis­closed by the por­tray­als of the Sig­nif­i­cance of Ori­gins. The Mem­ory of Mercy dis­closes the moral debt of the chil­dren of mercy—their spir­i­tual li­a­bil­i­ties—to be set down against their as­sets of the sav­ing pro­vi­sion es­tab­lished by the Sons of God. In re­veal­ing the Fa­ther’s pre-ex­is­tent mercy, the Sons of God es­tab­lish the nec­es­sary credit to in­sure the sur­vival of all. And then, in ac­cor­dance with the find­ings of the Sig­nif­i­cance of Ori­gins, a mercy credit is es­tab­lished for the sur­vival of each ra­tio­nal crea­ture, a credit of lav­ish pro­por­tions and one of suf­fi­cient grace to in­sure the sur­vival of ev­ery soul who re­ally de­sires di­vine cit­i­zen­ship.

45:7.1The Mel­chiz­e­deks are the di­rec­tors of that large corps of in­struc­tors—par­tially spir­i­tu­al­ized will crea­tures and oth­ers—who func­tion so ac­cept­ably on Je­ru­sem and its as­so­ci­ated worlds but es­pe­cially on the seven man­sion worlds. These are the de­ten­tion plan­ets, where those mor­tals who fail to achieve fu­sion with their in­dwelling Ad­justers dur­ing the life in the flesh are re­ha­bil­i­tated in tran­sient form to re­ceive fur­ther help and to en­joy ex­tended op­por­tu­nity for con­tin­u­ing their striv­ings for spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, those very ef­forts which were pre­ma­turely in­ter­rupted by death. Or if, for any other rea­son of hered­i­tary hand­i­cap, un­fa­vor­able en­vi­ron­ment, or con­spir­acy of cir­cum­stances, this soul at­tain­ment was not com­pleted, no mat­ter what the rea­son, all who are true of pur­pose and wor­thy in spirit find them­selves, as them­selves, pres­ent on the con­tin­u­ing plan­ets, where they must learn to mas­ter the es­sen­tials of the eter­nal ca­reer, to pos­sess them­selves of traits which they could not, or did not, ac­quire dur­ing the life­time in the flesh.

54:3.2Al­though con­scious and whole­hearted iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with evil (sin) is the equiv­a­lent of nonex­is­tence (an­ni­hi­la­tion), there must al­ways in­ter­vene be­tween the time of such per­sonal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with sin and the ex­e­cu­tion of the penalty—the au­to­matic re­sult of such a will­ful em­brace of evil—a pe­riod of time of suf­fi­cient length to al­low for such an ad­ju­di­ca­tion of such an in­di­vid­ual’s uni­verse sta­tus as will prove en­tirely sat­is­fac­tory to all re­lated uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties, and which will be so fair and just as to win the ap­proval of the sin­ner him­self.

54:4.1An­other prob­lem some­what dif­fi­cult of ex­pla­na­tion in the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek per­tains to the rea­sons for per­mit­ting Lu­cifer, Sa­tan, and the fallen princes to work mis­chief so long be­fore be­ing ap­pre­hended, in­terned, and ad­ju­di­cated.

54:4.2Par­ents, those who have borne and reared chil­dren, are bet­ter able to un­der­stand why Mi­chael, a Cre­ator-fa­ther, might be slow to con­demn and de­stroy his own Sons. Je­sus’ story of the prodi­gal son well il­lus­trates how a lov­ing fa­ther can long wait for the re­pen­tance of an erring child.

54:4.3The very fact that an evil-do­ing crea­ture can ac­tu­ally choose to do wrong—com­mit sin—es­tab­lishes the fact of free-will­ness and fully jus­ti­fies any length de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice pro­vided the ex­tended mercy might con­duce to re­pen­tance and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

54:4.4Most of the lib­er­ties which Lu­cifer sought he al­ready had; oth­ers he was to re­ceive in the fu­ture. All these pre­cious en­dow­ments were lost by giv­ing way to im­pa­tience and yield­ing to a de­sire to pos­sess what one craves now and to pos­sess it in de­fi­ance of all obli­ga­tion to re­spect the rights and lib­er­ties of all other be­ings com­pos­ing the uni­verse of uni­verses. Eth­i­cal obli­ga­tions are in­nate, di­vine, and uni­ver­sal.

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.

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.

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

54:4.8But these mercy de­lays are not in­ter­minable. Not­with­stand­ing the long de­lay (as time is reck­oned on Uran­tia) in ad­ju­di­cat­ing the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, we may re­cord that, dur­ing the time of ef­fect­ing this rev­e­la­tion, the first hear­ing in the pend­ing case of Ga­briel vs. Lu­cifer was held on Uversa, and soon there­after there is­sued the man­date of the An­cients of Days di­rect­ing that Sa­tan be hence­forth con­fined to the prison world with Lu­cifer. This ends the abil­ity of Sa­tan to pay fur­ther vis­its to any of the fallen worlds of Sa­ta­nia. Jus­tice in a mercy-dom­i­nated uni­verse may be slow, but it is cer­tain.