planetary epochs

• dispensations › Universal Censors are organic part of all dispensational adjudications

19:4.3One bil­lion Cen­sors are as­signed to each of the seven super­uni­verses. Both in an in­di­vid­ual ca­pac­ity and in as­so­ci­a­tion with Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom and Di­vine Coun­selors, they op­er­ate through­out all di­vi­sions of the seven super­uni­verses. Thus the Cen­sors act on all lev­els of the grand uni­verse, from the per­fect worlds of Ha­vona to the coun­cils of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, and they are an or­ganic part of all dis­pen­sa­tional ad­ju­di­ca­tions of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

• dispensations › Magisterial Sons adjudicate to close

20:2.51. Ju­di­cial Ac­tions. They act at the close of the plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tions. In time, scores—hun­dreds—of such mis­sions may be ex­e­cuted on each in­di­vid­ual world, and they may go to the same or to other worlds times with­out num­ber as dis­pen­sa­tion ter­mi­na­tors, lib­er­a­tors of the sleep­ing sur­vivors.

20:2.62. Mag­is­te­rial Mis­sions. A plan­e­tary vis­i­ta­tion of this type usu­ally oc­curs prior to the ar­rival of a be­stowal Son. On such a mis­sion an Avo­nal ap­pears as an adult of the realm by a tech­nique of in­car­na­tion not in­volv­ing mor­tal birth. Sub­se­quent to this first and usual mag­is­te­rial visit, Avo­nals may re­peat­edly serve in a mag­is­te­rial ca­pac­ity on the same planet both be­fore and af­ter the ap­pear­ance of the be­stowal Son. On these ad­di­tional mag­is­te­rial mis­sions an Avo­nal may or may not ap­pear in ma­te­rial and vis­i­ble form, but on none of them will he be born into the world as a help­less babe.

20:2.73. Be­stowal Mis­sions. The Avo­nal Sons do all, at least once, be­stow them­selves upon some mor­tal race on some evo­lu­tion­ary world. Ju­di­cial vis­its are nu­mer­ous, mag­is­te­rial mis­sions may be plu­ral, but on each planet there ap­pears but one be­stowal Son. Be­stowal Avo­nals are born of woman as Mi­chael of Neb­a­don was in­car­nated on Uran­tia.

• dispensations › Magisterial Sons adjudicate to close
• dispensations › Magisterial Sons reassign celestial beings for tasks of each new dispensation

20:3.1The Avo­nals are known as Mag­is­te­rial Sons be­cause they are the high mag­is­trates of the realms, the ad­ju­di­ca­tors of the suc­ces­sive dis­pen­sa­tions of the worlds of time. They pre­side over the awak­en­ing of the sleep­ing sur­vivors, sit in judg­ment on the realm, bring to an end a dis­pen­sa­tion of sus­pended jus­tice, ex­e­cute the man­dates of an age of pro­ba­tion­ary mercy, re­as­sign the space crea­tures of plan­e­tary min­istry to the tasks of the new dis­pen­sa­tion, and re­turn to the head­quar­ters of their lo­cal uni­verse upon the com­ple­tion of their mis­sion.

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

20:3.4Avo­nal Sons may act as plan­e­tary judges prior to both the mag­is­te­rial and be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ences. On ei­ther of these mis­sions, how­ever, the in­car­nated Son will judge the pass­ing plan­e­tary age; like­wise does a Cre­ator Son when in­car­nated on a mis­sion of be­stowal in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. When a Par­a­dise Son vis­its an evo­lu­tion­ary world and be­comes like one of its peo­ple, his pres­ence ter­mi­nates a dis­pen­sa­tion and con­sti­tutes a judg­ment of the realm.

• Urantia’s normal sequence deranged by Michael’s incarnation

20:4.4Uran­tia has never been host to an Avo­nal Son on a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion. Had Uran­tia fol­lowed the gen­eral plan of in­hab­ited worlds, it would have been blessed with a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion some­time be­tween the days of Adam and the be­stowal of Christ Mi­chael. But the reg­u­lar se­quence of Par­a­dise Sons on your planet was wholly de­ranged by the ap­pear­ance of your Cre­ator Son on his ter­mi­nal be­stowal nine­teen hun­dred years ago.

20:4.5Uran­tia may yet be vis­ited by an Avo­nal com­mis­sioned to in­car­nate on a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion, but re­gard­ing the fu­ture ap­pear­ance of Par­a­dise Sons, not even “the an­gels in heaven know the time or man­ner of such vis­i­ta­tions,” for a Mi­chael-be­stowal world be­comes the in­di­vid­ual and per­sonal ward of a Mas­ter Son and, as such, is wholly sub­ject to his own plans and rul­ings. And with your world, this is fur­ther com­pli­cated by Mi­chael’s prom­ise to re­turn. Re­gard­less of the mis­un­der­stand­ings about the Uran­tian so­journ of Mi­chael of Neb­a­don, one thing is cer­tainly au­then­tic—his prom­ise to come back to your world. In view of this prospect, only time can re­veal the fu­ture or­der of the vis­i­ta­tions of the Par­a­dise Sons of God on Uran­tia.

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed
• sleeping survivors enter upon eternal ascent at end of each dispensation

30:4.112. Sleep­ing Sur­vivors. All mor­tals of sur­vival sta­tus, in the cus­tody of per­sonal guard­i­ans of des­tiny, pass through the por­tals of nat­u­ral death and, on the third pe­riod, per­son­al­ize on the man­sion worlds. Those ac­cred­ited be­ings who have, for any rea­son, been un­able to at­tain that level of in­tel­li­gence mas­tery and en­dow­ment of spir­i­tu­al­ity which would en­ti­tle them to per­sonal guard­i­ans, can­not thus im­me­di­ately and di­rectly go to the man­sion worlds. Such sur­viv­ing souls must rest in un­con­scious sleep un­til the judg­ment day of a new epoch, a new dis­pen­sa­tion, the com­ing of a Son of God to call the rolls of the age and ad­ju­di­cate the realm, and this is the gen­eral prac­tice through­out all Neb­a­don. It was said of Christ Mi­chael that, when he as­cended on high at the con­clu­sion of his work on earth, “He led a great mul­ti­tude of cap­tives.” And these cap­tives were the sleep­ing sur­vivors from the days of Adam to the day of the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion on Uran­tia.

• dispensations › Son-Spirit minister supreme seraphim assist

39:1.3Be­ing of as­sign­ment to the high Sons and Spir­its, these ser­a­phim are nat­u­rally as­so­ci­ated with the far-flung ser­vices of the Par­a­dise Avo­nals, the di­vine off­spring of the Eter­nal Son and the In­fi­nite Spirit. The Par­a­dise Avo­nals are al­ways at­tended on all mag­is­te­rial and be­stowal mis­sions by this high and ex­pe­ri­enced or­der of ser­a­phim, who are at such times de­voted to or­ga­niz­ing and ad­min­is­ter­ing the spe­cial work con­nected with the ter­mi­na­tion of one plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tion and the in­au­gu­ra­tion of a new age. But they are not con­cerned in the work of ad­ju­di­ca­tion which might be in­ci­den­tal to such a change in dis­pen­sa­tions.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › 1st mansonia designed to develop up to

47:3.9The so­journ on man­sion world num­ber one is de­signed to de­velop mor­tal sur­vivors at least up to the sta­tus of the post-Adamic dis­pen­sa­tion on the nor­mal evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. Spir­i­tu­ally, of course, the man­sion world stu­dents are far in ad­vance of such a state of mere hu­man de­vel­op­ment.

• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › 2nd mansonia compares with

47:4.8Man­so­nia num­ber two more specif­i­cally pro­vides for the re­moval of all phases of in­tel­lec­tual con­flict and for the cure of all va­ri­eties of men­tal dishar­mony. The ef­fort to mas­ter the sig­nif­i­cance of mor­ontia mota, be­gun on the first man­sion world, is here more earnestly con­tin­ued. The de­vel­op­ment on man­so­nia num­ber two com­pares with the in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus of the post-Mag­is­te­rial Son cul­ture of the ideal evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

• 5th – postbestowal Son era › 3rd mansonia compares with

47:5.3Man­so­nia the third is a world of great per­sonal and so­cial achieve­ment for all who have not made the equiv­a­lent of these cir­cles of cul­ture prior to re­lease from the flesh on the mor­tal na­tiv­ity worlds. On this sphere more pos­i­tive ed­u­ca­tional work is be­gun. The train­ing of the first two man­sion worlds is mostly of a de­fi­ciency na­ture—neg­a­tive—in that it has to do with sup­ple­ment­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of the life in the flesh. On this third man­sion world the sur­vivors re­ally be­gin their pro­gres­sive mor­ontia cul­ture. The chief pur­pose of this train­ing is to en­hance the un­der­stand­ing of the cor­re­la­tion of mor­ontia mota and mor­tal logic, the co-or­di­na­tion of mor­ontia mota and hu­man phi­los­o­phy. Sur­viv­ing mor­tals now gain prac­ti­cal in­sight into true meta­physics. This is the real in­tro­duc­tion to the in­tel­li­gent com­pre­hen­sion of cos­mic mean­ings and uni­verse in­ter­re­la­tion­ships. The cul­ture of the third man­sion world par­takes of the na­ture of the postbestowal Son age of a nor­mal in­hab­ited planet.

• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › 4th mansonia comparable to

47:6.4The in­tel­lec­tual and so­cial cul­ture of this fourth man­sion world is com­pa­ra­ble to the men­tal and so­cial life of the post-Teacher Son age on the plan­ets of nor­mal evo­lu­tion. The spir­i­tual sta­tus is much in ad­vance of such a mor­tal dis­pen­sa­tion.

• planetary epochs

49:5.214. Plan­e­tary-mor­tal epochs. This clas­si­fi­ca­tion rec­og­nizes the suc­ces­sion of tem­po­ral dis­pen­sa­tions as they af­fect man’s ter­res­trial sta­tus and his re­cep­tion of ce­les­tial min­istry.

• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s ended with 1st dispensational roll call at arrival of Prince

49:5.22Life is ini­ti­ated on the plan­ets by the Life Car­ri­ers, who watch over its de­vel­op­ment un­til some­time af­ter the evo­lu­tion­ary ap­pear­ance of mor­tal man. Be­fore the Life Car­ri­ers leave a planet, they duly in­stall a Plan­e­tary Prince as ruler of the realm. With this ruler there ar­rives a full quota of sub­or­di­nate aux­il­iaries and min­is­ter­ing helpers, and the first ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the liv­ing and the dead is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with his ar­rival.

49:5.23With the emer­gence of hu­man group­ings, this Plan­e­tary Prince ar­rives to in­au­gu­rate hu­man civ­i­liza­tion and to fo­cal­ize hu­man so­ci­ety. Your world of con­fu­sion is no cri­te­rion of the early days of the reign of the Plan­e­tary Princes, for it was near the be­gin­ning of such an ad­min­is­tra­tion on Uran­tia that your Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, cast his lot with the re­bel­lion of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign, Lu­cifer. Your planet has pur­sued a stormy course ever since.

49:5.24On a nor­mal evo­lu­tion­ary world, racial prog­ress at­tains its nat­u­ral bi­o­logic peak dur­ing the regime of the Plan­e­tary Prince, and shortly there­after the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign dis­patches a Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter to that planet. These im­ported be­ings are of ser­vice as bi­o­logic up­lifters; their de­fault on Uran­tia fur­ther com­pli­cated your plan­e­tary his­tory.

49:5.25When the in­tel­lec­tual and eth­i­cal prog­ress of a hu­man race has reached the lim­its of evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment, there comes an Avo­nal Son of Par­a­dise on a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion; and later on, when the spir­i­tual sta­tus of such a world is near­ing its limit of nat­u­ral at­tain­ment, the planet is vis­ited by a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son. The chief mis­sion of a be­stowal Son is to es­tab­lish the plan­e­tary sta­tus, re­lease the Spirit of Truth for plan­e­tary func­tion, and thus ef­fect the uni­ver­sal com­ing of the Thought Ad­justers.

49:5.26Here, again, Uran­tia de­vi­ates: There has never been a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion on your world, nei­ther was your be­stowal Son of the Avo­nal or­der; your planet en­joyed the sig­nal honor of be­com­ing the mor­tal home planet of the Sov­er­eign Son, Mi­chael of Neb­a­don.

49:5.27As a re­sult of the min­istry of all the suc­ces­sive or­ders of di­vine son­ship, the in­hab­ited worlds and their ad­vanc­ing races be­gin to ap­proach the apex of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion. Such worlds now be­come ripe for the cul­mi­nat­ing mis­sion, the ar­rival of the Trin­ity Teacher Sons. This epoch of the Teacher Sons is the vestibule to the fi­nal plan­e­tary age—evo­lu­tion­ary utopia—the age of light and life.

49:5.28This clas­si­fi­ca­tion of hu­man be­ings will re­ceive par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion in a suc­ceed­ing pa­per.

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

49:6.3Through­out the ear­lier ages of an in­hab­ited world, many are called to the man­sion spheres at the spe­cial and the mil­len­nial res­ur­rec­tions, but most sur­vivors are reper­son­al­ized at the in­au­gu­ra­tion of a new dis­pen­sa­tion as­so­ci­ated with the ad­vent of a di­vine Son of plan­e­tary ser­vice.

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

49:6.7Thus are the sleep­ing sur­vivors of a plan­e­tary age reper­son­al­ized in the dis­pen­sa­tional roll calls. But with re­gard to the non­salv­able per­son­al­i­ties of a realm, no im­mor­tal spirit is pres­ent to func­tion with the group guard­i­ans of des­tiny, and this con­sti­tutes ces­sa­tion of crea­ture ex­is­tence. While some of your rec­ords have pic­tured these events as tak­ing place on the plan­ets of mor­tal death, they all re­ally oc­cur on the man­sion worlds.

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

50:1.4But not of­ten do these world princes fail in their mis­sions of or­ga­niz­ing and ad­min­is­ter­ing the in­hab­ited spheres, and their suc­cess greatly fa­cil­i­tates the sub­se­quent mis­sions of the Ma­te­rial Sons, who come to en­graft the higher forms of crea­ture life on the prim­i­tive men of the worlds. Their rule also does much to pre­pare the plan­ets for the Par­a­dise Sons of God, who sub­se­quently come to judge the worlds and to in­au­gu­rate suc­ces­sive dis­pen­sa­tions.

• epochs of planetary development

50:5.3Un­der the be­nign rule of a Plan­e­tary Prince, aug­mented by the Ma­te­rial Sons and punc­tu­ated by the pe­ri­odic mis­sions of the Par­a­dise Sons, the mor­tal races on an av­er­age world of time and space will suc­ces­sively pass through the fol­low­ing seven de­vel­op­men­tal epochs:

• epochs of planetary development › 1st – nutrition; food quest paramount

50:5.41. The nu­tri­tion epoch. The pre­hu­man crea­tures and the dawn races of prim­i­tive man are chiefly con­cerned with food prob­lems. These evolv­ing be­ings spend their wak­ing hours ei­ther in seek­ing food or in fight­ing, of­fen­sively or de­fen­sively. The food quest is paramount in the minds of these early an­ces­tors of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion.

• epochs of planetary development › 2nd – security; attention devoted to war

50:5.52. The se­cu­rity age. Just as soon as the prim­i­tive hunter can spare any time from the search for food, he turns this leisure to aug­ment­ing his se­cu­rity. More and more at­ten­tion is de­voted to the tech­nique of war. Homes are for­ti­fied, and the clans are so­lid­i­fied by mu­tual fear and by the in­cul­ca­tion of hate for for­eign groups. Self-preser­va­tion is a pur­suit which al­ways fol­lows self-main­te­nance.

• epochs of planetary development › 3rd – material comfort; luxury vies with necessity

50:5.63. The ma­te­rial-com­fort era. Af­ter food prob­lems have been par­tially solved and some de­gree of se­cu­rity has been at­tained, the ad­di­tional leisure is uti­lized to pro­mote per­sonal com­fort. Lux­ury vies with ne­ces­sity in oc­cu­py­ing the cen­ter of the stage of hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties. Such an age is all too of­ten char­ac­ter­ized by tyranny, in­tol­er­ance, glut­tony, and drunk­en­ness. The weaker el­e­ments of the races in­cline to­wards ex­cesses and bru­tal­ity. Grad­u­ally these plea­sure-seek­ing weak­lings are sub­ju­gated by the more strong and truth-lov­ing el­e­ments of the ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

• epochs of planetary development › 4th – knowledge and wisdom

50:5.74. The quest for knowl­edge and wis­dom. Food, se­cu­rity, plea­sure, and leisure pro­vide the foun­da­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of cul­ture and the spread of knowl­edge. The ef­fort to ex­e­cute knowl­edge re­sults in wis­dom, and when a cul­ture has learned how to profit and im­prove by ex­pe­ri­ence, civ­i­liza­tion has re­ally ar­rived. Food, se­cu­rity, and ma­te­rial com­fort still dom­i­nate so­ci­ety, but many for­ward-look­ing in­di­vid­u­als are hun­ger­ing for knowl­edge and thirst­ing for wis­dom. Ev­ery child is pro­vided an op­por­tu­nity to learn by do­ing; ed­u­ca­tion is the watch­word of these ages.

• epochs of planetary development › 5th – philosophy and brotherhood

50:5.85. The epoch of phi­los­o­phy and broth­er­hood. When mor­tals learn to think and be­gin to profit by ex­pe­ri­ence, they be­come philo­sophical—they start out to rea­son within them­selves and to ex­er­cise dis­crim­i­na­tive judg­ment. The so­ci­ety of this age be­comes eth­i­cal, and the mor­tals of such an era are truly be­com­ing moral be­ings. Wise moral be­ings are ca­pa­ble of es­tab­lish­ing hu­man broth­er­hood on such a pro­gress­ing world. Eth­i­cal and moral be­ings can learn how to live in ac­cor­dance with the golden rule.

• epochs of planetary development › 6th – spiritual striving

50:5.96. The age of spir­i­tual striv­ing. When evolv­ing mor­tals have passed through the phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, and so­cial stages of de­vel­op­ment, sooner or later they at­tain those lev­els of per­sonal in­sight which im­pel them to seek for spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions and cos­mic un­der­stand­ings. Re­li­gion is com­plet­ing the as­cent from the emo­tional do­mains of fear and su­per­sti­tion to the high lev­els of cos­mic wis­dom and per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Ed­u­ca­tion as­pires to the at­tain­ment of mean­ings, and cul­ture grasps at cos­mic re­la­tion­ships and true val­ues. Such evolv­ing mor­tals are gen­uinely cul­tured, truly ed­u­cated, and ex­qui­sitely God-know­ing.

• epochs of planetary development › 7th – light and life

50:5.107. The era of light and life. This is the flow­er­ing of the suc­ces­sive ages of phys­i­cal se­cu­rity, in­tel­lec­tual ex­pan­sion, so­cial cul­ture, and spir­i­tual achieve­ment. These hu­man ac­com­plish­ments are now blended, as­so­ci­ated, and co-or­di­nated in cos­mic unity and un­selfish ser­vice. Within the lim­i­ta­tions of fi­nite na­ture and ma­te­rial en­dow­ments there are no bounds set upon the pos­si­bil­i­ties of evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ment by the ad­vanc­ing gen­er­a­tions who suc­ces­sively live upon these su­per­nal and set­tled worlds of time and space.

50:5.11Af­ter serv­ing their spheres through suc­ces­sive dis­pen­sa­tions of world his­tory and the pro­gress­ing epochs of plan­e­tary prog­ress, the Plan­e­tary Princes are el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eigns upon the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the era of light and life.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › races brought to physical perfection

51:0.1Dur­ing the dis­pen­sa­tion of a Plan­e­tary Prince, prim­i­tive man reaches the limit of nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment, and this bi­o­logic at­tain­ment sig­nals the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign to dis­patch to such a world the sec­ond or­der of son­ship, the bi­o­logic up­lifters. These Sons, for there are two of them—the Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter—are usu­ally known on a planet as Adam and Eve. The orig­i­nal Ma­te­rial Son of Sa­ta­nia is Adam, and those who go to the sys­tem worlds as bi­o­logic up­lifters al­ways carry the name of this first and orig­i­nal Son of their unique or­der.

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

52:0.1From the in­cep­tion of life on an evo­lu­tion­ary planet to the time of its fi­nal flow­er­ing in the era of light and life, there ap­pear upon the stage of world ac­tion at least seven epochs of hu­man life. These suc­ces­sive ages are de­ter­mined by the plan­e­tary mis­sions of the di­vine Sons, and on an av­er­age in­hab­ited world these epochs ap­pear in the fol­low­ing or­der:

52:0.21. Pre-Plan­e­tary Prince Man.

52:0.32. Post-Plan­e­tary Prince Man.

52:0.43. Post-Adamic Man.

52:0.54. Post-Mag­is­te­rial Son Man.

52:0.65. Post-Be­stowal Son Man.

52:0.76. Post-Teacher Son Man.

52:0.87. The Era of Light and Life.

• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › 6 colored races appear; language develops
• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › emergence from animal level; lasts from 150,000 to 1,000,000 years

52:1.1From the time of man’s emer­gence from the an­i­mal level—when he can choose to wor­ship the Cre­ator—to the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince, mor­tal will crea­tures are called prim­i­tive men. There are six ba­sic types or races of prim­i­tive men, and these early peo­ples suc­ces­sively ap­pear in the or­der of the spec­trum col­ors, be­gin­ning with the red. The length of time con­sumed in this early life evo­lu­tion varies greatly on the dif­fer­ent worlds, rang­ing from one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years to over one mil­lion years of Uran­tia time.

52:1.2The evo­lu­tion­ary races of color—red, or­ange, yel­low, green, blue, and in­digo—be­gin to ap­pear about the time that prim­i­tive man is de­vel­op­ing a sim­ple lan­guage and is be­gin­ning to ex­er­cise the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion. By this time man is well ac­cus­tomed to stand­ing erect.

52:1.3Prim­i­tive men are mighty hunters and fierce fight­ers. The law of this age is the phys­i­cal sur­vival of the fittest; the gov­ern­ment of these times is wholly tribal. Dur­ing the early racial strug­gles on many worlds some of the evo­lu­tion­ary races are oblit­er­ated, as oc­curred on Uran­tia. Those who sur­vive are usu­ally sub­se­quently blended with the later im­ported vi­o­let race, the Adamic peo­ples.

• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › long, dark, and bloody chapter

52:1.4In the light of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion, this era of prim­i­tive man is a long, dark, and bloody chap­ter. The ethics of the jun­gle and the morals of the primeval forests are not in keep­ing with the stan­dards of later dis­pen­sa­tions of re­vealed re­li­gion and higher spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. On nor­mal and non­ex­per­i­men­tal worlds this epoch is very dif­fer­ent from the pro­longed and ex­traor­di­nar­ily bru­tal strug­gles which char­ac­ter­ized this age on Uran­tia. When you have emerged from your first world ex­pe­ri­ence, you will be­gin to see why this long and painful strug­gle on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds oc­curs, and as you go for­ward in the Par­a­dise path, you will in­creas­ingly un­der­stand the wis­dom of these ap­par­ently strange do­ings. But not­with­stand­ing all the vi­cis­si­tudes of the early ages of hu­man emer­gence, the per­for­mances of prim­i­tive man rep­re­sent a splen­did, even a heroic, chap­ter in the an­nals of an evo­lu­tion­ary world of time and space.

52:1.5Early evo­lu­tion­ary man is not a col­or­ful crea­ture. In gen­eral, these prim­i­tive mor­tals are cave dwellers or cliff res­i­dents. They also build crude huts in the large trees. Be­fore they ac­quire a high or­der of in­tel­li­gence, the plan­ets are some­times over­run with the larger types of an­i­mals. But early in this era mor­tals learn to kin­dle and main­tain fire, and with the in­crease of in­ven­tive imag­i­na­tion and the im­prove­ment in tools, evolv­ing man soon van­quishes the larger and more un­wieldy an­i­mals. The early races also make ex­ten­sive use of the larger fly­ing an­i­mals. These enor­mous birds are able to carry one or two av­er­age-sized men for a non­stop flight of over five hun­dred miles. On some plan­ets these birds are of great ser­vice since they pos­sess a high or­der of in­tel­li­gence, of­ten be­ing able to speak many words of the lan­guages of the realm. These birds are most in­tel­li­gent, very obe­di­ent, and un­be­liev­ably af­fec­tion­ate. Such pas­sen­ger birds have been long ex­tinct on Uran­tia, but your early an­ces­tors en­joyed their ser­vices.

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

52:1.6Man’s ac­quire­ment of eth­i­cal judg­ment, moral will, is usu­ally co­in­ci­dent with the ap­pear­ance of early lan­guage. Upon at­tain­ing the hu­man level, af­ter this emer­gence of mor­tal will, these be­ings be­come re­cep­tive to the tem­po­rary in­dwelling of the di­vine Ad­justers, and upon death many are duly elected as sur­vivors and sealed by the arch­an­gels for sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion and Spirit fu­sion. The arch­an­gels al­ways ac­com­pany the Plan­e­tary Princes, and a dis­pen­sa­tional ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the realm is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the prince’s ar­rival.

• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › religion is fear, awe, and superstition

52:1.7All mor­tals who are in­dwelt by Thought Ad­justers are po­ten­tial wor­shipers; they have been “lighted by the true light,” and they pos­sess ca­pac­ity for seek­ing re­cip­ro­cal con­tact with di­vin­ity. Nev­er­the­less, the early or bi­o­logic re­li­gion of prim­i­tive man is largely a per­sis­tence of an­i­mal fear cou­pled with ig­no­rant awe and tribal su­per­sti­tion. The sur­vival of su­per­sti­tion in the Uran­tia races is hardly com­pli­men­tary to your evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment nor com­pat­i­ble with your oth­er­wise splen­did achieve­ments in ma­te­rial prog­ress. But this early fear re­li­gion serves a very valu­able pur­pose in sub­du­ing the fiery tem­pers of these prim­i­tive crea­tures. It is the fore­run­ner of civ­i­liza­tion and the soil for the sub­se­quent plant­ing of the seeds of re­vealed re­li­gion by the Plan­e­tary Prince and his min­is­ters.

52:1.8Within one hun­dred thou­sand years from the time man ac­quires erect pos­ture, the Plan­e­tary Prince usu­ally ar­rives, hav­ing been dis­patched by the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign upon the re­port of the Life Car­ri­ers that will is func­tion­ing, even though com­par­a­tively few in­di­vid­u­als have thus de­vel­oped. Prim­i­tive mor­tals usu­ally wel­come the Plan­e­tary Prince and his vis­i­ble staff; in fact, they of­ten look upon them with awe and rev­er­ence, al­most with wor­ship­ful­ness, if they are not re­strained.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › government appears

52:2.1With the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince a new dis­pen­sa­tion be­gins. Gov­ern­ment ap­pears on earth, and the ad­vanced tribal epoch is at­tained. Great so­cial strides are made dur­ing a few thou­sand years of this regime. Un­der nor­mal con­di­tions mor­tals at­tain a high state of civ­i­liza­tion dur­ing this age. They do not strug­gle so long in bar­barism as did the Uran­tia races. But life on an in­hab­ited world is so changed by re­bel­lion that you can have lit­tle or no idea of such a regime on a nor­mal planet.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › Adjusters arriving in increasing numbers
• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › usually lasts 500,000 years

52:2.2The av­er­age length of this dis­pen­sa­tion is around five hun­dred thou­sand years, some longer, some shorter. Dur­ing this era the planet is es­tab­lished in the cir­cuits of the sys­tem, and a full quota of se­raphic and other ce­les­tial helpers is as­signed to its ad­min­is­tra­tion. The Thought Ad­justers come in in­creas­ing num­bers, and the se­raphic guard­i­ans am­plify their regime of mor­tal super­vi­sion.

52:2.3When the Plan­e­tary Prince ar­rives on a prim­i­tive world, the evolved re­li­gion of fear and ig­no­rance pre­vails. The prince and his staff make the first rev­e­la­tions of higher truth and uni­verse or­ga­ni­za­tion. These ini­tial pre­sen­ta­tions of re­vealed re­li­gion are very sim­ple, and they usu­ally per­tain to the af­fairs of the lo­cal sys­tem. Re­li­gion is wholly an evo­lu­tion­ary pro­cess prior to the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince. Sub­se­quently, re­li­gion pro­gresses by grad­u­ated rev­e­la­tion as well as by evo­lu­tion­ary growth. Each dis­pen­sa­tion, each mor­tal epoch, re­ceives an en­larged pre­sen­ta­tion of spir­i­tual truth and re­li­gious ethics. The evo­lu­tion of the re­li­gious ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity in the in­hab­i­tants of a world largely de­ter­mines their rate of spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment and the ex­tent of re­li­gious rev­e­la­tion.

52:2.4This dis­pen­sa­tion wit­nesses a spir­i­tual dawn, and the dif­fer­ent races and their var­i­ous tribes tend to de­velop spe­cial­ized sys­tems of re­li­gious and philo­sophic thought. There uni­formly run through all of these racial re­li­gions two strains: the early fears of prim­i­tive men and the later rev­e­la­tions of the Plan­e­tary Prince. In some re­spects Uran­tians do not seem to have wholly emerged from this stage of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion. As you pur­sue this study, you will the more clearly dis­cern how far your world de­parts from the av­er­age course of evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress and de­vel­op­ment.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › racial dispersion and intense nationalism

52:2.5But the Plan­e­tary Prince is not “the Prince of Peace.” Racial strug­gles and tribal wars con­tinue over into this dis­pen­sa­tion but with di­min­ish­ing fre­quency and sever­ity. This is the great age of racial dis­per­sion, and it cul­mi­nates in a pe­riod of in­tense na­tion­al­ism. Color is the ba­sis of tribal and na­tional group­ings, and the dif­fer­ent races of­ten de­velop sep­a­rate lan­guages. Each ex­pand­ing group of mor­tals tends to seek iso­la­tion. This seg­re­ga­tion is fa­vored by the ex­is­tence of many lan­guages. Be­fore the uni­fi­ca­tion of the sev­eral races their re­lent­less war­fare some­times re­sults in the oblit­er­a­tion of whole peo­ples; the or­ange and green men are par­tic­u­larly sub­ject to such ex­tinc­tion.

52:2.6On av­er­age worlds, dur­ing the lat­ter part of the prince’s rule, na­tional life be­gins to re­place tribal or­ga­ni­za­tion or rather to be super­im­posed upon the ex­ist­ing tribal group­ings. But the great so­cial achieve­ment of the prince’s epoch is the emer­gence of fam­ily life. Here­to­fore, hu­man re­la­tion­ships have been chiefly tribal; now, the home be­gins to ma­te­ri­al­ize.

52:2.7This is the dis­pen­sa­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of sex equal­ity. On some plan­ets the male may rule the fe­male; on oth­ers the re­verse pre­vails. Dur­ing this age nor­mal worlds es­tab­lish full equal­ity of the sexes, this be­ing pre­lim­i­nary to the fuller re­al­iza­tion of the ide­als of home life. This is the dawn of the golden age of the home. The idea of tribal rule grad­u­ally gives way to the dual con­cept of na­tional life and fam­ily life.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › agriculture appears

52:2.8Dur­ing this age agri­cul­ture makes its ap­pear­ance. The growth of the fam­ily idea is in­com­pat­i­ble with the rov­ing and un­set­tled life of the hunter. Grad­u­ally the prac­tices of set­tled habi­ta­tions and the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil be­come es­tab­lished. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals and the de­vel­op­ment of home arts pro­ceed apace. Upon reach­ing the apex of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, a high level of civ­i­liza­tion has been at­tained, but there is lit­tle de­vel­op­ment of a me­chan­i­cal or­der; in­ven­tion is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the suc­ceed­ing age.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › races brought to physical perfection

52:2.9The races are pu­ri­fied and brought up to a high state of phys­i­cal per­fec­tion and in­tel­lec­tual strength be­fore the end of this era. The early de­vel­op­ment of a nor­mal world is greatly helped by the plan of pro­mot­ing the in­crease of the higher types of mor­tals with pro­por­tion­ate cur­tail­ment of the lower. And it is the fail­ure of your early peo­ples to thus dis­crim­i­nate be­tween these types that ac­counts for the pres­ence of so many de­fec­tive and de­gen­er­ate in­di­vid­u­als among the pres­ent-day Uran­tia races.

52:2.10One of the great achieve­ments of the age of the prince is this re­stric­tion of the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of men­tally de­fec­tive and so­cially un­fit in­di­vid­u­als. Long be­fore the times of the ar­rival of the sec­ond Sons, the Adams, most worlds se­ri­ously ad­dress them­selves to the tasks of race pu­rifi­ca­tion, some­thing which the Uran­tia peo­ples have not even yet se­ri­ously un­der­taken.

52:2.11This prob­lem of race im­prove­ment is not such an ex­ten­sive un­der­tak­ing when it is at­tacked at this early date in hu­man evo­lu­tion. The pre­ced­ing pe­riod of tribal strug­gles and rugged com­pe­ti­tion in race sur­vival has weeded out most of the ab­nor­mal and de­fec­tive strains. An id­iot does not have much chance of sur­vival in a prim­i­tive and war­ring tribal so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It is the false sen­ti­ment of your par­tially per­fected civ­i­liza­tions that fos­ters, pro­tects, and per­pet­u­ates the hope­lessly de­fec­tive strains of evo­lu­tion­ary hu­man stocks.

52:2.12It is nei­ther ten­der­ness nor al­tru­ism to be­stow fu­tile sym­pa­thy upon de­gen­er­ated hu­man be­ings, un­salv­able ab­nor­mal and in­fe­rior mor­tals. There ex­ist on even the most nor­mal of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds suf­fi­cient dif­fer­ences be­tween in­di­vid­u­als and be­tween nu­mer­ous so­cial groups to pro­vide for the full ex­er­cise of all those no­ble traits of al­tru­is­tic sen­ti­ment and un­selfish mor­tal min­istry with­out per­pet­u­at­ing the so­cially un­fit and the morally de­gen­er­ate strains of evolv­ing hu­man­ity. There is abun­dant op­por­tu­nity for the ex­er­cise of tol­er­ance and the func­tion of al­tru­ism in be­half of those un­for­tu­nate and needy in­di­vid­u­als who have not ir­re­triev­ably lost their moral her­itage and for­ever de­stroyed their spir­i­tual birthright.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › races brought to physical perfection

52:3.1When the orig­i­nal im­pe­tus of evo­lu­tion­ary life has run its bi­o­logic course, when man has reached the apex of an­i­mal de­vel­op­ment, there ar­rives the sec­ond or­der of son­ship, and the sec­ond dis­pen­sa­tion of grace and min­istry is in­au­gu­rated. This is true on all evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. When the high­est pos­si­ble level of evo­lu­tion­ary life has been at­tained, when prim­i­tive man has as­cended as far as pos­si­ble in the bi­o­logic scale, a Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter al­ways ap­pear on the planet, hav­ing been dis­patched by the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Adjusters increasingly bestowed

52:3.2Thought Ad­justers are in­creas­ingly be­stowed upon the post-Adamic men, and in con­stantly aug­mented num­bers these mor­tals at­tain ca­pac­ity for sub­se­quent Ad­juster fu­sion. While func­tion­ing as de­scend­ing Sons, the Adams do not pos­sess Ad­justers, but their plan­e­tary off­spring—di­rect and mixed—be­come le­git­i­mate can­di­dates for the re­cep­tion, in due time, of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors. By the ter­mi­na­tion of the post-Adamic age the planet is in pos­ses­sion of its full quota of ce­les­tial min­is­ters; only the fu­sion Ad­justers are not yet uni­ver­sally be­stowed.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › hunters and herders to agriculture
• 3rd – post-Adamic era › usually lasts 25,000 years

52:3.3It is the prime pur­pose of the Adamic regime to in­flu­ence evolv­ing man to com­plete the tran­sit from the hunter and herder stage of civ­i­liza­tion to that of the agri­cul­tur­ist and hor­ti­cul­tur­ist, to be later sup­ple­mented by the ap­pear­ance of the ur­ban and in­dus­trial ad­juncts to civ­i­liza­tion. Ten thou­sand years of this dis­pen­sa­tion of the bi­o­logic up­lifters is suf­fi­cient to ef­fect a mar­velous trans­for­ma­tion. Twenty-five thou­sand years of such an ad­min­is­tra­tion of the con­joint wis­dom of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the Ma­te­rial Sons usu­ally ripens the sphere for the ad­vent of a Mag­is­te­rial Son.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › usually witnesses elimination of the unfit

52:3.4This age usu­ally wit­nesses the com­ple­tion of the elim­i­na­tion of the un­fit and the still fur­ther pu­rifi­ca­tion of the racial strains; on nor­mal worlds the de­fec­tive bes­tial ten­den­cies are very nearly elim­i­nated from the re­pro­duc­ing stocks of the realm.

52:3.5The Adamic progeny never amal­ga­mate with the in­fe­rior strains of the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Nei­ther is it the di­vine plan for the Plan­e­tary Adam or Eve to mate, per­son­ally, with the evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples. This race-im­prove­ment project is the task of their progeny. But the off­spring of the Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter are mo­bi­lized for gen­er­a­tions be­fore the racial-amal­ga­ma­tion min­istry is in­au­gu­rated.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Adamic life plasm immediately upsteps man’s intellectual capacity
• 3rd – post-Adamic era › age of invention and exploration

52:3.6The re­sult of the gift of the Adamic life plasm to the mor­tal races is an im­me­di­ate up­step­ping of in­tel­lec­tual ca­pac­ity and an ac­cel­er­a­tion of spir­i­tual prog­ress. There is usu­ally some phys­i­cal im­prove­ment also. On an av­er­age world the post-Adamic dis­pen­sa­tion is an age of great in­ven­tion, en­ergy con­trol, and me­chan­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. This is the era of the ap­pear­ance of mul­ti­form man­u­fac­ture and the con­trol of nat­u­ral forces; it is the golden age of ex­plo­ration and the fi­nal sub­du­ing of the planet. Much of the ma­te­rial prog­ress of a world oc­curs dur­ing this time of the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the de­vel­op­ment of the phys­i­cal sci­ences, just such an epoch as Uran­tia is now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing. Your world is a full dis­pen­sa­tion and more be­hind the av­er­age plan­e­tary sched­ule.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › races are practically blended to olive shade of violet

52:3.7By the end of the Adamic dis­pen­sa­tion on a nor­mal planet the races are prac­ti­cally blended, so that it can be truly pro­claimed that “God has made of one blood all the na­tions,” and that his Son “has made of one color all peo­ples.” The color of such an amal­ga­mated race is some­what of an olive shade of the vi­o­let hue, the racial “white” of the spheres.

52:3.8Prim­i­tive man is for the most part car­niv­o­rous; the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters do not eat meat, but their off­spring within a few gen­er­a­tions usu­ally grav­i­tate to the om­niv­o­rous level, al­though whole groups of their de­scen­dants some­times re­main non­flesh eaters. This dou­ble ori­gin of the post-Adamic races ex­plains how such blended hu­man stocks ex­hibit an­a­tomic ves­tiges be­long­ing to both the her­biv­o­rous and car­niv­o­rous an­i­mal groups.

52:3.9Within ten thou­sand years of racial amal­ga­ma­tion the re­sul­tant stocks show vary­ing de­grees of an­a­tomic blend, some strains car­ry­ing more of the marks of the non­flesh-eat­ing an­ces­try, oth­ers ex­hibit­ing more of the dis­tin­guish­ing traits and phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of their car­niv­o­rous evo­lu­tion­ary pro­gen­i­tors. The ma­jor­ity of these world races soon be­come om­niv­o­rous, sub­sist­ing upon a wide range of viands from both the an­i­mal and veg­etable king­doms.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › dispensation of internationalism

52:3.10The post-Adamic epoch is the dis­pen­sa­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al­ism. With the near com­ple­tion of the task of race blend­ing, na­tion­al­ism wanes, and the broth­er­hood of man re­ally be­gins to ma­te­ri­al­ize. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment be­gins to take the place of the monar­chial or pa­ter­nal form of ruler­ship. The ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem be­comes world-wide, and grad­u­ally the lan­guages of the races give way to the tongue of the vi­o­let peo­ple. Uni­ver­sal peace and co-op­er­a­tion are sel­dom at­tained un­til the races are fairly well blended, and un­til they speak a com­mon lan­guage.

52:3.11Dur­ing the clos­ing cen­turies of the post-Adamic age there de­vel­ops new in­ter­est in art, mu­sic, and lit­er­a­ture, and this world-wide awak­en­ing is the sig­nal for the ap­pear­ance of a Mag­is­te­rial Son. The crown­ing de­vel­op­ment of this era is the uni­ver­sal in­ter­est in in­tel­lec­tual re­al­i­ties, true phi­los­o­phy. Re­li­gion be­comes less na­tion­al­is­tic, be­comes more and more a plan­e­tary af­fair. New rev­e­la­tions of truth char­ac­ter­ize these ages, and the Most Highs of the con­stel­la­tions be­gin to rule in the af­fairs of men. Truth is re­vealed up to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the con­stel­la­tions.

52:3.12Great eth­i­cal ad­vance­ment char­ac­ter­izes this era; the broth­er­hood of man is the goal of its so­ci­ety. World-wide peace—the ces­sa­tion of race con­flict and na­tional an­i­mos­ity—is the in­di­ca­tor of plan­e­tary ripeness for the ad­vent of the third or­der of son­ship, the Mag­is­te­rial Son.

• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › races blended and fit

52:4.1On nor­mal and loyal plan­ets this age opens with the mor­tal races blended and bi­o­log­i­cally fit. There are no race or color prob­lems; lit­er­ally all na­tions and races are of one blood. The broth­er­hood of man flour­ishes, and the na­tions are learn­ing to live on earth in peace and tran­quil­lity. Such a world stands on the eve of a great and cul­mi­nat­ing in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment.

52:4.2When an evo­lu­tion­ary world be­comes thus ripe for the mag­is­te­rial age, one of the high or­der of Avo­nal Sons makes his ap­pear­ance on a mag­is­te­rial mis­sion. The Plan­e­tary Prince and the Ma­te­rial Sons are of lo­cal uni­verse ori­gin; the Mag­is­te­rial Son hails from Par­a­dise.

52:4.3When the Par­a­dise Avo­nals come to the mor­tal spheres on ju­di­cial ac­tions, solely as dis­pen­sa­tion ad­ju­di­ca­tors, they are never in­car­nated. But when they come on mag­is­te­rial mis­sions, at least the ini­tial one, they are al­ways in­car­nated, though they do not ex­pe­ri­ence birth, nei­ther do they die the death of the realm. They may live on for gen­er­a­tions in those cases where they re­main as rulers on cer­tain plan­ets. When their mis­sions are con­cluded, they yield up their plan­e­tary lives and re­turn to their for­mer sta­tus of di­vine son­ship.

52:4.4Each new dis­pen­sa­tion ex­tends the hori­zon of re­vealed re­li­gion, and the Mag­is­te­rial Sons ex­tend the rev­e­la­tion of truth to por­tray the af­fairs of the lo­cal uni­verse and all its trib­u­taries.

• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › races effect economic liberation

52:4.5Af­ter the ini­tial vis­i­ta­tion of a Mag­is­te­rial Son the races soon ef­fect their eco­nomic lib­er­a­tion. The daily work re­quired to sus­tain one’s in­de­pen­dence would be rep­re­sented by two and one-half hours of your time. It is per­fectly safe to lib­er­ate such eth­i­cal and in­tel­li­gent mor­tals. Such re­fined peo­ples well know how to uti­lize leisure for self-im­prove­ment and plan­e­tary ad­vance­ment. This age wit­nesses the fur­ther pu­rifi­ca­tion of the racial stocks by the re­stric­tion of re­pro­duc­tion among the less fit and poorly en­dowed in­di­vid­u­als.

52:4.6The po­lit­i­cal gov­ern­ment and so­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion of the races con­tinue to im­prove, self-gov­ern­ment be­ing fairly well es­tab­lished by the end of this age. By self-gov­ern­ment we re­fer to the high­est type of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment. Such worlds ad­vance and honor only those lead­ers and rulers who are most fit to bear so­cial and po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › fusion Adjusters not yet universal

52:4.7Dur­ing this epoch the ma­jor­ity of the world mor­tals are Ad­juster in­dwelt. But even yet the be­stowal of di­vine Mon­i­tors is not al­ways uni­ver­sal. The Ad­justers of fu­sion des­tiny are not yet be­stowed upon all plan­e­tary mor­tals; it is still nec­es­sary for the will crea­tures to choose the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors.

• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › flowering of art, music, and higher learning
• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › return to more simplified living
• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › sciences reach height of development
• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › world-wide spiritual enlightenment

52:4.8Dur­ing the clos­ing ages of this dis­pen­sa­tion, so­ci­ety be­gins to re­turn to more sim­pli­fied forms of liv­ing. The com­plex na­ture of an ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion is run­ning its course, and mor­tals are learn­ing to live more nat­u­rally and ef­fec­tively. And this trend in­creases with each suc­ceed­ing epoch. This is the age of the flow­er­ing of art, mu­sic, and higher learn­ing. The phys­i­cal sci­ences have al­ready reached their height of de­vel­op­ment. The ter­mi­na­tion of this age, on an ideal world, wit­nesses the full­ness of a great re­li­gious awak­en­ing, a world-wide spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment. And this ex­ten­sive arousal of the spir­i­tual na­tures of the races is the sig­nal for the ar­rival of the be­stowal Son and for the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the fifth mor­tal epoch.

• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › many Avonal visits may take place
• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

52:4.9On many worlds it de­vel­ops that the planet is not made ready for a be­stowal Son by one mag­is­te­rial mis­sion; in that event there will be a sec­ond, even a suc­ces­sion of Mag­is­te­rial Sons, each of whom will ad­vance the races from one dis­pen­sa­tion to an­other un­til the planet is made ready for the gift of the be­stowal Son. On the sec­ond and sub­se­quent mis­sions the Mag­is­te­rial Sons may or may not be in­car­nated. But no mat­ter how many Mag­is­te­rial Sons may ap­pear—and they may also come as such af­ter the be­stowal Son—the ad­vent of each one marks the end of one dis­pen­sa­tion and the be­gin­ning of an­other.

• 4th – post-Magisterial Son era › lasts 25,000 to 50,000 years

52:4.10These dis­pen­sa­tions of the Mag­is­te­rial Sons cover any­where from twenty-five thou­sand to fifty thou­sand years of Uran­tia time. Some­times such an epoch is much shorter and in rare in­stances even longer. But in the full­ness of time one of these same Mag­is­te­rial Sons will be born as the Par­a­dise be­stowal Son.

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

• 5th – postbestowal Son era › Michael’s bestowal on Urantia

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

• 5th – postbestowal Son era › world-wide pursuit of moral culture, spiritual truth

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

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

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

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

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

• 5th – postbestowal Son era › lasts 10,000 to 100,000 years
• no arbitrary time limits regarding

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

• 5th – postbestowal Son era › average life span climbs above 300 years
• 5th – postbestowal Son era › disease and delinquency virtually eliminated

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

• 5th – postbestowal Son era › man is of one race, language, and religion

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

52:6.1The be­stowal Son is the Prince of Peace. He ar­rives with the mes­sage, “Peace on earth and good will among men.” On nor­mal worlds this is a dis­pen­sa­tion of world-wide peace; the na­tions no more learn war. But such salu­tary in­flu­ences did not at­tend the com­ing of your be­stowal Son, Christ Mi­chael. Uran­tia is not pro­ceed­ing in the nor­mal or­der. Your world is out of step in the plan­e­tary pro­ces­sion. Your Mas­ter, when on earth, warned his dis­ci­ples that his ad­vent would not bring the usual reign of peace on Uran­tia. He dis­tinctly told them that there would be “wars and ru­mors of wars,” and that na­tion would rise against na­tion. At an­other time he said, “Think not that I have come to bring peace upon earth.”

52:6.2Even on nor­mal evo­lu­tion­ary worlds the re­al­iza­tion of the world-wide broth­er­hood of man is not an easy ac­com­plish­ment. On a con­fused and dis­or­dered planet like Uran­tia such an achieve­ment re­quires a much longer time and ne­ces­si­tates far greater ef­fort. Un­aided so­cial evo­lu­tion can hardly achieve such happy re­sults on a spir­i­tu­ally iso­lated sphere. Re­li­gious rev­e­la­tion is es­sen­tial to the re­al­iza­tion of broth­er­hood on Uran­tia. While Je­sus has shown the way to the im­me­di­ate at­tain­ment of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood, the re­al­iza­tion of so­cial broth­er­hood on your world de­pends much on the achieve­ment of the fol­low­ing per­sonal trans­for­ma­tions and plan­e­tary ad­just­ments:

52:6.31. So­cial fra­ter­nity. Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of in­ter­na­tional and in­ter­ra­cial so­cial con­tacts and fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tions through travel, com­merce, and com­pet­i­tive play. De­vel­op­ment of a com­mon lan­guage and the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of mul­ti­lin­guists. The racial and na­tional in­ter­change of stu­dents, teach­ers, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and re­li­gious philoso­phers.

52:6.42. In­tel­lec­tual cross-fer­til­iza­tion. Broth­er­hood is im­pos­si­ble on a world whose in­hab­i­tants are so prim­i­tive that they fail to rec­og­nize the folly of un­mit­i­gated self­ish­ness. There must oc­cur an ex­change of na­tional and racial lit­er­a­ture. Each race must be­come fa­mil­iar with the thought of all races; each na­tion must know the feel­ings of all na­tions. Ig­no­rance breeds sus­pi­cion, and sus­pi­cion is in­com­pat­i­ble with the es­sen­tial at­ti­tude of sym­pa­thy and love.

52:6.53. Eth­i­cal awak­en­ing. Only eth­i­cal con­scious­ness can un­mask the im­moral­ity of hu­man in­tol­er­ance and the sin­ful­ness of frat­ri­ci­dal strife. Only a moral con­science can con­demn the evils of na­tional envy and racial jeal­ousy. Only moral be­ings will ever seek for that spir­i­tual in­sight which is es­sen­tial to liv­ing the golden rule.

52:6.64. Po­lit­i­cal wis­dom. Emo­tional ma­tu­rity is es­sen­tial to self-con­trol. Only emo­tional ma­tu­rity will in­sure the sub­sti­tu­tion of in­ter­na­tional tech­niques of civ­i­lized ad­ju­di­ca­tion for the bar­barous ar­bitra­ment of war. Wise states­men will some­time work for the wel­fare of hu­man­ity even while they strive to pro­mote the in­ter­est of their na­tional or racial groups. Self­ish po­lit­i­cal sagac­ity is ul­ti­mately sui­ci­dal—de­struc­tive of all those en­dur­ing qual­i­ties which in­sure plan­e­tary group sur­vival.

52:6.75. Spir­i­tual in­sight. The broth­er­hood of man is, af­ter all, pred­i­cated on the rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God. The quick­est way to re­al­ize the broth­er­hood of man on Uran­tia is to ef­fect the spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion of pres­ent-day hu­man­ity. The only tech­nique for ac­cel­er­at­ing the nat­u­ral trend of so­cial evo­lu­tion is that of ap­ply­ing spir­i­tual pres­sure from above, thus aug­ment­ing moral in­sight while en­hanc­ing the soul ca­pac­ity of ev­ery mor­tal to un­der­stand and love ev­ery other mor­tal. Mu­tual un­der­stand­ing and fra­ter­nal love are tran­scen­dent civ­i­liz­ers and mighty fac­tors in the world-wide re­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

52:6.8If you could be trans­planted from your back­ward and con­fused world to some nor­mal planet now in the postbestowal Son age, you would think you had been trans­lated to the heaven of your tra­di­tions. You would hardly be­lieve that you were ob­serv­ing the nor­mal evo­lu­tion­ary work­ings of a mor­tal sphere of hu­man habi­ta­tion. These worlds are in the spir­i­tual cir­cuits of their realm, and they en­joy all the ad­van­tages of the uni­verse broad­casts and the re­flec­tiv­ity ser­vices of the super­uni­verse.

52:7.1The Sons of the next or­der to ar­rive on the av­er­age evo­lu­tion­ary world are the Trin­ity Teacher Sons, the di­vine Sons of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. Again we find Uran­tia out of step with its sis­ter spheres in that your Je­sus has prom­ised to re­turn. That prom­ise he will cer­tainly ful­fill, but no one knows whether his sec­ond com­ing will pre­cede or fol­low the ap­pear­ances of Mag­is­te­rial or Teacher Sons on Uran­tia.

• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › lasts more than 1000 years

52:7.2The Teacher Sons come in groups to the spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing worlds. A plan­e­tary Teacher Son is as­sisted and sup­ported by sev­enty pri­mary Sons, twelve sec­ondary Sons, and three of the high­est and most ex­pe­ri­enced of the su­preme or­der of Day­nals. This corps will re­main for some time on the world, long enough to ef­fect the tran­si­tion from the evo­lu­tion­ary ages to the era of light and life—not less than one thou­sand years of plan­e­tary time and of­ten con­sid­er­ably longer. This mis­sion is a Trin­ity con­tri­bu­tion to the an­te­ced­ent ef­forts of all the di­vine per­son­al­i­ties who have min­is­tered to an in­hab­ited world.

52:7.3The rev­e­la­tion of truth is now ex­tended to the cen­tral uni­verse and to Par­a­dise. The races are be­com­ing highly spir­i­tual. A great peo­ple has evolved and a great age is ap­proach­ing. The ed­u­ca­tional, eco­nomic, and ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tems of the planet are un­der­go­ing rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions. New val­ues and re­la­tion­ships are be­ing es­tab­lished. The king­dom of heaven is ap­pear­ing on earth, and the glory of God is be­ing shed abroad in the world.

• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › many mortals translated

52:7.4This is the dis­pen­sa­tion when many mor­tals are trans­lated from among the liv­ing. As the era of Trin­ity Teacher Sons pro­gresses, the spir­i­tual al­le­giance of the mor­tals of time be­comes more and more uni­ver­sal. Nat­u­ral death be­comes less fre­quent as the Ad­justers in­creas­ingly fuse with their sub­jects dur­ing the life­time in the flesh. The planet even­tu­ally is classed as of the pri­mary mod­i­fied or­der of mor­tal as­cen­sion.

• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › government vanishes
• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › life span approaches 500 years

52:7.5Life dur­ing this era is pleas­ant and prof­itable. De­gen­er­acy and the an­ti­so­cial end prod­ucts of the long evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle have been vir­tu­ally oblit­er­ated. The length of life ap­proaches five hun­dred Uran­tia years, and the re­pro­duc­tive rate of racial in­crease is in­tel­li­gently con­trolled. An en­tirely new or­der of so­ci­ety has ar­rived. There are still great dif­fer­ences among mor­tals, but the state of so­ci­ety more nearly ap­proaches the ide­als of so­cial broth­er­hood and spir­i­tual equal­ity. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment is van­ish­ing, and the world is pass­ing un­der the rule of in­di­vid­ual self-con­trol. The func­tion of gov­ern­ment is chiefly di­rected to col­lec­tive tasks of so­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion and eco­nomic co-or­di­na­tion. The golden age is com­ing on apace; the tem­po­ral goal of the long and in­tense plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle is in sight. The re­ward of the ages is soon to be re­al­ized; the wis­dom of the Gods is about to be man­i­fested.

52:7.6The phys­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion of a world dur­ing this age re­quires about one hour each day on the part of ev­ery adult in­di­vid­ual; that is, the equiv­a­lent of one Uran­tia hour. The planet is in close touch with uni­verse af­fairs, and its peo­ple scan the lat­est broad­casts with the same keen in­ter­est you now man­i­fest in the lat­est edi­tions of your daily news­pa­pers. These races are oc­cu­pied with a thou­sand things of in­ter­est un­known on your world.

52:7.7In­creas­ingly, true plan­e­tary al­le­giance to the Su­preme Be­ing grows. Gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion, more and more of the race step into line with those who prac­tice jus­tice and live mercy. Slowly but surely the world is be­ing won to the joy­ous ser­vice of the Sons of God. The phys­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties and ma­te­rial prob­lems have been largely solved; the planet is ripen­ing for ad­vanced life and a more set­tled ex­is­tence.

52:7.8From time to time through­out their dis­pen­sa­tion, Teacher Sons con­tinue to come to these peace­ful worlds. They do not leave a world un­til they ob­serve that the evo­lu­tion­ary plan, as it con­cerns that planet, is work­ing smoothly. A Mag­is­te­rial Son of judg­ment usu­ally ac­com­pa­nies the Teacher Sons on their suc­ces­sive mis­sions, while an­other such Son func­tions at the time of their de­par­ture, and these ju­di­cial ac­tions con­tinue from age to age through­out the du­ra­tion of the mor­tal regime of time and space.

52:7.9Each re­cur­ring mis­sion of the Trin­ity Teacher Sons suc­ces­sively ex­alts such a su­per­nal world to ever-as­cend­ing heights of wis­dom, spir­i­tu­al­ity, and cos­mic il­lu­mi­na­tion. But the no­ble na­tives of such a sphere are still fi­nite and mor­tal. Noth­ing is per­fect; nev­er­the­less, there is evolv­ing a qual­ity of near per­fec­tion in the op­er­a­tion of an im­per­fect world and in the lives of its hu­man in­hab­i­tants.

• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › conclusion of Teacher Sons’ missions mark entrance upon light and life
• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › Planetary Prince elevated to Planetary Sovereign
• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › Teacher Sons may repeatedly return to same world

52:7.10The Trin­ity Teacher Sons may re­turn many times to the same world. But sooner or later, in con­nec­tion with the ter­mi­na­tion of one of their mis­sions, the Plan­e­tary Prince is el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign, and the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign ap­pears to pro­claim the en­trance of such a world upon the era of light and life.

52:7.11It was of the con­clu­sion of the ter­mi­nal mis­sion of the Teacher Sons (at least that would be the chronol­ogy on a nor­mal world) that John wrote: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth and the new Je­ru­sa­lem com­ing down from God out of heaven, pre­pared as a princess adorned for the prince.”

52:7.12This is the same ren­o­vated earth, the ad­vanced plan­e­tary stage, that the olden seer en­vi­sioned when he wrote: “‘For, as the new heav­ens and the new earth, which I will make, shall re­main be­fore me, so shall you and your chil­dren sur­vive; and it shall come to pass that from one new moon to an­other and from one Sab­bath to an­other all flesh shall come to wor­ship be­fore me,’ says the Lord.”

52:7.13It is the mor­tals of such an age who are de­scribed as “a cho­sen gen­er­a­tion, a royal priest­hood, a holy na­tion, an ex­alted peo­ple; and you shall show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of dark­ness into this mar­velous light.”

• 6th – post-Teacher Son era › conclusion of Teacher Sons’ missions mark entrance upon light and life

52:7.14No mat­ter what the spe­cial nat­u­ral his­tory of an in­di­vid­ual planet may be, no dif­fer­ence whether a realm has been wholly loyal, tainted with evil, or cursed by sin—no mat­ter what the an­tecedents may be—sooner or later the grace of God and the min­istry of an­gels will usher in the day of the ad­vent of the Trin­ity Teacher Sons; and their de­par­ture, fol­low­ing their fi­nal mis­sion, will in­au­gu­rate this su­perb era of light and life.

52:7.15All the worlds of Sa­ta­nia can join in the hope of the one who wrote: “Nev­er­the­less we, ac­cord­ing to His prom­ise, look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righ­teous­ness. Where­fore, beloved, see­ing that you look for such things, be dili­gent that you may be found by Him in peace, with­out spot and blame­less.”

52:7.16The de­par­ture of the Teacher Son corps, at the end of their first or some sub­se­quent reign, ush­ers in the dawn of the era of light and life—the thresh­old of the tran­si­tion from time to the vestibule of eter­nity. The plan­e­tary re­al­iza­tion of this era of light and life far more than equals the fond­est ex­pec­ta­tions of Uran­tia mor­tals who have en­ter­tained no more farsee­ing con­cepts of the fu­ture life than those em­braced within re­li­gious be­liefs which de­pict heaven as the im­me­di­ate des­tiny and fi­nal dwell­ing place of sur­viv­ing mor­tals.

52:7.17[Spon­sored by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger tem­porar­ily at­tached to the staff of Ga­briel.]

• dispensations › determined by missions of divine Sons; listed

55:0.2This era of light and life, in­au­gu­rated by the Teacher Sons at the con­clu­sion of their fi­nal plan­e­tary mis­sion, con­tin­ues in­def­i­nitely on the in­hab­ited worlds. Each ad­vanc­ing stage of set­tled sta­tus may be seg­re­gated by the ju­di­cial ac­tions of the Mag­is­te­rial Sons into a suc­ces­sion of dis­pen­sa­tions; but all such ju­di­cial ac­tions are purely tech­ni­cal, in no way mod­i­fy­ing the course of plan­e­tary events.

• practice to send forth advance groups to prepare way for subsequent epochs

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.

• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s lasted 1,000,000 to 500,000 years ago
• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s began with appearance of colored races; regarded as Old Stone Age

64:0.1This is the story of the evo­lu­tion­ary races of Uran­tia from the days of An­don and Fonta, al­most one mil­lion years ago, down through the times of the Plan­e­tary Prince to the end of the ice age.

64:0.2The hu­man race is al­most one mil­lion years old, and the first half of its story roughly cor­re­sponds to the pre-Plan­e­tary Prince days of Uran­tia. The lat­ter half of the his­tory of man­kind be­gins at the time of the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the ap­pear­ance of the six col­ored races and roughly cor­re­sponds to the pe­riod com­monly re­garded as the Old Stone Age.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › Mansant was great teacher of

64:6.29From time to time all of these dif­fer­ent peo­ples ex­pe­ri­enced cul­tural and spir­i­tual re­vivals. Mansant was a great teacher of the post-Plan­e­tary Prince days. But men­tion is made only of those out­stand­ing lead­ers and teach­ers who markedly in­flu­enced and in­spired a whole race. With the pass­ing of time, many lesser teach­ers arose in dif­fer­ent re­gions; and in the ag­gre­gate they con­tributed much to the sum to­tal of those sav­ing in­flu­ences which pre­vented the to­tal col­lapse of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion, es­pe­cially dur­ing the long and dark ages be­tween the Cali­gas­tia re­bel­lion and the ar­rival of Adam.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › age of invention and exploration

73:1.1On a nor­mal planet the ar­rival of the Ma­te­rial Son would or­di­nar­ily her­ald the ap­proach of a great age of in­ven­tion, ma­te­rial prog­ress, and in­tel­lec­tual en­light­en­ment. The post-Adamic era is the great sci­en­tific age of most worlds, but not so on Uran­tia. Though the planet was peo­pled by races phys­i­cally fit, the tribes lan­guished in the depths of sav­agery and moral stag­na­tion.

• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s ended with 2nd dispensational roll call at arrival of Adam and Eve

74:2.8Then was heard the arch­an­gels’ procla­ma­tion, and the broad­cast voice of Ga­briel de­creed the sec­ond judg­ment roll call of Uran­tia and the res­ur­rec­tion of the sleep­ing sur­vivors of the sec­ond dis­pen­sa­tion of grace and mercy on 606 of Sa­ta­nia. The dis­pen­sa­tion of the Prince has passed; the age of Adam, the third plan­e­tary epoch, opens amidst scenes of sim­ple grandeur; and the new rulers of Uran­tia start their reign un­der seem­ingly fa­vor­able con­di­tions, not­with­stand­ing the world-wide con­fu­sion oc­ca­sioned by lack of the co-op­er­a­tion of their pre­de­ces­sor in au­thor­ity on the planet.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Urantia’s last; ended with 3rd roll call upon resurrection of Jesus

77:8.1At the last ad­ju­di­ca­tion of this world, when Mi­chael re­moved the slum­ber­ing sur­vivors of time, the mid­way crea­tures were left be­hind, left to as­sist in the spir­i­tual and semispir­i­tual work on the planet. They now func­tion as a sin­gle corps, em­brac­ing both or­ders and num­ber­ing 10,992. The United Mid­way­ers of Uran­tia are at pres­ent gov­erned al­ter­nately by the se­nior mem­ber of each or­der. This regime has ob­tained since their amal­ga­ma­tion into one group shortly af­ter Pen­te­cost.

• each p.e. provides immediate destiny for all preceding stages

118:0.13Each suc­ces­sive uni­verse age is the an­techam­ber of the fol­low­ing era of cos­mic growth, and each uni­verse epoch pro­vides im­me­di­ate des­tiny for all pre­ced­ing stages. Ha­vona, in and of it­self, is a per­fect, but per­fec­tion-lim­ited, cre­ation; Ha­vona per­fec­tion, ex­pand­ing out into the evo­lu­tion­ary super­uni­verses, finds not only cos­mic des­tiny but also lib­er­a­tion from the lim­i­ta­tions of pre-evo­lu­tion­ary ex­is­tence.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Urantia’s last; ended with 3rd roll call upon resurrection of Jesus

120:2.4“4. In ac­cor­dance with your re­quest, Ga­briel and all con­cerned will co-op­er­ate with you in the ex­pressed de­sire to end your Uran­tia be­stowal with the pro­nounce­ment of a dis­pen­sa­tional judg­ment of the realm, ac­com­pa­nied by the ter­mi­na­tion of an age, the res­ur­rec­tion of the sleep­ing mor­tal sur­vivors, and the es­tab­lish­ment of the dis­pen­sa­tion of the be­stowed Spirit of Truth.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Jesus perceived end of

174:5.6As Je­sus stood be­fore them at this time, he per­ceived the end of one dis­pen­sa­tion and the be­gin­ning of an­other. Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the Greeks, the Mas­ter said:

• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s ended with 1st dispensational roll call at arrival of Prince
• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s ended with 2nd dispensational roll call at arrival of Adam and Eve
• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Urantia’s last; ended with 3rd roll call upon resurrection of Jesus

176:2.3In fur­ther an­swer to Pe­ter’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Why do you still look for the Son of Man to sit upon the throne of David and ex­pect that the ma­te­rial dreams of the Jews will be ful­filled? Have I not told you all these years that my king­dom is not of this world? The things which you now look down upon are com­ing to an end, but this will be a new be­gin­ning out of which the gospel of the king­dom will go to all the world and this sal­va­tion will spread to all peo­ples. And when the king­dom shall have come to its full fruition, be as­sured that the Fa­ther in heaven will not fail to visit you with an en­larged rev­e­la­tion of truth and an en­hanced dem­on­stra­tion of righ­teous­ness, even as he has al­ready be­stowed upon this world him who be­came the prince of dark­ness, and then Adam, who was fol­lowed by Mel­chiz­e­dek, and in these days, the Son of Man. And so will my Fa­ther con­tinue to man­i­fest his mercy and show forth his love, even to this dark and evil world. So also will I, af­ter my Fa­ther has in­vested me with all power and au­thor­ity, con­tinue to fol­low your for­tunes and to guide in the af­fairs of the king­dom by the pres­ence of my spirit, who shall shortly be poured out upon all flesh. Even though I shall thus be pres­ent with you in spirit, I also prom­ise that I will some­time re­turn to this world, where I have lived this life in the flesh and achieved the ex­pe­ri­ence of si­mul­ta­ne­ously re­veal­ing God to man and lead­ing man to God. Very soon must I leave you and take up the work the Fa­ther has in­trusted to my hands, but be of good cour­age, for I will some­time re­turn. In the mean­time, my Spirit of the Truth of a uni­verse shall com­fort and guide you.

• Father will send another bestowal at end of dispensation

176:2.5“But the times of the reap­pear­ing of the Son of Man are known only in the coun­cils of Par­a­dise; not even the an­gels of heaven know when this will oc­cur. How­ever, you should un­der­stand that, when this gospel of the king­dom shall have been pro­claimed to all the world for the sal­va­tion of all peo­ples, and when the full­ness of the age has come to pass, the Fa­ther will send you an­other dis­pen­sa­tional be­stowal, or else the Son of Man will re­turn to ad­judge the age.

• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Urantia’s last; ended with 3rd roll call upon resurrection of Jesus

189:3.1A lit­tle af­ter half past four o’clock this Sun­day morn­ing, Ga­briel sum­moned the arch­an­gels to his side and made ready to in­au­gu­rate the gen­eral res­ur­rec­tion of the ter­mi­na­tion of the Adamic dis­pen­sa­tion on Uran­tia. When the vast host of the ser­a­phim and the cheru­bim con­cerned in this great event had been mar­shaled in proper for­ma­tion, the mor­ontia Mi­chael ap­peared be­fore Ga­briel, say­ing: “As my Fa­ther has life in him­self, so has he given it to the Son to have life in him­self. Al­though I have not yet fully re­sumed the ex­er­cise of uni­verse ju­ris­dic­tion, this self-im­posed lim­i­ta­tion does not in any man­ner re­strict the be­stowal of life upon my sleep­ing sons; let the roll call of the plan­e­tary res­ur­rec­tion be­gin.”

• 1st – pre-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s ended with 1st dispensational roll call at arrival of Prince
• 2nd – post-Planetary Prince era › Urantia’s ended with 2nd dispensational roll call at arrival of Adam and Eve
• 3rd – post-Adamic era › Urantia’s last; ended with 3rd roll call upon resurrection of Jesus

189:3.3Not­with­stand­ing that count­less in­di­vid­u­als hav­ing per­sonal se­raphic guard­i­ans and those achiev­ing the req­ui­site at­tain­ment of spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity prog­ress had gone on to man­so­nia dur­ing the ages sub­se­quent to the times of Adam and Eve, and though there had been many spe­cial and mil­len­nial res­ur­rec­tions of Uran­tia sons, this was the third of the plan­e­tary roll calls, or com­plete dis­pen­sa­tional res­ur­rec­tions. The first oc­curred at the time of the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince, the sec­ond dur­ing the time of Adam, and this, the third, sig­nal­ized the mor­ontia res­ur­rec­tion, the mor­tal tran­sit, of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• sleeping survivors enter upon eternal ascent at end of each dispensation

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”